10K Pride Run Race Report

Now that my 30x30K challenge is over, I'm shifting my focus to marathon speed. The problem is, I have no idea what kind of pace to target. In the past, my marathon pace/training strategy has looked something like this:

Step 1: Look at pace charts. Pick a time for a race that looks attractive. The average pace of my imagined race is a little bit faster than the fastest mile of any REAL race I have ever actually run.
Step 2: Run workouts for my imagined ideal pace. Have The Phantom Poo frustrate every interval workout I do. Get discouraged. Try to run all of my regular workouts at my imagined race pace, and skip the interval workouts (since I can't hit the intervals anyway). In most of these workouts I have to slow down before the end of the workout, because I don't seem to be able to sustain my imagined race pace for more than a couple of miles. Usually this is because after a few miles I feel like I'm going to poop my pants.
Step 3: Give up and hit the trails where I can't worry about pace anymore.
Step 4: Turn up to the marathon underprepared and run the same time I always run, which is of course much slower than the time I was targeting.
Step 5: Vow to quit running because I suck at it. Try something else.

This time I want to be smarter, and train within myself. But with my new-found fitness, I have no idea what I can REALLY do. Time for a tune-up race. A quick Google search turned up a 10K in San Francisco associated with Pride weekend. I'm not really a rainbow flag kind of gal, but it seemed like a better choice than the 5K alternative closer to the house that warned, "ABSOLUTELY NO COMPETITION, THIS RACE IS FOR FUN!" Party poopers. Plus, I figured, being in the fog belt of the city, it was sure to be the only place in the Bay Area that wouldn't be broiling hot on race day.

There are probably 15 days a year when the sun shines on Golden Gate Park, and only one day every seven years when the sun shines on Golden Gate Park in the morning. When I first moved to San Francisco around this time of year, I stayed a block from Golden Gate park, half a mile from the ocean. Temperatures were in the mid-50's every day that summer. Today, it was already 70 degrees at 8:30 in the morning and this was the one morning in every seven years that it was sunny in the fog belt at 8:00 in the morning. So much for cool weather. Oh well, at least I was adjusted to it now, but I was a little worried about running for 45 minutes without my trusty water bottle that comes with me on every run. My water bottle is my only defense against my superhuman sweat rate, but fast runners don't run 10K's with water bottles, and I wanted to believe that I could be a fast runner too.

As I walked up to the registration table, I was acutely aware of just how gay this event was. Men had limp wrists and gay voices (you know, that whiny drawl that draws out the last word of every sentence and trails off with a note of distain), and women had short hair and gay postures (you know, carrying themselves with a swagger that's half way between James Dean and a self-aware teenaged boy). I don't know if it was stranger for me that I used to be accustomed to being surrounded by so many gay people, or that it felt so weird coming back to it now. You see, I'm not gay. Well I mean, I am, but you wouldn't catch me dead with a rainbow sticker on my car or turning up to some gay pride rally, or palling around with other gay people talking about how gay we are. But then again, here I was on the fringes of the biggest gay pride celebration in the world and by the end of the day I would have a rainbow ribbon around my neck, so never mind. I did hear some guys talking about how they had gone down to city hall that morning and gotten married, though. That was pretty cool. They were probably among the first to do so since Prop 8 was finally shot in the head, and that made my heart soar. I was grateful to the Gay Movement for that, but other than that I was more of the opinion that they should put the rainbow flags away already. This isn't 1989 anymore, right?

Anyway, back to running. I checked in, dropped off my bag, and ran a half mile warm-up. My race plan was to run without a watch, even though I would be wearing my watch on my wrist the whole time. I just promised myself not to look at it, that's all. As I started my warm-up lap, I looked down at my pace: 9:26. I panicked. What if I just didn't have it today? What if my legs were shot? Don't look at the watch, you idiot! Then, about 400m later I looked at the watch again. My pace was 7:20. I was going to win this race! I should run even faster for my warm-up and see what running 6-minute miles felt like. If it felt good, then maybe THAT should be my race pace. Don't look at the watch, you idiot! I put my wrist down and shook out my shoulders. Coming back full circle, I looked at my watch again, 8:45. Oh no, I had spent all my speed in my half-mile warm-up. I was hitting the wall. The race was over. I was probably overheated. My stomach felt sour from the coffee. I would probably throw up. My race was beyond saving!

