Eighteen Saturdays: Canton Marathon 2012, Weeks Fourteen and Fifteen

Holy mackerel, I have only a dozen runs left on the schedule, counting the 26.2-miler looming out there on June 17.

It’s been a decent couple weeks: Tuesday and Thursday morning runs have been five-milers, and it’s gotten a little bit lighter each time my brother and I go out. These are pretty relaxed loops, and we talk while we keep a pace of between about 8:30 and 8:50 per mile.

Wednesday the 16th I ran my last midweek eight-miler, and although I felt decent enough during the run, I clocked in at 1:09:15, or just over 8:30 per mile. I wasn’t trying for a pace record, but that 8:09 pace I did for eight miles in Week Ten really inspired me at the time, and I wanted to be closer to that mark.

On Saturday the 19th, we did a 12-mile route that felt particularly difficult after mile eight, but we ended up with an 8:23 pace, and I was pleased about that.

On Wednesday the 23rd, Adam and I had a five-mile pace run on the schedule. Two weeks prior, I had run a 40-minute five-mile for the first time ever, so I felt good about this one, and we really attacked it hard. Through three miles, we were still under an 8-minute pace (23:30), and we managed to knock even a few more seconds off our average over the final two, coming in with a final time of 38:47.

We used that achievement – and the fact that I felt pretty good afterward – to motivate us for Saturday’s 20-mile run – the longest on the schedule. Adam suggested we try to cover the first five miles in 40 minutes, then settle in and slow up for the remaining 15 miles.

I prepared well for Saturday’s run: Carbed up Friday night, got a good night’s sleep and my long-run breakfast of toast, a banana and a PowerBar.

When we left at 6:45, though, it was already pushing 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and I could tell I was in for a difficult run.

We did manage to hit the five-mile mark at an 8:06 pace, but it took a lot out of me, and I was already battling to stick to my walk-water-and-gel plan at 5, 10, and 15 miles.

I can’t re-slog it mentally, but it boils down to this: After the 15 mile break, I couldn’t get back up to speed. It was maddening. I mean, yes, my knees and ankles were sore, but heck, that’s what happens on a long run. It wasn’t the pain – it was that I just had no energy to get my speed back up at all.

I had to walk some more. And I was pissed off and frustrated about it. After about a quarter-mile, I managed to jog again, fuming inside.

I was hot and thirsty and irritated and after I’d finished off the last of my water, I had to walk again for a few tenths of a mile. Adam jogged back to me and poured some of his water into one of my bottles. With about 2.5 miles to go, I bore down and just said, “Let’s finish this thing,” and I finished with no more walking. Still, the whole thing really bugged me, and we finished in an ugly, ugly 3 hours and 14 minutes, something around 9:45 per mile.

Looking back, I think the heat was the real problem. I’ve never trained for a summer marathon before, and my running belt carries 20 ounces of water. I’d been doing a good job of rationing it and taking sips every mile or so to keep myself hydrated, and using a few ounces at a time to wash down the gels, but Saturday’s heat just left me wiped out, and my water supply wasn’t enough.

On race day, there will be water stations along the entire route, so I’m already planning to at least get a sip at every station, even if I don’t feel like I need it right at that moment. That way I conserve my own water for the miles in between, and hopefully don’t wind up a dehydrated mess like I did on Saturday.

 

Eighteen Saturdays: Canton Marathon 2012, Week Thirteen

In terms of total weekly miles, the running schedule has entered the taper phase, and for the first time in more than a month, I’m running regularly with my brother Adam again.

Last week’s schedule called for five-milers on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Adam and I did the Tuesday and Thursday runs pretty casually, and even while talking, we kept things well below 9 minutes per mile. I ran Wednesday’s loop in the evening by myself – I don’t remember why – and it was a really good pace run: I’m pretty sure it marked the first time I’ve ever run a 40-minute time on a five-mile course.

Saturday morning, Adam and I left for our 19-mile run just after 8:30 a.m. My third-longest run ever – behind only the 2009 Towpath Marathon and the 20-miler I did to train for it.

I didn’t fully carbo-load the night before, since I had driven to Columbus for a fantastic dinner, but I’d had a bowl of pasta when I got home at 11 p.m., so I wasn’t totally unprepared.

The first five miles went very smoothly – we were managing right around 8-and-a-half-minutes per mile when I took my first gel-and-one-minute-walk break. We happened to be near our brother Nick’s house, so he came out and joined us for a couple minutes as we passed.

Miles five through ten weren’t bad overall, although mile nine was much more uphill than we’d anticipated. Still, we were keeping pretty close to that 8:30-per-mile pace when I did my second gel-and-walk minute.

Miles eleven and twelve were decent, and I was feeling OK.

