Thinking about drinking

So I took off on yesterday's "long" run at about 7:30 in the morning. I thought I'd enjoy a sleep-in on my second day of summer vacation, so I stayed in bed until 6:30, for crying out loud. The problem here in the summer is that any run that starts later than 7:00 is going to be hot. Yesterday was not an exception.

I had a decent run going. Decent considering I have about 20 pounds to lose, and my pace is impacted by every one of those pounds. Still, I was at a solid LSD pace for the first three miles or so. By mile three and a half, I was soaked in sweat, and taking off my sunglasses seemed like a solution to dealing with the heat. For some reason, I feel the heat in my eyes.

And I was drinking. A lot. I had a water bottle on a waist pack, and I had drained it by mile four and a half. Yea for me! Wait. I still had at least three miles to go no matter which way I turned, and I had no water, and I was starting to bake in the sun, and there was no shade in sight.

Signs a run isn't going as well as I had hoped:
1. I take off my sunglasses because they are making me hot (I know, I already said this one, but I'm about to make a list here.)
2. I have to switch from NPR to music because I can't stand the chatter in my ears.
3. I start searching for shade where there is none.
4. I ponder stealing water from someone's hose and weigh whether or not that will get me shot.

So here's the short version. I ran out of water. The wheels fell off the bus. I started thinking maybe I should have rationed out my water over the whole run instead of drinking when I was thirsty early on. Clearly, the best solution would be to leave the house with enough water, but which is better: rationing or risking running out? That's the QOD--question of the day.

I was gassed by the time I got home. I'm amazed at how dehydration will impact me for the rest of the day. I have had fifteen milers that felt better than yesterday. But no water=no legs.

Bricking...the endorphins!

I got in the pool yesterday for the first time in about a year and a half. I was expecting to be dying after about 500 yards of swimming, but I was still going strong at a mile. So I guess that was a good thing. Last time I got into the pool after having taken such a long break, I was ready to vomit at about 400 yards. But that was right after the baby was born. Better shape now.

Went home last night and ran 3 miles. So technically speaking, it wasn't a brick workout where you do one immediately after the other, but it was a double, and I haven't done a double in...well, I don't know how long. The run went well. I was satisfactorilly tired at the end. Oh, how I have missed doubles and bricks.

I came off the Flying Pig thinking I'd like to just train mindlessly for the summer, doing whatever I felt like doing whenever I felt like doing it. No structure. No plan. Just go. That thinking lasted less than a week. That's not my style. I like to think it can be my style. But it's not. No plan depresses me. Seriously.

I've moved on to planning for a sprint-distance tri (maybe two?) in August and the Indy half marathon again in October. I've got to drop some weight. Again. And I've got to pick up some speed. A lot. And I'd like to put together a well-rounded training program for the summer that has me up before the crack of dawn running while the baby is still in bed. I really enjoyed that last summer.

The endorphin rush from almost feeling like my old self again yesterday was awesome. And it's something I'll be chasing all summer. Because almost isn't going to cut it.

The Flying Pig Marathon...a week later

We watched the weather like...well...like people who were going to have to run a marathon in it for the week leading up to the race. Reports were pretty consistent. It was going to be hot. Humid. Hotter than previous years' races. Got it.

The morning of the race, we got up and headed out from our hotel for what was supposed to be a 1.2 mile walk to the start of the race. I would have liked to have been shivering in my sleeveless shirt and shorts, but I was comfortable in the morning air. Ahhh, well. Control the controllables.

Highlights and lowlights:
The walk to the race start was longer than 1.2 miles. There was no shuttle to the start of the race. No one about to run 26.2 miles really wants to go longer, so that was a bad thing. The physical start of the race may have been 1.2 miles from the hotel, but we had to walk all the way past the football stadium and then back around it and then back another half mile to our starting corrals, so that was more mileage than I wanted on my legs that morning. I admit to getting a little fussy trying to figure out where we needed to be.

