Don’t Race like This!

As Boston approaches, I keep thinking of my first marathon.

I did almost everything wrong.

I was living in Boston in early ‘92, had been living there for three years and was about to move to Santa Barbara. A friend of mine, Carl, decided to run the Boston Marathon. He hadn’t qualified or anything, he just decided to run it. He had a personal trainer come out to his house daily to run with him, the trainer was going to run the marathon too, also without qualifying. Every now and then Carl would suggest that I join him.

Finally, about a week or two before the marathon, I thought “Why not? I’m leaving Boston, I won’t have a chance like this again, and it will be interesting to see if I can do it.

I didn’t know you had to register. So I didn’t. I did know there was a qualifying time, but since Carl hadn’t qualified I assumed it didn’t matter much.

I hadn’t trained either.

Oh, I hadn’t been sedentary. During the winter I often couldn’t ride my bike (what with snow and ice and all) so I would frequently run one way to work (~8miles) and take the car the other way (leaving the car at work overnight sometimes). But I hadn’t really trained. I hadn’t raced since high-school — and even then the longest I’d done was ~3mile road race that we called “cross-country”. I was a little worried.

So, on the Saturday, 9 days before the race, I went out for a thirty mile run. I managed it, so now I was confident that I could run the distance. A week later, 2 days before the race, I did another 30 mile run.

I didn’t know you were supposed to taper.

I’d never heard of carbo-loading.

Monday, 20 April, dawned, and it was cold. So I put on some long corduroy pants and a button down shirt. Carl picked me up and we drove out to Hopkinton. Carl was in running shorts. I thought he’d get cold. I didn’t have any running gear in those days, I ran in my street clothes.

We got to the start and went to stand in line. I went to the back, Carl and his trainer put themselves further up (after all, they had been training).

It was cold, even in long pants.

The gun went off.

Nothing happened.

For a long time, nothing continued to happen.

Finally we started walking — slowly.

We were still walking when we got to the start line. There were no chips in those days, but I did start my own watch. We were a mile out before I was able to start running. Rusty recommends using the first mile as a warm up, but I think a walking pace is a bit extreme.

After a bit I was entranced by the sound. I was in the middle of a huge throng of people, tightly packed and I heard — footfalls. I felt I had a purpose that I shared with all those around me, and the sound our feet made affirmed that.

There were no gel-packs then, I remember the joy I felt at about mile 20 where someone passed out orange quarters. But it really never occurred to me that it might be wise to eat on the course. I’d never eaten when I raced the mile in high-school, why should I expect to eat in a longer race?

When I could see the finish line I started running faster, and passed quite a few people in the last quarter mile or so. I went through the chute and stopped my watch 3:29:06. The woman who was there to help the runners took one look at me and said “You didn’t run this, get out of here.” Being too bewildered and exhausted to contradict her, I got.

I assume not many people race in street clothes, and as I didn’t have a bib I was obviously not a real runner.

Now was the hard part. I had to find Carl, since he was my ride home. It was cold, I didn’t have any money to buy food. Carl hadn’t finished yet. I waited. An hour. More. Finally he showed up. His wife drove us home and I soaked in a hot bath for a long time.

The next day, I got on a plane for LA and then SB. I was amused that everyone else on the plane seemed to have the same trouble walking that I did.

Mistakes not to make again:

• Qualify
• Register
• Train
• Taper
• Don’t run 30 miles two days before a marathon
• Don’t wear street clothes
• Now-a-days, take some gel packs with you and do some form of carbo-loading.
• Don’t cross the finish-line looking like someone who could not possibly have raced, or you’ll get kicked out of the finish area without food and without a mylar blanket.
• Don’t wait for someone who is an hour and a half slower than you if it’s cold and you are hungry.

I feel that I made it up to Boston in 2006. I qualified in 2005, and registered for the 2006 Boston marathon, but got injured and could not run it. So I have qualified, have registered, have trained, and have run it. I just qualified after I ran it.

The Boston website says the qualifying times must be run after a certain date — but it doesn’t explicitly say it must be before the race

Santa Barbara International Marathon 2009

The first public notice of the Santa Barbara International Marathon has appeared! There’s a website. Nothing much on it yet but some of my pictures, still it’s finally there

A Portrait of The Runner after A Marathon

I always forget just how bad I feel after a marathon. And of course I am convinced that each time feels worse than any previous recovery.

It’s almost impossible to walk. My legs hurt. Any attempt to dorsal flex my foot is painful and the calf is so tight the attempt is generally unsuccessful — giving me an odd hobbling gate. My quads hurt too, going down stairs is a challenge. Every now and then my hamstrings feel left out and they give me a twinge just so I’ll remember that they worked hard too.

This race had a mental depression to recover from too. Having been forced to reconcile myself to a 3 hour goal by injury, I was dismayed to find I could not even achieve that. By the end of the race I was telling myself “I’m never racing another marathon again”. Time to work on half-marathons. I might run a scenic marathon slowly and easily to enjoy its beauty, but I’m never racing again. Obviously I can’t do them.

A day later I was pretty much out of my funk. This one didn’t work, but I’ve done well in all previous ones. (And, I keep having to remind myself, by most people’s standards I did well in this one). There will be others.

Mental recovery came pretty easily ( that is, assuming that counts as recovery, some would argue that running marathons is the disease and I’ve merely recovered the disease). Physical recovery comes more slowly.

Day 0: After the marathon walking was extremely difficult. Walking back to the hotel was almost as hard as the last mile of the race. But after some rest, a bath, food — I found I was going up and down stairs almost as if I were a normal person.

Day 1: The next day was much worse. I needed to hold onto something to come down. I went for a 16 mile bike ride (which took an hour and a half — slow!) and going up hills was unpleasant at first but I warmed up toward the end and felt better.

Day 2: My calves hurt. But I am struck by the fact that after I notice that I’m thinking, but they don’t hurt as much as they should. Four short bike rides today. Hills are less of a challenge. Stairs still require a handrail.

Day 3: I find I am walking down stairs side-ways, but without needing a handrail. Yay! Progress. During the course of the day the pain faded to an ache. I biked ~30 miles at a normal pace (though I found I tired more easily). I did a basic pilates class. I survived one of the most painful sports massages of my life.

Day 4: I no longer notice stairs. I did a harder pilates session, and biked about 40 miles. I still tire very easily. My calves are still sore.

Day 5: The pain seems basically gone now, but the calves are still very tight. 20 miles on the bike, didn’t feel the same tiredness as yesterday. First yoga class. I ran across the street. I’m getting a post-marathon cold.

Day 6: I thought I’d try a short run (up to the Wilcox and around a couple of times). My right calf tightened up again, so I stopped and tried to work on it. It still feels very dense. I couldn’t get it to loosen up. So I cut the run short (maybe 1.5 miles). I managed a half hour on the eliptical (though my heart rate was about 4% too high) and ~20miles on the bike.

Day 7: 6 mile run today. Calf got knotted up around 4 miles. More tired than I should be after an easy run.

Week 2: 0-3-5-10-0-11-8 That is 0 miles the first day (but a half hour on the elliptical), then gradually building to 10 miles. Another day off, and then a real work-out, running on a hilly grassy course, two miles at ~6:40, two more at 6:30, and a final one (I was tired) at 6:50. Still a little slow, but definitely much closer to normal.

Week 3: 0-10-5-11-5-10-10 Back to a reasonable weekly mileage. On the low side, but reasonable. No really long runs, nothing really fast. But the easy stuff feels normal.

Not “the Wall” but “the Parabola”

“Show up and blow up” as Ms. Toth said. Meltdown, might be more accurate in my case. After mile 20 my splits got progressively worse. Indeed the deceleration between splits got worse so “cubic” is more accurate than parabola I suppose.

Up to mile 20 I averaged a 6:50 pace (well, 6:48 to be precise), which was my intent. Mile 20 was 7:01, then 7:07, 7:24, 7:41, 8:11, 8:57 and 9:20 for the last mile. I wasn’t hungry, or cold. I had none of the traditional signs of hitting the wall, I just got slower and slower and slower with each mile. My legs hurt, but that wasn’t the problem.

I hunched in on myself. I was still passing people up to about mile 23, but that changed and hordes of people started passing me. I thought about resting, but I knew I’d never start up again if I did.

---

California International Marathon. I’d never been to Sacramento before. I rather liked the city. It looks much more like the kind of environment I grew up it. They were having a real fall. That was extremely nice. Maggie and Rusty and June (Rusty’s wife) and I all flew up on the same flight on Friday. Rusty and June were doing research into how a marathon was organized. Melissa G. and her husband drove over from Sacramento, and Tony (whom I hadn’t even realized was running CIM) came up on Saturday.

On Saturday we registered, and then Rusty drove us over the course so we could get a look at it (he and June were counting port-a-potties, aid stations and similar things). The course starts out in Folsom and wanders through moderately rural countryside for a while before entering the suburb of Fair Oaks, and then on into Sacramento itself. Coming in to Sacramento was quite lovely with tree lined streets still in (almost) full fall color.

The course loses 350ft or so over 26.2 miles so it is known as a fast course (indeed, all of us got PRs, but we all paid for it — the downhills trashed our quads). It isn’t a constant decline, of course, instead constant rolling hills with each decline a little longer than the incline that precedes it.

We were worried about the weather. No rain was forecast, but it was much colder than SB. The prediction was for 37 °F (~3°C) at 7 in the morning when we started rising to a high of 50 (10C) in the afternoon, with winds. The wind sounded worrying. The course runs basically west with a little bit of southing, but it meanders. The wind was from the southeast mostly cross, but sometimes we veered into it.

Because we were heading west, I decided against sunglasses. I had a pair of throw-away gloves, an ancient moth-eaten sweater, a garbage bag, an ear-band, a long-sleeve wicking shirt and shorts. I considered tights, but decided I didn’t need them.

(Maggie and I had done a short run the day before and I found my legs were warm enough without tights).

I set four alarms for 3:30am and woke up 2 minutes before any of them. A series of buses came and picked us up at our hotel a little after 5 and took us out to Folsom. We arrived around 6. We were allowed to stay on the buses as long as we wanted in order to keep warm, however I got out immediately and went to the port-a-potties — past experience has taught me that if I wait the lines become insane.

As I was waiting, I glanced over at the next line. Someone was staring at me. “George?” he said. “Mike?”. A guy I used to work with 15 years ago was there. He and his wife, Lori, do marathons from time to time, but it hadn’t occurred to me that he might be here too. He was hoping to run it in 4 hours or so, but was injured (and unsure he’d succeed). I was hoping to run in under 3, but had also been injured (and was unsure I’d succeed). Lori was going for a 4:30 or so.

I went back to the bus (now almost empty), took off the sweats I’d been wearing for warmth, smeared my legs with vaseline (as insulation, and then loaned my container to some others who were also redressing.

My plan was to run the first mile with the 3:10 pace group (7:15 min/mile), speed up a little on the next and then start running 6:50s and try to catch the 3 hour pace group (6:52 min/mile) around the half-way point, run with them until 19 or so and then try to speed up. I had my doubts about speeding out, but we would see.

Rusty told me to start out slowly to give myself a chance to warm up, I doubted my ability to do start slowly by myself which was why I was going to run with the pace group (I get so excited at the start of a race). I was supposed to do a mile or so before the race as additional warmup, but I couldn’t find anywhere to run. In one direction was huge mass of bodies lining up, in the other a constant stream of buses and cars dropping off runners.

