Race Report: Rock 'N Roll San Jose Half Marathon 2018

So, the long and short of it is that I basically ran a 1.5 mile warm up, a 6 mile half marathon pace workout, and a 7.1 mile cool down. In retrospect it might have been better just to skip this one, but hey, at least I got a solid tempo/threshold workout in, something that (for whatever reason) feels like it's been sorely lacking on my training plan lately.

I signed up for this race last year with the super cheap (as RNR races go) $59 re-run deal, riding the high of a four-year best time of 1:41:07. I do like this race and it's well done and a good course and not THAT far from hom, so I figured I might as well sign up & if it didn't work out, well, hey, it's $59. But that was before Boston, before running three marathons in the course of a month, before getting so burnt out on LONG-long distance races that I quit running for 8 weeks and decided the fall was going to be all short fast stuff, all the time.

Which is to say, this race had always been out there, but I was having quite a lot of trouble getting excited about it. I went back and forth about whether I even wanted to run it; part of me said, "Hey, you got the cheap registration exactly so you wouldn't feel bad about not running it, skip it & run something else short & fun that weekend," while another part was saying, "The money's spent, you should just go, and who cares if it's terrible." All this was further complicated by the fact that we're down to zero cars now (long story for later), and while we have an insurance-covered rental for a little while, Don needed it for the Stanford football game on Saturday, so I'd have to work something else out transportation-wise.

Race Talk: You Have A Right to Your Disappointment

This past weekend was the Cal International Marathon in Sacramento, which when it comes to marathons, we all know is 100% the best in the west. Any number of my good friends were out there, as well as a number of other bloggers or visible social media-type people that I follow, and I've spent the last couple days liking/heart-ing/favoriting my little heart out of dozens of pictures, tweets, and various other types of social media posts.

Far & away one of my favorite parts of big race weekends, whether I'm racing or not, is celebrating the hard-fought victories of friends and others, and last weekend was no exception. From all accounts, the weather was perfect, the temperature was lovely, and PRs, BQs, and OTQs were racked up by the barrel full.

There are always other stories, though. Stories of giving it everything you had and still coming up short of a long-held goal. Of being foiled by some dumb injury. Of training that didn't go as planned, of DNFs and DNSs. Of working and working and working to get back to a certain time and coming nowhere close. Whether you had an amazing day or an abysmal one, it's hard to know what to say sometimes when others around you are in a different place.

Race Report: Race to the End of Summer 10K

Every now and then, you have a race that leaves you staring breathlessly at your watch going, "Holy f***ing shit!! How the hell did THAT happen?"

Well, I had one of those races on Sunday. Except not in the way that you generally hope for.

I ran this race last year as an early tune-up for CIM. It was cheap and reasonably close to home and looked fairly flat and fast, except for maybe the fact that it's in San Jose during the summer and thus likely to be hot. Let me also say that I didn't have the highest of expectations last year because after running possibly my slowest marathon ever (or pretty close, anyway) at the end of April, I took May more or less off, spent most of June consuming LOTS of dairy, whisky, & other not-particularly-healthy things & getting basically zero physical activity, and returned at the end of the month pretty darn out of shape and unable to fit comfortably into most of my clothes.

Knowing I had just two months to prep for a 10K and five for CIM, I got straight to work running 40+ easy miles a week & lifting three times a week. I didn't have much hope that I'd get very far in eight weeks (including only three not-that-intense speed workouts), so I was utterly stunned to run 44:38, just 17 seconds off my PR, and come in 1st in my age group and 2nd overall. I think I spent a solid five minutes staring at the official results going "HOW?????" But hey, I'll take it! And when the race organizers sent out a $25 re-run offer for next year, I figured, why not?

So, here we are, next year. I'm certainly no longer in the shape I was in for CIM, but for the last few months my mileage has been in the 40+ range and pretty darn consistent, including reasonably intense speed and tempo/threshold workouts twice weekly. I haven't been in the gym three days a week without fail, but I've been making it twice a week pretty regularly (and I can squat and deadlift a LOT more than I could last summer, which should at least theoretically translate into power). So part of me felt like, "Surely I should be in the same ballpark as last year, and maybe even faster."

On the other hand, I've mentioned many times lately just how exhausted these 40+ weeks have left me, which seems silly. I can't ever remember feeling so worn out, even running 50+ miles a week. My speed workouts have been fine but my last two threshold workouts were the worst I can ever remember in terms of just plain not being able to run the target paces, by more than a little. So another part of me has not felt that confident about this 10K at all.

CIM WEEK 8 of 18: Knee Troubles :(

I am always superstitious about filling out my weekly logs before the runs are actually done, like it's somehow going to jinx me & cause me to get sick or hurt or some kind of emergency to come up. But this week I had some extra time early in the week & just thought, "Eh, that's stupid, let me just get this stuff typed up now while I have time." Three days later, I kid you not, I could barely walk.

Here's how the week went down:

Monday 9/19: a.m. strength work / p.m. karate.

This was the day after my 19.5 miles in Half Moon Bay, and I felt totally fine. No knee pain. Now, I was quite tired so pushed strength work to Tuesday, but throughout karate I was completely fine--no hint whatsoever that anything was wrong.

Tuesday 9/20: a.m. strength work / p.m. 2 warm-up, 6 x 200m / 200m jog, 4 miles marathon pace, 6 x 200m / 200m jog, 2 cool down = 11 total

Good solid track workout; again, not a twinge anywhere. I finished it thinking how weird it felt to have these double-digit track workouts starting to feel normal.

Wednesday 9/21: Rest

I had planned a short, easy run as long as I felt good, but in the grand tradition of WTF Wednesdays, I felt awful and exhausted and spent most of the evening sleeping, rising only to devour Shalane's recovery salad & a slice of marathon lasagna.

What's a blog good for anyway?

Well, so much for not injuring myself early-on.

On my long run last Sunday, I felt a tiny twinge in my left calf/Achilles area. Nothing major; just one of those niggly little pains that shows up sometimes for no good reason and disappears quickly enough. Otherwise I'd had a great run so I barely thought anything of it.

On Tuesday, I had an easy 10 on the schedule. The first bit was fine, but then after two or three miles, I started to feel something in that same calf. You know how it is; I waffled & wavered about whether it was really there, and how bad it was, and whether I was being smart or paranoid by considering cutting the run short.

Mile 4: "Mmmm, yeah, that kinda hurts."

Mile 5: "Yep, still hurts, and now I am five miles from home."

Mile 6: "Yep! Pain! Ow ow ow pain!"

I had my phone so I could have called a cab but to be honest I'm pretty sure no one would have let me in their car at that point. Also, it would definitely feel worse after stopping for a traffic light, but then kind of-sort of feel a little better after a few minutes of running, and I'd find myself thinking, "Ugh, this sucks, but it's not that bad, just ____ more to go." But then every now and then I'd feel a very sharp pain in my Achilles tendon and panic a little. After a while I also noticed that my right knee was starting to hurt (and I don't generally have knee pain).

The bad news is, by the time I got home, I was actively limping. The good news, on the other hand, is that at least after an hour or two of walking around barefoot, it felt about ten times better (but still hurt pretty badly if I tried to stand on the ball of my left foot).

For all but the most charmed of runners, this (some injury that seems to appear out of nowhere) is a thing that sometimes happens. It has certainly happened to me more than once!

And here's the other good news: I have gotten waaaaaay better about how I handle it.

• Angela handling a sudden, debilitating running injury ca.2008: "INJURED WHO'S INJURED LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"
• Angela handling same, ca.2011: "But, like, injury's just a state of mind, man. All that matters is whether I feel like I can run 10 miles safely."
• Angela handling same, ca.2014: "I am definitely, definitely injured and cannot even THINK of running and this SUCKS and I hate my body, running, life, the universe, and EVERYTHING. If anyone needs me I will be sobbing under the covers with a bottle of cote d'rhone."

The nice part about becoming older and wiser is that you remember going down all those paths, and also how much they sucked and also did not fix the situation. When all this happened Tuesday night I could sense how easy it would be to let myself fall into the Pit of Despair that running injuries have been for me in the past, especially since this was supposed to be my "peak" week of base training, 50 easy miles before cutting back to add speed & tempo & prep for a September 10K.

But, thankfully, I caught myself falling into that trap & instead tried to react to it the way I know I should react in a race that has taken a crappy turn: "Well, look, this is happening, and throwing a tantrum about it isn't going to make it NOT happen. So let's just accept it and start from there."

I think just getting into that state of mind let me think more rationally and come up with some objective, non-emotionally charged facts, like:

• It isn't even mid-August and my 'A' race isn't until December.
• Trying to run on it every day or every other day "just to see" is almost guaranteed to drag the healing process out even longer.
• A few days or a week or even two weeks of not running will suck a lot psychologically, but it is unlikely to have a huge effect on my race day fitness this far out.

The other thing that's helped, honestly, is having this blog, where I've recorded just about everything that's happened to me running-wise for the last five years. When this first happened, I remember thinking, "Didn't something like this happen to me two years ago in Vancouver? Also, I have a vague memory of something similar happening like five years ago too during the summer. Or was it the other leg?"

Nope; it was the same leg, both times. Not surprising, considering this is the leg my PT was always raising his eyebrows about & constantly cupping & grinding on with various tools, and also the leg where I've had the plantar fasciitis (mostly caused by tight calf muscles, it turns out).