Forrest Gump passed me as I was getting into the starting corral. Yep. THE Forrest Gump. Long hair, trucker cap, short shorts, yellow t-shirt, tube socks, classic shoes. The whole bit. I smiled.

The race started, and I passed the first 10 miles or so pretty well. The one blip was at mile 5 when I got to the aid stations to discover they had run out of cups. Seriously. The volunteers were standing there with gallon jugs of water pouring it into peoples' cupped hands. I had a small water bottle with me, and I refilled it, but I had visions of the Chicago disaster in my head, and I got a little wound up about having another 21 miles to go. Took me a couple of miles to calm down.

I was sticking to my plan of regular run/walk intervals. My nutrition was all over the place. I kind of just kept eating. The temperature started climbing. I started thinking I needed more salt. I hadn't trained with Gatorade, but I decided to take in a cup every aide station to give me some salt. I felt like I wasn't racing my plan, though. It was a loose plan going in, but I don't think I remembered it after about mile 4.

The wheels fell off the bus at about mile 13. I don't remember what happened exactly, but I remember feeling like I wasn't feeling nearly as good as I had felt on my first 20 miler, and I wasn't sure if I was even feeling close to how I had felt on my second twenty miler. I was still chatting with some folks out there, and I was still enjoying the day, but I became very aware that I was falling off the pace that I had held for the first half of the marathon.

I was really excited when I hit what I thought was going to be the fifteen mile marker, and it was actually the sixteen mile marker. Heck yeah! A free mile. Somehow, I had missed the previous mile marker. That's always a great moment in a marathon. I was pretty much walking more than running at that point. And I was feeling really discouraged. I kept telling myself to just keep moving forward and to stop beating myself up for how I was doing it. Running or walking, I was going to get to the finish.

At about mile 18, I hit my last highlight for the race when I discovered the guys handing out the Gu were all wearing University of Michigan caps. I actually ran through the aid station and high-fived all the guys while yelling, "Go Blue!" Those were my people. I have no idea where that burst of energy came from. And I hope they used hand sanitizer after I ran through. Cause yuck. I was gross.

After that point, I think I pretty much started generating a list of people that I wanted to punch. Marathons are funny. You run them because you want to see what you are made of. But then you start to get angry at what other people are made of when your race isn't going well. I ended up with an extensive list.
1. Forrest Gump. Yep. He made me smile at the beginning. But then he managed to pass me no fewer than five times over the course of the race. I don't know if he was stopping or going off course or what, but I never saw when I passed him. So it was a surprise every time he came up from behind me again. It was an unpleasant surprise because I would be slogging along, and all of a sudden the crowd would start to go crazy, and I would start to smile thinking that they were encouraging me, and then I would realize that it was just Forrest Gump. Passing me. Again.
2. Guy in the blue camouflage running shorts with the aviator sunglasses. First, he was running with his girlfriend, and she was having a hard time, so he kept putting his arm around her and pulling her closer to him. It irritated the fire out of me for her. If I'm trying to make forward motion, the last thing I need is a smelly idiot boyfriend trying to pull me laterally towards him. Moron. Then, as the miles passed (yes, I was with these people for miles 22-25), he started to clap and say, "Sunburn! Sunburn!" in a puerile chant that was just freaking annoying.
3. Weightlifting dude and his weightlifting girlfriend. They'd run a bit. Then start walking slowly. Then run a bit. Then start walking slowly. At one point, they actually dodged between me and someone else who was walking, only to then start walking slowly again so that I'd have to pass them. And when they were walking slowly, they were holding hands like they were out for a walk in the park.
4. Juggling guy. I got passed by him at about mile 24. He juggled six balls over the course of the whole race. And passed me. That was a bit demoralizing. So I wanted to punch him. A guy walking near me at that point also confided in me that he wanted to punch him, too. So that was good.

The thing is. I don't normally want to punch people. But I was working really hard to keep my head in the game, and any time I started to think about how disappointed I was in the run I was having, I started to get in a strange headspace. So I focused my energy outward. And that was kinda fun.

6 hours and 11 minutes. 6 hours. 11 minutes. 371 minutes.

