Monday (7 miles easy)

7 miles? What? Oh yeah, mileage increases. My usual downtown route really maxes out at about 6 miles - anything more and you’re kind of just running in circles, which feels weird. So I went up through Maple Hill Cemetary, ran around Blossomwood Elementary, then dumped out in between the medical district and downtown. A couple of extra zigs and zags around Big Spring Park, and back to Five Points. 7 miles in the bag.

Unfortunately, my watch started to die on the last three miles, and I got a bit panicked. I ended up booking it the last few miles to try and finish before the battery died. Stupid. My knees or my metrics? Finished up at 9:36 min/mile, which is a bit too fast. Oh well.

Tuesday (4x1200 meters)

Last day of speed work. YAY!

It was hot and humid. Gross, really. 73 degrees when I started, but it felt like a wet sponge. I didn’t need this. On lap two, I started to feel like :poop:. I’ve had heat exhaustion a couple of times, and I was getting killed out there. No water either, which was probably a little stupid. I realized that if I wanted to finish this thing, I wasn’t going to do it by simply gutting it through.

I took my shirt off, sat down, and rested for a few minutes. Just getting my shirt off made a huge difference, and I cooled off relatively quickly. After a minute or two I felt like I could finish the workout, albeit rocking out my awesome programmer-bod.

Ran the next two iterations without a shirt on, and felt 1000% better. Ended up walking the recovery laps instead of running them at 11:00 min/mile, but being able to finish the last two speed intervals at full blast made me feel good. Or at least, better, since I didn’t want to puke any more.

Shirt back on, run back to house, finish up.

Wednesday

Alas, due to life creeping in (dog had to go to the vet), I didn’t manage to get any crosstraining in.

It’s very hard to get all of the workouts in, 7 days a week. 6 is actually doable - I can usually juggle morning committments such that I can push things to Wednesday or reschedule my runs to move my day off around. But it does mean crosstraining gets sacrified first, which is probably a bad idea.

Thursday (8 mile tempo)

The moment of truth. 1.5 mile warm-up/cool down. Did old marathon route, rocked it out. Even ran further since I hit the stop button on my Garmin at the turn around. What is up with me and my watch? Saw a coworker, that was cool. Lucky to live near routes, since he would have to had to drive to get there. Felt strong the whole way through, which was a confidence boost after the heat knock on Tuesday. Still a bit warm/humid today, but nothing quite look Tuesday.

When does fall arrive?

Friday (5 mile easy)

Downtown. Done.

Saturday (8 mile easy)

Looking at the schedule, I can see that I’m now up to 20 miles of easy running. This feels like an awful lot, but it is apparently working, as I’ve managed to keep up with the substance runs. I did find it hard to keep engaged during that entire 8 mile run at a 9:40 pace, but managed to complete it.

Sunday (10 mile long)

Given the previous week’s 15 miler, I found this run to be pretty easy, and thankfully so. I re-visited the old marathon course again, which is one of my defacto standard out and backs. At the end of the run, I caught sight of an albino squirrel, so that was pretty cool.

Totals

Distance: 49.05 miles

Time: 7:38:44

Calories: 6924

Albino Squirrels: 1

This week was going to be a challenge. AstriCon.

I don’t usually get a lot of sleep during AstriCon, and I typically work my liver out more than any other part of my body. Not exactly the best set up for marathon training, particularly when one’s training plan is based on cumulative fatigue. Going in, I came up with the following plan:

1. Get to bed early Monday night. I wouldn’t get in until nearly midnight, which actually worked a little bit in my favor: less time to get pulled into whatever conference vortex was forming. I planned to move quickly through the hotel lobby and get to bed immediately.

2. Get my speedwork day in on Tuesday, as per plan. This was the first of the hard runs.

3. Move my Friday easy-ish day to Wednesday, as opposed to taking it off. I had an early flight out on Friday, and this way I didn’t have to worry about running before the flight.

4. Suck it up enough to get up on Thursday. Wednesday night is usually the most active night, so this would be a challenge.

Monday (5 miles easy)

I did my five miles easy downtown. A few hours at work, and it was off to the airport for an evening flight to Orlando. I had to wait for a few other folks once I landed. Combined with the taxi ride over, I didn’t get to hotel until midnight, and fell asleep about 12:30.

No worries. Six hours of sleep is enough, right?

Here we go.

Tuesday (5x1000m speed work)

The alarm went off at 6-ish. Groggy, I got myself up, out, and going.

As I got going, I noticed that it smelled a bit. Kind of sulfurish. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised; Florida is kind of one big swamp. It was also hot and humid. Knew that the route was mostly a big square, figured I’d run to one of the far ‘corners’ and turn around. Out and back. Went fine until I saw the hill. WTF?

That’s a 100 ft. elevation change, and it goes up a lot faster than the chart shows. By the time I hit the last interval I was sucking wind, and sucking wind hard, but I did it.

FU Floridia. You stink, literally.