So I placed myself where I thought 3:10 might be (the pace leader hadn’t shown up yet), A bit back from the 3:00 sign. When the 3:10 leader did show he was well in front of me, but by then it was so packed that I could not move up. I’d wait for the start. Anyway it would mean I’d run even more slowly, which was all to the good as a warm up.

I didn’t hear the start signal. But that didn’t matter, because no one around me could move for several seconds after it. We were still stationary when I’d worked out that the leaders had started. I guessed it too me 30~40 seconds just to reach the start line (thank goodness for chips!). We were sort of running then. I could see the 3:10 sign dancing some distance in front of me, but I still couldn’t get to it.

Amusingly enough the 3:15 sign was ahead of the 3:10 sign for the first half mile or so.

The first ¾ of a mile, or so, is a gentle downhill. Then we turned onto another road and slammed into our first hill. Only a short hill. Suddenly I heard someone calling splits, and realized I most have passed the first mile mark without noticing it. 7:28 by my watch. Nice and slow.

I started moving a little faster and eventually passed the pace group. I felt warm. I took off my ancient, mothy sweater and tossed it off the side of the road (the race expects this, they gather the dropped clothing after the run and donate it to charity — though I doubt anyone would want that sweater).

Somehow I completely missed the second mile marker. Mile 3 was a small sign on the right side of the road. At that point I tore off my garbage bag, wadded it up, and, just before the next aid station, I tossed it to the ground (they didn’t have a garbage can before the water, and I wanted water, which I could not snag with a wadded up bag in my hand).

Shortly after this my cap bounced off my head and onto the ground behind me. I had intended to keep it, but I wasn’t going to stop and turn back for it.

Mile 4 had a great huge flag attached to the mark, as did all subsequent mile marks. Easy to spot. My split for that mile was 6:39. A little too fast for this early in the run. I slowed. Mile 5 was 6:51. Perfect.

As were miles 6 and 7. Quite good pacing for me. I ate my first gel pack here. Then the next two miles were hillier and were both 6:55. Mile 10 was a long steady downhill: 6:34, and that got me moving a little faster: 6:46 and 6:36 for 11 and 12. And then I realized the large clump of people a minute or two in front must be the 3:00 pace group. I wondered if I’d catch them by the half. Didn’t seem likely.

Mile 13 was 6:37, and they were still well in front. I crossed under the half-marathon marker (which had a clock) and saw that I was right on target. Even a little fast. I crossed under at almost exactly 1:30:00, but that was gun time, and I’d been running for ~30 seconds less.

So I was right where I wanted to be, the pacer was just going too fast. (not much, I guess, but I was annoyed with him). I ate my second gel.

After the half marker we turned dead into the wind. I’d been feeling pretty good about going ~6:40, speculating that maybe I’d be able to continue at that pace. Nope. 6:57 for mile 15. I picked it up again to 6:40 for the next two, but it was hard.

Another gel. Then mile 18 was 7:01. Arg! can’t have that. So mile 19 was 6:45. Whew. That averages 6:53, that’s close enough to pace.

Up to now I’d averaged 6:48.

But mile 20 was 7:01 again, and when I tried to run faster I didn’t. 7:07. There was someone at this mile marker giving splits, and I was till a little ahead of 3:00 pace. I couldn’t do the exact math but figured if I could just hold a 7:00 pace for the next 5 miles I’d still have a chance of breaking 3 hours. Time for my last gel. Maybe that will perk me up?

No. 7:24. Well, at least I was till passing people. 7:41. Ug. 8:11. Now people were passing me. Every now and then there’d be someone in worse straits than I whom I could pass, but not many, and eventually none. People were cheering us on, telling us how well we were doing. Others were doing well. I was not. 8:57 for the penultimate mile I’m slowing by almost a minute per mile. That’s really bad. I feel awful. I keep thinking of stopping and walking. But I … just … can’t … give … up. All I can do is keep pushing to the best of my ability. All thoughts of breaking 3 hours have long past. Will I at least manage to break 3:04 (7 min pace)?

(Horrible thought: Will the 3:10 pace group pass me? Will Maggie pass me?)

My heart rate monitor has also failed me. I’ve been running at about 90% heart rate, but now it tells me 41%. It lies.

Maggie said later there was a bad wind in this stretch. I didn’t even notice. The wind was irrelevant, the problem was inside me.

Slowly, slowly onward. Suddenly I hear “Keep going Georgie.” I look up. It’s June, watching. That brings a smile. I think I say something. Sadly, even at my sluggish pace, I eventually pass her.

At mile 26, I hear Rusty. I can’t see find him.

Another .2 miles. Women to the left, men to the right (why? what would happen if I went through the wrong shoot? Would they disqualify me?). Plod. Plod. On. And there’s the finish line 3:08:??, chip time will probably be 3:07:?? (my watch reads 3:07:3

Well. Ok. That is technically a PR. My best race before this was 3:13 at Big Sur. That is known as a hard course. This is known as an easy course. A ~6 minute improvement is pretty pathetic.

Well. Ok. Most people would be pleased. That would qualify anyone for Boston, it’s faster than the open men’s standard. It’s ~73% at my age. But I was expecting something closer to 2:52 just a few months ago. Then I was willing to accept 3 hours. This is a disappointment.

No one seems prepared to deal with me. I can’t find anyone to cut my chip off. Ah. There. Now I can’t find a mylar blanket. The woman who was passing them out has just turned away as I come up to her. Someone gives me a bottle of water. I can’t get the cap off. I have to take my gloves off. In doing so the mylar blanket comes off. A nice lady comes up and rewraps me and opens the water for me.

I can barely walk. My calves hurt. My quads hurt.

Where’s the food? I’m not hungry, but I know I need to eat.

Here’s a booth advertising cars. Why is that here? I think that’s … insulting to find at the end of a marathon. We’ve just been pushing our own bodies to the limit — and they want to demean that by selling cars? Feh!

Where is the food? I move further and further from the finish. (I should add, although I was in no position to appreciate this at the time, the finish is right at the state capital, down Capital Mall. A grand avenue with a grassed median leading from a beautiful bridge over to the capital building). The food is far too far away.

Finally I see someone serving soup. I take a cup. And a banana. There’s not really much here.

I grab my bag. (I realize I’ve lost one of my gloves)

Now where’s my hotel?

Oh. In exactly the opposite direction from the one I’ve been walking.

About 10 blocks from here.

Some of the slowest blocks I’ve ever walked.

I can barely hobble. The wind is bad. It blows my mylar blanket up around my neck so it’s more a scarf than a blanket. It’s cold. The sun has gone behind clouds. I have some warmer things in my bag, but that would mean: stopping, unwrapping the blanket (dealing with it somehow in the wind), bending over. It just seems impossible. Especially bending over.

Instead I keep walking.

Eventually the hotel.

The elevator.

I lean my head into the wall as the elevator goes up. It feels so nice to rest. But the elevator stops, and I have to walk some more. Then my door. The door key is in my bag. I have to bend over. I can’t find it. I dump the bag onto the floor. There it is. Open door. Go back and push the pile of clothes into the room. Close door. Draw bath. Gently, carefully, gratefully, ease myself into the water.

Ah.

---

So what went wrong?

My guess is that I still had not gotten my endurance back after my earlier collapse. I need to rest.

Good night.

Accident — they will fall

The latin word accident means “they will fall”.

My friends seem to have had far too many this year. First Annie got planar fasciitis which eventually pulled her out of St. George. Then Melissa G. had hip problems which meant she couldn’t even try St. George. I had — well, whatever it was I had — and couldn’t do Twin Cities. Rusty had hip problems too and had to run too slowly. Dianna, Maggie & Melissa M. had too much heat at Twin Cities.

Resurgent — they will recover.

Maggie, Melissa G. and I all decided to join Lauren in Sacramento.

And what happens? Lauren gets injured with less than a week before the race.

Damn.

Dream

The marathon starts downtown in my home time, and quickly moves inside a house. It twists and turns inside that house, doubling back on itself. There are chalked lines drawn on the floor with numbers indicating which route you should follow this time through the room. I don’t notice them at first and have to retrace my steps. The numbers differ from room to room and they do not start at 1. This room contains routes labeled “2,8,9″; route 2 continued as route 2 in the next room, but route 8 turned into something else when it got outside. Route 9 just twists around in the room and causes confusion. There are also kilometer marks. One room has a tile floor and the chalk has gotten skuffed up so as to be invisible.

It is impossible to go fast. I’m never sure if I’ve gone the right way. The guy who is running beside me keeps persuading me to stop and rest. I realize I’m running terribly slowly — just jogging really, but somehow I don’t care. It’s impossible to do well, it doesn’t matter, nobody cares, so why try?

At the first rest stop they are serving iced-tea because it is a nicely dehydrating drink. They also have tiny cups of sugar water for “serious” runners. The sugar water tastes vile.

Now we’re out on the streets again. We run around the block and then back inside the house…

And then slowly I wake up — oh, marathons aren’t really like that. How odd.

Doubts…

The long workout this week called for 10 miles easy then 8 at a 6:50 pace. I still think of a 6:50 pace as easy — even though it no longer is.

When training for Catalina I did a 20 mile workout with 10 at a 6:30 pace. So 8 at a 6:50 pace should be trivial.

I thought the same last week. We had 10 miles at 6:50, then 5 easy, then 2 at 6:30. Lauren had no problems with it, while I struggled to keep up with him, and then totally failed to speed up for the two miles at the end.

I decided to make up for it this week. I’d do the last mile at a 6:30, just to prove to myself I could speed up at the end.

Well, I couldn’t. When I started the hard part I passed Maggie, who blithely told me she was a little ahead of pace after 8 miles. I was a little behind pace after 1. It only got worse. I ended with a 7:05 mile. I could even hold the pace.

Again, I could not speed up. This does not bode well for my long distance endurance. And I realized…

I’m no longer getting better. In fact the last two long runs I seem to be getting worse. Have I fallen into overtraining yet again?

Will I run the first mile of the marathon at 7:20, the next at 8:05 and then realize it is hopeless, give up, and walk back to the start?

Not as bad as it was before, I hope. And with luck two weeks of taper will pull me out.

Or is this normal exhaustion at the end of a long training period (except I haven’t really been training that hard or that long. This should be easy; damn it). Maggie and Lauren don’t seem to be having this problem; it’s just me.

---

Rusty told me I should get a pair of light weight trainers for the marathon. My racing flats wouldn’t do for this long a race (I suspected that), but my normal shoes wouldn’t either.

So I went in to Joe’s for light weight shoes. I was given only two choices. Neither felt good. I chose the pair I thought was the least abusive to my feet. After running 23 miles in them I had a large, painful blister on my right least toe.

Rusty told me I needed shoes that felt good (shoes rarely feel “good”, my feet are weird, I’m almost always forced to compromise and chose the least bad). He suggested I try another brand, (the new store seems to have a third choice).

These don’t rub my toe, but they seem to push my knee out of alignment, after today’s 18 mile run the left knee felt odd and was clicking on every step. Then when I finished my arches felt completely abused, as though I were heading for planar fasciitis. I think I’m better off with a bad blister.

Or maybe with the normal trainers that I know I can tolerate.

---

Rusty wants me to start out the race slowly, then speed up to 6:50, and then half-way through speed up further. I don’t think I can. I have not managed a single workout where I could speed up at the end.

Perhaps my body doesn’t work that way? My natural inclination is to start out a little fast and try to hang on as I tire. I can’t imagine doing the reverse. Certainly my training indicates that speeding up will be difficult.

On the other hand, I have no hopes for doing well on this race, so why not experiment? Rusty says this (slowly speeding up) is the way to race. So do the books I’ve read. I’ll try it on this race I’ve given up on. If it works, great, I’ll have faith in the technique in the future.