You can see why I shouldn't race with a watch.

I went to use the bathroom, and there in front of me was... my Sponsor. Now THERE was a blast from my past. Our relationship had ended with her yelling something like, "Fine, quit AA. Go drink! I don't care. Because if you quit The Program, you're going to go back to drinking." Half of me wanted to tell her that in a few weeks I would be 3 years sober and that walking away from AA was the best thing I'd ever done. The other half of me just wanted to run way faster than her. I came out of the bathroom and awkwardly stood next to her for a few minutes as she talked to her friends about the race. It dawned on me that neither of us really wanted to talk to each other, because neither of us really liked each other. That's okay, I don't need everyone to like me, especially the people who I don't care to keep in my life. I wished her luck and walked away, and in my head I wasn't giving her a self-vindicating monologue. It felt pretty good.

I went up to the starting line where people were gathering. A man with a bull horn was talking to us, yammering on about how all the volunteers had synchronized their watches so we should line up in the correct corals because they were going to start ON TIME... What corals? I wondered. We all stood there dumbly. "So get to the start," he said. We stayed put, under the rainbow balloon arch. "Uh, back there," he said. OH! the start was behind us. We moseyed on back and lined up. He followed us. "5K on the left, 10K on the right." Uh, okay. We lined up. I and everyone else wondered, Our right, or his right?

"OH! The 10K start is back there," someone said. So we kept moseying. On the ground were chalked lines with different paces, "6 min/mi," "7 min/mi" and so on. I didn't know where to line up, so I stood in the back of the 7-minute coral, but in front of the 8-minute line. I watched people pick corals. Almost everybody hesitated for a second trying to decide whether it was better to stand in a fast corral and look like a fool, or stand in a slower group and get stuck behind all the walkers. Only one woman got in the 6-minute coral. Good for her. I bet she had a better race strategy than, "Just don't puke."

There was a countdown from 10, and then someone said, "I think the 10K start is separate," so we all stood there and waited patiently. Then the man with the bullhorn standing up the road yelled, "GO GUYS!" and the group collectively went, OH! He must mean us, and started running.

Mile 1:
Mile 1 was downhill and everyone started out fast. I just let the tide roll around me and concentrated on relaxing. I looked at my watch just long enough to verify that it was on, and then I am proud to say that I never looked at it again. The road was wide for awhile, so it didn't matter that we had to run through the entire 5K field, but when it turned off onto a narrow dirt path and a couple of guys formed a road block, I let the Bitch Voice out. "Please move aside to leat people through," I said as I crashed through the underbrush next to them. I still had a voice. That was good. That meant that, for now anyway, I probably wasn't going to puke. I ran past the first mile marker and a man with a watch yelled, "7:15!" Then I ran through another mile marker and another man yelled, "7:25." Now, looking at my watch (but not at the time), it says I ran the first mile in 6:55. All those times were too fast, but I knew that I had been headed downhill, so I could expect to slow down in the next mile.

Mile 2:
Now we were coming uphill. Not so severely uphill that you might even call it a hill, but uphill enough that if you carried your momentum in from the downhill and tried to keep charging at the same speed, you would probably puke. "Relax," I told myself. "Listen to your breathing." A few songs about breathing or not worrying –none of which I liked– flashed in my head, but mostly I just repeated the words, "relaxed" and "supple" in my head. As I came up on the 2-mile mark a man yelled something that I couldn't understand. Then he was silent. You nitwit, I thought. But I didn't look at my watch, and I kept the Bitch Voice in my head and out of my mouth. Later inspection of my watch clocked this mile at 7:39. Not too bad. This mile would be different on the second loop.

