Hello again friends. Welcome to Part 2 of our latest catch up, en route to, yes you heard right, a ✨👟marathon race report👟✨ (by which, just to be clear, I mean a race report about a marathon, not just, like, a **really long** race report).
Catching Up: Part 1 (icymi)
Where were we? Oh yes! End of July 2025; missing out on Tracksmith SF 5000; recovering from a horrific back strain. Let us move on to late summer.
In general, the plan was:
- Mid August ➡️ train for & run a one-mile time trial on the track
- Late August ➡️ Tahoe vacation with family
- September ➡️ Start training for CIM
AUGUST
In which the future was still so bright (in many ways). My back continued to feel fine; I continued to rip fast workouts on the track without worrying too much about building overall mileage. Having run a 6:28 mile on the roads in May with, like, two weeks of mile-specific training, I was very curious what I could manage on the track in spikes having spent the summer doing honest-to-gods speed work. 6:20? 6:15? Faster?? I tried getting a group together for a time trial day (mostly for my own selfish rabbiting purposes) but at that point people were mostly busy getting ready for other things so I ended up going it alone. On a weirdly humid August 17 I drove to the track, did a little warm-up and some strides, put my spikes on, and did my best to flog myself to one all-out mile, with not-terrible results:
SEPTEMBER
I suppose, officially, I started my CIM training on August 28, but who's counting. What made me want to sign up for CIM? Well, as you may recall, I signed up for it in spring 2022 when running was going really well, and then had a series of not-quite-catastrophic injuries in the fall kind of one after another (after and amidst a bunch of work travel, including three international trips), oh and then got really sick, until finally six weeks out from CIM I really had no choice but to wave the white flag and completely shut it down for a while until my body could recover. Having a big international trip planned for fall 2023 (oh and plus a knee injury that took me out for over a month in late summer), that wasn't a great year for CIM either.
But 2024! Not only did I have a *much* lighter fall travel schedule than usual, but also, the plan had always been to try to BQ again and actually have a non-miserable Boston Marathon, and because I will be 45 on Boston Marathon race day 2026, that means that as of September 2024 (when 2025 registration closed & the 2026 qualifying window opened), I only had to meet the 45-49 standard even though I will only be 43/44 during the 2026 qualifying window. Which is all to say that I now had a bit of leeway in terms of not having a flawless build-up and perfect race day.
So, in the summer, I went ahead and signed up for CIM in early December, but because I was taking no chances, I also signed up for Mesa Marathon in Arizona on Feb. 8, juuuust in case something catastrophic happened or CIM ended up being a crappy day for whatever reason.
And, for the first few weeks, things went pretty well. I had four solid weeks in the 40+ miles range with long runs of up to 16 miles. Speed work felt good, my body felt good, and I was feeling confident about the whole process.
And then, due to a combination of less-than-optimal life/work obligations and good old fashioned bad choices, things kind of started to slow-motion fall apart, starting with a weeklong work trip to Chicago. So that you may learn from my (many, many) mistakes, I will highlight said bad choices below in blue and the resulting consequences in red.
First of all, it's becoming clear that getting up early, long(ish) cross(ish)-country flights, jet leg, and multi-day work trips are like kryptonite for me when it comes to getting *any* useful running done. It usually takes me several days to stop feeling like crap even if I'm *NOT* trying to figure out how to get a run in in an unfamiliar setting with a nutty conference or work schedule. Which inevitably means that any running I DO manage tends to feel pretty bad.
I didn't get all the scheduled running in that week but it wasn't terrible--two easy 10Ks (which, see above, did NOT feel easy or like they were only 10K long) and even a short workout, 6x(2:00 @ 5k pace / 1:00 jog) plus two miles easy of warmup/cooldown. But by the end of the week I was falling apart from an energy perspective.
I was planning to run San Jose Half the following weekend, so my coach suggested just 12 miles the weekend before, including 5 mile repeats at half marathon pace if I was feeling up to it. I wasn't sure if I was or not but I thought I'd at least try, and in the end managed to complete them all, though I was completely and totally gassed by the end of those 12 miles.
OCTOBER
October 1-6
Not long after that, it became clear that I'd picked up some kind of bug in Chicago (thankfully not Covid, which is what I came home with after my last work trip to Chicago in March 2023, but still a pretty miserable cold). On October 1 I had an easy six miles scheduled but after only a little more than one I was super struggling and texted my coach in kind of a panic (thinking forward to SJ Half the following weekend). Her advice was to just can it and not try to force it while I was under the weather, which of course made perfect sense. (<-- Let's use a jaunty & verdent green for the rare good choice I made this last fall.)
