The whole story

So, I ran the Honolulu Marathon last Sunday, 12/11/11.

It was quite the experience. I do think choosing such an "interesting" first marathon was probably a good idea, because I am still in nothing approaching actual marathon shape and it took me a long time to finish - eight hours, 42 minutes and change - and so at least I had stuff to look at during that time. I love Chicago, but suppose I did that marathon and had a similar physical result - limping along at mile 24, instead of coming up Diamond Head and being able to look out over a shimmering Pacific Ocean, I would have been staggering up Michigan Avenue - and not the cool part of Michigan Avenue either. (Mile 24 of the Chicago Marathon is on South Michigan a bit north of 31st Street.)

Either way, the marathon was really a tale of two halves. I felt pretty good for most of the first 13 miles - even going up Diamond Head around mile 8 didn't pose much of a problem. Here were my times for the first 13 miles:

Mile 1: 16:49
Mile 2: 16:37
Mile 3: 17:53
Mile 4: 27:58 (this time was more like Mile 3, but I lost at least ten minutes waiting for a bathroom)
Mile 5: 14:58
Mile 6: 14:29
Mile 7: 22:27 (again I lost at least five minutes in a bathroom line)
Mile 8: 15:04
Mile 9: 13:57
Mile 10: 14:42
Mile 11: 16:39
Mile 12: 16:09
Mile 13: 17:41

If you could pretend the 15 minutes or so of bathroom waiting didn't exist, I did the half in about 3.5 hours - by no means speedy, of course, although those 16 and 17-minute miles are a couple minutes slower than what I can do, but I was trying to pace myself for the second half.

Not that it ended up mattering. Pretty soon after the halfway point, I started tiring and pretty soon gave up on running almost entirely. Here's the rest:

Mile 14: 24:09 (this did include another short bathroom wait)
Mile 15: 19:55
Mile 16: 21:52
Mile 17: 21:01
Mile 18: 23:53
Mile 19: 17:51
Mile 20: 22:37
Mile 21: 23:45
Mile 22: 31:19
Mile 23: 23:54
Mile 24: 22:57
Mile 25: 21:13
Mile 26: 18:45
Final 0.2: 4:02

A couple things probably do jump out here - the 17:51 on mile 19, the 31:19 on mile 22, and the 18:45 on mile 26. During mile 19, a brief rainstorm sprang up; I gamely attempted to run a little more in the hope, I guess, that I could make it pass faster, but it wasn't long before I gave up. It's interesting how much faster a mile goes with even a brief amount of running, though. Mile 22, my right knee had started to hurt to the point that I was limping significantly, and so we stopped at the medical tent to get it iced for almost ten minutes. As for the 18:45 on mile 26, that was aided by the downhill off Diamond Head (and, probably, the fact that I could picture the finish at that point).

The marathon was physically exhausting, to be sure. As I said, my knee started hurting quite a bit on the last few miles, and by halfway through I had already pretty much exhausted my ability to run. In addition, I did the entire thing on sore feet, which for whatever reason were really hurt by my Saturday morning combination of two-mile warmup run with the T2 group (it probably did not help that the whole thing was done on sidewalks, which I had sworn off in May as too punishing on the feet and knees) followed by a two-mile round-trip walk from the hotel to the Hawaii Convention Center to pick up my packet (including bib and timing chip) at the marathon expo. One of the two probably would not have been fatal, but doing both in fairly quick succession really wore my feet out. By mile 4 on Sunday I was already commenting to one of the other T2 marathoners who was near the back of the pack with me that I hoped I hadn't ended up with a stress fracture. (Time will still tell but my feet do seem to be improved as I write this, on Wednesday, over Monday and Tuesday's condition.)

But even more so, it was mentally exhausting. To some extent this came from the physical exhaustion - once I started walking, the sheer amount of time left really became daunting. (At three miles an hour - which I wasn't even averaging - the last thirteen miles would have taken well over four hours, an insane amount of time to think about just walking. As it is, the back half of the marathon - or more accurately the final 13.2 - took me just a couple minutes shy of five hours to complete. Even factoring out the breaks it was still around 4:45, which is a huge chunk of time. It probably didn't help that the entire portion of the course between miles 11 and 22 was an out-and-back from the end of the H-1 freeway to the Hawaii Kai neighborhood and then back to the H-1. This enables you to see the mile markers on the opposite side of the road and realize exactly how far you are from being back to the same point, only going the other way. In addition, the main T2 cheer station was set up at the underpass where H-1 concludes since it was the 11-mile mark on one side and the 22-mile mark on the other - this meant I briefly got to see Alma at the 11-mile mark, which was nice. But as soon as I ran back onto the course, I immediately started thinking about how I wouldn't see her again until I did another 11 miles, i.e. the full distance I had already done. I would have been in good shape if this were a half-marathon. But of course it wasn't.