Mile 3:

We climbed another little rise, and hit a water station. I grabbed a cup and aimed for my mouth. I missed. I must learn to drink from Dixie cups. Fast runners who do not run with water bottles do not throw all of their water on their chests. Then we rounded a hairpin bend, and it was back downhill to the finish. A man at the 3-mile sign yelled, "22:45," but I'd lost track of whether he was the 5K guy or the 10K guy. Watch tells me this mile was 7:11. If I had stopped my race right here and run across the finish line, I would have won the 5K overall. Instead I bypassed the rainbow balloon arch and set out for the second loop.

Mile 4:

Suddenly the course was much less crowded, and most of the people I could see up ahead were going close enough to my pace to seem out of my reach. Without rabbits to catch, the miles dragged longer. There was one guy I passed, and then I could hear him sitting on my shoulder. He gave me comfort. As long as he didn't pass me, I probably wasn't slowing down. We talked about the weather, and then we hit the bottom of the hill again. Suddenly I regretted saying the few sentences I did about the heat and sun. All of a sudden I was sitting on The Puke's shoulder, and if I sped up, I would soon be grabbing my knees on the side of the road while the clock ticked on without me. When I ran past the next mile marker, the guy's watch was hanging uselessly from his elbow as he clapped and cheered for us. Nitwit. Later, the watch reveals that I ran this lap in 7:13.

Mile 5:
Better I didn't know my time, because I would only lose a few seconds by relaxing my pace, but I could (and had before) lost minutes by puking at the side of the road. As I headed into the hill, I had to choose between an uneven rocky section of the trail, or a flat, smooth part. The problem was that the guy just over my shoulder was on the smooth part, and I didn't want to trip him. He was my guardian angel, and I didn't want to break his ankle. Eventually he let me in ahead of him, and I was glad that he didn't want to talk again, because now it was me and The Puke having a very involved conversation. When I passed the next mile marker just before the top of the hill, the watch guy shouted "37:27." It seemed that I had lost some time, but right now I was so hot and thirsty, and The Puke was shouting so loud at me that I didn't really care where the time had gone.

Mile 6:

And then I was coming to the top of the hill where the water stop was, and there was... A HOMELESS MAN with a bike packed with mountains of stuff blocking the whole entire water station. I'm thirsty, motherfucker! Only in San Francisco! The volunteers were handing him water. I muttered something to the guy over my shoulder about how a homeless man was going to keep me from getting my water, and then The Bitch Voice came out. "Move around him!" I yelled to the volunteer. The volunteer did a great job of dodging the hobo's rig and handed me my cup. I threw it at my chest. Damn. Then it was time to come around the hairpin turn when, leisurely as you please another homeless guy stepped right in our path. Me, the guy behind me, and The Puke all almost crashed into him. "Look out!" Bitch Voice yelled. "On your right," the more polite guy yelled behind me. We both missed him by a fraction of an inch. On to the final mile marker where the guy was yelling, "44:45, 44;50..." So much for a sub-45-minute race. Oh well. Right now I just had to beat The Puke to the finish.

Mile 6.2
And then there was a goddamned CYCLIST in the way, swerving down the finishing chute at a slower pace than the runners were running. She needed to get from the right curb to the left side of the road, but she would need to cut across the course to do it, and I didn't trust her to hold her bike straight while she looked over her shoulder. I decided to make it someone else's problem. This sounded like a job for The Bitch Voice. "Stay right, coming through!" I yelled as I dashed around her. Let her ruin someone else's finish, at least I scared her out of my path.

I wanted to sprint into the finish, but I had The Puke to contend with. For the first time since the first quarter mile, people were passing me. But I didn't care. Let them pass me, I couldn't make up more than a second or two by now. And little did those suckers know I would probably puke down their backs the second we crossed the finish line. I finished in 46:36 by the official time, 46:25 by my watch, meaning that I ran the final .2 (.28 miles by my watch) in an underwhelming 7:06 pace.