Wednesday (6 miles easy)

On Wednesday I woke up and ran with a group of fellow AstriCon attendees - one a coworker who was also training for the marathon, and another who is a longtime Asterisk community member and all around great guy. He was training for his first marathon, so the two of us who had done the insanity before had a nice chat with him as we ran the same route I had the day before.

I don’t usually run with groups, but when you’re running with good people, it’s quite enjoyable. Good conversation when needed, quiet when we’re all heading up that silly hill. I can see this would be a bit weird on a tempo day or other substance day, but easy days are great for group running. I did have to them to slow down a bit, no faster than 9:40-ish for me please. Luckily, both of them were will willing to humor me.

All together, we finished up at 9:50 min/mile. Nice.

Thursday (8 mile tempo Sleep)

Guess what happened the night before?

Conference Matt. Conference Matt happened.

Really, it wasn’t a lot of boozing, but way too much talking. I didn’t get back up to the room until 12:30 or so, and wasn’t really asleep until 1. When I woke, there was just no way I was getting out there. Could I have done it? Maybe, I wasn’t hung over. But running after drinking with no sleep didn’t sound very smart. Rationalizing it to myself, I thought, “I know, I can juggle it again - we’ll run Friday evening when I get home. That still gives me Saturday for an easy run, with my long on Sunday. YAY.”

As it turns out, this was not the best of plans.

Friday (8 mile tempo 6 mile tempo)

My flight was early in the morning, so there was no chance of getting in the run early. The plane trip back was uneventful, getting me back to good old HSV early in the afternoon. I don’t like running in the evenings, but damnit, I was going to get all my runs in this week.

Got home; talked to Katie.

“You know it’s going to rain all weekend, right? I don’t see you doing 15 miles on a treadmill on Sunday.”

“Shit.”

Stupid hurricane Nate.

If I moved the 15 mile run to Saturday morning, I should’t do my tempo run; no back-to-back substance runs. Or else I could cancel my long run. I didn’t like either of those options, so I went with a compromise:

1. Drop the 8 mile tempo to a 6 mile tempo. Still a substance run, but slightly easier.

2. Do the 15 miles tomorrow, but don’t set a 9:20 min/mile pace. Instead, do 5 at slow pace, 5 at long pace, and finish it up with 5 at slow pace.

And so I went and did the tempo run and did not enjoy it. How do people run in the evening? All during the run my lunch wanted to come out and regale me with tales of my intestinal tract. Maybe those burger sliders with chili weren’t a great idea. Somehow, I got it done with a solid ~8:32 min/mile pace. No pain in the knees at least.

Saturday was going to be fun.

Saturday (15 mile long)

WHoooooooooooooooooooo boy.

Getting up before the crack of dawn, I drove down to Whitesburg Elementary to start the loop of transcendence. Bailey Cove. 5 miles or so of flat, straight-to-only-slightly-curved road, before you loop and head up the interminable Chaney Thompson for more of the same.

Y.A.Y.

Even without the Garmin warning me, I quickly got up to long distance pace. “What the hell,” I thought, “it isn’t hurting.” I kept it at that pace for the whole 15. Unlike previous long runs, I never had to stretch out the legs to keep the knee from hurting.

Training seems to be working. I’m pretty sure my knee pain was from weak quads, and the Hanson plan appears to be fixing that.

Finished well on it, 9:25 min/mile.

Sunday (6 mile slow)

Hurricane Nate was a bit of a soggy mess. Lots of rain that seemed to alternate between sprinkling and spattering. The real stuff, with the wind, was still several hours away, and I hate treadmills. Running in the rain it is.

No big deal, finished at 9:44 min/mile.

Totals

Distance: 47.95 miles
Time: 7:28:43
Calories: 6794
Rules broken: 1

Monday (Off…?)

Ever since I moved to Alabama, I’ve wanted to hike the Walls of Jericho. Somewhere near Scottsboro there’s a sign for it (only 20 miles away!), and every time I’ve driven by it I’ve thought to myself, “I should do that.” A few friends warned me that the hike back up is a bit “strenuous”, but that if you were in okay shape, it was doable.

And hey, I’m training for a marathon. I’m in okay shape, right?

Katie let me know that there was a guided hike on Monday, which provided the perfect excuse to finally go and experience the Walls. Yes, it meant taking a day off of work, and I’d need to juggle my runs accordingly. Looking at my schedule, I figured I’d skip my usual crosstraining (hiking is crosstraining, right?) and move that from Wednesday to Monday. That would mean at least 8 straight days of running. Yikes.

Whatever, you’re only 36 once.

The hike was totally worth it. The pictures don’t really do it justice.

While it would have been great to swim in the pool at the bottom of the walls, being on a guided hike with a large group made me feel a bit awkward. Plus, nobody else was doing it, and I didn’t really pack anything for that. Eating lunch on the cliff overlooking the pool was good enough.

