Day 112

Forced rest.

My shin pain has progressed to the next level. My right one is now aching even when I walk and my left one is increasingly becoming more and more sore to the touch. I think that the only wise move for me now is to take a couple days off and let my body heal.

I'm pretty much addicted to running now so I'm not enjoying the prospects but it's probably for the best since I've been having trouble taking it easy on the taper.

I'm thinking that I'll take three days off and then hopefully put in some easy miles this weekend depending on how I feel.

Day 111

Training is winding down. I'm committing to my taper.

Today. 4 miles at base pace.

Distance: 4.19
Duration: 34:05
Pace: 8:08
HR Avg/Max: 146/158
notes:
Temperature was 62 degrees. Perfect for running. Kept a good steady relaxed pace. My right shin was bugging me a bit but overall I felt good. My head cold is subsiding. I feel great right now but I can tell that in a few days I'm really going to have to hold myself back from doing a hard workout.

day 110

last of the long runs

Distance: 14 miles
Duration: 2:04:42
Pace: 8:55
HR Avg/Max: 142/154
notes:
I'm sick with a head cold. The run sucked but I made myself do it anyway. It felt lousy but I got it done. Being sick sucks, but it's probably happening at the best possible time. Plenty of time to get well before the marathon.

Also I broke the 500 mile mark today. I've now completed 510.84 miles since I started my marathon training 16 weeks ago.

Day 109

Day 109 a.k.a. The last of the fast...

I have a confession to make. I feel like I rely a little too much on my watch. During my average run I'm looking at it constantly; counting down the miles, checking and rechecking my pace, checking my heart rate, estimating my finishing time... As much as I try I just can't seem to ignore it for more than 30 seconds at a time. So, today I decided to try a little experiment.

I taped a piece of paper over my watch face so I couldn't see what it said and decided to go out and run "blindly". Today was supposed to be a marathon pace day so I figured I'd go out and see how close I could hit pace without knowing how fast I was going.

Here's how I did.

Distance: 4.03 miles
Duration: 27:56
Pace: 6:56
HR Avg/Max: 164/179
notes:

Utterly failed at my pacing efforts as usual. I went out at what I felt was a brisk but relaxed pace. By the end of the first mile I could tell that I was going too fast by how hard I was breathing but I still felt pretty good. By the end of the second mile I was starting to hurt but I figured that it was partly just cumulative exhaustion from the last couple weeks. Mile three I decided I might as well go for broke and at least hold my pace for one more mile and then see what I had left for my four... Mile four I gave it all and pushed all the way home.

Splits:

Mile 1: 7:03
Mile 2: 7:05
Mile 3: 7:02
Mile 4: 6:30

Very even splits for the first three miles which was good. As I was running the pain was getting progressively worse but I managed it well and didn't let it slow me down at all. The last mile was hell but it felt good to push myself near my limits for one last time before the marathon.

Tomorrow I run my last "long" run and after that I plan on taking it very easy until marathon time. The last few weeks of workouts have been intense and hopefully they will benefit me in both confidence and fitness come marathon time. But for now I think that I've attained all the fitness I can expect to get before the marathon and that the best thing I can do for myself is force myself to slow it down and allow myself to recuperate.

I might throw a few 1-2 minute fartleks into next Wednesdays workout but besides that this is the last run I plan to do at a pace which is anything faster than marathon pace so help me god!

Day 108

BLAH! Right now I'm fucking toast. My hard training has finally caught up to me and my legs feel like they've been beat with bats. Climbing stairs in a chore. Walking sucks.

Figured I'd better go easy today...

Distance: 6.18 miles
Duration: 55:00
Pace: 8:54
HR Avg/Max: 134/157
notes:
Sure enough. Legs are beyond dead. I'm like a running zombie. I was able to keep this run at a recovery pace mostly because I couldn't go any faster if I wanted to. Yesterdays speed work seems to of sucked any semblance of speed out of my body.

I'm not worried though. While technically I'm starting my taper this week I'm really thinking that I might be better off with a two week taper instead of the three weeks Uncle Hal proscribed. I'm still on course and have plenty of time to recover and if I can get myself refreshed after my last few weeks of training domination I should be an animal come marathon time!

