Running on an Isthmus is Tricky

Week 4 started out with a novel twist. Due to the fact that I was traveling for business, I had the opportunity to enjoy some new scenery during my training. I had heard that Madison was a beautiful place but the reputation of its intolerable winter weather had prevented me from visiting until now. What I discovered was that Madison, Wisconsin is a running wonderland (at least for a couple months of the year). The lakes are encircled by biking AND running lanes. The elevators there even accommodate bikes. How cool is that? But back to running. I loved my cool morning run around Lake Monona so much that I got up at 5:45 to do again the next morning. There's nothing like doing some post race stretching on a dock that is lightly bobbing in the water.

Not that there wasn't a challenge or two to running while I was in Madison. First, there was the un-Godly hour at which I had to run in order to get to the conference in time for the first workshop. It was dark when I started. Yeah - that kinda sucked. Secondly, Madison has a certain unusual geographical feature that caused a small challenge during my time up north.

Geography lesson time. Madison, Wisconsin is an isthmus. According to Merriam-Webster, an isthmus is a narrow strip of land connecting two larger land areas. While this makes for beautiful views, it also tends to exaggerate any sort of wind situation. Madison was experiencing a pretty serious wind situation during my trip. Running upright for any distance is an accomplishment in that sort of situation. So yay me.

The pleasant surprises didn't end there. When I got home from my trip, I found a hand-addressed note in my mailbox. It turned out to be a "You Go Girl" note from my friend Erin. She had sent the coolest encouragement note to keep me motivated furing my training. As training weeks go, this one is definitely turning out to be a good one!

Now You're Just Trying to Embarass Me

What a weird running week so far. It started off hot, humid and miserable and ended cool, rainy and...fast? Yeah, I was shocked too.

On Tuesday, after a couple of weeks having scheduling conflicts, my running partner Wendy and I finally got a chance to run together again. I was feeling optimistic that my 3 miles after a rest day would be a fairly simple workout to check off my training schedule. I was coming off a pretty awesome 7 mile run from the weekend before and I was ready. It didn't quite work out that way. Wendy's legs, after a week of vacation and limited running, were fresh. Mine weren't. Actually they felt like I had anvils strapped to my ankles. It was hot. I was tired and grumpy. To add insult to injury, Wendy's husband Dan showed up to run with us that day and so I had 2 witnesses to my butt-dragging, sweat-inducing, complaint-spewing run.

It's no surprise that after Tuesday, I was not looking forward to my next run. But to my utter shock, when I took to the trail the next day I felt great. My legs were pumping and my breathing was good. I didn't even feel like I needed the water stop I had pre-arranged. The next day's run was a repeat performance. I had energy. I had confidence. And could it be that I was enjoying my training? (Side note: shout-out to Kay who supplied me with some ice cold water this week. Thanks Kay-Kay!)

I'm not sure what caused the difference between Tuesday's and Thursday's runs but I have 2 theories. 1) It's my legs' way of getting revenge on me for torturing them - by embarrassing me when I run with others, or 2) all the extra protein I've taken in the last 2 weeks by ingesting swarms of soybean aphids gave me an energy surge. Who needs Gu?

And now for a happy note to end on for the day. A lovely thought entered my head on one of my pleasant runs this week. My last long run was 7 miles. That means I am already capable of running over a 1/4 of the distance of the marathon.

Tomorrow I "step back" to a long run distance of 5 miles. Normally, that would give me an feeling of confidence, but I'll be running with Wendy again. Who knows what my legs will have in store for me?

Memo to My Legs

Dear Legs,

I gave you a day off. What's the deal? Seriously. We have a long way to go together. Work with me here!

-Raegan

Week 2: Tired Legs and Airborne Pests

Week 2 is finished! The story of the week was my tired legs. I made the mistake of running the day after my long run when it should have been a rest day. Three miles never felt so long. That also happened to be the day I discovered the lovely Soybean Aphid. For anyone living in Central Illinois in the under position of a rock, these creatures are the annoying little gnat-like disturbances that seemed to appear overnight and attack anyone who dared venture outside. After Monday's run, my shirt was covered with them. Ewwww!

