Big Sur Marathon

On Sunday we took part in, and completed, the Big Sur International Marathon. This was our second marathon, and, what a difference 9 months makes.

Anyone who knows anything about this marathon knows two things:
1) it is often considered the most beautiful marathon in the country.
2) it is one of the hardest marathons in the country.

These two factors seem to be appealing to us, though it might take some soul searching to figure out our attraction to more and more difficult goals of completion rather than picking something easier and doing better. This is the kind of thing that is drawing us closer to the ultra marathoning world and further away from the flat course optimum speed marathons.

I think the reason for this is probably a combination of not being naturally fast, our desire to run our races together, and our past life hiking these same trails that we now run. We seem to be in it for the challenge of completion and the beauty of the journey. Perhaps speed will come, (and I'll come back to that in another post), but for this marathon, again, completing it was the goal, enjoying the course was paramount, and a sense that we did well and ran strong for our current abilities in the face of adversity important.

However, I was also asked several times about what time I wanted to run. Since Big Sur is said to be 20 minutes or more slower than other marathons I said if I could PR (against my other injury plagued first marathon), or break 5 hours, then that would be complete success. With the six hour time limit and the prospect of more hill running than I'd ever done, I imagined a scenario where I could only walk uphill, limp downhill and generally walk aimlessly for hours until I was either pulled from the course for taking more than 6 hours or preemptively leaped into the Pacific Ocean. I hoped that wouldn't be the case, but couldn't discount it completely as I truly wasn't certain my body was ready for this.

Finally the time had arrived. My parents were visiting from Australia and my parents-in-law took on Kelly early Saturday morning while we packed up and drove south the 2 hours to Monterey. Our pack list filled all the space of a notepad page, imagining hot or cold race conditions, cold start with warm finish (note: buy throwaway gloves at expo), cold waiting for bus (what if they have run out of TP? camera?) , post race needs (what if we need to stitch our own arm back on?), if we had our car nearby, or not, what to bring to eat (what? 8 packets of Gu??), what to buy down there (pasta place reservation?) etc. We had a surprisingly complicated checklist for what should require a pair of shoes and some sunscreen.

EXPO

Down at the expo we picked up our race numbers and chips and then shopped for a while. I came away with $80 of Big Sur branded (mostly Asics) gear, so really hoped I'd finish, and also a signed copy of Bart Yasso's new book. He's the chief running officer at Runner's World and maybe the nicest most interesting guy in running. He also has a quoted as saying that if he could run one marathon he'd make it Big Sur. How can you not like the guy?

I asked him about running the course and he said to negative split it, that although the second half in hilly, it's a net downhill and to save yourself in the first half and use the energy to work the downhills in the second half.

Later in the day we saw Jeff Galloway talk. Now here's my problem: I'm a runner. I'm a sucky runner, but still a runner. That means, I run. I don't walk. Walking is not the challenge running is. On the other hand, I'd rather make it through an event strong than 'run' hard the first half and then implode at mile 18. So, we listened to him answer questions about his walk running, the strategy of dropping the walk run ratio down to 1:1 or 1:2 on the hills, and other Galloway wisdom and by the end we both thought for this race it could be worth a shot. For this kind of course, where the ups and down were going to make energy conservation critical, we thought it couldn't hurt. We'd keep our planned pace, but we'd do some walking.

RACE PLAN

So we formed a race plan over our spaghetti and marinara that evening, largely formed off advice we picked up at the expo:

1. We'd use 4:1 run/walk ratio. This was very different from any walk/running we'd done before (mostly either walk through the aid stations only, or walk 1 min every mile). When the time hit a 5 min mark, we'd walk a minute then run again. We'd do that until Hurricane Point (a 2 mile climb starting at mile 10) where we'd do 2:1 (run 2 min, walk 1) to get to the top. If the going got tough later on we'd do 2:1 and then 1:1 until we completed the course.
2. We'd run 11 min/mile average pace until the hill. After that we'd do the best we could for the last half.
3. If Jeff Galloway ran by us (pacing for a 5 hour finish), we'd run with him.
4. Eat a Gu shot 15 minutes before the race and every 45 mins on course
5. Run down hills with caution, don't brake, shuffle. Save the quads!
6. Drink a cup of water at every aid station.

RACE

We spent the night in Salinas, CA, about 30 minutes of iceburg lettuce fields east of Monterey. Set alarm for 2:45am, woke up at 2:30 and made coffee. Yes, 2:30am. It was vomit inducing. I put on my race t-shirt and shorts. Stuffed an iPod shuffle deep into a pocket in case the going got tough. Added 8 Gus. Yum. Over that I layered a long sleave shirt. Over that stuff, a pair of fuzzy pants and a fleece. We grabbed our stuff and headed back to Monterey. Outside it was warm, already. I knew I wouldn't need my fleece.

We parked in a garage and boarded the school buses for the start line. It took more than an hour to wind their way down the coast in the dark. Half the people on the bus were talking loudly to each other, nervously telling strangers about their lives, while the other half stayed quiet, silently knowing what lay ahead, that perhaps by the time that made it back to the finish line hours later they might be changed forever. That makes some people disappear into themselves while others cover it up with apparent mindlessness.


The area where we started was filled with people already. It was good people watching. There were people doing push ups. There was much personal grooming. That a large number of people still run in cotton socks was an interesting fact. After a final trip to the port-a-potties we headed to our start spot on the road. A lone bagpiper played nearby. Once in position, it wasn't long before the national anthem was sung and the doves released. I'm not kidding. The gun fired and (3 minutes later) we were off. This is the point when you wonder how you got yourself into this again. Too late though, there's only one way back home. Start running.