Day 107

First Wednesday of the three week taper... I'm slowly cutting back the milage but still want to get some intensity out of this workout. Next week I'll have to really start focusing on cutting back the milage and the intensity but for now I want to squeeze every last bit of fitness out that I possibly can.

I decided to do some semi-speedwork to work on tuning up my turnover and max out my cardio.

The work out: 2 miles hard, 2 miles easy, 1 mile hard, 2 miles easy.

Total Distance: 7.0 Miles
Duration: 55:03
Avg Pace: 7:52

Here's the break down.

2 miles hard...
Duration: 12:51 (6:26, 6:25 splits)
HR Avg/Max: 166/178

2 miles easy
Duration: 16:30 (8:27, 8:03 splits)
HR Avg/Max: 157/167

1 mile hard
Duration: 6:40
HR Avg/Max: 174/180

2 miles easy
Duration: 19:02 (10:06, 8:56)
HR Avg/Max: 158/172

__________________________________________________________

notes:
another brutal workout on a hot day... I'm really spent from all the running and need to force myself to cool out pretty soon if I want to be 100% by marathon time.

Day 106

5 easy miles.

Distance: 5.0 miles
Duration: 41:34
Pace: 8:19
HR Avg/Max: 148/169
notes:

After the last 4 days I guess there's no such thing as 5 easy miles. My heart rate was up. I was hot. My legs were stiff, tired, and I hurt!

On a positive note, it appears that my achilles pain is completely gone and my shin pain while still intermittent has not gotten any worse so I guess the conscientious icing has been paying dividends.

12 more workouts and 19 more days until the marathon!

Day 105

Another day, another 20 mile bike ride.... really slow though. My legs are out of energy. Had to go back and clean up my gator-aid and power-gel wrappers from my weekend run though.

Day 104

Last of the long runs before the ultimate long run.

Distance: 22.4 miles
Duration: 3:17:53
Pace: 8:50
HR Avg/Max: 132/149
notes:
Started the run off pretty sore after yesterdays 10 miler but loosened up after about 3 miles. From there I pretty much cruised at about exactly a 8:50 pace for the entire run. I was even able to average 8:47 for the last 5 miles which was the first time I didn't have to slow down and fight my way in at the end of a long run. Definitely my best long run to date as far as being a confidence booster.

The conditions of the run were less than optimal. The first 12 miles went smoothly, but then it started to pour rain. I still had 10 miles left to go and the trail that I was running on became muddy and covered with about a inch and a half of standing water. My cloths were completely drenched and my shoes were waterlogged. The traction was terrible as well and I had issues getting good footing. On the bright side I think it made me run faster because I just wanted to get the run finished with as fast as possible.

52 miles logged this week and I'm feeling tired, but not injured. 3 more weeks to marathon time. The taper has officially begun!

Day 103

Hal is going to be mad at me... he said that I was supposed to cut out cross training during the week and what did I do? I went out and biked 20 miles yesterday... Of course I had an excuse. I was dropping off gator-aid and power-gel for my 20 miler tomorrow.

Then today I decided to follow the intermediate 2 plan instead of the intermediate 1 plan... So 10 miles at marathon pace... no problem.

Distance: 10.0 miles
Duration: 1:15:58
Pace: 7:36
HR Avg/Max: 159/176
notes:
Seems like I have a problem with pace. The plan started out easy enough... 8 minute miles. But for some reason I'm always worried that I'm starting too slow (even though I have a Garmin which tells be exactly how far ahead I am of pace) and I wound up running my first mile in 7:15. I slowed down, averaging 7:40 miles for the next 8 and then kicked in the last mile in 7:10.

So I'm happy with the run... this was my third run at this pace in the last week starting with my half-marathon last Sunday. On the other hand I'm a little worried about my inability to keep pace. My plan is to find the Nike pace group at the marathon and let them do the work... otherwise, I'm going to go out too fast and die.

As far as the quality of the run through I figured my lactate threshold to be 158-176 bmp which was my average and max of the run. I hit 158 at about the 3 mile mark so I was in the threshold range for about 7 miles (50 minutes). Hell of a tempo run.

Tonight's the Berlin marathon and they're streaming it live on NBC Universal Sports. Hopefully I can either stay up till 1:45 am or wake up and watch it because there's a good change a world record is going to be set!

101

Another day easy day at conversational pace.