By mile 18, walking at not much more than a 2.5-mph pace down Kalanianaole Highway, I was starting to lose it - choking back tears, wondering why I had signed up for this and if I could just quit. Sheer embarrassment - I would have been the only T2er to drop out had I done so - was keeping me going, but only just barely (the fact that I have no idea how I would have even gotten off the course at that point also helped). When the rain swooped in heavily, if briefly, on mile 19, I wasn't feeling any better, but just after that I was caught by Kerry, one of the coaches from the Los Angeles chapter of T2 who was performing the role of sweeper - basically walking in the course to make sure everyone was finishing. I had seen him a couple miles earlier and already was feeling pessimistic, but this time I just outright started crying when he asked how I was doing. It was kind of embarrassing, but I couldn't really help it at this point (it turned out, unsurprisingly, that I was hardly the first person he'd seen break down during a Honolulu Marathon). With roughly seven miles to go, he promised to walk me the whole way in.

And thank God he did, because I don't know if I could have made it alone. I was often alone during my training runs - we started in pace groups, but on the longer runs these tended to splinter and, anyway, once the Chicago Marathon was over and the group was much smaller, there wasn't always someone in my usual pace group there on the training day. My longest training run, the 18-miler I did on November 19, was done alone, but I had run most of that path before, certainly on the back end, and was familiar with the surroundings. While Hawaii was nice to look at, it's a bit more mentally challenging when the only way you really know where you are is seeing the actual mile signs. (Even with much of the course being an out-and-back, which helps, you're just not familiar enough the first time to have a good sense for where the miles are, which tends to make them seem longer.) With Kerry walking next to me, I had someone to talk to, to pump me up a little and, perhaps most crucially, to tell the people at the 22-mile cheer station not to leave yet. Alma told me later that - obviously - she was the last one there, and the bus was preparing to leave with or without her. Had she left and I'd gotten to 22 to find no one, that would have been brutal. But had she stayed and been stranded - short of having to either call a cab to somehow find its way through traffic to this point or walk the last 4.2 miles with me on one ACL - I would have felt so guilty that I don't know what I would have done. As it was I started crying again. Alma told me she would support whatever I wanted to do, and I told her I had to finish.

By this point, as I've said, my knee was quite sore, and we stopped at the medical tent around the corner where they iced the knee for a few minutes. When we restarted, the knee felt good for a bit... until the ice wore off. At this point I was basically just limping in anyway, although having to go back over Diamond Head in this condition seemed unappetizing. But it actually wasn't that bad, and we coasted down it as mentioned earlier. Entering Kapiolani Park, I knew there was basically nothing that could stop me now, and I even somehow managed, perhaps on sheer adrenaline, to break into a pain-free jog for the last 30 yards or so, crossing the finish line at, officially, 8:42:12. (My watch says 8:42:33 but obviously I didn't stop it the second I crossed the line.)

Immensely grateful, I hugged Kerry and then we made our way through the park - in my case on legs that were barely still functioning and felt like they had been poured in concrete - to the tent where I picked up my finisher's t-shirt and medal. (They apparently only offer these for the first nine hours, so I just made it.) Then I limped over to Hula's Bar, site of the post-race party. Walking across the last stretch of grass before Kapahulu Avenue, I could see the other runners, coaches and supporters already hanging out on the second floor - and I cried again, just a tiny bit, this time not from frustration but from happiness and relief.

So that was the marathon. It was long, it was tough, it might have beaten me if I hadn't had support. But then, if I hadn't had support, I probably wouldn't have been there in the first place. I had a goal - break nine hours (so as to get a shirt and medal) or, somewhat facetiously, finish in less time than the flight from O'Hare to Honolulu took (nine hours, 20 minutes) - and I set it. I also didn't die of heat stroke (the weather was pretty favorable, and it only got sunny and hot on the last six miles, at which point I did get a small sunburn on the left side of my face), nor did I ever collapse, throw up, or anything. If my feet turn out to be fine I'll have gotten out of this with really no significant damage to speak of, although that is an open question right now. But either way, I made it, and if nothing else, I can say I did it once.

