The Home Stretch?

Wow, so I ran 21 miles yesterday, and boy that was a hell of a thing.  I'm pretty impressed at how you forget what it's like even though you've done it before.  

Basically the day went like this, early out of bed, meet the team at Boston College, and then take the bus out to Hopkinton for a team photo, and then a run back to where we started.  Believe me I know that seems like a lot of work just to get back to where you started, that was on my mind the whole ride out.  We took the group photo and everybody just started walking to where the starting line is supposed to be and then we just started running without any fanfare to speak of.  The weekend 3 weeks before race day is an important one for everybody training for the marathon and so between the other charity teams in the area and qualified runners I was one of over a thousand people running the course and never out of sight of other runners, which is a big change from our regular runs.  

Like I said last week, my body is up to the challenge of completing the marathon and so it's the  psychological challenge that I had to beat on this run.  So, I divided the run into 3 parts, 1 unknown and 2 known.  Part 1 is mile 1-9 and the unknown because though I've driven it before I've never run it.  The second part is mile 9-16, we did this part on the 16-miler, After that it's 16-21, which includes the foreboding Heartbreak Hill.  This division worked pretty well for me, the first 9 were mostly downhill and so I took it slow to keep energy in reserve, plus at this point in training I can run just about any 9 mile stretch even if I haven't seen it before.  The next bit was tougher as it includes both the highest and lowest points between the start and Heartbreak - this section really dragged for me, but might not on race day as it includes a mile of screaming coeds at Wellesley College.  The Final 5 miles weren't too bad really, even though it had those 2 big-assed hills and then the Heartbreak.  I read on someone else's blog that when faced with these hills you should just put your head down and go (kind of like not looking down when you're on top of a cliff), which worked pretty well for me.  I made it up Heartbreak with some energy to spare and was glad to see my teammates there.  

The day started grey and in the 40s, but we ended with a cloudless sky and tempts in the 60s.  Nice.  The funny thing about a one-way marathon is the tan lines, the right side of my neck and my right arm got a nice burn (not too bad) that was earning me calls of "redneck" by my friends all night.  I got to mile 21 in about 4:06, which is slower than I wanted it to be, and did include some walking, but I know that I could do the remaining 5.2 within the hour (unless I bonk on the way down Heartbreak).  Everybody talks about an extra kick of adrenaline that they get on race day, and I'm looking forward to seeing what that will do for me on the big day.

I'm pretty happy with my performance.  No blisters and the new shoes and socks held up well.  I was very sore at the end but the tightness in the backs of my knees didn't hit until mile 16 as opposed to 13 like last week.  At mile 9 I took off a layer of clothes and found that I had a bloody nipple; nothing new for me but you hope the body glide will keep it at bay, I'm starting to consider medical tape for the big day.  That's the blood on my shirt that I'm pointing out in the picture up there.  I love the shirt I'm wearing, it gives you the last set of directions that you need on race day, right on Hereford Street (uphill, grrr...) and then a left on Boylston, where the finishing line will be in sight.  Can't wait for that.

A day later I'm still in disbelief that I ran the 21 miles yesterday, but I did.  I didn't obsess about it, in fact when my alarm went off that morning I couldn't remember what I had to do that morning.  No, I just did the math on what was in front of me; one 9 mile race, one 7 mile race, 5 miles uphill, and don't stop.

Three weeks from tomorrow.

The Training Goes On.

So, it's been a while since I last reported in about the Chuck Stratton sighting. Since then I've come back to Boston and mushed on with training. I have to say though that until last night I felt like I was sort of going through the motions. Not surprisingly the long the day after I got back wasn't great, I was just out of energy completely. The next day was a fun 5K with my friends called the Ras na hEireann that is in Davis Square which was a lot of fun, as was the after party, especially since it was nice enough to sit in the sun all day!