Distance: 5.35 miles
Duration: 45:01
Pace: 8:24
HR Avg/Max: 140/154
notes:

Pretty much the same run as Tuesday... I'm very satisfied with the fact that this pace seems to be my easy running pace now and considering that both Tuesday and Thursday's runs are on the heels of two of the hardest workouts gives me even more confidence.

Also, I feel like my stride is really improving... I've been focusing on it a little bit, but i mostly just think that the faster workouts are forcing it to improve. I definitely feel like I'm mid-foot striking and each stride feels more effortless than it used to. The marathon is getting closer and closer and my anticipation is building!

Day 100

One hundred days since I started training for the Chicago Marathon! I've come a long way... I'd like to stop and reflect on my training so far, but I still have about a week and a half of good solid training before I'm planning on hitting full taper mode so I think I'll hold off on that. Instead I decided to honor the 100 day mark with a particularly grueling Wednesday workout.

I had 8 miles scheduled for today, and it's Wednesday so I wanted to run it pretty hard. I also wanted to get some speedwork in too so I decided pepper some hard mile repeats into my run, by alternating easy running and marathon pace running every other mile. Here's how my plan unfolded.

Distance: 8.0 miles (plus .5 mile cooldown)
Duration: 1:01:12
Pace: 7:39
HR Avg/Max: 156/179
notes:

Started out at a moderate pace but quickly started speeding up despite myself and ran the first mile in 8:09... at this point I decided to change my plan from alternating between E running and MP running and instead alternate between MP running and hard running. Here's the mile by mile breakdown.

Mile 1: 8:09 (feeling better than expected)
Mile 2: 8:03 (all warmed up and ready to burn)
Mile 3: 6:51 (woaw this feels fast, but I'm feeling good)
Mile 4: 7:55 (amazing how easy this pace feels relative to 6:51)
Mile 5: 6:42 (woaw, this feels really fast and I'm not feeling so good anymore)
Mile 6: 8:07 (amazing how this pace doesn't feel so easy anymore)
Mile 7: 7:56 (hit the first .4 at 6:51 pace, next .35 was up a steep hill and my muscles finally remembered the half-marathon from Sunday... heart rate averaged 172 and peaked at 179 during this stretch)
Mile 8: 7:33 (last mile... man I want to walk, but I can't quit now... time to see what's left in the tank)

Last mile and a half was horrid, painful, and the opposite of fun. I just wanted to quit, but I knew that pushing through the pain would help me when I hit the "wall" in the marathon so I pushed on. Glad that I did now because I feel great!

24 more days to the marathon and I'm trying to spend the rest of the time cleaning up my diet, shedding a few pounds, getting some last ditch polish on my fitness, and resting up with a good taper so that I can be in top possible shape come marathon day!

day 99

Tuesday after a half-marathon... 5 miles at a "conversational" pace (not literally since I run by myself)...

Distance: 5.1 miles
Duration: 42:47
Pace: 8:23
HR Avg/Max: 143/154
notes:
My brain said yes but my legs said no! First mile hurt like hell but once I loosened up I felt much better. By 3.5 miles I was tired though. Had to run up a couple hills (even though this is my "flat" course) and those just about killed me. Last mile was mostly downhill and combined with the knowledge that I was almost done went smoothly.

In a side note, I started running while listening to audio books... I wasn't sure if this was going to work or not, but it turns out that it's not that bad for easy - moderate paced runs. It takes my mind off the run just enough help me ignore the bad parts (pain, fatigue) while still letting me enjoy the good parts (fresh air, freedom, my stride)... Don't think I'll try it for a hard run though, that requires too much focus.

Day 97

Race day! IVS Half-Marathon.

I drove most of the way to the race and then parked about 1.5 miles away from the start on a side street. I used the 1.5 as a warm up and felt great as I lined up to start the race. The gun went off and we were off!

Distance: 13.1
Duration:1:39:19
Pace: 7:35
HR Avg/Max: 161/183
notes:

Turned out to be a way tougher race than I anticipated. I planned to just go out relaxed and coast the first 10 miles and kick in the last 5k. The problem with this plan was that the course was two laps over the hilliest terrain I have ever attempted. My GPS says there was over 3000 feet of total accent!