For the first couple of miles it was hard to settle into anything, and walk breaking was difficult for fear of being run down. But we did it. Patty took charge of calling '5 seconds'. In 5 seconds we'd try to find some road shoulder to walk on. Way before 60 seconds we were itching to start running. But we held steady. Slow now will get us there faster later. Don't worry about the people running by. Stay on the plan.

We ran through redwoods towards the coast. Some kids were out now to watch us and the sun was out. It was already in the mid-60s and I'd started in just shorts and a t-shirt and never even begun to feel cold. I had a moment of thinking that was a little bad, but perhaps that should have worried me more. It was going to be hot. For now, it was perfect running, looking at the trees and the little streams and campgrounds or two nestled down in between trees. And the running was easy too, so life was good. But hold steady. Our pace settled into an 11:01-11:03 average. Perfectly on plan.


By mile 6 we'd cleared the trees and headed straight towards the coast and the Big Sur lighthouse perched atop a piece of marooned coastline. From there we curved north and started up along the coast. The road climbed slowly past cow fields with the Pacific ocean behind them. Cresting the hill we headed down to sea level and then onto the big climb: Hurricane Point. This hill was approximately 600ft up over 2 miles. It's work, but it's very doable and never gets too steep. Both of us felt strong the whole way up. At the top we stopped and posed for pictures (in hurricane force wind), the view was spectacular. People headed up the hill behind us, a trail of runners stretching along the coast in front of us.


Then started our way down. Easy on the quads. Easy. Easy. Easy. At the bottom was the famed bridge that is seen in many photos of the area. It was also 13.1 miles, halfway there. As we ran across the bridge a man was playing a baby grand piano.


Behind Patty the ocean was a deep deep blue. "This is Californian living," said Patty, "this is why you moved here." It was magical. And it was living.


We continued on. The next major hill I came too was the first sign of fatigue onset. It wasn't too bad, but the climb up the Big Bad Boy had taken something out of me that I wasn't going to get back before the end of the race. It was only going to get worse. The course became a fairly steady stream of climbing and dropping with little which you'd consider flat. Where there were hills, which is to say, everywhere, they had no name, but were still the equal of any heart break hill elsewhere. It was hard running. By mile 18 I was getting tired and my legs and I were having conversations. Our pace average had taken a hit on the big hill (with one mile in there taking 13 minutes), partially recovered on the following downhill (ran some nice sub-10 sections in there) and stabilized at about a 11:12 pace. All in all, the race to mile 20 was pretty good. Why don't they make races 20 miles long?


I remember at the San Francisco marathon a pace group leader giving the following assessment of running a marathon: run the first 10 with your head (be smart, don't go too hard), run the second 10 with your legs (it will get harder, use you legs to hold the pace), and run the last 6.2 with your heart. Not long after mile 20 I knew where she was coming from.


Around me the scenery was only more spectacular. Cliff sides we ran along were covered with flowers and dropped spectacularly into intimate little coves that you'd never see from a car. Sea gulls would soar by us against clear blue sky, while a we ran by a musician playing the harp. This is 80 or 90% of the experience of running Big Sur. The beauty of Big Sur far outweighs the challenge. And the two experiences become separate. While your legs can be saying lets stop. We're done. Your mind can be saying "Hell no, this is living. Let's keep going. This is fun."


By mile 23 I was hurting on the uphills. I was tired, there wasn't too much glycogen left, but largely it was this: I was very dehydrated. My HR was high and I unable to keep it down on the hills. Patty, we need to do 1 minute run, 1 minute walk, okay? What? My HR is 195! You know, like, as though I was sprinting the final 400 yards of a 5k, only we're doing a 12 min/mile up a hill and there's still 2 miles to go. I don't want to blow up here. So we walk-ran up the last few hills and cruised down the final downhills. They still felt good.

Soon we crossed the Carmel bridge and headed into the finish line. People cheered. It was amazing. A life moment. Our chip time was 4 hours, 57 minutes. A 10 minute PR for the two of us.


One of the organizers shook my hand as he placed the hand crafted medal around my neck. "How was it?" he asked with such sincerity. "It was hard" I said. But I felt like it wasn't a very good answer to his question. It was a momentous spiritual journey that I'll never forget. And it was hard.

CONCLUSIONS

Well, I'm still digesting this. The race itself was a perfect race for me. We beat our expectations on all levels. Our second half was less than three minutes slower than the first half (and some of that was picture taking). Not quite Bart's negative split, but I'll take it.

But there were things to learn from it, as always. Here are some initial thoughts:

Water. Hydration was the big issue. By the time we finished it was in the high 80s. Under those conditions I know I need a lot of water. It seems likely I need more water than I can reasonably take in at an aid station. I either need to practice that, or I need to run with a bottle like I do in training. And then I need to think about sodium intake.

Food. The 100 calories (1 gel) every 45 minutes worked well.

Knees. My knee is still a problem, but my PT and I are working on that. After the race I had someone at the medical tent tape ice onto it. It was borderline annoying during the race approaching 'pain' in the final few miles. Ugly afterwards. Back to those exercises.

Walk/Run. This was the brave experiment of this marathon, and I think it works. It doesn't sit right with me, but at this time and this place it made for a much better (and faster marathon). Being a slave to a watch is not fun either, but being in control of the outcome of your race is. Like they say: walk before you're forced to.

Hills. Good technique down hills worked really well. The final hill we ran down was our fastest. After 5 hours our quads were still going strong (not as good today!) Something to take forward. We can always be stronger running up hills, but all our trail running certainly helped. We'll get stronger.

All in all, we had a fantastic time. I haven't even mentioned how well organized this is too. Everything was perfect for every aspect of this event. Like the half we ran last November this is a class act.

done. running.

Christmas Relays

This weekend Patty and I ran the Christmas Relays at Lake Merced in San Francisco. Our running club put together 9 teams, each of 4 runners. Each runner completed one lap of the lake, about 4.5 miles.