After that though it was back to the grind of work and training and it was just hard to get into it all. I did my usual runs that week just fine, but wasn't feeling the old excitement and energy that I had been. That Saturday was a particularly tough day because I was I was planning to do 16 only to find that FitCorp was only set up for 12 miles, and only had one water stop! The water stop was at mile 3, so that meant that I had over 10 miles without water when there normally would be about 3 in that time. That's a hard way to go when you're not prepared. Fortunately I'm on a team with some damn good teammates. Out in Brookline I fell in with some of the other Liver runners who were going to 16 as well including this guy Adam that I've been getting to know over the past few weeks.  He was hitting a pace that was good for me and when it came time to commit to the 16 miles he offered me water from his fuel belt.  I can't tell you how much that helped me, nor how much I appreciate him for giving me water.  He was also very encouraging and walked with me a few times when I felt that I couldn't run.  Great help to me.  I made it to the end of this one tired, but surprisingly I wasn't sore or physically drained, the problems I was having were in my mind.  I hadn't regained the belief that I could finish the run; I had lost some faith in myself and I honestly think it's because of not getting enough rest.  I wasn't getting the "reset" that a good nights sleep gives you. I ended that 16 miles slow, but still happy because I had diagnosed my problem and all I had to do to fix it was stay in bed.  Nice.

I did that pretty well Saturday night and into Sunday morning (not quite into the afternoon).  Monday's run was pretty cold and upwind which is no fun.  I woke up yesterday feeling like my legs were still tired from Monday and Saturdays running and so was really worried about the hill workout at FitCorp that night.  I started late but settled right in to the rhythm of uphill to downhill and before too long was getting the feel for efficiently burning energy on the way up and recharging energy on the way down again.  When I got done I felt like it had been over too fast!  I felt like I hadn't done enough of a workout even though I had.  This is a really weird feeling that I didn't try ruin by running extra, that's a great way to ruin your training schedule.  

Now it's Wednesday morning and an off day.  I have 6 miles tomorrow before the big 21 Miler on the course on Saturday.  After this week I think I might actually be ready for that.

In related news, I got fitted for new shoes at my local Marathon Sports, and they switched me out of the Saucony's that I had been wearing for years and into the Asics Gel Fortitude 3. So far, so good!

In other news, my Mother should be getting out of the hospital today!  

Motivation.

It's really strange to be home while one of your parents is in the hospital; it means the time in their house has an emptiness to it.  We spend the day at the hospital and then Dad and I go home and he checks the messages on their answering machine and we go through the calls, most of which are for Mom, though not all of them know that she's in the hospital.  One of the calls this week was from the wife of the former pastor of the church we went to in Youngstown checking in on Mom and reporting that her husband had just had a heart attack.  This was hard to hear with all this other stuff going on; the good Reverend was quite a nice man and had been like a mentor figure to my father. 

I've been awful torn about going out and running, it seems like there's always something I should be at the hospital for, and it's hard to find the motivation to pick a new running course in a town that I'm unfamiliar with as far as running goes.  I have run though and the course was kind of a natural for me because all I did was pick a landmark that was familiar to me and then head for it.  I picked the High Falls and it works out that that an out and back is about 8 miles, and that's just what I need  now.  You can see my course by clicking here, though my newly calibrated watch tells me it's longer than what the Google thinks it is.  The section along the river is pretty good, but the genius urban planners here didn't make it a priority to preserve that trail all the way along the river, so I did have to run through the city for a bit of it, and downtown Rochester isn't as friendly or nice as Comm Ave or Beacon Hill.  Sunday's run went just sort of OK, but I made it through fine.  I planned to run the same route in the morning yesterday, but various things pushed that to the afternoon.  

Around 1:30 or so yesterday Mom complained about being too hot, so I stepped to the back for the room to see about setting up a fan for her.  I looked up from wrestling with that to see a Man standing at the door to her room.  He was probably in his 80s, dressed sharply in a blue blazer, shirt, tie and khakis, and had an obvious energy to him that made him seem much younger.  He was clearly waiting to be invited in which I did, and in three short motions had crossed the room to where my mother sat, dropped to one knee and was holding her hand before I knew it.  I was surprised by this partly because of his speed, but also because I had no idea who he was!  He knew Mom though and mentioned Becky, Dad and I as though he knew us.  I introduced myself and we shook hands, but he didn't give his name, so I asked him who he was as politely as I could.  He looked me straight in the eye and responded:

"I'm Chuck Stratton," and coolly turned back to my mother.

"The Reverend Stratton?"  I asked in disbelief.

He turned back to me, "Yes the Reverend Stratton, just let the ramifications of that sink in." 