On my second run of the week, I ventured to the oasis of my friend Pam. She was waiting to offer me cold water. When I arrive at her doorstep stooped over and a good deal later than I should have for a mile and half, I was greeted with the fact that she measured the distance wrong and that I had actually run more like 2 miles. The upside was that she had trailmix and ice water for me and drove me the excess distance back to my car. Pam rocks!

My Friday run was uneventful, though I did have to re-route myself in the middle of the run to avoid excess amounts of aphids.

Sunday's run was great. It was a cool morning. I had planned to run in the Shoreline Classic in Decatur. The distances of the races were 5K (3.1 miles), which was 4 miles too short for my schedule and 15K (9.3 miles) which was 2 miles too long. I think you can guess which race I ran. I had my mom drop me off at the side of the road and ran 2 miles to the park, jumped in and ran the 5K and then ran 2 miles afterwards. The cool part was I ran the 5K portion of my 7 miles at a faster pace than I had run any races this summer.

So week two ended with an awesome run and me icing my left shin. Stupid shin splints! Only 16 more weeks to go.

My legs kind of like me again

2 straight days of rest and my legs are in the process of forgiving me. Little do they know what is in store...

Friends & Designer Shoes Did Me In

Lousy run tonight. In just about any marathon training program, the day after a long run is a rest day. Turns out there's a reason for that. My legs felt like lead and I had no energy. But that wasn't the only problem.

I wasn't planning to run today. However once I received an email confirming a dinner celebrating a friend's new job, I realized that I could either miss a night out with my friends or I could run on my off day. So...lesson learned: thou shalt rest after long runs.

The shoes I wore to work also gave me a little grief. Most women have a pair of shoes like the ones I wore today. You love them and you hate them. You love them because they look darn cute. You hate them because they inexplicably make mince meat of your feet. This was the syndrome that caused discomfort during 3 of the most miserable miles of my recent recollection.

The route I chose was bad too - it was hillier than I thought was possible in Normal. As an added bonus there were visible swarms of bugs . I don't quite get these things. They gave their lives to dive bomb into my sweaty body. I know I ate at least 3 of them and am pretty sure inhaled one or two. I don't even want to think how many were in my hair. My shirt was covered with them when I got done. (And if that wasn't enough, I had to run to the grocery store to pick up something for dinner and ran into one of my most beautiful co-workers. Lovely.)

So I practically crawled back to my car after my 3 sloooooow miles. And as proof that God does indeed have a since of humor, a license plate on the car across from mine caught my eye. It read: RNFST3. Very funny big guy.

Raegan 1, Training 0

Week one of training is done and I've made it through the week 1)alive and, 2) in good spirits. I decided that this time around I was going to try to photographically document my journey so I had my mom take a photo of me before I began my official training. I felt good. I felt motivated. And soon I felt...hot. But we'll get to that later. In my before pictures you can see a woman about ready to embark on a mission.

So I was dressed in one my most comfortable running outfits, I had my iPod ready and a bottle of Powerade chilling waiting for me to finish my 4 miles. I was confident and I was ready to go. I stepped out of the house and was greeted with approximately 146% humidity. Yeah - this was going to be a long 4 miles. In my cockiness, I actually planned a route that was a mile longer than my prescribed run and it didn't take Mother Nature long to smack me in the face for my audacity. Speaking of which, I have a bone to pick with Mother Nature. This summer has been unseasonably cool and not swimming friendly, to my chagrin. But I just kept thinking that at least it will be good for training. But Nooooooo! The heat returned on day 1. I will not be deterred though. I'll be stinky, but not deterred. We can see this from the "after" picture. The really awesome thing about this run was that my mom (she's the best) offered to pick me up at the end of my run and came not only with my chilled sports drink, but also a cinnamon biscuit to "replenish my sugar." I could get used to that kind of treatment.