Once I’d had lunch, it was back up. And up. And up. I left the guided group in the dust and power hiked it out, and it was still two hours of constant climbing. My iPhone says I did 7.7-ish miles of hiking, and climbed 109 flights of stairs. It certainly felt like it. My right knee was a bit sore afterwards, in that oh so vague “complaining” sense. This wouldn’t bother me, but this was supposed to be my “off” day. Hopefully everything holds together. We’ll see how the substance runs go.

Tuesday (6x800m speed work)

While I was a bit sore from the hike, this ended up being no big deal muscle/joint wise. Frustratingly, my warm up lap was screwed up. I have my workout set up to let me do a 1.5 mile warm up/cool down, triggered by lap button presses. Somehow, I had set this one up wrong, and it immediately clicked over into the speed interval at mile 1, causing me to have to do the first 800m/400R on a hill and not on a track. Luckily, I think as the distance has gone up I’ve actually found it a little bit easier to do the speed intervals. I think it comes from not having to ratchet the effort up and down quite so often. Even so, the laps were still pretty brutal, the last two in particular. I’m not sure if I’ll feel the same way on the 5x1000m runs in Orlando next week. By the end of the substance run, my knee was a bit sore, but not twinging.

I’ll call that a victory.

Wednesday (6 mile slow)

Took this one extra slow, given that my knee was still a bit sore. Had no problems, and it was a nice, slow, pleasent run. Later in the afternoon, I still had no knee soreness, so things seemed to be healing up just fine.

Thursday (6 mile tempo)

The run I was fearing, as intensity + longer distance is usually my recipe for disaster. Knee was fine, although it felt “present”. I’m not sure how else to describe it - it isn’t sore, it isn’t painful, I can just feel its existance more than usual. As normal, tempo runs feel like the hardest run in the set, given how tired my legs are. Usually, I have my crosstraining day off in between to “freshen up” for this run; even missing it, I finished just fine. As I was starting my last tempo mile, I wondered if right now, I could run another three miles. I get to find out next week when I bump up to an 8 mile tempo run.

Friday (5 mile slow)

A nice easy loop around downtown, run at roughly a 9:41 min/mile pace. Easy peasy.

Saturday (6 mile slow)

Another nice easy loop around downtown. I was particularly proud of this because I ran it slow, giving my legs extra rest. Finished it up at 10:03 min/mile. I never thought I’d be proud at holding myself at roughly a 10:00 min/mile pace, but sometimes controlling yourself is harder than just simply letting loose.

Sometimes, it’s a lot harder.

Sunday (12 mile long)

As this would be my last 12 mile long before AstriCon - which has traditionally been the death of training (more on that in the next post) - I was anxious to get in a solid long run. Plus, my mileage was going to go up next week with an 8 mile tempo run and 15 mile long, and having a strong long run to finish off the week would give me a nice mental boost.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t gone more than maybe two or three minutes before I encountered a house on fire.

Seriously.

Okay, so not a big fire, but a fire nonetheless. I mean, it’s 6:15 AM in the morning, there’s smoke coming from the porch, and actual flames. (Ironically, as I approached the house, I smelled the classic smell of burning wood and thought to myself, “wow, that’s nostalgic”, only to realize that the wood was their house.)

Holy flirking shnit.

I knocked on their door; no answer. Pounded, shouted, nothing. Not surprising, really. Who wants to answer their door at 6:15 to a guy wearing bright clothes and super-short shorts?

Ran around the house, looking for a hose. None found.

Here then, we have a moral dilemma. I have water on me, about 18 ounces. I need that water. I’ve got 12 miles to go, it’s the South, and it’s unseasonably warm. There’s no water fountains along my route, no public places to refill.

I hesitated.

With an internal sigh, I dumped half of each bottle onto the fire, hoping it would put it out. I got maybe a quarter of the fire to go out, but then the wind picked up and it flared to life again. Feeling the remainder of the water in my bottles, I decided that:

• Dumping the rest of the water on the fire wouldn’t solve the problem.
• I could theoretically do 12 miles on half the water I usually bring.

Time to call in the professionals. It felt weird to try and call the fire department for a fire that was technically less than 1 ft x 1 ft, but I was running out of options. Alas, there wasn’t a non-emergency number for the fire department (and, really, is any structure fire an emergency? Presumably yes), so 911 it was.

It was a very awkward 911 call.

“What is your emergency?”

“Well, it’s not really an emergency, but there is a house on fire.”

“Sir, are you in the house?”

“It’s not my house, I was running by and saw it.”

“Are there any occupants trapped?”

“Well, I can walk around the fire and pound on the door, so I don’t think so. But they aren’t answering their door either.”

“…”

Anywho, the fire department showed up, put the fire out in 10 seconds, and thanked me for my service. I waved, and took back off out of my neighboorhood on my course.

15 minutes behind.

This is a problem, as I tell Katie how long I think I’m going to be out and about when I’m doing my long runs so she doesn’t worry. I always give myself a good 30 minutes of padding in case I have to walk some, and I’d just eaten 15 minutes into that. If for whatever reason I had to slow down considerably, I’d be bumping pretty close into my time limit.