But if it doesn’t work, well I won’t have lost much.

---

Annie dreamed too; but her dreams were interesting. I wish I could dream of giant teratorns to pull me from the waters, much preferable to my rather dull worries.

Not Yassos but Snows!

Most of us are aware of the Yasso 800 workout for marathon training — where you run 10×800 (or 10 half miles). You run your 800s at a weird variant of marathon pace: if you plan to run a 3 hour marathon then you run 3 minute 800s, if you want to run a 2:47:00 marathon then you run 0:02:47 800s. And so on. In between each interval you have the same amount of rest (easy jog) as for the interval itself (so 3 minutes, or 2:47, or whatever).

Rusty Snow has his own variant on this workout. Not 10×800, but 8×1k. Same pace, 3 minute rest between, same total distance, a little less total rest.

I’ve never managed to complete this workout before. I seem to fade after about 4k.

But today I did it!

(And then the nasty little voice in the back of my head says “Well, of course. You aren’t trying to run as fast as you usually do, in fact you’re only running at your 10k race pace — and if you can’t do 8k, with rests at 10k pace you are in sad shape.”)

No… actually the little voice is wrong. It was a little (but a significant amount) faster than any 10k I have raced.

Anyway, I did it. And what better way to prepare for a winter marathon than to do a Snow workout?

Two and a half weeks to Sacramento…

Catalina

18 Mar 2007

“Why would you want to run the Catalina marathon? You could get a great time on a normal course.” Asked one of my friends in Rusty’s training group.

“Why would you want to run the Catalina marathon? The 50 miler was just a month or so before.” Asked one of my trail running friends.

(“Why would you want to run?” asked my mother, incessantly.)

I chose to run it because I thought it would be beautiful. I hoped it would be like the Big Sur race I did two years ago. I chose to run it because when I registered I was still concerned about my knee and thought running fast was bad for it, so I chose a race I expected to go slowly on.

A week before the event one kind friend told me the weather should be perfect — temperatures in the 90s and sunny. I looked at her in horror, practically the worst thing she could have said. I hoped for temperatures in the 50s and overcast.

I thought I’d take the train down to LA, and then the Metro down to Long Beach, and then the boat over to Avalon. When I last lived in LA there was no Metro. This was an experiment — does public transport work?

It did for me.

It’s slower though. It took me 7 1⁄2 hours while it took Amy and Art Tracewell 5 1⁄2.

This is the off-season for the island. Most of the hotels are closed for the winter — but they make an exception and reopen for this one weekend.

I stayed in Avalon, but the race started in Two Harbors, a spot near the west end of the island where it narrows to a tiny isthmus before widening out again on either side (thus making a bay on both sides of the island, the eponymous two harbors with a short walk from one to the other. At 5am a boat took us from Avalon thither.

A large boat. There were about 800 marathoners, several hundred walkers and some spectators. The boat was a tourist boat with three decks, the top was unroofed and open to the wind, the second was enclosed in the front but open at the back. The bottom deck was entirely enclosed. Doubtless great for tourists in the summer, but very chilly if you have to be on top in the wind at 5am. I hadn’t realized this was an issue, I had just assumed we’d be in a warm boat. I’d have gotten there a little earlier if I’d known. As it was I was early enough to get a portion of the exposed second deck. Chilly, but at least out of the wind. Once the boat started most of the people from the top deck came down.

Pitch black as we pulled into Two Harbors a little before 6. People who had done the run before complained about the new Daylight Savings Time — in the past 6 was close to dawn (and the view of the harbor was good), but this year it was an hour before. Well, at least the run would be cooler.

We all immediately lined up for the restrooms. The lines moved very slowly. It was 6:30 before I reached the head.

Rusty wanted me to do a warm up mile. I had no idea which track would go that far. I trotted a bit in one direction but quickly ran out of road. I turned back then and gave up on that idea.

Time to decide what to wear. A fuel belt full of gel. Sunglasses or not? It was overcast, but I suspected it would burn off before too long. Sunglasses. It was cool, so I took a plastic bag to protect me from the wind until running warmed me. The rest of my stuff went into a bag that got transported to the finish.

A stream of people were heading across the isthmus, and I learned the starting line was at the other harbor. Someone told me that a buffalo had been sighted in the meadow over there earlier in the morning.

No buffalo was visible now.

(A few buffalo where imported to Catalina in the ‘20s as stage dressing for a film, and then just left to roam. Rather surprisingly they thrived and a decade ago there were 400 of them. The Catalina Island Conservancy did a study which showed that they were damaging the native plants and started culling the herd, moving the excess to other parks. There are now about 200 on the island, and seeing one would be kind of neat.)

The start line was nice and wide. I was too late to get on the first row, I was in the second. But more and more people came and they put themselves in front of me, so then I was in the third. Grump.

It was chilly.

We waited.

I heard someone whisper “Go” (the quietest start to a race I’ve ever experienced, I heard no “Ready, Set”, no warning of any kind. I wasn’t even sure that this was the start, but everyone else went, so I did too.

Splits
7:56/8:33/7:39/7:01 7:13/7:21/7:05/6:28 8:11/7:05/8:28/7:20 8:03/7:49/7:08/7:21 7:35/8:30/9:05/8:36 7:20/8:33/7:35/6:54 7:20/6:53 0:52

We went back over the isthmus to where we’d started, and then turned so we were climbing up above the bay. It was just around sunrise but under overcast, and the light was fairly dim. In my sunglasses I couldn’t read my watch. Oh well, I still clicked the splits for each mile anyway.

Catalina is a very bouncy marathon with a total elevation gain of ~4300ft (slightly more that Pier to Peak), but since it starts and stops at sea level it has an elevation drop of ~4300 as well. It’s sort of like running a few miles up Gibraltar and then back down, and then repeating. Impossible to run a consistent pace, splits weren’t going to be very meaningful on this race.

Instead, at mile 1 I started counting the number of people ahead of me, complicated, as always, by the fact that walkers started earlier and could be randomly mixed among us. I saw 18 ahead. I suspected there would be a few already out of sight beyond the bend of the road, let’s say 20 then.

By mile 2 I’d passed 8 people (the trail climbs about 800 feet in the first two miles, and I’m good at climbing).

I was surprised at how good the trail (fire-road actually) was. Not rutted like the SB fire-roads, and with very little camber to it. Few loose rocks trying to trip me. Almost perfect really.

The overcast hung at about 300~500ft above sea level. We were now in dense fog. I couldn’t read my watch at all. I could barely see the runner 50ft in front of me. I worried I might miss the trail.

But it’s kind of neat to be in dense fog

I got down to about 10th by mile 4 or so but then the trail started to go down again and a few people passed me.

On the next uphill I caught up with some of them and ran with them for a long time. Robert and Beto. We chatted. We were all fairly fresh at this point, and no one wanted to push hard this early.

Robert asked me how old I was, first time anyone has asked me this in a race, I’m 47 and he’s 52 so we’re different age groups and he didn’t have to worry about me. Beto was 29. Rob said he thought there were about 20 people ahead of us. I had guessed 6. I learned later that there were 8.

Beto wanted to break 3:30, as did I. Rob, who had done this race numerous times before chided us. He had no time goals, he was just going to run what felt right, do the first half easy, and then speed up on the second. He warned me to slow down (But not Beto, disquieting that). In one area, at least, Rob was right. I hadn’t looked at my watch, I had no idea what my splits were, and I had no idea how to plan for any time. I, too, was just running what felt right.

I pulled away from them after a bit. We were now heading down again, all the way down to sea level at Little Harbor, about mile 8. And we popped out of the fog. Little Harbor (just a harbor, no land structures) was quite beautiful, and was almost the only vista I got on the run, with stark rocks rising from the sea.

Beto caught up with me again and we ran together until mile 16 or so.

We climbed up into the fog again and couldn’t see much of anything.

Around mile 11 a bicyclist came by and shouted “8,9” at us. That was encouraging.

Around mile 12 we caught up with number 7 who had pulled a muscle and was looking for the sag wagon. Then Jason caught up with is. We crossed the halfway point in a clump 7,8,9. I’ve never been 7th, 8th or 9th in a half-marathon before.

At mile 14 Rob zoomed past us. He had really meant it when he said he was going to pick it up on the second half. And then someone else passed us. So now we were 9,10,11. Beto and Jason picked up the pace. I didn’t match them, but kept them in sight, and then slowly, slowly began to catch up again. I passed Jason. I caught Beto around 15 or 16 and ran with him for a bit, but that burst of speed seemed to have tired him and I pulled ahead. I was alone at 17, and in 9th place.

I know it sounds as though I am terribly competitive, hoping to get ahead of everyone, but from my perspective it was just something to think about. When running in dense fog there isn’t much to see. In truth I was just running my pace. Oh if I heard someone behind me I might pick it up a little, or if I saw someone ahead I thought I might catch, but there were another 9 miles to go. Running fast now might prove a mistake later.

There was a rest station near mile 16 where they offered me Cliff blocks. There were hundreds of blocks all jumbled in a box and they had stuck together. It was impossible to extract any without stopping. Annoying. The next station had little paper cups each containing 2 blocks. A much better approach.

The steepest, longest climb begins at ~17.7, where we gain 800ft in 1.1 miles, then a slight dip and then another 200ft up. And now, finally I was climbing out of the fog. Just when I most wanted to be cooled I had the sun beating on me. I slowed, but kept on. When I reached the ridge, I was half in fog again as it blew up the side of the mountain. Nothing to see but cloud in either direction.

Running along the ridge I was alternately in the fog and out of it. Occasionally I would look out over the top of the clouds and see a few mountain peaks poking through, islands in a sea of mist. Quite lovely actually.

I was tired. I managed the 800ft climb ok, but when I reached the top of it I had no strength left in my legs and could not take advantage of the downhill. Someone passed me (10th now).

We had a series of small hills then; one was very steep. I was reduced to walking up it. Someone else passed me. But I there was another exhausted person ahead, whom I passed, and I stayed ahead once I started running. So I was still 10th.

As I turned a bend I saw it was downhill, and encouraged him to run again by saying so. “Downhill from now on?” he asked hopefully. Sadly no, only downhill until the next bend. Still another mile or two before the real descent.

Someone else passed me.

A little before mile 22 we reached the highest point on the course at 1570ft. One small bounce more, and then we plummet and lose all 1500ft in around 4 miles.

I was afraid of this. Downhills are not my strong point, and I was tired. I felt I was barely moving along now. Hmm. If I ever do run a 50 miler I’m going to have to learn how to pace myself for it.

The fog rolled in again. Someone passed me.

I got a stitch in my side (I never get stitches) and had to slow down more.

Someone else passed me.

I was 13th now. But for how long?

The stitch eased.

At mile 25 I started catching the guy who was 12th. At mile 26 he was close… but he crossed the finish line five seconds before me.

I hadn’t seen the clock when I crossed the line. As always I forgot to stop my watch. I estimated 3:22~3:23. Not bad for this course. And 13th is also pretty good.

I ate, drank. I had intended to go ice my legs in the ocean, but the day was still foggy (and cool) and the ocean was so cold — I could not stand it for long. My hotel was 20ft from the finish line so I showered and returned to wait for Amy and Art. They crossed the line together at 4:04.

If I had a partner would I be willing to run at her pace (or she at mine, in the unlikely event she were faster?) Training for a marathon is so much work… would I be willing to do less than my utmost? But then these two have done many more marathons than I… and I suppose it is possible they find more important things than just being fast.