As we lined up to hand in the tabs from the bottom of our bibs, I gave the volunteer a sign that meant, "I'm probably going to puke on you any second, no hard feelings, right, bub?" He gave me a look that could have meant, "No hard feelings, you're pretty badass if you ran hard enough to puke. And good on you for getting to the finish line before you did it," or his look could have meant, "What are you doing with your hands?"

The story has a happy ending, because I didn't puke. I won!

I wasn't sure if I actually had won something, so I stuck around an hour and a half for the awards ceremony. I wound up taking 4th overall, and I'm lucky I just turned 30 because if I'd been 29, then the overall winners would have taken up all the "Under 30" age group hardware as well and I would have been shit out of luck. As it was, I won my age group and walked back to the car with a gold medal hanging from a big, flaming, rainbow ribbon around my neck.

But as much chagrin as it gives me to be draped with a rainbow at a big, gay event, my heart swelled to see a high school kid who had also won his age group walking around with a big, gay rainbow around his neck too. I can say with some degree of certainty that this kid was straight, but he apparently thought nothing of turning up at a 5K, running it fast, and wearing his finisher's medal home. It was like he'd turned up at a race at the Knights of Columbus and was walking away with a red, white, and green ribbon around his neck. It seemed to affect his swagger that little. The fact probably wasn't lost on him that 90% of the field was gay, but it's not like someone might think he was gay by association. This is the most beautiful thing about San Francisco: not the fact that 10% of the city's population lived in a same-sex-relationship household in a recent census, not the fact that they fly rainbow flags down Market Street for the entire month of June, or that The Gays have as much of a presence in the city and its history as the Chinese, the Latinos, the hippies, and the crackheads. The most beautiful thing about San Francisco the fact that this straight teenaged boy could walk around in a rainbow ribbon and think no less of it than an Asian-American MIT student wearing a shamrock on St. Patrick's day. To me, that straight kid who wasn't worried about looking "gay" is what Pride is all about.

30/30

On May 14 I started an experiment to see what would happen if I ran 30K a day, every day that I worked (i.e. not running on weekends and vacations) until I had run 30 days. On June 25, I ran my 30th 30K. I wasn't sure what would happen, but I expected something along the lines of burn-out, injury, an insight into the nature of discipline, and perhaps a zen state of nirvana akin to the Marathon Monks or Forrest Gump. Well... not really. But it has been the most worthwhile experiment I've ever done, and way less uncomfortable than giving up caffeine for six weeks.

I did offer myself some breaks. Because I knew that injury was certain if I insisted on running every step, I allowed that miles walked counted, and any 3 miles cycled would count as 1 mile run. I pictured myself spending hours and hours every day in the woods and mountains around where I live, becoming one with nature and coming home every day with dirty ankles and a peaceful feeling like an REI ad might evoke. That wasn't exactly what happened either. In fact, most of the miles were run on treadmills between clients at work, or on the bike trail less than half a mile from my house. Hilly miles are slow miles, and all this running had to be crammed in around other responsibilities.

Expectations...
I also expected conventional wisdom to be true: that I would get injured, that I would get slow, that I would lose a lot of weight and get frail, or put on weight and get fat, or bike most of it to reduce the impact on my legs, and that most of all I would begin to hate running even more than I already do. I was half expecting to give up in the second week. None of that happened either.

Lots of fried food in Arkansas after week 2 was
not good for my aspirations of making a visible
six-pack.