And yet, strangely, I find myself tempted not to stop there. As I've said to a couple people, and suggested on Facebook, I find myself a bit torn between two sides - the "Well, now I never have to do that again" side and the "I can't wait to do that again" side. I may have spent hours on the course hating it and wanting to quit at any opportunity, but as soon as I crossed the finish line a switch flipped from "This SUCKS" to "That RULED!" I'm hardly revising history - I think this entry tells the tale of how brutal things were for a while there - but there's such a sense of accomplishment that goes with finishing that it fuels a desire to run more, just so you can finish them, too.

The current plan, then, I think is this: first things first, I need to make sure my feet are okay. If they still hurt in a few days I'll probably need to check in with an orthopedist. But let's assume that they are, or at least that they eventually heal and I'm not told "Do not ever run long distances again under any circumstances." I need to lose weight - as it stands right now, at least 30 pounds, and possibly, if I were really out to get into major running shape (like four-hour marathon running shape), as many as 50. (Which would take me down to weights not seen since about my freshman year of high school.) Once I've done that, I can try to start running longer distances again and see how I take it. And if it seems like I can handle it, then maybe I start to run some marathons.

Now, maybe I don't. It wouldn't be the first plan I felt good about but never ended up following through on. But I need to lose weight and exercise more anyway, so it's not that much of a stretch, and having a real target attached to those things might help make them more achievable. At any rate, it's something to think about for now, and we'll see what happens later. But if I never run another one, well, at least I finished one.

T minus six weeks

It's Saturday, October 29; the Honolulu Marathon is Sunday, December 11, which means we're six weeks away. Yikes.

Positives

* I don't appear to have any actual injuries; I'm sore following today's run, of course, but that's just going to happen. I still have shin splints, I think, but I didn't notice them while running today, so that's good.

* Today I ran 14 miles, more than a half marathon.

Negatives

* 14 miles is, to date, the longest I've run - and let's be real, I didn't come anywhere close to running the whole thing.

For that matter, I was supposed to do 15 miles and it just wasn't happening. I was doing all right through the first... ten, maybe? But over the last few miles I hit a massive wall, and then the wall fell on me, and then the entire building collapsed. I brought more food than usual so I don't know if it's attributable just to that - although I've been home about an hour and I am starving - or if it's just a matter of my muscles being like "Yeah, we think you've used us enough today." My quads started actively cramping a bit around mile 11, and I walked most of the last four miles, including absolutely all of the last two. I tried a few times to break into a light jog, but my legs weren't having it; over the last mile I couldn't even really walk faster.

So I finished 14 miles in 3:56. That's... okay, I guess. Over 26.2 miles that comes out to around 7:25, which isn't great but at least puts me ahead of that 100-year-old guy. All told it breaks down to almost 17 minutes a mile.

But here's the thing. That's obviously an average. And if I hit a massive wall during the actual marathon, to the point where I simply cannot do anything but walk, it is entirely likely that I will do much worse than even that.

Here were my mile times for today:

Mile 1: 13:21

Mile 2: 17:29

Mile 3: 15:34

Mile 4: 14:21

Mile 5: 16:44

Mile 6: 14:52

Mile 7: 15:17

Mile 8: 14:29

Mile 9: 14:09

Mile 10: 16:41

Mile 11: 18:32

Mile 12: 20:31

Mile 13: 22:37

Mile 14: 21:21

We're told to keep the clock running during things like bathroom stops, which accounts for some of the higher earlier totals (I definitely stopped during miles 2, 3, and 5). Factoring out the bathroom, I was pretty well on my training pace - around 14:30 - until the last few miles. But if during the actual marathon I get to a point where the absolute best I could possibly do is 20 minutes a mile, and I still have twelve miles to go at that point... then we're looking at eight hours, best case. That's assuming I could even walk twelve more miles; I barely got through the last two today.

There's still some time, of course, but I need a better showing at the final pre-marathon long run in three weeks. I'm scheduled to do 18 that day; if I can manage to strengthen my legs in the next couple of weeks, maybe it'll happen. I mean, I can probably finish 18 if I had to. But I'd sure like to get as close as possible to that number without reaching a point where I can barely even walk the rest of the distance. Dragging myself over a full third of the marathon course in 80-degree temperatures is not going to be my idea of a good time come December 11.

