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 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.