...versus results
What happened was that I got faster, and for the first time in my underwhelming 16-year-long running career, I felt like a runner. I started looking forward to the runs, and feeling lean and fast. I felt like I could push myself and endure pain like I used to relish when I fancied myself a talented cyclist (usually when I try to run fast I just feel like I'm going to poop my pants). In the first two weeks, I started to realize that I could do this. In the third week, I started getting faster. In the beginning of the fourth week I took nearly 20 minutes off my best marathon time without really aiming for it. In the fifth week I found myself a Boston qualifying race at the end of the summer (to allow time for recovery, and a lot of speed work), and started looking at pace charts again. In the sixth week, I started running more and more of my runs at a fast pace (8 min/miles, for me), and people started telling me that my abs looked good. It has been an incredible journey.

A typical day looked like this:

• Wake up between 3:45 and 4:45 am. Eat 2 eggs on toast with olive oil and black tea, plus 1-2 pints water. Drink coffee on the way to work and through my first client.
• Work from 5 or 6 until 8 to 10 am. Drink water as much as possible.
• After morning clients, eat fruit and yogurt, then get on treadmill and run 30 minutes to 2 hours (depending on breaks). Drink 16oz of water per hour. Sweat at least a liter per hour. In the beginning I would eat a bar per hour, but after a few weeks I started only eating mid-run when I was running more than 2 hours. Possibly shower, or possibly not, depending on schedule for the day. Eat 300-500 calories (usually in the form of a frozen entre or burrito; Amy is my personal chef) and drink as much water as possible. 
• If breaks do not allow for enough time to change-warm up-run-change-eat, then walk on treadmill in work clothes between sessions to knock off a few miles while responding to emails. Drink as much as possible. 
• Meet with midday clients. Drink as much water as possible. 
• Possibly add a second run between clients, if time allows. Possibly shower, but not likely.
• Finish with final clients of the day between noon and 4pm. Eat a bar and seaweed snack, and change into running clothes. Drive to trails or home to run on bike path (occasionally finish on treadmill if busy day). Finish miles for the day, possibly leave 1 mile for later (see below). Eat bar in car on the way home.
• Make smoothie (banana, frozen fruit, coconut milk, water). Drink smoothie on way to shower. Shower. Sit in cold bath for 3 minutes. Finish smoothie and eat 1lb of greens with dressing and usually toast with cheese. Maybe some tortilla chips. Drink as much water as possible. Do work till Tolerant Girlfriend comes home. 
• Possibly walk dog with Supportive Girlfriend for final mile or so that I have saved for "family time." Talk about our days (read: tell Patient Girlfriend about what happened in that day's installment of Game of Thrones or Biggest Loser).
• Eat dinner around 7:30. Usually some kind of vegetables: stuffed mushrooms, salad wrap, homemade veggie burritos, occasionally frozen pizza (classified by USDA as a vegetable) or mac & cheese (orange = high in beta-carotene). 
• Sleep between 8 and 9pm. 

Challenges

A picture from mile 5 of the 2011 San Francisco
Marathon. Note: shirt soaked through and shorts
plastered to legs. Already. At mile 5.

Rather than the miles, my biggest challenge was sweat. I am a very, very heavy sweater, especially indoors. I dealt with constant chafe, always in new places: armpits, mid-back, shorts band, underwear bands, chest, and always, always in the crotch. I have rash-like bumps under my watch, my engagement ring, and behind my knees from sweat being rubbed into the skin.  I created mountains upon mountains of sweaty laundry. I sweat so much that on more than one occasion I had to get off the treadmill not because I was done running, but because my shorts were plastered to me and there was sweat sloshing in my shoes (once I actually sweat through the soles of my shoes and they began making that "shoes on wet linoleum" squeak. I had to slow down for fear of slipping and falling off the belt). Once I even sweat the maxi pad out of my pants. Often I would get off the treadmill to find that coordination and even talking were difficult from electrolyte depletion. Once my key fell out of my pocket on the trail on a humid day, and I had to run an extra hour without water to circle back and find it. Then I would spend the rest of the day trying to slam in as much water as possible so that I would start peeing again, and then so that my pee would go from orange back to clear. I took electrolyte tabs when I remembered, but even though I know better, it still seems silly to take 2 salt tabs for a 1-hour run.

