Get me to the finish line, Lady Gaga

This time tomorrow, the marathon will be over. Ready or not, I'm running 26.2 miles.

I'm feeling pretty great, actually.  For the last couple runs this week, I felt energized, light on my feet, and more excited than panicked.  The speed training on Wednesday involved a series of 400 meter sprints, which I ran faster than I have throughout this entire training.  Each 400 around 1:40-1:50 -- not terribly fast for a sprinter, but great for me.

Sporting my new KBVCM shirt before my final run

Today I did a quick 3-mile run.  They say it's good to run the day before the race, so I saved this one for today.  I was supposed to run it at my planned marathon pace, which felt soooo slow for a 3-mile run.

It's fairly warm and humid again today (around 80° right now), and breathing wasn't entirely comfortable.
Tomorrow's high is 76 and partly cloudy.  It looks like it'll be in the 50s for the start of the run, which is absolutely perfect.  I'm grateful.  The hard thing with this training is that the majority of it seemed to be in the winter, or at least cool spring weather.  I don't feel like I've had enough time to get used to running in the heat.  I'm not quite sure how to deal with this for future marathons, when we may not be so lucky with the weather.

The rest of this day will involve consuming tons of water and gatorade, eating carbs, stretching, and not doing much else.

For the marathon, I decided that I'm going to listen to music for the last half.  Last time, I didn't listen to music at all, believing the crowd would adequately energize me.  Unfortunately, after 13 or so miles, the cheers from the bystanders become more annoying than motivating, and I mostly want to be left alone.  The idea is that when I start up my playlist, it will reset my mindset.

Behind the cut is my well thought out, tested throughout training, and slightly embarrassing list of songs that will get me to to the finish line.  I've never listened to so much pop music before this year's training.  At least I balanced it out with some pre-nose-job Hole.

This two-hour long play list will not be played in order.  I'm all about the shuffle.  You know, the list seems to be too short, but Spotify says it's 2 hours.  It is somehow comforting that 2 hours of music doesn't look like that much.

I think I may need to go back and add some Dolly Parton.

sticky fingers

Today I completed a 14-mile run, the run yet this year. It went pretty well. My pacing has become a lot more consistent, and I'm right where I'm supposed to be, which is 45-60 seconds over my planned marathon pace.

My feet are killing me. My legs feel a bit stiff, but not too bad. I did devote about 20 minutes to stretching after the run. I probably would have done more, but I really wanted to jump in the shower.

New this year is a bottle belt, which has been great. I remember seeing these on runners now and then, and I always thought they looked kind of silly. But now I'm not sure how I ever ran without them. I filled all four bottles up with gatorade, and then had an additional 12-ounce bottle hidden at the 12 mile mark (also conveniently by my apartment). It seemed to be the perfect amount of liquid for 14 miles.

Speaking of things I used to think were silly, let's talk about gatorade. In 2010, I was convinced that all sports drinks were simply sugary drinks that people consume when they want to feel slightly healthier than they do drinking soda. A bunch of overpriced propaganda for "athletes" to buy into, and defeat the purpose of the exercise in consuming all those calories. I ended up creating my own concoction, with water, juice and honey. It was kind of gross. So, this year, LTB bought a jug of powdered gatorade that he prepares before the run (meanwhile, I make our post-run smoothie.* Making the smoothie before the run and storing it in the fridge is the best idea ever).

It turns out that gatorade during the run is incredibly refreshing, energizing, and completely essential. Electrolytes or whatever, right? Water alone simply does not cut it for runs over an hour. I tried to find a link to verify this fact, but my computer isn't cooperating. So, either trust me or Google it up.

On that note, LTB did pick up some other gatorade products as part of their "G-Series." It was crap and a waste of money. That "pre-game" fuel made me nauseous and I felt weighed down for the first couple miles. No more of that, just plain old gatorade, even though it does make my fingers and face terribly sticky by the end of the run.