Day 2 was fairly uneventful as I did my 3 miles on Constitution Trail. Wednesday, however, is when I discovered the Holy Grail of my marathon training: water stops. I had pre-arranged to stop on my run at a friend's house to get some cold water and short break. It was, however, a bit of surprise to show up at my water stop and finding myself in the middle of an impromptu party. At least I was wearing my running skirt in a fetching shade of pink. The sweat stains on my tank top weren't quite as fetching.

Little did I know that the anticipation of my water stop and the refreshing effect it had afterwards would make my run so much easier. I am in love with this plan. Shout-outs to Gail, Joan, Ken and Candace for serving as my water stops this week. You rock! So I'm hydrated but unfortunately my nutritional situation leaves room for improvement. Dinner after my Wednesday run consisted of a Cliff Bar, a couple of slices of cheese and 2 Advil (to alleviate the previously-mentioned chafing situation). Oddly enough, my appetite isn't corresponding with increased mileage.

My first long run was only 6 miles. I chose to do this on Sunday morning. Little known fact: in the city where I live, Fort Jesse Road from Veteran's Expressway to Airport Road is mostly uphill. My calves clued me in to this fact. Of course, if I hadn't been standing on my tired legs in front of my TV for 8 hours the day before playing my new Wii, they might have been more forgiving.

Toenail update!
Normally, the danger of losing toenails doesn't rear it's ugly, uh, foot, until the mileage gets pretty high. However, I have already managed to lose part of a toenail. To be fair, stubbing my toe on a grocery cart earlier in the week probably instigated this injury but the 17 miles I ran over the course of 4 days certainly pushed it over the edge. So much for my beautiful pedicure...

So week one is done. Ony 17 more to go.

Rubbing me the wrong way

Day 3 and I've experienced my first chafing incident. Let's just say my pink running skirt isn't as adept at making it past 2 miles as I am. You can imagine what a delightful experience showering was after that run. I should have known. It's the running gods' little joke on me. Apparently, the only outfits that are comfortable for me to run long distances in are getups that make me look like a character out of an SNL skit.

The good news is that I've run 3 straight days and now I get a couple days break before my first "long" run. Notice the word long is in quotes. That's because in several weeks, I'll look back at this "long" run and refer to it as one of the good 'ole days. At that point, 6 miles won't even be halfway to my end destination. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I have simply days until I have to worry about that.

The bad news is that I decided to crunch some numbers - something that never goes well for me. In my number-crunching madness, I discovered that en route to my holy grail run of the Disney Marathon, I will have logged 437 miles. That's the equivalent of running from my house to the Sears Tower 3 times and STILL having more than 40 miles left as a chaser.

So now I'm off to bask in a stretch of several running-free days. And when I return to the roadways, I'll be wearing something in a lovely shade of spandex.

The Calm Before the Running Storm

Sunday, September 4th. My last day of freedom.
For the next 18 weeks I will run, go to work, run, buy Gatorade by the barrel, run, check for missing toenails, run and run some more. In my last hours of training-free life I can't help but think about what I will be missing out on for the rest of 2009.

Free Time
This is the most obvious casualty of my marathon training. Instead of going out with friends, I'll be running. Instead of sleeping in on weekends, I'll be running. Instead of finding clean socks in my drawer, I'll be digging through the dirty clothes hamper. And then I'll be running.

Real Dinners
Given that I need to run 4 days of week, 3 of them after a full day of work, I'm guessing that cooking dinner will be a thing of the past. Of course, that would imply that in the past I've cooked dinner on a regular basis. No comment on that. Let's just say that most of my dinners in the coming months will likely consist of sports drinks, energy bars and possibly things in my refrigerator that haven't turned green yet.

My cheery disposition
Those that know and tolerate me can attest to the fact that if you catch me after 9:00 a.m., I can be almost congenial. After spending my evenings discovering how many sweat glands I have and walking like someone who's spent the last week on a horse, I might just be just a tad less pleasant. You were warned.

My Sanity
As we've already established, my sanity has already been questioned due to my attempt at this marathon endeavor. I have semi-good reasons for deciding to run this marathon. However, around week 5 these reasons are going to seem questionable even to me. At this point in training, there's a good chance that running down the street in the dark in spandex might be one of the sanest things I did all day.

