Another 26.2!!

Sorry about the blurry photo, but hopefully you can see the readout on the Garmin: 26.2 miles in 4 hours and 57 minutes!!  That's my PR by 15 minutes!  I was super excited when my friend, Holly called me over the weekend and asked if I wanted to do a 20 mile run with her today.  I haven't had a chance to run with her for a while and even though I did 12.6 miles with Chris on Saturday, and even though she is my little speedy friend who always pushes me to go a little faster than I normally would, I figured I could handle it and it would be a good chance for us to catch up on other things in our lives!  So we agreed on an out and back route leaving from her house this morning.

We were on the road by 8, once we got all the kiddos off to school.  We used the run/walk/run method, doing a 4 minute run to 1 minute walk ratio.  When we reached our half-way and turn around point, I mentioned to her that sometime I'd like to keep going from there, run across the freeway overpass and take the road on the opposite side of the freeway back home, a loop that would equal approximately 25 miles.  She said, "Want to do it today?  I know we were only going to do 20, but let's just do it!"  Okay!  We made our way across the freeway overpass, a bit of a scary endeavor I have to say, but so worth it to be able to run on a different road back home.  I also have to mention that the the first 10 miles were mostly uphill and we were both looking forward to running mostly downhill on the return 10, but since we changed plans, the new route involved many, many hills, two big hills that were pretty steep grade and over a mile long each!  My hamstrings were hurting at that point, but having someone to run with and talk to makes the time go by a lot faster.

I also have to mention something else cool that happened.  I had planted some extra water on our original route, which obviously wasn't going to help us on our new route.  But as we talked about it, we agreed that if things got really bad and we needed more water, we could just call one of our husbands to bring us some. Well at some point, a white utility-type truck drove past us, we waived but neither of us knew who we were waving at.  A couple of miles later, when we had reached approximately mile 20 of our run, the same truck pulled along side us again, going the opposite direction.  He slowed down and held out two fresh, cold bottles of water for us, at which point Holly recognized him as being a friend of their family.  He is also a runner, which is probably why when he saw we were so far from home he knew we were on a long run and was thoughtful enough to realize we might need some water.  It was awesome!  We drank some, then were able to use the rest to fill the bottles on our belts and that was plenty to get us through the last 6+ miles.

(Here we are after our run.  I've noticed I always have slumpy, sloppy posture after long runs.  Hmmm...tired, maybe?!)

Anyway, when we were within a mile of my friend's house, which was to be our stopping point, she looked at her Garmin and then asked me if I realized we were just over 24 miles at about 4 hours and 42 minutes?  That meant we had about 2 miles to go and 18 minutes to do them in if we wanted to do the full marathon distance in less than 5 hours.  So, with her keeping pace just in front of me and yelling words of encouragement at me, we decided to go for it and do those last two miles.  My legs were throbbing at this point because even though I've now done this distance 3 times this month, I've never done it pushing myself so hard, with increased speed and all those darn hills.  Still, there was no way I was going to miss the opportunity to PR when I was so close.  We ended up finishing right in front of my house, which was kind of cool!  So, I am now extremely happy to be able to say my marathon time - and it starts with a 4 instead of a 5!!

Not quite 13.

There was no way I was going to waste this magnificent morning, so after I did 30 minutes of Pilates and got the kids off to school, I went out for a run.  I used a 4:1 run/walk ratio and did a 12.7 mile loop.  I even left the house wearing only a tank top and shorts, and sunblock - the first time this year I haven't started out with layers!  It was about 50 degrees when I started, and with the wind blowing, my hands and face felt cold for the first 5 miles or so.  After that it warmed up and now it's about 80 degrees out there.  My mp3 player crapped out on me about a mile into my run.  I'm not sure why, it was charged I think, but it is about 5 years old, so who knows.  Anyway, I tucked it away in my belt pocket and with the lack of distractions I just focused on the rhythm of my feet.  The first half of the run, I could tell that I wasn't going very fast because my legs were feeling a little sluggish.  By the second half, I felt more "warmed up" and was able to pick up my pace a bit.  In the end I had an average pace of 11:20 min/mile, which is pretty good for a run that long and taking the walk breaks.  Right now though, as I sit here typing this, my calves are shaking and twitching, not too sure what that's about.

I was reading another runner's Facebook status the other day where he posted this quote by Bart Yasso, endurance athlete and Runner's World contributor:

"I often hear someone say I'm not a real runner.  We are all real runners, some just faster than others.  I've never met a fake runner."

I'd read this quote before, but it was good to read it again and be reminded of the importance of not comparing ourselves with others.  It's hard to do, but if we can focus on just trying to do our best and improve on our own individual achievements, I know we could be much happier with each success.

Yes, that's right...I said 26.2 miles!

