Hello;
I know, I know, it has been a while since my last post on this blog. My bad. I have been swallowed up by my recent addiction to running. This does not mean I have any intentions of selling Eos. She is still my favorite ride.
Now onto the reason for this post. I decided to re-post the background of my transition into running as the primary motivator for maintaining and improving my level of health and fitness. I had written this piece for my MotionBased wiki site. Enjoy and with any luck I will be able to take Eos back out onto the road soon.
THE STORY OF THE UNLIKELY RUNNER
Despite an early interest in trail running, I logged zero miles between 1986 and 2002. In 2002 I decided to start running again as a way to augment my cycling and as a means for getting exercise when I was traveling. My running from 2002 until 2005 was infrequent and a long run was 3-4 miles.
In early 2005, my wife and I decided to train for a marathon. It had been Katy's dream to run a marathon. Her next goal was to qualify for and run in the Boston Marathon, Boston being her place of birth. After talking to a personal trainer, we decided to follow one of
Hal Higdon's marathon training programs.
This first attempt at running in many years was not kind to me. I suffered from ongoing knee pains and was forced to miss a lot of our training runs. I also was not able to complete any runs longer than 15 miles. I rode my bike as an alternative to these long runs.
Despite the lack of training, we signed up for and completed the
Mount Desert Marathon in October 2005. The result was not pretty. I started experiencing severe knee pains at mile 13, struggled to mile 18, almost crawled to mile 20, then walked the final 6.2 in heavy rain, high winds, and temps hovering around 50F. My final time was 4:35:53 (see
My Digest for the gory details).
Once the horrors of MDI subsided, we decided to give it another shot and signed up for the
Big Sur Marathon, held on April 30, 2006. We again followed one of the Higdon marathon training plans. Again we missed a bunch of the training runs, including most of the long ones. And again, I suffered from an injury, this time being my right heel (skiing incident). Marathon day arrived, I felt strong, Katy felt strong, and off we went. The course was pretty hilly, the weather was nice, but the pollen got the best of Katy. She started having trouble breathing at about mile 12. This forced us to slow down, resulting in a new PR of, gulp, 4:26:32. I should mention that my right heel was painful during the entire run and that for almost one week after the marathon I had trouble walking. Oh hum. Again, you can see the details of this run in
My Digest.
Beaten yes. Quitters No. So next comes the
Green Mountain Marathon on October 21, 2006. This marathon featured a reasonably flat course, so we thought, what the heck, it should make for a good Boston qualifier. We ramped up our training and missed very few runs. Unfortunately for me, I suffered yet another injury. This time I got a tad over ambitious doing 800 repeats at the local track. I ended up with one pissed off left calf and only two months until the marathon. I substituted some cycling on speed days, but kept on running. I also started seeing a massage therapist who was able to work out some of the kinks.
Finally race day came and yes, we had success!!!! I had picked up a copy of John Parker's book, "Heart Monitor Training for the Compleat Idiot". Katy and I followed John's advice and kept our heart rates under 75% of max. Despite cold temperatures (36F to 41F), more hills than we expected, and a 25+mph head wind for the first 14-15 miles, we finished with a 3:37:24. Katy's cut off for Boston was a 3:40. So we are off to the 2007
Boston Marathon. This was way cool. And almost as neat was that using John's heart rate strategy, we finished strong, passing a lot of people from mile 20 until the end. And we did not even feel very tired afterward. It was almost as if we had just finished a long training run. Life is good. The details are
here.
So what are we to do with all this free time until Patriot's Day 2007? Sign up for and run another marathon of course. Our next gig was the
Philadelphia Marathon on November 19, 2006. This gave us a solid 4 weeks to recover, run a little, then taper again. Race day came, we both felt good, but alas, I was just short of my 3:30 goal again. As many have said, despite your best training, there are 1,000 things outside of your control which can effect your performance on race day. One issue which started us out on the wrong foot was our lack of experience running in large marathons. The Big Sur marathon had been our biggest to date with approximately 2,500 runners. In comparison, there were over 12,000 runners lined up at the Philadelphia marathon. We got to the starting line with only 10 minutes to spare. This forced us to start 50 yards or more behind the 10 min pace line. It took about 7 minutes to cross the starting line once the race had started. We then spent the next 8 miles trying to work our way through the slower runners. This resulted in a very slow pace for the first half of the marathon. And despite my best efforts, I was only able to chip away enough time to finish with a time of 3:38:08. Again, the details can be found
here. Note that my heart rate readings were all over the place early on in the race, so I turned my forerunner off, then back on. I then forgot to re-start until another half mile or so.
Analysis of the above marathons showing splits for mile 10, 13.1, 20 and 26.2 can be found
here. This is a PDF file with one page for each marathon.
I am still trying to decide if I will try one more time to qualify for the 2007 Boston marathon. If I do, I am leaning toward the
Tallahassee Marathon on February 4, 2007. It is an extremely small marathon, with under 250 runners in 2006. And given it is Florida, it ought to be nice and flat. There is no hurry on the decision. Katy and I will proceed along with our recovery training and ramp up for Boston in the meantime.
That is it for now. Until next time, be sure you set frequent goals and then work hard to meet or exceed them.
Enjoy!
