Posts tagged marathon training

There is it.  I ran 127 miles in september.  That includes today’s 10 mile run.  Stick a fork in me, I’m done with my long runs. Oh yeah, except for that one really, really long run next Sunday.

Comparing how I feel tonight to how I felt last week at this time? Huge difference!  Calves are tight, but I think that’s the shoes and going to take a little shopping trip tomorrow. 

We met at the trailhead and after I harrassed Jeremy about the directions (straight in and straight out on Leif) we took off, went a 1/4 mile and used the porta potty.  I ran with my usual half marathon people until mile 6 where they turned back and then went the next 5 on my own, with a potty stop in the woods.  I felt bad knocking down this gigantic spider web, with the gigantic spider sitting dead center in the middle of it, but there was no way I was crawling under it and I needed to get back farther off the trail.  Its rare to find a flat spot that goes off the trail and so I knocked that sucker down.  I’m sure she’s on the way here to take her revenge, even though I apologized. Of course, then I hardly peed at all. Of course, I came around a corner, almost to the halfway point and meeting Jeremy and there it was. A vision in blue.  A freaking porta potty!  Oh sure I had just gone, but there was no way I wasn’t going to take advantage off it on the way back out and try and squeeze out a little more pee!

I met Jeremy, filled my bottles on my fuel belt, which worked wonderfully I might add, with orange replinsher, and hustled back on the trail.  I realized I forgot to turn off my watch too.  Tsk.  I took advantage of the porta potty.  They have mile markers every 1/4 mile.  I thought they were going to drive me crazy, but I actually found them really comforting knowing I was chipping away at it quarter mile at a time.  I kept feeling like I had to pee so I made another stop and of course, it was hardly worth the bother.  So annoying.  I did take a few little walking breaks on the last 5 miles, because my legs were really talking to me, but it wasn’t for long.  I hit the 1 mile marker and I was like “1 mile! 1 mile!!”  And before I knew it I was back at the trailhead.  Woot! Of course, then I had to walk back to my car, which I think was about another half mile.  I could have run it, but it was down hill on cement so I didn’t want to piss my quads off even more.

I really didn’t see anything exciting.  It was just another run. Jeremy did say he might cut back next week’s run. It was supposed to be another 22 miles.  I say let’s go for it.  I want to be well prepared and don’t want to lose any conditioning.  But I don’t want to be that kid who throws her hand up in the air and says “Ms. Smith, you forgot to give us homework!”

Marathon Training.  Week whatever.  20 19.75 mile. 

JEREMY sent us up Vista Blvd. I missed the last run that sent us up Vista. I’m thinking this was good and bad.  Good because it probably would  have been a crap fest then and who needs that.  Bad, because maybe it would have helped my legs out today.  Vista goes up and up and up and then you turn on Patton and it goes up and up. The elevation gain is 1000 feet in 3 miles.  I mapped it.

So we get to the end of the hill climb and meet Jeremy. Now we have to run the Fairmount Blvd. loop, which was 3.51 miles.  4 times. FOUR. FUCKING. TIMES.  He sent us off on what was later dubbed “the hard way.”  There was more of a gradual hill climb this way, and the other way was downhill, of course.  So I’ll just summarize the rest by bullet points.

