50 degrees and beautiful outside and yet I'm doing 20 minutes on the Elliptical and 25 minutes on the TM. My body and legs are beat up. I know that these two workouts don't beat me up as badly as running on pavement and I didn't feel like driving to a trail. I guess I shouldn't have done the keep away frisbee on Sat. at the b-day party. Plus, this cold is just kicking my b__t still!
Just call me Phlegm.
Easy day today, off tomorrow and a sort of dress rehearsal on Wednesday of 1 mile warmup 3 miles @ marathon pace, 1 mile MP -15 seconds then 2 mile cool down. Thursday 3 mile easy. Friday off and travel day.
Great morning for a run with 50 degrees and overcast. Took Tori to school and then went to the track(still trying to keep my legs fresh off the roads).
Felt sluggish the first lap or so. After the warmup mile did a quick stretch and then into 3 miles @ marathon pace and then one more at MP - 15 seconds. Had to slow down several times as my legs were ready to wheel. Had tons of energy. Still not sure I can hold 8 minute pace for 26.2 but am ready to find out on Saturday.
Wore the wrong kind of shorts due to saving my other ones for the marathon and started chafing at mile 5. OUCH!
3 miles easy with my "little bro". He's in town from Sacramento and is going to run the marathon with me. Hit the Sno Valley trail to keep it easy on the legs. Everything feels good.
No miles tomorrow. Overall Pace 9:21 and Avg. HR 131
Next run: Saturday 26.2 miles @ 8:00 pace (hopefully)
Friday: Matt(Our Bishop, 35) Mike(my brother, 40) and
Mark(good friend,52) and I had a big buttermilk pancake breakfast in the morning, then
off to drive for 6 hours. Stopped for
lunch and everybody fueled up well. Mike and I shared a large pizza of which he
ate 4 monster pieces and I had only 2 and was called various names for not
pounding down more. Was glad I didn’t overeat as I have before other races.
Subway sandwich for dinner at 9:00
which was way too late as I couldn’t sleep very well afterwards. Got about 3-4
hours of sleep. Up at 5:00 to eat a
banana and then 5:15 for a powerbar
and water. That was it for fuel except for a few sips of accelerade and water.
Race Day: Sommer and Laura(the two girls that Mark and I
were going to try to keep up with) and the rest of us walked down to the
starting area. The girls took a bathroom break(long line) and we got in the
starting zone a little ways back. The girls must have finagled their way into
the front of the line as we only saw them in front of us after that. This race
was not chip timed so I started my garmin when we crossed the starting line.
Mark and I stayed together and started at a nice easy 8:00 pace which was our goal.
The first 4 miles or so go through some business areas and
residential streets with a little up and down but not bad. Then to the dock
area(lovely fish smell which reminded me of my mission in Concepcion,
Chile) and to the
waterfront. Beautiful place to run! The weather was just about as perfect as it
could be, around 50 degrees and partly cloudy. The sun came out for a bit but
then we were running with a hill blocking the sun so it was really nice. Mark
was getting antsy to get out ahead and run but I stayed on the 8:00 pace and he stayedwith me instead of bolting ahead like his
legs were telling him to.
There were 3 men around our age that kept passing us and
then they would stop and walk for a bit. Found out they were running 8 minutes
and then walking 20 seconds. They were trying to BQ. After a few more times we
lost them and I highly doubt if they got there BQ times. One of the guys was
really heavy on his feet. Clomp, clomp and clomp.
We thought several times that we might be making up some
distance on the girls but we never did and they came in at 3:30 and 3:31 which
was what they were shooting for.
As we ran along the waterfront we kept our same effort and
were losing a few seconds off our goal pace of 8:00
and I mentioned this to Mark who said “it is what it is”. I thought he might
want to kick it up a notch and get back on target pace but he was OK staying at
that effort level.
We hit every water station on the way. I had water only the
first 2 and then HEED and water after that. The HEED stuff was pretty much
tasteless but worked well for me. We picked up a gu and held it til the next
water break and had a heck of a time getting it opened up so we could drink it
with water.
We hit the turnaround about 15.4 miles and I was feeling
pretty good until I noticed that now we were going against the wind. It felt
good with the cool breeze but I also felt like we slowed down after that too.
We finally passed a guy who had been ahead of us for quite
some time and he said that we looked pretty fresh. He then said that he was
going to draft us and got right behind me. If he hadn’t said anything then I
probably wouldn’t have cared much about it. So I kicked it in gear and we lost
him in short order. It felt good to go a little faster as we had gotten a
little sluggish.
At the water station around 20 I ate 2 orange pieces and picked
up 2 bananas to carry with me to fuel up along the way which worked well for
me.
Mark had some of his magic electrolyte beans around that
area. At around mile 23 the wind disappeared and I had some extra energy so I
started going a little faster and Mark to my surprise wasn’t hanging with me.
He said later that if I had gotten much further ahead then he probably would
have just stayed back. Mr. wind showed back up along with a gentle sloping hill
and Mark caught and passed me with about 1.5 miles to go. He did great passing
multiple people on that last hill. I passed a few as well and this one woman in
a purple shirt that had been leapfrogging with. Then at the top of the hill I
heard her friends cheering her on like she was right behind me and I was ready
to roll down the hill ata pretty good
pace. Passed another guy down the hill and barely missed a couple at the finish
area.
That is one of the best feelings in world to finish a
marathon. More than 3 and a half hours later of pure solid effort.
Mike came in at 4:32.
It was his first marathon and he had been having hamstring issues and we were
praying that he would make it. He missed about a month of his training because
of hamstring problems.
Matt came in at 4:38
and announced that he was starving and wanted to eat all the way home, which he
did. He had only run 8 miles in the previous 2 weeks.
Mark finished about a half a minute ahead of me.
My official time is 3:38:31
which is about 10 seconds off the real time from my garmin due to the starting
area.
Next Marathon: Maybe one in Sacramento
in about a year. I can only do these so often but they can truly be life changing
as we challenge ourselves to do things we never thought we could do.
