20 Degrees

What a difference 20 degrees makes!

On June 26, I ran 6.12 miles at 11:30 AM, just about when the sun was at its peak. The temperature was about 81 degrees F and the sky was mostly clear with a light, breeze coming off the lake that teased my senses. I thought I should be able to knock out the 6 miles in no time. How wrong I was.

After the first couple of miles, my legs grew heavy and my pace started to slow. By mile 3, the sun had taken its toll. I needed to walk. I walked for a couple tenths of a mile, took a deep breath and started to run again. I'll be damned if I was going to walk the remaining 3 miles back home.

My paced was a bit slower and I had to walk again at the end of miles 4 and 5. When I arrived home, I was completely exhausted.

Pace of 6-26 run.

I guess I should not have been surprised by this result. According to this website, based on my height, weight, pace, and the fact that it was 81 degrees (F) outside, my body perceived the temperature to be about 110 degree (F)! No wonder I struggled.

The moral of the story: If it's going to be hot, run sooner.

If 6 miles was brutal in the heat, I could not have image what the next day's run of 11 miles would have done to me knowing that the afternoon temperature was supposed to be 84. So, I made a decision to beat the heat. I woke up at 4 AM (no alarm needed), put my contacts in, filled my CamelBak, and was out the door by 4:30. I needed to be back by 7 AM because Jody had to leave for work and I needed to watch the baby.

Typically, when I run a route longer than 10 miles, I usually eat a bagel with peanut butter about an hour before heading out the door. On this morning, I was not going to get up at 3 AM. Instead, I grabbed a few pretzels and drank a half of glass of water. That's it! During my run, I had one energy gel at about the 5-mile mark and a few pretzels that I had shoved into a plastic bag into my pocket.

I had some concerns that I might experience some linger effects from the previous day's run. These concerns never materialized. In fact, two hours after I started this run, I had never felt better after running 11 miles!

6-27 run. The pace is in blue and elevation is the grayed-out area on the bottom.

Flying Pig: Post Race

It did not take long for me to realize that something was seriously amiss soon after I completed the Flying Pig. Sure, I was sore and achy, but this was to be expected. Alas, I didn't feel very good and I could barely put any weight on my right foot, which I took as a bad sign.

Jody was in no better condition. She did the half-marathon ... while she was five months pregnant! Sure, she walked most of it, but she still did it with minimal amount of preparation! Amazing!

There were no post-race selfies. Jody and I limped back to the hotel; all we wanted was a nap and a shower before our six hour drive back to Milwaukee. Alas, just getting back to the hotel was feat that mirrored the race itself. The three blocks felt like 10 miles. Every curb looked like Mt. Everest. We were not sure if we could cross streets before the light changed, even if we had a head start. I swear I heard a few cars rev their engines.

After cleaning up the room, we limped through the hotel and to the car. Each step I took hurt like a @#$%. This was not the typical post-race stiffness. My right foot and achilles were giving me serious problems.

I returned to the office the next day. For some asinine reason, I scheduled a meeting with a student. I work on the fourth floor. I've only taken the elevator a handful of times and this was one of those times. I walked around the office with a serious limp.

Three days later, I was in no better shape, but I decided to try to play golf. It's probably a sign that I should have skipped the round when I knew I needed a cart for the 9 holes. I hate carts! You just cannot get in a rhythm with them. I also forgot that I had to walk around the greens. Fortunately, I was able to hit the ball without any discomfort, though mentally, I'm sure the foot affected a handful of shots. Like at the office, I limped my way around each green. I shot one of the worst rounds of the year.

I never did see a doctor about the foot, but I'm pretty sure I did significant damage to the achilles, possibly nearly tearing it. I vaguely recall having a couple moments during the race when my feet didn't feel very good, but I just chalked this up to the heat and overall physical exhaustion. Reflecting back to the run, I wonder if my shoes were not the right fit. I purchased them in the final weeks of my training. They were fine for short distances but I never tested them for longer runs. I demoted the shoes after the run and have only used them for walks.

My next run would not be until June 11, over a month after the marathon, when I had aspirations of running marathon number two of that year...

Flying Pig: Lessons Learned

When it was all said and done, I was not too pleased with myself after the Flying Pig. Sure, I ran a personal best, but it felt far from it and I was not satisfied with the race. The year before, when I ran Green Bay, I felt absolutely elation when I crossed the finish line having run all 26.2 miles and I still had energy in the tank. I wanted that feeling again and Cincinnati did not provide it.

So what went wrong?

For starters, my goal time of 4:30 was completely and unrealistic. I should have tampered this once I realized how much faster it required me to run. My goal of my next marathon will be much more reasonable: 4 hours and 40 minutes.

