Marathon Training

 

After several failed attempts to run a marathon, I decided last year to walk one.  It is not the same, of course, but it did serve to break the ice, so to speak.  I knew I could do it, and now that I have, all that's left is to improve my time. 

Easier said than done.  I do a lot of cardio at the gym, including HIIT (high intensity interval training), but that rarely lasts more than 30 or 45 minutes.  I need to be able to sustain a run for hours.  There is no way to prepare for that other than actual running, at least none that I know of. Some published marathon plans include strength training, but I have never seen one that had zero running.  Ya gotta put in the miles.

So yesterday (Saturday 5/4/24) I met up with some local runners who had planned a run down Mt Charleston along Kyle Canyon Road.  I fully expected to be the slowest of the group, and I told them as much, if for no other reasons than to set expectations.  After all, I don't want anyone to worry about whether I'm ok, etc.

It was a beautiful morning to run.  I arrived a few minutes early and took a few pictures.  Soon the whole group was there, and we self-organized and got underway.  Half of us were planning to run 13 miles, and the other half eight.  I had been thinking I would run 13, but my more logical inner voice told me that my last training run had been 6 miles, so 8 was a more logical progression.  Besides, someone had to drive, and I could fit all six of us in my van.  After a quick reconfiguration of the seats in said van, we were off . . . driving eight miles uphill to another parking area.

There was little to do after getting out of the car.  I locked up, stashed the car keys in my backpack, secured the pack on my back, and started trotting downhill on the side of the road.  Now I meant what I said about being slow, but somehow I was in the lead.  No worries, I thought to myself; there is plenty of room for them to pass me.  If all else fails, I don't mind stepping off the road onto the gravel to let people by.  Surprisingly, no one passed me.  Not only that, but I heard their voices and footsteps fade as they fell farther behind.  Weird.  Did they stop to stretch?  Not likely.  Were they pranking me?  Even less likely.  Eventually I craned my neck around far enough to look behind me, and I saw that they were there.  Good . . . but still weird.

I did not know what pace I or they would be running.  For myself, I would have guessed somewhere near an 11 minute mile, maybe 11:30.  When I finally consulted the tracker on my phone, I was pleasantly surprised to see a consistent 8:30!  Totally unexpected for me, but then I remembered that we were running downhill. I have long been below average running uphill and a little better running downhill.  In Spartan races in particular I have been able to maneuver quickly down a slope that has other runners practically standing still. Somehow that skill was one of the few that seemed unaffected by the coordination-sapping progression of Parkinson's.  In any case, I was moving at a decent pace for the first mile and a half or so.  When the road leveled out to mostly flat, I forced myself  to slow my pace to 9:30.  Not long after, I was working to keep it from falling below 10:30, and mostly staying between 10:00 and 10:30.  It was during that slower phase, of course, that everyone passed me.  I could not keep up, but neither did I fall ridiculously far behind.  By four miles in, I was relieved and happy to be halfway there, but I was also ready to walk.  It's all fun and games when you're fresh, and running downhill; but give it a while for fatigue to set in, and that's when the real runners stand out from the rest.

I know that when my brain starts wanting to stop, and even when my body says stop, and my muscles are screaming at me--I can go on.  That is how we get stronger.  The body will adjust, in a good way.  I like to think that I have a fair amount of mental toughness, but in this case as in so many others, I did give in to the urge to walk.  As long as the length of that initial running phase keeps growing longer, it's not so bad.  But I did switch to intervals, rather than continue just walking.

Overall it was a good day:  the official stats from my tracker say 7.97 miles in 1:23:50, for an average pace of 10:31.  That average conceals the widely-varying current pace throughout the run, which is shown in the screenshot.  Bottom line, I'm happy with the run, but I'm far from my goal.  There is a lot of work to be done, and it starts today.