Go! Run Fast!

Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life, and also the first day of the last week of my Chicago Marathon recovery month. I’ve also indicated this to be the first week of my Miami Marathon training plan. Everything seems to be going well. My runs have felt good, my gruesome blisters have all healed, and I feel like my energy is up. I don’t have any lingering injuries.

The Miami Plan also feels doable at this point. My only issue is that I would prefer to do my 20-miler a week earlier so I can do it here on my native trail instead of home in Crystal Lake (since it’s scheduled for the Sunday after xmas). However, because the plan is so compressed and I’m trying to increase my mileage as gradually as possible to prevent injury, the room to move it around isn’t really there.

So here’s to training!

Flights to Miami are much less frequent and more expensive than I expected. I had a free round trip on Southwest (they go to Ft. Lauderdale) that I was hoping to use, but the return flight I needed was not available each of the several times I checked last week.

After fully scoping out my options, I decided it was best to just pay to fly Southwest anyway. At least their tickets can be changed and reused later if something were to happen. This morning, I went back to book the flight and, just in case, I checked on my award again. It was set to expire February 6, 2009 - only about a week after the marathon - so I was contemplating a call to Southwest to see if I could apply the whole thing to cover one leg of the trip. That’s kind of a waste of a round trip on one hand, but letting it expire and not using it is even more of a waste.

Before calling, I made one last check of the dates, and over the weekend an award seat opened on the return flight. I grabbed that ticket so fast, my browser isn’t sure what hit it. So now, for the total cost of $5, I’m booked on exactly the right flights for Miami.

I went ahead and got myself a rental car with a Garmin, so I think I am all secure for travel.
I also scored with respect to hotels last week. I had booked three rooms in South Beach (about 5 miles from the start) because the hotels near the start were either full, very expensive, or required a 2-night stay. I kept searching and I think eventually someone’s website got tired of me and just offered up 3 rooms at a reasonable rate in the Doubletree at the start line. This is great because (1) it’s at the start line and (2) it’s at the Doubletree which means cookies.

Now, with all my travel planned, all I have to do is train for 3 months, avoid an injury, and show up. Piece of cake.

Darling Brother Tom wrote a post that nearly mocked me but was also scarily accurate regarding my love for the medal. I do indeed love my medals and getting one is pretty much a requirement for me to run a race. I don’t especially need the medals to be giant or super fancy, though it doesn’t hurt.

The Miami Marathon takes their medals seriously. They have spinny medals and even have a defensive little note about this on their website:

Please note: To our knowledge, the ING Miami Marathon® was the first race in the world to have a spinning medal. It is now the first to have a double spinner and the first to include a diamond! The spinning medal idea originated at our race in 2004.

No need to get defensive, Miami! You have a cool medal. We don’t care if you were first.

While I have always appreciated their reverence for the medal, I saw this little banner on their website today. It made me laugh and also like them more. Talk about taking medals seriously!

I want to do another marathon before Chicago next year. I looked around and found two options: the Miami Marathon in late January and the Georgia Marathon (in Atlanta) in late March. Let’s review how I came do my decision:

Race	Pros	Cons
Miami	It’s Miami. In January. Flat course. Warm and sunny - in January Spinny medal with a palm tree and a little diamond in it Good weather Access to good cuban food	Shorter recovery time after Chicago
Georgia	Longer recovery time after Chicago Slightly closer flight	Not Miami in January. Hilly, described by some previous runners as “brutal”. It’s already warm at my house by late March. Unlike January when I would go to Miami. Diamond-free, spinnless medal

So yeah, I picked Miami. I also convinced Mom and Tom to tentatively sign up for the half marathon (Tom says: “Tough decision - do I want to go to Miami in January. I don’t know…”).I registered making at least a $90 committment, and also put together a training plan. That’s the one thing that freaked me out. I have a marathon training spreadsheet. I plug in the date of the race at the end and it creates a table with the dates and distances for training plan I use. (Yes, I realize this makes me a huge dork). For the Miami race, my usual training would have started in August. Instead, I’ll be starting in November. I hope I’ve maintined enough of my fitness from the Chicago training and that I heal up well over the next couple weeks so I can handle this without difficulty.

In the meantime, I’m going to re-watch some CSI:Miami reruns to get a better sense for the course.

Now that I’ve had a day to recover, I may have a bit more to say about the Marathon.