Why?
I started this experiment because I knew that there was another level on the other side of overtraining. I knew that if you pushed through the initial phase of push-back from your body – when you took your training to a whole other level – that eventually you would break through. I'd seen and read about it, but I'd never experienced it. I'd tried running a 90-mile week before and my body tolerated it, so what would happen if I did several of them in a row? I knew that whatever it was, it would be something worth knowing about.

But what did others think, you weirdo?
I have this blog (and sometimes Facebook) to brag,  but out there in the world I really don't talk that much about the things that I do or have done. I am fiercely proud of the things that I have achieved, and it really bothers me when people just call me crazy, or brush it off saying that "I could never do that" (like it's something that I was just born being able to do, and it didn't take hard work???). But if you're running 2-3 times per day every day at your place of work, then people are bound to notice, so I unveiled my plan only as people started to notice. In the beginning my reactions were along the lines of, "What do you hope to achieve with this?" (translation: you're stupid or crazy or both), or "That's a long way." (translation: that's impossible). As time went on, the reactions turned to, "And how's it going?" (are you injured yet, or just sick?) or just "Wow." (which means 'I don't believe you.'). There are surprisingly few people in professional fitness who have more than a cursory understanding of endurance training, and those few eventually began to take an interest, asking me in the break room how many days I'd done so far, how it was going, and how my body felt. Most people just stopped talking to me.

What it felt like...
I felt great. At some point I realized that what I was doing wasn't some monkish effort like fasting for a month or meditating in a cave for a year straight. I had been inspired by the marathon monks, but there was another subset of people who ran an average of 20 miles a day and everyone accepted it as normal: I'm talking about fast marathon runners. From everything I've read, even the most talented and low-volume elite marathoners run between 80 and 100 miles per week (although for them it means a lot less time on their feet). As long as my body could handle the mileage, then why would I assume that training more would give me a different result than them? Once I realized that the reason fast runners run more miles is to give themselves more training for their body to respond to (and once I had established that my body could handle the load), then I started running more of my runs even faster and dropping tempo sets into my 2.5 hour runs. Of the last 5 runs, I ran more than 10 miles at 8-minute pace (10K pace for me in 2009) in 3 of them.

Rather than cleansing my soul in a bath of suffering, my mind was more occupied with Netflix, Hulu, and Audible. At least I feel like I did occupy my time with worthwhile pursuits. Over this period I took in:

• An entire season of Biggest Loser
• 2 Game of Thrones books (numbers 2 & 3)
• 2 triathlon books (Matt Fitzgerald's "Iron War" and Chrissie Wellington's "A Life Without Limits")
• Too many movies to count here, including Braveheart, Radio, Marathon, and yes, Forrest Gump

What I learned
It was Chrissy Wellington's book that really seemed to put the whole experience into context (although to be honest, I could't wait to finish it so that I could get on to the next Game of Thrones book). In the end of the book she waxes philosophical about not imposing limits on your dreams; you really don't know what you're capable of, so don't limit yourself by only training within your expectations. It's not exactly a life-changing revelation, but you know how you think you know something, and then suddenly it takes on a whole new level of meaning? That was what happened to me. I realized that for years I had been training for marathons in the same way that everyone trained for marathons: build up your mileage to 40 or 50 miles per week, most of it slow-ish (because the body can't handle intensity at high mileage), build up your long runs by about 2 miles every week or two, taking a recovery week every fourth week. Do your Tuesday tempo run and Thursday track session in the final 8-12 weeks leading up to the race. Cut your volume in the 3-4 weeks before the race. Get the same result as you got last time. Then I realized that without training, I could still get the same result as if I did the training, so I stopped training for marathons. I haven't trained for a marathon since 2008, although I've probably run a dozen since then. Ho hum.

Me and Very Supportive Girlfriend (and PigDog) finishing the ceremonial final mile together.