And guess what also definitely happened the first time? The weird right knee pain, which I'd completely forgotten about until I went back and read that blog post. (I'm pretty sure it's some kind of stride/compensation thing.)

The icing on the rational, objective, non-melodramatic cake? Being able to look back at exactly how long each had taken to heal. Both times it seemed like the end of the world (or at least my 'A' race), but in June 2011, the injury apparently happened on a Tuesday & I was back to 6 easy miles the following Monday, and in 2014, the worst of it happened on a Thursday & the following Tuesday I was healthy enough to run a 10 mile track workout.

So. Self, I know you won't like it, but can you handle 4-6 days of taking it easy/cross training?

Answer: Yes. Yes, I can. (Thanks, blog!)

(Update: I wrote this a few days ago and I think it's mostly fine now.)

Tempo Runs Kicking My Ass

Back in the day, tempo/threshold runs were the easiest & most enjoyable workout on my weekly schedule. More often that not, that "comfortably hard" place that nestles about halfway between speedwork & easy maintenance felt like play time--I could open up my stride a little and really let myself run, but without having to push push push into that not-so-fun red line place that's necessary on the track. It was work, yes, and usually tough towards the end, but also exhilarating and super satisfying.

Well, lately I feel like those days are gone. And that's with my assigned tempo pace about 15-20 seconds slower per mile than it was three or four years ago. Now it's nothing but work, work, work all the time.

And by 'life' he means 'tempo runs.'

I think there are a few reasons for this.

1) I'm in objectively less-good shape now than I've been in a while.

2) I had a lot of months away from actual workouts, so my mental toughness is not really up to snuff, ergo everything feels harder on top of that.

3) My current tempo pace (~7:40) is about the pace I was running half marathons in circa 2012-2013 and that's still how my brain thinks about that number. So when I see a workout like 3 x (2 miles @ 7:40/2:00 jog), I go, "Oh cool, two miles at HM pace, nbd." So on top of everything else, I go into it completely unprepared for how hard it's going to be and how hard it's going to feel.

(And yeah. It's kind of depressing to think about it, but 7:40 feels hard right now. Doable, but legit hard.)

On the plus side, heart rate wise, the effort level on paper looks about right, so I don't think this pace is harder than I should be running for tempos relative to my current fitness.

In general my pace was ~3-5 seconds too fast across the board (because I still haven't regained a good feel for the effort level so am relying more on GPS & also panicking sometimes about keeping the pace & hedging a little, probably), which is not the end of the world, though I'm hoping to improve my "inner pacer" as I do more of these workouts. (The first mile was uphill & into the wind so ~7:51ish, & likewise the last mile was downhill & with a tailwind so ~7:23ish. I wasn't sure pace-wise how much difference that should make so I just tried to keep the same effort level, ie, BUTT HARD.)

Also, fun nerdy biofact, I ran 600m repeats much faster at the track on Thursday and my HR never got above 183. Dunno if that means Tuesday was a lazy heart day or if yesterday was just one of those physically "off" days. (Which is possible. I was tired and my warm up & cool down miles were noticeably slower than usual.)

The good news is that in the end terrible workouts generally just motivate me to keep working hard to get back into shape! (Or, y'know. *Better* shape.)

21 Days

I pretty much always find myself rolling my eyes at blog posts that start off with an apology for not updating recently (I mean, it's not like you owe anyone anything, and highly unlikely anyone has been losing sleep over your absence), so instead I will just say HEY, I am still here and alive and NO, I have not been kidnapped or given up running altogether.

But, it has been kind of a crappy three weeks.

Remember how my most recent post was titled, "I maybe jinxing myself, buuuuut..." and then went on to given an account of my first "real" training week for CIM, post-stress reaction?

Well, it turns out I am super good at jinxing myself.

At the time, I'd been faithfully sticking to the recovery protocol my PT gave me when I had a stress fracture back in January 2014: starting with cycling, then moving to elliptical once that caused absolutely zero pain, and then once I'd been completely pain-free walking around for a week, adding in 30 minutes of walk/run intervals every other day. The progression starts out 3 x (1:00 run/9:00 walk), and then every other day you add one minute of running and subtract one minute of walking for each interval, until eventually you're running the full 30 minutes. (If at any point you have pain during or after, you have to take three days off & go back a step.) I also dutifully kept at my foot arch strengthening exercises to hopefully avoid repeating this entire episode.

All was going well, and in due time I was up to the full 30 minutes with no pain. (Side note: Every time I've been injured for multiple weeks, then finally reached the point for I can run for some non-insignificant amount of time, I'm like, "HOW the hell did I EVER complain about long runs? How can anyone ever complain about having to run MORE??" Gretchen Rubin is 100% correct that if you want to get ridiculous levels of joy out of something mundane, take it away for a while.)

Then I think on my third 30-minute run with no walk breaks, I made it about ten minutes before I started to feel a dull, sickening ache in the injured spot for the first time in weeks. I tried taking some walk breaks and was even freaked out enough that I turned around early. By the time I got home the pain was sharp and bright and I was back to limping.

Basically, I regressed two months in twenty minutes without any warning signs. After that, there was very clearly no question of trying to run again for quite a while.

I'm pretty sure that was the most depressed and hopeless about running I have ever felt. It wasn't just "Oh, look, here I am injured again." It was that, yes, but also "I just had the most brilliant training cycle of my life, got injured, got a miraculous chance at a Plan B that had the potential to result in even better training, except HAHAHAHA JUST KIDDING! You get nothing. Except probably another stress fracture. Oh, and paying for ANOTHER marathon that there's now a 99% chance you won't even be able to run, not even just to finish."

It wasn't just the injury. It was that I did everything right (I think). I followed the rules. I was patient. I switched to a new gym so I could do elliptical work on days I work from home and also elliptical "long runs" on the weekends (GAAAAH DIE IN A FIRE). It was the fact that I haven't been able to truly race something hard for over 2.5 years now because I've constantly been fighting or recovering from some kind of major injury. At a certain point you just get really tired of always being "on the comeback trail" and mustering all your optimism, again, so you can once more choke out the words, "Oh, well, maybe next year."

I don't want to get melodramatic about how bleak the situation was, but MAN, those were some dark days. It made me feel sick to see, hear, or read anything even remotely related to running; needless to say, the thought of writing about it was utterly demoralizing. (Actually, at that point, I wasn't really capable of translating emotions into coherent words, so probably wouldn't have gotten much farther than BAAAAH, EVERYTHING SUCKS, followed by maybe a depressing .gif or two.) So basically, I stuck my head in the sand & ignored the world of running almost completely, except to drag myself to the gym & back for elliptical sessions and strength work in a desperate attempt to maybe not 100% completely lose all the fitness I built up this summer.

And to be honest, it wasn't terrible timing. I've had some big things I've been working on at work and there've been some long days when getting to the gym wasn't even possible. I've had a lot of travel lately. We are planning over 1000 square feet of renovations for our house in the new year, which has been like a part-time job. There have been football games, and Don & I have started rock climbing again.

Mission Cliffs! I climbed a 5.9 on my second day, which I think is actually not at all impressive, but I was still pretty stoked to get to the ceiling without having a panic attack.

So maybe going all-out for CIM was never in the cards. Still, I haven't been able to shake the little voice in the back of my mind whispering that maybe I'll never be healthy enough for long enough to actually run a really good, hard race ever again.

But....Well, it's been 21 days today, I think, which is the longest I've ever gone without posting except for being on vacation for 3 weeks, and things are getting better, and I kinda-sorta have my act together emotionally now, so, what the heck. I figured I might as well stop being a grump and post *something*.

THE STATE OF THE LEG

Something I learned when I had my stress fracture last year was that a lot of doctors are moving away from the designations "stress reaction" and "stress fracture" because it gives the impression that those are two distinctly different injuries which are distinctly different again from the asymptomatic bones of someone who is training just as heavily. Instead, I learned, all these situations exist on a continuum which has less to do with what shows up on a bone scan or MRI & more to do with how functional/painful it is. It turns out that if you take a bunch of pain-free runners who are just starting to increase their training substantially and give them all bone scans, odds are a handful of those scans would look the same as someone a doctor would normally put in a boot for a month, just because of how the training response in bones works. You treat the patient, not the scan. So if someone comes in with symptoms of what we used to call a stress reaction or stress fracture, doctors are now more likely to just call it a "bone stress injury," full-stop, and treat it according to how severe the symptoms seem without attaching an additional label to it.

Which is all to say, I don't know if I had what they'd call a "stress reaction" or a "stress fracture" or if it started as a reaction and became a fracture, but honestly, it doesn't really matter because the treatment is all the same: stop running till it stops hurting. I did try to get a doctor appointment, just to, y'know, cover my bases, but when it was a month wait at both reputable sports medicine clinics, I figured I might as well just pretend I'd gone to the doctor and gotten diagnosed with a BSI and been told all the things I already knew they would tell me and start following the recovery plan they gave me the last time when I really did go to the doctor and get a bone scan and a $25 co-pay.

Same leg, different spot. Last time it was high and outside on the fibula; this time low & inside on the tibia.