On my team one runner couldn't run because of a knee problem, so Ken stepped up to run two legs, each at a spectacular pace (sub 6 min/mile). My leg of the race went well and I held roughly my previous 5K pace for the 50% longer distance. Of course, that meant I was passed by a lot of people as the position Ken had put us in was totally out of my league. At one point I was running down a hill at just under 7 min/mile and people were flying by me on both sides like I wasn't moving at all.

The course itself was tougher than I thought when I drove around it. There's a hill at the start which you run too hard because it's the start, then a lot of downhill with a lot of people moving faster than you. Here you fly, too fast. By the third mile it's a slow uphill and the reality of how fast you ran the first two miles and how far it is still to go sets in. The final push to the finish also had a untimely hill. On top of that, the whole time you know there's a guy standing at the finish waiting for you. That keeps it moving along. I finished my leg in about 39 mins. Our team was the second LMJS team to finish.


Anyway, a fun time was had by all. After the race Patty, Patrick and I ran around the lake again to keep our miles up. It was a little rough as Patty and I were thinking 12 min/mile and Patrick was thinking 10 min/mile. Oh well, the legs were already trashed from the race, so what did it matter.

Southwest

We were recently on a roadtrip to the American Southwest and managed to get in a few runs. Here's the first one. Patty returning down Echo Canyon in Death Valley National Park.


We camped there for two nights in perfect camping weather. This run took us a couple of miles up a canyon along a jeep road. It was pretty hard going on the way up as it was uphill and the footing was very loose rocks. On the way down those same rocks were like pillows for our feet to crunch down on.


From Death Valley we headed into Arizona where the temperatures were not as nice. Flagstaff was in single digits and windy when we got up so we decided to pass on our planned run in Buffalo Park. We Northern Californian dwellers are not built for those conditions (or at least lack the right apparel!)

A couple of days later, now in Moab, UT we woke up and, because Kelly was still asleep and we were in a dark motel room, we checked the iPhone to see what the weather was like outside. "28 degrees." Not bad. A run looked on. "And a chance of snow." Hmmm. We checked the radar image and a big green and yellow blob hovered over Moab. Double hmmm. I got up and looked out the window. White. Snow. Everywhere.

When Kelly woke up she was pretty excited. She'd never seen snow actually falling before.


We spent the first part of the morning hanging out in a coffee shop and then playing in snow at the local park. While there I noticed how many people were out running! There was even a couple doing intervals across the park's snowy grass. If they could run, so could I. We went back to the hotel and got changed and then took turns in putting down a 3 mile run.


While I won't go so far as to say it was really all that nice running into the snow, it was refreshing and something different. Plus, with almost 3000 miles of driving in a week, it got my legs moving.

Two weeks to go

Week mileage: 22.3 Miles (4hrs 4min)

Another pretty good week, although there's signs of overtraining.

It's been a pretty fast climb back up to decent miles, both for our long runs and total miles. Because of this we've now peaked for our half marathon and will hold at this level with some easy running this week and then taper down the following week so we're fresh at the start line.

This weekend I did my first real race since the marathon three months ago! We did the 15km race at Lake Merritt. Both of us were pretty happy with our run. My time was just over 90 minutes, which was my goal.


According to the GPS we ran quite a bit over 15km, probably because of poor tangents at the beginning (and maybe GPS error). Apart from the first two miles, which were fast, we basically negative split each mile until the end, with the slowest being 10:00 mins (actually our goal pace) for mile 3, and just under 9:00 mins for my final mile. It was good to be able to finish strong like that. Patty finished so strong in fact that she kicked my butt by 30 seconds.


From this race I'm supposed to draw conclusions on how fast to run the half marathon. I feel like 9:30ish pace is probably doable now, with 10:00 being pretty easy and 9:00 being probably too hard for that distance at this point. That puts our goal between 2:05 and 2:10.

We'll see.

Taco Tuesday

Weekly mileage: 25.1 Mi (4 hrs 56 min)

Running has come completely around in the past month and I'm back to enjoying it. Mostly. Last week I hit my target of 25 miles a week which I hope to more or less sustain until the beginning of next year.

On Wednesday morning we headed out to Tilden, a local regional park, in pouring rain to run five miles on a trail there. It turned out to be one of the hardest runs in a long time. With the rain the trail turned to sticky slippery mud. How can something be sticky and slippery at once? Somehow this mud was. Running was something like running on sand dunes, two steps up, one slide back with the bonus of extra pounds of mud caking our shoes and rain pelting our faces. Afterwards I was beat for the rest of the day.

During the week I also put in a couple of good runs at work. I have a new Garmin Forerunner which I got to test out for the first time. It's pretty cool, but I have the same feeling I had when I first got a HRM. That it will initially just show me how slow I really am. But in the long run, that's probably a good thing.

On Sunday we headed out for our long run. The morning started with a flat tire on our car, followed by a flat battery on the forerunner, and plus, I felt terrible and in completely the wrong place for the run mentally. After about three miles the run came round and we ran a little over 12 miles in total. I've been having some kind of cramping and/or early onset fatigue on the outside of my right shin. Not pain, like shin splints, but something else. It usually subsides after a while. No idea what that's about, but it doesn't help!

Our goal is a half marathon in three weeks called the Big Sur Half Marathon. Rather than actually being in Big Sur, it's in Monterey and runs by the aquarium and out to near Pebble Beach and back. The course is actually pretty stunning as it runs right along the coast.


I'm really looking forward to it, although I don't have the best sense of how my body will respond to a race that length or even what an good pace is for me right now. I'm surely fitter than the first and only time I've run a half marathon that wasn't a mountainous trail run and that time was 2:18. To help figure this out, and kick ourselves into the racing mood, we're running a local 15km race this weekend. Three laps around the lake. I'm mostly hoping to not DNF like the last time I raced there, but the goal is tentatively 90 minutes.

