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 9, Days 2 and 3

Day 2 (Wednesday)

Distance: 7 miles

Total for the week: 11 miles

Overall total so far: 177 miles

Notes: Seven miles in the hills of Oxford, ME. And when I say hills, I mean bigger, longer hills than they have here in Rochester. A most challenging run, though I thoroughly enjoyed being out on the streets of small town Maine. It was a profoundly nostaligic experience—totally took me back to my childhood.

Day 3 (Thursday)

Distance: 4 miles

Total for the week: 15 miles

Overall total so far: 181 miles

Notes: Still in Maine, I ran a quick out and back. Uphill for the first half, downhill for the second half. Not a bad little run, though quite hot.

Week 9, Day 1

Distance: 4 miles

Total for the week: 4 miles

Overall total so far: 170 miles

Notes: Four boring miles in the rain, big whoop. My next two runs will happen in Maine, where the air is clean and pure. I'll post about them when I come back.

Week 8, Day 4

Distance: 14 miles

Total for the week: 24 miles

Overall total so far: 166 miles

Notes: Tracey and I tried even more frequent walk breaks this time, and it actually shaved another ten seconds per mile off our average pace. We walked for one minute every mile. Far more important than the increase in pace was the fact that we felt good and finished pretty strong. I think I'm becoming a believer.

Attention Town of Pittsford: They invented this awesome thing called sidewalks. You can put them next to your roads in order to help pedestrians (including runners) keep from, well, dying. You might want to Google it.

Week 8, Day 3

Distance: 4 miles

Total for the week: 14 miles

Overall total so far: 152 miles

Notes: Over 150 now, nice. I ran this alone and did two speed pushes, running at over 80% for a couple minutes twice during the run to see if I could recover without walking. It may have been good for my cardiovascular strength, but it did nothing for my pace. Interesting.

Week 8, Day 2

Distance: 6 miles

Total for the week: 10 miles

Overall total so far: 148 miles

Notes: Six miles is now one of the "easy" runs.

Week 8, Day 1

Distance: 4 miles

Total for the week: 4 miles

Overall total so far: 142 miles

Notes: I can't believe it's already week 8! This was my fastest run yet (a staggering 8:40/mile, whoopie), including a final mile that was about 7:30. I pushed it throughout the run and ran as hard as I could when the iPod gave me the "400 meters to go" warning. I don't know why; I just felt like lengthening my strides a bit. My legs were achy the next day, though!

Week 7, Days 2, 3, and 4

Another quick and dirty set of recaps. Been really busy moving the church to our new building.

Day 2 (Wednesday)

Distance: 6 miles

Total for the week: 10 miles

Overall total so far: 122 miles

Notes: A nice long loop after dark. Six felt pretty good.

Day 3 (Thursday)

Distance: 4 miles

Total for the week: 14 miles

Overall total so far: 126 miles

Notes: I was exhausted during this run after painting outside in the sun all day long. But I ran it anyway. Not a bad pace, either.

Day 3 (Saturday)

Distance: 12 miles

Total for the week: 26 miles

Overall total so far: 138 miles

Notes: After last week's eleven mile debacle, we were determined to make this run good. Tracey plotted a nice round loop, we made sure to start out in a better mood, and we decided to try the "walk break" idea. Every two miles, we walked for one minute. It kept us feeling pretty fresh, and our pace was actually faster than we've been averaging on long runs. Interesting—we'll probably try a few different ways of using walk breaks over the next few weeks.

Week 7, Day 1

Distance: 4 miles

Total for the week: 4 miles

Overall total so far: 116 miles

Notes: This was a fast four, for me anyway. Ran a personal best over the first mile, then joined Brian, who only had to run three, to finish it out.

The medium run bumps to six miles this week, and I have to do twelve on Saturday, in addition to performing a wedding later in the day. Oh, and I'm also painting the new/old church building on Thursday and Friday. Should be a tiring week.

Week 6, Days 2, 3, and 4

Quick blast edition, since I'm behind on posting my notes—very, very busy week in other areas of life.

Day 2 (Wednesday)

Distance: 5 miles

Total for the week: 9 miles

Overall total so far: 97 miles

Notes: Ran in the rain for the first time (!) since the official training began. Not too bad, especially since Tracey had the day off (Independence Day).

Day 3 (Thursday)

Distance: 4 miles

Total for the week: 13 miles

Overall total so far: 101 miles

Notes: More rain. Broke 100 miles for the training.