Well, clearly, that did not work out for me. So this time, I've decided to wait until, in addition to having not the tiniest inkling of pain with walking/elliptical/karate/climbing/lifting/etc., it feels 100% completely indistinguishable from the other leg in every way. With my first stress fracture, the doctor & PT told me I was good to start the walk/run progression as long as I had no pain with walking or any other impact activity, but they were not concerned that the injured spot was still a little tender as long as it didn't get worse. When I started the walk/run plan this time, the injured spot was still a bit swollen and felt like a big bruise, even though it didn't hurt to walk. I don't know if that had anything to do with the reason I kind of relapsed, but if nothing else, I figure it's just kind of a higher standard of recovery with more time off my leg, which cannot be a bad thing.

At this point, I think it's really close--the bone feels flat again, and if I press reeeallllly hard, there is just the tiniest detectable hint of tenderness, which is really not all that different from the same spot in my other leg. I'm back doing everything normally in karate again with no pain whatsoever, even twisting/torquing movements, which were one of the things that hung me up for the longest before. So, I'm hoping that in just a few more days that leg will feel indistinguishable from the other.

(Also, I finally just caved & made a dr. appointment even though it was a month wait. Hopefully my bone injury will be totally healed by then, but it's with the foot/ankle doctor, so I'm hoping she'll be able to give me some further advice about what I can do with my weak arch to avoid something like this happening again.)

All that said, I think it's still 99% or better that I won't be running CIM, even just to finish. Even if I can start run/walking by next week, that's like six weeks to go from 30 minutes of impact to probably around four hours, which just doesn't seem all that realistic.

THE FUTURE

But all is not lost!

Because I'm still an indomitable optimist at heart, there is a part of my brain that is already buzzing with spring running plans. There are some bright & shiny races on my radar for 2016 that I think are far enough out to be doable (more about that in another post), and I'm trying to use them as incentives to stay patient and follow to the letter any advice or instructions I get from doctors and/or coaches about how to ramp the mileage back up in a way that doesn't just get me injured again. Because I've been keeping up with the elliptical work, I have a feeling I'm going to spend a good chunk of time in that annoying place where the cardio system is in pretty good shape, actually, but the bones and connective tissue that take all the impact have gotten a bit fragile, which will probably mean a very gradual cross-fade from elliptical hours to running hours through the rest of the year.

And that's fine. If I can be up to 8-10 miles by January, I think I'll be in a good place to start working towards some races in the spring.

Fingers crossed.

So here's the deal.

Remember that swollen, tender spot on my left tibia I mentioned a few weeks ago?

Remember how I cut my 16 mile long run short because it was sort of reaching yellow-flag levels of uncomfortable, but then it was fine the rest of the week, and it was fine through my 22 mile long run?

So, the day after that run (8/3), it felt a little tender, but no worse than when I've had shin splints flare up in the past around peak mileage weeks. I was walking fine & went to karate that night as usual. After running a few kata, though, it started to feel more and more uncomfortable, so I sat out the last 15 minutes or so.

The next day (8/4) I had a big track workout, but since I was traveling in the evening I couldn't go to SF Track Club as usual at Kezar. I could have done it during the day before heading to the airport, but the leg still didn't feel quite right, so I decided I'd give it a few more hours of rest & then maybe do it on the treadmill once I got to my hotel. Except, then my flight was delayed so I didn't get to my hotel until 10pm, and since I had a 6:00 am wake up call & hadn't eaten in like seven hours, I definitely did not get on a treadmill. Which I figured was probably for the best; my leg would get an extra day of rest & then I could do the workout on Wednesday.

Well. Wednesday evening (8/5) I got on the treadmill, and less than one minute into the warm-up got a big giant NOPE from my left tibia. It hurt. A lot. In a way that was uncomfortably familiar.

So I thought I'd give it a few more days & see how it felt. The spot on my tibia was kind of diffuse and not particularly painful to touch (it felt more like a large bruise), so I wasn't too worried about it yet.

Well, it didn't get better, even with complete rest. Instead, over the course of my work trip that week, it gradually got worse until even walking on it was quite painful and once or twice I legitimately thought about seeing if I could find some drugstore crutches somewhere just so I didn't make it worse. This is when I started to actually worry.

Also, why am I always alone in a hotel room when things like this happen?

From that point on, there was no question of trying to run on it. After a few days of resting it at home (~8/9ish), it started to feel much better, though by "much better," I mean "could technically walk on it, if I had to, with only a little pain."

Just based on how it felt at this point and how the pain presented (significantly better in the morning, worse by the end of the day), I was pretty sure I had a stress reaction & if I had tried to run on it, I probably could have turned it into a full-on stress fracture pretty easily. Because of where it is & how it feels with bearing weight in different ways, I'm 99% sure it's a result of trying to fix the issue with my left arch, & for all intents & purposes a part of my leg that has gotten away for a long time without doing much was suddenly thrown right into the middle of marathon training. It had been feeling better for a while so I'd gradually weaned myself off of taping up my foot; now I'm not sure that was such a hot idea. (Then again, it's also probably not the sole factor here, either.)

Now, with a stress reaction in a low-risk area (ie, low-risk for complications/nonunion, which tibia is), it is possible to recover with 2-3 weeks off running and then be able to run again, so at that point that's the medical factoid I was clinging to. (Nevermind, of course, that those 2-3 weeks are supposed to be followed by a "sensible return-to-running plan," not a goal marathon. I figured I'd burn that bridge when I came to it.)

I emailed with Coaches Tom & Ashley to let them know what was up, because my concern was that if I hadn't run at all in the 3 weeks prior to the race that it wouldn't even be worth starting, even if my leg was 100% better. They reminded me, though, just how little effect anything you do in those last three weeks has on race day compared to everything that came before, and if I was able to cross train some, it wasn't likely to affect my performance much. At that point (8/10) the plan was to get some cross training in & then see how things felt the following weekend.

And it definitely did improve pretty dramatically. I got some elliptical in instead of running, & by the end of last week (8/14) I was walking completely normally with no pain. I even jogged a few steps up & down the hall, which felt fine. I've been continuing to do my arch exercises, and there is a little pain in the bone with those in the same spot, but it doesn't linger, which is something.

So, we re-evaluated this weekend in terms of the options, which were pretty much 1) start & see how it feels, 2) drop to the half, or 3) don't run. Well, there's no space in the half at this point, so option 2) is out (also 8/1 was the deadline for switching anyway). After some back and forth, the recommendation from Tom & Ashley was to let this one go, get 100% healthy, & run CIM in December instead. The bottom line is that I want an A+ race, and even if I were able to start and even finish, that's looking pretty unlikely.

Obviously, I'm disappointed. Not utterly crushed the way I might have been if this had been a sudden thing (it's funny how two weeks of fretting lets you ease into the possibility), but still pretty bummed that this will be the second time in a row I've paid for this race, driven up to collect swag for it, & gone home without crossing the line.

But...I'm handling it. Okay, I *might* have needed a day to mope around in my pajamas & drink wine, but there's been no gnashing of teeth or rending of garments or throwing of crockery. No ugly-crying.

Part of the process has been making a list of reasons in my head (and, apparently, on the internet) of why not starting is for the best, even though it sucks massive donkey balls:

• Sometimes I don't make good decisions. Yes, it's possible I could start the marathon, and everything could be fine. But it's also possible I could get to mile 22, realize things are Not Good, but be too amped up/dehydrated/emotionally unstable to do the rational thing and quit. (This is why I quit SRM at mile 14 last year. I could have gone farther but the hip was just getting worse, and I knew the closer I got to the finish, the harder it would be to quit.)
• I want to go all-out at my next marathon. Even if my leg were feeling much better, it's still unlikely that I'd be able to give my absolute best effort on Sunday. I'd be thinking about the leg and paying attention to whether it hurts and how much and how bad I should let it get before I quit instead of focusing on my race. For a while I was kind of thinking, "Eh, if it feels okay, I could just aim to finish," except no. I have zero interest right now in running a marathon "just to finish." I would rather wait until I'm ready to kill it.
• It leaves me well positioned for CIM. The rest of "I'll just try to finish" was "and then run CIM." When you think it through, though, the math doesn't really work out. Even if I were to run SRM comfortably AND my leg felt perfect, that's still ~4-6 weeks to recover & be ready to train again, leaving only ~8-10 weeks before CIM. Which means it's pretty unlikely I'd be in top shape. The way things stand now, I have some solid training under my belt, and if I can get my leg taken care of (and cross train in the mean time), I'll be in a good spot to roll that training over to a new cycle & build on it.
• CIM is a better race for that anyway. Don't get me wrong, Santa Rosa is a great marathon on a good course and it's very well run. But it's pretty much accepted out here that if you want the best possible shot at an awesome marathon, given the choice, you run the net downhill race with six turns in December, not the one with 30+ turns in wine country in August.

So here's my loose plan:

• Keep chillin' on the elliptical this week.
• Keep up the arch strength stuff.
• Once I've been 100% pain free for 5-7 days, embark on said "sensible return-to-running" plan & follow the guidelines re: whether or not the pain stays gone.
• Spend 9/2-9/9 in Portland living the good life. (Did I mention this?? SO EXCITED.)
• Stop slacking on strength work & get back in a routine with A.T., focusing particularly on the arch issue because BAAAAH.
• Pick up the serious training again by mid-to-late September (provided all is well with the foot/leg bone).
• Maybe run a half in there somewhere if I'm feeling it.

So....yeah. Boo. Sucks. However, I am trying to make the best of it. I have two friends running, & since I've already got the weekend free & the hotel room & there's a lot of pretty awesome wine to be enjoyed (especially by someone who is not running a marathon Sunday morning), it seems only logical to drown my sorrows in Pinot Noir go enjoy what there is to be enjoyed.

