marathon blog post

Time to catch up! I'm going to speed through all of the past long runs to catch up to where we are today. Progress has been made, and it must be documented!

February 27, 2010: Excuses
I showed up to this 18-miler with no intention to run. My foot still had the glaring blood blister; I hadn't gotten a chance to buy new shoes yet (see "Sick" by Shel Silverstein); and I convinced myself that I would attend our team pre-run discussion, leave, buy new shoes, and run the next day instead.

That didn't work. I wanted to get the run over with (not the best attitude to tackle 18 miles, but it happens), and not many folks had shown up to that particular team run. Somehow, that motivated me to want to do it all the more. Not to mention, my homies Laura and Erin would join me if I ran that day. So we ran.

And we walked!

This was the first time we heeded our coach's advice to walk one minute for every nine minutes we ran. None of us had been eager to try this, since walking felt so much like giving up somehow. But when the walk-breaks are planned, brief, and all throughout the run (as opposed to suddenly decided upon near the end of the run when you're out of breath and feel like you can't go on), they're wonderful.

Though it seems counter-intuitive, our pace didn't suffer. We all found that we ran faster during the nine minute intervals with scheduled walk breaks than we would have without walking, so we felt that we ended the run with just as good of a time and more energy. This run made us believers.

March 6, 2010: Owning the Bike Path
Back to just 13 miles for this run, and there wasn't a regular team meeting scheduled. I met Erin in Arlington to knock out a relatively easy, unofficial half-marathon on the Bike Path. You might recall that this was the same setting that our harder-than-it-ever-should-have-been 17 miles was just a few weeks previous; we were happy to own the route this time. We continued with the run/walk method, and we even managed to conquer Park Hill *two* times without dying. Check!

March 13, 2010: "I Might Die Here"
The Monday following this run, I overheard Erin tell another one of our coworkers, "At one point, I told myself I had to put one foot in front of the other, or else I might die there." I knew immediately she was talking about this run.

This was another team run mile marker: 19 miles in the pouring rain and gusting wind. This day was just begging to be legendary.

I wasn't nervous about running in the rain on this Saturday, since we had done it more than one time before. One glance at the weekend's forecast also confirmed that the rain would last all weekend, so there was no reason not to run with the rest of the team on Saturday--it's not like running Friday or Sunday would spare me from getting wet.

Unfortunately, my overconfidence regarding the weather led me to under-dressing for the first time. I didn't bring gloves along, and I chose a t-shirt and track jacket instead of double-layering sleeves with a long-sleeve and track jacket as I should have.

At one point in the run, Laura and I stopped under a bridge to take shelter from the monsoon, and we both worked to try to open a packet of carb gel she had brought. I volunteered to help when she initially couldn't get it, figuring my lack of gloves would provide my fingers more dexterity. Instead, the cold had left my hands unable to function properly, and they didn't listen to my brain's instructions to separate the two sides of the plastic packet. Laura ended up tearing the top off with her teeth, and we made our way back into the rain, determined to get the run over with.

Weather was a mammoth challenge to this run, but I can't emphasize how difficult the distance was to conquer as well. When I first looked at our training run schedule, I stopped considering the differences between long runs once those numbers got into the teens. At the time, there seemed a gigantic difference between 2-mile runs and 4-mile runs, but 17-mile runs and 19-mile runs sounded pretty much the same. Once you get into numbers that high, a 2-mile difference just doesn't matter that much, right?

Ask me that question about the difference between 12 and 14, and I'll actually still agree with you. However, something happens between 17 and 19. I think this may be the Ominous Thing that runners always refer to as The Wall.

Near the end of the run, the wind had picked up, and we had to run directly into it. The rain had gone in shifts throughout the three hours and some that we were outside, and it seemed like it had just started to pick up and really come down again. And sometime around Mile 17, I just felt done. I didn't have energy left, and I knew the day's finish line wasn't just around the corner. We still had something like 20 minutes of running left, and I didn't envision any possible way my legs could carry me that much longer.

This is where running with the Great Lady Laura comes in handy. Laura ran in the same weather I did, the same distance, and faced the same challenges--actually, arguably many more challenges, since her blog will tell you that she also has to deal with diabetes on top of all of this. And yet, shortly before we hit the 19 mile mark tracked by her GPS watch--shortly before I heard the sweet "beep beep beep!" sound I had been waiting three hours to hear--Laura suggested, "Let's run to 19.1--just in case Lisa [another teammate's] watch was right and we're still a tenth of a mile short." I do not exaggerate when I say that Laura is Great. She's also insane. =)

We hit 19. We kept running. We hit 19.1. We were just a couple blocks away from making it back to the gym that serves as our usual starting and ending point. We walked across the street at my request, then kept running.

We hit 19.2. We finally hit the gym. We hit the water fountain. We had hit the wall, but we'd made it to the other side.

March 20, 2010: The Grinch & Her Whip
Now that I've properly introduced Laura, it's time to give Erin the same proper introduction. Erin is, by all accounts, The Queen of Hills.

Our run for this week was another one with relatively short mileage--just 12 miles, and no team run scheduled. Erin, Laura, and I all met in Arlington to knock out the 12 together, and Erin (also Queen of Plotting) was kind enough to put together a route.

I forget the total number of hills we tackled in the couple of hours we were on the road, but it was more than one. Erin also wisely put the majority of elevation challenges in the second half of our run, to more closely mirror what we'll face in the marathon. Though our schedule would have you believe this was an "easy" run compared to the mileage we face in the Saturdays directly before and after this one, Erin ensured that "easy" would need to be listed in quotation marks when we typed up blog posts about her route. We decided that Erin was The Grinch; Laura and I were Max.

I wish I had a photo of the hill at Porter Street. We came to an intersection at somewhere around Mile 10, I would guess--the point in the run where I'm just out-of-it enough that I'm taking in very little scenery except for what's directly in front of me or has potential to hit me. At the intersection, Erin pointed to the right, and it seemed I was faced with a piece of sidewalk just a few feet away from my head. It wasn't an illusion--the hill was just that steep that the ground rose almost that quickly. Though Heartbreak lasts much longer than Porter Street, it's got nothing on how sharp of a rise Porter presents.

This was also what we called our first summer run--we began just after 2 PM, when sunscreen was warranted and Erin tried out running with a hat to keep the sun out of her eyes. We even stopped for a water break at a convenience store mid-run; between the hills and the warmer weather, it was easy to go through water more quickly than we'd planned.

Though this run went overall very well, the last hill we had to conquer made me break into what Erin termed the "Kelly wants to get this run over with" pace. I have absolutely nothing to prove on hills, but I love/hate them--the "hate" part of me just wants to get them over with as quickly as possible. It was shortly after I put on a bit more speed that Erin gave us all our animal counterparts for running:

My friend at home has already labeled me Kelly Gazelly, so that was taken care of. Kelly = Gazelle. Laura = Wolf. Erin = Bull.

We all get the job done. =)