But duh! I've always known that my body responds well to high volume on the bike, why didn't I ever run more? Because I hated it and was bad at it, that's why. It never occurred to me that I just wasn't training enough. So at the end of six weeks of high-volume running, this is what I've learned: If you impose limits on your training because you are surrounded by doubters (in my case gym rats who don't know the first thing about endurance and rookie athletes with a much smaller athletic base determining their training scale), then you will get mediocre results. If you push the limits and push the boundaries of what you thought possible, eventually something will break. Sometimes it might be your body, and you will have learned that that is not the way and it's time to go back to the drawing board. But sometimes you won't break, but instead break through.

Final thoughts
I am not training for a marathon, nor am I training to qualify for Boston. Dropping 25 minutes of my marathon PR and finally running a Boston qualifying time after all these years would be great perks, but even if I did qualify and the race filled up before I was eligible to enter, I wouldn't really care. Because I no longer think of myself as a 4-hour marathoner. I no longer think that running 90-mile weeks is only for genetic mutants. I no longer think that 26.2 miles is a distance too long to be raced, and only to be survived. I used to think that meeting a goal and beating other people was the best feeling there was in the world. No. Have you ever beat yourself and so far exceeded your expectations that you don't even know where to set your goals? It's a great feeling. From here on out I'm just training to figure out how deep this rabbit hole goes.

...hang on...

I'm still going. I've hit my miles every day. I've finished 23 days, 7 to go. Just haven't had time to write about it. 

But I have:

-Been stung by a wasp in my ear and had my ear swell to twice its size for days

Gotten faster

-Basically reached the point where people at work don't think I'm going to fail at something crazy, now they think I'm crazy but I'm going to succeed

-Had a week where all was running except 2 cycling classes

-given up wearing a shirt when I run, even at work

-lost less than 5 pounds, but at least 6 people say I look like I'm losing weight

-finished an entire season of Biggest loser all while working out

-gotten very good at manning a touch screen at 8:30 pace

-generated a great deal of stinky laundry

-made at least 1 hiker scream

Other than that, there's not much to tell. Running 18.6 miles a day actually feels manageable. I don't even feel that tired till Friday. Today was Friday. Today I felt tired... Until I got to the top of the hill. Then I felt okay again.

Don't worry, at the end of this whole thing, I will do a full write-up. Just as soon as I've identified the lesson in this whole experiment.

Day 16: time management, part two

I thought that if I ended my workday three hours earlier in preparation for this challenge, that I would have enough time to exercise three hours a day. Falsehood. Emails are going unanswered, food is going unbeaten, errands are going undone, and forget work. On top of that, last night was one of those nights that I woke up at 2 AM and couldn't fall back to sleep. Hello, overtraining. It has been a while.

Today, I almost skipped. There was just too much to do that I couldn't put off. I had exactly 3 hours at the end of my day before I had to leave the gym, and I have work to do. I was halfway through, I had done an extra day this week, and it was a full marathon. Didn't I deserve a midterm break? Plus, I wanted to nap.

But heroes don't become heroes because they take a nap when the going gets tough. When my last client left for the day at 2, and I had only walked 1.5 miles, I took my iPad to the cycling studio, where you will find me now; pedaling and dictating my workouts, my emails, and these blog posts for 2 hours so far.

Siri and I seriously need to talk about her listening comprehension.

Day 15: Time management

This day was The Girlfriend's birthday. This meant that I HAD TO BE HOME RIGHT after work. The only problem was, that between 6 AM and 4 PM when I finished, I had only 2 1/2 hours to complete my full distance, including changing and eating time. That meant I had to run FAST.

As soon as my 8 o'clock client left, (which was about three minutes before the end of his hour,) I dashed to the locker room and put on running clothes. Then, it was time to run to the nearest treadmill to run until 10:20. Just over 7 miles later, I dashed to the locker room to change clothes. No time to shower before I had to conduct an interview. Luckily, I work at a gym, and so it is minimally acceptable to turn up to an interview where you are mock client already smelling like an armpit.