And then we hit the climb which kicked off the thirteenth mile, and that thing ate up all my reserves. I came down the other side just absolutely beat, and knowing I not only still had something like two miles until my next break, but four more after that. I had hit the “just-try-to-keep-moving” wall. Hard.

I wound up doing my gel-and-water break about a mile early, and even after that, it was all I could do just to stick to my plan and not stop jogging.

I closed my eyes a lot. I looked at the white line at the edge of the road a lot. I tried to look to the horizons and the treelines off to the left and right – anything to put my gaze anyplace except on the road ahead, which just. Kept. Going.

Mile Nineteen.

It kicked off with another climb of not quite a quarter-mile. At its base, I finished the last of my water.

Over the top, then, and with about 3/4 of a mile to go, I started to feel like I was going to puke. I was thisclose to pulling up short and walking when Adam slowed up and jogged back to me. “Mile nineteen,” he said, “Don’t stop now. Just focus on the breathing.”

I gave an angry grunt, gritted my teeth, and threw myself into the long strides again and drawing the deep in-through-the-nose, out-through-the-mouth kinds of breaths I turn to in moments of desperation to keep myself from throwing up.

My head cleared, my stomach settled, and the last half-mile eventually passed.

We finished in 2:58:09 – less than two minutes more than it had taken me to do 18 miles a couple weeks ago. The pace works out to about 9:21, and though that’s about a half-minute faster per mile than I ran my 18-miler, I still find myself wondering how the heck I’m going to come anywhere near the 9:01 pace I achieved in the Towpath Marathon.

Five weeks until race day.

Eighteen Saturdays: Canton Marathon 2012, Week Twelve

After the missed steps and self-doubt of Week Eleven, I went into Week Twelve wondering how much damage I had done to my goal of running the full Canton Marathon at an 8:23 pace. Still, I knew focusing too intensely on that would likely only discourage me further, so I really made an effort to focus on the things I like about running on a schedule: the mental distraction and unlocking; the physical motion and the world around me; the effort and the breathing and just being out there.

My weekday runs took place after work, and it was unseasonably warm this week. Tuesday’s five-miler wasn’t bad, since I wasn’t pushing it, but on Wednesday, I was supposed to run another 8-miler at race pace, and even though I waited until 7 p.m., it was still above the 70-degree mark when I set out. The Garmin didn’t work at all, so I just checked the time when I left the house and figured I’d try to recall the pacing and feeling of the unexpectedly great eight-mile pace run (8:09 average!) I’d done in Week Ten.

This week, though, that ease of effort was nowhere to be found, and though I suspect that I managed to keep a decent pace through the first three, maybe four miles, by the second half of the run, the heat had taken its toll and I was just wiped out. I wound up with an 8:48 average, which was not really the way I wanted to peak for my pace runs. (From here on out, the pace runs get shorter.)

While a late night at work kept me from Thursday’s five-miler, I decided to try to make up for it by really going after Saturday morning’s 13.35 mile course.

I couldn’t have asked for a better morning: When I left the house at 7:45 a.m., it was right around 60 degrees and completely overcast, with a bit of a breeze. The cloud cover was low enough to be called hazy, but high enough not to be called fog. Just perfect for a long run.

I had memorized the points every 4.5 miles for my water-and-gel one-minute walking breaks – since, again, no Garmin. No way to know what my pace was at any given moment, of course, but I was feeling good after the first mile. A southbound wind pushed against me for the next couple miles, but when I reached the northernmost point of my run, I realized my energy level and lungs and legs were all in a decent zone, and I kept telling myself, “Run faster now, while you feel like you can,” and I deliberately picked up the pace until I hit my first break.

The middle 4.5 miles were probably even a little bit better, since they took me south and west, and the wind wasn’t a factor, and after my second walk-water-gel break, I put on a little eastbound burst in preparation for the three-miles-mostly-northbound stretch home.

I finished up somewhere around 1:56 for the entire course, which works out to about 8:40 per mile. I cut roughly three minutes from the last time I ran this loop on April 14, and I felt really good at the finish.

Eighteen Saturdays: Canton Marathon 2012, Weeks Ten and Eleven

The past two weeks have been rollercoastery in many ways that had nothing at all to do with my marathon training, but which absorbed so much of my mental and emotional energy that it took a toll on my running.

Week Ten (April 15 – 21) started off with an untimed four-miler on Tuesday – I didn’t bother with the Garmin, since it’s been unpredictable – and it felt really good just to be out there running without even the ability to glance at my time or pace or distance.