Did I seriously run 14 miles? It's kind of unbelievable. I felt tired towards the end, but I felt like I had my head in the right place, always remembering to only count the miles I'd finished, not how many I have left. Somehow, thinking, "woah, I already ran 5 miles! That wasn't so bad," is much much more comforting than thinking, "I have 9 miles left. Not even half way there." The latter line of thinking needs to be avoided as much as possible, for sure.

*Ingredients for my amazing smoothies: I've tried changing it up, but it doesn't get better than this: frozen strawberries, bananas, spoonful of peanut butter, couple spoonfuls of Cabot greek vanilla yogurt, almond milk, and whatever juice we have on hand -- usually grapefruit or orange.

Week 1 of Official Marathon Training: Done

Today I completed an 8-mile run, the longest yet this year. It actually felt pretty great. I get a little scared each time I take on increased mileage, which makes completing it all the more satisfying.

It's weird to think that I've done all this before, but there's still a nagging voice in the back of my mind telling me this is impossible, that I simply don't have the constitution, the body, the willpower to make it through this. I think this is the reason why people run marathons. I know it is for me. Because I can think back on this at any point in my life, whenever things seem impossible, and remember that that nagging voice is nothing but a scared, ignorant, lying source of misinformation. It's sounds corny as hell, but seriously, there have been countless times when I've thought to myself, "I ran a goddamn marathon. I can do anything."

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm doing the "train less, run faster" program, which started this week. As I was warned, just because I'm training less days a week, this does NOT make it any easier. This is freaking hard, and I am feeling pushed right to the edge of my ability. However, I am hugely grateful for having a day off in between runs. I ran Monday/Wednesday/Friday and did yoga on Tuesday and Thursday. Not surprisingly, my knee pain is GONE. Like magic. Even after the 8-miler today, I feel great. I didn't even need ice.

So, Monday involved speed training. 10-20 minute warmup (about 1.5 miles jogged slowly, followed by stretching), then 3 x 1600 meters (1 mile) at a 10K-45 second pace, 1 minute rest intervals. End with 10 minute cool down. I thought this would be easy! Only three miles? And I get a whole minute to rest in between? Piece of cake. My pace was supposed to be 7:15/mile -- quite fast for me, but I'm only doing one mile at a time, so how hard could it be?

I was hoping to run on a track, but that proved trickier to find than anticipated. I called UVM's athletic department to ask if I could use their track and got no response. I then called Burlington High School, and they said it was cool so long as the gate was unlocked, which they said it should be. Drove down there early afternoon, and it was locked. Argh. SO, I went down to the waterfront instead, as they at least have mile markers on the bike path. I was hoping to run on some rubber, but had to deal with the asphalt once again.

Once warmed up on the bike path, I began the first run, iPhone in hand to measure the miles. Turns out I really need a watch, or a stopwatch. The iPhone screen turns off, and it's too easy to accidentally hit the pause button on the touch screen. Plus I kept yanking my headphones out of my ears. I gave up on music by the third mile.

For the first mile, I felt like I was running fast as hell, but I made it in 7:30-ish. I felt exhausted. The one minute of rest FLEW by and I felt like I was still gasping for air on the second mile. "I hate this. I hate this. I hate this," is what ran through my mind. I finished the second and third miles in about 8 minutes. I felt really uncomfortable and unhappy the whole time. This is very different from the long distance running I'm used to. Plus side? It went by really fast, I guess.

Day #2: easy 2 miles, 2 miles at 10K pace, easy 2 miles. I was wary about running 6 miles for the first time, but I actually really liked this run. The easy miles were, well, easy and quite enjoyable. I didn't quite make my desired 10K pace (8 minutes), and was closer to 9 minutes. We'll work on that.

Day #3: 8 miles at planned marathon pace + 30 seconds. For me, that's 9:40/mile. This was actually great. The weather was absolutely gorgeous -- about 40 degrees and soooo sunny. I think this is my favorite running weather. Just perfect. The run was challenging, but I felt prepared for it. Now, I have GOT to work on my pacing. With the "lap" feature on the iPhone stopwatch, I tried to capture my times for each mile. After the fourth mile, it looked like it wasn't letting me do that any more -- turns out it just scrolled down and I could have kept using it. So, I only got the first 5 miles, and it's obvious that I'm all over the place and not great with pacing.

