Sunday, May 20, 2012

Massochistic training

I can't seem to get my calf right.  I still refuse to see a doctor and the common self-medication thing is RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation).  I had been doing everything but the compression as I didn't have one.  I finally bought a heat compress and do it daily.  What I found out is that "Rest" doesn't mean a couple hours, it means a couple days.  I don't know though, I think if I take a week off, I won't want to start up again.  I think this because I went two months with never missing a day, than I helped a friend move into his new apartment on a Saturday, (Monday was my day off), so I took that day off but made up for it on Monday.  On the following Wednesday, I took another day off because I hung out at my friend's apartment till 12:30AM so didn't have time.  Again, the following Monday I made up for it.  Then the very next day (Tuesday) I again took the day off because I met someone for a drink that lasted 4 hours so got home late.  I decided to stop making up days and moved my day off to Sunday (now that the marathon is Saturday, not Sunday, I revised my training for big Saturday runs).  I also stopped doing strengthening on my days off.  My day off, is just stretching from now on, though I'll still strengthen twice a week.  So, I went 2 months never missing a day, then for two straight weeks I missed days.  So, once I break my routine, I seem to downward spiral.  As for my calf, it still acts up every now and then but it's not a daily pain and the pain seems to have dimished but I'm still worried it'll tear in the next couple months. 

Last Thursday was my first 10K (6.2) miles.  I was nervous because I looked it as a milestone since last November I told my friend's marathon partner that I could never run a 10K (she made it sound like anyone could). Even though my longest run a day in high school was 8.5 miles, I never thought I could.  So I took all the precautions necessary, I ate a bagel with peanut butter for breakfast, had a lunch I know I can run on, 1.5 hours before the run, I drank a 20oz of gatorade.  I even bought the GU 1 series gummies and ate an entire pack 15 minutes before the run like you're supposed to....the run was SIMPLE!!! In fact, I got so upset at how easy it was,that when I ran another 10K yesterday, I cut everything in half.  I had eggs for breakfast with a 20oz of vitamin water. Only ate a half pack of the GU series and did the run in the hottest part of the day.  I finished, but it was harder. The thing is, I don't want to develop a tolerance to the preparation and not have it work when I need it most...marathon day.  Given how easy the first 10k was, I think if I feel like that on marathon day, I will be able to complete it. Hopefully, I will but I don't anticipate going through all that preparation unless I actually fail to complete one of my runs.

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Sunday, May 13, 2012

Marathon training month 2 (continued)

My first day of training I got a really bad stitch in my stomach and had to resort to walking for a couple blocks after a half mile.  This is the only time I was forced to stop for physical reasons as I kept up the mile a day for 6 days.  As I said before, I'm almost finished with the 2nd week of 3,5,3,5,3,5.  Although my day off has changed, my weeks start on Wednesdays (since March 7 was a Wednesday) and I haven't gone Wednesday - Wednesday with taking more than 2 days off yet. 

March 7 - April 7 I ran in my basketball shoes that I wear daily.  Basically I wanted to make sure I was serious about keeping up with the training before investing in shoes.  I had gotten a pedometer for Christmas but it doesn't work very well.  Presumably, my strides (which is how the pedometer measures distance) aren't consistent.  It always undercut by about a mile and wasn't even consistent.  Same route garnered differences in mileage by up to a half mile.  The GPS based pedomaters are 150 dollars. Given if I'm successful this year for the marathon I'm going to stop running, this doesn't seem like a good investment for 4 months.   Luckily I found mappedometer.com, which allows me to map my mileage routes.  I purposely go over the allotted mileage and have kept it around 0.2 more (so a 3 mile run is really between 3.1 and 3.2 mileage).  Basically since the marathon is 26.2 miles, my mileage goes on the .2 curve.  I kept the training up so shortly after April 7, I bought running shoes.  The running store I went to was very vigilant on finding the correct shoes as they have treadmills with cameras aimed at your feet so you can see how you run and if you need shoes to correct your form. I had noticed my right leg seemed to hurt more than my left, I found out this was due to form (though, they said my knee would hurt more, it was really my shins).  After I bought the shoes, I put my sneakers back on and they felt like they weighed 100 pounds, I immediately saw a HUGE difference.  Running the 2 miles a day (That's where it was at the time) saw me falling over a bump in the sidewalk twice.  Now I run 24 miles a week, and I haven't fallen since I bought the new shoes.  Conclusion: running shoes are very important for running long miles. 

