Archive for November, 2009

Got back to running on Thursday morning, albeit stupidly going 8 when I should have capped it at 6 or 7.  My left calf, which ached during the race (maybe from all that starting up and slowing down) was still hurting.  I was already 4 miles out when I realized it wasn’t going to let up but I didn’t dare shorten the run since that would have required walking and my running ground is on the marathon course – no way in hell was I going to replay Sunday’s shame, recovery run or not, so rational self argued with wounded pride and the latter won.

This morning I went for a more reasonable 6.  The calf was better yet still a bit sore.  It’s nothing serious, just an annoying consolation prize after successfully remaining ache-free the entire cycle.

There were a couple bright spots this week.  First off, it looks like my evil upstairs neighbors are indeed moving out!  I heard them making all sorts of commotion on Wednesday and when I looked out the window, they were loading their refrigerator into somebody’s van.  This is HUGE!  I can’t tell you how depressing it’s been living beneath them – I got used to the street noise soon after moving in, but their constant loud presence waking me up and the memory of our altercation colored every single day these past two months with a negative vibe.  Not a good way to live.

Second bright spot was Thanksgiving dinner at Nick’s.  He made a wonderful feast for 6 of us which was just the ticket for warming my heart and belly.  Now I need to work on said belly which I’ve been stuffing for the last week with anything and everything.  Emotional eating + less running = Clydesdale in the making.

As you probably know, I spend my social internet time on the Runners World forums, almost exclusively on MRT (Marathon Race Training).  I’ve made some real friends there and love the vibe, so even after last year’s marathon, when my goal race for Spring was a Half, I continued to post there.

Most of the posters on MRT are what I call serial marathoners, they do one marathon after another – some a la Maniac style, with a few short weeks between, some in standard cycles.  Either way, I never got the lure of wanting to do consecutive marathons.  I enjoyed my short race training this year and felt it really improved my speed – I tend to think constant marathon training can potentially dull speed since the workouts are slower and longer.   Bottom line, it just didn’t appeal to me as a year-long endeavor.

So when it came to qualifying for Boston, I wasn’t even sure I would do it, it meant going from a Philly cycle, short break, then into a Boston cycle through the winter.   However, the Women’s BQ thread I’ve been involved with for over a year has been churning out BQs left and right, so the chance to meet even more of my imaginary friends in the flesh was enough to commit to it.

Additionally, over the last few months, I’ve been spending most of my posting time in the Sub 3:20 thread (which needs to be renamed soon since most of them are way faster now).  That thread differs greatly from the Women’s in that it’s predominantly men, which I can’t help but adore.  Along with great training conversation there’s a plethora of bawdy humor that always makes me laugh out loud – I just love those freaks.

Between these two factions, along with some other forumites I enjoy but who don’t post in those threads, Boston is set to be one huge-ass party.  Admittedly, I’m sad that I’ll be missing a short-race training cycle and I’m not super excited about doing 20-milers in the winter, but I ran straight through the winter last year, so I’m figuring it won’t be that different, just a bit longer.

So Boston in Spring.  Now about Fall…

Almost all of my Sub 3:20 cohorts are already talking about doing Chicago 2010.  Since some of them won’t be doing Boston, the idea of meeting everybody, some for the second time, sounds too good to pass up.   Then there’s that other meeting, the Marathon itself…

I feel like Sunday I had a fight with a high school slut bully and the bitch won.   That’s the second time she’s kicked my ass and I’m not happy about it.  In the comments to my last post, Ewen and Joe have differing opinions on how many marathons I should do.  Ewen suggests 3 or more, Joe says 1.  I was thinking 1 was plenty, too.  Until now.

Having attached so. much. importance. to that one single raceday only to have it fizzle in my face is making me think it’s time to make the marathon a little less precious.  So I’m about to test the waters of serial marathoning:  Philly Fall ’09, Boston Spring ’10, Chicago Fall ’10.  Plus the Shamrock Half in March…it’s going to be a traveling year!