SRM WEEK 16 OF 20: Yellow Flags...

Greeting from the Inland Empire! Try not to be jealous that my life is all glamour, all the time.

Also, MAN, things got weird and/or real this week.

Weird-ness and/or Real-ness Factor #1: Remember a couple of weeks ago when I was like, "La la la, this training cycle is SOOOO easy, what are people even complaining about all the time???" Well; let the record show that this week was marked by a couple of days when I Just Could Not, from the first couple of miles in. (I mean, I'm not saying I Didn't in all cases; just that I reallllly didn't want to.) Not because I was doing anything hard, even; my body just felt like I was starting every run at the 15 mile mark. I'm calling this one "bad news and good news;" bad news because it sucks, but good news because I'm pretty sure that it's mostly due to the fact that I've run over 40 miles for the last 4 weeks in a row and I literally cannot remember the last time that happened.

Weird-ness and/or Real-ness Factor #2: I've had this weird sensation on some of my harder runs lately where my body is exhausted, and I can feel it's exhausted, and I soooo very badly want to not be running, and yet...physically it kinda just doesn't seem that bad? The legs just kind of keep chugging, even though I feel like I should be slogging? I feel like this is maybe the flip side of #1, so again, I'm calling it bad news & good news.

Weird-ness and/or Real-ness Factor #3: For the first time this training cycle (!), I didn't get all my weekly mileage in. And while that sucks, I am still pretty darn happy with the fact that I managed to go 15 weeks before it happened. I didn't miss any runs (I've still only missed one this entire cycle), and when I cut things short this week, I did it for good reasons.

One of the reasons is slightly more concerning than the other. For the last couple of weeks, I've had this tender little lump on my left tibia, and I know it's a result of putting more stress on that part of my leg since I've been working on using my left arch correctly. What I can tell you for sure is that it's NOT a stress fracture (something I learned when I had one last year was that once you've had one, you never mistake something else for it ever again), but it's definitely a spot I've been paying attention to because I very very much want it to not BECOME one.

On Sunday I was supposed to run 16 miles (a cut-back long run), and for the first time, that spot kinda-sorta hurt enough that I thought very hard about how important it was to finish that run. I went back & forth about how far I was willing to go on it, and then the pain would go away for a while but come back after stopping at a light, then go away again, then come back. And eventually I settled on two thoughts:

1) I kept flashing back to fall 2013 when I was training for NVM the first time around, and had some mild pain in my calf, and kept pushing through it, and it got worse, and I kept pushing through it, and then by Christmas I DID have a stress fracture & couldn't run again for 2 months.

2) I could not help but think back to exactly one year ago to the day, training for the same race, & running 18 miles on a sketchy not-totally-healed hip because I was having panic attacks about not getting in every single mile of every single run. Afterward I got on a plane for the same work trip, and by the time I got off I couldn't put weight on that leg and couldn't run for that entire week.

So yeah; those two thoughts together were enough for me to declare those 16 miles just Not That Important relative to a thing that is hurting a month out from your goal race. I keep reminding myself that Coach Tom has said my training plan is designed with the assumption that I will do 90% of it, and if one is going to fall short by a few miles so that certain bones can fully recover, the week in between two big long runs seems like a pretty good time to do it.

~*~*~SRM WEEK 16 OF 20~*~*~

Grand Total: 33 miles

* 24.75 easy
* 7.5 speed/tempo

Monday: Rest

Man, déjà vu all over again. Busted feet first thing in the morning, work insanity, & no karate. :(

Tuesday: 1.75 warm up, 5 x 800 alternating 5K pace & marathon pace, 1 cool down = 5.25 total

Speed work at Kezar with SF Track Club. The assigned workouts are usually shorter than what RunCoach has me doing on a regular basis, so I've been trying to arrive ~20 minutes early & stay a little later to get in some extra mileage. No time for that today, so this one ended up being on the short side.

When Coach Tom explained this workout, it sounded kind of hard to me, especially given that my legs were still feeling heavy after Sunday's 21 miler & my warm-up had been in the 10:30 pace range. The idea of running even one 7:15 800m just did not sound like something my legs were up to. And although 8:15 is certainly more comfortable than 7:15, it's not what I usually think of as "recovery pace." So, I had told my training partner (who was watching our pace) that he was free to give me a verbal kick in the ass if at any point I started to lag.

But then a funny thing happened. We started our first fast 800m & my legs just kind of took over. I mean yes, there was effort, but it really did not feel that hard, & we actually finished every fast interval in more like the 6:58 range than 7:15. And the 8:15 "slow" intervals that I had been worried about feeling hard (which were more like 7:45's, I think) felt weirdly comfortable. The whole thing was over before I knew it & I finished feeling like I could have gone a few more rounds with no problem.

So, like. Not sure what's up with that.

Wednesday: 5 easy / karate

Feeling very antsy & uneasy with Tuesday's short workout so got in a few easy miles before karate. I think the mileage was fine but the timing maybe was not, because...

Thursday: 10 6 easy

OMG. I can't remember the last time a run felt this bad. Not painful, but like I had lead in my shoes--just dragging myself through every step. And also kind of lightheaded. And just exhausted. (See: #1 above.) When I just feel "Ugh," I almost always push through whatever I had planned, but this just felt on a whole other level. I mean, I still *could* have dragged myself through the entire 10 miles without killing myself, but I had a big interval workout the next day & I kind of felt like I was in a situation where I had to make a choice between the two. In the end I decided to cut this one short (which was still REALLY hard) in hopes of not being a wreck for the intervals.

I doubt this was PURELY because of running 5 miles the day before when it's usually a rest day, but between that & two weeks of several bigger, longer runs, I think the cumulative effect just hit me particularly hard that day.

Friday: 2 warm up, 6 x 1 mile @ 10K pace / 1:30 jog, 2 cool down = 10.75.

I would have preferred to do this one at the track so it would be easier to hit the right pace consistently, but the logistics of the day dictated otherwise. Womp womp. So, I got to do these on rolling hills while dealing with pedestrians & a good bit of wind. As a result my pace was all over the place between 7:15 & 7:35. I tried to stick to the right level of effort, though, & was (thankfully!) able to finish the whole workout with no problem. (Though MAN did it wipe me out. See #2 above.)

Saturday: Rest

I am not too proud to admit I toyed with the idea of getting in some easy miles to make up for the lost ones on Thursday, but was then reminded by my achey legs not to be a frickin dumbass.

Sunday: 16 long 6 easy

See #3 above. Uggggghhhh this was frustrating. I had a 2:30 flight so was feeling smug about how I'd gotten up at 8:00 on a weekend to get the run done beforehand. Things started out pretty schlubby (I think my first mile was almost 11:00; see #1 above) which kind of seemed like par for the course this week. But, over time, even though my body still felt exhausted, I got into a rhythm & weirdly felt like I could run comfortably for a long time. (See #2 above) So yeah. It was super frustrating to feel like I needed to stop when I was otherwise totally capable of getting it done, but I'm trying to be mature about it.

SRM WEEK 12 of 20: Reset / Reboot

After my dubious experience in Sunnyvale on Sunday, I needed to wash that race right outta my hair!

Yes, the entire experience was disappointing (note: under the circumstances, I am NOT disappointed in myself), but there are some bright spots.

First, starting soon after the end of the race, I had this suspicion that even though the race was physically uncomfortable and I finished hard and am not sure I could have run it much faster, it was not really going to physically count as a truly hard effort. At every stage post-race (30 seconds after, 5 minutes after, 2 hours after, 10 hours after), I just felt way better than I should have. I felt great Monday morning & even got up early for a solid strength workout (not something I'm usually up to the morning after a real race). Nothing felt the least bit off Monday or Tuesday. Which is all great because, woo-hoo, feeling normal again after one day instead of three!

Second, I had Monday through Wednesday as scheduled rest days, but Sunday was so unsatisfying that by Tuesday afternoon I *really* wanted to get out for a nice, easy, cleansing run. I didn't go to the track (that seemed like pushing it), but because I suspected the race hadn't been near as hard on my body as I'd expected, I decided to go out for a few easy miles for however long was comfortable, maybe three and maybe eight.

I don't know if it was the overall low mileage last week or what, but this easy run felt better than any easy run in several weeks. Four miles out I still felt great but forced myself to exhibit some restraint & turn around anyway. Plus, the weather was perfect--warm and balmy in the Mission; cool in the Panhandle; slightly breezy but comfortable in the Park. There is nothing like a good run to get a bad one out of your system!

Third, though I would much rather have had a solid race, not having had one means that I can run actual mileage this week, including a long run on Sunday. I was totally ready to sacrifice some mileage to taper & recovery in order to get an all-out race in, but since that didn't work out, at least I'll get some extra training time in.

This coming week, I think I will probably stick to the plan to not do any workouts, but will go back to pretty much normal mileage; just all at an easy pace.

~*~*~SRM WEEK 12 OF 20~*~*~

Grand Total: 24 miles

* 7.8 easy
* 6.2 speed
* 10 race

Monday: Rest, but not by choice

Work, work, work.

Tuesday: Rest, but again...not by choice

We had dinner reservations at a new fancy pants spot in SF, so I'd planned to do leave work a little early so as to get my track workout in beforehand. Alas, work stuff came up & I barely managed to leave just in time to make it to dinner.