I never thought I could do a marathon because I was born with bad knees, and high school cross country gave me bad shins (running with shin splints so they never healed properly) and bad ankles (constantly twisting/spraining my ankle but never wrapping it or giving it any care).  Because of this, I wore ankle braces up until two weeks ago.  The odd thing was during the early part of my training, none of these things hurt, my calves and shins hurt the most in the early stages and after my shoes, my calves killed, especially the left one, which the running store told me I had the better form  My marathon friend had given me a stretch routine and strengthening regiment.  On it, it tells of exercises if you have knee or shin pain...I did them when I had pain in those areas and the pain went away.  So, it worked, but it had nothing for calf pain.  I use her stretch routine after runs rather than before since it takes 40 minutes and I'm too eagar to run to wait that long.  Before running, I do the cross country stretching routine I did in high school, which appears to be working.  Oddly, only 3 out of the 16 stretches my friend's routine gave me are found in both, but the calf stretch is one of them.  On Easter, I found out another calf stretch but it takes upper body strength but with my left calf in constant pain I was willing to try anything.  It had minimal success.  One of the stretches my friend's routine had was putting your calf on a round stretching roller and pushing back and forth.  Given I didn't have one of these rollers, I skipped that part, then my roommate gave me a dumbell that was round.  Before this, I tried cans but the weight of my leg would pierce or collapse it (depending on if it was full or not).  20 oz bottle had the same failure.  The dumbell worked perfectly and the pain finally went away in my calf.  Of the routine I skipped the thigh rolling and one other stretch that every time I got in the position I felt my knee was about to collapse under me.  Eliminating these 2 stretches had no effect on my running so they were superfluous.  I'm not sure if this had anything to do with this but when I got my laundry back 2 weeks ago, I didn't see my ankle braces so I stopped running with ankle braces.  There still is no pain in my ankles (over 50 miles later) and the pain in my calf is subsiding so maybe the pain was caused from the ankle braces and not skipping one of the 2 calf stretches.  Who knows, I'm still going to do both calf stretches. 

My friend also e-mailed me all the e-mails her running coach sent her.  This did two things A) taught me about hydration and B) really motivated me.  This started as an experiment to see if my legs really couldn't handle marathon training/marathon.  I was okay with either result, one thing they say is you should have a motto. My motto was "Run a marathon or get injured trying."  After these e-mails I really wanted the first one to be true.  I got pumped! which I still am.  One of the things it says is you should take a sip of hydration every 20 minutes.  Since my pace started at about 10 minute miles, I took this as every 2 miles.  My time now is down to 9:40 miles  but I still do my 2 mile rehydrating.  This required getting something to carry on my runs.  I didn't want something around my waist because I didn't want to have to worry about getting it strapped in again while running.  The running store had something for people like me.  A water bottle that is morphed to the shape of a hand that ties to your hand.  I was skeptical that it would get annoying to carry it for long mileage but you really do forget that it's there because it fits the hand so nicely.

As for what is hydrating me, I tried water the first week and it sucked.  I felt bloated and horrible.  I have spent my entire life never drinking straight water.  The only time I drank water was after races during Cross Country because that was the only thing available.  So I switched it to vitamin water pre-run and gatorade during and after running and it appears to be working very well. I really want to do this on my terms, meaning no straight water and no pill popping.  My friend told me straight up "You can't run a marathon if you don't pop pills" By pills she means pain relievers.  I do not take medication and am not going to stop now just because of the marathon. When my joints hurt, I ice, that's my anti-inflammatory.  I also believe that pain helps your body avoid serious injury because you compensate unconsciously.  So if successful I will be one of the few people to be able to say I ran a marathon with no water and no pills.  When I feel tired on my runs, I play my friend's comment "you can't run a marathon" in my head, which keeps me going. 

I am being cheap about this.  Before buying something for running, I contemplate if I really need it.  The water bottle I needed, the shoes I needed.  The pedometer I bought to replace the one for Christmas broke quickly and was even more worthless than the first one.  I also bought athletic tape because I noticed anything above 4 miles made my nipples scab up or extremely tender.  My cousin (also has run a marathon) told me that the taping of you nipples is key and he had learned the hardway.  I test things for myself...he is definately right.  Past 4 miles if I forget, even a shower is painful by how tender they are!  The hydration rules also state that after 45 minutes, you should use a gel, IE the gatorade prime (1).  I have never used it.  My cousin says he uses all 3 but I just feel it's expensive and I can't find the 1 or 3 series in bulk.  It also says to drink 20 oz 1.5 hours before long runs.  not sure what they consider a long run but my 5 mile runs I haven't followed this with no detrimental results.  I do take two sips of vitamin water before my pre-run stretches (20-25 minutes before running) which was recommended.  I'm thinking of getting the 1 series and I'm still debating to try the 3 series after running.  So far, I just take a large gulp of gatorade after my post-run stretches and it appears to be working.

As for eating.  One other fact about the marathon is you need food!!! if I miss a meal, I get severely light headed.  This didn't really happen before, I rarely ate 3 meals a day before training. Sometimes I would get light headed but more often than not I didn't.  Now I definately do!  Now the e-mails say that carbs are important.  My friend ate a lot of pasta when she trained.  The exact food the e-mails said was a bagel with peanut butter.  What I noticed is, that pasta/bagel with peanut butter works just as well as fast food/chipotle./subway.  I'm upset by this because there's got to be something better for running fuel than fast food, but after multiple sample sizes, there is no difference between pasta and fast food.  Pizza is a step below, running is harder if I had pizza for lunch.  I found out that the worst possible thing for running is a steak.  I love steak too so this upset me.  I went to dinner with my friend had a lamb shank.  As an appetizer I had pita bread with tarama (Greek cavier).  I thought this was a good balance of carbs and proteins...that run sucked!!!