When the results were finally posted I found I finished at 3:21:05, and first in my age group. Amy was 2nd in hers. (The 52year old Rob put me to shame and ran 3:11, Beto was just over 3:30).

Avalon is tiny. There seem at least as many marathoners as locals. As I walk the streets are crowded with finisher’s tee-shirts. People see mine and congratulate me. People come up to me and ask what was it like to run those trails? Would I do it again? How many marathons have I run? How long is this marathon? — the perennial question. All very small and friendly.

Actually… looking at my last split (0:52) between mile 26 and the finish line, well if that were really 365 yards I’d have been running at a 4:20min/mile pace. At the ~7min/mile pace I was probably running that works out to about 220 yards. So how long was the marathon?

I saw one young father calling after his toddler: “Come back! Daddy can’t run after you today.”

Running Monolog

Winter 2006

Explaining ourselves seems to be a disease we all suffer from, and people training for a marathon seem to have it worse than most. After all, why would anyone want to hear about running 18 miles as a training run? There is no glamor, no excitement in that, yet newspapers are full of people describing their training efforts. The disease does not seem to affect those running 5K races, but train to go eight and a bit times as far and we want to explain why.

I suppose running 26.2 miles seems a little (or a lot) daft, and may need more explanation… Running 3 and an eighth seems normal in comparison.

I think there is some similarity to the homeless who mutter at street corners, no one else wants to hear them, but they are talking anyway. There is one poor woman I see who simply howls in agony as she walks down the street. Well I hope I shan’t come to that. But perhaps I shall attain the level of those who swear.

April

I qualify for Boston by running the Big Sur International Marathon. A beautiful run which I heartily recommend.

May

I take the month off from running and go biking in France with my parents.

June

I ease back into running. I also get a bigger lift in my shoe to help the hip pain I’ve been feeling. I start to get tendinitis in my achilles. My physical therapist (Mike) and my massage therapist (Rusty) encourage me to run through the tendinitis as long as it doesn’t get worse.

July

It gets worse. I stop running.

September

I am fed up with not running. I’ve missed one race I care about, and it looks like I’ll miss another. I’ve tried rest, ice, acupuncture, two different massage therapists — nothing works. My friend Dan sends me a very uplifting article from a medical journal on tendinitis which essentially says that no treatment method works. On the happy side my hip pain has finally vanished. I go back to Mike and he starts doing ultrasound on the achilles. He tells me not to do yoga or run (I’m not) or bike (which I gave up a few weeks before just in case). But I can swim. I hate swimming.

October

After two weeks Mike tells me to run again. Slowly. On a treadmill. Not for long. Every other day. The only way for the achilles to heal he says is to get blood to it, and the best way to do that is to run. I still can’t bike or do yoga. After a week of running slowly I’m allowed to do some yoga, and after another week to bike.And the achilles does start to improve. Slowly.I’m allowed to run for longer. And then run outside on flat ground.Mark & Alice, my friends who live in Boston, invite me to come stay with them for the marathon. I have to admit that I don’t know if I’ll be able to run.

November

Mike said “Well, we should start building a base if you’re going to run Boston.” I start running faster. Move from every other day to 4 days a week. I also sign up for Boston. I happen to bump into a friend that evening who has also just signed up. Yeah! Exciting to think that it may actually happen. I write Alice and tell her I’ll be there! My friend Dan (a high school friend from NC) has felt for a while that he’d like to run a marathon before he turns 50, and was all fired up by my running Big Sur. So he now signs up to run a marathon in Umstead Park (between Durham and Raleigh NC) in March. He tries to convince me to run with him, but it is too late now, I can’t do both. Not that I’m much tempted. A bunch of my friends are running Boston this year. http://www.bostonmarathon.org/ says that there are 16 Barbarians (Les Invasions Barbares?) going to Boston and I know 7 of them. There’s an interesting 20K race in early December. I presume that I shouldn’t run it, but it would be nice if I could. I ask Mike and to my surprise he says “Maybe. Let’s see how you feel the week before.” Wow.When I visit my parents at Thanksgiving, my mother warns me not to overdo it. Tells me my yoga practice is “violent” and finds my penchant for practicing handstands unnerving.

You are old sonny Williams, the mother said
And your pate has become almost bald,
And yet you incessantly stand on your head
Don’t you think, at your age, you’ll be mauled?

December

Mike tells me I can run the race. Suggests that I not run faster than 7minute miles. The first 6 miles are uphill and all of them are around 7min. As the hill gets steeper I slow down to 7:25. But then it’s all down hill for 6 miles. That first downhill mile is really steep and I run it in 6 minutes (which is fast for me). I end up being first in my age group, averaging 6:50 (not too far off) And the achilles did not bother me at all during the race.At this point Rusty, whom I’ve asked to train me for the marathon, suggests that I come out with the group he’s training.Wally warns me that training with Rusty will not be easy. Come to think of it Mike said something similar. Mike, of course, has trained with Rusty so he knows. I don’t require easy, I do require possible.They meet out at San Marcos High School. So at 6:30am that Saturday I’m at the San Marcos track. I hadn’t realized however that we weren’t doing a track work-out, and everyone else was at the main entrance (which I bypassed on my bike). I wait until 7, in the early morning darkness (we’re almost at the winter solstice now, it doesn’t get much darker) and the cold. And then bike back home, grumbling to myself.

We get that confusion sorted out, and Rusty sends me my first weekly schedule.
Rusty generally starts 12 weeks before the race, but he’s taking me on a
little early because a) he wants to make sure I don’t break again and b)
he’s got a guy starting who runs at a similar pace.

Dan seems to view me as a expert on marathoning, which I find rather ironic
(I’ve run two) and has been asking me questions about training. I’ve sent
him a copy of Advanced Marathoning, a book with far more information
I can provide. Dan runs a 5k a little faster than I ever have, but he’s only
just started longer distances and his half marathon is a bit slower. I expect
he’ll be pretty similar to me in a year or two. Dan has just discovered that
one needs to drink (and maybe eat) during a marathon. Is that really necessary?
Well, in once sense, no. People didn’t drink or eat 100 years ago, and they
were about an hour slower than they are today. In 1908 the world record was
2:55, in 2005 the world record is 2:04. In 1908 the first runner collapsed
yards from the finish line, had to be carried over and was disqualified.
There are other factors, of course, but drinking water during the race is
definitely called far. It may (just) be possible to do a marathon without
consuming calories, but most people need some carbohydrates to run that far
that fast.

My father tells me I should be proud of Big Sur as the high point of my running
career. This surprises me since I will be rather disappointed if I can’t
improve my time by about 15 minutes or so. He sees his comment disturbs me,
so he changes it “the piece I wrote about it is the culmination of my writing
career.”, so much for this monologue then.

Week 19/12/05

Mon	Elliptical trainer 45min, level 4-7 keeping HR around 135-145
Tue	SBCC track, 3mile warm-up, 5x 100m strides, 8x 550m hill repeats, 3mile cool-down
Wed	Same as monday
Thu	Easy run 60min at ~8min/mile
Fri	Off. Do yoga
Sat	San Marcos, 3mile w/up, 3 mile tempo (~6:40 pace, to be adjusted) 5mile cool-down
Sun	Easy run 90min at ~8min/mile

The Santa Barbara City College track has lights, so it isn’t dark at 6am
when we meet. And meet we do, thank goodness. I had only known that Rusty
was training one other guy, Jim, whom I’ve run with before, and with whom
I’m pretty well matched, but he (Rusty) turns out to be training three people
(four with me).

There’s Jim, of course, who is training for Napa in early March, Rusty thinks
he should do about 2:55 (which is a pace of 6:40 minute/mile).

Laura is someone I’ve seen before though I don’t know her. She is also training
for Napa and wants to get under 3:30 (8min/mile), though Rusty thinks she
should be able to go faster.

And there is Jeff. Jeff has just started running. He did the local half-marathon
a few seconds faster than I have, but he wasn’t training for it properly
– only ran about 20 miles per week (I normally do 40~45). He should be really
fast after he gets his mileage and endurance up. At the moment he is hoping
for a 3:10 marathon (~7:15 pace). He is training for the LA marathon in late
March.

Jim & Laura have already been training for a few weeks, while Jeff has
just started (though he actually met up with everyone last Saturday).

Although we met at the SBCC track, that’s just a gathering spot, we jog down
along by the harbor and out along the beach, and then turn back and jog on
up onto Shoreline Park. Continuing away from SBCC is a slight incline up.
It doesn’t seem like much — until you run it at 95% effort level. Then it
suddenly becomes very steep.

Before we do our hill work we do strides, a short fast run for about 100m.
This helps us switch from the gentle warm-up pace to the real work-out. And
then we start. Jim, Jeff & I all are running together and about the same
pace. I’m currently the slowest of the three, but only by a second. Not too
surprising considering that I wasn’t running for most of the summer. Poor
Laura has no-one at her pace. And it makes a real difference to have others
there, we push each other to run faster than we would alone. Rusty runs with
Laura, and that helps a bit.

It’s an exhausting work-out. When we finish we run 3 slow miles as a cool
down and then go our separate ways. I’m proud that I did it. Haven’t done
any real speed work in ages.

---

On Saturday we meet at San Marcos at 6:30am again. Out front this time, and
I find everyone. I get there first, and worry for about 5 minutes until the
others drive up. Then we trot down to the bike path and along that out toward
UCSB. The bike path is handy, as it has been very precisely marked every
1/4 mile (also 2.5k and 5k marks). We again to a 3 mile warm up. Well, Jeff
& I do. Jim and Laura, being further along, run for an hour at this easy
pace. Jeff, Rusty & I stop at the 1mile mark and do our strides.Then we start our tempo run. This is a lactate threshold effort (supposedly),
the pace at which lactic acid starts to build up in the legs, but the body
still does a good job of flushing it out. Rusty doesn’t really know what
a true tempo pace is for us, so we experiment. We run the first mile at 6:40,
and that’s easy enough (well, it’s a definite effort, but talking is still
possible), then next at 6:35, and the last at 6:30. The last mile is hard
for me, eminently doable, but definitely harder than the 6:40 pace. I can
still talk, but I’m not doing so voluntarily. Jeff seems to have no trouble
and I’m a little jealous.We jog back to get in our 3 mile cool-down, and Rusty goes off to find the
other two and run with them.A much easier day than Tuesday, but I’m still elated to have done it, I thought
it would be far harder.

Oh, it’s Christmas Eve, that probably matters to some people.

---

Talking to my parents on Christmas, my mother warns me not to overdo it.My normal Sunday running group is down to one person, Amy, and we are each
very grateful to have someone else to run with. Amy is also training for
a marathon: LA. I try to convince her to come join us (Laura needs someone
to run with, Amy is a bit faster than she, but would be good company none
the less). However Amy is happy with her own training schedule.

Week 26/12/05

Mon	Easy run 40min ~8min/mile
Tue	SBCC track, 3mile warm-up, 5x 100m strides, 8x 550m hill repeats, 3mile cool-down
Wed	Elliptical trainer 45min, level 4-7 keeping HR around 135-145
Thu	Easy run 60min at ~8min/mile
Fri	Off. Do yoga
Sat	Mountain Dr, 3mile w/up, 3 mile tempo (6:35~6:40 pace) 5mile cool-down
Sun	Easy run 90min at ~8min/mile

Our hill repeats are similar to last week, except this time we do the first
four on the very steep stretch up to Shoreline that only lasts for a 1/4mile
(last week was 1/3). Jeff runs his first at a 5:00min mile pace. Too fast
for Jim and me. Rusty tells him to slow down a bit. After that we run pretty
much together.

