Wicked Half Marathon

Well what I learned today is that I don't seem to be a cold weather runner.

It was 37 degrees when we left the house at 5:30 AM for Salem (race start at 7:00 AM). Other than the cold, it was a beautiful day and a beautiful course. The race start is at the Salem Willows park right off Salem Harbor. Here is what the harbor looked like as dawn broke:

Aware of my traditional slow starts, I did a 3/4 mile warmup as well as the usual stretching. Nonetheless, I only managed a 9:30 mile pace for the first two miles and didn't break a 9 minute mile until the fifth mile, when my pace dropped by nearly a minute per mile. It wasn't until I got up the first serious hill in that fifth mile that I felt truly warmed up. Finally around mile 6 I settled into a steady race pace.

The rest of the race felt pretty good but as planned I didn't push it as hard as I had the Triple Threat Half Marathon in August. Especially since the very slow start put paid to any hopes of a half marathon PR. I cruised in the last few miles and, unlike the Triple Threat Half Marathon, I was not thrashed on finishing the race. Here I am finishing up:

 

I ended up running a 1:53:17 at an 8:38 pace, about 3 minutes slower than my time at the Triple Threat Half Marathon. Naturally part of me was hoping for better given the easier course than the run in Rockport and the cooler temperatures, but it turns out the cooler temperatures worked against me, making my start even slower than usual. (And as usual, I spent miles 4 and beyond passing people). Also the missed training in August and my recent illness didn't help. The slow start doesn't concern me much because it's not going to matter in a 26.2 mile race at Disney, and neither will it likely be 37 degrees at race time in Florida.

Where to from here? I'm done with racing until Disney, except for maybe the odd 5k for kicks. I didn't lose as much weight since early August as I hoped (only a couple of pounds). 186 is still a lot of weight for a runner - only 4 lbs short of the Clydesdale division - and I definitely feel "big" when I run, in the sense that I know I'm really working hard to run at race pace (compared to when I was younger and weighed 160 lbs and felt like I was gliding along).  Obviously those youthful days and certainly 160 lbs isn't going to happen again, but I still think I have something like 15 lbs I can take off, and I'm convinced I will feel much different running with a weight in the low 170s than 186.  And I think I can take if off if I get truly religious about avoiding carbohydrates and cheating with Coke. That's the whole point of this exercise in any case - to motivate me to take off as much weight as I can.

The true marathon training is going to begin as well, as I've been planning to follow a three month training plan from Hal Higdon that I'll talk about in a forthcoming post. Up to now I've been building a base from which to start this training.

Wicked Half-Marathon Pregame

The Wicked Half-Marathon in Salem is this Saturday morning. The weather looks good but cool, in the high 40's. Shortly after the Triple Threat Half-Marathon in early August, I had high hopes for this race, but fortune put some roadblocks in my path. These included a few injuries in August and, the last few weeks, a nagging cold that isn't bad but won't seem to go away. The injuries impacted my training in August and the cold, while it hasn't slowed my training down or prevented me from running the half marathon, does make it much harder to control my eating. I'm just not interested in being hungry while miserable from a cold. Worse, a Coke in the afternoon makes me feel a lot better and is difficult to resist. The bottom line of all that is I haven't lost all the weight I hoped in preparation for the race. My pre-race weigh-in this morning was 186.5, a three pound loss since the Triple Threat race and a lot less than I hoped, but I suppose I should be grateful that I am still losing, if more slowly.

In any event, I'm not going to push it as hard as the last race, the August injuries having taught me a lesson. But the course is easier and it won't be as warm, so we will see what happens. It's an interesting course as well, through historic downtown Salem and out through the upscale neighborhoods on Marblehead Neck.

Dodging A Bullet

So I planned to only blog concerning the major events leading up to the Marathon, but some sports fans have indicated they want more content. I'm more than willing to write more posts... who doesn't like to write about his favorite person?

Had a bit of a scare in August. The week after the Triple Threat Half Marathon, I pulled a calf muscle while running an ordinary training run and ended up taking a week off. During that week off, my left knee started to hurt in an ominous way that was reminiscent of how it felt before I had surgery on it seven years ago.  Probably this was all the result of pushing it too hard at the Trip Threat Half Marathon. The week after that, I began starting some mild training again, but the knee didn't seem to be improving much. Naturally I got depressed thinking I might have done serious damage to the knee and blown the Disney Marathon.

I set up an appointment with Dr. O'Holleran, who did my two knee surgeries, and it turned out the knee is structurally sound and I only had a mild strain. By this point, I'm back to full training and did 11 miles last Sunday on my long run of the week.

The lack of training for those couple of weeks, and some inconsistent commitment to restraining my eating, probably killed my hope of weighing 180 lbs by the Wicked Half Marathon on Sept 20. I weighed 186 at my last Monday weigh-in, which is a 3 lb loss since August 4, but I'd need to lose 6 lbs in two weeks, which isn't going to happen.

In any case, I learned my lesson, and I'm going to take it easy and cruise the Wicked Half Marathon.

Triple Threat Pictures

Pictures from the Triple Threat Half Marathon. Ellen running in style and me trying to hold it together across the finish line.

Triple Threat Half Marathon

The next waypoint on the Disney Marathon trail was the Triple Threat Half Marathon on August 3 in Rockport, MA. I looked at my pace times for the 10 miler (8:40) and the 10k (8:06) and figured I could run somewhere in between those speeds, hopefully closer to the 10k pace. I weighed 197 for the 10 miler, 194 for the 10k and was 189 going in to the half-marathon. My training included runs of 13 miles, 14 miles and then 13 miles again on my long Sunday runs after the 4th of July race. I set myself a goal of a 1:50 finish, which would involve an 8:23 pace. Yet again, Ellen was with me running the 5k. (The "Triple Threat" includes a one mile race, a 5k and a half-marathon, some runners competing in all three races.)