Well, it's Tuesday. And that means track workout and Baja fish tacos!

San Francisco Marathon

Yesterday we completed our first marathon. Patty and I crossed the finish line together in 5 hours and 8 minutes. What a weekend!



Expo

After collecting our race packet Friday, we returned to the expo site Saturday to watch some of the talks. There was a crazy mix of people presenting, including the race medical chief telling a room full of people that they didn't need to eat before or during the race. The highlight was seeing ultra marathoner Dean Karnazes talk. He was funny and inspiring.

I also managed to meet up with a couple of Internet friends: Steve from the Hal Higdon v-team message boards and Mary who lives in Florida and has been blogging about her marathon training since March.

We went home and ignored the race medical chief and had a big plate of pasta.


The race

We were awake and up by 3:30am. I downed a cup of coffee, drank a last glass of water and ate a granola bar and yogurt (sticking to my standard pre-run breakfast). By 4:30am we were out the door and driving across the bridge. We were beyond ready to go by this stage, no room to feel tired from the early wake up.


We made it over to SF and parked fairly close to the start/finish. People were emptying out of their cars, attaching timing chips to shoes, bibs to shirts, jogging around. We used the potties and ran into one of Kelly's teachers two people in front of us in the line. We walked over to the start line and watched the first wave go off, joined the potty line again, and had basically the perfect amount of time to join our wave, find our pace leader, before we were off.

We decided we'd join the 4:30 pace group. Not because we planned to run 4:30, but because we didn't want to start faster than this. It was fun running with them for a little while, easy running, but staying with a pace group would be hard for the whole race. At the first aid station we slowed, grabbed a couple of cups of water and looked up to see her halfway up the Fort Mason hill! We couldn't believe we were blown away by her so fast through the first aid station so we ran a 9:37 mile to catch her. At the end of Crissy field the same thing happened again and by the time we sighted her she was halfway up to the bridge. We blew her a kiss goodbye, we were on our own.

Up on the bridge it was very foggy. A refreshing wet wind blew through the gate. No view, but it was better to have it cool. The running was at it's most congested here and the walkers who didn't move to the right drove us a little crazy. Really, do they think running 3 across and then coming to a relative halt is helpful to the thousands of people coming up behind them? Half way across I heard "Go Patty! Go Peter!". It was Mary, who'd caught up with us. She was more or less naked (sports bra and skorts). We stayed with her for much of the rest of the bridge and then she was gone.

Also interesting about the bridge was that my IT band started to act up. This is Patty's designated problem and I haven't had any problems with mine in all the training runs. Oh well, if there's one thing we mentally practiced during our training, it was that anything could happen and we'd take it and deal with it.

From there we headed south to the park. We were keeping roughly a 10:30 pace for much of this time. This section was underrated for hills. They are not steep, but they wear you down then you're not paying attention to them. We started to walk one minute every mile too, realizing that we had a long way to go. During this period my foot started to hurt again. Slowly, each mile, it got worse and worse. I knew it would come at some point during the race, but I had hoped for later rather than sooner.

We passed the half marathon mark in 2:20, almost a half PR! I'm looking forward to running another half some time soon and see what I can do when I don't have another 13 miles to run. But back to the business at hand.

The course soon headed back up the park from near ocean beach. This section was where we dived. It's hard to say where 'The Wall' was, but for us this was it. Our pace dropped a minute or two a mile with the long long uphill and never rebounded. My foot hurt. My knee hurt (IT). My hips hurt. And generally, as far as my body went, things were all downhill from around mile 15 or 16.

Around Stowe Lake was one of the low points. We weren't moving towards the finish line, just going around in a circle and my foot was now so troubled that I seriously was considering the nearby half marathon return buses. This is the only point where I started to doubt things. Then something happened. I don't medically know what went on, but around mile 18 the buildup of pain all of a sudden gave way and there was a feeling of having something very cold poured on it, followed by a slightly mushy feeling and dull pain. I could almost feel the internal bleeding. Yikes! But the good news was that it was then much easier to run!

From the park we re-entered the city and ran down the middle of Haight street. This was a highlight of the race and the energy coming from the spectators there gave me a big lift. Mile 20, a point I was looking forward to (and dreading) came and went without us spotting the marker. We ran across Market street and I knew then I'd make it. Finishing sub-5 hours now seemed doubtful, so it was just a matter of getting it done.

This was a much more industrial area of old rundown buildings and bikies mixing the tunes for the runners under freeway overpasses. To be honest, I didn't care for the music by this point, but every spectator gave me lift. One had a sign for "Patty" and yelled "Hey, a Patty. Hey, we made a sign for you!" They put a smile on my face and really helped to keep me going.

But in general those were tough miles for us and there's some take home lessons there. Like have a slow walk-run backup plan for when/if the wheels fall off, don't just start walking with no plan to start running again. We didn't have too many clear thoughts in there.

By the final two miles I regained my focus and actually felt good and strong. The "dog patch" area was the turning point where the course turned to face the ball park and the Bay Bridge. The effect of seeing where the finish line was overcame everything else. I was ready to run the rest but Patty wanted to walk more because of the old IT knee thing.


We passed AT&T park, with a game about to start, there were people everywhere, but we were a secondary attraction to some guy called Barry Bonds I suppose. Rounding the park was the 26 mile mark and the finish line was in sight. I picked up my pace with what I had left and ran strong across the line.







The aftermath

My foot is now a mess. A red-blue bruise now covers half the side of my foot. And of course much of my lower half will take some recovery time.

All in all, we're really happy. When I hurt my foot 5 weeks ago I thought that's it, no marathon this time. Then I got some more running in and hurt my foot again. Again that was it. But I cross trained like a crazy person and did make it to the start line.