Day 4 (Saturday)

Distance: 11 miles

Total for the week: 24 miles

Overall total so far: 112 miles

Notes: Worst run ever. But we finished it, so I'm calling that good. I don't really feel like writing about it, but Tracey did. Better luck next week, right?

Week 6, Day 1

Distance: 4 miles

Total for the week: 4 miles

Overall total so far: 92 miles

Notes: Brian showed me a two mile route down to the new pedestrian trail along the Genesee River, and we ran it as an out and back. The trail is really pretty, except that for some reason the city of Rochester is unwilling to bother to pull fallen trees out of the river, and it means any bit of debris gets hung up and covered in algae. Anyway, it was a nice quick run. It's a good feeling to be able to pound out four miles and have it basically feel like nothing!

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 5, Day 4

Distance: 10 miles

Total for the week: 21 miles

Overall total so far: 88 miles

Notes: So much to write about this run. It was our first double-digit mileage. Wow—the longest distance I've ever run. It's pretty cool to be able to say I ran ten miles. I even paused the workout on the iPod so I could officially "end" it in the car with it plugged in. Paula Radcliffe congratulated us on our longest workout so far. That's cool, even if I don't know who she is.

We ran it along the Erie Canal in the villages east of the city. A good portion of the marathon route follows the canal, so we figured it would be good to check it out. It was fairly nice scenery, but it's actually harder on my knees than city streets, because it's all asphalt with no level grass to retreat onto when the banging starts to get to you.

It was also my first time trying a few hydration and energy tricks. I bought a belt with a water bottle and hose built in. I can't stand holding bottles in my hand as I run, and bothering to drive out and stash water along the route... yeah, I just don't have that in me, on so many levels. But it's to the point where we definitely need to hydrate during the long runs, not just before and after. It worked out really well; wearing a belt took a bit of getting used to, but it's definitely a trade I'll make. We also tried gels for the first time. The verdict was that they were a nice boost, but that one of the two flavors we tried was awful. It's something we'll experiment with. Today we used PowerBar gels, but there are several other brands we can try.

Oh, and there's also this (click to enlarge):



And this:



That was pretty cool. The 100 miles includes a handful of short runs that came before the official training began.

Weekly recap coming tomorrow, after my sermon.

Week 5, Day 3

Distance: 3 miles

Total for the week: 11 miles

Overall total so far: 78 miles

Notes: I'm posting this a couple days late, and I can't really remember anything about this run. It was the last three-mile run for several weeks, though. I won't miss that loop; it was getting a little old.

The Nike+ iPod system

The Nike+ system has been a real motivator for me during this training. I thought some people might be interested to know a little more about how it works.

It's a two-piece system. A small chip goes into the iPod's cable connector port, and a small pedometer/accelerometer goes into a special compartment under the insole of the special Nike shoe. I don't wear Nike shoes, but that doesn't matter. You can put the Nike+ sensor in a plain old shoe wallet, and it works just fine. The pedometer broadcasts a signal to the chip in the iPod, and the iPod records your data and gives you feedback through the headphones. And when you sync the iPod, it sends the data to Nike's website, where you can view all kinds of interesting information.

Here's what I see when I upload my run data (click to enlarge). The circles are mile markers, and you can mouse over any of them to see your pace for that mile. (In this screenshot, I'm mousing over the first mile.)



And I can also see a bar graph of all the runs I've done in the past week, month, or ever. The new run is in red, and when you mouse over any bar, it gives you the details from that run.



Psychologically, this can be very encouraging. You get to see the real progress of your training program, and something about the visual association is just lots of fun to watch. I also track goals for myself using the Nike+ Dashboard widget. For example, I recently looked ahead to see how many miles I would do in the next four weeks. It happened to be 70 miles. So I set a goal of running 70 miles in four weeks. Now, every time I open Dashboard, I see this widget in the upper corner, with the runner symbol (actual mileage) nipping at the heels of the target point (which keeps moving to stay "on pace" with the goal). Here's where it sits this morning:



Interestingly, I don't usually listen to the iPod itself as I run, because I'd rather talk to the person I'm running with than listen to music. I usually just put the chip in the iPod and leave the headphones at home. But when I run alone, I often listen to podcasts, which tend to pass the time faster than music.

As I mentioned, the iPod does give you feedback as you complete miles, reach your halfway point, and near the end of your run. And occasionally a famous athlete (Lance Armstrong, for example) will congratulate you for your fastest mile or longest run so far. That's all well and good, but I often prefer not to know how far I've come or how much distance remains. I'm more interested in the tracking that happens after you upload the run.

So there you have it. It's a great system. I highly recommend it.