Adjusted Reality

Back on Halloween, my husband and I were training for a marathon together and then the next day, he went and fought a bear.  This resulted in three fractures in his leg.  So, not only was he out of the Space Coast Marathon four weeks later, he also was sidelined for the Woodlands Marathon (and the whole 3 month training cycle before it) coming up the last day in February.

I had some history trying to train for a marathon by myself, and it wasn’t pretty.  I had two attempts, which started with fits and starts and quickly fizzled into an Olympic triathlon plan and then next time pacing Zliten’s first half instead.  The third time I limped along, getting a 20 mile run cobbled together from mileage before and after a half marathon race, and two other long runs, but overall, I had poor and inconsistent training.  While I had a blast, I walked at lot of the second half.  After I got over the high of “I want to run all the marathons” post race, I kind of vowed not to do another marathon before Zliten was ready because I would much rather spend those long training runs with him.  And now… I had to deal with it all by my lonesome.

My training that last month was OK, but inconsistent, and riddled with questions and uncertainty.  Everything just felt… off.  I lost most of a week to nursing what I thought was something major but ended up just being muscle soreness.  I felt a little disconnected from the process and just kind of went through the motions to prepare for a race.

That showed up during the marathon itself as well.  I let my head get the best of me during a lot of the hard parts instead of digging in.  I had actually planned to hang with Zliten at least during the first half as my race plan, and when that removed itself from possibility, I just never really got over that.  Running by yourself for five hours (I mean, surrounded by people, but strangers) is just plain rough if you’ve had a constant run buddy for, like, 3 years.

After that race, I took 9 days with no running, and the next 5 with very little, and set my decision point at the end of December.  Was I going to go for the marathon or drop to the half?  The first thing I had to decided was if I hated running enough to train for a marathon without a partner.  I was very gentle with myself that month.  I took no electronics on my runs.  I ran whatever pace, whatever mileage, and whenever I felt like. I found a weird and wonderful routine over the holidays of lazing around all day, and running for the hour or so before sunset almost every day.

I felt a lot of run love come back by the new year, but the longest I was able to drag myself outside was 12 miles.  Every time I attempted a long run I got bored, or hungry, or ran out of time, or just plain didn’t want to run for more than 2 hours over Holiday break.  This didn’t bode well for running the marathon.

I did some soul searching and figured out that dropping to the half marathon felt like giving up something I wanted to do, and not just a weight off my shoulders.  I made a hard and fast rule with myself that I had to get in some quality long runs in January or I had to give up anyway.  I wasn’t going to run a marathon on a long run of 12 miles.

The weather didn’t really make things easy.  Neither did some major shakeups at my job.  The first weekend in January we had freezing rain for the entire thing, so I toughed out a 15 mile treadmill run in my living room.  It wasn’t *that* bad, and I’m sure I’ll repeat it again over the summer when it’s 90 fucking billion degrees out, but it wasn’t something I wanted to make a habit of in my life.

Then, the next weekend, allergies were so high I feared the outdoors, plus I was in the maximum point of uncertainty and depths of deep depression about what was going on at work.  I tried the treadmill trick again and failed miserably at 3.5 miles and 2.5 miles on two successive attempts.  Then, I went and got rip roaring drunk on a Sunday because life was awful and forgot to take my allergy pill that night, and I have no idea how I made it through work the next day but oddly enough, things started to look up.

I remembered that whole “stress is stress, whether through training or life” thing, and called that Saturday – Friday my rest week at 21-ish miles during that period of time.  By the end of that week, things weren’t totally OK, but getting there, and I shoveled myself out the door that weekend with a plan to get at least, like, 17 miles.  With victory chips and beer waiting for me if I succeeded.

Finally, it all clicked.  The stress from work clearing, the rest week lifting some fatigue, a decent day outside.  I not only did 17, not only did 20, but I did my longest training run ever of 21.3 miles (albeit WELL above marathon pace) simply because I was happy to be out doing it.  I only quit because I started feeling some deeper fatigue than normal and didn’t want to sideline myself if I pressed on.  Break on through to the other side, I was back on track.

The next week, I peaked my run mileage at 48, and had another slow but phenomenal 20 mile long run in almost 4 hours of pouring rain that ended at the pho place near my house.  I still felt good last week, so I celebrated my last week before taper with 48 more miles, and a much faster 18 mile long run (10:54 pace vs 11:44 pace the week before) which gave me some confidence that maybe, just maybe, if I show up and then stay out of my own way, I might have a PR in there after all.