The next evening, I was scheduled for an eight-mile pace run, which I wasn’t looking forward to, given my Week Nine struggle with a seven-mile pacer,  But I carbed things up with a pile of noodles at lunch and found myself facing a gorgeous evening for a run when I got home after work. Warm enough for shorts, cool enough to wear long sleeves and not worry about overheating. I let myself get out to a quick start (7:43 first mile), and realized I still felt pretty good, so I figured I’d keep pushing while I had the energy. Two miles in, I was pleasantly surprised to see my overall pace still just under the 8-minute mark, so again, I’m thinking the better I can keep these early miles, the more of a cushion that gives me down the stretch. At three miles, I was at just over 24 minutes, and now I’m starting to kind of wonder what the hell’s going on that I’m feeling so, well, good. After four miles, I’m at an 8:06 overall pace, and I slow for my planned 60-second walk – even so, when I start up again, I’ve only added three seconds to my overall pace. Over the second half of the run, I watch my pace climb steadily, but I’m still feeling remarkably good, and my accumulated pace never goes above 8:13 per mile. In fact, when I hit the seven-and-a-half-mile mark, I decide to power things up and see if I can get my overall pace back into the eight-minutes-and-single-digits range – and I do: Eight miles, 8:09.

I’m floored. And I’m ecstatic. And it just feels so damn good that on Thursday’s four-miler, I don’t care when I discover that my calves had seemingly taken out a strength advance to pull off that eight-mile time the night before, so I’m just out jogging and enjoying the road.

What happens Friday and Saturday is this: Real life. The weather turns cold and rainy. We drive across the state to spend Saturday at Kelsey’s regional gymnastics meet – which is awesome because she places three times, including a third-place podium spot – but it means I miss my scheduled 17-miler. We get home fairly late, go to bed, and I am wholly unmotivated Sunday morning, which is still cold and rainy, and I never get out to run that day either.

This marks the first time I have ever completely missed a scheduled run while training, and paired with some other real-life stresses going on, it fuels a couple days of motivational crisis: Do I even want to do this marathon? Is my heart really still in it? I’m still not sure about either when Week Eleven begins, but Tuesday night, I make myself go out for my scheduled five-miler, and although I think this gets me back in the saddle, there are more scheduling conflicts and demotivational moments on Wednesday and Thursday, so I miss TWO MORE RUNS.

And now, I think, I am really up against it. Saturday, April 28, I am supposed to run 18 miles. Since my fantastic eight-mile pace run, I have missed three of four scheduled sessions and only put in five of my scheduled 35 miles. Time to see how much damage I’ve done, and whether I have time to recover.

The 18-miler and I, we have a history. Back in 2009, my first 18-mile run set a bar for Worst Run Ever that surpassed even the full marathon I ran a few weeks later. Many times since then, I have pushed myself through low points by thinking, “Wow. I feel like crap. But I don’t feel as bad as I did during that 18-miler in ’09, so I’ve got that going for me.”

Friday night the 27th, I carbed up at dinner and went to bed on the early side, knowing if I was going to do this, it would have to be early, since we were facing afternoon rain, and we had things to do in the afternoon. As with the last time, I was also facing a solo run, since my brother would be heading out pre-dawn due to a mid-morning track meet.

So: Up at six a.m. Some cereal, some toast, and a PowerBar. A single cup of coffee. I load up my running belt with gels and water. It’s overcast and in the mid-30s, and the high is only in the mid-40s, but it’s not raining, so it’s actually good running weather: I can get by with a sweatshirt, hat and gloves and not worry about sun or heat.

And out I go, at about 6:55.

And back I go, at about 6:57, because I forgot to bring my inhaler.

And out I go, 19 seconds after 7 a.m.

I’m utterly unconcerned with time – although I do expect to come in at under three hours, which I barely, barely managed to do on my Worst Run Ever. I just need to see if I can do this, and stick to my plan of 60-second walks for water and gel every 4.5 miles. That’s how I’m looking at this – four 4.5 mile runs. Just in case the Garmin decides to conk out, I look at my route map and memorize the spots at 4.5, 9, and 13.5 miles.

I am slow from the start, but I don’t care. I’m not pushing my lungs, and all I want to do is keep my legs moving. The first quarter of the route goes by smoothly, and just past 4.5, I eat a gel and drink some water and walk for just under a minute. Then I focus on the next 4.5.

These miles pass more slowly, since there are longer turn-free stretches of road and more hills, but at about 9.5 miles, I have another gel, wash it down while walking for a minute, and then tell myself that I’m more than halfway done.

I’m in mile 10 when the Garmin shuts down. Oh, well. I know where my next water-and-gel-and-walking marker is.

It’s about this point where my knees start getting that numb sort of ache, which sounds weird, maybe, but there it is. It’s getting harder to lift my legs and stride out the downhills, and harder still to push them uphill.

I turn the Garmin on just to see what time it is, and I make a note of exactly where I am at my two-hour mark. (Turns out I was 12.5 miles in and averaging 9:36.) Although I have run distances of 13.1, 14, and 15 miles this year, my legs are starting to feel like jelly, and I blame those missed runs and missed miles.

