skipping straight to the whining

Alright, enough background and plan-talk. What is doing the crazymaking?

I think my marathon training problems boil down to two things.

1. I wanted to run too fast
2. I am not running as far on my long runs as I'm supposed to be running.

Let's say, for the sake of today's post, that I have fixed problem 1. The solution -- you're gonna be blown away -- is to not try to run so fast. If you're not good at complicated concepts, I'll put it differently -- you slow down. Or rather, you're more okay with the pace that you're running anyway. I'm really not that good at making my body run faster than it wants to run; I suppose I have more self-preservation instinct than, like, good runners do, and I'm pretty keen on keeping that, actually. Two times in the first four weeks of my training, I hurt myself in ways that I have never hurt before, and I'm quite confident I should put the blame on trying to run tempo runs faster than my, you know, tempo. So, no more of that nonsense. I took a break, I stretched/rolled/iced/heated as necessary, and I missed a couple runs, but very few, mostly by getting more realistic time goals. So, let's say I'm mostly on top of Problem Pace Monster.

The big other problem is the real mindfuck: Problem Distance Monster. There has been a little bit of schedule juggling in the last couple weeks, to handle the fact that my first 17 mile run was supposed to be on the day of a family wedding, two days ago. Um: HA. No. Not happening. So, long story short, I moved it to today.

Conditions were in some sense optimal. I got lots of sleep last night; I had BOTH my parents with or at least near me, riding up and down the same path but on their bicycles (yeah, I know, spoiled only child) for the first 8 miles, providing both distraction and water-bottle carrying; I had a fully charged Garmin and mostly-empty bike path for nearly all the run; I had a good week of hitting on my runs last week, and after Friday's decent 8 mile tempo, I did nothing Saturday and just did a light elliptical session and some core/pilates yesterday. (I'm on a bit of vacation at my parents this week, so this is why I can do 17 miles runs in the middle of the day! Or rather, why I could in principle do so.)

However, there are other ways in which conditions were kind of shit. When I say I did nothing on Saturday, of course I actually mean I went to my cousin's wedding -- BUT, no, before you point that out, I actually did considerably less drinking or dancing than I would normally contribute to a wedding festivity. Partly because I knew my parents would want to leave fairly early (as my father was heroically DDing) and partly because I needed my energies for Sunday... Because then Sunday, yesterday, we hosted a postwedding brunch/linner/all meals in one event that required a fair amount of cooking and hosting and moving furniture and standing and smiling and pouring and replenishing and then cleaning surprisingly large number of dishes... and so, right. That's kind of tiring, in the end, I guess? And I slow-drank the bubbly punch, very little, but maybe enough. And I of course ate a lot of carbs, over many hours, but again not your whole wheat pasta with sweet potato and arugula (or whatever Runners World says you should eat. Actually that now sounds really good, which is what post-run hunger is like.)

So, there was some exceptional fatigue in the previous couple of days. And then three other run-fails: I didn't realize how how it actually was. It's been way cool here for summer... but today it got up to 29C. And this running was taking place between 3:30-5:30, so hardly a cool part of the day. There was some sun. Also, I didn't have fuel. Um, what was I thinking? I guess I thought I only need food for half marathon distances when I'm actually racing? The idiocy here is not really understandable, although granted my first few half marathons I didn't eat on the course... but I DID drink gatorade, and you see now I'm drinking stuff that has electrolyte bla bla blas but not a lot of sugar. Which is cool if you want to take care of each separately. But uh -- that means actually doing both! I had forgotten to buy any swedish fish beforehand, so I somehow thought eh, it'll be fine. And, final nail in coffin: I didn't stay on top of my water needs. When I ran on Friday, I had water at 4 miles and 8 miles, and great! Yeah you know what? If it's like 10C hotter, you need more water. [Oh, and a thing I actually forgot till now is that last night while taking apart a brunch-related table I whacked myself good on the inside of my ankle, resulting on some swelling and tenderness that still hasn't gone away, but wasn't any better or worse on the run than any other time in the intervening 24 hours, so probably that's not even relevant, just another awesome.]

Having written this all out now, I'm pretty impressed I didn't keel over into a ditch 3 miles in.

Anyway: what happened was, finally, 14 miles. Of a sadly positive split nature. Overall I had enough water, but it was stupidly timed; too little at the beginning, requiring too sloshy much at the end. At 10 miles I got back to the house, and had some dried apricots and diluted OJ so i actually had some sugar in my body, and the last 4 miles were therefore doable. But the last 2 were like death sentence style running -- I think the slowest pace I saw was 10:10 miles (the overall pace of the run turned out to be 9:30/mile, which was in hindsight what I should have been aiming for all along, but not in this skewed way), but really I think I only got those last two miles in at 9:30 or so because I was using tremendous mental willpower. My body was just like WE ARE DONE AND DYING AND DONE WHAT DONT YOU UNDERSTAND HERE STOP RUNNING. It is NOT reasonable to hit the wall at mile 12. I ran a half marathon the other month! It was like 'oh yeah, this is work, i am kind of uncomfortable' but hardly doom death despair wall-hitting. AND I had hardly been training! So, that felt horrible. ... I actually contemplated stopping and CRYING twice during this run, not because I actually hurt that much -- in fact, I don't have any injuries, really, see below -- but because my SOUL hurt. That's some bad wall hitting, folks. My SOUL wanted me to stop running. Do you see the depth of my issues?

Then I got home, I stretched, I gasped, I showered, I ate a little even though I didn't want to, I felt a little crappy, and then I got this thing I sometimes get after long runs where if I am anything other than lying down, I feel pretty damn nauseous... so my poor parents witnessed my pathetic attempts to sit at dinner table, followed by lying down on helpful nearby couch until I felt well enough to go for ice cream with an old friend (way to rally, eh? and except for wearing really attractive magenta calf compression sleeves with zero shame, i felt 100% back in the land of the living.) Now, of course, I am experiencing post-run ravenousness, but I had some toast with peanut butter and I can safely ignore it until oatmeal o'clock tomorrow.

In short (too late): the goal was 17 miles and I did 14. And had to white knuckle 2 (hell maybe 3) of them.

As you may have sensed, I am pingponging back and forth between two responses to this debacle. Response 1: despite bad choices and odds, you managed to run longer than a half marathon! Learning! You're getting there! Response 2: In 9 weeks you have to run 12 more miles. Girl, you gonna die first.

A potentially convincing happy medium between two said responses is that I didn't hurt myself. At various points while running today, I felt various twinges, but nothing serious. My IT bands didn't bark. That weird hamstring thing I did the other week didn't act up. My calf got tight, and wherever your upper calf muscle attaches in behind your knee, but I stretched it twice, and it was overall ok. I'm sore but not overly so; less sore than when I run a half-marathon at race pace, certainly, and I think pilates tomorrow will be fine. So the overall positive conclusion I can draw is that the white knuckling mindwork did, in fact, overcome the tendency to hurt myself when I'm running tired, because the brain checks out and the legs flail as they want and then familiar pains surface. Since that didn't happen, I must assume both that my mind was still taking care of me, and that in fact my legs are strong enough to carry me through more than 14 miles. Even if I might spend some of them FIGHTING MY SOUL ABOUT DEATH.

And next time I won't be a tool about water or swedish fish.

Next up: Wednesday, eeeeeasy run. Thursday: little race on Ward Island! ... Then on Sunday it's supposed to be cutback long-run week -- 13 miles. But how is that cutback if this week's 17 miles were only 14 miles? I have not decided what to do about that -- whether 13 miles or longer. Maybe 15 miles? I think I need the time on my feet. But then there's the soul thing. We shall see.