• The first loop my back tweaked. I took a step and I yelped out.  I had this painful twinge and my lower back tightened up. Luckily its loosened up. 
• Shout out to the construction workers building a house who let us use their porta potty.  Twice.  (Okay, I was the one that used it twice.)
• This run really became mentally hard for me when I saw people in our group doing the loop the other way and knowing they were way ahead of me.
• It also became mentally difficult when I saw bikers and a dude on roller ski things circling the loop multiple times.  Oh, there’s that dude ont he bike again.  15 minutes later.  Oh there he is again.  And again.  You begin to realize how slow you’re going.
• You’re way above the city (seriously, I don’t think you can go any higher with city limits) and the views were spectacular.  Wish I had a camera to take a picture.
• After the first loop my pacer went back down and I was by myself, which made it so much tougher.
• 3rd time around I stopped to talk to Jeremy.  He said I should head down and then just finish the rest on the flat.  Run down Vista, and then tack on the rest of the mileage by running down the water front and then back up to the store.  This is why it was only 19.75 miles  I wanted to make sure I got to 20 or close to it.  Shy by a 1/4 mile.
• Running down Patton and Vista was hard.  SO. HARD. My legs were screaming at me. I don’t think I’ve ever had my legs feel that on fire on a run.  Afterwards, yes. During?  No.  And I was really trying to make sure I didn’t heel strike.  There were parts of it too steep to run down.
• My right knee didn’t like it either.  I don’t have knee problems, but it didn’t like the long down hill grade on that hill.
• The good news was my hips didn’t bother me at all.  Massage is working!
• My last loop would have been the “easy way” with little up hill, and I really regret not sticking with it.  Running down Patton & Vista killed my legs, so trudging down to the waterfront and back up to the store to my car?  Hard.  Really, really hard. Like I walked a lot of it hard. I’m not proud of this.
• I also really ran out of energy.  I had sports beans, and ate them regularly, but they weren’t helping.  I actually had to lean against poles at stop lights.  I realized I was really low on energy and realized I didn’t eat enough breakfast.  I wasn’t hungry this morning and was having a hard time choking down one slice of PB and toast.  I should have finished both.   And had a third.  Next time I’ll know better.

This run was confidence shaking.  Like seriously doubting I’ll be able to finish the marathon unless I’m just dragging ass across the finish line confidence shaking.  I had one voice saying “you won’t have to go up and down Vista for the marathon” and “you didn’t eat enough for breakfast.  you’ll fuel better next time.”  And another little voice saying “you’re going to crash and burn big time during the marathon.  You’ll be lucky if you can make it mile 20 without crashing and  burning.”  Little fucker.  But it was really hard not to believe that little fucker. 

So there you have it.  All 20 miles of shitastic. 

Track workout tonight.

400 / 800 / 1200 / 1600 / 1200 / 800 / 400 (:40)
each set at 95% or above race pace

So this is 4 miles total (4.5 if you include the easy 800 we do as part of the warm up).  JEREMY is a card. 

Marthon Training, Week Whatever (Is it over yet?), First 18 mile run

I swear, if Tumblr eats this post like it did a few minutes ago….  Its going to be much, much shorter, which you guys will appreciate, I’m sure.

I slept well last night because it was so much cooler—yay!  And it was cool and cloudy the whole run.  Truly, it was lovely!  Our route was down to the waterfront from the store, out to Willamette Park to see Jeremy at the first aid station, and then over Sellwood Bridge to Springwater corridor and then see Jeremy under the Hawthorne Bridge, loop around the waterfront, back to Jeremy, and back to the store. 

I was running with Mirielle, the French lady, and my hips were tightening up.  Damn hip flexors.  I have an appointment scheduled for August 27th.  I have been stretching, but they were just pissed off today.  I should have taken some Aleve yesterday and this morning. 

We were on Springwater trail and Mirielle kept looking at her garmin and saying “11 minute pace.”  “13 minute pace.”  “10 minute pace.”  We were bouncing up and down, probably because of me.  I told her “how come 11 minute mile feels the same as 13 minute mile.” 

I asked Jeremy at the aid station under the Hawthorne Bridge if he had drugs.  I told him he’d achieve super hero status if he didn’t, but no go.  Although he did have water, but you don’t achieve super hero status with water, only good drugs.

At some point Mirielle announced “I want a big sandwich” in her French accent. I was like, me too. With a side of Aleve, please. 

We hit up Jeremy again and he asked how I was doing.  I pretty much didn’t want to talk about it.  Wasn’t going to make it better. Every step was an effort.  2.5 miles back to the store.  I just kept trudging along.  I had slowed significantly but didn’t care.  Just wanted it to be over. Thank goodness it was cool because I can’t imagine having had to churn out those last miles with the sun beating down on me.  I was never so happy to see my car and the store.  I had Aleve in my purse and popped too. 

I really hope that massage helps loosen things up because I can’t imagine being out there on marathon day and crapping out around mile 18.  And don’t think I didn’t think about that when I was out there today.  I was like “crap, am I going to be able to pull this off?”  It would be a big suck fest for the next 8 miles. 

I am very happy with the fact that other than a little walking break over the Hawthorne we ran the whole thing. The whole thing.  Having Mirielle there kept me from having walking breaks which are usually pity parties.  I wish I could figure out the average pace, but I don’t have a watch right now (don’t want to talk about it), but we left the store about 8:10 and I was back at the store around 12:20 and that was with 3 potty stops and 3 aid station stops.  So all in all, pretty good.

