16 Mile Roundup

Man, it's been quite a week.  Last week was the disastrous (for me) Love Your Liver Valentine's Day 16-Miler.  This is a special run that the team does every year as kind of a way to inject some fun into the long training season.  They encourage people to dress in V-day related costumes and then drive us out to Mile 9 on the course (roughly Natick Center) and then we run the rest of the way in.  Its great experience for us since we're on the actual course the whole time instead of doing out and back runs from FitCorp where we're on and off the course.  

That's the idea anyway but things went horribly wrong for me.  I started off okay, but because we were off our usual routine my head never really got into the run and I was struggling to stay motivated the whole time.  I walked some and then in the midst of the hills in Newton I remembered why I run and was able to get my head in the game again.  That didn't last long though because just before Heartbreak I came across a runner who was in a worse way than I was and walked with him a bit.  I got into Brookline before I realized that I was developing multiple blisters on each foot.  I made it to the end with a dismal time and feeling demoralized - honestly the feeling was familiar, it was just the way I felt during my first (and only at the moment) marathon.  That time I felt like I couldn't finish and somehow managed to after a long and arduous ordeal.

This week I've soaked my feet in epsom salts a bunch of times and all of my blisters except one have gone away.  I also had a great 7.7 mile Crossroads run Thursday so I went into this mornings long run feeling positive.  We had the choice of 14.7, 16 or 18, and I was on the fence about which to do.  My coach has set up a training schedule for me that called for 14 miles but I was kind of thinking that 16 was a challenge that I was up to.  

I've been thinking about my running pace lately, and by pace most runners mean how many minutes it takes them to run 1 mile, which is a good metric for comparing two runner's speeds.  I'm typically a pretty consistent 10 minute per mile runner which is 6 miles per hour and I think isn't too bad for a biped, though it's by no means fast on the scale of marathon runners.  Coach Brian has decided that my goal for the marathon should be 4 hours 20 minutes (which as you all know is not one of my 3 listed goals), a perfect 10 minute mile pace, but in order to do that I have to do some miles faster to make up for the miles that I will inevitably do slower.  I'm being realistic here not self-deprecating.  In order to achieve this goal I have to do some training runs faster and some realistically slower, and so Coach Brian had me set to do 14 miles at a 10:43 pace.  That wouldn't be pushing my limits much, but is still good since I did my 8 miles the other night faster than the 9:55 pace he wanted me too.

I'm going on a bit long here so I'll try to keep the description of today's run short.  It started off fine except for a intermittently ridiculous headwind that was nice to have at our backs for the return loop.  When I got to the 14 mile turn in Newton Center it was decision time on if I was going to take another swing at 16.  I felt good and so I went for it.  this meant that I got to Heartbreak Hill and the hill before it, but today that was no big deal.  The only thing that came close to being an issue here was getting sweat in my eyes (a first for that) that had me thinking of borrowing one of my Dad's old 80s style blue and red sweatbands.  I would look totally rad in that.  By the time I got to the last water stop I was definitely feeling tired and sore, but good enough to make it through the end.  And then the blister in the center of my left foot popped.  

That didn't hurt, but Damn. the aftereffects sure did.  The final three miles were very painful and I was in a constant mind game of trying to block out the pain.  Now, a popped blister doesn't hurt much on the scale of human experience, but running on one after 13 miles is way beyond the scope of my daily pain experience.  I had made it this far without really walking that much, just across a few streets and at water stops, but this blister sure derailed that effort.  I made it back to FitCorp having run most of the way, though Sheri caught me walking on Beacon Hill and ordered me to get running.  What could I do?  She's the Runner's Council Chairperson, so I ran the rest.  

There was only a little bit of blood on my sock when I got to the locker room, and an open blister hurts a lot when it gets wet in the shower, plus it looks gross (I have a picture if anyone wants to see, by request only of course).  Needless to say, I'm going to be more careful about blisters in the future.  In the end I did the 16 miles at an average 10:10 pace, well ahead of where Coach Brian wanted me to be, and I'm happy with myself because some of those final miles were at well over an 11 minute pace.  Not bad.

I'm posting some pictures of the silly costume's from last weeks run on my other site, and you can see them here:  http://web.mac.com/andyhint/Canaveral/V-Day_16-Miler.html