"The only way you really fail is to not try at all"

I wanted the experience and was willing to take a cost. I felt like even if I dropped, I would still learn things for the next one. So I did all that. As a bonus, I finished.

Physically, this race was a serious challenge. But I never stopped enjoying being out there and being in the event. Even in the final miles I knew it wasn't going to be the last. I wasn't saying to myself "how did I get myself into this thing?" like I probably should have been.

Was running my first marathon a defining moment in my life? Unfortunately not in the way I thought it might be. It was almost anti-climatic. But it really was living life and that's what it's all about.

We're already deciding what's next, but first I need to see about that foot.

Week 15

The big week. In many ways this week, the highest mileage week of my program, has been the focus of my training, even more than the marathon. I thought, if I can get through to that peak week then I'd be in good shape for the marathon.

The numbers:

• Running: 32 miles (on a plan of 40 miles)
• Time: 6hrs 25mins

As you can see, things rebounded some what from the previous forced fall back week and I got some much needed final miles in.

The foot injury held up well during the week. It was ever present as a faint something, but didn't escalate. I ran 3, 10, then 3 miles. The 10 mile run was also one of those focus points of this training cycle. The peak mid-week mileage on the 4th of July holiday. I really enjoyed this run and felt pretty encourage about the marathon outlook after this.

Then Sunday came and we went out for our 20 miler. I felt I needed another long run before the taper so I went for it. If I made it then it would be like week 14 never happened. If I broke I'd have 3 weeks to heal.

It felt pretty good for the first 10 miles, but then fell apart. How can something be fine for two hours and then have a problem? It was right after our half way point where we stopped at our car to fill up on water. Perhaps my foot started to swell at that moment or something. We took off from the cars and I had the same sensation of there being an unusual pressure in my shoe. A couple of miles later the pressure had became more like stabbing pain and soon after that I was walking back to the car. There's no point in pushing through that kind of thing in a training run.

Back at the car I waited for Patty to finish her run. I couldn't locate any sharp objects to kill myself with, so I just had to sit there watching a woman hit a tennis ball against a wall for an hour. When Patty finally showed up she was only 17 miles into hers and had circled back to see how I was doing. She wasn't doing so good either (ITB issues), but she was moving. She suggested that if I needed to kill myself, the BART tracks were close by. I didn't think of that.

Anyway, enough dwelling on the failure of this run. My goal now is to forget it happened and get my foot in shape to take the marathon. I'm fit enough to run it, I have a solid number of miles banked. I just need a working foot. Now almost a week later, it doesn't really hurt anymore so hopefully in two weeks it will be healed enough to not relapse in the marathon.

Here's a graph of my training up until the taper, just for the fun of it:

Time will tell if it's enough.

Fallback

Well this week was more of a fallback than I had in mind. 

Here are the numbers:

Running: 4 miles (on a plan of 32)

Cycling: 20+ miles (on a plan of 0)

Injuries: 1 (on a plan of 0)

Last Tuesday I headed down to the lake from here on a gentle 5 miler. The first 2 miles went by quickly, a nice run downhill. The next mile I looped around a tree a 1/2 mile around the lake and then headed back towards home. I passed one of the marathon training LMJS guys headed the other way and said Hi. Heading back home, initially, my left foot felt a little funny. Like the tongue of my shoe had moved to an annoying location. Kind of a pressure in the outside of my foot. 

I passed a woman who noted how much energy I looked like I had. In fact, I felt good. I was thinking about how well the run was going after the 17.5 mile trail run just a few days before. It was exactly 300 miles since we began training for this marathon. Pretty good!

Then my foot started to ache. Hmmm. I ran a little further. It hurt some more. I stopped and started to walk. I was a mile out from home. By the time I got home I couldn't put my foot on the ground. Nice.

I took the rest of the day off work. I didn't really know how I was going to get in there anyway. I iced. I Advil'ed (verb). I elevated. I compressed. I hoped around.

Things didn't really get too much better for a few days. I posed to Hal Higdon's message board. He said it wasn't a good sign. I might have to taper. My doctor told me to rest it. It was probably a stain. Since there was no sore spot to touch it probably wasn't a stress fracture. 

So, I've taken the whole week off, my second last build up week. I didn't go to work (they let me work from home), and concentrated on my resting and icing. By Saturday I could walk around. Kelly and I went out to Moraga to crew Patty on her 14 miler. That was fun, but I wished I was out running of course.

The cause of my injury is anyone's guess, but the suspects are:

1. The 18 miler did the damage, something I didn't feel at the time finished it off.
   
2. I was trying to break in new shoes and instead they broke me.
   
3. I walked around the lake the day before wearing a pair of sandles.
   
4. I only had 300 miles in me.
   

Who knows?!  

Bike

The good news, since I'd like to reflect on the good parts of my marathon jeopardizing week, is that I finally got a mountain bike. It's not a very expensive model, but I like it. In fact Patty had to warn my that it wasn't coming to bed with us.

On Sunday I did two rides. One out on a rail trail we run on (I mean I used to run on, when I was, you know, a runner), and in the evening I did I trail ride in the area of our trail half marathon. Both were a lot of fun.

Week 13

Our biggest week so far (and what may prove to be my biggest), and not at all unlucky.

Distance: 35.4 miles on a plan of 36.
Duration: 7hrs 18min

Well, last week was great. A complete change from the sad tale that was getting through a 16-miler with a knife stabbed into the back of my foot. The mid-week runs are taking up a lot of time so I've been working at home a lot, or trying to slot them in really early.

Mid-week runs:
Tuesday's run was at my old nemesis, the Lafayette-Moraga Regional trail. It follows an old mule train route where loggers once pulled redwoods from the hills and carted them to Sacramento. Later a steam train ran along part of the route. Today it's a stretch of pavement with a 'linear park' on either side. It gives you 7 or 8 miles each way of relatively uninterrupted pavement and pleasant enough scenery to look at. For a rail trail, it's also decently hilly. We ran just 4 miles. Map.