Yeah. A definite Personal Worst in terms of marathon times. But it was a heck of a fun day in a lot of ways.

The finish line of the race was a tremendous disappointment. I was WAY at the back of the pack. I get that. But I ran for a very, very long time. When I got to the finish, I had to find someone to give me a medal. I didn't get a mylar blanket. I had to ask someone to take my photo at the finish line. I wandered under the bridge, and I saw a bunch of tables with cups on them, but there was no one there to tell me that it was for me. It was confusing. I kept walking.

I got to the back of the bridge, and I saw a whole bunch of tables being broken down by volunteers. I think I walked a good 50 yards wandering from one table to the next trying to figure out what food was available, and not a single person spoke to me. There was no one there to take my finisher's photo in front of the backdrop. It felt tremendously anti-climactic.

I walked out of the finisher's area to look for my husband, but there was no where to meet him. I finally asked a passing volunteer to use his phone to try to call Kevin. He seemed peeved. Okay. I used it anyway. Kevin didn't answer. I sat down. I waited. When Kevin finally found his way back to the finisher's area, he told me that there hadn't been any signage to direct him where to go.

We walked up the hill and asked a police officer where the hotel shuttles were. He directed us up the hill about 100 yards to a sign that said "hotel shuttle." We felt stupid. Until we sat there for fifteen minutes waiting and no shuttle came. 20 of us sat there together. Waiting. We started wandering up the hill towards a main street where a friend had offered to pick us up if we couldn't get the hotel shuttle. We found the buses another 200 yards up the hill. Next to no sign. Dang. If I had had anything left in my legs, I would have gone back down to tell the other poor suckers waiting by the sign. But I didn't. And I had about 25 minutes to get back to the hotel, take a shower, and check out. Had to go.

All around. A great day. Any race I get to run "with" my best friend, Jen, is a great race. Would I do this race again? Probably. I would want to be better trained. Faster. All that jazz. It was a pretty course. Most of the failings of the day had to do with the weather or within me. And that was alright with me. As for the finish line, well, that was probably the biggest bummer of the day, honestly. I have wanted to finish the Flying Pig for longer than I can remember, and I would have liked to have enjoyed the finish and getting the medal a lot more than I did. I have more empathy now for the BOTP finishers. And a stronger desire to get mid-pack again.

Up next? Not sure. Cross-training for a while and then the Indy half marathon this fall.

Well, holy crap, I'm running a marathon on Sunday. Magiccool?

I've survived much of taper madness. (And am still going through the "am i really ready?" phase of taper.)  I've had a lot of stress at work, and I'm trying to leave it all at home (or at work) to get my head on straight for Sunday.

Came across the notification that they are offering deferments due to the weather. Defer. For next year. Like not run Sunday and put it off for a year. I don't think my 20 milers will hang in my legs for that long, so I'm going to go ahead and run. Here's where we are at on this:

1. Going to be carrying some sort of fluid with me, I think. Visions of the Chicago marathon from that one really, really hot year are dancing in my head, and I'm thinking better safe than sorry. I may change my mind on Sunday morning, but that's where my head is right now. (And the Flying Pig people are already saying that they are doubling up on their fluids for Sunday).

2. Abandoning all time goals. Oh, wait. I already did that. Well, I'm abandoning them even more. They are even more left behind now. If I'm hot, I'm walking. Just gotta cover the 26.2 miles on my feet on Sunday, and that'll be a success. No watch.

3. Taking salt tabs. I have to pick them up yet, but I lose salt like no one's business on hot days. So I'll be taking some salt tabs with me.

4. Bought cooling cloths. Got this great thing called "Magicool". I'm not relishing the idea of lugging my weight in gear around on Sunday, but this looks like a good idea. It's a cloth. And it's cool. How bad can that be?

5. Relying on my training. I'm a pretty tough cookie. Even when I'm a little out of shape, I can get my head in the right space. Depending on that.

Finally, I'm going to enjoy the run. Seriously. This is going to be fun. Damn it.