Don’t. Panic. The. Wife.

Even so, I was good so long as I could keep myself at my 9:20 min/mile pace. As I ran, things felt… good. I had run 6 days in a row, and while my legs were sore, after the first mile things just clicked into place and I bumped along. After the first three or four miles it was hard to keep myself from running too fast. No knee soreness, other than the usual “you’re running on me for 12 miles” kinds of soreness that one can expect.

I finished up with a solid 9:22 min/mile and got home in plenty of time. Yay.

Totals

Distance: 44.53 miles
Time: 7:01:06
Calories: 6305
Fires: 1

To keep things from getting long and repetitive - and because I don’t want to make that many tables - I’m going to stop putting all the metrics into these updates. I’ll wait for something impressive before throwing in all that detail…

Monday - Easy (5 miles)

Monday was a nice easy 5 miler, which I ended up completing at roughly a 9:51 pace. I’m finding that even though I’m a little fatigued from the substance runs, I quickly end up bumping against the maximum easy pace. I’ll probably need to be more conscious of my pacing for some easy runs, as I really should run some of them closer to a 10:00 min/mile to 10:20 min/mile pace. Anyway. I did notice that my hips were a bit sore afterwards, but I chalk that up to all the walking at the Monte Sano Art Show.

As an aside, I’ve always found it odd that if I walk 6 miles, my hips will want to straight up murder me, but if I run 12 miles, they don’t even make a squeak. Body mechanics be weird, yo.

Tuesday - Speed Work (8x600 meters)

Ah, speed work. I suspect that by the time I’m done with the speed work section of Hanson’s, this will be my least favorite day of training. Or tempo work. It remains to be seen.

The 1.5 mile warm up went just fine, and I made my way over to the local high school track. After two of the 600 meter intervals, I didn’t feel super great. When I ran the speed work last week, Hurricane Irma had just passed by and the day was cooler, even if it was humid. Not so this Tuesday; it was warm and humid, and I was feeling it. I kept glancing nervously at the ridgeline/treeline, waiting for the sun to peek out and start baking me. As I ran those endless loops, I lost count on which iteration was on. At one point I thought I had done six intervals; looking at my watch, I saw that I was actually only halfway. How the hell I lost count between four and six I have no idea, but F-bombs began to rain down onto the track. By the time I legitimately had hit six laps, nausea was pretty constant. At the same time, the sun peeked out from the treeline, starting my inevitable steaming/baking. Slightly panicked, the last two iterations became a blur. I was so damn happy when the Garmin beeped on the last interval and I could jog a mile and a half home. By the time I reached the house, I felt okay-ish, but I’m worried about next week. Even more so for the 5x1000m, which is going to be in Orlando.

Humidity sucks.

Thursday - Tempo Run (6 miles)

So this is really an 8 mile run, with 6 miles run at tempo and 2 miles run at easy pace. I was supposed to do five miles, but in week 9 this jumps to 8 miles at tempo pace, and I didn’t want a 3 mile jump. Knowing myself, that may do me in; if not physically, then psychologically. On top of that, I had a massage the night before. While I love them, and view them as being incredibly beneficial in the long term, they do usually make me more sore for a few days afterwards. Starting out I was a bit stiff, and the first tempo mile didn’t feel very good. It doesn’t help that there are several rolling hills on the route I chose. The first being near the end of mile 2, another half way through mile 3, and then a nasty one at about 2/3 of the way through mile 7.

After running the first three tempo miles (half-way, yeah!), I was getting pretty sluggish and tired. My refueling plan usually calls for water every two miles and something with energy every four miles, so I popped four Gu gel blocks. I’m still not sure if I like the blocks or the gels better. To their benefit, the packages for the blocks can be opened before a run, which means I’m not desperately trying to tear open a plastic package with my teeth while running. As those went down, I had a nice straight-ish section, which helped me to get some energy back. By the time I hit the mile 7 hill, I didn’t feel all that terrible. Not great, but not terrible. If I had to run two more tempo miles, I probably could have done it. The last easy mile was easy (as it should have been), although things felt like they were cramping up a bit as I finished. Overall pace was 8:50 min/mile, with my tempo pacing hold between 8:30 and 8:36.

Friday - Easy Run (5 miles) / Saturday - Easy Run (6 miles)

Both the easy runs were easy, which is what they should be. The first was done at a 9:43 min/mile pace, the second at a 9:41 min/mile pace. At some point I’m going to need to slow down even further some of these easy runs. For me, the book recommends some easy runs to be run at ~9:40 min/mile and some at ~10:20 min/mile, and I’m definitely erring on the side of faster right now. As the substance runs gets harder, running some of these firmly in the “recovery” category is going to be important. And a challenge: it’s getting hard to run slower than 10:00 min/mile.