All in all I think I raced it well. I started smoothly and didn't let the race day anticipation get the better of me. Many of the runners took off fast when the gun went off but I stayed relaxed and ran my own race and hit the first mile in 7:48. From here I picked up the pace slightly, but focused on running relaxed and within my means. We hit the first big hill at the 1.75 mark and this is when I started passing people. By mile 3 several of the runners who had went out too fast were already walking and I easily must of passed about 30 people as we went up and down rolling hills. I just focused on not slowing down on the uphills and coasting on the downhills to recover. I finished the first loop in 50:15, about a 7:40 pace.

At this point I started running into some trouble. Cardiovascularly I felt fine with my heart rate sitting at 160 but my legs felt shot. It felt as if I had been lifting weights rather than running. My quads were tight and I had a pain in my ass! The next 6.55 was pretty rough. I was by myself at this point with only one or two other runners even in sight since the course was so hilly and winding. I just tried to keep my stride loose and not slow down and as I came to the big hills I just put my head down and didn't look up focusing on one foot after the other until I reached the top. Somehow I didn't slow down and maintained a 7:40 pace even though it seemed that I was going much slower. I think the steep downhill forced sprints must have helped with the pace.

By 10 miles I knew that my plan to kick in the last 5k was out of the question. I just maintained the 7:40 pace and was happy even to do that. The next two miles had a couple more really steep hills and I finally started catching some more runners as they died on the hills. About the 11.5 mile mark we started up the last hill and I knew that after this is would be smooth sailing. I powered up the hill, passing two more runners and even surging as I passed them just to make sure that they were completely demoralized and didn't try to latch on and follow me.

The next .5 miles was down hill and I lengthened my stride and let my body go limp trying to regain as much energy as I could for the final mile.

As I hit the 12 mile mark I consciously picked up the pace. Now I was running hard, but still tried to stay relaxed. With about 800 meters left I saw some two more runners up ahead and decided to really push it so as to catch them. I caught one of them with 200 left but there was still a woman up ahead of me. At this point we came out of the woods into the final straight away. She was still 50 feet ahead but I could tell she didn't have a kick. I went into full sprint mode and finally caught her with about 10 meters to spare. I hit the last 1.1 miles at a 6:40 pace so I guess I had something left after all. It helped that it was flat.


Happy with my finish I did some stretching and cooled down the 1.5 miles back to the car... not nearly as enthusiastic about where I parked as I was during my warm-up.


All in all the race was a positive experience. McMillan running calculator predicts my marathon time at 8:00 exactly based on todays time. Considering how hilly it was I suppose this was a positive sign. On the other hand the last 6 miles were ridiculously hard and I couldn't imagine doing another 13.1 afterwards.

I'm still having trouble hitting an 8:00 minute pace and am really going to have to focus on finding that groove if I want to run a successful race in Chicago.

Day 96

Back on the road.

Distance: 5.0 miles
Duration: 38:14
Pace: 7:39
HR Avg/Max: 154/171
notes:
Wound up running harder than planned but after 5 days off I felt good and wanted to get going. I just tried to run at a comfortable pace and focused on being fast but relaxed. Hopefully I didn't over do it before tomorrow's half marathon!

Day 91-95

Temporarily out of commission :(

My right shin and left achilles tendon were bothering me so I figured I'd take Monday and Tuesday off to get some extra rest... I did and felt somewhat better on Wednesday. At this point I was in Wisconsin helping my mother clean out my grandparents apartment. After a day of working I decided to head out for a evening 5 mile run...

I set off but after the first mile disaster stuck!



Here's the image from my run... as you see I was running down Rosa road and everything was going good and then suddenly I took a round about detour... this is me running behind a bush to let out a monster, liquid, literal shit storm. Seems like I must of had food poisoning from dinner. I'll spare the details but I had to run home shirtless. I ran the mile back home and spent the next 2 hours on and off the toilet.

Thursday I was still pretty wrecked and Friday I spent the whole day moving furniture... so basically 5 days off in a row... not great timing, but at least I had a chance to let some of my aches and pains heal.

The achilles is still barking, but I think with some icing and stretching things will be fine.

Day 89, 90

Weekend recap

Saturday, Sept 5th

Distance: 5.0 miles (+.66 mile cool down)
Duration: 38:30
Pace: 7:42
HR Avg/Max: 153/175
notes:
Awesome off road trail run... kept right near pace for the first 4 miles (7:57) but then really kicked it up the last mile (6:57). Finished with a short cool down.