Past 13 miles, I eat my last gel and drink while I walk, and it’s soul-crushing how quickly this minute goes by, even though I know I’m three-quarters of the way done. The next mile is much more hilly than I remember, and it really wears on me. In 2009, this stretch actually almost drove me to tears. The next three miles feel like a dozen. By the time I get to the big climb that marks the beginning of mile 18, it is all I can do to just keep jogging. My lungs are fine, but the knees and calves and ankles are just screaming at me to freaking stop, and maybe more painful than that, I’m getting close to the three-hour mark.

I reach my driveway at 2:56:48. Not nearly as much of an improvement over the Worst Run Ever as I was hoping for, but considering the lost miles and my strategic walking minutes, I’m OK with it.

It’s eight-and-a-half hours in the past, now, and my knees feel shredded, but thinking ahead, I realize that even so, I’ve run 26.2 miles once before, and this run convinced me I can do it again.

Eighteen Saturdays: Canton Marathon 2012, Week Nine

So the Garmin Forerunner has been acting funny from time to time, blanking out and throwing my time and distance calculations off. Oddly unpredictable about it, too. I thought maybe I was bumping the power switch somehow, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Anyway, last week marked the halfway point of the training schedule, which is hard to believe, since it’s gone by pretty quickly. There are long runs and high-mileage weeks coming up though, and I don’t expect the second half to go as smoothly.

Tuesday and Thursday’s four-milers were routine.

Wednesday’s seven-miler called for me to try to achieve race pace (8:23), which I’d managed to do in Week Seven (8:18). This time around, I worked in my recently-adopted one-minute walk strategy. Just before the four-mile mark, I slowed up and drank a bit of water before kicking back into my run. My overall pace was still slower than I wanted, but I felt like I had more energy through miles five and six than I had two weeks earlier. (My final times would prove this to be true: These laps were both 10 to 15 seconds faster than the Week Seven run.)

Still, going into the last mile – in fact, going into the last half mile – my overall pace was 8:27, and I was all ready to settle for it and tell myself that I was only a few seconds off pace … and then I decided “Screw it – I’m going to try and knock that down.” I ran really damn hard that last half mile and watched my average drop to 8:26 … 8:25 … It hit 8:24 when I turned onto our street for the final almost-quarter mile, and at about the 6.95-mile mark, I got it down to 8:23.

I know that the sprinting finish to lower the average pace is hardly ideal, but hey, I’ll take it.

Saturday I did a half-marathon route of 13.3 miles, running solo and walking for one minute to eat a gel at the 4.5- and 9-mile marks. The Garmin went wonky early in the run and threw off my accumulated distance by about a half-mile, but it still gave me a decent idea of the pace I was managing, which turned out to be right around nine minutes per mile.

By the numbers:

• Tuesday,  April 10 Schedule: 4 miles. Actual: 4 miles. Time: 35:26. Pace: 8:51/mi.
  
• Wednesday, April 11 – Schedule: 7 miles. Actual: 7 miles. Time: 58:43. Pace: 8:23/mi.
  
• Thursday,  April 12 – Schedule: 4 miles. Actual: 4 miles. Time: Unknown. Pace: Unknown.
• Saturday, April 14 – Schedule: 13.1 miles (half marathon). Actual: 13.31 miles. Time: 1:59:00. Pace: 9:00/mi.

Eighteen Saturdays: Canton Marathon 2012, Week Eight

Without any pace runs scheduled, this looked to be a good week. Turned out kind of odd.

Started out OK on Tuesday. With four miles on the calendar, I thought I’d work on maintaining a steady pace, trying to keep things as constant as possible. I altered the Garmin display to show my current pace as well as my average pace, and tried to make an effort to push a little bit harder if I saw the current pace regularly displaying above 8:40. (The current pace stat can be a bit maddening, since it lags slightly, and since it occasionally spikes or drops off by a jarring 30-seconds-per-mile without me feeling like I’d changed pace at all.)

I didn’t really brake myself on steep downhills – that’s just wasted energy – but I tried to conserve energy on the more level stretches so that the steeper climbs wouldn’t hit me as hard. And I was pretty happy with the results. The miles looked like this: 8:11, 8:20, 8:27, and 8:10. Overall, that’s 8:18 per mile, slightly ahead of my race pace goal, and I felt really good afterward.

Wednesday and Thursday weren’t that enjoyable, really: It was sunny and breezy both days, and chillier than it had been in awhile, so the wind kind of made things feel raw. With no pacing to worry about, I just tried my best to put in the miles and appreciate the sun and the time and the landscape.

Then came Saturday.

I was expecting a rough run, of course: 15 miles on the schedule. When I did my first marathon, I remember the 15-miler as a really significant challenge, and even though we did 14 last week, I found myself dreading this one.

