Change of Pace

I'm actually quite pleased with this week's effort. The hardest bit at this point is thinking about doing it 17 more times. Granted, there are a few easy weeks in there to keep me sane and healthy, but there are also some undeniably intimidating long runs at marathon pace.

Speaking of pace, I dropped my average mile time by about :30 this week. Part of that might be coming off of a week of running at altitude and part of that is a conscious decision to up the intensity a bit. Either way, it hasn't felt like a huge increase in effort, so I'll stick with this pace for a few weeks before dropping to my goal pace of 7:52 (or one minute over 3-hour marathon pace) for my normal, every day mileage.

It really is saying something that I'm comfortable running not too much over 8 minute pace though, since this is the week that summer really came to New York. The past few days have been hot and muggy and I haven't put any effort into running at cooler hours. My Saturday 15-miler was actually begun just after noon. My next goal race is another half, just about three weeks away, so I figure that I might as well do what I can to acclimate. Odds are it will be a hot and sweaty 13 miles, but since temperature is a decidedly democratic factor, all I can do is prepare for it just as well as anyone else might.

Finally, on to the easy week. Thanks to my little experiment with the foam roller, I survived this past week surprisingly well and can cautiously say that my shin issues seem to be going away.

The most distressing thing about my trip to Massachusetts is that I'm not going to be able to visit the National Plastics Museum as I had hoped. What kind of respectable museum is only open from Wednesday through Sunday, I ask you?? As everyone knows, pink lawn flamingoes were invented and are manufactured right here in Leominster and here I am missing out on learning all the details of that fascinating history. Truly, this is a crime.

There's not a whole lot to blab about here in terms of race reporting. I spent most of the race trying to just stay in sight of a teammate of mine, before losing contact with her for mile 6 - 9. At that point, I got a bit of a second wind from a CarbBoom gel and a mental boost from passing a West Side member who beat me in the last half. The last four miles weren't really any more painful than the rest of the race had been so I just kept pushing through to the end. I caught up to my teammate with a mile to go and just ran scared the rest of the way, knowing that she does a lot of speedwork and could probably outkick me at the end. Third-frickin-place. That's really something for me. And I'm pretty sure that means that I'm in the money for the NYRRC's Half Marathon Grand Prix series. Not a whole lotta cash, but something like $50 I think...enough to cover my entry fees at any rate and hey, who doesn't like winning money?

7/17 7 miles 9:00 pace, really tired 7/18 9 miles 8:10 pace, hot but fast 7/19 7 miles 8:00 pace 7/20 #1 9 miles 8:32 pace, much cooler #2 8 miles 5x1 mile: 6:14 , 6:25 6:34 , 6:12 , 6:08 7/21 9 miles 9:39 pace 7/22 17.5 miles 8:47 pace 7/23 10.5 miles 8:34 pace

I'm having mixed success with my little nutrition experiment where I'm trying to distribute my calorie intake more evenly throughout the day. I did pretty well the second half of last week, but yesterday was just a disaster. After running ten miles in the morning, I consumed 32 oz of blueberry tea and then nothing until nearly 5 'o clock, when I inhaled half a plate of nachos, three greasy stuffed potato skins, a mozzarella stick, two pints of beer, a shot of tequila (with lime & salt), ten mini milano cookies and at least one bottle of hard lemonade. I attempted to salvage the day's diet with half of a chocolate milkshake at 9pm, but I'm not sure that really helped matters. At the very least though, I have a pretty good idea of why I felt like crap on my run this morning.

Oh, that they could all be this easy and rewarding.

I did not end up racing the Achilles 5 miler yesterday, choosing instead to sleep in until 10. If I can call that a choice...it was more like, my body selected to remain in a catatonic stupor until 10. It was just as well though, since the top four women all ran the distance under six-minute pace. A bit out of my league for now, but just you wait, grasshopper....

I ran the first few miles with some young ex-collegiate runners I know which motivated me to start out faster that I probably should have. They're adorable girls and very talented, but it was hard not to cringe when one of them started complaining about the taxes she has to pay on her Nike sponsorship money. I talked to them a little bit about my training and they were surprised to hear how old I was, so I pointed out that Priscilla Welch didn't even start running until she was my age and got the opportunity to cringe again when they asked who that was.