So you better watch out slut bully marathon, I’m coming for you twice in 2010 and while I may not be carrying a razor blade under my tongue, I’ll be kicking you into submission one way or another.

First off, group hug to everyone who commented. You guys gave me a lot to think about, important stuff to use for next time, training thoughts for this next cycle and lots to smile over while my brain was in the shop for mental repair.  Which, btw, turns out it was only a light dent, didn’t need a complete body overhaul after all.

The whole digging deep deal is something I’ve decided that, in the end, there was nothing I could have done mentally that would have kept me running without the walk breaks, my body was just not going to do it for longer than a minute, every time I started up, it genuinely hurt, I felt like I was pushing a 250lb weight.  And today, I am in classic marathon pain.  My quads and calves are killing me, but I like it, it proves to me that it wasn’t my brain saying “I don’t like this, let’s walk” but my body saying “I can’t do this, let’s walk”.

So I think my Giver Upper thoughts were misplaced, it would have been more accurate to berate myself at the time for attaching to the pace group around mile 11.5 when I had no business doing that at all.  I wonder what I’d have finished in if I hadn’t made that terrible tactical move.  Maybe 3:25?  That was a huge error and I was so driven by ego (can’t let 3:20 go!!!) that I totally messed it up.  Of course it sucks, but at least I can use this as valuable information for the future.

Nutrition and Hydration: I ate 3 gels, forgot about the last one, but I had a cup of gatorade so I was ok in that department. Since the race was already stupid, I decided to practice drinking straight from the cups a couple times since I suck at that.  It just confirmed that my bottle is worth carrying for 26+ miles.  I can refill it pretty high with 3-4 cups running through one stop.

Shoes:  Mizuno Elixirs (which I’d tested out on long runs) were ok in that I had no toenail problems or blisters, but I was very aware of my foot slapping the pavement starting at mile 15ish and I don’t think that did me any favors, my feet were hurting, so next time I’ll wear my Inspires.

The other thing I’ve been thinking about is this: I had an amazing Spring, that’s when my times dropped faster than I’d ever imagined they would, so most of my races came out better or right on the money with the goals I’d attached to them.  Now things are normalized again, so if I make goals that are on the outside edge of what I can do, there’s a lot bigger chance for a crash and burn.  I need to be a little more modest (aka realistic) in my goals from here on in.

Next marathon is Boston and I’m going to transfer the sub3:20 goal to that.  No chasing a sub 3:17, just plain old difficult enough 3:19:59.  Incidentally, one good thing out of yesterday’s PR is that I’m at least in the first wave at Boston, if only by the skin of my teeth.

So I’m taking it easy through December, haven’t decided on mileage but I’m thinking something around 50-60 with a weekly day off sounds good.  I’ll play it by ear.  No pressure, that’s the ticket.

Where to start?  I won’t go into detail about the FE (forum encounter) except to say these women are as smart, savvy, funny and beautiful as I imagined and as yesterday’s photos illustrate.  It was truly a special gathering of old and new friends.

Afterward brunch and expo, then Kat and Audra come back to my place since they were staying with me.  I was so glad they were there, I was able to almost forget about the race and felt in capable hands since they’ve got a lot of marathons between them.

Race morning: Up at 5:15, slug some coffee and my usual peanut butter bread w/banana  and get myself ready.  I gave my bag for bag check to the girls who offered to carry it so I wouldn’t have to deal with checking it in.

Perfect weather for a race: 44 – 51 and sunny.  I’ve got sunglasses on my head, small water bottle in my hand, socks for arm warmers (which I discard after the 1st mile) and 4 gels.

Get to the race area and slide right into my corral (advantages of living 10 minutes from the start line).  I’m feeling good, I tell myself this is my day and I believe it.  Gun goes off.