That’s a lot of words about a training cycle that was fraught with peril and on the rocks for a bit, but ultimately seems like will end with a solid foundation to run on Feb 28th.  If I complete what’s planned, I’ll have long runs of 21, 20, 18, 16, 15, 12, 11, and 10.  I’ve had 3 weeks of 33+ and 4 weeks of 40+ miles.  I also conquered running alone and have learned some things from it:

Running by myself…

…is a great place to think things through.  I had so many conversations with myself and people at work in my head on runs, and I ended up figuring out where I really stand on a lot of things.  Also, those runs went by so, so quick.  When I used to need to get ready for a meeting right after lunch I’d skip my workout to do so – now I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

…is a great opportunity to do whatever the fuck I want most days.  Running with Zliten, we’d have to establish a route, distance, time, and pace goal parameters before the run.  By myself, I can shovel myself out the door not knowing whether I’m going to run north or south, 1 or 11 miles, or whether I’m going to have splits in the 12s or the 9s.  Hell, I stopped and played on the swings at the park one day during a run.  I can show up and see what happens.

…is great mental training for the race.  Running 4 hours by myself means it won’t be a shock on race day.  I have to motivate myself every day, I won’t rely on anyone to do it for me at the race.

…is fantastic when I truly want to be electronics free, since I pretty much could only pry my husband’s garmin from his cold dead hands (and he’d probably just use a phone app to track pace/HR or something as back up).

…means I get to talk about my run as a story, and we’re not both like “yup, uh huh, I was there, remember…” and also hear about how he killed it that day doing something else.

…is really helping me embrace my “run as travel” mindset, and not just clocking miles on a watch.  Taking the emphasis off watching a watch has allowed me to consider running as commuting, where before, I wouldn’t have done that because the stops or crazy terrain would have fucked up my splits.  I don’t give a rats ass about my splits if I can’t see them until after the fact.

However, Zliten’s making a comeback.  He is up to 30 mins on the treadmill or track, and should be running outside before the end of the month.  We even got to run together last night!  It was weird having company but then it was awesome.  While I’ve enjoyed running on my own for the last few months a lot more than I thought I would… nothing beats a run buddy!

When I started this running streak, I aimed to go from my starting point (Dec 29th) through the end of January.  At times, I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it.  However, I think ultimately it was a really great experience.  Running daily taught me a lot of lessons in energy management and preserving recovery, and established some really great habits I’ll bank on for the rest of the year.

Running Streak by numbers:

Days: 34 (35 total runs)

Runs inside vs outside: 13 vs 22 (pretty good for January)

Runs by mileage:

• 1-1.9 miles =  5
• 2-2.9 miles = 2
• 3-3.9 miles = 7
• 4-4.9 miles = 3
• 5-5.9 miles = 7
• 6-6.9 miles = 6
• 7-9.9 miles = 1
• 10-14.9 miles = 1
• 15-21.3 mile = 3

Analysis here: 5.5-6 miles is about what I can run in an hour, so if we boxed in 5.5-6.5, that would probably make up the majority of the runs.  3-4 miles is what I can run at the gym over lunch, and also seems like a reasonable jaunt even when I’m tired (less than 3 seems like a waste to me).  I did 7 runs less than 3 miles, but most of them I cut short to preserve my energy for the next day, not necessarily because I didn’t have more in me.

Days by pace:

• 9-9:59 minute miles 3
• 10-10:29 minute miles 10
• 10:30-10:59 minute miles 15
• 11 – 12 minute miles 7

My slowest runs were generally the longest runs or the shortest runs (recovery days, easy miles).  Fastest were surprise days I felt great and sped up a bit (3-6 mile distance).  The number I saw most often was 10:30-something.  I’m happy with 25 of the 35 being in 10-11 min/mile pace.  Hopefully 2015 will see that normal pace shift a little downward, but for now, it’s copacetic.

How about that mood:

• Great vs crappy: 33 good runs, 2 crappy.  I’ll take that ratio.
• Days that I would have not run if not for the streak and was glad I got out: 9
• Days that I would have not run if not for the streak and still felt crappy after: 2

It’s kind of amazing how many times I thought it wasn’t a good day to run, but I got out anyway and felt great.  The two crappy days were: 1. dealing with the crux of mental and physical exhaustion before I scaled back the mileage a little bit and 2. a REALLY BAD hangover day.  If I feel good 95% of the time, I should be running more than 40-70% of the time (depending on when I’m at in the training cycle), yeah?

Time of day:

• Morning: 1
• Noon: 15
• Afternoon (no headlamp): 14
• Evening (headlamp): 5

If I could run whenever, as proved on vacation/weekends, I’d run about 4pm until sunset.  With work in the mix, the best time for me to run is at lunch (starting sometime between noon and 1) for an hour.  All but one of my long runs started in the afternoon (and the outlier was 11:40am), and I started to find the love for after work headlamp runs on warmer days near the end of the month.

I’d like to be more of a lark, but it really takes forcing it over the winter and I’m ok waiting until it gets warmer to get up with the sun since obviously I’m still fitting in training.

