Archive for August 10th, 2008

I just completed my first Marathon Paced run, ever. I’d been both dreading and looking forward to it all week. This would be my first reading of where I stand in the midst of my training, so it was important for me to give myself the best possible scenario as far as sleeping and eating beforehand.

Which makes you wonder why I’d accept a last-minute invitation to my friend Yvonne’s for dinner where I was self-forced to drink 3 glasses of wine plus a touch of Sambuca before joyfully (drunkly) plopping into bed. I did manage to be asleep by midnight, so the sleeping part was a success, but I could have done without the boozy carb-load.

I was also psyched about the forecast (woo! supposed to be 67 degrees at 7am, can’t wait!!) That turned out to be bogus. When I left the house at 6:30 it was 77 w/heat index so any extra weather induced speed wasn’t happening in my neighborhood. Pooh.

I got my handheld, filled my gel-flask with a couple gels and a bit of water, slapped a visor on my head and left for my MP adventure.

During the 3 warmup miles, I took the occasion to finally use, for the very first time, a porta-potty in the park. It was all I imagined and less. Seriously, I have never seen one filled so precariously high. Disgusting.

As you can imagine from the prelude, I was whining for most of the run, thinking woulda, shoulda, coulda and “damn, this is harder than I thought it’d be”. It was pretty disconcerting, to be honest. At one point, I told myself, “there’s no whining in Marathon Training” which shut my addled brain up for about a mile, but then it was back to it’s bitching and moaning and numerous decisions to downgrade my goal.

When I got tired of that, I made silent remarks to the many overflowing packs of Team In Training people who haven’t figured out that we all SHARE the bike path, bikers and runners, so staying on the right side like the signs tell you to (and as would common sense if a person had a clue), is the right thing to do. I was this close to plunging my elbow into one of those charitable white t-shirts.

I really shouldn’t have had that wine last night.

Despite all the grouchy inner chatter, I managed to complete the stupid run at the correct pace, 8:22 (I needed 8:23) and that included stopping to refill my bottle once and stopping to pick up some car keys a runner in front of me dropped, and then getting them back to her.

Now that I’m back home and looking at my logs and thinking about it more, I’m not ready to switch my goal just yet. My friend Joe, who is speedy as hell (3:09 marathon) and who did Pfitzinger too, said it wasn’t till the VO2max work came into play that his pace felt more doable, so I’m going to resist comparing myself to a couple speedy gal-pals in my Women’s BQ thread who report their MP runs are “comfortable” – their paces are more aggressive than mine to begin with. Besides, whenever I read about someone doing an MP run in the Marathon Training forum, “comfortable” is not a common adjective, so I’m not downgrading yet.

On an all-together different bummer note, I initially chose Steamtown because a couple RW forum friends were doing it, then I kind of talked my other forum buddies, Matt and Joye into doing it, too. The first two girls have already dropped out due to injury and now Matt has a strained calf that the doc says he has to stay off of until he can manage stairs comfortably (which I’m hoping with all hope will only be a week or so, at the most). If that’s not enough, Joye is having physical troubles as well. So here’s to Matt and Joye, please be healthy and get there with me, I’m rooting for us to get this thing done together and celebrate our first marathon with all the excitement and wonder we’ll have left in us. Be well, both of you!