Then Jeff goes off home to pack up his family and drive to Mammoth to go
skiing for the rest of the week. He’ll get in his runs on a treadmill up
there.

---

I have read that over a long enough course that humans are faster than just
about anything. That we can just run prey down on the savannas, rather as
jackals can. And I started thinking of horses, now they might be a special
case as they’ve been artificially bred for speed, still it would be interesting
to know if a human can run faster than a horse over a long enough distance.Or over a marathon. How long does it take for a horse to run a marathon?
Horses don’t seem to race marathons. How about 25 mile runs then? Well I
can’t find any numbers on that either. But I do find a rather amusing
22 mile
man/horse race in Wales. It’s been won by a human once in its twenty-five
year history. Oh well. I guess I’m unlikely to be beating any horses in Boston.

---

Saturday it is raining. When I get on the bike at 5:45 it is pitch black,
chilly, wet and miserable as I head up to Mountain Dr. Generally there are
good views of the ocean and the city. Not today. It’s still quite dark when
I lock my bike to a tree. The others drive up.Somehow I have lost my glasses. This is stupid, I had them a minute ago.
I get everyone looking for them. We can’t find them. Eventually I give up
and we start. I can’t see very well, but it’s rainy and misty and there are
no views anyway. Oh and it’s dark. And wet. Chilly too. Quite unpleasant.Mountain Dr. has also been marked, not quite as well as the bike path. It
used to be better marked, but they repaved the road. Some of the marks have
been replaced (perhaps by Rusty, I’m not sure) but they are only every half
mile, not every quarter. This makes something of a difference, when you try
to find a pace it’s easier if you can correct yourself every quarter mile.At the 3 mile mark Jim & Laura turn back (they have a longer warm up
again), and I do my strides. Then Rusty and I set off. Rusty tells me he
thinks I’m running too fast so we slow down a bit, but we finish that first
mile at about 6:20 or so. Then the pocket on my shorts breaks and my keys
fall all over the road — it’s not my day. I would not even have realized
this if Rusty had not been behind me. So we stop and find my keys. Rusty
carries them for me. When we start up again I zoom off and do the next half
mile at 3:05 or so in a vain and foolish effort to get back on track. Rusty
checks every now and then to make sure I can still talk (If I can’t talk,
I’m running far too fast). Then he leaves me to do the last mile by myself.
I have trouble with my watch but I think it was again about 6:20. Too fast.

Now we’re back at the 0 mark, and Jim an Laura are there too. Rusty asks
me if I’ll run with Laura as a cool down (she’s doing a 7:45 tempo pace,
which is a little faster than an 8min cool down, but not bad). I feel kind
of badly for her, there she’ll be working hard, and I’ll be cooling down?
Rusty asks how that’s different from what he’s just done with me. Er. I guess
it’s no different.

I put my keys in my back pack by the bike (kind of stupid, I know to leave
the keys right beside the lock, but what else can I do?). I make another
futile effort to look for the glasses (it’s light now).

I look up and I see Laura zooming off. I give up on the glasses and sprint
to catch up, but before I do so she slows and stops. Oh. She was doing her
strides.

Then we are off. The first mile was a 7:30, a bit too fast. And we slow down,
7:40. Then another 7:30 I think and we turn round and come back. Laura is
running even faster on the return and finishes with about a 7:20. That’s
not really a cool down pace for me, a bit fast. But it was fun to have the
company.

Rusty asks me how I feel. He has asked me this after every workout. At first
I thought he was being polite, but I’m coming to realize this is something
he really needs to know. If I’m feeling exhausted, I’m doing too much and
he needs to have me do less.

I’m done now. Laura and Jim still have to cool down. Rusty offers me a lift
home. I make a final futile search for my glasses and let him drive me home
(I don’t want to bike without glasses in a misty drizzle). At home I find
an old pair of glasses and prepare to drive back to search the hillside once
more… But before I do that I make a thorough search of my back pack. I
searched it earlier, of course, but in the dark and the rain, now at home
I find my glasses bundled up in a sweater. Oh. Whew. But how stupid.

This same storm hit Mammoth. I think Jeff said they got 3 feet of snow. Luckily
he managed to get out before the storm hit.

---

It’s New Years Day. I sent out email asking if anyone else would be running
today and no one responded (or rather, no one said yes. David and Liz said
they’d be misbehaving in San Diego instead). So I start running from my house,
and run towards the beach where we normally start, timing my run to get me
there when other people will show up, if any do. To my surprise Chris drives
in just as I run up. Chris doesn’t run with us often, but he runs faster
than my group normally does. He and I wait a bit and no one else shows (not
surprising) and we go off, around a 7 minute pace. Faster than I should be
running, but so what, better to have company.Chris has just returned from visiting home, his first visit since he graduated
from high school thirty years ago. All his high school buddies seem to be
in terrible health. This one has had a heart attach, another back surgery,
another knee surgery. Most are over weight. We comment on how great it is
to exercise. I mention that the only high school friend I’ve kept up with
(Dan) is also training for a marathon.My mother warns me not to overdo it. Forty year old men (Jim & me) still
think they can run as if they were 20.Well the world record for the marathon was set by a 34 year old. 40 year
old men may be able to run as well as the 20 year olds, but probably not
as well as the 30 year olds… Endurance improves with age far longer than
sprinting speed does.

Week of 2/1/06

Mon	Elliptical trainer 45min, level 4-7 keeping HR around 135-145
Tue	San Marcos track, 3mile warm-up, 5x 100m strides, 5x 1k (88sec/400) with 3min jog between, 3mile cool-down
Wed	Easy run 75min at ~8min mile
Thu	Easy run 65min at ~8min/mile
Fri	Off. Do yoga
Sat	San Marcos, 3mile w/up, 5 mile tempo (6:35~6:40 pace) 3mile cool-down
Sun	Easy run 90min at ~8min/mile

When I was in high school tracks were 440yards around, which was 1/4 mile
(still is a quarter mile, of course). Now-a-days tracks are usually 400meters
around which is about 6feet shy of a quarter mile. Essentially they are the
same size, they’ve just gone metric. And it’s slightly easier to talk about
doing “400″s than “440″s.

I’m worried about this run, an 88sec quarter mile is easy. Doing a kilometer
at that pace (2.5 laps) isn’t bad either. Doing 5 of the damn things with
only a 3 minute breather between is … well worrying.

About half way through my watch suddenly has conniptions and resets itself
to midnight, looses the stopwatch mode (which I’ve been using to find how
fast I’m going). I have to rely on other people to set the pace after that.

But we do it. I’m really glad to have the other two there. Then I find that
Jeff and Jim have to do 3 more (because their marathons are closer, Rusty
doesn’t want me to get too fit too early, people tend to break if that happens).
So I cool down alone. That’s easy.

---

The first Saturday of the month I go down to Ventura to do water quality
testing, so I shan’t join the others on Sat. instead I do my tempo run on
Friday. Alone. Have I any chance of doing this without someone else to spur
me on? Have I any chance of finding the pace without help?I’m out on the bike path at 6:30 and do my warm up in the dark as usual.
It’s light enough when I finish and I start to do my strides. A biker sees
me and he actually leaves the bike path to come over and congratulate me.
“That’s the way to be fast, says he, do 5 short sprints and you’re all set.”
Well that’s exactly what I’m doing!Then the tempo run. I get ready at the 1mile mark (the 0mark is in the middle
of the Goleta beach parking lot, and we tend to avoid that). I’ve got a different
watch today, it’s my heart rate monitor. I’ve never used it’s stopwatch mode
before, but it seemed easy enough from the directions.I’m off. Terrified that I’ll go too slowly I run the first quarter mile in
78 seconds. That’s a 5:12 mile pace. Way, way, way too fast. I slow down.
I can’t understand what my watch is reading at the next quarter, or the next
(is it telling me I ran the quarter mile in 30 seconds? Impossible). At the
mile mark I’m ready to give up. I slow down stop, and look at the watch,
and suddenly I understand how to read its display. There’s an extra digit
tagged on to the front of the elapsed time, oh and the display shows time
since the last lap, rather than total time. I start up again. My first mile
was 6:21. Far too fast. My next mile was 6:19 even with the time I slowed
down and checked my watch. The next half mile was exactly right (3:20), but
then I sped up again and the whole thing was 6:33, then 6:24 and finally
6:19.

Well I had no trouble running as fast as I needed to, but I had great difficulty
finding and keeping the right pace. In a five mile run I can easily maintain
a 6:20 pace (obviously), but if I run a marathon with the first 5 miles that
fast I will have blown it. I’ll have to slow down, way down, to make up for
that initial sprint. I need to learn to find 6:40 or so.

Still I’m glad that I ran too fast, at least I’ll have no trouble running
6:40s if I ever learn how…

The goal seems to be to run at a consistent pace. More efficient or something.
So you have to figure out beforehand what pace can be maintained for 26 miles.
To knock off 5minutes from your marathon time you need to run 10 seconds
faster per mile (about). Which is easy. For a mile or two. Marathon pace
feels slow because it must be maintained so long.

Hmm. I wonder if my inability to find a running pace is related to my inability
to hear rhythm in music.

---

Saturday I bike 32 miles to Ventura and 32 back.

---

Sunday we finally have a good group together in my normal run. But most of
them are going to run an out-of-town half marathon next weekend.They warn me that Rusty has overtrained some people. I’ve heard this before.My mother tells me that Peter (brother-in-law, who is a better athlete than
I) thinks I am overdoing it. This surprises me. I’d think Peter would have
better sense than that. He doesn’t know what I’m doing. Probably Peter said
something like “He might be overdoing it.” And, indeed, for all Peter knows
I might. And then my mother latched on to that and fleshed it out with her
worries. My guess anyway. I get annoyed however and point out that a) Peter
doesn’t know what I’m doing, b) Peter doesn’t know what shape I’m in c) Peter
doesn’t know what precautions I’m taking. Nor does my mother, of course.I continue to check in with Mike (physical terrorist) once a week, he looks
at the achilles mostly (which continues to improve). And Rusty (coach and
massage terrorist) goes over my body once a week. They really are prepared
to notice and deal with sports injuries.

Dan has run his first 20mile training run. The foolish boy didn’t eat lunch
before hand and felt beat after 15 miles and could barely finish the run.
Is it possible, he now asks to eat enough during a marathon? I tell
him I don’t think he has hit the wall, he just didn’t have enough food in
him for a twenty mile run. Running without fuel doesn’t work. We talk some
more about replacement fluids and sugar gels. I point out that a few weeks
ago he wondered if it was necessary to eat at all. He admits to the irony.

Week of 9/1/06

Mon	Elliptical trainer 45min, level 4-7 keeping HR around 135-145 or take it off
Tue	San Marcos track, 3mile warm-up, strides, 2400 (87/400) then 3×800 (2:44-2:46) 3min between, 3mile cool-down
Wed	Easy run 65min at ~8min mile
Thu	Easy run 90min at ~8min/mile
Fri	Off. Do yoga
Sat	San Marcos, 3mile w/up, 5 mile tempo (6:33~6:35 pace) 3mile cool-down
Sun	Easy run 40min at ~8min/mile

On our warm up I mention how much my mother worries and complains about my
running. Oh yes, says everyone. Ours too.

Rusty tells me he thinks I should plan on running the marathon in 2:52~2:53.
A 6:35 pace, or thereabouts. My first thought is “Wow, he really thinks I
can go that fast?”, my second thought is “Oh my god, he’s going to expect
me to go that fast.”