Ellen almost matched her PR, coming in just over 26 minutes at 26:03. The half marathon course turned out to be harder than I expected. The website indicated a few rolling hills, but the course was really nothing but rolling hills, including a few steep ones. Furthermore, it was an out and back course, with the first half involving a net decrease in elevation. I noticed this going out and had a feeling of foreboding for the trip back. Coming back I calculated I was on an 8:15 pace at the 8 mile mark (I find doing pace calculation arithmetic a good way to occupy my mind during a race), which seemed good but I knew I was facing some hills on the way in. Also at the 8 mile mark, an attractive young woman running next to me chatted me up for awhile (more on that later).

I started to have visions of glory, given my history of negative splitting my races, but the course had different ideas. The hills over the last 3 miles killed me, especially a quarter mile long steep one in the last mile. Halfway up it, my thighs were completely burned out, my heart was about to burst, and I was moving no faster than the old man on the Carol Burnett show (Mrs. Wiggins!) I never walk in my races, but there is always a first time, and I walked up the last half of the hill. That break rejuvenated me enough to run in the last half mile at a decent pace, but the race thrashed me much more than either the 10 miler or the 10k did. I could barely walk to the water and the fresh fruit at the finish line and was moving with a noticeable gimp in any case. Along the way I ran into the young woman who chatted with me at mile 8 and, male pride being what it is, I wiped the grimace off my face, stood up straight, and pretended I wasn't in scorching pain. Fortunately she only talked to me briefly and I could go back to my scowl and hobble.

In the end, I wasn't far off the 8:23 pace, finishing in 1:50:24 at an 8:25 pace. That improves my 8:40 Disney corral pace from the Lazy Lobster. The torture of those last miles did what they were supposed to do, and re-energized my motivation to lose a good chunk of weight before running my next race, the Wicked Half Marathon in Salem on Sept. 20. Assuming I can get down to around 180 lbs by then (a challenge, but I have lost weight at that rate in periods over the last few months and I still have a spare tire), I would then be 14 lbs lighter than when I ran the 10k on the Fourth of July. Could I hold that 8:06 10k pace for the half-marathon? That would get me to about a 1:46 half-marathon. So there is the goal for the Wicked Half Marathon: 1:46.

North Andover 4th of July 10k

Next up, the 10k on the 4th of July in North Andover, MA. This was mostly for fun and was the first time I had trained over-distance for a 10k (I never used to run more than five or possibly six miles at a time). And, again, I had Ellen with me running the companion race (a 5k). Given that I had run an 8:40 pace for the 10 miler a few weeks before, and I had lost some more weight in the meantime, I was hoping I could break 50 minutes on the 10k, which would involve an approximately 8 minute mile pace.

I came close to my pace goal, but ended up running a 50:19 at an 8:06 pace. Ellen ran a PR for the 5k at 25:59. The 10k wasn't an easy course, featuring some serious hills, including a good climb towards the end. As usual for me - and as happened on the 10 miler - I started the race slowly and spent the race passing people, negative splitting the second half of the race. I know I'm losing some time starting so slowly, but even when I put in a good warmup (I warmed up a half mile for this race and then a lot of stretching) I never start quickly. This was true going all the way back to my teenage running days.

In any case, I was already a long way from the behemoth who ran a 10:24 pace for the 5 miler in 2012.

Lazy Lobster 10 miler

The first real challenge I laid for myself was the Lazy Lobster 10 miler to be run on the South Shore on June 15. The Disney Marathon involves something like 15,000 runners who are released in stages; each stage is known as a "corral" (the images of cattle this encourages is appropriate given the herding that goes on with getting 15,000 people started in a race). Your corral placement is determined by a pacing time you submit to Disney. The faster times are placed in the first corrals and the further back you go the slower the pace. The idea is to group runners with similar pace so there isn't too much passing and jockeying for position going on in the initial stages of the race. When you get to the last corrals you are getting to the runners who are running in costume and will likely be walking large parts of the race. If you plan on running the entire race, it's a placement you'd like to avoid as you will find yourself trying to fight your way through crowds to find space.

Disney accepts pacing for the Marathon from races of 10 miles or longer. I wanted to run a 10 miler relatively early in my training to have something on record in case I got injured later and missed a pacing race. Thus the Lazy Lobster. An added benefit was that Ellen came along to run the associated 5 mile race.

This being the first serious race I had run in years, along with the fact that I had never run 10 miles competitively (my previous longest was 10k), I had no idea how things would go. I was hopeful as I had managed to break through the 200 lb weight barrier that I had long found insurmountable and weighed in at 197 for the race. I attributed the weight loss breakthrough to the combination of disciplined eating, increased running, and also weight lifting I was doing on the off-running days. This was the first time I had tried an "all-court press" like this in an effort to lose weight. The key for me is the prize at the end of the line, the Disney Marathon, which provides the motivation to forego the junk I want to eat. The motivation is not only positive, but negative as well: I've committed to the Marathon and paid for it, and those 26.2 miles are waiting for me whether I lose weight or not. Hauling 200 lbs, 190 lbs or even 185 lbs around for the marathon is a prospect that fills me with enough dread to push the food aside.

It turned out I ran the 10 miles in 1:26:40 for a mile pace of 8:40. Good enough to get me out of the back of the line at the Disney Marathon. Ellen ran a 44:41 for the 5 miler.