Practical interview finished, in which the subject had his face in my feet, near my crotch, and near my armpit, I grabbed a water bottle and another granola bar and got back on the treadmill. 45 minutes later, the girlfriend turned up looking pissed. She had taken the day off of work, and had gotten bored at home. Stuck between running too fast to talk to her, or having to complete a third run after I finished work, I kept the treadmill speed high and kept trucking. I did at least turn off the Biggest Loser episode that I was watching on my iPad in order to run in silence next to her. It was the season finale, stopped five minutes from the end. Now that's love. Later, when I got home, she said that she just felt like running was more important than she was. I objected! In my opinion, running 8:30 pace on legs as tired as mine for 18 miles in order to get home for cupcakes is definitely love.

Then, with only 1.4 miles to go, I got off the treadmill at 2:01 for a 2 o'clock meeting. Luckily, my final client was in the pool. I followed him for just over a mile, and then ran a final quarter-mile before running out the door to my car.

Then, finally, I showered.

Ultraendurance is not so good for relationships. Luckily, you only turn 30 once, I have a wonderful girlfriend, and I never ever plan to train this much again once this is over.

Dave 14: recovery

I don't think I have ever run the day after a marathon. Why would I ever run the day after a marathon? I'm not stupid. But I am doing something stupid, and stupid times call for stupid measures. Don't get me wrong. I'm not doubting what I'm doing. But it is stupid to take something that everybody knows is true, but experience tells you is true, and flip it on its head to see if it's true. So I had to do three hours of exercise the day after doing a marathon.

My legs were surprisingly fine. My ankles were a little bit cranky and my calves tight, but other than that I had no problem demonstrating exercises or being on my feet all day. Still, I only actually ran a token 2 miles. The rest I did on the bike. Oh well, in general I feel like cycling is cheating unless necessary, but in this case I don't mind cheating.

Lucky Number 13 - Unfinished business

"Troncos, what do you think: Mental training - Run a marathon on the track." 

I trained through Boston winters, my tedium tolerance is off the charts, so I agreed to join Captain America on his track marathon, even though it was about 12k more than my daily dose, and on a weekend besides. 

Captain America threatened all kinds of additional challenges: wearing a weighted vest, wearing a mask that would cut his oxygen so it would be like he was running at altitude, doing 13 burpees every mile... But by the night before our run, he was texting me every hour to say that he feared he would break at mile 10. My plan was just to run until A) I hit 30k if he quit, or B) I had run 26.2 miles. 

Based on a recent 10k race-pace effort, I estimated that I probably shouldn't run faster than 8:40 if I planned to finish upright. Who was I kidding? I had never finished a marathon at under 9:00 pace! What made me think today would be any different. 

But when I started running, it was tough to keep myself from dipping into the 7's. I never run on flat, even road anymore, so I have no idea what my cruising pace should be, but this seemed too fast. Whenever I caught myself speeding, I would slow down, but when I was at mile 18 and still drifting down toward 8, I figured I could let myself go.

The last mile the cumulative fatigue and dehydration started to make life tough, but who cares? I used to start feeling like this at mile 18 and then it only got worse. Today I crossed that 26.2 line in 3:41 - 1 min off my qualifying time when I used to chase such things, and 6 min off my current qualifying time. All without racing, pacers, or fresh legs. As soon as I stopped running, unbidden my ipod played The Dropkick Murphies' "Shipping up to Boston." I almost lost my shit. I now knew I could finally qualify. Time to cough up some race entry fees.

Days 11&12

...happened, but barely. Of those 37.2 miles, 26 were one on the bike in order to spare my legs, which seemed a bit worse for the wear after the asphalt. I needed to save my legs because I would only get 1 day off before 6 consecutive days, which will kick off with... A marathon. On the track. 

I ran the last 3.5 miles of day 12. Thanks to all the cycling, legs felt good.

Off to te travk!