The sun was up, but it was freezing outside at 8 a.m. Technically, just below freezing, at about 30 degrees. I knew the high for the day was only in the low 50s, so while I had been counting on wearing my hat and gloves to ward off the wind anyway, I followed Adam’s lead and wore a sweatshirt over my short-sleeved running shirt.

While it was a nice morning (if chilly), and I like my brother’s company fine, especially on these long runs, both of us admitted afterward that we were surprised how early on this run just turned into a slog. And seriously: Nothing makes a run pass more slowly than when realize you’re already counting miles less than a quarter of the way in.

My lungs were fine, really – but my legs just felt shredded by the fifth mile, and I was really struggling to keep my energy level up.

Maybe it’s being a couple years older than the last time I did this, but I really found myself questioning and doubting and wondering whether, in fact, I am actually up to running another marathon.

So I’m thinking of trying out an adjustment in my training, something I avoided back in 2009, but which seems like it might not be such a bad idea this time around: incorporating brief walking breaks into the long runs. Although I’ve always figured that for me, walking would only make it harder to resume running again, Hal Higdon himself writes:

Walking is a perfectly acceptable strategy in trying to finish a marathon. It works during training runs too. While some coaches recommend walking 1 minute out of every 10, or even alternating running and walking as frequently as every 30 seconds, I teach runners to walk when they come to an aid station. This serves a double function: 1) you can drink more easily while walking as opposed to running, and 2) since many other runners slow or walk through aid stations, you’ll be less likely to block those behind. It’s a good idea to follow this strategy in training as well. You will lose less time walking than you think. … Walking gives your body a chance to rest, and you’ll be able to continue running more comfortably. It’s best to walk when you want to, not when your (fatigued) body forces you too.

The thing is, I never want to walk. When I did the Towpath Marathon, not walking during the final five miles was the hardest mental and physical battle I’ve ever fought, and not stopping or walking was a big part of my goal.

But if walking needs to be part of a strategy, since I’m actually trying to hit a specific time in the Canton Marathon, well, maybe I need to see how it affects me.

I wish I could say that I was being logical and strategic on Saturday around mile eight when I called ahead to Adam and asked him to hold up. I kept running, and when I caught him, I said, “Gotta walk. Just for one minute. Then I’m good to go.” I can’t even say I felt like I was giving up, because honestly, it felt so good just to be walking and sipping some water and trying to recharge even for those all-too-quickly-passing seconds.

Looking back at the route stats, it looks like it was about 90 seconds, during which my pace went from 9:23 to 14:10 and then back up to 9:10, and this was about a third of the way into our ninth mile. When I consumed my second gel and washed it down at about the 10.25-mile mark, I took Hal’s advice and walked while I did so, this time slowing for about 1 minute and 15 seconds.

Miles 12-14 were, without question, the most difficult I’ve done in quite awhile, and I felt pretty miserable. The sun was fully up, and though it was still probably only 40 degrees or so, I was feeling too warm in my sweatshirt, and I removed my hat and gloves. But having stopped to walk twice, I wanted to push through the rest of the way.

We reached Adam’s driveway more than two-and-a-quarter hours after we’d set out, and I was completely spent.

Still, what I learned later, crunching the numbers, was encouraging. Even with my two walking breaks, I had managed an overall pace of 9:03 per mile – 15 seconds faster per mile than I’d run 14 nonstop miles on the previous Saturday. Maybe I can make this a strategy for improvement after all.

By the numbers:

• Tuesday,  April 3 – Schedule: 4 miles. Actual: 4 miles. Time: 33:10. Pace: 8:18/mi.
  
• Wednesday, April 4 – Schedule: 7 miles. Actual: 7.18 miles. Time: 1:01:52. Pace: 8:37/mi.
  
• Thursday,  April 5 – Schedule: 4 miles. Actual: 4 miles. Time: 34:24. Pace: 8:36/mi.
• Saturday, March 31 – Schedule: 15 miles. Actual: 15.05 miles. Time: 2:16:11. Pace: 9:03/mi.

Eighteen Saturdays: Canton Marathon 2012, Week Seven

This week, we added miles.

The Tuesday and Thursday runs, which had been three-milers, bumped up to fours, and Wednesday bumped up from six to seven.

Saturday was a fourteen-miler: five more than the previous weekend, which had been a step-back nine-miler in preparation.

Because of the increased distances and the extra daylight, I’ve shifted to running after work, rather than trying to get up even earlier in the morning.