Sunday - Long Run (12 miles)

This was supposed to be a 10 mile long run, but I bumped this up to 12 miles based on my previous long runs. Things held together shockingly well until about the last three miles, at which point I started to feel my knees. Concerned, I tried to compensate by engaging my quads more consciously, which seemed to work. I never had a knee twinge during the long run, but things were a bit more sore in the knees than I’d like afterward. Maybe bumping the mileage on the long run wasn’t a good idea? I’m not sure. On the one hand, increasing mileage too much and running too fast/hard is how you injure yourself. On the other hand, that giant bump in two weeks scares the willies out of me, and this really was just a 3 mile bump over the previous week.

A larger concern for me after this long run is a hike I had planned at the Walls of Jericho tomorrow. I’ve never been there before, and I’ve heard rumors that the hike out is long and uphill. I’m going to push my Monday easy run to Wednesday, moving my “off day” to Monday and count the hike as “cross-training”. This is probably a bad idea, but I’ve been wanting to do this hike for the better part of a decade, and taking advantage of a free group hike is probably the only time I’d get to do it. So… here’s hoping my knees withstand a couple hours of downhill/uphill hiking.

Totals

Distance: 45.29 miles
Time: 8:07:24
Calories: 6782
F-Bombs: > 10

This week was the first substantive week of marathon training. Prior to this week, I had built up to running five days a week:

• A ‘fast-ish’ day of running, where I would attempt to run most of the run at approximate marathon pace.
• 4 to 5 miles of hills, generally running 2 to 2.5 up Monte Sano and back down
• (Rest)
• Medium run day, generally between 8 and 10 miles run at a slow pace (but probably not slow enough)
• 5 mile easy run day
• Long run day, generally between 10 and 15 miles

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this, as it incorporates some tempo like runs, hill work (strength training), and two long-ish running days. The downsides are:

• Something of a lack of science to my method. I came up with the plan by incorporating elements of my previous marathon attempts (which haven’t gone well) and a lot of reading about various methods, including Hanson and Pfitzinger. That’s probably not a smart idea.
• Pacing. Looking at my run results, I’ve been running a bit too fast in most places.
• For the longest distance I’m currently doing, my volume still probably isn’t enough.

Enter the Hanson Marathon Method.

I explained in my previous post why I chose it. So how did it go for me?

Monday - Speed Work (12x400m repeats)

I moved the speed work up from Tuesday, it’s regularly scheduled day, to Monday as I had an early morning meeting Tuesday and hadn’t run on Sunday, thereby avoiding the “no back-to-back SOS workouts” rule. That weekend I purchased a pair of Nike Zoom Fly shoes from our local Fleet Feet store, and I was pretty excited to try them out. Due to being a Linux user, I’ve had some trouble with the Garmin Connect app pushing workouts down to my watch, so I decided to do my run at a local high school track, which conveniently was within a 1.5 mile-ish warm up run from my house.

The plan was:

• 9:40 min/mile warm up/cool down
• 7:50 min/mile 400m sprints with 11:00 min/mile 400m recover laps

This being my first set of speed work, I think I did relatively well. The splits aren’t exactly the best, as I found I’d usually rocket off to a too fast start on each 400m interval and have to throttle it back to get to the right pace. This led to most of my 400m repeats being run too fast. My recovery intervals were worse, and I eventually just decided to try and go no faster than a 10:20 min/mile. Next week I should have the workout pushed to the watch, and the beeps/buzzing of the Garmin should keep me in line better.

After writing all of this down, I realize I am still running way too fast. Drat.

Tuesday - Easy Run (5 miles)

At this point, I had managed to get my workouts downloaded to my watch, which made pacing a lot easier. I did my favorite route through downtown Huntsville, which includes a nice jaunt down from the square through Big Spring park. I also swapped shoes for my Brooks Glycerin 15’s, my old stand-by in running shoes.

While I run this route a lot, the fact that it goes through some nice neighboorhoods and downtown makes it a favorite. It certainly beats running alongside interstate access roads or down a four line thoroughfare, both of which are some of my other options.

Wednesday - Crosstrain

I’ve chosen to do some strength training at a local gym for my crosstraining. I find that keeping my upper body in “okay-ish” shape helps with long runs. Without it, after about 10 miles I usually end up with some ice-pick like pain jabbing between my shoulder blades. I may write someday what this routine looks like; suffice to say it takes about 60 minutes and isn’t liable to turn me into He-Man any time soon.

Thursday - Tempo (5 miles)

I’ve read a lot about the dreaded tempo runs. Up until now, other than a few ill advised “push it” moments, I’ve usually stayed above the 9:00 min/mile mark. If I’m going to get a 3:45 marathon time, however, I have to be able to hit and hold a 8:30 min/mile pace. That feels ambitious, but not out of reach. Since my runs are now starting to include some warm up/cool down times, I decided to add those to all of my workouts and push that to my watch as well.

When Thursday dawned, my legs felt tired. I suspect this was the after effects of having run my speed work a bit faster than I should have, combined with the start of my “cumulative fatigue”. Or it’s too early and I’m just imagining how I’m going to be feeling. Anyway.

