Apologies to those of you that follow my blog for being AWOL for the past month but this post will make up for it and I'll start being better once again about posting interesting things since I am in a period of recovery.
Marathon Training - Week 13
After the 5Km, I was feeling pretty high on life from both the fast time I posted and the long run the following day that was the fastest and best I have ever felt during a long run. I was hoping to ride that feeling into the final 3 weeks of training but nothing goes as planned. The week after the race I came down with a combination of the flu and bad fall allergies, which sidelined me for about 4 days. The first few days back were really rough as I felt extremely sluggish even running 6 mile recovery runs. I was also basically stuck in the middle of wanting one more quality week at 70+ miles and starting my 3 week taper, so I decided to push through and get one more quality week in then taper in 2 weeks. This quality week included a 20-miler to make sure I still had it in my legs and a 10-mile race.
So if you have been following my blog, you know I have a love hate relationship with Harvard, MA. The town is beautiful and there is a good race series that is run there, but those damn hills are absolutely brutal. I can't imagine living in Harvard and training in those hills daily, although it might be a good thing.
Apple Harvest Ramble (10M)
The 10-miler was a stacked field because it is marathon season and most good marathoners use these races as fitness tests. My goal pace going in was 6:46/mile but it turns out that this course was even more ridiculous than the previous 5-miler I ran earlier this year. There was a 3/4 mile climb at mile 4 that really cleared out the field and I saw people off to the side looking like they were going to hurl. The middle miles were pretty normal for Harvard, lots of rolling hills and some quality climbs, but I held my 6:50/mile pace through mile 7. However, the next mile had me face to face with that same hill that made me walk previously. I was determined this time to not walk and I made it running the whole hill. After the race a woman came up to me who I was running with and said I carried her up that hill because all she wanted to do was walk. I ended up finishing in a respectable 14th given the quality of the field.
Marathon Taper
The two taper weeks were a new experience for me since I haven't run such few miles in probably almost 6 months. The goal of the taper is to reduce volume, sharpen speed and recovery while maintaining a consistent intensity. The first week this was easy, I just pulled my 2 doubles out and dropped to 50 miles for the week and started feeling really good. The Sunday long run of 13 miles was nearly the fastest I have ever run half marathon and I barely felt like I was trying which gave me a ton of confidence.
The second taper week was really hard on me; primarily because I am crazy OCD about my weight (unfortunate side effect of at one point being almost 300 lbs). The lack of volume was causing me to retain more water weight than I was used to and so I was overcompensating and not eating enough. I think this contributed to the mid-week feeling that I was getting sick with the flu which also stressed me out.
So for many of you this may sound crazy, but one of the worst part of the taper week was having to carbo-load and needing to eat nothing but carbs for 2 straight days. I can imagine most people would like a free ticket to just eat and eat whatever they want but that is really hard for me. I had to consume roughly 500g of carbs Friday and Saturday without getting sick or losing my mind from the temporary weight gain. In case anyone is interested in what 500g of carbs looks like here was Friday's menu:
- 1/4 Box of Kashi Go Lean
- 3 Kashi Granola Bars
- 1 Banana
- 1 Apple
- 1 Grilled Chicken Sandwich on a Bulkie Roll
- 3 Servings of Mini Pretzels
- 1 Box of Kellog's Cracker Chips
- 1/3 Loaf of French Bread
- 1 Cup Garbanzo Beans
- 2 Cups Spinach-Mushroom Risotto
- 1/2 Box of Peanut Butter Puffins
- 1/2 Box of Kellog's Special K w/ Red Berries
- 1/2 Bag of Popcorn Chips
Just seeing that list makes me sick to my stomach, and having two do it two days in a row was even worse.
Baystate Marathon
This was definitely a new experience for me from a racing perspective as I have always at least run the race distance once prior to a race and in training the longest I had run was 22 miles. I think maybe this is really what the magic of the marathon is all about because you just don't know what is going to happen over those last 4 or 6 miles that you haven't run before.
I had a hard time sleeping from the excitement and anxiety so I only got about 4-5 hours of sleep the night before but Tina did a great job of keeping me organized and the morning was actually not very stressful at all. She made sure the car was packed and basically I just had to throw my clothes on and get in the car. We got to the race with plenty of time for me to get ready and fight the porta-potty lines.
On the starting line I was feeling a pretty wide range of emotions with everything from complete adrenaline to the sinking feeling of "What the fuck did I get just get myself into thinking I can run 26 miles". I lined up with the 3:15 pacers because that was about the time I was thinking I might be able to run if everything turned out as planned.
When the gun for the race went off, I learned an extremely valuable lesson which is nothing ever goes as planned. I had 2 energy gels in my waist band and one fell out! I got a sinking feeling that I was in trouble but I settled myself and adjusted the plan to take one of the gels they were giving out on the course and use that in place of the one I lost. Within the first half mile I realized that the 3:15 pacers had no idea what they were doing as they were running 8:20/miles which is way too slow even if you want to go out slow. In retrospect, this was the best possible scenario as running a marathon is about running based on feel and you shouldn't race based on someone else's fitness or feeling that day.