(On the other hand, if you're in the Bay Area & feel like dropping a chunk of change on a cool prix fixe, check out Californios. Really cool food with a Mexican twist. Also DO THE WINE PAIRING.)

Wednesday: 2 warm up, 2 x 1K @ 10K pace, 4 x 1K @ 5K pace, 2 x 1K @ 10K pace, 1.8 cool down Karate

I figured that since I didn't get the track workout done Tuesday, I'd skip karate & do it Wednesday. Alas, things came up & I had to be in class.

Thursday: 7 easy 2 warm up, 2 x 1K @ 10K pace, 4 x 1K @ 5K pace, 2 x 1K @ 10K pace, 1.8 cool down = 10 total

I really did not want to do this workout this late in the week, but it was a big one & I didn't want to skip it. So, I went ahead with it & just hoped the fact that this ends up being a really low mileage week will kinda-sorta make up for it.

Those middle four intervals? BITCHES. It was hot & I hadn't eaten particularly well that day or the day before, so let's blame it on that.




This is the face of a woman who has done three
10+ mile track workouts in as many weeks. BOO. YA.

Friday: Rest

I don't like resting on Friday. Friday is for running. Thankfully I had a good college friend in town that I hadn't seen in over ten years! Also it was our other friend's 30th birthday, so we had to take her out to celebrate proper-like. Sorry no pics because we were too busy, like, living our actual lives.

Saturday: 2 easy

Just an easy shake-out run.

Sunday: 2 warm-up + 10 race

(You already know how this turned out.)

Onwards & upwards!!!

Some Epiphanies I've Had

Like I said in my last post, I have ideas & thoughts & hopes & plans running absolutely wild in my head, & when I try to think about how I might wrangle them all into a post that is both coherent and not 27 pages long, I feel totally overwhelmed & like I need to just go look at internet cat videos for a while. Which tends to result in posting nothing.

So, I'm trying the bite-sized approach. One piece at a time, and probably a lot of circling back over time, because this shit is all connected.

After I DNF'd in Santa Rosa, I had a nice, long, silent two-hour drive home in which to mull a lot of things over. That night I spent probably another two hours pouring my thoughts out unedited into a blog post that I knew I would not be ready to post for a while. But, having let it sit for nearly a month now & gotten through the crazy-making-breath-holding-limbotastic nightmare of waiting for the MRI & waiting for the results & waiting for the follow-up & being cleared of anything catastrophic, I think I have enough perspective now to put it out there.

Friends, I present to you some really honest epiphanies that came to me during & after the race, the type of honest you can only really be with yourself once all the stakes & pressure are off.

1) I am scared of long runs. I used to just say I hated them, but the more I think about it, the more I think it's at least partly fear--of the discomfort involved, of the monotony, of the logistics, of the huge chunks of sacrificed time in which I can't really do anything else. In terms of process-oriented vs. goal-oriented personality types, I am 100% unabashedly goal-oriented. I don't want to do things; I want them DONE, as soon as possible. This makes me really good at finishing what I start, hitting deadlines reliably, not procrastinating, and getting things done quickly; the downside is that in many cases I have a lot of trouble "enjoying the ride," as they say, and I sometimes find enormous, long-term tasks or projects so overwhelming that I become too demoralized to start.

Bullshit, are we there yet? How about now?

In the past, with marathon training, this has meant that I've usually done the bare minimum that I think I can get away with in terms of long runs. (This time around, I only missed two, both due to injuries, but since they didn't really get all that "long" until halfway through my training cycle, two is kind of a lot, percentage-wise.)

I realized before the race that I was really, truly going into it actively afraid of the distance, and I suspect the same is true of every other marathon I've ever run as well. Mentally, I think I've just never gotten all that comfortable with runs over about 15 miles, and if I'm going to continue running marathons, I've got to get over that. Which, I think, means establishing enough of a base *before* the real training starts so that 18-20 mile long runs are just part of the weekend routine, instead of something I build up to doing two or three times a few weeks before the race & spend my training cycle dreading and stressing about. I don't want to run another marathon until I'm able to stare down the barrel of these runs and not bat an eye because it no longer seems like such a big freaking deal.

2) Related to #1, if I can get to a place where I'm comfortably doing an 18-20 mile long run most weekends, I think it actually might help me mentally to run one or two full marathons at an easy, comfortable pace in the course of training for a goal marathon (say, four months & two months before a goal race). I think one of the reasons I've never totally gotten over my fear of the distance is that I run the full 26.2 rarely enough that I don't have the feel of it in my body the way I do with shorter distances I run more often. It would also give me more chances to practice logistics/fueling/etc. as well as the mental aspect of never stopping (whereas on long runs I typically make brief stops for water, traffic lights, etc.).

3) Related to #1 AND #2, the last couple of years have been cycle after cycle of shortchanging base-building because there was always some race I really wanted to run and I "just didn't have time" to spend weeks upon weeks running slow, easy miles because "I need to get fast NOW!" I was constantly telling myself I'd get back to it right after x race, which would turn into right after y race, and so on, and so on. As a result, I know my "aerobic engines" have suffered a bit in a way that doesn't really show up until you're doing marathon-type long runs. Basically I think my options at this point are 1) stop running marathons so I can get away with doing less of that type of training, or 2) admit I want to run more marathons, accept that that's part of it, & invest long-term in some serious base-building efforts before I even *think* about another goal marathon. Basically if I'm going to be a semi-decent marathoner (at least temporarily), I have to start acting like one.

It's like Nanna always said....

4) Somewhere in the last year or two, I've lost my hill mojo. Although SRM was generally flat, there were a good number of rather steep rollers in there, and I felt myself kind of mentally fall apart every time I saw one coming because I was just not prepared for it. I mean I doubt I will ever totally {heart} running hills, but I think I've maybe gotten too caught up in trying to make sure I hit my prescribed training paces every time out, which has meant that I've avoided the hilly routes I used to run regularly in favor of friendlier, more gently rolling ones. I know it will make me stronger if I suck it up & do at least a couple of easy runs a week on not-nasty-but-legit hills. (The trouble with this is the downhills. Going uphill hurts in the good way; downhill a lot of times hurts in the not-so-good way.) Tying this back into #1 above, it would probably be good if I did a long, hilly run at *least* once a month.

I mean, I live HERE...

5) I need to do more medium-long runs at goal marathon pace, even if only for the mental benefit. This is the one thing I've questioned about my training plans the last couple of times. There have been some GMP miles, but usually only a few at a time, or chunks stuck into the middle of monster track workouts. I'm a firm believer in keeping true long runs nice & easy and I know it's very easy to overdo the amount of running you do at GMP, but I think this is something I might bring up with Coach Tom the next time I train for a marathon & see if there's a smart way to integrate some mid-week GMP runs (say, 8-10 miles) occasionally. I felt like I had a hard time "dialing in" to that pace/effort level & getting into a groove at SRM, even when my hip was feeling fine, and I think personally I might do better at that if I have more practice running at that pace & getting what it feels like solidly into my body. (Also, I think it's probably time to finally admit out loud that I want that pace to be 8:00/mile. Sorry not sorry.)

Every one of these deserves its own post, but again, I'm trying to keep things bite-sized for now in the interest of, like, posting something consistently. I have more to say about each of them, so hopefully that will happen bit by bit over the next few weeks or months.

Post-Santa Rosa I decided to give myself a month of much-needed (relative) sloth, but as of Monday I think it's probably time to get back on some sort of schedule & start holding myself accountable for putting this stuff into practice. I have a hard time doing that when I'm not training for something imminent, so hopefully forcing myself to blog regularly again will help.

Who Moved My Cheese

First off, if you somehow missed The Oatmeal's latest genius because you live under a rock or something, you're welcome.

Genius, I tell you.

Secondly -- hoo boy, did the speed work spank me on Tuesday.

Generally, track workouts have always been my favorite of the week. Yes, sometimes it takes a little more functional brain power to gather everything up & drive to the track vs just putting on running clothes & heading out the door, but for the most part I find speed work more interesting and more rewarding than just putting in easy miles.

Tuesday was different, though. I won't say I was dreading my track workout all day Tuesday, but, unusually for me, I was most certainly looking forward to it being over. Partly I think it was because of the distance; my last track workout had 1.5 miles worth of intervals while this one had 3.5. Plus most of my runs lately feel significantly harder than I'm used to. Also I pretty much constantly worry about my calves. (It was during a track workout in December when the stress fracture in my left leg went from "Well this is pretty uncomfortable" to "HOLY JEEBUS someone get me some crutches.")

Usually my favorite place...

My assignment was a 2 mile warm up, one mile in 7:10 / 1:30 jog, two 800m's in 3:26 / 2:00 jog, another mile in 7:10, & a 1.5 mile cool down. As with my previous two speed sessions, I had to break the warm-up into half-mile chunks because long run + karate + 48 hours of no running apparently causes my Achilles/lower calf area to tighten up like shrink wrap. A couple minutes of aggressive stretching & shaking them out seems to do the trick, but as a result my warm-up ends up taking nearly twice as long, which is annoying.

It was a less-than-promising start in other ways as well. It was hot & I was sweating & chafing everywhere like a mofo (even in my nose), and on top of this some running group was doing their circle-of-bffs-and-stretching thing on the track while there were about a billion people running on it (ok like 30).