So first things first, a massive branch of a massive tree fell on the track tonight.  And fell on people.  Yeah, fell on people.  The diameter of the bottom of the branch that broke off the tree was probably 2 feet and there multiple branches.  It covered almost the whole width of the track and a good 20  feet length wise.  We were in the middle of the workout, heard this giant cracking sound and I looked up just in time to see it falling on people.  On one side of the track there’s this stone house and a big tree on hillside. The weight of all the limbs must have been too heavy and it just cracked and fell.  As soon as we saw it fall we all went running over there.  2 of our people got caught under it.  One was only a little scrapped up but the other one had a lot of scraps.  The last couple of weeks there have been 2 girls there training with a coach and one of them got trapped under it.  They got her out and called an ambulance.  She was conscious and moving around, but was definitely in some pain. There’s a hospital really close to the track so the ambulance got there really quickly and the fire department was there soon after.  I couldn’t help but think about how much worse it could have been because Team in Training has been showing up around 6:30 and doing there warm up right under that tree.  So that pretty much took the wind out of our track workout. 

Rewind about 40 minutes before that, and I had gotten to the track and there was a local news crew there (KGW for you locals) and I asked “what’s going on with the news being here?!”  The thought  of being filmed while waddling around the track had me freaked out. I’m not sure if they talked to someone, did some kind of report or what, but they were packing up after our warm up. Of course, perverse curiosity is going to make me watch the news tonight. 

I was standing there, avoiding the news camera, and talking to someone and Mirielle (pronounced me-ray) came up to me and said hello.  She was the woman who ran the whole route with me on Saturday in July.  I knew she was going to be gone for a couple of weeks because she was going to France, but she hadn’t shown back up yet and I figured she had decided not to come back. But there she was again!  She walked up to me and said “hi!  I’m back!” in her cute little French accent.  (Apparently she was there on Saturday, but I wasn’t.)  I was so thrilled to see her because this means I might have someone to run with on Saturdays for the whole route.  Woot!!

So we did our warm up, I felt good, even with the warm weather. Jeremy (Moxy, I’m not referring to him as JEREMY tonight because he scaled down the workout for us due to the weather) told us to do 200 at 80-85% and then 200 easy.  Like a really slow jog easy or even a walk.  The marathon people were supposed to do 4 miles like this.  I was standing there and felt my hamstring tightened up and before we started I leaned over to stretch and zing, my hamstring seized up on me.  I was like “are you fucking kidding me?!”  I mean, seriously?  Again?!!  I walked for a bit and it loosened up and I was able to run.  My shoe lace came untied, I leaned over to tie it, and it tightened up again. Lesson learned, don’t bend over.  Got it.  I was just starting to run again after a short walk and that’s when the tree limb fell over. 

After the whole tree thing happened and the emergency people arrived, Jeremy got us back together and said “yeah, well, I think that wraps up tonight’s workout.  People hurt, a tree blocking the track, yep, its time to go home.”  I only got 1.5 miles into it. Oh well. I’ll kick ass next week.  Just glad no one was hurt more seriously and hope the girl is okay. 

9.45 miles done.  Didn’t quite make it to 11, but that’s okay because I ran up Terwilliger. First I ran out and back on 4th avenue to add extra mileage, then I ran up Terwilliger Blvd.  I also forgot I was out of sports beans this morning so my energy was fading fast on the way back down Terwillger. A 180 calorie kashi bar is not properf fuel for almost 10 miles.  Just glad that’s done.  Back on track tomorrow with 8 miles.

I remember when I used to have clean legs. 

15 miles through Forest Park (so thankful for all the trees and the shade and it wasn’t Vista this week), a few near biffs (seriously, I just got lucky), one squat behind a tree to pee what felt like was going to be a river, but was probably only a tablespoon (still lingering bladder infection?), enounter a man with two standard poodles—twice—that he called by male names, but one was white with a large pink stripe (poor fella is gonna have identity problems) and a lower half that feels like its on fire. I’m pooped.  I got home, ate a sandwich, and turned on the Olympics to see the men’s 10k.  I simply can’t watch anyone run right now.  Just watching them makes me more tired. Seriously. Now to take a shower and scrub trail dirt off my legs.