Today's run was kind of a last minute decision.  I have been doing my long runs on Thursdays or Saturdays, whichever day works best with my (and my husband's, sometimes) schedule.  So, at the start of this week I made plans to do my long run on Thursday.  Chris has been having continued IT band pain when he runs farther than a few miles, so he decided to forego doing the really long run with me, in exchange for doing a medium long run on Saturday.  Alas, when I looked at the weather forecast for the week and saw that it was going to be sunny and 60 today, versus the rain/snow and high of 40 that's predicted for tomorrow, I opted to run long today.

I left the house at about 7:30 this morning, dressed in a couple of layers over my sunblock-slathered arms, neck and shoulders.  See?  I do learn from my mistakes - once in a while. ;)  I had mapped out my run last night.  It was not an easy route.  Leaving from our house, down the old highway which is basically a series of mild up and downhills for about 6 miles.  Then it levels out as the route goes through town for the next 9-10 miles.  That was when the wind was at it's absolute worst, at least today.  At times, I felt like it was pushing me backwards.  Once I was back out of town and up against the foothills, I took a little out and back jaunt of about 4 miles, up towards the mountains.  Obviously, that was a pretty tough section for me, as my legs were starting to fatigue as I was trying to go uphill.  Then back down the hill, and out to the road that would take me back home.  Portneuf Rd. is filled with hills - big hills.  Apparently I like a challenge. ;)

(I took this right before I headed up the mountain road.  See off in the distance, where the mountains converge in a small valley?  The freeway runs through there, and it's called The Portneuf Gap.  I love running the gap!  Incidentally, that's Pocatello Marathon's tagline: "Running the Gap!")

Despite the fact that my legs felt a bit achy and tired before I even started running today, I was able to stick with my 4 minute running, 1 minute walking ratio for the entire time.  I finished the 26.21 miles in 5 hours, 22 minutes.  That's an average pace of 12:18 minutes per mile.  I am pretty excited about that time, for a training run.

Some of you may be wondering why I ran the full marathon distance as a training run.  Well, I trained for and ran my first two marathons in a "traditional" way, basically running as much as I could and only walking when absolutely necessary.  I developed many different injuries, and despite logging TONS of miles, I never really got any faster.  I was feeling over-trained and even though I enjoyed running and training, I was starting to get burned out.  I came across a method of training for and running marathons/half marathons developed by former Olympic runner Jeff Galloway.  I read several of his books, and decided to give his method a try.  What it boils down to is adding short walk breaks to your runs right from the beginning.  This way you "re-set" your leg muscles before they start to get overly fatigued, making it possible for the average runner to not only run longer distances, but shortening the recovery time after long runs considerably.  I am still not a super fast runner, but even with the walking breaks (I usually use a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio), my times on long runs and races are improving over what I was doing before.  And...other than some minor issues I've talked about before, i.e. black toenails and mild muscle soreness, I haven't had any injuries since starting to add the walk breaks, and can more or less get on with normal daily activities after a long run, which is much better than being so sore I could barely go up and down the stairs for days, as it was before.  For all you skeptics out there, yes, you can still call yourself a runner (and marathoner) even if you take walk breaks - and your body will thank you for it. :)

My running mentor/friend recently sent me the Run/Walk/Run Interval Timer used by Jeff Galloway:

I just got it today, so I wasn't able to use it for today's run.  Normally I use my Garmin to alert me at scheduled intervals for my walk breaks, but now that I have this, I can use it for my intervals, while simultaneously tracking my mileage, pace and run time.

There's a lot more I could say about using the Galloway method to train for distance running, but honestly, I can't say it any better than Jeff himself does in all of his books.  If any of you want to learn more about it, I would highly recommend starting with his book, "Marathon: You Can Do It!"

Question: What have you done to realize you can do hard things?

P.S. This is what recovery looks like: CEP Compression Socks.  Mmmmm. :)

20 miles...it finally happened!!

I'm so excited to report we were finally able to get outside for a long run!  I have to say, I was a little nervous when I woke up this morning and realized my body was none too happy with me for putting it through that killer workout yesterday, and about to put it through 20 miles of suffering.  Once I got moving, though, I knew I just needed to push through the pain. ;)  I took some Motrin, too...that helped.

I was so impressed with how well my husband did, considering his longest run prior to today was 18 miles, and that was a few weeks ago.  He was strong well into the double digits, and really didn't start to fatigue terribly until about mile 16 or so.  After that it was a bit of a struggle, but he kept going and we finished in good time.

After we got home and had chocolate-peanut butter smoothies to refuel, we went in to the gym where we swam a little to loosen up and sat in the hot tub.  Then we went and had a "lunch" of Mexican food.  It was like a day-long date! :)