Two things I learned from this run:

1. I kind of messed up my tempo run slightly, as I had set my goal tempo pace to 8:35 as opposed to 8:30. Rather than suffer five miles of beeping and buzzing, I just went with it. I’ll fix it up for the tempo run next week.
2. That last mile at tempo pace was no bueno. I had to keep on mentally telling myself “one more mile, you’re good; one more mile, you’re good”. And by mentally, I mean I was muttering that out loud through some slightly random neighboorhood. I’m not worried that I won’t be able to do another 5 mile tempo run next week; I am worried about week 9 when I go from a 5 mile tempo run to an 8 mile tempo run. That’s a huge leap. I may try to gradually increase this over the next two weeks just to even out the pain a bit.

Friday - Easy (5 miles)

After my tempo run, I woke up on Friday feeling pretty good. I again decided to go for about a 9:40 min/mile pace, and did the good old downtown course again.

Note that I’m including my small-ish warm up/cool down routines for easy runs now too, because why not. I’m moving damnit, and those calories count.

Saturday - Easy (6 miles)

Saturday morning I felt a bit more tired than on Friday morning. That didn’t surprise me; I usually feel the worst after effects of a strenuous exercise two days later. I was a bit concerned, as I had volunteered to do parking at the Monte Sano Art Show all day that day, and I knew I was going to be on my feet for around 8 hours at least. I decided to shoot for anything over a 10:00 min/mile pace. I still wanted to finish up in about an hour, as I had to be up in the state park by 8:00 AM or so to start my volunteer duties.

Sunday - Long (10 miles)

Sunday morning dawned and I knew I was in a bit of trouble. All of the walking yesterday had definitely made me pretty sore, despite my best efforts the night before on loosening things up on a foam roller. My largest concern was not that I wouldn’t be able to run 10 miles, but that my soreness might cause me to whack out my knee and cause larger damage. I decided that at the first sign of trouble I’d stop and stretch and/or walk, as I’d rather take a DNF on my first long run than mess up the whole shebang.

Although, I will admit in a moment of honesty, that if I mess up my knee on week 6 of a program that is supposed to help prevent injury then I’m probably not ready to do this thing in the first place. Anyway. Let’s keep that little realistic thought out of the way for now.

Despite my misgivings, it went just fine. I hit up the old Rocket City marathon course. Starting in and around downtown, it forms a nice out and back through South/Central Huntsville, keeping mostly to small quiet neighboorhoods. Given the course’s popularity, you’re always bound to run into a couple dozen other runners, which I like on long runs (safety first). I kept up my long run pace of ~9:20 min/mile relatively well. I also practiced taking a Gu gel while running; something I haven’t done in the past. I’ve always walked my water/Gu breaks, but if I’m going to keep up a pace throughout an entire marathon, there’s no time like the present to train for it.

Total Impressions

• Total Distance: 42.78 miles
• Total Time: 409.38 minutes
• Total Calories: 6014

Well, it is just week one, so I probably should tamper my enthusiasm.

1. My legs feel pretty good today (which was an Easy run day, but that’s technically on week 2). I definitely have a perma “ache” or soreness in them, but it’s that good level of soreness/achiness that says that you’ve done something, not any kind of acute pain. I can imagine that as the weeks go on and the mileage goes up, this is only going to become “more of a thing”. I’m okay with that.
2. I hate getting up in the morning and running, but once I get out the door I’m fine. It’s worse when it’s dark out; I’m finding myself hitting the snooze once or twice just so I can leave just after 6 when there’s a hint of light as opposed to 5:45-ish when there isn’t. It’s a weird mental thing. I’m not looking forward to having the cold pile up on top of that.

I ran a marathon once.

I was 29, and the notion of kicking off my third decade with a marathon appealed to me. Up until that point in time, I think I had run two half marathons and was in reasonable-ish shape; reasonable-ish because I have an aversion to running in the cold (even Alabama cold) and generally slack off during the winter months. The Rocket City Marathon, held in December, seemed ideal. I’d train during the summer/fall, and would be able to run the race when it is good and cold in North Alabama, but not have to train too long in below 40 temperatures. I gave myself what I thought was plenty of time, and like so many marathon newbies, I picked a Hal Higdon Beginner marathon plan and started training. I’m pretty sure I used the Beginner Two plan, as I recall having two 20 mile runs. On that fateful second 20 mile run, my knee twinged pretty badly and I ended up having a lot of pain after I completed the run. Concerned, I backed off on the training some, thinking that if I gave my knee some time, I’d be okay by race day. To test it, I went ahead and ran the Huntsville Half Marathon, doing fairly well with a 1:43:20. This was stupid on two fronts: first, running a race on a slightly bum knee is never a good plan. Second, I naively assumed that I could just sort of “double” that half marathon time and tack on another 10 minutes or so for my goal marathon time.

Not surprisingly, while I managed to finish, the marathon did not go super great.