Should I have probably just taken a few more days off that week and try to recover as much as possible before the weekend? Of course! Is that what I did? Of course not! Because in the screwed up logic of my panicked mind, already flashing back to how things fell apart the fall before, every run counted, it was crucial to fit in every mile and every workout on the plan whenever and however possible, because you could just never know when it was going to be completely IMpossible.
So, yeah. I struggled through a set of 800m's the next day and a recovery run the day after that that left me feeling anything but recovered (bonus: angry hamstring!), then finally decided (better late than never? Maybe?) that I'd be better served by taking the two days left before the race completely off.
In the mean time, the group chat was blowing up about Sunday's forecast--highs in the triple digits and full sun, meaning best case 80s and full sun for our race. At this point my goals had gone from racing and tacking on miles to get to 18 for the day to trying to run goal marathon pace to wondering if I should even be doing this race at all. (Lol @ rereading emails to my coach that week like "Do yOu ThiNk iT wOuDd be SmArtEr tO do a mAraThOn wOrKouT" 🤣🤣🤣🤣 looooord amighty girl.)
In the end I did three warm-up miles in which I already felt like trash, and as for the race, well, let's hear Strava Angela tell it:
** Your training plan does NOT intend for you to feel completely exhausted on a regular basis. **
Make sure you have a sense of just *how* hard any given run or workout is supposed to feel, and do your level best NOT to push beyond that. If the assigned workout is pushing beyond the intended level of effort/exhaustion, then it's not the right workout that day, regardless of what is on the schedule.
Well-designed training, even fairly heavy marathon training for experienced runners, just can't be THAT hard, THAT often, or else people would just fall apart instead of gradually getting fitter. You have to be able to fully or mostly recover in a day or two, so you can do another moderately hard workout. Again, that analogy of investing a responsible amount of extra money you have over time in order to slowly grow the nest egg, versus investing ALL your liquid assets to the point of not being able to pay your bills and even going into debt for the sake of investing as much as possible, **RIGHT NOW**. One might give you the temporarily satisfying sense of doing more and hustling harder *right now*, but ultimately that is not what's going to get you the best long-term results. Harder / tougher / more unpleasant does not always equal better.
October 7-13
The following week was almost a complete write-off as far as running, thanks to some rough work travel and also having guests in town with whom we'd planned a weekend trip to wine country, plus a random swollen & painful foot that I can only assume was the result of a ton of travel-related walking that week in work shoes. That week saw a grand total of ten, count 'em **ten** miles.
October 14-20
Looking back now, it seems so stupid--so completely and utterly stupid!--but what did I decide the best thing to do that next week was? Why, run **FIFTY** miles, of course! Including a cross country race I'd committed to so we could score a masters team! And two additional workouts, including a long run! Plus lifting! And lunch on the Peninsula with friends! And, and, and!
Of course I had crafted a highly exacting plan for fitting all of these things into my life, which was working GREAT until I was so sore from lifting on Monday that doing my Tuesday workout as planned was out of the question. I pushed it to Wednesday but then woke up that day even more sore. And what did I decide? That I was out of time for pushing that workout off and it had to happen that day.
From an email to my coach later that week:
"It hasn't been a great week. I feel like even though I have cut back on weight & general intensity with lifting, I am ending up sorer and sorer and it's lasting longer and longer into the week. I was super sore Tuesday so figured it was just as well that I didn't really have time for the workout, but then by Wednesday I was even more sore but didn't really think I should put it off any longer. It was so painful and then yesterday I barely dragged myself through five [easy] miles feeling awful, and today I felt even worse and just quit after 2.5 miles because my whole body hurt and I felt like if I tried to go any farther there was no way I'd be able to do a long run this weekend. So I am hoping that if I can get some extra rest tonight I'll still be able to do it tomorrow. Honestly I have never felt so physically bad running and like I was recovering so poorly as I have in the last few weeks. I wish I knew why but I have no idea."
I can date the pain in my right hip flexor/pelvic floor to that ill-advised speed workout while still sore from lifting--this kind of pinching on the inside of my right/lower hip & lower abs every time I raised my right leg. It wasn't utterly horrific, but definitely felt off, like something to pay attention to, but I had no time for that; all I could do (said my brain at the time) was cross my fingers, get the miles in, and hope it went away on its own.