Overall, my time was about 81 minutes, or 10:07/mile. I don't have the exact time because a) I didn't start running the second I hit "start" and, b) my phone froze at the end of the run for about 30 seconds. Here's the breakdown. This looks ridiculous:

Mile 1: 10:00

Mile 2: 9:11

Mile 3: 10:44

Mile 4: 9:47

Mile 5: 9:21

Miles 6-8: 32 minutes (10:40/mile)

Miles 3 and 6 involved a ridiculous hill on Battery Street -- 6 solid blocks of a relatively steep decline/incline. This is actually what runners face at the 15th mile of the Burlington Marathon, affectionally referred to as the "assault on battery." I figured I should get a handle on it so it doesn't wipe me out like it did in 2010. It's surprising that running DOWNhill (mile 3) slowed me down so much. I think I was holding back as I saw it as an excuse to conserve my energy, but there's no excuse for that time. I'm assuming that running up the hill on mile 6 slowed me down to about 12 minutes, and I ran 7 and 8 in 10 minutes each. I felt like I was crawling up that thing. It's pretty damn tricky.

Week 1 is done. I feel great. I love how breathing feels after a long run. My lungs feel so open, like I was never really breathing before. Have I mentioned how much more energy I have now? How I can climb the multiple flights of stairs to my apartment without being out of breath? Life is good.

like a gazelle

Second run of the third week of base training, and I finally feel like I'm in shape again. I felt that coveted "runner's high" for the first time in a while, as I kept my head up and focused throughout the 4 miles. None of those, "uggh this is awful when is going to stop" thoughts that have been running through my head for the last two weeks. I'm sure those thoughts will be back, though. It was nice to be reminded that running is actually enjoyable!

Before the run, I really wasn't feeling it. I've been running 5 days a week, taking off Tuesday and Friday (always subject to change depending on the weather). The last two days, Saturday and Sunday, were rough. It was absurdly cold. The high on Sunday was 6 ºF, with a low of -8. This morning, when I woke up and checked the temperature, wunderground reported -5. Ack!

Also worth noting is my yesterday was filled with a debilitating migraine. All I could do, for hours, was lie down with a blanket over my eyes. While I'm certainly no doctor and may spend too much time self-diagnosing, I think dehydration may have triggered my first migraine in years. Saturday night, I went out and had a few drinks - first time since NYE, actually. I did not properly rehydrate before passing out (not that I drank all that much). The next day, I don't recall drinking much water, nor consuming more than a sip before jumping in the shower post-run. Before I knew it, scintillating scotoma took over my vision, so I downed a bunch of water and took some excederin, but it was too late. My afternoon was ruined.

So, fully recovered today, I wanted to stay that way and was in no mood to run. But I did anyway, of course. I remember an interview with a competitive marathon runner that I read a while back, where the interviewer asked the runner at the starting line how he was feeling. His response was simple: it doesn't matter. It might come off as cold and callous, but I find it somehow calming and zen-like. It's true. It doesn't matter how I'm feeling before a run, not emotionally anyway. Obviously physical problems are a different story, but when I'm running, but those silly thoughts and emotions are a different story. I'm going to run anyway. I might be cranky, scared, tired, enthusiastic, optimistic - it's irrelevant. Just run.

I wish I could find the interview. I think it was in Runner's World like 2 years ago.

Today, I just ran. I lost myself in the moment, and it felt great. The temperature increased to a balmy 15 ºF, and I did feel the difference. I felt like I could use that energy normally devoted to shivering to, you know, running. I can tell that running in this frigid air is going to pay off come spring time.

And, I had my best time yet for the 4-mile run: 37:30. Still, at 9:20/mile, I'm not quite at my 8:00/mile goal, but I'm getting there, slowly but surely.