This was on the old course of the Rocket City Marathon. At the time, the race had an infamous stretch along a straight, boring, four lane road (Bailey Cove Road) that went on for five or six miles. Once you were done with that transcendent experience, you had to come up another slightly inclined straightaway that is Chaney Thompson. I remember feeling pretty good when I started that stretch; by the time I was halfway up it, I remember not feeling very good. My knee twinge flared. That caused me to slow down. Then it flared - and stayed flared. Sharp, stabbing pain. By mile 18 I was hobbling. Hobbling very, very slowly. The notion of shuffle walking another 8 miles did not appeal to me, but because it was my first marathon and I did not want a DNF to grace my entrance into my 30s, I gutted it out.

Finishing was still an emotional experience, even if I crossed the finish line in 4:09:27 - a far worse result than my unrealistic 3:40. Worse than my miserable finish was what that marathon did to my running. I fell off the running bandwagon hard, and have never really managed to get back to that same level of effort.

I have tried a few times over the past six years. At least twice, I’ve started ramping up my mileage, with the thought in the back of my head that I would avenge my Rocket City Marathon debut. Both times, I’ve ended up hurting myself; usually, again, stabby knee pain that won’t go away. The last attempt at this was roughly three years ago. Since then, I have managed to finish a trail 25k (not without a hydration/electrolyte related mishap, but that’s another problem) as well as another decent half marathon finish. Even so, the allure of finishing a marathon strong has appealed to me. I don’t really care that much how long it takes, I just want to finish it strong.

(That being said, finishing under 4 hours would still be nice, if for no other reason than I don’t want to be out there pounding pavement that long.)

Earlier this year, I began to consider bookending the first half of my thirties with a marathon. I started to run again in April, and have since slowly built up my endurance running long, slow mileage. Longest run so far has been 15 miles, but I’ve been hitting 10 - 14 mile long runs with a weekly run total of over 30 miles since July. So: can I run a marathon before November 25th?

Nope.

In reality, I’m still not quite there. There’s only so many marathons in the Southeast that I’d want to run before November. For me to be ready for a marathon by early November, I’d have to be further into a real training program than I am right now, and “pushing it” for the sake of an arbitrary date is clearly not a good idea.

How about the Rocket City Marathon?

Tracing back from where I am right now, that’s 13 weeks out. Most beginner marathon training programs are 16 to 18 weeks, and with my currently weekly mileage being where it is, this feels more doable.

So how to train?

After a lot of reading on reddit, I settled on the Hanson Beginner Marathon Plan. I even bought the book on Amazon - a first for me. I settled on this approach for a few reasons:

1. The Hanson Method doesn’t sugar coat it: running a marathon is hard. In fact, if anything, the author almost seems to try and discourage you slightly: training for a marathon is a commitment, and it takes a lot of time. Given my last few attempts, I’d rather go with a realistic - but successful - approach.

2. The very long runs have been my Achilles Heel. Two out of the past three attempts, I’ve hurt myself on a 20 mile run. I’m fairly sure my other injury also occurred not long after an 18 or 20 mile attempt. Running longer than 3 hours in training has gone poorly for me, and the Hanson Method addresses this head on. A lot of people focus on the promise of only running 16 miles; however, they miss the author’s reason for limiting the long run. Generally, for most people, running longer than 3 hours is damaging on the body. Doing so in training is likely to lead to injury. For those of us in the 9 - 10 min/mile camp, 16 miles is roughly a 3 hour training run; hence that limit. This is a plan that addresses issues in my previous training attempts.

3. The plan helps with pacing. Like most running neophytes, I tend to run too fast and end up hurting myself as a result. The plan gives you pacing guidelines, which for the slow runs is far slower than I was running.

4. The focus on speed work. I’ve never really known how to do speed work properly. I had attempted to do fartleks in the past, but it didn’t feel “right”. I’d run fast either too little or too much, and burn out on what felt like a very inconsistent run. Eventually, I just stopped doing speed work. The Hanson Method has you doing speed work for several weeks, followed by what it calls “strength” runs, consisting of longer iterations run at slightly faster than marathon pace. Again, the author explains very well why these substance runs (Something Of Substance, or SOS) matter, and how to view them in relation to your easy/recovery runs and long runs.

Since my mileage was already high, and the first five weeks of the Hanson method are really building up to the first set of SOS runs, I started out on week six of the plan this week.

We’ll see how it goes…

I have to be careful. I’ve now written two blog posts in two days, after ignoring this blog for a good six months. Seriously: if I write too much, I’ll get annoyed and just stop again.

Maybe every two weeks is a good goal?

Maybe.

Anyway, I wrote last time on maintaining a work/life balance because I felt I needed context for this post. Namely, that I run. That’s traditionally been one of those things I set aside from work, and don’t violate.

Except that hasn’t been true for some time. I have to qualify my “I run” statement: I’m working back to becoming a runner. Two years ago, I ran quite a lot, all of which culminated in the Rocket City marathon. Unfortunately, I torked my knee out about a month before the marathon. Undeterred, I ran it anyway, and at about mile 18, my knee fell apart. “Fell apart” is a nice way of saying it felt like someone took a chisel to my knee cap. I willed myself through the next 8 miles, but I went from running a good 9:00 minute mile (which was, at the time, my goal marathon pace) to 12:00 minute miles. Or worse. I’m not sure.

