Marathon Training

I hadn’t been in weeks. First, the rain kept me from marathon training, and then out of my own apathy and body exhaustion, I missed two weeks of training long runs on Saturday mornings. But, because I missed those runs, and because my conscience was kicking in and starting to nag me, I was determined to actually get up and get my ass to training Saturday morning.

And I did.

Not only for the aforementioned reasons, but my IT band which I had hurt weeks prior was actually starting to feel a little better. I had been running mornings at home and picking my mileage back up. So I was determined to get a good long run in.

The half-marathoners (which I THINK I’m training for now) were supposed to go 12 miles. I decided, since I hadn’t run that far in a while, that I would just do a tour of the lake, which is almost exactly 9 miles. It would be my first tour since my injury happened, and the farthest I had ran in a while.

On my run, I wasn’t really concerned with speed as I was finishing, and keeping a good pace.

Though I was running, I was keeping about the same pace as the run / walk group. Which was good, but can also hurt your ego a little, knowing someone is doing a walk /run hybrid the same pace as your run. But I kept a nice steady pace, and my legs didn’t start hurting until about mile 6. It wasn’t an extremely hard run either. Saturday during the run was right before the cold front blew in, so we got air that was cooler than “normal” (which, for us at the time, was still nearly 100 degrees at 6AM).

I was just mainly happy that I finished.

If you’d like to learn more about Team In Training, see my fundraising progress and / or donate to my marathon campaign, check out My Marathon Page.

It was about that time. That time somewhere in between when the rooster crows “Cock-a-doodle-doo” and the sun coming out to bake everything it came into contact with.

Yes. It was THAT. Time.

It was EXACTLY 6AM on Saturday morning. Exactly the time that this week’s marathon training was supposed to begin. Not the time I was supposed to leave for it; the time we were supposed to begin hitting the pavement and begin on another journey around Dallas’s White Rock Lake.

And here I am, pouring myself out of bed when I SHOULD be huffing, puffing, and sweating. My alarm clock went off at its normal time, circa 5:15 am, but I slept right through it. And by slept right through it, I mean my roommate turned it off after 15 minutes of the same 5 second clip being played at loud volume over and over. But failed to wake me up. This oversleeping came after taking a nap after leaving work Friday afternoon, AND after going to bed earlier than normal that night. I suppose I am just too hardcore during the week. But it’s like a quote I once heard in a famous play, Life on Campus:

I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

Needless to say, I missed yet another Saturday marathon training. I was disappointed in myself, because I was finally running again during the week, and was getting back to my old self. I wanted to get back to doing the long runs again, to begin to make up for the progress I had lost from my IT Band injury. But that progress – and that long run – sadly, would have to wait another week.

That awkward moment when you are exhausted from going pretty hard during the week, so you take a nap Friday night after work, and the next thing you know, it’s 6 o’clock on Saturday morning when you wake up to your alarm on your phone screaming at you to throw yourself out of bed.

The only thing is that you have to be AT White Rock Lake at 6am; that is when marathon training starts.

And that, is where I should have been, but it was where I wasn’t. I didn’t think it would be the best idea to drive there, as we’d be half an hour late, and running by yourself isn’t very fun. I also figured that I needed the sleep. Like I said, I was busy during the week with work, content creation and blog writing, as well as going to networking events; I think my body was just exhausted and was trying to tell me to slow down. And slow down I did: I slept for an additional four hours after that. In addition, my IT band still hurts a little bit. I think it still needs more time to heal.

Excuses, I know. We’ve all got them. And they’re like booty holes. And today, while I don’t like them, was my day to have many of them. I will try to be better in the future, but today, I’m just gonna go back to sleep.

GO TEAM.

Make it up for me! I’ll be out there next week.

If you didn’t know, I’m training to run a marathon, and raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphona Society to fight blood cancer! You can learn more about my marathon (or make a tax-deductable donation to my efforts) at my marathon fundraising page.

This week, we were supposed to have marathon training, as we usually do. Bright and early, at 6am.

On. A. Saturday. Morning.

I was actually dreading it this week. We had been starting training earlier because of the extreme heat (we almost set a record in Dallas for number of consecutive days over 100 degrees). In addition to the extreme heat, Dallas has been experiencing extreme drought too. So these were definitely NOT the ideal conditions for 8 miles of hills marathon training, as your body operates at about 20 degrees warmer than the temperature outside.

But there was a 30% chance of rain in the forecast for Saturday, August 6th. We asked our coach, Coach Claire, if we still did marathon training in the rain. She said we certainly do, and just to put on a hat and suck it up.

And suck it up I was about to do. It was 5am, and I was jilted awake by my Blackberry’s alarm. I poured out of bed, grudgingly, I might add, and put my shorts, running shoes, and Team In Training shirt on. I was tired from a long and busy week of work, writing marathon training and search engine optimization blogs like this one, meetings and networking events and I just wanted to sleep. Plus, I could hear the rain. I didn’t want to run / walk 7 miles and be cold. I checked my facebook, and the group said that we were still having training.

I get in my car and drive about 2 miles. My friend checks his email. There was thunder (and we DON’T train in thunder) so marathon training was cancelled.

So I quite ungrudgingly poured myself BACK into bed for another few hours, and thanked God that all those years of African Rain Dances I had done had finally accumulated into a sum large enough to cash out.

I’ll be back at it next week though.

If you’d like to donate to my cause, check out my marathon page!

So last saturday, July 30th, as usual, we had our marathon training at White Rock Lake. This week, we were doing hill training in the neighborhoods around the park.

For the last 2 months, I’ve been suffering from IT band issues. The IT band is a group of muscles around the outside of the knee. Running, while it hasn’t been impossible, is more difficult, and is more like limping at this point. They say the only thing that really helps the pain go away is adequate stretching, and a foam roller.

With that being said, I had been talking to the marathon coach, claire about whether I should try to go to training or continue to stay off of it. We agreed that training with the walkers this week may be a better option; I didn’t want to hurt myself any more, but didn’t want to lose any progress.

On saturday, in order to further avoid the heat, we started training 30 minutes earlier, at 6am. I overslept slightly, so I didn’t get to do as much stretching as I had hoped before training began.

But I still walked.
I walked mostly with Tina, who I think is the walking group coach. During the walk, we talked about fundraising, and she gave me some ideas. We also talked about other races, such as training for an Ironman (something that may be interesting to do, one day, but that whole swimming thing). AND WE TALKED ABOUT PUPPIES. WHO DOESN’T LIKE PUPPIES.

We had walked maybe a mile. At this point we were somewhat into a neighborhood with some beautiful homes. The coach Claire was filming a video for a friend who was currently suffering from leukemia. At which point she pulled me over because I was limping.

I wasn’t mad at her or anyone else – more frustrated at the situation. I’ll finish this marathon any way it goes, and thought I was fine and really wanted to walk. I’m trying to do more stretching & work with this injury, but progress isn’t being made as fast as I like. Plus, that is compounded by having a desk job & sitting / not doing much walking all day.

But I guess I can’t do anything but keep stretching & keep going, right?

GO TEAM.

If you’d like to learn more about Team In Training, check out my fundraising page and / or donate to my marathon campaign, check out My Marathon Page.