It was not my best race. I was hoping to beat my 2006 time of 5:11:something and, if things were good, maybe even break 5 hours. However, it was 40 degrees warmer than in 2006 and I had a hole in my leg. I finished about 13 minutes slower, but that was fine with me. I also finished only 4 minutes behind MOM, which is impressive for me.
The race started very well. I was ahead of the pace I had planned for and while the hole in my leg certainly hurt, it wasn’t unbearable or even really distracting.

As I passed mile 16 and 17, I really felt the wall coming at me. It’s odd that this never happens in my training, but has happened in my last 2 marathons. My energy completely dropped off, I felt like I couldn’t breathe right, my head was fuzzy, I think I may have cried when I saw something emotional. I was taking the hard candy people were passing out, trying to get my blood sugar back up. Luckly, they stick the Power Gel right there. I took a couple, ate one, and packed the other away for mile 22. I never fail to be completely impressed at how well those things work, and how quickly. By the time I was through the water stop, I was back at it.

The heat didn’t really bother me, but it certainly affected me. I was drinking a full cup of gatorade and another of water at every rest stop. They were much more frequent than usual - some miles had 2 stops - and yet I never had to stop for the bathroom. In 2006 I probably stopped 3 or 4 times. In fact, I was even thirsty between aid stations, so dehydration was clearly an issue.

I also was subconsciously compensating for my holy leg (the left one). I didn’t notice a difference in my stride, but by mile 20 my right knee was very tight. I always run the full race and walk through the aid stations. I kept that up here, but I was always VERY ready to walk when I reached them. My knee didn’t hurt at all when I walked, but the tightness and pain crept back after each aid station. I never had these issues in training, but it makes sense that I’d use that leg differently with the consistent pain on the left. I really felt that yesterday. It was hard to make it down the stairs because my right IT band was so inflamed.
This factor is the thing that added the most time to my race. I was taking 2 minutes to make it through the aid stations, walking from the very start to the very end. Usually, they would only take me a minute because I’d drink and then go. Since there were probably 8 stations I hit this way, it added a good 8-10 minutes to my time.

In any case, it’s now almost 2 days later and I’m in pretty good shape. I have some nasty blisters that are healing, and the expected muscle soreness, but I didn’t do any real damage.

Major points to my brother Tom who ran a brave and smart race in the face of a really serious injury - much worse than my mostly-healed-up-leg-hole.
I’m now starting to think about my next marathon. It will depend on my recovery this next month but if all goes well, I’m seriously considering Miami or Mardi Gras, which are a week apart at the end of January / beginning of February. There’s also the Georgia Marathon in Atlanta in late March. We’ll see…

I have many things to say about today’s 2008 Chicago Marathon, but I will start with heaps of praise. It was very hot, and the organizers could not have done a better job. There were a lot more aid stations than in previous years, and they were all needed. All were overstocked with water and gatorade, even for people like me who were toward the back. As it got warmer, they deployed misting stations all over the course. They brought in trucks with cases of bottled water than they placed between aid stations. The medical tents were well stocked and not over burdened. All the volunteers and staff were very friendly and supportive.

While I was far behind a personal best - in part because of the weather (and also the hole in my leg) - I was extremely impressed at the organization throughout every step of the race. Kudos to the organizers who learned from last year and did exactly the right things to be prepared this time.

Today was my 5 mile “long” run, the last weekend run before the race. It was going great until 2 blocks from home. There is construction on my street and they are putting in curbs and sidewalks. There are deep gaps between the road and curbs, and some of the corner sidewalks and curbs are not in yet. I came upon one of these and had to run on the road through the intersection. When I tried to get back up on the sidewalk, I tripped on the gap. I fell forward and impaled my leg on a piece of rebar that was sticking up around the place they planned to lay the sidewalk.

It went in about an inch and opened up a wide gash, about 3 inches long, an inch wide, and an inch deep. It removed quite a big chunk of my flesh in the process. I will not give all the gory details except to say that flesh continued to ooze out of this wound until the doctor stitched it closed.

I walked home, drove myself to the hospital, and after a bit of an annoying wait in line to be triaged, Holy Cross Hospital did what a hospital should do. The nurse, upon seeing the giant hole in my leg, sent me right up to the Emergency Care wing where I was put in a room without waiting and they started treating me immediately. I think the round-trip was only about 90 minutes- pretty impressive. I am now the proud owner of 6 stitches and a tetanus shot.
I was crying a lot, but not from the pain. It’s really not *that* bad. I was crying because this had great potential to keep me from racing next week. The tears were unnecessary, it turns out, because the doctor said it would be no problem to run as long as I could deal with the feeling of tightness that might come from the stitches. I told her running a marathon hurts anyway. Thus, I’m still on to race and I will look extremely hard core with my row of nasty black stitches and the bruise that is likely to accompany it by next week.