So yeah, I'm going to miss some things during my training but let's look at all I have to look forward to: becoming one with the pavement, feeling every muscle below the waist (at least I'll know they are there!) and appreciating my car more than ever. Bring on the miles!

That Damn Queen!

This is my last week of freedom before my marathon training commences. Not that I haven't been hitting the pavement up till now. On the contrary, I'm just now finishing my pre-training. The only real difference is that I can actually let myself sleep in on the weekends and that my longest run was 5.16 miles. So, before I set out on this journey, I thought I'd take a step back and look at what the marathon is, who runs it and how it has evolved.

A modern day marathon is a 26.2 mile test of fortitude. For those keeping track, that's 26 miles, 385 yards. Some folks minimize the .2 but let me tell you, after the previous 26 miles, the .2 is a pretty big deal.

Those that are familiar with their ancient history might be familiar with how the marathon came about. The race really didn't start out as a race at all, but as a military task. Back in 490 B.C. Greece was living under Persian rule in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) but not terribly happy about the situation and began to revolt. Not to be daunted Persians sent an army of 20,000 troops to Athens, and the fellas would eventually settle in Marathon - on a coastal plain in northern Greece. Well, a lot of stuff happened and then the Greeks won (Go Greeks!). A messenger, Phidippides, was sent from Marathon to Athens to announce the victory but had to be quick or his homeboys the Athenians were going to burn their 'hood if they sensed they would be defeated. The distance good old Phidi had to cover between the two cities was 25 miles. He successfully covered the distance, relayed the message, saved Athens and then fell over dead from the exertion. He obviously hadn't trained properly!

So if you're paying attention to my little history lesson, you might be asking yourself, "Hey if the distance between Marathon and Athens was only 25 miles, where did the other 1.2 come from?" (And if that's the case, props to you for remembering the .2) Well, that's were that damn Queen Alexandra comes into the picture. In 1908, the marathon had been an Olympic sport for 12 years. The Olympics were held in London that year and Edward VII's wife thought she'd like to watch the race but didn't care to actually go to the race. She had it come to her - specifically she had the race re-routed to go past Buckingham Palace, thus adding an additional mile and 385 yards.

So now that we've had our history lesson, let's move on to statistics. Given that I did enough original research when I was a graduate student, I'll be taking these already compiled statistics from the U.S.A. Track and Field Road Running Information Center, via Jeff Galloway's book on marathoning. Because of that, these stats are 9 years old but if you'd like to update the numbers and get back to me, feel free.

So here's marathoning by the numbers. In the year 2000, an estimated 451,000 people finished a marathon. Many more idiots started one and then realized those long training runs were in fact important and dropped out somewhere before tape.

The largest marathon in the world (at press time) was London, followed by New York City and then Chicago. I did Chicago in '02 with 35,000 of my closest friends. Though I have no statistics to back this up, I'm declaring the Walt Disney World Marathon to be the most expensive. In addition to the $125 entry fee, there's no end to the other "add-ons" one can choose - a $45 spaghetti dinner the night before, the race retreat entry that allows you access to more porta-potties, the $45 post race party at which you can purchase celebratory food, the ChEAR Squad membership where race spectators can pay to see you finish, and on and on and on.

Approximately 62% of marathon finishers are male and 38% are female. (I guess no one checked "other") The average age of a male marathoner is 38 and female is 35. So, that makes me younger and in possession of more X chromosomes than the average marathoner.

The winners of the major marathons are typically covering the distance somewhere between 2 hours and 7 minutes and 2 hours and 15 minutes. The bigger races "corral" runners letting the faster ones go first, then the next fastest and so on sometimes causing the slower runners to have to wait 15-20 minutes to cross the starting line. That means that the leaders of this race will probably be around mile 8 or 9 when I'm hitting mile 2. I hope they save some Gatorade for me.

So that's marathon 101. Before I sign off, though, a final thought. Approximately 1/10 of 1% of the world's population has run a marathon. Which makes me wonder, how many people are crazy enough to do it more than once?