Look, I ran another marathon: the Foot Traffic Flat Marathon on Sauvie Island outside Portland, Oregon! It's a fantastic event that I encourage others to do, even though my race did not go well. Since an actual human being recently mentioned to me that he had read this running blog, I'll take this opportunity to do some catching up.
After Chicago last Fall, my previous marathon, I had hoped to run a Spring marathon but a minor injury to my pes anserine tendon (of whose existence I thus became aware) forced me to take 10 days off in late February shortly after I had shifted back into marathon mode. At that point I was not far enough along to be able to recover my fitness quickly after 10 days off, but it was too late to start over and get in a full build-up. So I abandoned the Spring marathon idea and briefly refocused on running a half in April instead. But I only managed to get running again for 5 weeks before the flu forced me to take another 10 days off in late March and early April. So I ended up just doing a few club races this entire Winter and Spring, mainly as workouts.
Usually we head to Greece for the summer sometime in mid- or late-June. But this year my nephew's birth was the occasion for my son and I to visit my sister in Portland, Oregon, in early July. When we were making plans for this visit in March, before I got the flu, I mentioned to my sister that I noticed there was a marathon near Portland on July 4. She replied enthusiastically that she knew of the race, that I must do it and get the Portland race experience, and that she wanted to drive my son and I up to the race early that morning and hang out there with him while I ran. So I registered and booked our tickets. In retrospect, I don't think it was a good idea to do this race 4 weeks after my nephew was born, because my poor sister was hardly getting any sleep and had more important things to worry about. I should have done it another year instead. But she had been trying to get me to run a marathon in Portland for years and seemed to enjoy it, somehow, despite barely sleeping. She's really into biking and soaks up that outdoor, endurance sport ambience. I guess it runs in the family.
The day I started running again after being leveled by the flu was exactly 12 weeks before the marathon. Normally I like to make sure I'm generally fit before beginning a 12-week block of marathon-specific training, but this time around I was starting from ground zero. I had no residual fitness since the flu had hit me quite hard and I wasn't in great shape before getting the flu anyway. Plus, this year's germs seemed to take longer to recover from than usual, so it was really slow going at first. Here are my 12 weeks of training for this race since recovering from the flu:
As you can see, this was very much an abbreviated build-up. The first baby marathon workouts were in weeks 9 and 8, while I was still building mileage, and neither of them went well. It wasn't until 6 weeks to go that I had my first good long run workout while at a conference in Vancouver, running around Stanley Park on May 21. But that turned out to be my only good long run workout of the entire cycle, probably not coincidentally since the weather in Vancouver was so much nicer than in the DC area. Later that same week, back in DC on May 27, I tried to run 21 miles easy on a very humid day but barely made it 16 miles. The next long run on June 5 was not much better: that time I made it slightly further (18 miles) and briefly got going faster but then fell apart even more spectacularly. I finally concluded after that run that the shoes I had been wearing since January for faster and longer runs, the Nike Elite 9, were not working for me and probably had precipitated my pes anserine injury, which was then starting to bug me again. I just about pulled the plug on the marathon after that run too, but instead I hoped that reverting to my trusty Adidas Bostons would help me turn things around. (Why did I ever set the Bostons aside?) I was able to get in a couple of good workouts in my final pre-taper week (3), although I never got going faster than 7:15 pace in my final long run that week. I figured it might be just enough to run a slowish marathon in good weather, though. In the end I averaged 44.25 miles per week during these 12 weeks, compared with 53 miles per week before Chicago. But this time around I had done almost none of the major workouts that have formed the backbone of my marathon training blocks for the past several years.
After Chicago last Fall, my previous marathon, I had hoped to run a Spring marathon but a minor injury to my pes anserine tendon (of whose existence I thus became aware) forced me to take 10 days off in late February shortly after I had shifted back into marathon mode. At that point I was not far enough along to be able to recover my fitness quickly after 10 days off, but it was too late to start over and get in a full build-up. So I abandoned the Spring marathon idea and briefly refocused on running a half in April instead. But I only managed to get running again for 5 weeks before the flu forced me to take another 10 days off in late March and early April. So I ended up just doing a few club races this entire Winter and Spring, mainly as workouts.
