Thursday, September 26, 2013

It's been an up and down few weeks. I attempted to do a 20 mile run 2 weeks ago and totally crashed after mile 14. It was an interesting run though. I was quite a bit South.


When I got to mile 16 I was completely spent. I had my bus pass with me and took the bus the rest of the way home.

I was completely sweaty, salty and out of breath. Everyone on the bus eyed me suspiciously as I heaved and rasped all the way home.

I took a shower, ate and rehydrated. When I was done, I totally couldn't stop sneezing, coughing and sniffling.

I read a lot of articles about my running crash and my sudden sickness and everything led me to believe I might be overtraining.

Too many miles. Too few rest days. Not enough variation in my mileage. Since March I have run between 35 - 42 miles a week. That's not a lot, compared to what experienced runners do. But, being as this is my first marathon, I needed to alter my training a bit because I was extremely run down.

So, I took a full week off. I probably should have just cut my miles down for a week, but taking the whole week off was really what I needed. It wasn't ideal, being that I did it with 4 weeks until the Marathon. But, it really helped.

I did my normal miles last week and had a nice comfortable 20 miler.

Tomorrow, I'm hoping to do 22 miles. Then,...

...it's time to taper.

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Location:I'm still running...

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Long Runs...

Last time I wrote on here I mentioned that I was about to do a 20 mile run. Well, I did it, but it was a mess.

To clarify, the actual running aspect wasn't too bad, it was the surrounding environment that screwed everything up.

A few years ago while I was working at a theater in Maine, I trained for a half-marathon on a high school track that was nearby. Maine is very hilly and the track was the only place I could run that was level. Surprisingly, I enjoyed the track a lot.

Last year while training for the half-marathon again, I logged some huge portions of miles on the track on Loyola's campus. I would run 4 miles to get to the track, do 4 miles on the track, then turn around and run 4 miles back.

So, this year I thought it might be fun to run on the track next to the Water Tower downtown. It's kind of hidden away, behind the Museum of Modern Art. I figured I could do my 20 miles on that track and end my run downtown.

Well, that was a mistake. The buildings disrupted the GPS signal on my phone and my Nike App couldn't measure my laps. Instead of circles, it gave me this...


Disaster.

Sadly, I didn't realize it until 4 miles in. I measured out the distance of the laps and ended up having to manually count the laps to measure the miles. 120 laps would equal my 20 mile goal.

Unfortunately, I discovered that I don't really like running that many miles on a track. Doing a stretch of miles in the middle of my run is fine, but 3 1/2 hours of running in one location is not enjoyable. For the last two miles, I had to break off the monotony of the track and run in the streets.

It's annoying to look at that big blob in the middle and not the normal, uniform circles that usually you see when you run on a track. Also, the fact that it says my slowest mile was 16.30 and my fastest was 10.03. On the track I was actually running 8.45 in the beginning and 9.30 in the end. 10.03 was what I ran when I switched to running in the street and had to stop for traffic. That's the point where the GPS started working again.

So, it was a rough run. Not physically, but mentally. Having my normal flow disrupted and knowing I couldn't trust my running app, really screwed with my mind. Having the voice from the app tell me that I was on mile 11 when I knew I was at mile18 was discombobulating. Also, I knew my measurement and counts where right, but I kept question it. I'm sure I ended up running further than 20 miles because I added on laps to compensate in case I hadn't.

To make up for it, I decided to do miles again last Friday. Well, that was the day the temperatures hit 93 and the heat index hit 102. I hydrated well and took tons of gels, but it was miserable. I cut is short by 2 miles because I started getting a little delirious in the heat. I even made a pitstop along the way to grab an ice tea and to soak up some air conditioning at Starbucks.


When I got home, I did something I've never done before. I took an ice bath.


It was the smartest thing I've ever done and will now be a part of my long run ritual.

Aside from those hiccups in my past 2 long runs, training has been great. I usually do 8 miles on Sundays, Tuesday and Wednesdays and then a long run on Fridays. I've managed to keep that steady without departing from it too much. I know that one of those days is supposed to be a recovery run at 5 miles, but I never feel like cutting those three miles off. In total, I ran 178 miles in the month of August.

My feet feel great, my legs feel strong and I feel like I'm getting closer to being ready.

I'm going to attempt to do a (nuisance free) 20 miler tomorrow. Then a 22 miler next week and a 24 miler the week after that. Then, I'll start to cycle down.

Also, I've begun to check the weather for October 13th and the forecast looks good.


Sunny and 58! I'll take it!

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