On Tuesday, to start the week, Adam and I decided to run our usual four-mile around-the-block route in the opposite direction just for a change of pace, but also because it means we finish the first mile with a big downhill instead of beginning the last mile with a steep climb. (Of course, since we start and end at the same place, we know full well our ascents and descents wind up washing each other out.) Without much effort, and boosted by that nice downhill, we did a 7:48 first mile, and then surprised ourselves by following it up with an 8:02 second, even with a decent climb toward the end. The third mile was by far the toughest – it’s basically a couple long gradual climbs separated by a short dip – and it took us 8:41. I hadn’t really set out with a time goal, but as we got close to the finish, I realized if I pushed hard, we just might make it in under an 8-minute pace, which I’m not sure I’ve ever done for four miles. I accelerated hard for the final two minutes, and we came in at 31:59. I may have whooped a bit at that.

I did Wednesday’s seven-miler solo, and had my doubts about the race pace goal, since I tend to struggle to push myself when I’m running alone. Looming in my mental rear-view was the surprisingly successful six-mile pace run of a week prior. I figured I’d try as hard as possible to mimic that run, at least through the first three miles, and then try not to lose whatever pace cushion I had built up. I actually ran the first three faster, and was right about the same time through four. At 8:50 each, though, miles five and six took a serious toll and ate up a lot of the time buffer I’d accumulated. Still, I managed an 8:09 final mile, which made my final pace average out to 8:18 – five seconds faster than my goal.

Thursday, I took it easy on the four miler, looking ahead to Saturday’s distance.

The jump from 9 to 14 miles was reminiscent of the 10-to-15-mile increase back in 2009, when I was training for my first marathon, and I remembered that it was rough. Yes, we had just run a 12-miler two weeks prior, but the knees and muscles really start feeling the mileage at these distances. And I was doing this one solo, too, since Adam had to be someplace else on Saturday. I set out with the following goals:

• Don’t walk.
• Don’t stop.
• Don’t puke.
• Don’t care (too much) about the time.

Achievements unlocked – in fact, after about the 1.5-mile mark, I completely stopped looking at my overall time and accumulated pace, focusing only on the distance, enjoying the overcast and comfortably cool 40-degree morning. The first 3 miles were into a bit of a breeze, and they felt long, but after that, I kind of settled in and paid attention to setting small goals, doing the math and figuring what fractions of the run remained; noting the appropriate points to eat a gel and drink some water.

Since I wasn’t pushing my pace, my lungs felt fine, and I really didn’t start feeling the fatigue in my legs until about mile nine. At that point, though, it did hit pretty hard, and miles 11-13 were by far the slowest of the day. Still, my last mile of the run was my third-fastest, and I recovered pretty well over the next couple hours.

Seven full weeks in, eleven to go.

By the numbers:

• Tuesday,  March 27 – Schedule: 4 miles. Actual: 4 miles. Time: 31:59. Pace: 8:00/mi.
  
• Wednesday, March 28 – Schedule: 7 miles, race pace. Actual: 7 miles. Time: 58:03. Pace: 8:18/mi.
  
• Thursday,  March 29 – Schedule: 4 miles. Actual: 4 miles. Time: 34:19. Pace: 8:35/mi.
• Saturday, March 31 – Schedule: 14 miles. Actual: 14 miles. Time: 2:10:24. Pace: 9:18/mi.

Eighteen Saturdays: Canton Marathon 2012, Week Six

Week six felt almost like an inverse of week five: The weekday runs provided the highlights, while the long run was a mental battle.

Tuesday morning was incredible: 60 degrees at 5:30 a.m.. In full sun, this would feel uncomfortably warm, but in the pre-dawn darkness, it was perfect. I stuck to my tripled-up half-mile out-and-back route and managed a 23:04, which works out to 7:40 per mile, and starts to reach that pace territory where, last summer, Adam and I built up to a speed of about 7:24 for a 3.15-mile loop. Felt good to be in that neighborhood again, even though I know this is the final week for three milers, at least until the pre-race taper.

Wednesday morning was a six-miler, with the goal of tackling it at race pace, 8:23. It had been two weeks since our last pace run – which I hadn’t enjoyed, and during which I struggled to finish with an 8:40 – and we were covering the same distance and route. This time, I wanted to try to get out to a little bit faster start, and after a warm-up first half-mile, Adam and I picked things up and took advantage of a nice downhill to pass the first marker at 8:03. We felt good enough to keep that overall pace going, and through two miles, we were still averaging just over 8 minutes, prompting Adam to note that the third mile of this loop had tended to be one of the most difficult, but if we could just manage to keep this pace up, we’d have almost a half-minute-per-mile cushion for the second half of the run. And the third mile was tough – and it felt tough – but still: We did it in 8:15, and our overall pace was, frankly, starting to surprise me.

The fourth mile has two nice downhill stretches, and we used them to our advantage, marking our fastest mile of the run (7:44) and knowing full well that the fifth mile would feel like a real slog. And it did – but we still managed to get it behind us in 8:25, and with an 8:13 final mile, we completed the run in 48:38 for an overall pace of 8:07.