Once I was back on my own again, the miles seemed to get longer as my muscles reacted to the quick start and started to gripe about what I'd done to them yesterday. I came very close to cutting off that last 1.6 and doing just 15, but I bumped into NYFlyGirl just about to start her run and my friend Gavin, who was just finishing up his, but offered to accompany me on that last loop on his bike. Now I'm just glad it's over and am focusing on the shower, burger and nap that lie immediately in my future.

I was only granted one day off this weekend, so on this beautiful early September Sunday...I'm sitting here in my windowless office proofreading scripts, clearing music rights and squeezing in a little blogging. I did have yesterday as my own though so we enjoyed a lovely, lazy morning before running 20+ miles in a soggy autumnal maelstrom, after which we satisfied our carnal craving for filet mignon and beer(him)/red wine(me).

The practicalities of running this many miles are still pretty daunting. Try to get 8 hours of sleep, and that's just the minimum to give you body a fair shot at recovery. Then half an hour to get ready to run (at 85 miles a week) an average of 1 hour, 43 minutes and 13 seconds. 45 minutes to shower and dress and you've already used up 10 1/2 hours of your day. 1/2 hour commute to work, grabbing food along the way, to be scarffed down at my desk to start off a minimum 9 hour workday. Lunch gets consumed this way as well, while working, and don't forget to be drinking water all along as well. 1/2 commute home and if the universe is cooperating, there's at least 3 hours left for dinner, laundry, cleaning, blogging, reading, calls home to mom & dad, conversation and relaxation with my man and finally, time to get ready to get in those eight hours of sleep. That is of course, if there isn't a second run to fit in!

In the midst of all this, it's challenging to maintain any semblance of balance. I used to have hobbies. I used to draw and paint and take photographs. I read newspapers and books and magazines...books and magazines that had nothing to do with running! It's almost a blessing that I'm having to deal with flux and upheaval at work through all of this, just to have something else to think and talk about. If someone were to place a moratorium on my ability to talk about running or work, I would simply stare placidly into space with a dull empty expression on my face. On second thought, that actually sounds really lovely, zzzzzzzzz.....

Now both of my heels are feeling a little achy, but I'm officially starting my taper so I really don't care. I'll stretch and foam roll and run increasingly less mileage at an easier pace and I'm pretty sure the issue will take care of itself.

My last long run went really well and I'm seriously indebted to my friend Kate for inviting me to tag along with her team up to Westchester on Saturday morning. It must have been something like the psychological boost you get when you know you're running your last mile repeat on the track, but I tackled the run pretty aggressively from the get go and the guys I was running with pushed the pace right along with me. I really tried to just stay relaxed and at a pace I could converse at, but maybe I was feeling a little bit that I had something to prove and didn't want to get left behind by the guys...while at the same time the guys probably pushed a little harder because they were running with a girl? Who knows. Whatever the reason, I think we all ran a little faster than we'd originally planned. Ultimately though, I felt pretty good about how it went and if I was a little beat up at the end, I think that had as much to do with the hills as it did with my pace. Plus, three hours of running is three hours of running, regardless of your speed.

I tried to be good and subject myself to an ice bath when I got home, but I don't think I'd really stockpiled enough cubes to get the water quite sufficiently cold. I sat in the moderately chilly water for about 15 minutes, but I don't know if there was any real benefit from doing so or not.

The correct marathon results. More on that later.

Anyone who knows anything about my racing history should know better than to believe that I ran even splits. Every marathon, I emerge from my taper cocoon feeling insecure and out of shape. I'm haunted by lingering injuries and nascent illnesses and end up toeing the line feeling as nimble as a three-legged basset hound. Then the gun goes off, the crowd moves out and I struggle along as best as I can with the expectation that my first mile will turn out far too slow. I never fully credit the effects of a two-week rest, a three-day carb binge, infusion of adrenaline and caffeine, the bracing jolt of chilly morning air, etc…and next thing I know, I've gone through the first mile half a minute faster than I meant to without even trying. My mile PR was the first mile of a marathon, nuff said.