First mile 7:53 was slower than I wanted due to the crowd but I’m not worried, lots of time to make that up.  The next few miles are pretty much on 7:30 pace but I know it’s not matching my paceband (which accounted for the course elevation, so indicated faster miles here).  I decided to ignore my paceband from that point on and just listen to my body.  I wanted to try to be as non-negative as possible, though not entirely successful, ignoring the paceband helped.

Mile 8 had a meaty uphill and my pace slowed to 7:50.  Mile 9 had another hill and I handled it ok but knew I was probably slower than what the paceband would have had me do.  At this point, I just said fuck it and told myself to “run within yourself”.  I was already figuring the sub 3:17 was toast and I didn’t want to feel pressured into running badly to make it happen.   Wish I’d stuck to that.

I get out on Kelly Drive, feeling alright, then the 3:20 pace group comes up from behind moving faster than I am.  I kind of panic seeing how fast they’re going compared to me (I still thought I was in 3:20 land at this point), so I decide to hang on, though I have to speed up some to keep up.  That was a major mistake.

The pace leader, incidentally, is an RW forumite as well, Pacer Chris, though he had no idea I was there and wouldn’t have known me if he’d seen me.  Nice guy, great pace leader too.  I follow him for a couple miles and up the last real hill, Lemon Hill, and I can tell my HR is just way higher than it should be.  I hear the people around me talk and they’re very relaxed while I’m not – this is not good.  So at mile 14.5 I sadly let them go and return to running my own race.  But by now I know it’s too late, this is going to be a looooong race.

Mile 16 is 7:56 (there are no hills here, I just can’t move faster), mile 17 is 8:16.  There aren’t any spectators for this portion which makes it very easy to berate myself for realizing that while I want to be competitive in this sport, I’m really just a Giver Upper, I don’t have the “dig deep” gene that a real racer has.  I’ve always felt this though, so it’s nothing new, just good to rub it in when I’m feeling low.

Mile 18 is 8:25.  I reflect at how, for my first marathon last year, this was to be my race pace (which totally got mangled, just as this one was).  Somehow this is amusing and very sour at the same time.  At 18.75, with labored breathing and the knowledge that my effort cannot continue, I take my first walking steps.

It feels like sweet relief, my body getting itself back into a manageable machine, albeit somewhat broken.  On a strangely positive note, I’d already reached Giver Upper stage but had accepted it, so I didn”t even feel bad anymore about my lost goal, it was a done deal so what was I going to do about it?  I know I’ve totally screwed this race so all I can do is try to make it end however I can, which means I end up run/walking the rest of the entire fucking race.

Luckily, I have a Sub 3:20 thread pal’s “voice” ringing in my head, Chris, who told me to relax about PRs and just have fun, so thanks to him and Zab (who sent the sweetest good luck note, also saying “have fun”), I decided that I would not make this a multi-mile self-flogging.  I was going to enjoy what I had and smile.  The new A goal was to get a marathon PR, knowing I could crawl it in at this point – at least that was a given.

I also made a mini-goal to keep me moving, and that was to try and keep my pace no slower than 9min, so I’d walk until I needed to get the time back in order, then run a tiny bit (not even 2 minute stretches, I don’t think) then walk again.  I knew the 3:30 pace group would eventually catch up to me and was kind of hoping I wouldn’t have to see 3:40, but I was pretty much all Fuck It at this point.

I did see a couple of my Women’s BQ pals since there was a long turnaround but couldn’t yell hi back because I’d lost my voice completely, all I had left was a squeak.  So the Manayunk portion was endless but I kept smiling and managed to find some humor out of this ridiculous situation.

I ended up covering a lot more ground than 26.22 because tangents were no longer in my guidebook, I had to stick to the right side of the road so I could stay out of the other runners way.

Oh, and the bibs were funny, they had our names on them and unlike Steamtown, when someone said, “you can do it” or “woohoo,  great job” and I just wanted to punch them since I was so obviously struggling, this time I thought it was really sweet when people called my name and I waved or smiled in thanks, though kept feeling as if I’d let them down when I began walking again.