Seriously. They were taking up four lanes. And they always do this. I nearly got kicked twice by the same dude getting his dynamic stretch on in the middle of lane four. Some shrieking & wild slapping may have occurred. In my defense that is what you get if you stand in the middle of the a track & nearly kick people who are trying to run. There are like infinity other places in that stadium where people can stretch; there's just no excuse for doing it on the track while other people are trying to use it.

Things did not get better once I started running. Since I've been running pretty much all my runs at faster paces than my schedule says completely comfortably, I figured I should probably bump these up a little too. In the past I've interpreted the paces on this workout as 10K pace & 5K pace respectively, so I figured I'd just go by feel & shoot for those levels of effort & try not to kill myself.

And it hurt. God it hurt. Which was weird, because the part of my brain that stores these things in muscle memory was going, "Yep, this is totally how that pace should feel" while the conscious part was going "Really? But it feels sooooo slooooowww" and the emotional part was throwing a little tantrum & going "It huuuuuuuurts, is it oooooover yet??" For a while I wasn't even going to look at my watch during the intervals so that afterward I would have an unbiased idea of what pace those levels of effort correlated with. At least that was the idea; eventually I couldn't resist looking and to my dismay my pace was all over the place. During the first mile alone I think I saw every possible number between 6:20 & 7:20 at one point or another.

I had a hard time jogging the recovery intervals too (though it ended up not mattering because I had to stop in between anyway to stretch out my stupid Achilles & remind myself that no, I wasn't getting a stress fracture again) which made me wonder if I was running the intervals too fast. By the last 1600m I felt like my right glute/hamstring wasn't firing quite right, and I could tell my muscles were getting tired because it was getting harder and harder to stay out of my calves. My rule of thumb is to always finish my last interval feeling as if I could run just one more with no problem, and that was definitely not the case after that last mile. It was all I could do to brow beat myself into doing the cool down (again, stopping for a stretch break every half mile).

If I'd been running these intervals in a vacuum, I'd say those paces were maybe fine, but it was hot, and there was a crazy headwind down the backstretch so realistically they were probably a bit too fast. I mean they didn't kill me, but still. By the time this workout was over I was BEAT.

One of the perks of recording all my track splits is the ability to go back in time & compare what I can do now to what I was doing at a certain point in the past when I have an idea what my fitness was like. It turns out the last time I ran this workout was March 5, 2013, about halfway through my training cycle for Mountains 2 Beach Marathon. At that point I was in pretty good but not amazing shape, & whipped out the following:

I was hoping I'd written something useful about this workout in that week's training journal to put it in context ("Woo, super easy!" "Ugh shoot me.") but apparently all I did was lambast myself for not writing the workout down & gypping myself on a minute of recovery time. Which probably means it was more or less fine & not awful.

Since these numbers aren't drastically lower & it was probably not 75° that day, I'm probably not *that* far off of my fitness at that point. But I am clearly waaaaaay out of practice at running the right paces with some amount of consistency. Though, this being my 3rd track workout of the cycle, I can forgive myself for that.

Still, I'm used to leaving the track feeling relaxed and satisfied and confident, not dragging myself to the car feeling physically like ass and also generally confused and insecure about what just happened (oh and also kind of still wanting to strangle people with no track manners). It's a good thing I have good friends who had a cold glass of white wine waiting for me when I finally got to dinner.

Three Cursed Marathons

So, once upon a time, I decided to quit rolling my eyes at full marathons & give it a shot, giving myself full permission to hate everything about both the preparation and the event itself, and never do it again if it turned out to just not be my bag (which I highly suspected it would not). Then and now, I felt like there was too much emphasis in the recreational running community on marathons (particularly running as many/as frequently as possible, regardless of quality) and not enough emphasis on just running better in general. But after twenty years of 5Ks, 10Ks, and half marathons, I just felt like it was something I should do once so I could speak with some small measure of authority on the subject.

("Oh, you're a distance runner!"
"Yep!"
"Neat! How many marathons have you done?"
{Mental face palm.}
I cannot even tell you how many conversations I have had with non-runners that went exactly like this. Cannot. Even. Tell you.)

And thus I came to Marathon #1: Cal International Marathon, in December 2011. Based on my long runs & other workouts, I felt confident I could run a ~8:00 pace comfortably, but since I was completely new to the distance, I wasn't all that attached to a particular finishing time--I just wanted to finish strong, feel good, & be able to say, "Yes, I have run that freakish, outsized, monstrosity of a novelty distance they call a marathon."

Then about 3 weeks before the race, I came down with an upper respiratory infection that made a lot of important activities (running, sleeping, breathing, etc.) incredibly difficult. I spent the week of Thanksgiving in bed at my mom's, sucking on my inhaler every hour or so & basically just trying to keep myself out of the emergency room. A week later I was doing a lot better, but still having asthma problems & using my inhaler quite a bit, and had been able to run maybe twice in the three weeks since I'd gotten sick. I thought very seriously about DNSing but then decided "Hey, maybe I'll be fine! And if not I can always quit."

Well, I did start. And immediately had an asthma attack. And I suck at quitting things. So I wheezed my way through an otherwise perfect race, sucking on my inhaler every two miles and trying not to black out, & finished in 3:47, which under the circumstances I felt was pretty respectable.

And weirdly, instead of walking away from that race as I'd planned going, "Ugh, that sucked, glad I don't ever have to do it again," I left with this nagging unsatisfied feeling. I knew I'd done the best I could under the circumstances, but I also knew I could do so much better if I had a shot at it healthy. Maybe just one more, I found myself thinking. Just to see.

So I spent the first part of the year running shorter races, & then in the summer signed up for round 2.

Marathon #2: Cal International Marathon, December 2012

I actually ran fewer miles in preparation for this race than for CIM 2011 but was finishing all my workouts much stronger and racing WAY faster at shorter distances. I'd had more and longer long runs and was finishing them more strongly and really felt like ~8:00 / mile should be a cake walk. Then 3 weeks before the race on my last long run, I finished completely unable to put any weight on my right foot. I limped home, called my sports medicine doctor & was instructed to ice & rest it & stay completely off of it until there was no pain whatsoever, and maybe I'd be able to run.

It did get better, but very slowly and very-two-steps-forward-one-step-back, so just like the year before, I ended up getting in maybe 2-3 short runs in those last three weeks. Going into race weekend the pain was totally gone; on the other hand, the forecast called for Sacramento to be pummeled by a freaking monsoon on Sunday between the hours of 6am-9am, and Jesus Christ did it ever deliver. For a second year in a row I seriously considered not running (though I wasn't alone this time), but once again decided that "Maybe it'll be fine! And if not I can always quit."

Long story short, the wind, rain, & standing water on the course made it a tough race as it was (we had 20mph headwinds in some places, I think), and by mile 11 I could barely put weight on my right foot again, which made me compensate with other muscles that eventually began shutting down in their turn. This was the closest I've ever come to quitting a race, and there was a LOT of stopping / limping in those last 12 miles. My gun time was ~3:55; I didn't even get a chip time because apparently the section of the starting mat I crossed shorted out thanks to the three or so inches of standing water at the start.

From the Sac bee

I still love this shot of Giraffy's, because it
just captures the entire experience so exquisitely.

Thankfully the pain in my foot turned out to be really bad tendinitis & not a stress fracture, but I was still in an air cast & not allowed to run for a month after.

Obviously, I could not let this be the last marathon I ever ran. So in January 2013, I started all over again.

Marathon #3: Mountains 2 Beach Marathon, May 2013

Why no, not hobbling across the finish with a torn muscle at all, what are you talking about

This cycle was definitely the best marathon training I've ever done, up until I started having problems with my right hip flexor ~4 weeks before the race. Once again, instead of running, I spent that last month desperately trying to fix a health issue & was barely cleared to run before I got on the plane for Ventura.

This was definitely the closest I've come to having the race I felt like I'd trained for. Up until mile 20 I averaged 8:06 / mile (including a 1-2 minute stop to deal with my foot going numb) at a pretty comfortable level of effort. But after that my hip was done, and between that & the heat it was all I could do to walk/jog/hobble my way through the last four miles & try to stay upright. (Later I'd learn that I'd torn ~40% of the tissue in my previously-strained hip flexor.) I finished in 3:36, an 11 minute PR, but still very far from the race I wanted & felt like I'd trained for up until that last month.

Going Forward...

So yeah. I doubt I will ever be a marathon junky, but if I could just get one good one under my belt, one solid race where there are no injuries or illnesses or acts of god to make running 26 miles at the absolute edge of my ability any more difficult than it already is, I think I could get over it for a while & go back to my core competencies. But right now, I'm still after that one.

One thing I know for sure is that I am through with the "Maybe it'll be fine/I can always quit!" mentality. I think it is quite clear by now that in a target race situation where I'm still physically capable of moving forward, I can't trust myself to make the smart decision & walk off the course. I've had enough of "giving it a shot" only to blow my training on a lackluster/disastrous race. Peak marathon fitness is too valuable, too hard-won for that. Yes, I had $300+ in reg fees, hotel, & rental car invested M2B, but in the 10 months since then I've spent over $1000 on doctor visits & physical therapy & another ~$170 on three races I couldn't run, so you do the math.

So that's my new resolution. If circumstances (health, weather, etc.) aren't reasonably close to ideal, marathon = not happening. I am extremely fortunate and thankful to be in a position where I can write off a couple hundred dollars now and then without sweating it (especially since that has definitely not always been the case); given that, it just makes a lot more sense to me to skip a race I paid for than "Give it a shot!" under sketchy circumstances and end up either too injured or burned out to run another one any time soon.