I did.  

This was our pastor from Youngstown who I hadn't seen in 15 years or so, and who I had assumed was lying half-dead in a bed somewhere else in this hospital.  My father and I both tried looking him up but couldn't get the lady at the front desk to tell us he what room he was in, damnable privacy laws.  

"Wait, I thought you had just had a heart attack?"  I said to him.  He glanced away as though he was deflecting bullets with nigh-invulnerable skin and said:

"I did have one.  About three weeks ago.  I'm fine now."  He sounded as though he were the Black Night saying "It's merely a flesh wound" when his arm had just come off.  

After that he said a few more things to Mom, we introduced him to the Deacon of my parents new(er) church who was in the room and he was gone just as quickly as he had shown up.  Leaving me floored in his wake.  How did this man who had had a heart attack seem younger than the man I had looked up to all those years ago?  

When I told my Dad about it he likened the experience to the Disciples seeing Jesus after the resurrection.  I don't know about that, but I could see that this man was unstoppable, and it filled in me a desire to be the same.  After my Dad showed up I went for my run, adding a half mile to it despite winds here being in the 35mph range.  

I don't know how being here for my Mom will affect my training, but I am going to try to be unstoppable.

In the Middle.

We're about 7 weeks away from the race now and I've started to have a bit of fatigue.  The training regime is long, repetitive, time-consuming and can be as difficult to endure as the actual race itself.  True, no one day of training is as hard as the full marathon, but the sum of a few weeks can be.  I'm doing my best to run 4 days a week which means being up early to run before work even in bad weather, scheduling evening runs around late in the day work meetings and deadlines, keeping a low profile on Friday night, and then being up early on Saturday for the long run.  Of course after that your day is often shot by the recovery from the run, though somehow I don't nap Saturday afternoons like a lot of my fellow runners do, but there have been days when I'd like to. 

I'm not trying to complain about all this, having done this once before I knew it going in, but its still not that easy to deal with.  I'm a flexible enough person that I can come up with a new running plan when an unexpected social or work event conflicts with an already planned run.  Alumni lecture Thursday night during Crossroads?  No problem, I can run in the morning, or do a shorter run Friday morning.  Planning like that becomes hard when the truly unexpected occurs.  Like, what if the alumni lecture puts your run off to Friday morning and then you oversleep, and then that afternoon a family medical emergency takes you to Rochester?  

Well, it means that you drive to Rochester, skip the 18-mile run on Saturday so you can go see your Mom in the hospital, and then pull an 8-mile run on Sunday so that you stay in some sort of condition.  Training is important but family is even more important.  It's hard to see your Mother in the ICU, and a run after that does help vent a lot of the nervous energy that builds up from it.  

The story goes like this, about 30 years ago Mom had Hodgkin's disease and the first treatment they tried was radiation which inadvertently damaged her left lung.  Recently this has caused her to have some pulmonary hypertension which makes lethargic at times and they've been using oxygen therapy to treat.  Last weekend she was hardly awake at all and my Dad took her to the hospital and she was admitted on Monday.  It sounded then like she might not be there long, but Thursday they admitted her to the ICU and intubated her that night.  I had been thinking of heading out to be with my family all week and the intubation was the last straw, so Molly and I drove here Friday and saw Mom at the hospital Saturday morning.  

There hasn't been much of change since then, her blood gases are acceptable and she's mostly breathing on her own, but she's still sedated and on the tube until they get some other things worked out, which means that we're sitting in the room with her and waiting for things to change.  It's been a hard two days of waiting and I have no idea how my Dad did it for the whole week, let alone for 3 years back in the 70s.  Our jobs are being very understanding and so we'll be waiting with her for another few days I guess.  I'll try to work another run in I think, but we'll see.  Like I said, training is less important than family, but I still have 7 weeks and have been doing well so far, so if this is a short interruption of my training than I should be fine.  So, tomorrow it's back to the waiting. 

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

16

Just finished the 16-miler am I'm waiting at the gym for Molly to finish
showering. What a day. Nice weather, but the run was kind of an
emotional disaster. Somehow I just wasn't ready to run today and that
just pervaded nearly every step of the way. Now I'm sore and have
blisters and a bloody nipple. That's right, I said bloody nipple.