I couldn’t believe it. 33 seconds per mile shaved off the same course from two weeks ago, and I felt great. This was a confidence-booster that I really needed.

I rode the adrenaline to a relatively easy Thursday morning three-miler, which I put behind me in 24:14.

So after those runs, Saturday’s nine miles didn’t seem too daunting: It was a perfect, windless, overcast morning of about 55 degrees, we didn’t have to run for pace, and this was a step back from the previous Saturday’s 12-mile run. And yet here was my weekly lesson in overconfidence – three miles in, I was already feeling like I was up against the wall. We got off to a decent enough start – 16:11 over the first two miles, and an 8:32 third – but I felt like I was fighting every footstep of miles four through eight. That stretch took us nearly 45 minutes – close to nine minutes a mile. I knocked a couple seconds off the overall pace by pushing for an 8:28 final mile, but wow, was I glad when this one was over.

Next week, the mileage jumps: 4, 7, and 4 on the weekdays, and 14 on Saturday. It’s a steep curve: We’re one full third of the way through in terms of training days. Distance-wise, however, the 124 miles we’ve put in so far are only only just over one-fourth of the 488.3 total we’ll run, counting the marathon itself.

By the numbers:

• Tuesday,  March 20 – Schedule: 3 miles. Actual: 3 miles. Time: 23:04. Pace: 7:40/mi.
  
• Wednesday, March 21 – Schedule: 6 miles, race pace (8:23). Actual: 6 miles. Time: 48:38. Pace: 8:07/mi.
  
• Thursday,  March 22 – Schedule: 3 miles. Actual: 3 miles. Time: 24:14. Pace: 8:04/mi.
• Saturday, March 24 – Schedule: 9 miles. Actual: 9 miles. Time: 1:18:02. Pace: 8:40/mi.

Eighteen Saturdays: Canton Marathon 2012, Week Five

This week turned out to be really about one surprisingly enjoyable and good run, so let’s get the short ones out of the way:

Tuesday I ran after work, taking advantage of my new hour of daylight. It was gorgeous and warm, so I pushed things a bit the first two miles. Unfortunately, the big climb in mile three plus a bit of a headwind slowed my overall pace. Wednesday morning’s six mile wasn’t a race-pace run, which was good, because I had some stomach issues and had to make a detour home about 3.5 miles into the run. I went back out and covered the rest of my distance after my stop, but my overall pace suffered because I was slowed by gut pain for about a mile and a half during that first stretch. Thursday I went out in the morning and did three out-and-back stretches, since a) 5:30 a.m. is once again back to full darkness and b) given Wednesday’s events, I thought I’d better stick close to home. It was a decent enough run, marked by some really spectacular pre-storm lightning that spread like fingers across the clouds and reminded me of the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where they’re prying open the Well of Souls.

So: Saturday. Twelve miles. And I was going solo because I needed to get my run in early.

When my alarm went off at 5:30, I really didn’t want to get up. Didn’t feel like going out in the dark alone, didn’t feel like hitting the pavement myself for that long a stretch, didn’t feel like dealing with the mental hurdle that I seem to hit around mile three of every long run.

In addition to still being completely dark when I went outside just past six, there was a dense fog settled at ground level. (Oddly enough, you could look up and still see the stars clearly.) Fortunately, the air was 50 degrees, so it was warm enough for shorts and a light long-sleeved shirt. But the fog gave everything a really isolated, quiet feel, and the unlit stretches of road beside the woods and fields were velvet darkness.

Around the middle of the second mile, I turned onto a road and felt like I was looking at the end of the world: The fog was incredibly dense, and the only light was from a building at the intersection behind me. The street just … vanished into the mist. When, a few minutes later, a car passed me from behind (Yes, I was wearing a yellow reflective safety vest.), the headlights had the odd effect of creating a halo on the fog in front of me which contracted like an iris until the car passed.

I felt like I was making decent time – not pushing things, of course: Saturdays are all about the miles – but trying to maintain a decent pace while I still had my early-run energy. I figured I’d be happy if I could equal the pace (8:57/mi.)I’d managed during the prior week’s 11-miler. I also thought maybe I’d approach hydration a little differently, taking smaller drinks regularly – every mile to mile-and-a-half or so – instead of waiting until I felt like I really needed one.

So when I had three miles behind me, I was actually feeling surprisingly good. I started mentally looking ahead, thinking thinks like, “OK – so, in 2.5 miles, I’ll eat my gel; and right after that, I’ll be halfway through the run.”

I had started out with an 8:29 first mile, but through five, I had watched my overall pace creep closer and closer to the 9-minute mark. (Skewed, ever so slightly, by a 15-20 second stop to tie my shoe during the fifth mile.) This wasn’t unexpected, really, although I was a little confused because, I was, surprisingly, feeling really good. I mean, yes, the hills in mile seven kind of hit me, but I never really reached that dragging point where every step just feels like a battle. I found myself thinking, “Hey, as long as I’m feeling OK, I should make sure I’m not just coasting,” and I pushed my pace a little more.