Wednesday we were back out to the same area to run around a canal trail. The Walnut Creek area (which I used to associate with hellish shopping, baking heat, and misguided visits to The Container Store) actually has these canals everywhere. I suppose once upon a time the whole thing must have flooded all the time. There's water control infrastructure everywhere. These canals are not canals like Venice, however, more like irrigation concrete channels that are mostly about 6 feet or so across. If you like concrete canals, then you'd like these. They do have wildlife sometimes, which right now means there's baby mallard spotting to be had. There's almost nothing cuter than a baby duck sliding down a concrete bank. Anyway, several of these long canals have trails next to them. Wednesday's run was 9 miles east from Walden Park in the middle of Walnut Creek, out to the hills on the Contra Costa Canal Trail. Then we turned south and travel up along the hillside, eventually passing under a road in a pretty cool tunnel. This section, being up high, is actually quite pretty. You can't even spot the Container Store, just trees mostly. Then it's back on a different canal through mostly residential areas along the Ygnacio Canal Trail. Map.

Thursday's 5M run was from home down to Lake Merritt-a pretty well trodden route. It felt so good I picked up the pace and ran it as a tempo run. I hadn't had the energy for that kind of thing since the whole 3 races in 3 weeks thing.

Long run:
This was all, of course, just a warm up for Saturday's long run. We decided that running a safe route, flat and easy, was just not for us. I was probably still a little crazy from my tempo run, and plus, the Western States Endurance Run (100 miles through the Sierras) was simultaneously off and running (a friend of ours was pacing), so we felt like something more adventurous than running along I-80 for 4 hours. So instead we headed out to the hills, to Tilden regional park where the LMJS running club was meeting.

The first section of the run was what the organizer Karen described as flat. Well maybe "with a hill in the middle, but mostly flat". In what universe was that flat? Not a flat universe, that's for sure. Most of it was, however, runnable hills. Except the one in the middle, which we walked some of. This section took us from the Little Farm parking lot north through Wildcat canyon to the Wildcat staging area, and back. It was pretty enough in there, and definitely better than running along the interstate. But somehow it wasn't quite trail running. At about 4 miles along a woman stopped us (who actually stops runners?) and asks if we could give our water to her dog. We look at her dog and it looks fine. She's less than a mile from her car and we're out for an 18 miler. We say sorry and keep running. After 9 miles we were back near our car, and those in the club doing just the Half headed to the parking lot. We stopped short of there at a drinking fountain and filled up and ate. After chatting to a couple of runners we started our second leg. A couple who is doing the marathon opted to get in their 18miles by running the first 9 miles again. We thought about it for a moment and again decided adventure needed to come first.

We headed up the road less travelled, more or less up the side of a mountain. We ran for an acceptably long time and then eventually started to walk. As the walking was getting tough we turned our walk break into a stop break. At the top was a paved section called Nimitz Way where the Tilden Tough Ten is held each year. We started to run again, but something was up. My HR was high, and quick to anger. Patty figured I was having some problems and gave me her bottle which had Cytomax in it. Now, I don't mean to promote Cytomax, or to appear like I believe a thing of their (FDA has not verified) claims, but that stuff is great. Half a mile later I'd gotten about 20 Oz of fluid in me and I was back on track.

Math interlude:
Now, I take from this that I need more water than I'd drunk up until that point. That is, in 10 or so miles I had drunk about 2 bottles worth of water, or around 3-4 oz per mile. This was pretty much in line with my pre-run plan. But on a warm but not hot day, that wasn't enough. In the following mile I drank another 20 oz and that set me right. About 50% more liquid. So, based on that, if I up my intake to 4-5 oz per mile, then in the race that's 8-10 oz an aid station which means getting a whole cup down plus some. In the race, this also means about 24 oz per hour, which is well below the 30 oz per hour considered dangerous. Also, note to self. Cytomax rocks.

At inspiration point we'd stashed more water, more Cytomax and a couple of Cliff Shots. We ate a little, refilled out bottles and then headed off. The next section was really tough. It took us up hundreds more feet along a spectacular ridge line. But mostly we were annoyed that a lot of this wasn't really runnable. Sure, it was a great workout, but we also needed just long running. After a few miles we reached the highest point. Some hikers were there looking at the view that extended for miles both inland and across the bay. In the distance was San Francisco, our marathon course. We were looking down on the whole city thinking that at least no hill was going to be as high as that one in the course.

By the time we returned to our car we'd covered around 17.5 miles in a slow but grueling 4 hours on the trails. We were beat. The gain/loss was over 2500ft not counting all the small hills. It was pretty rough.



Recovery Peter and Patty style:

1) Ice water in the car. Start drinking.
2) Start replacing calories. One Mocho Freddo (large) from Peets Coffee. This is a chocolate shake with coffee in it. They are beyond good, and not really that bad for you if you don't get the whipped cream.
3) 2 Super burritos (one each). I went with Veggie. Patty had smelled grilling meat somewhere on our run as we past near a picnic area and had partially turned into a grizzly bear ready to kill for meat. She went with the steak.
4) Ice bath. Filled half way with cold tap water. Add ice. Not so it's a slushy, just enough to put a chill into it. Soak for 10 minutes. Do not share. It heats the water up too fast and isn't romantic. Also, you need a clock. It's a long 10 minutes.
5) Lots of Advil. 800mg is a good place to start.
6) Sleep. 1 hour of quality napping.
7) Next day:recovery walk. One 3M lap of the lake works well.

Woodminster XC

The Dick Houston Memorial Woodminster is a cross country race here in Oakland now in its 42nd year. You might not normally associate Oakland with cross country racing opportunity, but in fact Oakland is bordered to the East with beautiful hills that hold some great trail running. Redwood shaded creeks that are great for hiking and steep rough terrain which makes for tough running.