What effects a run...the biggest factor for me is weather.  If it's sunny and above 70, the run is harder.  If it's 60 and rainy, it's ideal running conditions.  Only once since March 7 did I really not feel like running.  It was a Sunday and I just wasn't in the mood.  I think this isn't bad for over two months running 6x a week.  I did get myself up to do it and I walked outside and it was raining decently hard. I started running and it was awesome.  It makes sense because it's like your constantly being refreshed by having water dumped on you.  Given that sweating is your body's way to deal with overheating...throwing water on you to evaporate.  Now, it's coming from the sky to help my bodies' natural refreshing tool...only this water, unlike my bodies, isn't 98.6 degrees and instead of salt, it has some acid in it.  I love running in the rain, and I hope that it rains on marathon day even though that probably means I'll have less supporters routing me on. 

As for routes.  I mapped out a new 5 mile route that has me run along the Long Island sound.  the path is a mile from my apartment.  I had walked along it a couple times but never very often.  I always exited on an overpass over the belt parkway which is about a mile from where I enter.  My route takes me to the second overpass, which is cool because shortly after the first one, you can see the statue of liberty and running toward her is really nice.  The problem with this route is the first time I ran it, I took the wrong path ended up going through a park parallell to the path that curved a lot and forced me to go up and down a lot of steps before I gave up and exited the park, ran to the first overpass then ran to the second.  The overpasses all have stairs so there were a lot more stairs and a lot longer distance. Since mappedometer doesn't have the path I took in the park, I don't know how much over my 5.2 mile route I had gone but I did finish.  the second time I tried, I again took the wrong ramp and headed toward the belt parkway.  Luckily halfway down the ramp I figured out that it couldn't be right, so ran back and quickly found the right one.  When I got to the path along the water, I discovered a very strong wind directly at me.  I spit to make sure it wasn't my imagination, the saliva quickly shot behind me and covered a considerable distance before dropping.  Not my imagination.  But this was what a mapped so I had to continue fighting this wind for 2 miles.  I did it, it was hard but I finished giving me confidence.  The third time, finally I didn't have strong wind and I didn't go down the wrong path.  I really want to run along the water so I will continue going to this path but given that the windy day, no other part of the run or city had that strong of wind, I really need to figure out an alternative if I go down the path and the wind is intense again. 

So this is my first two months of training.  there's about 4 months till the marathon.  I hope to update the blog on my status a little more frequantly than 2 months.  Even on days where I ate and drank like shit (sometimes even having a few glasses of wine) I've been able to go 5 miles.  Next time I should report on how well the gatorade prime works for 6 miles or more. 

Marathon training Month 2

So, last November I entertained the idea to run a marathon.  I decided I was going to start training on March 1, so that I would have 10 months to get in shape for the Disney marathon the first weekend in January 2013.  I chose this date because my friend wanted to run it with me and I wanted a partner.  She has kids, so wanted to make it a trip to Disneyworld for her family out of it. 

Given that March 1 saw me in Trinidad, I decided to postpone my start till I returned back to New York...March 7.   Immediately my friend backed out on me but I kept up the training.  The way it started was I'd run 1 mile a day 6x a week. then every two weeks I'd increase a mile a day until I was running 3 miles a day 6x a week.  Every two weeks after I would raise 1 mile 3x a week so 3,4,3,4,3,4 then 3,5,3,5,3,5.  I would cap this at 8 miles on the long days and then every Sunday I would increase one mile every two weeks to prepare my body for long mileage on Sundays (day of marathon).  This made it so I would run 23 miles the Sunday before the Disney marathon. 

After my partner dropped out, I decided I'd try for the NYC marathon since I had no reason to travel to Disney anymore.  The NYC marathon is in November, so with my training schedule, I'd run 18 miles the Sunday before marathon day. This coincidentally was perfect since I found out that you shouldn't run over 18 miles a day while training for the marathon since at 18, your body goes on auto pilot for the remaining 8.2 miles.  Not sure how this works, but that's what the experts say. Unfortunately, this failed as well because your acceptance to the marathon isn't guaranteed and I got denied since I don't run sponsored NYCRR races...I train on my own.  With no marathon to run, I got a little discouraged since all the places I know people had their marathons in May where I would not be ready.  Then I found the Hamptons marathon on 9/29/12, which is a Saturday. They seemed to accept my application so it looks like that's the date.  This forced me to change my training schedule to after my 3,8,3,8,3,8 2 weeks, to increase one mile every Saturday now every week rather than every 2 weeks. At this pace, I would get to 18 miles on Saturday 5 weeks before the marathon date, giving me 4 weeks window for failure.  or....I would have run the maximum training allows for 5 straight Saturdays so my confidence would be higher for race day.  So that's where I'm at for training.  Next blog (going to be written immediately following this) will be the actual running part.