It sucked.

Either way, I did finish the marathon (4:09 and change) - but the marathon ultimately did me in. I haven’t run in the two years since.

Having running disappear from my life sucked a lot more than the knee pain ever did.

Getting the run back on

Running is a weird thing. The vast majority of the time you’re running, it sucks. Running in the South doesn’t help either; we have the worst conditions for running. Hot and humid just doesn’t go with slogging through a long distance run.

Now, after you’ve done it awhile, it does get “better”. But it’s not like your legs suddenly stop hurting, or your muscles stop cramping, or your head doesn’t spin when you run too hard up a hill and it’s 100 degrees out with 100% humidity. You can just hurt longer as you run farther, and that’s about all.

A funny thing does happen, however: eventually, you start to kind of like it. And when you’ve been out there for quite awhile, you eventually do get the glorious Runner’s High.

So… hours upon hours upon hours of pain to get a few brief moments of pleasure? Sure, why not!

Of course, I’m underselling this a bit. The Oatmeal got the joy of this correct when he called it “The Void”: time seems to stand still. Your legs are moving, things hurt, but it’s all good. Everything is awesome (cue theme music). And, when the world is stressful, when your thoughts are plaguing you, when all is chaotic and crazy… the void is a great place to reach.

It’s all worth the pain to get there. I decided to get back there.

Doing it better

My biggest fear is getting injured again. That knee: it took the wind right out of my void-happy sails. It’s not that injuries won’t happen again - when you’re pounding pavement over and over, sometimes things give - but I’d like to do better at preventing it this time around.

Number 1 problem: old shoes.

This one is easy to fix: buy new shoes and stop being a cheap skate. Compared to other hobbies, running is pretty cheap.

Number 2 problem: running too damn fast.

I tend to do pretty well at keeping myself to a 10% mileage increase week after week, but I get competitive. I attack hills; I try to beat my last pace. I do this even on long runs: if I ran a 6 mile run at 9:30, I can do an 8 mile run at the same pace. Or at 9:25. 9:20? Sure.

FYI: This is dumb.

To try and prevent my nature from overriding my brain - particularly when I want to run harder - I bought a Garmin Forerunner 220. Yay, new toys!

The Garmin Forerunner 220 has got all sorts of crazy features. It’s amazing how much functionality you can fit onto a chip (go-go Moore’s Law). The two features that I wanted the most were probably the most obvious:

1. A heart rate monitor. Heart rate doesn’t lie.

2. GPS. I want to actually know my pace per mile, and how far I’ve actually run.

10 miles at 143

Before going out for my 10 mile long run this Saturday, I calculated my aerobic heart rate at 143 (using the somewhat arbitrary calculation of 180 - 32 (age) - 5 (less than 6 months of running)). Last Saturday, I strapped on the heart rate monitor, drove up to Monte Sano, parked at the Elementary school, and started out.

It was a great day for running: overcast, a bit drizzly, and cool for July. The mountain tends to get wrapped in fog and clouds when the weather is like this, and Saturday was no exception. There’s a great 10 mile route on the mountain - start at the school, run the Panorama loop, head up to the state park, run to the overlook, run down the old bankhead/toll gate road until you hit five miles, then turn around and run the thing in reverse.

The first thing I noticed was that I hit 143 pretty easily, and at a much slower pace than I thought. I had previously been running my long runs at about a 10 minute per mile pace; I found that this really was too fast. Disappointing, but not unexpected. At it turns out, keeping myself at a 143 heart rate was closer to an 11:20 minute per mile pace. Oh well.

The second thing I learned: I attack hills. Not even a little, a lot. I actually speed up on the inclines, and my heart rate - not surprisingly - goes up a lot. (It’s surprising how fast heart rate goes up when start going up hill.) It took a bit, but I learned to slow down - a lot - when running up a hill. I ended up having to walk a few of them, particularly later in the 10 miles.

The final thing: I liked running with a heart monitor. It was kind of a game: how close could I keep myself to my target heart rate? It felt like I was a bit more engaged at times with my running. While I have always loved my long runs - far more than the weekly grind - sometimes, they can get a bit dull as you wait for that void to kick in. The heart rate game kept me interested during those first six or eight miles.

When the ten miles were done, and I was back at my car, I was surprised how much better I felt. Often, when I finish a long run, I’m a bit winded and my legs are a bit “jelly” like. Keeping myself a bit slower and in that aerobic zone helped a lot - I felt like I could have easily run another couple of miles.

Supposedly, keeping myself in an aerobic zone will slowly improve speed. I get to test that out over the next few months, as I’ll be wearing this during my weekly training runs.

Hopefully this will get me ready for the new marathon route this winter… and get me in shape to run it better this time around.