Marathon #4

I don't know how soon I'll have the fitness to run another marathon, but I think August is as soon as it's likely to be, so right now I have my eye on the Santa Rosa Marathon (8/24). It's close, the fee is reasonable, ($125 before April 30), and I've run the half before & so I know it's a well-organized race. In previous the years the course has been two monotonous loops along the gravelly-in-places Santa Rosa Greenway, but this year it's been changed to a single loop around town / local roads, so gravel should be minimal. While I'm not an elevation diva, I can't say I'm exactly *crushed* by the flatness of the course, and the 6 a.m. start means you stand a chance of decent temperatures. (We are talking August in wine country, after all.)

I think I have a good shot at being ready to run Santa Rosa if everything goes perfectly for the next few months--no injuries, no last-minute travel plans, etc. My plan is to continue building up my easy mileage & keep up my strength work & cross-training, ease back while we're in Italy (though I'll probably have to do some running there, just for maintenance), then jump into actual training with Coach Tom (no way I'm doing this alone) in mid-May. That leaves me ~15 weeks, which, if I can get to ~25-30 miles a week by then, is completely respectable in terms of a marathon cycle.

And if I get to May & August just isn't looking reasonable, there is certainly no dearth of sweet fall marathons; Wineglass, Steamtown, and Fox Valley have been on my radar for a while, and there's a handful of less flashy local options as well.

Diagnoses, Deferments, & My Future As A Radioactive Superhero

So last Wednesday I got in to see a sports medicine doctor (not my regular one, but a good one that I trust) as well as an orthopedic. After talking with me about everything that had happened, examining my left calf, & considering different things that I could do and not do, they both agreed that it sounded an awful lot like a fibular stress fracture. As my PT pointed out, I've likely strained a bunch of surrounding muscles as well, but the main symptom that seems to indicate a bone issue is the crazy sensitivity of the outside of my leg to pressure, right along / behind where the fibula runs. (As in, if I lean against the couch too suddenly or try to cross my left leg over my right, it's like 6/10 pain.) They did say that it's more common to have pain lower down close to the ankle or higher up close to the knee where there is less muscle padding, whereas mine is worst right in the middle, but occasionally it presents this way too, depending on where the fracture is.

Of course the treatment is the same no matter what the problem is: stay off of it, avoid impact, and DEFINITELY don't run on it until the pain (both with impact and pressure) is 100% g-o-n-e GONE. That said, the doctor was pretty clear that he wanted a definitive diagnosis for my medical history and also to give me an idea of how far out I am from 100% complete & utter lack of pain, so he scheduled a bone scan this coming Wednesday. This means I get to get shot up with radioactive goop, chill for 3 hours, & then get stuck under a special camera. I am told I will continue to be radioactive for ~3 days after. By then, I fully expect that my super powers will have emerged.

I'm expecting it will probably be a lot like this. Note the glistening adornment of radioactive isotopes.

So, while that's not exactly great news, there are a few up sides. First, even since that appointment, my leg is feeling much, much better. I can walk on it totally fine, it's only slightly tender to the touch, and (shhh don't tell anyone) the short little jogs I've done across the street to make a red light or down the hall at home have been completely pain-free, so if the bone scan shows no bone injury, I can probably start running again soon (albeit in very, very small quantities).

Second, the benefit of having the worst of it happen over Christmas & not getting to a doctor for weeks is that at this point I've already got four weeks of zero miles under my belt (& will have nearly five by the time I get the results of the bone scan), and the healing time for a fibular stress fracture is typically only 4-8 weeks. Somehow facing just a few more weeks, worst case, of no running at this point seems a lot more psychologically manageable than two months would have sounded the day I started limping on it.

Third, I had the foresight (by which I mean dumb luck) to register for one of the only marathons out there that will potentially defer your entry. I requested a deferral last week and the race director granted it, so I'm only out the administrative fees for that rather than the entire $125 reg fee. So that's pretty sweet.

In the mean time, I am allowed to bike, swim, strength train, & elliptical (basically anything that's low-impact & doesn't hurt), so people with tips / encouragement around that, do not worry that your advice came too late. I have been putting it to good use. :)

This was not a stellar training week as it was book-ended by two bouts of cold-and-sinus-general-unpleasantness, but since I'm not officially training for anything right now, I didn't feel too badly about it. I got some good cardio in on the elliptical & bike & also some strength sessions, and have also been using the extra time / brain space to continue working on my nutrition.

Grand Total: 31.3 miles

* 16.2 easy (bike)
* 2.6 speed (bike)
* 5 tempo (bike)
* 7.5 elliptical

Monday & Tuesday:

Sick as a dog; mostly lay on the couch / drink tea.

Wednesday:

a.m. strength work / p.m. 3.25 warm up, 3 x (.33 @ all-out / .15 easy), .5 easy, 3 x (.33 @ all-out / .15 easy), .5 easy = 7.5 bike; 3.5 easy elliptical.

I'd intended to do another easy half hour on the bike after the intervals, but about 5 minutes in I was having some weird pain in my right knee / quad & instead decided to see if my leg could handle the elliptical. It didn't hurt, so I did the last 25 easy minutes on it. I think I'm getting better at figuring out how to make the elliptical mimic running. Back in June / July I REALLY hated it because it felt *nothing* like running.

Thursday:

4 easy elliptical; 6.75 easy bike. Clearly I'm in better shape than I was in July when I was coming back from the hip injury; 30 easy-but-not-too-easy minutes on the bike used to only get me 6.2 miles, so that's reassuring.

Friday:

a.m. strength work / p.m. 3.2 warm up, 4 x (1.95 @ LT effort / .33 easy), 2 cool down = 14. (This is my bike equivalent of LT intervals.)

Saturday/Sunday:

I took Saturday as an intentional rest day & had planned to check out Koret Pool at USF courtesy of Kimra on Sunday, but then the nasty sinus stuff reared its ugly head again & I once again spent a lot of the day on the couch hydrating like a champ.

Why Injuries Suck: Part 7,926

My house is so clean, you guys. Also, I have been planning meals, grocery shopping, & preparing days' worth of food ahead of time like it's my freaking job. These are the types of things you have the time to do when you can't run and have gobs of mental & physical energy to burn off as a result.

I have some advice for you and that is that if you ever decide to injure yourself bad enough to interrupt your running for multiple weeks, don't do it just before / during the holidays / travel. Over the course of mid-December, my achey left calf got progressively worse and worse even as my runs got shorter and less intense until, after an easy 4-miler in Spokane, I could no longer really put weight on it.

Since then, it's all been kind of a blur of limping & travel & phone calls in airport terminals various & sundry to about a dozen doctors and clinics as I desperately tried to find someone with a medical degree who could fit me in & maybe tell me what the heck is going on. (This is why late December is a terrible time to injure yourself. Obviously no one can see you unless you're dying, and afterward they're swamped trying to take care of everyone who managed mild-to-moderate damage to themselves during the holidays.)

For the first two weeks, I could barely walk & couldn't bear any weight at all on the ball of my foot, & was routinely waking up at night in really surprising amounts of pain. In the last week I've been able to walk pretty much normally as long as I keep to less than say half a mile at a time, but there's still a reasonable amount of pain, even just to the touch in some places, and running is still so, soooooo far from happening.

I couldn't get in to see a sports medicine doctor until this coming Wednesday, but I did manage to get in for x-rays on the 3rd. Predictably, they didn't show anything; stress fractures generally don't show up on x-rays until they start to heal (usually ~4-6 weeks later), so even if that's what it is, only an MRI or bone scan would catch it.

(Don't ask me what that other stuff means; apparently they aren't concerned about any of it, but I'm still curious to know.)

I spent Thursday dejectedly explaining the situation to my PT & getting his take on it. His bullet points:

• Kind of presenting like bone, but impossible to confirm without MRI / bone scan.
• Regardless of the bone situation, there is definitely a pretty bad muscle strain in a few different places.
• Realistically, the bone situation kind of doesn't matter since the treatment is still "don't run on it until it stops hurting."
• WOW, your left calf is *obscenely* tight, ie bad strain = completely not surprising. (And yes, cupping did indeed ensue.)

We'll see if the sports medicine doctor has anything new to add on Wednesday.

So this week has been emotional and hard. The hip muscle I tore last May has been feeling great for a couple of months now and I was just starting to get back into the rhythm of training and building mileage, so suddenly finding myself saddled with another injury and likely *another* month of no running has been utterly demoralizing. It's also been tough trying to come to terms with the fact that (sigh) there is just no way I'll be ready to run a marathon on March 2nd. Even if my leg magically gets better tomorrow, it's not as if I'll be able to jump right back where I was. Once my leg is pain-free, my PT says I can start with a quarter mile to a half mile of jogging per day, & gradually work up from there based on how it feels, which is obviously very very far from what I'd hoped to be doing seven weeks out from NVM.

I don't know yet whether I'll be able to run KP Half or not. Absolute best case, it will most likely just be as an easy training run, as I haven't been able to do enough speed / tempo runs (and probably won't for a while) to feel confident about racing it.

So. All that sucks.

Still. The way I see it, my options are "Sit at home & feel sorry for yourself" or "Do whatever you can & like it," which is not a particularly difficult choice.

Please direct complaints to 1-800-waa-waaa, ext. Life Is Hard.