This work-out scares me enough that I ask Rusty, didn’t he mistype? A mile
and a half at under 6min/mile? No, he assures me I really can.

He’s right of course.

And Jim and Jeff have to run a 2mile interval in 12:00min after that. But
I don’t because my race is too far off.

---

This time Jeff has a longer warm up that I, so I’m doing my tempo run by
myself again. Rusty runs the first mile with me 6:36. One second slow with
him setting the pace. Then he goes back to start Jeff off. My next mile is
6:26 then 6:36, 6:28 and 6:15. I really need to work on my pacing… but
each time I slow a bit I think: this is too easy, I can’t be going fast enough,
and speed back up.As we ran the first mile, Rusty started talking about having me run the marathon
at a 6:48 pace for the first 18 miles and then picking it up if I had energy
later. That’s a little under 3hours for the marathon, rather different from
2:52 just a few days ago. Did I run badly in the speed work on Tuesday?My right calf tightened up during the warm up and never loosened. Ug.

---

A 40minute run on Sunday? With most of my group gone? No real point in joining people, I’ll just run from home. Calf still hurts.

Week of 16/1/06

Mon	Elliptical trainer 45min, level 4-7 keeping HR around 135-145 or take it off
Tue	Easy run 65min
Wed	Easy run 90min at ~8min mile
Thu	Easy run 45min at ~8min/mile with 8x strides afterwards
Fri	Off. Do yoga
Sat	San Marcos, 3mile w/up, 6 mile progressive run (pace: 7:00 first mile, 6:50, 6:40, 6:30, 6:20, 6:10) 3mile cool-down
Sun	Easy run 40min at ~8min/mile

No speed work this week. Yeah. But a rather frightening run on Saturday.
Perhaps it’s to help me find a pace?

When Rusty is working on me, I mention that I think I’m fast and anyone who
runs faster than I is really fast (we were talking of such a person). Rusty
laughs and says he thinks he runs slowly. Rusty runs slowly because he compares
himself to the 40 (or so) people in the US who are faster than he. Rusty
really wants to win, and be able to win the Olympics. He’s not quite that
good. I think I’m fast because I compare myself to the thousands of people
who ran slower than I did at Big Sur, not to the 69 who ran faster. I don’t
expect to win. It’s all a question of perspective.

Rusty has marked off a 4.3 mile loop around his house (which is 1/2 a mile
from San Marcos). He’s marked it every 1/4 mile too. We run round this loop
once as a warm up.

Today we are joined by Larry (who is a little slower than Jeff, Jim &
I, but not much), Lee and Garret who are much faster. After doing the warm
up a guy with a baby stroller runs up to us and Rusty invites him to join
us (I don’t catch his name, I’m doing my strides, but he knows everyone else).
He runs with Garret & Lee & Rusty. It’s a bit demoralizing to see
someone pushing a baby stroller overtake you…

Jeff and Larry are running 6:50 pace (Jim & Laura have a longer warm-up
and start later) so we three start together and I let them slowly creep ahead
of me. That feels kind of odd. I’m not used to running deliberately slow
with people in front… With someone in front I can do a fair job of judging
my time, 6:58 for the first mile. The next mile I just have to stay the same
distance back, 6:46 for the second. I should catch them up right at the 3
mile mark, but they’ve inexplicably slowed and I catch them at 2.75 and am
still too slow at the 3 mile mark (6:44). So the next mile I run too fast
6:22, and then to make up for that, too slow (6:35), and the final one is
again too fast (5:56). Oh well, I was never more than 15 seconds off. Better
than the tempo runs.

During cool-down I ask Larry what he’s training for. “Oh, I’m not, I’m just
training.” That sounds very existential. “I find that after training with
Rusty I have no desire to race.” The rest of us smile, yes we understand
that viewpoint.

Rusty is now talking about my running Boston with a 6:40 pace, a 2:55 marathon…
That sounds to me like what I should be doing. I think he’s just not sure
how fast I should run yet. Somewhere between 6:30 and 6:50. It’s not that
I’m running faster or slower than expected, it’s just he’s trying out various
ideas of my speed. That’s a bit of a relief.

---

I run with my group for all of 20 minutes, and then I turn back. Feels silly.In that time I learn that Amy was in a bike crash. Some idiot teenager was
riding in the wrong lane of the bike path around a blind corner and crashed
into her. Now she is in pain if she rides or runs. She didn’t run the
half-marathon with the others, but she went and cheered them on. I think
I’d be too depressed to do that. Good for her.Dan has run his second 20 mile training run. And this one went much better.
He ate before and took fuel with him. He’s feeling much better about the
idea of running 26 miles now. Good.

12 weeks before Boston (23/1/06)

This is the official start of training. Rusty works on a 12 week schedule.
So now my marathon training begins in ernest. My mileage is up, my speed-work
mileage is up, and my tempo run (which has now turned into a marathon pace
effort) is down, but my warm-up is up. The marathon pace run will increase
by one mile a week over the next few weeks…

Mon	easy 40 min run
Tue	San Marcos, 3 mile w/up, 5×1600 (5:52-5:55) 4:30 min jog between, 3 mile cool-down
Wed	Elliptical 60min resistance 7-8, crossramp 5-6 rpms 180-200
Thu	Easy run 90min at ~8min/mile (11miles)
Fri	Off. Do yoga
Sat	San Marcos, 5mile w/up, 3mile marathon pace (6:40) 3mile cool-down
Sun	Easy run 14 miles

Rusty warns me not to get excited about the race, or the idea of the race
until I’ve reached the top of heartbreak hill. Then I can speed up (that’s
about 20 miles into the race 12 weeks from now).

It’s freezing cold on the track at 6 in the morning.. And I mean that literally.
There’s ice. And frost. Rare for SB. And annoying to run across a slick bit
of track. Luckily it’s just one place.

I can’t read my watch for the first mile. It’s too dark.

As usual, I’m intimidated by 5 miles (1610m is about a mile) at a 5:52 pace,
but I now believe Rusty knows what he’s doing, or rather knows what I’m doing.
It’s hard, of course. But we manage them. The first 4 are at the high end
of the time range so Rusty asks us to do the last one faster. And we finish
with a 5:48. Jeff didn’t hear him, and wonders why Jim and I are going so
fast (we don’t have much breath for talking at this pace — he doesn’t ask
till after, we don’t explain till then either).

Garret has joined us again. He turns out to be one of the track coaches for
San Marcos. (we only had one track coach at my high school, but San Marcos
has 10 times as many students so there are more coaches). Garret ran the
first mile with us, setting our pace. He runs really smoothly, it looks
effortless for him. Then he did his miles progressively faster, and he only
got 2 minutes between them.

And Laura is running by herself slower than we.

I wonder what things will be like in March, when everyone else has run their
races and I have a month more of training alone. Or with Garret zooming ahead
of me?

As we cool down, Jeff is worried about his aches and pains. He, too, has
been told that Rusty overtrains people. Marathon training will involve some
aches and pains, there’s no avoiding it. But Jeff isn’t used to this much
running, overtraining is probably more of an issue for him, but then he’s
also less used to the expected aches.

It is worrying to keep hearing that Rusty overtrains. On the other hand Jim
has trained with him at least twice (the other time he knocked 20 minutes
off his PR and ran a sub-3 hour marathon ). Jill also knocked 5 minutes off
her marathon PR. Annie got a PR at the half marathon because of Rusty (and
he had her run less). What I hear is that the people who know how
to run and run well do well with Rusty.

Or that’s what I want to hear.

(I think I run well — oh, and fast)

---

I do my elliptical work, and I wear my HR monitor. Heart rate has crept up
to 170 by the end. When I tell this to Rusty he says
“WHAT? That’s way too high, why’d
you let that happen.” I point out that I just did what he told me. Oops,
he says, crank the resistance down and keep the legs moving fast. You should
still have a HR around 140~145.Perhaps this is how some people get overtrained? I didn’t know what the goal
was, but I did know enough to check my heart and to report back. If I hadn’t
I’d probably have continued doing too much. If I made that mistake often
enough…As my yoga teachers are so fond of saying, I must take responsibility for
my body, no one else knows what’s going on, not even the best coach. Especially
not a coach who is trying to push me up to, but not beyond, my limit. Only
I can know that. He can tell a lot from external signs, but I need to give
him the internal information…

---

I now have the same warm up was everyone else. We go once around Rusty’s
loop, do our strides. Laura sets out. Then Jim & me (at 6:40), and Jeff
and Larry (6:50 interesting, Rusty is training Jeff for a 3:00 marathon,
not the 3:10 Jeff originally expected. I think 3hours is more appropriate
– Jeff is fast). I’m not sure what happened to Garret. Jim and I run our
first quarter at 89, a 5:56 pace. My legs thought they were going too fast,
but I wasn’t sure, I might be just tired (I did work too hard on the elliptical
after all), and I assume Jim has a better sense of pace than I. A little
consoling to know that he doesn’t always. But after that we find the right
pace. And finish the mile at 6:29, essentially dead on except for that first
quarter (which was 11 seconds too fast. It’s amazing how much difference
those 11 seconds made. That quarter was uncomfortable, not really sustainable.
Slowed down — well it’s still fast, but it’s maintainable). But when I try
to set the lap counter on my watch, it squeals and resets itself to midnight
and loses the stopwatch. I think I need a new battery. It means I have to
depend on Jim for timing now. Next mile is 6:37 or so. Then we catch up with
Laura. I’m not sure what she’s running but we aren’t passing her very quickly.
At three miles I let Jim go, and turn back an join Laura.She looks at me oddly, “What are you doing?” “I thought I’d cool down with
you.” Shortly thereafter Jeff and Larry pass us. She’s doing 7:35 I think.
A bit fast for a cool down but nice to have company. We don’t talk much,
this is a fast pace for her, and although she can, talking is an effort and
I shouldn’t force her to — she’s got another 6 miles to go at this pace.
I run 2 and a bit miles with her and then turn round, slow down and make
directly for my bike as my final cool down mile.

---

Carrie, from my sunday group, is saying that next year she’d like to run
an ultra (she’s done 39 marathons already). She wants to know if I’ll do
Badwater with her (the insane 135 mile race across Death Valley). No. But
I might do a 50miler or a 100k sometime. That’s ok, says Carrie, we need
to do a couple of those first in order to qualify for Badwater anyway. But
how does one train for such a thing? The only ultra any of us have done (and
I’ve not even done that) is the local nine-trails, and as Carrie puts it
she just ran on the road for three hours “like a normal person” to train
for it. I suggest that perhaps this is stretching the definition of “normal”
a bit.I ask Carrie if her mother tries to dissuade her from running. “Oh yes, I
can’t talk to her about it at all. I never bring the subject up.”Today when I talk to my parents they seem quite supportive of my running
and excited for me. I wonder what happened?It’s amazing how this marathon has taken over my life. When I talk to people
I want to talk about training. I was thinking of doing a yoga teacher-training
class this spring, but I realize I just won’t have the energy (or time) for
that. Next year.

11 weeks before Boston (1/30/06)

Mon	easy 40 min run
Tue	75min easy run w/ 6 20sec strides
Wed	Elliptical 60min resistance 4-5, crossramp 5-6 rpms 180-200HR 135-144: this is the important thing
Thu	Easy run 50min 5-6strides, 4 mile MP (6:35-6:40), 4 miles cool-down
Fri	Easy 65min
Sat	Bike to Ventura
Sun	Easy run 14 miles

Marathon training is a fourier series of efforts. There are easy days and
hard days. Long and short, fast and slow. The body needs stress placed on
it to improve, but it also needs rest. There are bigger cycles too, hard
weeks and easy weeks. This is an easy week, it’s two miles shorter than the
last, and there’s no speed work. There’s a general build in effort until
about 3 weeks before, and then things ease off so as to allow me to be nice
and rested for the race.