Usually we head to Greece for the summer sometime in mid- or late-June. But this year my nephew's birth was the occasion for my son and I to visit my sister in Portland, Oregon, in early July. When we were making plans for this visit in March, before I got the flu, I mentioned to my sister that I noticed there was a marathon near Portland on July 4. She replied enthusiastically that she knew of the race, that I must do it and get the Portland race experience, and that she wanted to drive my son and I up to the race early that morning and hang out there with him while I ran. So I registered and booked our tickets. In retrospect, I don't think it was a good idea to do this race 4 weeks after my nephew was born, because my poor sister was hardly getting any sleep and had more important things to worry about. I should have done it another year instead. But she had been trying to get me to run a marathon in Portland for years and seemed to enjoy it, somehow, despite barely sleeping. She's really into biking and soaks up that outdoor, endurance sport ambience. I guess it runs in the family.
The day I started running again after being leveled by the flu was exactly 12 weeks before the marathon. Normally I like to make sure I'm generally fit before beginning a 12-week block of marathon-specific training, but this time around I was starting from ground zero. I had no residual fitness since the flu had hit me quite hard and I wasn't in great shape before getting the flu anyway. Plus, this year's germs seemed to take longer to recover from than usual, so it was really slow going at first. Here are my 12 weeks of training for this race since recovering from the flu:
Wk 12 – April 9-15
Mo: off
Tu: 3 miles
We: off
Th: 4 miles
Fr: off
Sa: 5 miles
Su: 4 miles
Week total: 16 miles
Wk 11 – April 16-22
Mo: off
Tu: 6 miles
We: 4 miles
Th: 6 miles with 6 x 40 sec. hills
Fr: 4 miles
Sa: off
Su: 10 miles
Week total: 30 miles
Wk 10 – April 23-29
Mo: 3 miles
Tu: 7 miles with 8 x 40 sec. hills
We: 4 miles
Th: Fartlek: 2 x (3, 2, 1 min.) with equal recoveries
Fr: off
Sa: 14 miles
Su: 4 miles
Week total: 40 miles
Wk 9 – April 30-May 6
Mo: off
Tu: Fartlek: (5, 4, 3), (4, 3, 2), (3, 2, 1) min. with half recoveries
We: 5.5 miles
Th: 7 miles
Fr: 6 miles
Sa: 16 miles, pushing 3 miles after 11
Su: off
Week total: 45 miles
Wk 8 – May 7-13
Mo: 4 miles
Tu: 5.5 miles
We: 8 miles
Th: 5.5 miles
Fr: 8 miles plus 5 strides
Sa: 5.5 miles
Su: 16 miles, pushing 3 miles after 11
Week total: 53 miles
Wk 7 – May 14-20
Mo: 8 miles
Tu: 6 miles
We: 9 miles
Th: Fartlek: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 min. with equal recoveries
Fr: 9 miles
Sa: 7 miles
Su: 7 miles
Week total: 59 miles
Wk 6 – May 21-27
Mo: 18 mile progression, with miles 12-16 under 7:00
Tu: off
We: 7 miles
Th: 8 miles
Fr: 3 miles
Sa: 8 miles
Su: 16 miles
Week total: 60 miles
Wk 5 – May 28-June 3
Mo: 6 miles
Tu: 8.5 miles
We: Fartlek: 3 x (1, 2, 3 min) with equal recoveries
Th: 10 miles
Fr: off
Sa: 6 miles
Su: off
Week total: 40 miles
Wk 4 – June 4-10
Mo: 6 miles
Tu: 18 miles, tied up early and slowed down after 12
We: 6 miles
Th: off
Fr: off
Sa: 6 miles
Su: 9 miles
Week total: 45 miles
Wk 3 – June 11-17
Mo: 6 miles
Tu: 7 x 1 mile (2 min. rests), from 6:46 down to 6:08
We: 6 miles
Th: 7 miles
Fr: off
Sa: 21.5 miles
Su: 6.5 miles
Week total: 60 miles
Wk 2 – June 18-24
Mo: off
Tu: 8 miles
We: 6 miles
Th: 4 mile tune-up in 25:14
Fr: 7 miles
Sa: off
Su: 11 miles
Week total: 45 miles
Wk 1 – June 25-July 1
Mo: 5.5 miles
Tu: 3 miles @ 6:37 (3 min. rest), 2 miles @ 6:32 (2 min. rest), 1 mile @ 6:20
We: 5.5 miles
Th: off
Fr: 5.5 miles
Sa: 3 x 1k @ 6:38 (1 min. rests)
Su: 4 miles
Week total: 38 miles
Wk 0 – July 2-8
Mo: 4.5 miles
Tu: off
We: Foot Traffic Flat Marathon
I wasn't hoping to set any records in a summer race with inadequate training. But I thought my fitness was beginning to come around and figured I was capable of running 3:05 or so in ok conditions. My 3:10 in Chicago will probably put me in the second wave at Boston, so I was hoping to beat that by just enough to get into the first wave. The weather was indeed ok: at the start it was cloudy and cool, maybe 60 or just under, and not very humid. It warmed up gradually during the race to over 70 by the end, but the humidity stayed in check and the sun peaked out from behind the clouds only during that last 30-40 minutes. These were somewhat better conditions than I had in Chicago, which was more humid and warmed up sooner, although the Chicago course is flatter and I was in much better shape for Chicago.
