It's Official

So I pulled the trigger and bought the plane ticket for the marathon in three weeks. I'm excited and nervous. I have no idea how the marathon is going to go - I know I can finish, but I want to finish a) in a time that is a PR (personal record) and BQ (Boston Qualifying time) and b) without getting injured and affecting my IM training.

Little background on my marathon history. I ran my first marathon in 2003 at the Chicago marathon in about 4:10 and was happy just to finish. Fast forward to 2007 when my co-worker started talking about qualifying for the Boston marathon (he had to run a lightning fast 3:10). Of course, this gets me thinking this should be something I should try for too, so it becomes my goal - run a 3:40:59 marathon (equal to 8:23 per mile pace) and qualify for Boston. And so it goes:

First Attempt, Oct 2007 - Grand Rapids Marathon, MI: Followed a training plan to the mile, perfect conditions, run a 3:41:59. While I had a great race and was happy with the race at the time, missing the qualifying time by a minute is still haunting me.....

Second Attempt, Oct 2008 - Grand Rapids again: Training was going well until I started having issues with the first of many overuse injuries three weeks before the race, and ended up not even attempting to run.

Third Attempt, May 2009 - Green Bay Marathon: After 8 weeks of completely no running to recover from my injury, I started training in January 2009 for the Green Bay Marathon. Injury struck again about 3 or 4 weeks before the race and I ended up basically not running those last few weeks just so I could make it to the starting line. I finished the race in 3:51 or so with a good deal of pain and could not walk the next day - turns out I had another overuse injury (stress reaction in my tibia) and had to take another 8 weeks off of running for it to heal. I can't even begin to describe how depressed and frustrated I was regarding running at this point.

Fourth Attempt, October 2009 - Chicago Marathon: After my 8 weeks off AGAIN from injury, I somehow convinced myself that started from zero running base, I could train in 12 weeks for the Chicago marathon. Things went ok, but I was nervous about injuring myself again so I was quick to reduce my mileage. I ended up making it to the starting line injury free, but I did not have enough muscular endurance to run the race I needed - looking back on my logs, my average weekly mileage for the 12 weeks was 25 miles and my max was 35 miles. For marathon racing, this is not even CLOSE to enough, however, I did run a 3:46 and my personal victory was that I came back from a year of injuries to run a decent race and not get injured.

2.5 years later, I'm three weeks away from the starting line of my Fifth "Attempt", although I would tend to consider this my second REAL attempt, based upon my issues before the starting line at the last three races. I decided to use a new plan from a book call Advanced Marathoning by Pete Pfitzinger (Pfitz). Pfitz's thesis is that to run faster, you have to run alot of miles, and to run alot of miles, you have to run most of the slow in order to not get injured. So, I have been running alot slower on my runs that I used to.

Running slower has made me enjoy running again. I can just go out and run and not worry about my pace and just soak up the feeling of hearing my feet hit the ground and watch what's going on in the world around me.

My 18 weeks of Pfitz's plan has not been without issues though. I mean I have been training through the middle of winter and over the holidays, I had two vacations planned during training, and I have managed to catch two head colds - always something to mentally overcome in training. Despite all of this, I have managed to put in 90% of the miles. The last 5 weeks I have run 50 miles a week, and my muscular endurance is so much better than its ever been - at the end of 20 mile runs I actually have energy! However, I feel as though I've forgotten what it feels like to run "fast". Running 8 min/mile pace feels much harder than it used to when I was running all of my miles at that pace. So, my confidence is waning. I have three weeks of taper to think about it.....

January

January totals:

Swim – 10,900 yards, 3 hrs and 50 min
Bike – 134.5 miles, 8 hours
Run – 181.9 miles, 27 hours and 32 min
Total – 39 hours, 22 minutes

My bike and run mileage and time were significantly up in January from December, and I sacrificed time in the pool to get it there. I’m not too concerned at this point about doing more than one swim per week since I have a decent swimming background and my workouts thus far have all been over 3000 yards. Definitely not enough time on the bike yet, but I am LOVING the Computrainer class I am taking (see description a few posts ago). I spend almost two hours on the bike each class, and it goes by super quick and is a great workout. I’m sure it will also improve my cycling technique (which it needs to, have I mentioned how much I suck at biking?)

LOTS of running this month. I am pretty sure I am going to run the Snickers Energybar marathon on March 6th in Southwest Georgia . I was having my doubts on making it there – training through the dead of winter, recovering from some finicky hamstring pain from my last marathon in October, and trying to avoid further injury have all been barriers to me getting to the starting line. I am on week four of the five week peak in mileage and I have been feeling better and better every run (knock on wood). Faster paces have felt easier, and my legs (and hamstring pain) have been improving. So, I am cautiously optimistic about getting to that starting line at this point….Yesterday I did an 18 mile run with the last 14 miles at goal marathon pace – I was nervous about this as it is the hardest and most predictive workout of my training plan so to speak (not to mention the 20 degree temps and 15 mph winds adding to my anxiety). But, I had a successful run and felt like I could have done a couple more miles at marathon pace at the end.

Can’t end this post without talking about my new favorite thing – Active Release Technique. This soft tissue technique is performed by a chiropractor (usually) and the basic concept is to return your muscles, tendons, etc to their normal range of motion by working out the scar tissue that builds up on them and in between them over months and years of (over)use. I had heard fantastic things about ART on online forums – and finally changed my insurance so I could get this covered. OMG, it IS Fantastic (although the actual process hurts like crazy!!!). For such a simple concept, it has amazing results – I have seen an improvement in my hamstring issues and more importantly, my chiro has been able to control a sudden onset of shin splints over the past couple weeks (side benefit is that the chiro can talk me off the proverbial ledge after I present with a new pain and I’m convinced my running “career” is over).

On to February – hoping that the decent winter weather holds up as I finish my last few weeks of marathon training – always makes it easier to run outside if its above zero degrees (that’s Farenheit….) February 15th kicks off the “official” start of Ironman training, which is going to be overruled for the first couple weeks by my marathon taper. Luckily I’ve been doing enough in the offseason to not feel too guilty about this.

If anyone is wondering, the roadside clothing item has been worn post pick-up. Don’t judge :)