Originally we were going to run this race, a 9 mile event which runs over some of the toughest course you could imagine around here. Instead, we decided it was time to work on running longer and not potentially injure ourself on this. So, rather than run it I decided to take some photos.

Woodminster is a handicap race, different age groups leave one after another. If I was in it I'd be 4 minutes in front of the fastest group (the young men), and about 20 minutes behind Patty in the old ladies group. Here's a couple of photos from the start:



Runners coming down the hill near the finish:


The trails are mostly like this, although there's hills which bring the whole field to a walk. Last year we were hiking on the day of this race and had a nice conversation with one of the racers as we walked up one of the more serious hills.

Here are a few more photos of the runners. This first one is the winner, Roy Rivers.


And I think this is the first place woman:

The rest of the photos are here, and the organizers were excited enough to have some one take photos they sent out a link to my photos with the race results and on their page.

Post-race slump

The payback for the trail race in the middle of our marathon training had to come.

In the days following the race I didn't feel especially bad in any one place. Just tiredness. Okay, well that's not exactly true. My knees felt tweaky. My back hurt a little. My blister did it's own thing. Nothing unexpected though. But as the days past I think the biggest problem was tightness.

By Tuesday I managed to get myself down to Lake Merritt and put in a slow and really rough recovery run in gusty and somewhat hot conditions. I threw in lots of walk breaks and a few times they weren't really walk breaks. More like just straight out walking. I cut the distance short to 3 miles (planned 4) and felt proud of myself for even getting out there, but NO fun was had, for the record. My main complaints at this stage: inside of right knee had a little pain left over from the weekend and my calves felt stiff.

Thursday morning before work I took on my 8 mile mid-long run with much better results, running from home to the lake, 2 miles around, then reverse. I felt tired, but basically I felt okay. And I love this run, especially early in the morning. The city rises over the course of the run's elapsed time. There's lots of people out doing their thing. It's Oakland at it's best.

Friday I skipped the first run of my training. There was supposed to be a 4 mile run in there that just didn't happen. Patty had run even less than me this week, still fighting ITB soreness around her knee from the race. So together we convinced ourselves another day of rest would do us good.

Saturday we had our 16 miler. It was horrible.

It was all a little disastrous from the beginning. With no relatives around this weekend we called in a play date we were owed. But there were two problems: Firstly, it ended up on a Saturday. Usually we do our long run on Sunday and besides, another day of rest would maybe have helped. The second problem was we ended up dropping Kelly off at nearly midday, which is neither good marathon practice, nor our idea running time food-wise (where was lunch? oh yeah, we ran for 3 hours instead!), nor the coolest time of the day. It was warm.

On top of that we made up a route with the following criteria. 1) Flat! 2) Long. 3) Few cross streets 4) close by, we didn't have time to drive anywhere. Enjoyable was not on the list. The result was we used the trail that runs along the bay from Emeryville, near the IKEA, north to the horse racing track, looping all over the place (into Chavez park twice and Berkeley Aquatic park once) to get 16 miles out of it.

Now, this might not seem so bad, with it's San Francisco views, but it is also right next to I-80.

Bike path between I-80 and the bay

The run started with us having to park a mile from where we'd planned to start. Curse you 'Chevy's customer parking only' signs. This made all the mileages I'd marked on a map a mile off. This was okay for a while, but by the time we'd run 10 or 11 miles, the math was too complicated. Seriously, it was.

Cesar E Chavez Park near Berkeley marina

The real problem with this run though was none of the above. It was my achilles of all things. I'd never heard a thing from my achilles. Never. Until just ONE mile into this run when it started to hurt out of nowhere. By mile 8 it was painful. Each step was a knife stab in the back of my heel. Interestingly, it was much worse to walk than run. So I ran. Now I look back on it as amazing I even finished this run. Each time conditions are not ideal we look at it as a good experience for the marathon, because things will get tough there and just like this run I will just have to tough them out as best I can. I just hoped that when I was done I'd walk again one day.

In the last few miles my foot still hurt but I'd stopped listening to it. It was best to keep moving. But a sense of fatigue descended on me which is hard to put into words. If they could bottle it, I think it could have dropped an elephant. But we maintained pace, such that it was, and got the job done. 3 hours and 14 minutes. 40 minutes longer than we'd ever run before. Fallback week ahead, thank God.

We got home and we both took an ice bath and I started 72 hours of rest, Advil, elevation and ice. My achiles seems to have responded, with a couple of solid runs (4 miles and 8 miles) in the past couple of days with no pain. My guess is an overly tight calf caused the damage, so I'm hoping if I keep up the stretching and stay off hills for a while, I can steer clear of that one going forward.

Although we love the trail racing, we're just not strong enough to do it in the middle of this kind of mileage build up. So we've decided to skip the Woodminster XC race this weekend and maybe do a run out on the Iron Horse trail (paved, relatively flat) this Saturday with our running club. After that there's two big runs (18 and 20 milers) with a fallback in between and then the taper! Let's hope, NO MORE SLUMPS!

Lake Chabot Trail Challenge

This past Sunday we took part in the Lake Chabot Trail Challenge Half Marathon. We signed up because we thought the course looked beautiful, because ultimately we'd like to get better at trail running (so why not dive right in?) and because it fit into our schedule and general sense that a few tough races would do us good on marathon day, if we survived. If the San Francisco Marathon is our A race, then this is our main B for the spring. On one hand I couldn't wait and on the other I kept thinking "once I get past that Chabot run then it's full speed ahead to the marathon."