I decided to take advantage of the cool start and go out a little faster than my goal pace, intending to execute a modest and controlled slowdown during the second half as it warmed up. Despite the name of this race, its course is in fact not flat but consists of rolling hills for most of the first 17 miles, including one or two modest hills, after which it is mostly flat with one bigger hill on a short out-and-back segment. Only the 250 or so marathoners start first at 6:30am, and the entire course is on farm roads around a rural island outside of Portland with majestic views of Mts. St. Helens (especially), Adams, and Hood. There were few spectators or really anyone at all out on the course, so I was quickly by myself in a semi-meditative state, alone with the views, until after a turn-around just past 10 miles, when other runners passed me going the other direction, and then after 17 miles when the marathon course joined the half-marathon course and I started passing groups of walkers until the finish. At each water stop there were a few people handing out water in absurdly small cups who sometimes noticed that a runner was coming. I didn't manage to get a great deal of water during the race.
I settled into a pretty consistent pace just under 7:00 and went through halfway in 1:31:13 (6:58 pace). But I already started feeling crappy by 11 miles, which is really early in a marathon. In mile 11 I got the distinctive metallic taste in my mouth that I only get during migraines, though no migraine actually developed until later that evening. I've learned from 30 years of experience, however, that the symptoms I mainly associate with migraines are only the tip of an iceberg. Other physiological events occur below the surface that leave me mysteriously out of sorts for up to 2-3 days before and after migraines. Sometimes I'll feel incomprehensibly crappy during a workout and have to abandon it early, believing that I must be in worse shape than I had thought, only to realize when a migraine surfaces in the next day or two that it was the cause of my feeling crappy all along. Then it passes and I'm fine again, always relieved to have the migraine behind me. It has almost become a tradition for me to have a migraine 2-4 weeks before a marathon, which derails one workout but puts me at ease knowing that I'm not going to get another one that affects the race itself, since I usually don't get them very often (and the actual migraines I get nowadays are pale images of the ones I used to get). But this time around I did not have a migraine during my taper and one did affect me during the race. I felt crappy from 11 miles and never recovered. Despite getting the distinctive metallic taste in my mouth, I still wasn't sure that was the cause until the full migraine arrived later that evening. "Oh, that's what it was," I thought, almost welcoming this excuse to have run so poorly.
I did not immediately slow down in mile 11 but only started slowing a little in miles 15-16 when the rolling hills went more up than down, and then I stopped to stretch at a water stop at mile 17 where the marathon course rejoins the half-marathon course. After that I jogged a few miles more slowly and then basically jog-walked the final 10k. What first slowed me down was muscle tightness in all my usual weak spots. But in the final 10k it was GI discomfort that led me to jog-walk, which is consistent with both the warming conditions and the presence of a migraine, since at least my migraines have some sort of deep connection with my gut (the headache part is just the cherry on top). I finally crossed the finish line in 3:37:56, having assured my sister that I would take no longer than 3:45 even if I blew up spectacularly. This was in fact the least slow of my now 4 marathon blow-ups, which includes my first marathon and Houston a year and a half ago. This one was also by far the most fun, because my son and sister were there, the race environment was scenic and chill, and my hopes weren't very high in the first place.
I was hoping to run a solid, if not fast race, and didn't manage that. But more importantly I wanted to get my training back into the ballpark where, after recovering from this race, I can handle a proper marathon build-up to Richmond this November, and I did manage that. For Richmond I'm going to restore all the corners I cut for this race, since I'm now more familiar with the purposes they serve. We'll head to Greece in a couple weeks and I promised my wife that I wouldn't do serious marathon training there this year (since I did nearly all my Chicago training there last summer). But I do plan to establish a solid base of mileage with the usual hills, fartleks, eventually some tempos, and easy long runs by the time we return in late August and Fall marathon training picks up in earnest. I'm registered for the Parks half on September 9, the Army 10 miler on October 7, and the Richmond Marathon on November 10, and I may do the South Lakes 10k in late August as well.
So, on to Richmond....