In my case there’s a bit more going on. Rusty keeps saying he doesn’t want
me too fit too soon. Injuries happen when one is really fit, and given my
recent history of injury… So I’m not doing speed work this week, nor a
couple of weeks ago. No one else gets off from speed work, and it is a little
galling to be thus singled out. Yet I admit it is wise.

Silly me. I’m comparing myself against the people who are better than I.
Most are far worse off. I was teasing Rusty for this very behavior. And yoga
would suggest that I not compare at all. Do my best and enjoy the process.

My schedule is also complicated because this is my week to check the Ventura
River. So I will do my marathon pace effort on Thursday by myself. I don’t
get to run with my group at all.

Dan has pulled his hip-flexors (or something like that) and is having trouble
doing long runs. I suggest a deep-tissue massage, warning that work on the
psoas is not pleasant.

My mother called to ask me what her password was, and when I couldn’t answer
asked me how my running was going. To get her mind off me I told her about
Dan’s problem. Not a good idea. “Does that mean you’re having problems too?”
she asks. NO. Wherever did she
get that from? She apologizes. Doesn’t know why she always thinks the worst
of my running. Well, it’s very annoying.

---

After I used the elliptical Wally asked me what pace I was training for.
“6:40.” “Do you really think you can do that?” I can understand his surprise,
I’ve never run even a half marathon at that pace, much less a marathon. And
can I do it? I haven’t the faintest idea. Rusty thinks so. But I say “Well
if everything is perfect, maybe. But I’m really hoping to break 3hours.”
Rusty is annoyed, “Wally has never seen you run what you’re capable of, he
doesn’t know. If the weather’s right and you don’t get injured, of course
you can.” Well, we’ll see.

---

Suddenly it doesn’t feel like winter any more. It is light and almost warm
when I bike out to the bikepath for my long run. How pleasant! When I’m warming
up I run beside the little creek that goes parallel to the path (I don’t
need exact mile marks in the warm up). The creek is a good place for birds
and there are a lot of mallards about this morning, plus a some snowy egrets.
A few miles further along the creek enters the slough and opens out, here
we have a flotilla of coots, two great blue herons (side by side) and a white
heron. Often I’ll see cormorants, night herons and bitterns here, but not
today. I finish my six mile warm up.I’m wearing my heart monitor today because I still haven’t fixed the watch.
I press a button and it goes blank. I can’t make it work. Damn. I can’t do
the work-out without a watch of some kind. I let it sit by itself for a bit
while I do my strides. I come back. It’s still blank, but when I press a
button it comes back to life. It thinks it’s midnight of 1-Jan-2000, but
that’s ok. I go to the mile mark, start the stopwatch (and it starts, yeah!)
and go. I think I’m going too fast, so I slow, but in spite of slowing the
first quarter was at a 5:56 pace. I slow further, but my first mile is still
fast 6:25, the next is 6:32 — better, the third is 6:36 — which is in the
range I’m looking for — except: I’m not pressing any buttons on the monitor
(just in case) and it isn’t calculating my lap times, so I’m doing subtractions
in my head while running, and I get the difference (from time at end of mile
2 to current time) wrong. I think I just ran a 6:56 — far too slow, and
I speed back up. Final mile 6:24. Oh well.And now it really seems hot, there is sweat in my eyes. I wish we had that
lovely cold winter weather back:-).On the cool-down run I see lots of monarch butterflies fluttering about,
it’s a lovely warm day and they’ve popped out of their winter hideaway down
the road. Amusing: I don’t notice nature when I’m running hard.

There’s a kite (black-shouldered I think) hovering high overhead as I finish.

---

(I get new batteries put in my watches)

---

There is an old woman whom I sometimes see walking down on the beachway in
front of town. To every runner who passes her she chirps “Run, run ’till
you’re a hundred.” We wave and smile. If you stop and chat she will explain
that she is 95 and attributes her great age to her habit of walking on the
beach every day. And she tells you to keep exercising, it’s the only way
to live long.

---

I lead a yoga practice with a couple of friends. Their four year old son
has become addicted to a video game, he is dull and out of sorts until someone
asks him a question about the game, then he brightens up and becomes voluble.
I fear this is the way I react toward this marathon — my friends nod in
sad agreement.I think I have become generally more cheerful in the last two months — even
when I’m not thinking about my marathoning addiction. Chock full of endorphins
probably.

---

I talk to my brother on the phone, complaining about my mother’s assumption
that I’m “overdoing it”. Well, she might be right, says he. Yes, I suppose
she might. I tend to think that I probably have a much better perspective
on these matters than a mother 3000 miles away who has no idea what I’m doing,
how I’m responding to it or anything. But I can’t deny that she might be
right.

---

Jody is also running Boston, and her birthday happens to be the day of the
race. Jody also switches age-groups at that birthday. But suppose the Boston
officials are picky? Jody thinks she was born in the afternoon (after the
race) — they might claim she was still in the old age-group. Luckily she
qualified for the faster age-group, so the point is moot.

10 weeks before Boston (2/6/06)

Mon	easy 40 min run (6-8 x 20 sec strides after run)
Tue	3mi w/up, 3×800 (2:52), 2:30 jog between each, 3:30 before 1600, 1600 (5:57), 4:30 jog, 2×800 (2:52), 2:30 between, 3:30 before 1600, 1600 (5:57), 2:30 jog, 2×400 (85) 90sec between, 3mi cool-down (~13miles total)
Wed	Elliptical 60min resistance 4-5, crossramp 5-6 rpms 180-200HR 135-144: this is the important thing
Thu	easy 90min (10-11miles)
Fri	Easy 65min
Sat	65min easy, 5miles ~6:35-6:42/mi, 6miles after easy (~19miles)
Sun	Off

I approached my Tuesday run with some dread. I’m no longer worried that it
will be impossible, just unpleasant. I don’t like these short fast intervals
(though I remind myself that in high school I had faster, shorter intervals
and those were much worse, these are mild in comparison. I really should
not dread them).

I said last Thursday that it was light and warm. Well, not today. It’s half
an hour earlier and the sun isn’t up yet. There’s frost on the roof of my
car when I set out at 5:30.

During our warm-up we discuss various recovery drinks. Is it good to have
some protein in them? Does the lemon-lime flavor taste better than the mandarin?

This time we were joined by Bill (I learn later that Bill is the guy with
the baby stroller — it’s hard to recognize people in the dark!) who ran
with Jim, Jeff and me. He’s a better runner than we, but he’s been off for
a while and is starting slowly (for him). During our first half mile, Bill
comments on the sunrise. I can’t look, but after we’ve finished I do. It
is beautiful. Little mottled clouds painted orange and yellow.

After we’d finished our first 3 half miles Jim had to leave. Then after the
first mile Bill left. Then Garret vanished. Then Laura. When we finished
there were just Jeff and me on the track. Rather lonely…

Rusty tells me my breathing is better than it was in December. I presume
this means I’m running more efficiently.

Jeff and I have different complaints about interval work. I like the miles
because the pace is a little slower. I don’t mind that they are longer (much).
So I push Jeff on the miles and he tells me to slow. Jeff likes the quarters,
the pace is faster, but they are over sooner. Jeff was running 80second quarters
at the end (we were supposed to do 85), I didn’t keep up, but did end up
running faster than required too (82). And my watch worked

Jeff tells me that I run at an erratic pace during these intervals. Unfortunately
that sounds likely.

These intervals would be far harder without company, and I’m really glad
they are over for this week.

---

Last week when I did my work on the elliptical I noticed how my heart rate
crept up over time until after 45 minutes or so it was above 150 (actually
I’ve noticed this each time I’ve used it). I just assumed this was part of
exercising. You get tired and have to work harder to maintain the same level
of output. I mentioned this to Rusty and he said it was probably because
I was dehydrating. But I’m only doing it for an hour and I drink, how can
I be dehydrating? Anyway today I tested the idea. I went in with two full
water bottles and I forced myself to drink a mouthful of water every 2 minutes.
And my heart rate stayed pretty constant around 136. Wow. Maybe Rusty knows
what he’s talking about:-)I’m amazed at how easily this effect can be seen. I assumed it would be far
more subtle.

---

My mother ran into Dan back home and worried to him I was “overdoing it”.
I wonder what she thinks that phrase means? She has no idea what I’m doing,
so how can she know if I’m overdoing? I get so frustrated about this, as
far as I can tell she has no specific worries so any specific reassurance
I give will fail to address them, and will be ignored. Dan did his best to
reassure her too. It would be nice if he had succeeded where I have continually
failed… Perhaps I’m just not credible.I had hoped that not collapsing after two months of training might carry
some weight with her, but I guess not.

---

Or perhaps I am frustrated because I fear she is correct. I’m 46. Is that
too old for this sort of thing? I haven’t done this kind of speed work since
high school. I think I have recovered from my injuries (not just recovered
but healed the ultimate cause), but I and my PT and my doctor might be wrong.

---

My Pilates teacher prefers me to run after my Pilates class, so I didn’t
start my medium run until 9 or so. It was hot. The sky a cloudless blue,
the ocean, calm, a darker blue, the islands sharp and clear. A beautiful
day. But hot. The old woman was out feeding the sea gulls and told me to
run.But hot, sweat stinging my eyes. I won’t be able to run very fast if Boston
is that hot.

---

My longest run so far, 19 miles with 5 at pace. Jeff is off skiing, Garret
is running a race, it’s just Jim and Laura and me. Their run is slightly
longer, but with 13 miles at pace. I do an 8 mile warm up before my 5, and
I find it hard to hold the pace on my final fast mile. When we’re all done
with our fast work we pause and refuel and then start up for our cool down.
Just at first we’re stiff and tired. We joke about how decrepit we must look.

---

Rusty tells me it’s best if I don’t run on Sundays now, I need that day to
recover from my long runs. Rats. I’ll miss my group.When I call my parents this week I notice that it is my father who is all
enthusiastic for me, while my mother is now silent.

9 weeks before Boston (2/13/06)

Mon	easy 40 min run (6-8 x 20 sec strides after run)
Tue	3mi w/up, strides*5, 3200 (12:00), 5:30 jog, 1600 (5:48), 2×800 (85/400), 3mi cool-down
Wed	Elliptical 60min resistance 4-5, crossramp 5-6 rpms 180-200HR 135-144: this is the important thing
Thu	easy 95min (11-12miles)
Fri	Easy 40min
Sat	45min easy, 5miles tempo ~6:18-6:22/mi, 65min easy after (~18miles)
Sun	Off

It’s a beautiful moonlit night as I set out at 5:30. The full moon is directly
in front of me and the streets are deserted. I get to San Marcos and find
only Jim and Rusty. It’s just beginning to be twilight when we set out on
our warm up, but it’s light enough to read watches by the time we finish.

We start with a 2 mile run trying for 6min/mile pace. We run round the track
in a little pack, one guy leading (and in theory setting the pace) the others
drafting off him a bit. We alternate leads every half mile and Rusty begins.
He does the first half in 2:55, which is 5 seconds faster than it should
be (and 5 seconds is hard at this pace). I’m already breathing hard, I can’t
hear anyone’s breath else. Then Jim takes over and he’s even faster. I’m
wondering if I’ll have to drop out. Jim ran a far harder work-out on Saturday
than I, how can he be doing this to me? After Jim’s first quarter Rusty warns
him that he expects the second mile to be just as fast. Ogg. Rusty says he’s
not asking Jim to slow, just warning. I ask Jim to slow though.
Finally I hear Jim start to breath hard.

