Week 12, Day 3

Distance: 5 miles

Total for the week: 18 miles

Overall total so far: 270 miles

Notes: I ran out right after a fat dinner and my knee was killing me, so I had to stop for about a quarter mile a third of the way in. I was pretty down on myself about it, but then it just dawned on me that I was letting little crap bother me, and I decided to start running again. I worked on keeping my head up and smiling so that I would look as if I were having a good time (seriously, it works), and in short order I was cruising along again.

One funny thing is that I saw some people warming up to play what looked like a serious game of volleyball in Cobb's Hill Park, and I chuckled to myself, "I remember when I used to play actual sports that were actually fun." In a few weeks, that will be me again!

The first 18 happens on Saturday. It's the longest run of our training program. We do it twice. Wish us luck!

Week 11, Days 2, 3, and 4

I have been pretty bad about recording my training runs for the past few weeks. I think I'm just numb to it at this point. I'm not really using the Nike+ iPod system much; I've found that I'd rather run with nothing strapped to my arm than record my pace and calories burned. It was a great incentive at first, and I still carry it in my pack on Saturdays, but I just can't be bothered on the shorter runs. Anyway, here is what happened at the end of last week.

Day 2 (Wednesday)

Distance: 4 miles

Total for the week: 9 miles

Overall total so far: 231 miles

Notes: This was scheduled to be an eight mile run, but I think I ran my legs out playing Ultimate on Tuesday—the game lasted forever, and I played a lot more points than I should have. I had some pretty significant pain above both knees on the Wednesday run, so I cut it short halfway. (I'm sure I ran the equivalent of four miles the day before.)

Day 3 (Thursday)

Distance: 5 miles

Total for the week: 14 miles

Overall total so far: 236 miles

Notes: A little lingering pain for this run, though not as bad as on the previous day. I was looking forward to a rest day by the end of it, though!

Day 4 (Saturday)

Distance: 16 miles

Total for the week: 30 miles

Overall total so far: 252 miles

Notes: The last sixteen-miler was the best! We spent the night in Buffalo on Friday at Tracey's parents' house. My mother-in-law and her father drove around during the week leading up and found us a great, flat course. Then, since we had built-in babysitting, we got up super early and left for our run at 5:45 a.m. We finished around the time we usually start! This was awesome because heat never became an issue. We are now seriously considering getting a waiver to start the marathon at 6:00 instead of 7:00. And we know that carrying plenty of gels means we are much less likely to hit the wall. That was a good lesson to have learned, even if it wasn't any fun.

Next week: 5-8-5-18. Two weeks of that, then the taper begins! We are almost there.

Week 10, Day 1

Distance: 5 miles

Total for the week: 5 miles

Overall total so far: 198 miles

Notes: It felt good to be back on the roads after the horrible long run on Saturday. Our "short" runs are now five miles. The weekday runs are 5-8-5 until the taper.

Week 9, Day 4 (The Wall)

Distance: 16 miles

Total for the week: 27 miles

Overall total so far: 193 miles

Notes: By far the worst run ever and the most grueling physical experience of my life. Quite simply, Tracey and I both ran out of fuel at about mile thirteen. Literally, we had no more carbohydrates to burn. This is called "hitting the wall" or "crashing," and I'd heard it was a pretty nasty experience. Well, it was. My legs simply could not run any longer. And yet I had to keep going, through the heat of the day, because I needed to relieve our friends who were watching Abel—they had a wedding to get to.

So I walked a while, and then jogged for a minute until the burn overtook me again, and then I walked. At one point I sat on the grass next to a tree and just didn't move for a while. Finally I arrived and basically collapsed on their lawn for a while. When I got home, I sunk onto the couch and shivered under a blanket in my running clothes with a stomachache. It took a few hours to feel any better. Eventually we went for ice cream at Friendly's, and then I started to feel kinda normal again.

This was the first time during the program where I had any whisper of "Maybe I can't do this after all." Writing about it a few days later, I can see all the stuff that went wrong and the ways to correct it, and I am optimistic again. But that was awful. We have two more cracks at sixteen, then two weeks of eighteen before the training tapers for a few weeks to build strength before the marathon.

Week 5 Recap

Quite a week. My first ten miler—that was a good feeling. I finished up my 70 mile 4-week goal and reached a big milestone on the Nike+ iPod system. But really, the biggest accomplishment for me this week was just getting out there and doing the runs. This was an important week in my mind, because it was week five—and I only made it through week four the first time I set out to train for a marathon. So I was officially in uncharted territory when I took my first step on Monday.

The NRMT suggests incorporating visualization techniques at this point in the training. The idea is that you create two short "videos" in your mind and commit them to memory; then you "play" those videos every time you get discouraged or tired on a run. The first is based on the memory of your best run ever, and the second is the scene that you imagine will meet you when you finish the marathon. I have to admit, this technique seems a little goofy to me. But I'm going to try it out and see if I find it useful.

