Training for my first marathon

I attempted to maintain a blog documenting my first marathon training experience. Unfortunately, I was too busy running to do a good job. Nonetheless, I did write a few posts, which are posted below, from oldest to newest.

Monday, November 3, 2008

How it all began.
I started training for my first marathon roughly two weeks ago.

Eight days ago, I ran my second half-marathon, finishing 32 minutes faster than my first.

That was Sunday. I took a one-day break and then resumed training. Most of my runs are on city streets and through my neighborhood. On the following Thursday, I got daring and went for a trail run. It was beautiful. It was liberating. It was one run too many.When I started feeling intense burning on the side of my left knee with each stride, I had no idea how to get off the trail.

To make a long (and freeezing cold) story short, I ended up walking five miles back to my car and arriving late to work.Thus, I acquired my first official running injury. I have self-diagnosed it as a bum IT band. With some (okay, TONS) of web research and the help of a long-time runner friend, I made a strategic healing plan. I took four days off from running (and, contrary to wise and abundant advice, exercise in general), and spent lots of time stretching and massaging my outer thigh.

On the plus side, I have discovered the wonderful world of treating my body right. Massaging the injured area led to massaging my whole leg, my other leg, my feet, and so on. The same applies to stretching. How have I been running 20-30 miles a week for the past few months without ever bothering to do these things?

On the down side, I have experienced how demoralizing even a small injury can be. Like I said, I pretty much took a long weekend off from exercising. I also took the opportunity to party it up, since I had pretty much given up drinking in the interest of adding another 20+ miles a week to my regime without keeling over and dying.

Returning to running today, I felt like I was starting back at square one. We're talking, before I even started training for the half-marathons. I had to break up my six mile work-out into shorter runs (one before work and one after). Even then, I barely resisted the urge to give up and walk. I can hardly believe it was eight days ago that I ran a half marathon in well under two hours!

My aforementioned long-time runner friend always says running is 90% mental. I am, as of today, a true believer.

I trained for my first half marathon with a friend and the second shortly followed. Now, training alone, I am at the mercy of my serially self-destructive mind. As long as I'm doing well, I am the best cheerleader an athlete could hope for. On hard days, though, I can hardly tell whether it was my body or my brain that started it.
Posted by The Spokanite at 7:50 PM


Tuesday, November 4, 2008

I'm truuuudging in the raaain...!
This morning it was raining. I hadn't really thought about what I would do in such an event, so naturally I decided to do nothing. Stay home. Get some extra z's. Cuddle with my cat. You know, things normal people do in the morning instead of running six miles.

After yesterday's discouraging runs, the last thing I wanted was to trudge around my neighborhood all soggy-like.

Then, traipsing around in my undies as I do in the morning, I discovered a new muscle line on my thigh. I'm obsessed with muscle definition, and this one's a real beaut. Apparently that was just what I needed to get excited about soggy trudging. After all, normal people who snuggle cats in the morning only dream of having legs like mine.
Posted by The Spokanite at 11:51 AM

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

WalkJogRun
Just as I was despairing about 1) my lack of running buddies, 2) how boring my regular routes were and 3) how annoying it is to try to figure out mileage using Goggle Maps, I happened upon WalkJogRun. I highly recommend checking it out.

Among a host of other features, this site allows you to use Google Maps to measure out running routes, save them, and share them with other people. I typed my address into this little box and it found my house. All around my house were little yellow numbered markers, each of which correspond to running routes listed (with mileage and a short description) in the sidebar. Click on one of the routes in the sidebar and you get detailed directions, point-to-point distance measurements, the poster's comments, and more. You can change variables like speed, weight, and pace to figure out how long the run will be, how many calories you'll burn, and anything else you could possibly want to know.

I showed my dad, a computer geek, and he got unreasonably excited. But then again, exploring the wide world of Google Maps is one of his favorite pastimes. I'm telling you, this puppy has more features than even the nerdiest super-nerd of runnerdom could dream of.

On the running buddies thing, it seems like you can find them through this site. When I find out more about that, I'll be sure to let you know. In the meantime, anyone want to go for a run?
Posted by The Spokanite at 10:28 PM

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Of Treadmills and Men
I'll be honest: I haven't been running much. I had one particularly torturous run late last week. it was supposed to be 14-15 miles, but instead came out to just under 11.5. It was freezing cold (34 degrees, to be approximately exact), drizzling, and 7:00 in the morning. (I have switched to morning runs because it is dark by 4:30p.m. up here in the North Pole.) Not only had I, predictably, left the house 20 minute later than intended, I was running painfully slowly due to general physical misery and a horrible attitude.

At my mammothly pace, I simply could not finish the full distance in time and figured I'd modify the route a little. Still, I was calculating my new approximate mileage by my usual slow pace, which is significantly faster than the pace I was running at that morning... so after arriving at my house with my sopping wet pants sagging and sticking to my body, I was horribly disappointed to find out I hadn't even broken twelve miles, much less the 13-14 i had predicted.

Now, I recognize that any sane person knows 11.5 miles is still, as my friend's mom said, "nothing to sneeze at." But running a large distance in awful conditions at ungodly hours of the morning requires a lot of self-talk about how good it will feel to have accomplished your goal. Which I didn't. If I felt okay about only running 11.5 miles, I would have stopped running at the point where I thought I had completed 11.5 miles and ridden my unicorn the rest of the way home.

My psyche feeling quite damaged, I used the fact that my friend was visiting from out of town as an excuse to take not one, but two days off. I know. I am committing marathon suicide.

Yesterday I made a plan. With much agony to my soul, I joined a gym and resigned myself to tromping out the miles on a treadmill. I can tell it's going to be hard to complete longer runs on a treadmill, but for medium-distance runs during the week, it'll do. As a major plus, I can also swim, bike, lift weights, stretch, take yoga classes, play raquetball, and more. As a major, major plus, I can do all these things after work, rather than dragging my not-a-morning-person ass out of bed when it's still dark. My muscles (and soul) are already thanking me for not putting them through the hot/cold routine every morning.
Posted by The Spokanite at 12:27 PM

In the end, I succeeded in running the entire ugly beast that is the California International Marathon on December 7. (I exaggerate. The CIM mostly flat and downhill, the weather was perfect, and I walked through roughly half the aid stations.) I did the bulk of my training on my own and way to much of it on a treadmill due to the painful combination of cold weather and an IT band injury. Considering I was unsure on race day if I would make it halfway (my last long run outside had left me re-injured and beyond discouraged), running from start to finish was a massive accomplishment for me. My new goal is to finish the next one in under 3.5 hours.