Until things get better, I am taking full advantage of my gym membership & loading up the week with strength sessions, yoga classes, & spin workouts, plus whatever bits of martial arts my leg can handle. I've been trying to simulate the runs I would be doing via minutes & effort level, & gradually figuring out how to translate certain paces into Watts.

Ie: 2 miles warm up, 3 x (800 @ 6:00/mile / 1:00 jog), 30:00 @ marathon pace, 3 x (800 @ 6:00/mile / 1:00 jog)

Becomes: 15:00 ~85 Watts, 3 x (3:00 @ 130 Watts / 1:00 easy), 20:00 @ 90 Watts, 3 x (3:00 @ 130 Watts / 1:00 easy)

(I had to hack off 10 minutes in the middle that day due to time.)

And: 2 miles warm up, 4 x (1600m @ LT pace / 2:00 jog)

Becomes: 15:00 @ ~85 Watts, 4 x (7:20 @ 105 Watts / 2:00 easy)

Yes, it's a little like living on protein shakes & rice cakes instead of actual food, but it's also keeping me half sane (and hopefully keeping me out of a massive cardio hole somewhat).

* * *

Grand Total: 44.5 miles (biked, obviously)

* 29.9 easy
* 6 speed
* 8.6 tempo

Monday:

a.m. 8.5 easy / lunch time yoga

Tuesday:

a.m. strength work / p.m. 3.8 warm up, 3 x (.8 @ 5K effort / .2 easy), 4.6 @ marathon effort, 3x(.8 @ 5K effort / .2 easy) = 14.2 miles

I've learned some new cool strength exercises lately, so it was fun to try them out. More on that later....

Wednesday:

a.m. 8.6 easy / lunch time yoga / p.m. karate + light strength

Thursday:

Rest; super-tight schedule with not a moment to spare.

Friday:

Lunch time strength work / p.m. 3.1 warm up, 4 x (1.9 @ LT pace / .33 easy), 1.5 cool down = 13.2 miles

Saturday/Sunday:

Since my gym is down by my office on the Peninsula, there's not a lot I can do on the weekend besides basic strength stuff. Which was just as well, since Don & I were both sick as dogs with some kind of nasty cold/sinus thing. At least we don't have the flu!

Next week's goal: Get rid of leg pain, run some amount that is not zero.

Learn From My Mistakes. PLEASE.

"The difference between school & real life is that in school, you get the lesson first and then the test, and in real life, you get the test first, and then the lesson." ~Someone I can't remember right now

Oy. I'm not ashamed to admit that in the last few days, it's been incredibly challenging to bring my own weather to the picnic. Not because of my running--now that I'm done being sick & out of town & absurdly overbooked & all that, the running has been going reasonably well. But running is tangentially related to the suckiness I'm about to describe, and it's kind of all I can think about right now, so there you go.

I've been doing my track workouts at Kezar Stadium more or less once a week for the last four years or so. When I first started going I'd bring only my keys, inhaler, water bottle, & flats out to the track, tuck them inconspicuously behind a bench, & leave everything else locked in my car. After a while that seemed silly since the benches are right out in the open in broad daylight, & the only other people around were other runners. So I started just leaving them out on the bench. (Because really, who's going to steal any of that stuff?)

Then I started sometimes wanting other stuff, like different clothing options depending on the weather, sunscreen for reapplying on hot days, extra Nuun tablets, etc. So I started carrying it all around in a bag, & whenever I head to the track or a race, I just grab the whole thing because I know everything I could possibly need will be in it. After a while having a different bag for every athletic pursuit (running, karate, gym, pool, CrossFit, whatever) got annoying so I started keeping everything together in one bag, & I would take that bag to the track, & leave it on the bench.

Then I started taking my phone down to the track, because hey, something might happen, or I might want to snap a picture, or whatever. Part of me kind of thought this might not have been the greatest idea, but I was always sure to tuck it deep in my bag, & hey, it's been *years* & no one has ever bothered my stuff.

Until this past Tuesday night. Thankfully I've been in the habit of putting most of the extra stuff I take to races into another, smaller bag which I can throw into the big one but don't routinely keep there, & I haven't been keeping much else in the bigger bag besides some of my karate stuff. But I did have my phone in it, along with my only set of car keys, house keys, & work keys.

You can probably guess where all this is going.

According to my Garmin, I started my first interval at 5:02pm, which would have been right after I changed from my regular shoes into flats. After four ninety-second 400m's & four ninety-second recovery jogs (so a grand total of ~12 minutes), I jogged back to the benches to change back into my other shoes, and my bag was gone.

What ensued at that point was a half hour of hysterical panic in which I jogged every inch of the track & stadium asking people if they'd seen my bag or anyone near it, searching trash cans in case it had been dumped, & verifying that whoever had taken it hadn't fished my keys out & used the electronic fob to locate/pillage/steal my car (which was parked right by the stadium gate, & had my purse & wallet in the trunk). After that I gave up & jogged to the police station (thankfully there is one right at the stadium), made a police report, tried to call Don, & promptly fell apart right there in the precinct.

(Pro tip: If you're ever going to lose the only set of keys you have while your car is parked somewhere that becomes illegal in four hours, try not to do it two days after your significant other's car has spontaneously broken down.)

Ultimately, I called AAA, who was able to tow it to their storage lot & then to the dealership in the morning where I could get two (count 'em, TWO) new sets of keys made, which only cost me $100 for the overnight storage & $500 for the keys. (*Vomit*. Pro tip #2: Keep track of your car keys. No luxury anything for me until 2014.)

I've also never gotten the theft protection or extra insurance on my phone & also never done the (FREE) Android thing where you can set up your phone to be GPS tracked and/or remote locked and/or wiped, so the best we could do was disconnect & blacklist it (no one can use it, even with a new SIM card). I am still 1.5 years from an upgrade, but because I've been a customer for so long AT&T said that they could give me an upgrade now. (I don't understand why, but certainly appreciate it.) So on the bright side, a new phone similar to what I had will only cost me $200 instead of ~$500. Which is something.

That's really everything I *have* to replace right now.

When all this was happening, it was interesting to note the thoughts running through my head. Obviously there were things like "I can't believe this is happening" and "How stupid can I be" and "There are so many ways this could've been prevented." At the same time, though, were a bunch of other thoughts, like "No one is hurt or dead" and "Almost everything is replaceable" and "My car is still here & intact" and "At least I was smart enough not to put my effing *wallet* in the bag too." As awful as it was when it was happening, I still found myself extremely cognizant of how much worse a terrible night can be. To be honest I often find myself rolling my eyes when people talk about having gratitude in the face of bad situations, but completely unexpectedly, I found that I did. I literally sat there on the curb while my brain scrolled through a giant list of everything that I did still have & how much worse it could have been & all the things that hadn't happened tonight.

I wasn't trying to feel grateful & thankful for all that; I just did. This, I think, is the payoff of consciously practicing bringing your own weather to the picnic. It doesn't mean I didn't still feel horrible & kind of hated myself for making such an expensive, easily preventable mistake, but I think it did keep me from wallowing in self-pity & -disgust for days on end & feeling like it was the complete and total end of the world. Today, my brain is doing this bizarre thing where it keeps ambushing me with positive (????) things about having my bag stolen. I'll just be doing whatever, & out of nowhere it's like, "You know you only bought that bag eleven years ago because it was cheap & you were poor. You always thought it was kind of tacky-looking." (Which, okay, there is some truth to that, although after 11 years with an inanimate object--it's spanned 99% of my karate career--you do start to develop a weird attachment.)

God, they were hideous. Still, I'll kind of miss them...

Or, "As much as you liked those Mizunos, they were really old, and you know they were ugly as sin." (Which...true.)

Or, "Now you don't have to deal with all those random, outdated keys that had collected on your key chain! Cross THAT off the ol' to-do list!"

Or, "Sure, those were $100 sunglasses, but they never really fit right, & you were only keeping them because you felt bad about the price."

Or, "You always hated that crappy phone case. Somebody else's problem now!"

Once we'd dealt with the immediate aftermath of the situation, Don & I kind of melted into the couch & didn't move for a while, except to drink more, & started listing all the super important things we know we reeeeaaallly ought to take care of but have put off for long enough that we've convinced ourselves that it's not that big a deal.

"We should put together an earthquake kit."

"We should write our wills."

"We should get LastPass set up." (Okay, fine, that was just me....Seriously, I've had the tab open in my browser window for months. I finally got CrashPlan set up a few months ago, so at least I've got that going for me.)

"We should make copies of all our important documents & stash them somewhere."

"We should, like, *find* all our important documents." (Fine, that was just me too.)

Suddenly I find myself a lot more highly motivated to do all that stuff.

Dealing with getting the car re-keyed today was an even bigger headache than I thought it would be, & over the course of the day I had some pretty low moments. In the spirit of bringing your own weather, I thought I'd share this quote from Caitlin Moran's "My Posthumous Advice for My Daughter," which was mostly what got me through it:

"Life divides into AMAZING ENJOYABLE TIMES and APPALLING EXPERIENCES THAT WILL MAKE FUTURE AMAZING ANECDOTES. However awful, you can get through any experience if you imagine yourself, in the future, telling your friends about it as they scream, with increasing disbelief, ‘NO! NO!’ Even when Jesus was on the cross, I bet He was thinking, ‘When I rise in three days, the disciples aren’t going to believe this when I tell them about it.’"

It made me laugh every time I thought I was about to completely fall apart again.

Hope your week's going better than mine. :P