At this point, my priority became trying to fit everything in at all costs. I'd planned to get up early Saturday and do my 16 mile long workout so I could make it to lunch on the Peninsula with friends and then have a solid 24 hours to recover before the cross country race. But as horrible as I felt when I quit that easy run at 2.5 miles, the thought of getting up early to do a long workout was giving me heart palpitations. I knew I needed more than 12 hours of rest if I was going to get the long workout, but I couldn't do it too late, or else cross country would be out of the question. so, though it made me feel like a bad friend, I bailed on lunch so that I could do the long run mid-day.
From another email after doing the 16 miles:
"I did feel a lot better today (not 100%, but *better*) and was able to get the 16 miles in, though I didn't try to do the tempo intervals since I was feeling so beat up yesterday....I think I might need to have another rest day during the week, maybe Thursday or Friday, at least for now [At this point, I'd had runs scheduled six days a week most of the time]."
Still, though, I dutifully showed up Sunday morning to run the cross country race, and though I did not race all-out, it was definitely hard enough to count as a third workout for the week. After a 1.6 mile warm up and a 3.4 mile race, I was absolutely beat and the pinchy, painful feeling in my right hip/abdomen was back, but dammit, I was 2.5 miles short of the planned 50, so dammit, a 2.5 mile cool down it was.
[Writing all this down, I do realize how incredibly stupid all this sounds. I know! Trust me, I am yelling pointlessly through time at past me as well.]
October 21-27
The following week had another 50 miles planned, starting with 6-8 miles on Tuesday with 10 x (90 seconds fast/60 second jog), but I could not muster even 90 seconds of fast running, even after a rest day.
Back to emails to coach:
"Ugghhhh I was so, so tired yesterday and my legs still felt so beat up. Really super shuffled my way through six miles that felt like 20. (Originally I was going to run 8 but it soon became clear that that would not be helping anyone.) Whatever is going on with my hip was pretty bad yesterday and last night but this morning it feels better? I am hoping I am just paying the price for an afternoon/evening long run followed by getting up early to go run xc and will feel more recovered today."
Followed very quickly by:
"I know it's not ideal but I think I need to take today off. I still feel so utterly fatigued and while my right leg feels better than it did yesterday, it still hurts if I try to jog on it a bit and I would rather spend a day or two getting extra rest or cross-training than try to push through it and end up with something worse (which I have done soooo many times, I should have learned by now! [Ya think?? 🧐]). Really hoping it will pay off in letting me get back to normal training."
And that's how I ended up taking five days completely off, and running six miles that week instead of 50.
October 28-31
This week had such a promising start. From another email:
"Cautiously optimistic -- Sunday was the first day I had no pain walking, so did an easy jog to the gym & back on Monday, which was all fine. Today [Tuesday] the intervals felt good [this was 7x(1K @ HM pace / 400m jog], and I felt like myself again -- like "YES this is what HM effort should feel like" vs dragging myself through a workout. Though I didn't do much of a cool down -- didn't want to push the total mileage in one run too much too soon. But I didn't have any pain in my hip so I am hoping that 5 days off while unfortunate was enough for it to fully heal (as long as I don't re-aggravate it). Based on how I felt today I feel like I *might* not have completely blown [CIM] as long as I can do enough (but not so much I dig myself into a fatigue hole) in the next couple of weeks."
And then:
"Given everything, I think this is my plan -- Back when I signed up for CIM, I also signed up for Mesa on Feb 8 as a kind of backup (like if the weather was super crappy or I had something catastrophic happen). So I think as long as the weather is good and I stay healthy enough to do pretty decent training from now on, I'm going to plan on running CIM pretty conservatively -- my BQ qualifying time is 3:45 [actually I was wrong about that, it's 3:50] so I think I am just going to aim to negative split and run like 3:39. So starting off around ~8:25-8:30 and gradually speeding up (and accounting for hills etc.) & hit the half no faster than 1:49. Not trying to PR or do anything super heroic. 😅 If I feel super good and am able to run more of the second part of the race closer to 8:00 pace, then great. But really just focusing on checking the BQ box with a bit of a buffer.
Then as long as I finish that race feeling like everything went physically pretty well, try to recover & bounce back to run Mesa & improve my time a bit if I can. It's 9 weeks so that feels like enough time to recover from CIM, get a few more good workouts & long runs in, & taper.
So a lot of 'ifs' but hopefully that doesn't sound too crazy! Just having this backup I think might make it a bit easier for me to not try to do anything stupid at CIM given that training has been a bit rocky (and I haven't run a marathon in 6.5 years 😬)."
We agreed that this was a good approach, as long as things continued to trend in an upward direction.
I should also probably mention at this time that I was also signed up to run Clarksburg Half on Nov. 10, not to race but as a last big MP effort workout, adding on milage before & after to get to 18. How did that go?? You'll have to check out Part 3 to find out.
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