This week the short runs bump up to four miles each, so there will be no more three milers until the program tapers leading up to the race. I'm looking at 4-5-4-11 this week, and the great thing about it is that I know I can do it, no problem. But the mileage really gets serious in the next few weeks, and I'm just the slightest bit nervous about it. At least until I remember that 3-4-3-5 seemed a little scary when I was looking at that for the first week of training. What can I say? You just run until you finish the mileage, and then you stop. We are not very good at estimating our own limits. They're higher than we think, and the only way you will believe that is if you are willing to try something you don't think you can do. So get out there and try!

Or else you'll wind up living in a van down by the river.

Week 4, Day 1

Distance: 3 miles

Total for the week: 3 miles

Overall total so far: 51 miles

Notes: Our running partners are on vacation, so we're doing this week's runs alone until Saturday. Our usual pattern is for me to run with Brian and Tracey with Becca during the week, and then to trade childcare with them on the long runs so we can run as couples. This week some other friends are watching Abel on Saturday for us, but we're on our own for the 3-5-3 during the week.

Anyway, it was kinda nice to run alone this time (even though I went out a little hard and paid for it at the end), but I'm a touch nervous about Wednesday's five miles. The midweek distance is bumping up (from four) this week, so it's already got some challenge built in. At any rate, I know I can do it because I've run that far several times now; it's just that I'll miss the conversation. Oh well, I'll toss a few long podcasts onto the iPod to keep me company.

Hooray for breaking 50 cumulative miles!

The training program

Well, my official training program begins on Monday. I just spent a few minutes putting all my training runs into iCal, and I discovered some interesting realities about my future over the next 16 weeks.

I will run:

5 miles on my anniversary...

9 miles on my birthday...

12 miles on the day I perform a wedding for a couple in our church...

16 miles on the Saturday of our church camping trip...

18 miles on the day of the GRADA Ultimate playoffs...

and so on.

Pretty crazy, huh? It is sinking in that this achievement is not merely about being able to run 26 miles in one race. It's also about being dedicated enough to the goal that I give up a lot of personal freedom for the sixteen weeks preceding the race. This will be good for me; perseverance and the surrender of autonomy are two areas of my character that probably need a bit of work. This program will sand off the rough corners, to say the least.

Here's a quick glance at the entire program (click to enlarge):



Now that's what I call a challenge.

What this is all about

I am not a runner. Let's get that straight from the beginning. I am a musician. I am a pastor. I'm a husband and a dad. I am even a good athlete, or so I would like to suppose. I am a lot of things. But I am not a runner. In fact, for most of my life, I have loathed running.

I used to taunt my sister, an All-American distance runner, that she had chosen as a sport an activity that normal athletes use as a warm-up, something to keep them in shape so they could play an actual sport.

Resolving to run a 26.2-mile road race, then, would seem like a rather stupid thing for me to do. I am aware of this, often acutely so.

I'm not really certain I can give you a satisfactory answer to the salient question, "Why the hell would you want to do that?" My only answer is, "Because I want to be able to say that I did." And I suppose if that doesn't satisfy your curiosity, or if that doesn't make sense to you, there is no amount of additional explanation that would help much.

Here are some more details about my crazy quest.

The Rochester Marathon takes place on Sunday, September 16, 2007 at 8:00 a.m. It begins and ends within walking distance of my house—but I imagine I'll have a friend drive me there and back. There is a link in the sidebar.

I'm running the race with my lovely wife. The date of the race will be about two weeks after our eighth anniversary, and we'll both be 30 years old when we cross the finish line. Two other friends will be running with us: another of the pastors from Artisan Church, and his wife.

I am using The Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer as my guide. There are plenty of other training guides out there, even for non-runners, but I chose this one because of its intriguing history and its emphasis on psychological as well as physical preparation. It is a 16-week training program whose only prerequisite is the ability to jog for 30 minutes without stopping. There is a link in the sidebar to Amazon.com's product page for the book.

My shoes are Asics GT-2120s. Although I like them, I can't claim any particular passion for them other than that they felt better than the only other pair of 14B shoes the store had in stock. Interestingly, my sister was very excited when I told her what I had bought, because she used the same series of shoe when she was running competitively.

During my training, I will use the Nike+ iPod Sport Kit (even though headphones are not recommended by the authors of The Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer). It's not that I really need to listen to music while I run; it's more that I find the Nike+ system to be incredibly motivating because it tracks your distances and times, gives you real-time information as you run, and helps you manage goals and challenges set by yourself or other runners. I "modded" my shoes by using a simple shoe wallet with a velcro strap that goes under the laces. It works fine for my purposes.

I hope this blog will be another source of motivation for me as I train. Putting it out there for all my family and friends to follow—and for anyone else on the planet to follow, for that matter—means that if I fall short, everyone will know. And writing intentionally about my training will be the best way for me to process what I'm going through. It is my intention to record both brief notes on each of my training runs and longer entries about how things are going and what I'm learning about myself.

Feel free to leave comments or just read along. (There's a link to the site feed after this post.) And if you're in the area on September 16, I sure would love to see you somewhere on the course. Wish me luck. I have to get running now.