I ran the Ocean View Half Marathon in Ipswich on Sunday. Not so much as a race but as an experiment. I haven't run a half marathon since the Star Wars half in the Spring of 2018, which was an exercise in pain because of the arthritis in my knee and hip. For a time after that I wondered if it would be necessary to give up running altogether. Since then I've been experimenting with cross-training, running styles, distances and running surfaces to see if there is a way I could manage to continue running. Through most of 2018 and the early part of this year, I found I could run and race short distances, but never without some pain. 10k's or the Tapleyville 7 miler I would finish with aching joints and maybe a limp. In fact, after finishing the Pot O' Gold 4 miler this Spring in a lot of pain I reconciled myself (I thought) to retiring from running.
But as might have been expected, after substituting cross-training for running and some time away from the road, my joints felt fine again and I couldn't resist trying running a few miles. The old saw is that runners don't stop running until they simply can't anymore.
I went back to experimenting, and discovered that the key factor that caused the pain was mileage per week. As long as I kept the total miles per week somewhere under 15, I could run with only minor pain or no pain. Even better, it was the cumulative miles that mattered, not the length of any individual run. So I could run an 8 miler as long as I didn't run more than 7 miles the rest of the week.
Over a few months I slowly increased the weekly mileage, to the point that I have now been running between 15 and 20 miles per week, along with a lot of time on the elliptical. The thought occurred to me that I might be able to run a half marathon - an idea that had seemed permanently beyond me for the last year and a half. Well, if total mileage is what matters, why not 13.1 miles when I am managing 18 miles/week?
Thus the Ocean View Half Marathon.
It was an experiment because I haven't run more than 10 miles in any training run. When I used to run half marathons, I would regularly run 15+ mile runs and 40 miles/week. So there wasn't just the question of whether my joints would hold up, but how I would handle the half marathon distance. Does an hour on the elliptical followed by an 8 mile run really prepare one for a half marathon?
Happily, I discovered that my joints held up well and I finished the race without any significant joint pain. I also held up from an endurance standpoint, running my fastest the last 5k of the race. And that after some very serious hills in miles 8 and 9. So some moderate distance runs combined with the elliptical
can be adequate preparation for a half. There will likely be more half marathons in my future. The old bones still have some miles in them.
It was a beautiful day for a race. In the 40's, sunny and very moderate wind. All in all things could not have gone much better than they did.