Here’s the picture. Click if you want to see it even bigger and nastier.

I was scheduled to do 13 miles this week and 20 next week, but MOM did her 20 miles this week and I was anxious to do it after the measuring debacle of a couple weeks ago. I felt good this morning, so I decided to do my 20.

After tropical storm hanna WEAKLY passed through on Saturday, the trails were pretty muddy and flooded in parts. I was also committed not to messing up on the trail again. I checked the maps several times. However, I didn’t trust them and brought my watch just in case so I could time myself after the 15 mile mark and make sure I did 5 more miles (interestingly, the last time I timed anything on this watch was the 2006 Chicago Marathon - my finishing time was still on there).

Sure enough, the maps told me to take the wrong bridge, and I ended up going down a dead end and then turning back and finally guessing at the right path to take. Again, this trail was poorly marked. I saw one sign stating the distance to the DC line was 5 miles when I was near the 11 mile marker (and they start at the border). It’s like some drunk guy randomly placed those signs.
Other than those few annoyances the run went very smoothly. I had plenty of energy and nothing hurt. Now I just have to make sure I don’t sprain an ankle or something before October.

Yesterday was supposed to be my 20 mile run. After that math problem, I carefully added up the 2.5 miles past the 15 mile point to give me 20. The run went pretty well. I felt a bit queezy when I woke up, so I had that distracting me a bit, but I ran well and felt fine when I got home.

The problem: my route was only 18.2 miles. There is absolutely no signage for the Rock Creek Trail after the 15 mile point. No mile markers, no signs saying “You are on the Rock Creek Trail”. Nada. One is left to simply guess at where to go. The signs that are on the trail are also wrong a lot of the time. The mile count starts at the DC line and about half a mile past the 8 mile marker, there is a sign that says it’s 7.7 miles to the DC line. I don’t know if they just randomly stuck those signs in without realizing they were supposed to go in a specific place, or if the person in charge of these things is also a moron like me.

Anyway, last week, I knew I was supposed to head toward Viers Mill Road. I asked a woman if I was going the right way, and she said “yes, follow the street once you are out of the park”. This was technically correct since it got me to the road, but leaving the park meant leaving the trail about a mile too soon.  When I followed that same path yesterday, I ended up crossing a very busy road with no cross walk, running along a path in a residential neighborhood, counting steps to try to figure out my distance. It was bad. I ended up going 2 miles from where I hit the road, but I hit the road .6 miles past the 15 mile point, not 1.5 miles from it like I was supposed to.

There aren’t even any good maps of the trail up there, but I eventually figured out I was supposed to have taken a hard left over a bridge to continue on the trail instead of going out and onto the streets.

I am really disappointed and when I realized this mistake, my heart sunk. I could have so easily done the extra 1.8 miles. It makes me angry at myself for not figuring this out better, and at whomever is supposed to give some reasonable indication of where trails go.

While a big part of me wants to just go out today and do the full 20 miles, I know that would be dumb. So I’m going to convert the 18 miler I have scheduled for 3 weeks from now into my 20 (which is how most people do it anyway). With my luck, that weekend will end up cold and raining.

Last week, was my 17 mile run. Now keep in mind that my 13 mile run ended up being 14, my 14 mile run ended up being 15.15 (and think about how that could have happened, since the week before I’d accidentally done 14 and knew it - why not just stop at the same place??). Last week, I decided I’d make sure this didn’t happen again. I found the 15 mile point and mapped out extra distance beyond that. I added 1.5 miles so I could run out, turn around and then I’d have 17.

But see, that is BAD MATH. 1.5*2 + 15 = 18. I ran 18. Actually, it was like 18.2, and for the third tim I ran too far. This also explains why it took longer than I thought it would for my 17 miles, even with my rough timing system of checking the time on my cable box about when I leave and about when I get back.
Today is my 20 miler and it had better not happen again. I’ve got 2.5 miles past the 15 mile point to make 20 with the turn around. At least from now on I will have gone all the distances left on my schedule so I should be less likely to screw it up.