Sunday, Sept 6th

Distance: 20.5 miles
Duration: 3:23:24
Pace: 9:55
HR Avg/Max: 123/156
notes:
Awesome 20 miler up and down lakeshore drive. The pace was conservative but probably wise since I'm ending this week with a total of 50 miles. Feet and shin hurt by the end but not anything out of the ordinary. When I got back from the out and back route my watch only registered 19.75 miles so I ran an additional .75 miles at 8:13 pace so that I would have 50 for the week. I'm glad I could finish strong, but not glad that I didn't get under 8 minute pace for the last .75 since I want to run this pace for an entire marathon.

Day 88

Should take the day off but I haven't been much for days off lately... hopefully my lack of rest won't catch up with me before the marathon.

My shin has been bothering me and I know I should be resting it, but a steady diet of ice and compression have actually been keeping it pretty well in check... It actually feels pretty good until I go out and run on it... after the run it's usually irritated and dully sore.

Distance: 3.25 miles
Duration: 25:44
Pace: 7:55
HR Avg/Max: 153/166
notes:
wanted to make this a marathon pace workout. i want to have a better feeling of what marathon pace is. did a good job of keeping pace, but the effort seemed pretty intense. it was also 15 degrees hotter than it has been so hopefully that had something to do with it. i can't say that I'm confident that 8 minute miles is really my marathon pace but I'll keep training like it is, at least for now.

Day 87

Recovery

Distance: 5.30 miles
Duration: 50:01
Pace: 9:26
HR Avg/Max: 130/141
notes:
not much to say... took it really easy today after yesterdays hard workout and before this weekends hard workouts. Still having some shin splint pain, but I've been doing everything I can to treat it so hopefully it won't develop into anything major.

Day 86

Goddamn... today was the work out to end all work outs (hopefully not literally)

Distance: 10 miles
Duration: 1:23:09
Pace: 8:19
HR Avg/Max: 149/179
notes:
Decided to do a little extra hill work today so I ran down to the Springdale cemetery down near the river. It was a 3 mile run to get there and I took those first three miles pretty easy. From there the madness began. I ran to the first big hill and sprinted up it which took about a minute and pushed my heart rate up to 177. I slowed the pace for recovery and did a mile loop through the cemetery getting my heart rate back to 134 before I got back to the hill again and sprinted up it again, this time taking my heart rate to 179. Again I recovered and decided it was time to head back home. Leaving the cemetery required that I climb another big hill so I sprinted up that one, again pushing my heart rate to 177.

For the three miles home I decided to do some fartleks. I did 4 1 minute fartleks at 5:30 mile pace taking my heart rate up to 177,178,177,& 177. Finally I was approaching home. At this point I had done 9.4 miles so I figured I might as well do a bit of a cool down and make it an even 10. I ran a extra loop with tired dead legs and arrived home half dead.

I downed a protein shake and jumped in the ice bath. Then I crashed out on the futon for 2 hours and had one of the best naps of my running career.

I'm still a bit groggy but I'm feeling alright. My achilles are a bit sore from the speed but the shin pain is pretty negligible! Tomorrow will have to be a recovery day for sure!

Day 85

First workout of week 13... less than 6 weeks to go... week 12 was amazing! I really felt like I hit a new level of fitness and my confidence soared... but what a difference a day can make.

After taking yesterday off I'm not nearly as confident as I was after Sunday. Off days just really don't play well in my world. Not sure why, but the day after an off day I really feel worse than any other running day. Probably psychological but it still sucks all the same.

For some reason I just can't shake a sense of impending doom today. I still have 3 weeks of hard training before my taper, and two 20 milers to run and it just feels like something is going to go wrong. I must be going crazy!

Anyway, nothing else to do then tell myself I'm crazy and go get my milage in.

Distance: 5.35 miles
Duration: 45:23
Pace: 8:29
HR Avg/Max: 144/163
notes:
started out easy and felt good the first two miles. Third mile felt a little laborious, but mostly just a mental block. 4th mile contained my favorite hill which was the reason that I run this course, which kicked the heart rate up to 163. 5th mile I cruised in and finally started feeling good about the run... found the zone by the end and didn't really want to stop, but figured I had a lot more milage to run this week so I better just follow the plan!