Workout distribution by day:

• Just run: 15
• Run/weights: 1
• Run/swim: 8
• Run/bike: 5
• Run/bike/swim: 2
• Run/run: 1
• Run/bike/weights: 2

You can take the triathlete and put her into a marathon schedule, but over half the time, I’ll figure out how to fit in a bike or a swim as well.  Running and swimming go together so well.  I need to remember that during heavy run cycles that swimming just heals me.

I went a little more bike heavy at the beginning of the month, but found that too much definitely contributed to overall fatigue (by contrast, swimming took fatigue away), so I scaled it back.  Biking is going to hurt when I start it again for reals in March, but I feel fit at 2 out of 3 sports, so I’ll get to that when I get to that.

Dang… I slacked on strength this month, or I forgot to track some.  I think a little of both.

Good things about the run streak:

It was a great way to get mileage without stressing my legs out too much.  Running every day to get 40 miles made me less fatigued than trying to get that same mileage in 5 days/week.

I thought it would make me get sick of running, instead I love it more.  It became a daily routine instead of a workout or chore.

I got in the habit of running for an hour at lunch, which takes almost nothing extra out of my day.  I can only do it until it gets too warm (May? June?) but I’m going to continue to make use of my lunch hour to run more often than not.

While my paces seemed to remain even, I haven’t really tested myself with any sort of real hard effort.  I feel stronger, but we’ll see when I get to racing.

I was surprised by how not-as-crappy some of the post-long-run shakeout runs were.  While I think easy cycling or swimming flushes out the bad stuff better for me, the runs weren’t as painful as I thought they would be and I now see the point of recovery runs.

I actually liked having some sort of movement every day.  There were very few days where ALL I did was a 1 mile run, and most of those were to give myself a recovery day before/after a long effort.

I was able to make some improvements in my swimming this month too – race pace last year is now just “hey look I’m swimming” pace in the pool on two swims a week.

I was able to knock out a 20 and a 21 mile run on back to back weekends fairly comfortably without a lot of incremental distance ramp up (and without being dead after) because of a solid base.

Running used to have to have the stars align and the situation be perfect.  Now I figure out how to make it work.  Ate spicy food?  Suck.  Probably shouldn’t do that again before a run but whatever.  Dark?  Take the headlamp.  Rainy?  That’s just fun.  Hot?  Oh well, slow down.  Drank last night? Wait until at least lunch and adjust expectations (but oddly enough, this sucked way worse than expected as well).  Sleet? Long run on the treadmill.  Allergies? Run Monterey Bay at the gym.  No excuses unless a run would exacerbate an injury that needs rest.

Bad/Annoying Things:

Running 1-2 miles wasn’t a chore so much, but my legs really don’t warm up by then so these just seem like exercises in frustration, and wastes of time and workout clothes.  I’d rather sub in other sports like swimming or biking or a pure rest day occasionally instead of suiting up for that short of a jaunt unless the goal was to get run miles at any cost.

I found I wasn’t limited by time as much as fatigue.  About 40 miles is my comfort zone when I’m not crunched by being too busy or trying to split time between running and biking more evenly.

I don’t think I could maintain this level of effort and also do anything but maintain cycling.  To make cycling improvements I would definitely have to sacrifice some of this mileage.  I could definitely see running most days and cycling most days though if I wasn’t pushing for super long distances at either (more than 3 hours in a session).

Long runs were a little harder running every day.  I really had to tamper down the mileage Friday to run successfully Saturday.  Maybe with more practice I’d be ok but I wasn’t there yet and bombed a long run (sort of) because of it.

I only own 1 running jacket and 3 running worthy sports bras.  I was stinky by the end of the week every week.  Didn’t really bother me but grosses Zliten out.

Future Plans:

I plan to continue to incorporate a run most days.  I’ll probably skip the 1-2 mile “just for the streak” type days.  However, getting out the door twice for a lunch run is 11-12 miles.  Put that together with a longer session one morning and a speed session, and I can maintain a much bigger base than I did last year even when I’m biking 200 miles as well.

I’m still at a point where more volume is netting me improvements.  I’ve tried to do one session each week “faster” and one “long”.  That’s enough for now, but at some point, I’ll incorporate real speedwork and maybe a specific running plan.

I think it’s probably a worthy goal to swim, bike and/or run just about every day.  I mean, take a full rest day off if I’m crushed, but I find that a short easy spin or swim does wonders in making me feel better than just sitting on my ass (unless it’s been long enough without a break that I really need that day of sitting on my ass).

I broke my streak Feb 1 and enjoyed the hell out of my first full rest day since Christmas Day, but I was back to pounding the pavement Monday and Tuesday with no regrets.

I’m still training for a marathon at the end of this month and optimistic about the performance.  I think I have the run streak to thank for that – otherwise I’d probably be talking about running the half.