It was supposed to be different this time. I'd learned my lesson from the past and others' forays into premature anaerobia and I recited my 6:50 mantra right up until the giant C-131 cargo jet did its dramatic pre-race swoop over the field of runners. Then I proceeded to run the first mile 24 seconds too fast, the second mile 13 seconds too fast and the third mile 27 seconds too fast before finally hitting the brakes on mile four with the 6:49 that I should have been running all along. But it was what it was and there's not much you can do when you're in the mix and the damage is done. I went with how I felt, running my second fastest half ever and crashed (if that's what it should be called) by running my second half about four minutes slower. It's not text book, but it's not really terrible either and it did leave open the possiblility that all that training mileage just might prop me up to hold it together for a 2:55 or 6. It didn't happen, but well...a girl can dream, can't she. Who knows, maybe this time I'll have learned my lesson.

The last few miles were tough. I'm not sure I've run a marathon where they weren't, but I definitely had to draw from rarely tapped wells of determination to stay focused through the end. Somewhere around the 22 mile marker I discovered the motivational power of that Melissa Etheridge song about her cancer and I somehow managed to run my fastest split of the second half. My biggest fear towards the end was that phenomenon where your legs just simply stop working the way you need them to and I think I danced dangerously close to that line. I could feel the concrete hardening, but luckily the race ended before it dried completely. And perhaps even more fortunately, it ended on a long downhill!

The actual details of the day...perfect weather, crisp and bright and dry. An even, flat course, with just enough undulation to keep it interesting and more turns than most people might like, but I find that they keep me sharp. Good crowd support , great water/Gatorade volunteers and I had other runners around me for most of the race, so I never felt like I was going it alone. The female winner of the race passed me just after mile five with a friendly hello, before turning all super-hero, NCAA champion on me and leaving me in her Carolina scented 2:44 dust. The Columbus paper made her out to be some wide-eyed neophyte who was just racing on a whim, so it was somewhat comforting to see that she was good enough for Alison to have interviewed her. Some jogger, right? She told the paper that she does Ironmans, but she's never done a marathon. How is that possible?

I'm only human, so I do have a few gripes, some of them pretty significant. The half marathoners started at the same time as the marathoners, which was a little annoying because you had no idea who you were racing against, but I suppose I was supposed to be sticking to the 6:50 plan anyway, so that shouldn't have mattered. Where it did become a real problem was after the course split for a mile and then rejoined the half race, only by this point we'd run a mile further than they had. There were two race clocks each mile after that and it was very confusing for a while to figure out which clock and mile marker belonged to which race. I recorded three really screwy splits through this section, but they average out to make sense. There was a lot of weaving and dodging through this section to avoid slower half runners as well as the marathon walkers who we also caught up to at this point. So I've got to figure that there must have been a better way to organize that part of the race.

The other somewhat annoying thing was the apparent disregard the race organizers had for their top finishers. The newspaper article pointed out, "For the first time in recent history, event organizers chose not to offer appearance money, prize money or performance bonuses." Ostensibly the plan was to make this a "People's Marathon", but I think Marine Corps was one of the first races to go that route and even they have an awards ceremony, don't they?

I did get a bike escort for the last few miles as the third female, which as Joe Positive pointed out feels like an amusingly odd sort of celebrity. Then Jack was running alongside and telling me I had a mile to go and it all felt like a surreal dream for a bit as I rounded the last turns and started to hear the loudspeaker. Noise, balloons, long sloping straight-away to the place where you'll be allowed to stop running, clock ticking down seconds :28, :29, :won't be breaking :30, :31, :32....whoosh. You can just barely see my bike escort's wheel -->

I might save the controversy bit for another entry here, since I have to go get ready for work, but suffice to say... I had every reason to believe that I finished third so when my family, friends and you guys started congratulating me on finishing fourth, I was very confused. I don't know who Phyllis Parker is (though being a researcher, I do have her phone number) and I don't know how her chip managed to cross the marathon finish sensor, but I know she wasn't in front of me. Some nice fellow on the Let's Run boards thought I was being petty for caring about this, saying that my finishing place meant "nada", but when all the results listings, newspapers and marathon websites mention who finished first, second and third, it's a little bit of a bummer to get left off. It's a rare and beautiful thing to finish in the magic top three when it's not something that happens very often for you, so it did not to me seem out of line to question what had happened. Actually, that may be all that I need to say on this subject. The results have been fixed and there was no awards ceremony anyway, so I'll just be satisfied knowing that I know how the race really played out.

Lessons?
Going out hard is expensive. Two energy gels are not sufficient.
High mileage pays off at the end. Melissa Etheridge rocks hard.