Initially my expectations were that we'd go in it, try to have fun, and run with a bunch of people who went as fast (I mean, as slow) as us. Most races have a pretty good range of abilities. But then a week or two ago we started to look at last years times. They were fast! The last person in my age group last year finished in 2:33. Not normally too fast a time, but over a rough course with 1800+ ft of gain/loss, that seems to me like a pretty competitive field. Perhaps we were completely out of our league here. And what's more, there was a course limit of 3 hours. We started to become a little scared. What if we got to the finish line and they'd already folded up the tables and everyone had gone home? What if the race results just showed "LOSER" instead of a time next to our name? I'm not really a big fan of signing up for something that I'm clearly going to completely fail at. Perhaps this was really a bad idea.

So, meetings were held, expectations beaten with a large stick and goals were reset.
In order of importance (and decreasing order of likeliness) they now read:

1. finish first trail race
   
2. finish in under the 3 hour time limit
3. try not to injure self or severely hamper training week ahead
4. enjoy it!
5. beat at least one person in my age group
6. run under 2:30hrs (an unlikely goal)
   

The race:

I woke up after a bad night's sleep and really didn't feel too good. Nothing felt right in my stomach but I was willing to head out and give it a go anyway. Race nerves or oncoming illness? Who knows?! Our baby sitter arrived just after 7am and we were out the door, headed into the unknown.

When we arrived at the lake, the street nearby was already swarming with runners parking along the road and heading down to the lake (there's a $5 parking fee to park in the lot). We too parked on the street and followed them to the start line and picked up our packets, then made a pre-race bathroom stop. That left us barely enough time to put down a granola bar and get a little pre-race stretching in before the start. A ready. Set. And go! and we were off and running. It was all so fast I didn't even start recording my HR until around mile one!

Patty and I at the start

The race initially followed along the lake on a paved bike trail. A guy went by on his tandem bike (alone) and said he was catching up to his 11 year old daughter who was running. She'd done several half's before. Then he was off. First mile went by in around 10:00. Still plenty of people around us.

At 1.5 miles we hit the first real hill and headed up. We imagined the fast people half way home by now. We ran to the top of this hill with perhaps a little walking near the end. Some people started to fly by us on the way down the other side (perhaps the steepest downhill of the whole race). At the bottom we noticed one of them was covered with a smear of dirt down one side of his body. I don't think you need that so early in the race.

At the bottom of this hill the course runs along the golf course for a few hundred feet through tall trees and ferns to a cool wooden bridge and an aid station at the 3 mile mark. We later noted that this few hundred feet was the only significant flat section of the course!

Across the bridge was the major climb of the run. Something like 650ft straight up. Pretty soon we realized running was out of the question here and started to walk and settled into a power hike to the top , practiced through many years of hiking up bigger hills than this one. We noticed that we were gaining here on lots of people. We caught up to the guy with who'd fallen. He said "you guys walk faster than I can run". Yes we do. Still, my HR was up in the 180s just walking. As we continued up the hill. we passed several more people as everyone in view started to walk eventually. Back behind us was a beautiful view of the lake nestled within the green hills. I tried to appreciate how nice this section was scenically and ignore the incline. Goal 4.

The top was an aid station, at 4.5 miles, and we stopped for a minute or so and tried to swallow freezing cold Gatorade. Brain freeze! My stomach was still not pleased too, so I didn't drink too much. For what would be at most three hours running I was willing to risk a little dehydration. I carried a hand bottle filled with Cytomax and sipped this from time to time. Mostly I just wanted to practice running a race with it, the aid stations would have been fine. In hindsight I probably could have used more fluids.

The terrain after this aid station became a very welcome gentle downhill before becoming steeper as we entered the loggers loop. This area was filled with gum trees and smelled of home (Australia). The trail was a little slick with their leaves and nuts; we had to be careful. Goal 3. The second half of the loop regained the elevation lost and we walked several sections here. On the way up I felt like a pebble had gotten behind the heel of my shoe. At the top I reached in the see what the problem was. No pebble. Hmmm. I kept running. A little later I figured out I had a blister, caused by all the steep uphill walking. Note to self.

The miles from this point on became a bit of a blur. I do remember the mile markers coming by faster than I expected so I took this as a good sign. I didn't really feel any real pain anywhere, just growing fatigue. I think perhaps I was numb by this point. Patty was yelping at anything like a downhill with a sore knee and/or IT band problem. Overall though we were feeling pretty strong.

At the half way point I calculated that we might run 2:45 . And the hard hills were behind us. That was exciting but we had to keep moving. And moving we did. By the time we hit 5km to go it was 2:01. We had 29 minutes to do a 5K. Easy. Normally. I set off at a faster pace. Patty yelled at me for going so fast. I yelled back "Let's give it a go!" And both of us were off. Each mile mark we seemed on track. It was going to be close. We rounded the final corner and the clock read 2:29:22. 40 seconds! No problem!! I don't think I tried to kick at the end, just ran it in. Final time 2:29:35 (unofficial). Patty came in a few seconds back from me.

Here's a graph of elevation (blue) and HR (red):


Afterwards we sat around on the grass with Patty's friend Julie and her son and watched the rest of the field come in. It turned out that Julie had run with the eleven year old girl for several miles. They both came in just after two hours (and both won their age groups.) An eleven year old running that course in two hours. My daughter is such a slacker!

It felt nice sitting on the grass when I probably should have been walking around. They gave out pies and bags and water bottles. When I got up later I noted that I could barely put my weight on my right leg without intense pain. I also noted that walking around had my HR back up to the 150s! Interesting! We went home and both soaked in an ice bath for 10 minutes and popped 800mg of Advil. After that we were good to go.

Conclusion

We're elated! We achieved all of our goals for the race. We entered and finished our first real trail run. Our time exceeded both our expectations by half an hour and any reasonable prediction. Looking at the results I was not last in my division (the tough 35-40 men group), and most importantly I felt like I had fun and arrived at the finish line in okay shape. Marathon full speed ahead!

Links

• Official website
• Map of the course