Most of our eight-plus mile routes finish with the same three-mile stretch, the first mile of which my brother and I pretty much think of as the worst part of our run. There’s no sidewalk, and it’s a fairly busy road, and a good bit of it is an uphill grind.

When I reached this part of the run, I was right around a 9-minute-per-mile pace. I had hoped for a better average at this point, because this tends to be one of my slower miles, but the sun was up over the horizon now, and the fog had burned away, but it was still cool and comfortable, and I just felt like I was In the Zone. With two miles to go, I had pulled my average back down below nine minutes; with a mile to go, I had pulled it even with my previous week’s pace, and I thought, “Heck, all I have to do is just keep this nice pace, and I’ll beat that!”

I pushed hard the last mile and made it my fastest mile of the morning by almost a half-minute, making my overall pace two seconds per mile faster than last week.

And I hadn’t wanted to do this run at all.

By the numbers:

• Tuesday,  March 13 – Schedule: 3 miles. Actual: 3 miles. Time: 25:10. Pace: 8:23/mi.
• Wednesday, March 14 – Schedule: 6 miles. Actual: 6.05 miles. Time: 56:25. Pace: 9:20/mi.
• Thursday,  March 15 – Schedule: 3 miles. Actual: 3.04 miles. Time: 24:53. Pace: 8:12/mi.
• Saturday, March 17 – Schedule: 11 miles. Actual: 12.01 miles. Time: 1:47:06. Pace: 8:55/mi.

Eighteen Saturdays: Canton Marathon 2012, Week Four

This was a pretty good week: I did both of my three-mile runs outside on a new out-and-back route (as opposed to a loop), which means I wasn’t on the treadmill at all, and I did my first double-digit-mileage run since last September (and only my second since August of 2010!).

Tuesday morning, I just couldn’t bear the thought of the treadmill, so I went out in the pre-dawn darkness and put in three miles carrying my flashlight and wearing a blinking green shamrock medallion (part of this year’s In Like A Lion race packet) on my back.

Wednesday morning’s six-miler was kind of a bear – the weather was much better than last week’s rain-drenched five mile pace run, but trying to find and maintain race goal pace was much more difficult. First mile was an 8:15, but I felt like I had hit the wall through most of miles two and three, and they took 8:23 and 8:55. Mile four had a couple nice downhill stretches, but it still took me 8:36, and the fifth mile just sucked: 9:09. I recovered enough to push back with an 8:42 final mile, but afterward, I really found myself questioning whether an 8:23 is doable for 26.2 miles. I’m still going to keep shooting for it, though.

Thursday I just couldn’t drag myself out of bed in time to run, which turned out to be a blessing: It was warm that morning, but extremely windy, and though it was cold and dark by the time I ran after work that night, the wind had moved through. Still feeling the sting of the previous day’s letdown, I pushed myself a little and did my three miles at an 8:12 pace.

I’ll admit that I really wasn’t looking forward to Saturday’s 11-mile run, even though the long runs are about mileage and not speed. I plotted a new course for Adam and me to run (Higdon’s Novice 1 training, which I used in 2009, doesn’t include an 11-miler.), and bought a PowerBar and PowerGel for the morning, too.

It was only 20 degrees when we set out, but it was sunny and calm, so we warmed up pretty quickly and got out to a good start. Still, the third and fourth miles (particularly) felt like a lot of work, and though my lungs felt OK, my legs were saying, “Hey – seriously? We’re doing how many more?”

A nice second wind came out of nowhere, though, and the fifth mile felt pretty good. I consumed my gel just past the five-mile mark, and drank some extra water to wash it down.

After the big climb that finished the sixth mile, the rest of the way was decent. Some slow miles in there, but we did the last two in 8:56 and 8:30 respectively, which was enough to pull our overall pace back to just below the nine-minute mark. Best Saturday pace so far, and one second per mile faster, in fact, than the previous Saturday’s six mile run. And I felt really good afterward.

By the numbers:

• Tuesday,  March 6 – Schedule: 3 miles. Actual: 3.01 miles. Time: 25:09. Pace: 8:21/mi.
• Wednesday, March 7 – Schedule: 6 miles, race pace (8:23). Actual: 6 miles. Time: 52:03. Pace: 8:40/mi.
• Thursday,  March 8 – Schedule: 3 miles. Actual: 3 miles. Time: 24:35. Pace: 8:12/mi.
• Saturday, March 10 – Schedule: 11 miles. Actual: 11.18 miles. Time: 1:40:08. Pace: 8:57/mi.