Monthly Archives: April 2012

Before I recap week 15 of marathon training, let’s take a second to talk about last Monday, when a first-time marathoner took on and finished Boston in the blazing heat.

Carlo – who co-owns Salon CU in Somerville, where I get my hair cut – came running by me in Natick Center, looking amazingly good for someone 10+ miles into a marathon during unseasonably ridiculous heat. I jumped in to run and talk with him and his running partner Nicole for a few minutes, and snapped a quick photo as they powered ahead for the next 16.2. It was so great to see him and to get the text several hours later when he’d crossed the finish line.

I didn’t do anything that impressive this week, by any means, but I did get Ol’ Breaky McFinger reset and splinted by the orthopedist. I managed to get away without surgery, but before that appointment I tried to pack in as many workouts as possible, assuming I’d be barred from running for a while if I ended up with surgery. So this week I did speed intervals, a tempo run and a hill workout, where I’d usually only have two of those three. I let myself have more rest days than usual, and didn’t do any cross-training.

Routes covered in the long run

This was technically the start of my taper, so my long run dropped back to 13 miles (since when is a half marathon a drop back?!). I spent a couple hours huffing along the routes of North suburban Boston, but was amazed to have plenty of run left in me when I pulled up to my house. That’s never been the case for me after a halfathon distance, and got me thinking that maybe, just maybe, I’ve trained myself to be able to actually finish those 26.2 miles in PVD.

Because if I don’t, Carlo won’t let me live it down

The OMG 20-miler started off innocuously enough. Team Flail (Andrew, Adam, John and me, minus Matt) met up at Adam’s apartment Saturday morning, mostly awake and resigned to our long-run fate. We headed out past the Museum of Science – where the T Rex statue is wearing a #65,000,000 bib in honor of tomorrow’s Big Race – and followed the south side of the Charles River well into Watertown.

Then, around mile 12 a root snagged my toe, I went down hard, and this happened.

Luckily, John is trained as an EMT and I have a reasonably high threshold for pain, so he popped it back in. We started back up, with Andrew carrying my water bottle for me, but I could only hold pace with them until about mile 14.5. I sent them ahead as I pulled up to walk, really mad that I didn’t have the stamina to keep going. But I made a deal with myself (this sounds like that 18 miler again, huh?) – even if I had to power walk those last miles, I was doing the full 20 on my own two feet, no matter what my stupid finger had to say about it.

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Things went according to plan in week 13, where my schedule included speed intervals (6x 1.5 minutes), cross-training (step & weights), a hill workout (4x 3.5 minute sprints uphill), a rest day, 3 shake-out miles, and a 10-oops-forgot-my-route-so-it’s-almost-11 miler. I made one minor diversion from the plan, however, to try a Magic Mile during Friday’s 3 shake-out miles.

I read about Jeff Galloway’s Magic Mile on No Meat Athlete, in Matt’s post about ways to predict your pace and/or time in a marathon (or other distances). So after a brief warm-up, I ran a mile flat-out, middle-school style, trying not to barf in the process. I did this twice, running 7:13 and 7:36 minute miles to come up with two estimates:

For the time being, I’m going to split the difference between these two and say I will probably run a 9:30 min/mile pace and finish somewhere around 4 hours & 10 minutes. That sounds pretty doable (right? Right).

Something that sounds a little less doable at the moment is my recent hare-brained idea to run a race (any distance; probably 5ks and halfathons mostly) in each of the 50 U.S. states. I ran my first 5k on Thanksgiving in 2010 (Massachusetts), and since then have run a handful of 5ks (all Massachusetts) and two halfathons (both Rhode Island).

After finishing the North Reading Turkey Trot 2010

The marathon will also be in Rhode Island, so that leaves me 48 states to go (yes, I’m aiming for Alaska and Hawaii). This project should be a cool opportunity to drag my exasperated family plan family trips all over the country, and a way to keep running dynamic, interesting, etc.

But before I can think about a 10K in Tennesee or whathaveyou, I’ve got to conquer 20 miles in Massachusetts – the long run coming up at the end of week 14. Yeesh.