The first 6 miles or so flew by and were a complete adrenaline blur. The big question mark on the day was whether I could handle the water stations as I wasn't wearing a water belt. The first water station I missed because they only had Gatorade or at least none of the people called out that they had water. I knew this was okay because I typically only took water in training every 4 miles. The second stop I got water and luckily saw someone doing something awesome to drink, they took the cup, pinched the top and then folded the top down to create a tiny opening to drink from. I copied it and it worked like a charm and 14 water stations later I am a pro at drinking from a cup now!
The race basically consisted of two 10 mile loops along the river in Lowell with 3 miles to and from the loop. The loop turned back around the 8 and 18 mile marks over this really weird bridge. The bridge itself wasn't weird but the walkway that we ran over was so strange, it felt almost like rubber and the bridge itself would bounce up and down as cars drove by. It actually was a nice break for my legs and I looked forward to it on the second loop.
For pace, I had figured based on my training runs I should run somewhere around 7:20/mile but one thing to note about this race is it is designed for Boston Qualifiers so there are packs of people running at the various qualifying times. There was basically a pack around 7:00/mile and 7:30/mile, neither of which worked for me. I chose to hang with the 7:00/mile pack for the first half of the race. This actually led to an official PR in the half marathon with a split of 1:34:49 which I am pretty happy about given it was in the middle of my first marathon.
In the world of marathons, miles 13 to 20 are considered "No Mans Land" and can be some of the toughest miles. The first creeping feeling that maybe I had bitten off more than I could chew was around mile 15 where I was like holy crap I still have 11 miles to go. At that point I was still on 7:10/mile pace and I could feel fatigue starting to settle in. I decided to back off and drop away from the pack and try and hold the 7:20/mile I planned from the start for the remainder of the race. I was feeling pretty good at that pace and definitely started feeling like I could actually finish this running this race and not walk.
As I was running over the mile 20 marker, I noticed on the ground that someone had spray painted a message, "Welcome to the Wall!". For those of you that don't know, the "Wall" is the point in an endurance race where your body runs out of fuel (it usually equates to mile 20 regardless of pace because of the rate at which your body burns fuel at various paces) and is something everyone tries to avoid hitting. I was feeling really good at that point and had run 22 in training without hitting a wall and not taking the my 3rd energy gel at mile 20 so I was hopeful that I would make it through the race without meeting the "Wall". I had executed my plan which was to try to get to this point as if the race was only half way over as I had read that mile 20 is the halfway point in a marathon regardless of what anyone says.
Miles 22-24 were tough but I definitely had yet to hit that point of utter exhaustion although my pace was slipping which you can see in my splits below. I think the 3rd energy gel helped me get to this point in relatively good shape, but there is only so much that science can do in these situations.
I now completely understand what marathoners mean when they say that you learn a lot about yourself as a person in those last 2-3 miles of the marathon. Those 2 miles were the longest I have ever run in my entire life and felt like they were as long as the 24 I had previously run. It became a 16 minute war between my body and my brain. All I wanted to do was stop running and walk but I told myself that I would never forgive myself if I did as I wanted to
run a marathon not walk. The road literally felt like it went on forever as I looked for the final bridge but around each turn was more race course. I thought about how I needed to keep running for Colin, Tina and everyone else who had supported me through the training. I am not sure exactly where the strength to keep going came from but I certainly didn't do it on my own.
I finally came to the final bridge and knew that I had done what I had set out to do. At that point I did get passed by a few people including a guy carrying his shoes running barefoot but I didn't care who passed me. I was going to finish the race and nothing could stop me. As I turned the last corner I did almost lose it emotionally but held myself together. I started thinking about how two years ago I was nearly 300 lbs and would get winded walking to the car from the office and here I was finishing a marathon. I even got to have the announcer call out my name at the end of the race as I raised my hands and crossed the finish line which was a truly surreal experience.
My final time was 3:17:08 which wasn't far off my stretch goal of 3:15:00. It also was only 7 minutes off qualifying for the Boston Marathon in my debut race. All in all I ran the best possible race I could have that day and it was an experience that I will remember for the rest of my life. I am now happily recovering and looking forward to some much needed rest and enjoying the accomplishment before I move onto my next goal, a BQ and sub-3:00:00 marathon.
Marathon Splits
| Split | | Pace |
| 1 | | 07:11.10 |
| 2 | | 07:06.20 |
| 3 | | 07:11.70 |
| 4 | | 07:06.00 |
| 5 | | 07:12.00 |
| 6 | | 07:17.20 |
| 7 | | 07:13.00 |
| 8 | | 07:12.70 |
| 9 | | 07:08.30 |
| 10 | | 07:11.30 |
| 11 | | 07:08.00 |
| 12 | | 07:09.70 |
| 13 | | 07:10.50 |
| 14 | | 07:26.00 |
| 15 | | 07:17.70 |
| 16 | | 07:21.00 |
| 17 | | 07:24.00 |
| 18 | | 07:26.20 |
| 19 | | 07:27.00 |
| 20 | | 07:27.70 |
| 21 | | 07:41.50 |
| 22 | | 07:42.00 |
| 23 | | 07:54.20 |
| 24 | | 08:10.50 |
| 25 | | 08:09.20 |
| 26 | | 08:45.70 |
| 0.2 | | 03:38.00 |
| Total: | | 03:17:08.40 |
The one thing that this experience has taught me is that nothing in this world is impossible and you truly can accomplish anything if you work hard enough.