Saturday morning (ok, at like 11:40 but still technically before noon, OK) I set out to decide my fate Feb 28th.

If it was another failed long run, either due to motivation or my toe or shin or whatever else the hell has gone wrong lately, I was going to cut my losses and change down to the half.  While I feel like 5 weeks of some speedwork would probably get me into shape to at least fight for a PR, which seemed like a noble enough cause and a lot of fun to pursue, it also felt like giving up.  So I gave little bunny foo foo one more chance to stop scooping up the field mice and bopping them on the head do a marathon training run.

I spent 10 mins spinning out my legs on the trainer first, and then headed out into the sunshine.  There would be no day but today.  Perfect temps in the 50s and sunny, and a low allergy count left me no excuses.  Today, it was really only me who could get in my way.  I took off, slow but deliberately trying to avoid the gremlin in my head (and legs) that had plagued a lot of recent runs.

I wore my garmin simply because it’s hard to keep track of all the loops and twists and turns to get in a long run that ventures no more than 2 miles from my house.  And also, Zliten asked me to so he could analyze the data and live vicariously through me.  By the way, he takes his first run this week after his bear fight 3 months ago.  I’m both excited for him and know he’s going to need a huge hug after because that first run back SUCKS.  So does the second, and the third.  Somewhere around the teens it starts feeling like you actually own your own legs again.

The first mile was very stiff and slow.  While this streaking has taught me a lot, I still haven’t learned how to run a super slow mile on the treadmill, and Friday’s mile still lingered in my legs a bit.  When the first few mile splits popped up, my first instinct was “ewwww” then “nope, that’s ok” because I didn’t care if I was running like a turtle today if it helped me get my miles in.  I didn’t have my HR monitor on, but I’m sure the average would have been in the 130s.  Not at one point was I breathing hard.  This was pure frolicking in the sunshine, friends.

The miles kept ticking off slowly (around 11:40 average) and I ducked back into the house a few times to drop off clothing and potty and refill bottles and get gels and remember aquaphor before it was too late (yay minimal chafing).  Finally around 12, I decided I had best head away from the house before it got hard and tempting to stop and I decided to take on the key route.  I also got the number 22 in my head, because 10 more miles from that point didn’t sound too bad.

This route embodies three of my least favorite things – going uphill, lots of turns, and uneven roads.  My pace slowed even more for miles 15-18 working my way around the teeth of the key.  It got hard, but I didn’t walk, I didn’t stop, I just kept plodding.  I may have been really, really happy when the light went red as I got up to it and got a quickie rest, but crossing that street twice was my only stopping point in the last 9.5 miles.

I kept willing myself away from the house, so I wouldn’t stop prematurely, but soon I ticked over to 20 miles, my bottle was empty, and I was starting to feel the “I’m almost running a marathon” fatigue begin to nip at my legs, so I turned home and finished at the end of my block and hit the stop button on my garmin at 21.3 miles.  Much more of a random distance than I usually do, but I just decided I was done and that was enough.

I walked a quarter mile to cool down, spun 10 mins on the bike (yessss… this did wonders for my legs), and then took my victory chips and coconut water into the bathroom for the most painful ice bath I’ve ever taken.  I was convinced my feet had frostbite by the end.  Beer, couch, and delivery sandwiches ended the day rightly.  #lessboozejanuary not #noboozejanuary in full effect.

I’ve realized some things.

I’ve got this huge wide base now.  The kind of base where I can knock out this long run without much ramp up and also without dying.  I may have holed up on the couch for a few hours and asked Zliten to bring me everything, but today I’m up cooking breakfast and batchcooking food for the week and plan to run and maybe swim or bike later.  I’ve got some soreness in my legs, but nothing out of the ordinary.

In five weeks, I’m going to run a marathon.  I’m not sure how fast or slow I’m going to go, but I’m going to toe the line with the intention to enjoy the journey through these 26.2 miles first, and race it second.  Between allergies and work stuff and unpredictable weather and some lack of motivation to trudge/frolick for multiple hours solo, this has not been my most consistent training block, except in the fact that I have ran every day, and that has saved my ass.

I’d like to finish with something like 4:59:xx or better, but if not, I’ll coast in whenever I feel like it.  Yesterday’s pace would have clocked me around 5:07.  The pressure is off.  I’ve learned so much useful stuff from this training block that it seems like the only way to celebrate it is with 26.2 miles whichever way they come.

Sometimes, you simply have to cast an ultimatum into the universe, or at yourself, and see where the dust settles.  Last week, I was having a lot of mental torment because I went ahead and cast two of those thoughts out there – one with the marathon, and one with work.  Obviously, one was more important and life-altering than the other, but both came back with the same result.  Stay the course.  Hang in there.  Continue on.

And continue on I shall.  Pressure off.  Running on.