At mile 25-something I saw my girls screaming for me, Kat yelled something about where we were supposed to meet but I didn’t hear.  I was running when I passed them and wondered if they saw me start walking a bit afterwards.  They knew it was bad anyway since I was so behind at this point, but I was actually feeling pretty good, all things considered (mentally, I mean…my feet hurt and my left shin was aching).

As I neared the museum with about 1/2 mile to go, the cutest thing happened.  People were loving saying my name, maybe because it’s a funny waitress name, but as I started the last rise I started walking again (seriously, I did that shit for 8 miles) a guy yells out, “c’mon Flo, it’s just 1/4 mile to the top of the hill and you’re there” and there were tons of spectators lining the course, so I waved to the guy, wry grin on my face and started running.  Both sides of the crowd started screaming like crazy “yay Flo, wooohoo, Go Flo”, it was surreal.  I’ve always said I didn’t care about crowd support but this was something so special, I was grateful like nothing you can believe.

I made it up the rise and I’m really ready to get this party over with so I pick up the pace and of course, at this very point, I feel the Bear knocking on the door.  For my non-running friends, the Bear is when you want to shit.  I have never, not one single time, in any of my training runs experienced the Bear.  But now, when I’m just .25mi from the finish of hell-race, all I can think about is holding my damn sphincter so tight, I could have strangled a baby with my ass.  Thankfully (because that would have really been a dramatic finish with or without the baby), I kept the Bear at bay.

I came in at 3:33:59.

So I hobble to a pretzel and am actually amazed that with all that walking the time wasn’t that bad.  I’m feeling pretty good about the craziness of the situation and can’t wait to see my girls and talk about it.

But I can’t find them.  They have my clothes and my apartment keys.

I end up walking back and forth for an entire hour looking for them.   We were all so dumb for not having a plan, I guess we all figured it’d be pretty easy to find each other but there thousands of people.  At one point I went to the med tent because I was so cold and asked if I could just stand there for a bit.  I borrow the medic guy’s phone to call Nick thinking he has keys to my apartment, plus I left my phone at home so then I could call Audra or Kat and find them that way but he wasn’t answering.

I start getting really depressed and wondering what the hell to do.  I was freezing and tired of being on my feet so finally, I found a bit of curb in a middle area and sat, just hoping they’d find me.  Like an angel, Nina (one of the Women’s BQ babes) finds me and immediately calls the others like a cop would, “I’ve got her!”  She gives me her jacket and I start blubbering.  All the tension from the race and me feeling lost and helpless just spilled out.

Of course, it turns out we were all going to the same places, just a few steps behind each other so in no time at all, we’re assembled, the girls hold the space blanket around me and I change in the middle of the throng, feeling much better and warm.  We walk to a bar for the apres race gathering (thanks Caroline, you really did a stellar job of all the event planning) and have a great time rehashing.

Everyone is insanely supportive as I know you, my readers, will be.  And I was in a great mood after I’d had a Bloody Mary in me, but walking back home, the fatigue and the weight of a failed race became very heavy.  My “lemonade out of lemons” feeling that I’d managed to hold on to throughout the hardest part of the race was gone.  I just felt and still feel sad.

There are things I realize, like it’s only my 2nd marathon so I shouldn’t be so disheartened, and whatever my body’s been up to these last couple months with the HR was something that wasn’t going to magically disappear even if I did find the cause.  The worst part is this feeling of unease of what does it all mean? Where am I, fitness-wise?  Have I been fooling myself?  Was I pushing the workouts in a false way?  It’s painful to think of these things but to simply say “naaa” is just being an ostrich about it.

My immediate plan was to do like last year and spend the next few weeks playing around with 5K workouts and going for a new 5K PR, but I’m feeling so empty right now, like I can’t fight another fight, even if it’s only 3.1 miles. I feel like my training is one big question mark.  But I’ll get over it.  Glass half full, that’s me.