I started too fast. My first mile was very slow, in part, due to all the people traffic. The first few miles were fine but then I got cocky. My pace started to push 10:00 min/mile.

I felt good! The air was cool. The cloud cover was deceiving. The energy of other racers was high and euphoric. I was going to shatter my PR!

I should have known better, especially from all the long runs where I petered out after running too fast out of the gate and not having enough energy to get home.

By mile 16 I was slowing down ... and still had 10 miles to go! By now, the sun was blazing and the air was much hotter. The clouds had disappeared. Runners had gone silent and the mood was one of survival.

In short: I did not pace myself well and fell into the all-too-common trap of running a race I could not run.

As it turned out, my training plan was not right one for me. I followed plan from the Strava website/app that is based on McMillan Running. I'll talk more about this in a later post. Suffice to say for now, this was a 12-week where each week was a combination of easy runs, long runs, and speed intervals. Come race day, I believe this plan hindered my endurance because it did not prepare me for the distance, because it assumed I could conquer the miles. By the end of the 26.2 miles, I was hurting and could already feel my legs screaming for mercy.

Preparing for a marathon is more than just running. What I wanted to do but was never disciplined enough to do was cross-train. This means doing core exercises, upper, and/or lower body workouts, walking, or some other activity. Sure I played some golf (always walking 9 or 18) on non-running days (and even on days when I ran) but this sport is hardly what one would be considered "cross training."

Diet is another significant part of the equation. I wanted to lose 10 pounds for the race. I lost about 6. Close but no cigar. During my 12 week workout plan, I had moments where I closely watched what I ate but I also had a lot of "loose" moments, meaning I fell victim to my sweet tooth's voice and the wrong mentality of "I'm running 4 days a week, I can eat what I want."

In sum, a lot went wrong in the weeks leading up to the race and all of this only added fuel to the flames of the weather and hilly conditions of the race. Hopefully, I can learn from these experiences.

Flying Pig Marathon: The Race

Clear skies and 26 miles do not mix. As it turns out, bad math, over ambitious goals, and sunny skies (by the second-half of the race), really do not mix.

Starting line.

Per last week's post, my goal for the Flying Pig Marathon was 4 hours and 30 minutes (give or take a few minutes). Sounds reasonable until I mention the fact that this would have lowered my personal best time by nearly 20 minutes. Ha!

Even as I write that, it sounds silly. I've never been very good at math.

In order to knock 20 minutes off my personal best time, I would have had to run nearly a minute faster per mile ... for the whole race ... than I had ever run before. Not likely since I had only been training for about 12 weeks.

This goal set me up for a plan that was unrealistic. I thought if I ran the first couple of miles at about 11:00 min/mi, I could gradually increase the pace to reach the overall goal of 10:18 min/mi.

Not factoring into my goal time was the course. Cincinnati has hills. At least more than Milwaukee does. One hill in particular at mile 5 seemed to go on forever. I ran the hills strong but they definitely zapped my energy level. After the endless large hill, there were a series of rolling hills through some nice neighborhoods. The stretch was pretty it did not help my energy reserves.

And then there was the stretch on Route 50. It's been a year and a half since I ran the marathon and I vividly remember a few parts: the big hill at Mile 5, crossing the bridge from Kentucky back into Ohio (made for a great picture of downtown Cincinnati), and Route 50. Route 50 was the straw that zapped my back.

Route 50 is four lanes and we ran in one of the lanes on the southbound side. This stretch of the race was only a mile and half long but it felt like 10 miles. It hardly helped that it occurred at the 18.5 mile mark and, by this point in the race, the sun was high in the sky baking our fair skin. What skin escaped the beat down from above felt the wrath of the concrete as the sun's rays bounced at us from below off the concrete. There was no water along this route. The welcome relief of shade only occurred in the form of the overpass once we turned off the road and went under Rt 50. This lasted less than 10 seconds. I wanted to stop in this shady area, lay down, and let everyone pass me. Alas, I kept running.

By mile 22 I was still on pace for my goal. I was at an overall pace of 10:20 min/mi. Alas, to get to this point I had exhausted myself and still had about 10K left to run. By mile 22 my body had had enough and could run no further. I found myself run-walking the rest of the way home.

Mother nature did not help my race time. The race started with a lot of clouds but the sun made a strong appearance at about mile 10. The course had very little shade. The temperature pushed the upper 70s (and even higher along Route 50). To put his into perspective, during my training sessions in Milwaukee, I ran a total of TWO short runs in weather above 50 degrees and both of these were in the week leading up to the marathon! In short, my body (as well as my mental state) was nowhere near ready to run in "hot" weather.

Although 4:30 was out of the question, I made the best of it and still earned a personal best by a couple of minutes with an official time of 4 hours and 47 minutes and 59 seconds.