More on all that later, now it's time to party

Urban Run

It's Thursday so that means another run from Crossroad's.

We had a nice break from the cold over the weekend, and Tuesday it warmed up for the snow (if you consider 30F warm), but overnight it dropped like a bad habit and at the start of the tonight's run it was near to 19F.  This caused my usual running partners to sally out and stay home.  Most of the group had already left to do the Woodland Hills run by the time I got there, so I couldn't do that (not that I would have anyway, that's way too much work for a Thursday), so I was on my own for a run.  

The goal was to do about 5 miles, which I could normally do on the river, but the wind along the river was strong and I wasn't sure that the paths wouldn't be too icy.  I decided to try out a course that I had once planned for an earlier Crossroad's run that was about what I was looking for. 

I cut over from the bar to Commonwealth Avenue, which in the Back Bay is actually more like a boulevard in the French sense of it.  There's expensive sandstone row houses down either side, and 2 pairs of traffic lanes divided by a wide, tree-lined walkway that is punctuated every so often by a statue or monument of some kind.  In the winter they put white christmas lights on the trunks of the trees so this area is illuminated in a warm light.  I headed east between the trees and into the Public Garden.  Crossing over what is apparently the worlds smallest suspension bridge (according to the Wikipedia which is never wrong) I noticed a guy clearing snow off the little ice-covered lake that the Swan Boats float on in the summertime.  I imagine he wanted to teach his kids how to play hockey here tomorrow or something - that's the Runner Mind talking again.  At Charles Street I looped around Beacon Hill and came up past the classically beautiful City Hall but neglected to look for the wind turbine on the roof that the Mayor hasn't been good at telling anyone about.  From here it was a quick run over the hill to Park Street T Station and after that I made a right onto Boylston Street.  I then cut across the West side of Boston Common and made a left to reenter the Garden from where I had left it. 

I could tell at this point that I wouldn't make the 5 miles I was looking for if I went straight back to Crossroads, so I decided to act on a thought I had had on the way in.  In order to make up the extra mileage I would run a loop around every statue along Comm Ave.  I know it doesn't seem like it would add much distance, but sometimes when you're running you just do something for the rigor of it, and ignore the fact that people might think you look crazy for doing it.  

First up was a giant statue of George Washington on his horse, and was a big loop because it's still in the Garden and has quite a formal path around it that looped me right out towards Arlington Street where I hit a light for the first time in this 3-mile journey.  It wasn't a long delay and from here it was a straight shot to all those statues and the loops they wanted me to do around them.  On I went and loop I did around:

Alexander Hamilton, slain by Aaron Burr

John Glover, Revolutionary War Hero

Patrick Andrew Collins, former Mayor

The Vendome Fire Memorial, which honors the deaths of 9 firefighters in the line of duty

William Loyd Garrison, abolitionist

Samuel Eliot Morrison, naval historian and sailor 

- after Sam I had a good long straightaway and decided to see if I could sprint it, which I did -

The Boston Women's Memorial

Domingo Sarmiento, one-time President of Argentina

and finally;

Leif Ericson, famed Icelander who may have once sailed into Boston Harbor, depending on your source....

After that I still wasn't quite up to 5 miles yet so I went past Mass. Ave to the Charlesgate overpasses and made the two rights that got me back to Beacon Street and the bar.  I felt strong in the end and sprinted again.  

It was a good run and I was glad to engage the city's beauty and history a bit more than I normally do.  Those statues that I passed range in age by over 100 years and you can tell by looking at them; not because some look old or new, but because of the way you're meant to interact with them.  The older ones are always a bronze man on a huge stone block that you're meant to walk around and observe from afar like a painting in a museum.  The newer ones have smaller parts that you're meant to walk right up to and engage in order to learn their meaning.  the Vendome Memorial has a timeline of the fire and features the names of the men who died on that corner which offers a much different experience than the Bunker Hill Monument in nearby Charlestown (hint, it's a giant stone obelisk).

The thing I'm noticing more and more lately is that when I do a shorter run (under 7 miles) I don't feel very tired when I'm done.  And today I felt that I could up my speed as I was going without getting too winded.  Something tells me that it's time for me to push harder and run faster more regularly.  Uh-oh.