Then I take over just before the mile mark. 5:45 for the first mile, so Jim
led a 2:50 half. And Rusty expects me to keep up that pace. As we cross the
mile mark he tells me not to look at my watch, just to run. And then …
I hear Jim’s footsteps dropping back. And then Rusty’s. I’ve not been checking
my watch but I don’t think I’m going any faster than they did… And it’s
harder now to keep the pace, there’s no one pressing me on. Rusty is talking
to Jim, encouraging him I guess, but I can’t really hear, it’s all I can
do to keep running. But I do. My face grits into a rictus, and yoga says
that’s bad so I unclench. This is really hard. I have no support. I’m not
sure I can keep going, I could stop. I could slow and run with the others.
I keep going. I cross the third half mile, no one takes over from me in the
lead. I look at my watch but I can’t figure out what it says. My face grits
up again and again I unclench. One more quarter to go. I can’t do this. Rusty
shouts something encouraging at me but I can’t really hear. The final stretch,
I really will finish. 11:32. I almost was able to keep the pace of the first
mile (5:45 then 5:47), I’m really proud of myself, I managed that with no
support. I’m a mess though, drooling spittle from the side of my mouth, mucus
from the nose, gasping and bent over.

That’s the fastest 2 mile I’ve run since high school when I did 10:47 in
a state-wide meet. I’ve tried to put two 6 minute miles back to back several
times in recent years but have not succeeded. I realize though that if I
wanted to run 2 miles well, I’d have to train my lungs more. My legs feel
OK, but I’m in oxygen debt.

There’s a reason I prefer long races — these short runs are far too painful.

Jim isn’t really far behind. By the time I unbend he’s there beside me. Rusty
tells us that he should now make us run the next mile 12 seconds faster than
the mile pace for the two miles we’ve just done — but that he won’t. We’re
supposed to have a 5:30 jog now, but Rusty is again kind and gives us another
minute or two before our mile interval.

I lead on the first half of this. For the first 100 meters I’m too fast,
and Jim reins me back. After that I’m too slow, barely under a 6 minute pace
for the first quarter, little better on the second. Then Jim takes the lead.
And once again I contemplate slowing, it’s less than half a mile, but I’m
exhausted. When the wind is against us I think of slowing, but we make the
turn and it’s behind us now, and we fly down the track footstrikes in perfect
sync. 5:47. Jim made up the time I lost on the first half.

As we wander around head down gasping for breath Rusty asks “How are you
doing?” I answer “Terrible”, Rusty laughs “I’m not talking to you, George;
Jim’s got a marathon to run in 2 weeks, while you’ve got time to recover.”
Of course I’m really fine, just exhausted. Still he decides we don’t need
to do the final 2 half-mile intervals.

Jim needs to go off to work (as does Rusty), so I’m left to do my cool-down
by myself. I’m barely moving as I head down to the bike path. But elated.
The sun is shining now, I get a really close view of a cormorant in the slough
standing on a rock close to shore, towering over a bunch of mallards and
coots. Then it sees me and takes off, wingtips hitting the water on each
downstroke before it eventually gains airspeed and gets aloft.

When I get back to my bike fog has rolled in. It’s cold and grey, an amazing
change in just a few minutes.
<!–

---

At the farmers’ market this evening I am chatting to one of the vendors (about
– good heavens, how surprising — about running) and I mention how a friend
of mine “is a fast runner for a woman”. How dreadfully condescending that
sounds. It is true though. She qualified for Boston with a time 22 minutes
slower than mine, and yet she is about 15 minutes faster than the time for
her age group (as I am 17 minutes faster than the time for mine). So she
is fast. There must be a better way to say it though. –>

---

I continue my experiments with drinking water and find that I can up the
resistance on the elliptical if I drink a lot.

---

Rusty tells me that Jim and Jeff are more efficient, smoother runners than
I, but that I have greater endurance and so can keep up in spite of that.
Then Rusty suggested that I train to run a 10k at a 5:45 mile pace. Yikes!
bad enough to do 2 miles at that pace, 6 sounds inconceivable.Rusty has been warning me for weeks that we’ll be doing a three mile time
trial next week. I’m dreading it. Yesterday after the two mile fiasco he
jogged beside me and pointed out that for the 3-miler I’d still be at 17:30
even if I died on the third mile and ran it in 6 minutes (Um Rusty, a 6 minute
mile is not dying. A 10 minute mile is dying). Today he is telling me that
I just have to hang with Jim and Jeff. They are faster than I, but I have
the endurance to keep up with them. I guess that means it’ll hurt me more
but I can do it. Um… great.Rusty complains about people he trains who do the fast part of their long
work-outs without doing the warm-up/cool-down. This may be a polite way of
telling me not to do this. The work-out is a unit and the warm-up is to get
you tired, and the cool-down is to force you to keep running when you are
tired, if you skip either the work-out isn’t as effective.

---

Dan tells me it looks as though his injury will keep him from running Umstead
in March. Now he is thinking of Richmond in the fall. Richmond has the advantage
that it is Boston certified.

---

In these days of global warming Boston is likely to be hot (where “hot” means
hot for running, even quite pleasant balmy days can be “hot” in this context).
So Rusty wants me to run my 90minute run either indoors (in a warm stuffy
room) or outside during the heat of the day. After Tuesday’s fog, the days
have not been hot, so that suggests I should run on a treadmill inside.Boston is mostly downhill. The first four miles quite steeply so, ten miles
of rolling hills, another steep decline for two miles, then five miles of
uphill culminating in heartbreak and the final 5.2 are downhill. I think
of running downhill as easy. It is and isn’t. It’s easy on the heart and
lungs, but it tears up the muscles of the legs. So Rusty wants me to train
for running downhill for a long time followed by a little up. Again this
means treadmill (the only 8 mile downhill stretch I know locally is far too
steep to train on).I do 15 minutes normally, then an hour downhill, then 15 minutes uphill.

---

I stop in to the local running store to buy some expensive sugar&salt,
and I end up chatting with Joe for a while. Joe trained with Rusty for Boston
last year. Rusty had him running 90 miles a week on his longest week (more
than Joe had done before) — my guess is that I’ll probably get above 60,
probably below 70 (63 in a week is my max to date). Rusty also tried to talk
Joe into training for a 10k at a ferociously fast pace (3~4 minutes faster
than the time Rusty wants me to run one in — Joe’s a lot faster than I am)
and he commisserated with me about that.

---

When I wake at 5 before my long run I find the power is out on my street.
Then it starts to rain. Why go outside? The cat is curled up contentedly
on the beanbag chair — I envy her, could I curl up beside her? It’s cold
as I bike out to the high school, and in spite of the rain the waning gibbous
moon shines brilliantly.As we set off on our warm-up the rain lets up, and I see the mountains are
snow covered, then there is a beautiful sunrise through the clouds on the
horizon. Then it starts to drizzle again.As usual I have no sense of pace. Jim & I are supposed to be doing a
5 mile tempo run at 6:20 pace or 95 second quarters. We set out, and it feels
fast, but it should, we get to the quarter mile mark and my watch says 1:29,
I misinterpret that as 4 seconds too slow instead of 6 seconds too fast,
so I speed up. Jim, sensible man, slows down. At the half mile mark, under
3 minutes, I realize my mistake and slow to let Jim catch up. Then Rusty
drives past and asks how we came to separate. I mumble something incoherent.
Jim sets a good pace and after 3 miles we are at 19:07, one second too slow
(our pace range is 6:18-6:22). This worries me and I speed up way too much.
I do the next mile in 6:05. I slow down for the last, but even so it’s 6:15.As we cool-down Laura warns that this monologue will provide a biased view
– most marathon training isn’t like this. It had never occurred to me that
it was. I don’t want to run an average marathon. According to Hal Higdon,
the average time to run a marathon is about 4 hours. I can run 27 miles in
4 hours with no training, no support, no competition (I did this one day
last year, just went out the front door and ran — all my friends were running
the LA marathon and I was feeling left out). I don’t need to train to run
an average marathon. Of course that’s misinterpreting Laura. Most people
don’t train as hard as we do. But most people aren’t as good as we are, we’re
all better than average, and the better you are the harder you have to train
to get each little dribble of improvement. Joe, for instance, had to work
a lot harder than we are. And we are all pushing ourselves to go beyond what
we could do by ourselves — that’s why we’ve got a coach, after all.

When we are done Rusty asks how we feel. I’m really hungry and a little
light-headed, signs that I’ve run through all my blood sugar. This is unpleasant,
but it is also something I should do from time to time. It trains the body
to metabolize fat more efficiently. Back at my bike are some biscuits and
some recovery drink (that expensive sugar&salt I bought the other day),
I gobble them down, go home, have a large breakfast, and take an hour nap.
I feel a little more human.

It’s a beautiful sunny day now (though still chilly) and all the snow has
melted away.

---

When I got home yesterday my left leg felt — unstable. Weird tingles down
the exterior posterior side of the leg, sometimes in the calf, sometimes
the hip, sometimes the thigh or ankle. My guess some sort of nerve constriction.
Sciatica? then I should stretch the periformus I think. So I go into pigeon
for about 15 minutes before yoga class. This yoga teacher is going in for
surgery on Wednesday and she begins class by asking “Is anyone not
in pain?” Which gets a chuckle.

8 weeks before Boston (2/20/06)

Mon	easy 40 min run (6-8 x 20 sec strides after run)
Tue	3mi w/up, strides*5, 5k time trial (~5:45-5:50/mile), 3mi cool-down*believe in yourself!
Wed	Elliptical 60min resistance 4-5, crossramp 5-6 rpms 180-200HR 135-144: this is the important thing
Thu	easy 95min (11-12miles)Run either mid-day in sun or on treadmill in heat drinking water (6-8oz every 15 min)
Fri	Easy 40min
Sat	45min easy, 7miles PMP ~6:35-6:40/mi, 65min easy after (~19miles)
Sun	easy 85min (~10 miles)

At 6am monday morning the sky is light enough that I can’t see any stars.
The waning quarter moon shines brightly overhead and two planets are visible,
but down on the road it’s barely twilight. And it’s cold. A heavy frost blankets
the grass. If it’s hard for me to get up and run outside — what must it
be like for the people who actually live in Boston?

The sciatica (or whatever it was) finally seems to have left me. Whew, that
worried me. Instead my right calf tightens up to the point of pins and needles
in the foot. But that’s an old familiar problem, I’m used to it. It goes
away on a downhill stretch.

I finish my 40 minute run at the Wilcox, near my house, where I do my strides.
The sun is up now, the planets have vanished, but the moon shines on (running
early has made me much more aware of the moon than I usually am). I can hear
the surf crashing at the base of the bluffs below the park. It’s really lovely
out this morning (but cold) — there are some recompenses for being up at
quarter of seven. There’s a very well kempt little dog sitting in the middle
of the trail down which I intend to run, nicely wrapped up in a dog-sweater.
He appears to be waiting for something. In the distance some more dogs and
their human appear and I assume they go together, but no, he just ignores
them all. I sprint past the little dog, and he just watches me (most will
try to play or chase, this one is well mannered). He stays there as I run
past him eight times, turning his head to watch as I go past. As I prepare
to leave I go up and pet him. I notice he has an airline baggage tag around
his neck with a label: “My owners are out running and will return.”

He watches me trot off home to breakfast.

I’m dreading tomorrow, it’s not going to be pleasant at all