Marathon Training Excerpts II

It’s been three weeks since I decided to post excerpts from my marathon training. It feels like simulataneously training just started and that it’s been going on for forever. A lot of progress has been made in the first four weeks but there is going to be a lot of work over the next fourteen weeks to get ready.

Before I call out a few of my runs, I decided to re-enable my Strava account. I’ve been using RunningAHEAD for years. It’s great at what it does, but I don’t think the social aspect of it is great. It was never designed for that. Several of my friends and family wanted to stay on top of my training and they’re not going to read this blog, so I’m cross-posting all of my runs to my Strava profile¹.

Run 5 - January 23rd, 8 miles with 10x20 second striders

Week 2 starts in much the way that week 1 did: with bad weather. I was excited initially because the temperature on this Tuesday was in the 30s. However, it was precipitating. It was at just the right temperature where it was freezing rain and the roads were awful. On Tuesdays, my dog, Ripley, and I have agility practice. With work commitments, even if I work from home and things are flexible, I still have the pitch black to deal with. I stressed about finding a window to get this run in. My wife is very supportive and was about to take Ripley to agility, when the weather broke and there was a window of about 90 minutes where I could dedicate myself to this run and still get to agility.

My pace for the 8 miles was good. Things went well. Then the striders started and I couldn’t push myself as much as I would have liked. However, slowing down allowed me to avoid an injury.

In the end, I think stressing about getting the run in made things worse. If I would have had to miss one run, I don’t think it would have been the end of the world. Weather isn’t under our control, but what is under our control is how we respond to it. I’ve been responding to it by being smart and pushing through, but this one probably should have been skipped.

Run 8 - January 28th, 13 miles with 8 at marathon pace

Even though the program called for 13 miles, I wanted to get the “half marathon” Apple Fitness award so I was going to push this to at least 13.11 miles. It’s stupid, but I love those damn medals.

Many things didn’t work on this run. I’ve been trying to think through some of them… It’s worth starting to write about it, so we can sort through my feelings.

To start, the plan called for 8 miles at my marathon pace. This is supposed to be a 7:10/mile. I was supposed to gradually increase pace until I got to that pace at around mile 6. However, stupid me, I got to that pace around mile 3. So already, I’m going too fast so it becomes a question on if I can sustain the pace. The good news for me is that I could when I didn’t have to deal with external factors. My route was a bit weird and I ended up on a trail near my house. Between two major roads I ran into multiple issues. The first is trail etiquette. There was a family walking ahead that took up the entire trail. I yelled “on your left,” and nothing. As I got closer, I yelled again. At this point I’m trying to hold on to a stupid pace and I didn’t want to slow down. They finally reacted when I was right on them, and almost plowed into this poor woman. Afterwards I went across a bridge, and there was about half a mile where it was pure slush and ice. It wasn’t plowed or shoveled which meant I couldn’t sustain my pace. I had to give up and walk. After the next bridge, it’s opened up and I could run again. Then I get to near the end of the trail and it’s completely flooded by the river. There is no way to go except for back, which I definitely didn’t want to do as it would also put me at too many miles, or through. I ended up taking my socks and shoes off because I don’t like wet socks and walked through freezing water. Ugh. Not fun, but I got through and finished the last couple miles.

I think the main issue here is how stubborn I get when I start going. I don’t want to give up or adjust things. I made the mistake of pushing too early and then tried to hold on. I was pissed that the family didn’t get over and again didn’t want to slow down. However, if I plowed into that woman then I think there is serious injury to both of us. It was stupid. I’m not sure why I’m so stubborn with physical things, but at work or other things I’m fine with adjusting on the fly and am far from rigid. It is interesting. I need to find things that will stop me and give me pause so I can catch myself when I get into these traps.

Run 11 - February 1st, 8 miles with 4 at lactate threshold

During week 3 I was in Connecticut for work. At one point I was supposed to move to Connecticut for this job, but one of the reasons that I couldn’t commit to it was the awful situation with walking and running. Have they never heard of shoulders and sidewalks? You take your life in your own hands in the area of my office and that is not the life I want to live.

Thankfully, with all my trips out there I did find some routes. I just have to drive 20-25 minutes to get to the spot. It’s really disgusting to have to drive somewhere to exercise, but we do what we have to do. I left later and knew I was going to have to contend with dark. I wore my high-viz with a headlamp. I was also excited to see what I could do with a repeat of the workout of my first run of this training block.

Overall, it went really well. However, there were some scary points when my headlamp stopped working. When you’re running at a 6:35-6:45/mile pace and can’t really see the road in a route you’ve only done once before, it becomes interesting. Thankfully, I got through it with no issues and I felt really good. I almost wanted to post about my run on the Tuesday before where I had some abdominal issues and praised to the powers that allowed me to find a convenience store with a restroom, otherwise I’d be adding to the list of times I’ve embarassed myself on a run.

This week was a real test since I’ll be doing more travel while on this training block, and I was able to get all my work done and get my runs in while away from home.

Run 15 - February 7th, 5 miles at recovery pace

I would not have guessed that I’d e writing about this run. 5 miles at a slower pace? Easy. However, that was not the case. This was probably the worst run I’ve done in a long time. During mile 2 I started to get light-headed. I really struggled. There were multiple times where I had to stop and walk to collect myself.

At the time I didn’t know why this happened, but now I learned that I had not been consuming enough calories. One of the things I’ve seen with me during marathon training is that I put on some weight as I’m consuming more calories. It was important to me to get to my racing weight early², so I could then focus on maintaining. I was still in a deficit as I was very close to the goal weight. Now, I’m at where I need to be and have adjusted my calories accordingly.

Cumulative Stats

• Weeks into Marathon Training: 4
• Planned Runs: 18
• Runs Achieved: 18
• Planned Mileage: 151 miles
• Actual Mileage: 156 miles
• Longest run: 15.05 miles
• Average distance per run: 8.67 miles/run