For my friends, I’m going to hibernate tonight, I don’t want to talk to anyone, so sorry for the unreturned messages and phone calls,  I know you get it.  You know what I hate though?  Is now you’re all going to be so sweet and do like I do when I read a crappy race report, be “great job considering you had to walk blah blah”.  But being on this end of it, I just feel a little pathetic about it.  So tell me I suck. It’ll make me feel better.

P.S. I want to say hi to Jhowdy, who I saw on the course looking fine, Christine, who was flying, Dave, who was also looking great, JoeShmoe who gave me a needed hug at around mile 23 and thank you Amy (my new self-appointed niece) who gave me the most incredible banana bread and some scented recovery salts in which I just took a long bath – they’re fantastic!  Plus all the wonderful BQ Babes: Kat and Audra (my personal race crew), Mir, Tara, Nina, Mary, Amy, Lynn, Jo, Caroline, Jo, Fran, mm64 (sorry for the name forgetting!) and their most excellent hubbies who managed to hang with the chicks and fit right in. Also, a shoutout to Robert, a fellow blogging pal I finally got to meet at the Expo.  What a cool culture, this running thing.

Edit: Lest you guys think I’m still in a funk, I’m not!!  I felt A-OK the next morning.  Read the next entry, Race Wrap Up for my thoughts on the whole thing.

Our most beautiful Women’s BQ thread babes.

OK kids, this is it until tomorrow.  Whhheeeeeeee……

I finally took everyone’s advice today – I put the HR monitor strap in a storage box under the bed and immediately felt better for it.  However, I still was dissatisfied because I am someone who needs to know Why.  Why was my HR higher these past couple months?  I was near admitting I must be overtrained, though I didn’t fit any of the signs.  I just needed a reason for it and tonight, I found it.

I was looking at the calendar and figuring out when the disparity started.  It was soon after my last Half, the PDR.  OK, so did I blow a heart fuse in that race?  No.  Did I start taking a new supplement?  A new allergy drug?  No.  What I did was, on Sept. 27th, one week after that race, I quit smoking pot.

Spending some quality time with my good friend Google tonight, I learned that right after smoking  pot, your HR becomes elevated for the next couple hours or so, that’s commonly known.  But what isn’t so commonly known is that if you’re a chronic user, which I’m embarrassed to say I was, it has the opposite effect.  It lowers your HR, not right after smoking but all the time.

Presented with excerpts from books and medical studies that finally answered my question Why, I’m finally able to put the overtraining fear to bed, that wasn’t it at all.  This study in particular focuses on marijuana users after a month of monitored abstinence and has this to say in the Results section (I’ll make it green in honor of weed):

“Heart rate for the marijuana subjects tested at 28 to 30 days after admission was significantly greater than the values obtained within 72 hours of admission.“

The average rise in resting HR after a month of being clean was 10 beats (8 for the Light users, 12 for the Heavys).  That’s a lot! And it explains everything.

While I’m being honest here – because what the hell, maybe somebody else can benefit – aside from one two-month break, I’ve been a pothead the whole time I’ve been running.  I should qualify that because I never actually ran stoned (well, I did once and didn’t like it), but it was an evening activity that I enjoyed for a long, long time.  I would say I qualify as a chronic user because I did it most every night, though using that study, I’d have been considered a “light” user by the quantity I took.

The funny thing is, I had made a jokey mention of it to my Sub3:20 friends a few weeks ago, thinking that getting off pot could have contributed to the HR weirdness, but I only meant it in the psychological way that not having a stress outlet might make me more anxiety-ridden, not that there would be a real physiological thing going on.

I only wish I’d have been into HR stuff last year when I was prepping for Steamtown.  I took a pot break back then too but only wore my monitor once throughout that whole cycle, so there’s no data to compare, maybe I would have figured it out sooner. No matter, I won’t have to do this again.  I want to be a the best runner I can be and smoking will never help, so I’m off the stuff for good.  OK, maybe an occasional party toke, but no more pothead Flo. Tense Flo is where it’s at from now on! Just kidding. No I’m not.  I hope I am, this tense shit is for the birds.