Back on the horse

Between an ear infection, my wedding and honeymoon, and then a case of bronchitis, I missed five out of six weeks right as the mileage was really starting to ramp up in the training program, which of course is unfortunate. Two weekends ago I did seven miles and it wasn't that bad; this past weekend I did 12 miles and it was that bad. Although actually, it's Monday now and the overt soreness is already way down, so that's probably a good sign. The real key is going to be doing good maintenance runs during the week - I haven't really done any of those since July, which is surely part of the problem. Now that we're settled in Lake County, it should hopefully be easier to find the time if not necessarily the space. I haven't decided yet whether to just try to do them on a treadmill or if I want to run around the cul-de-sacs of the apartment complex.

The 12 miles took about three hours and ten minutes. Considering how much walking I did in the last three miles or so, a pace of just under four miles an hour is actually pretty good. The first six miles, from Foster down to Chicago Avenue, where I turned around, weren't that bad. It was the second six, and especially the last four, that were really rough. But hey, I still finished a distance that's nearly half a marathon!

Long run 4: 6 miles

Both of my maintenance runs were fairly short this week. Monday was July 4th, and I didn't want to be out much longer than I had to, so I stopped at 32 minutes. On Wednesday, my right knee started hurting maybe 2/3 of the way through the run, and I stopped right on the 30-minute dot. I proceeded to spend the next two days icing my knee, rubbing Bio-Freeze on it, and trying to avoid stairs. I skipped going to the lab on Friday because the elevator was out and I did not think I could make it up nine flights of stairs at least twice with my knee how it was.

This morning I ran six miles and my knee did not hurt once.

A very similar thing happened last week, you may recall; my ankle - also the right one - hurt on Friday night and Saturday morning, but during the actual run it didn't hurt once. I mentioned these events to the physical therapist at the end of the run and she was somewhat mystified. I don't know how to explain it - last week I thought maybe the stability of the shoes cushioned the ankle in a way that my normal walking shoes don't, but I don't think that explains the knee, especially when the knee problem first appeared during a run. Do the long runs give me a surge of adrenaline that lowers pain? Does my brain just know I'm planning to run through the pain and does what it can to prevent it from flaring? My knee (technically just to the lower left of it) still hurts a bit if I press on it, about as much as it has all week, but it didn't come up at any point during a six-mile run when I would have had the force of landing shooting up through it hundreds or thousands of times. I don't know. More ice for it, I guess, and hopefully it continues to be only a minor nuisance during the week and not on Saturdays.

The six miles was... I mean, I can't call it easy, I guess, but it was a lot easier than I thought. Maybe this stands in comparison to last week - right now (10:30, around an hour after I finished) it's 83 degrees with a heat index of 83. Last week at this time it was 87 with a heat index of 98. So that's just a slight difference, yeah? The first two miles - down to the place we turned around the last two weeks - were pretty easy. The next two - down to this week's turnaround at Diversey, and back - weren't that bad either. The last two were the worst, but even they really weren't that bad. I started to feel my stomach grumbling around the last mile but had come prepared with an extra gel pack, which helped push me through.

All that and I even ran a little faster this week - the only person I could sensibly be paired with was in the 13:00 pace group, so we ran about 13:30 to split the difference. Total time was 1:25:42, but that includes about a five-minute stop at the three-mile turnaround to hit the bathroom and get some extra water, so that's about 1:21:00 total which is a perfect 13:30 mile. About an hour of it was actually running, with the walk intervals taking up about 20 minutes.

Looking at my socks, shoes, and even the lower part of my shorts, I apparently got covered in dust/dirt at some point during the run. Not sure how exactly that happened, although I guess it could just be the result of mostly running on the dirt/gravel track next to the path instead of on the path (a mite softer on the legs). It hasn't happened before, but in previous weeks the ground has been a little wetter. Whatever.

Next week: seven miles. Once again, as with this week, it will be the farthest I've ever run.

Long run 3: 5 miles

When I crossed the "finish line" today, the coach asked me how I felt. "Horrible!" I said, and although I said it light-heartedly, I really wasn't being ironic. I felt pretty horrible.

To be fair to me, there were two extenuating circumstances. The (I think) smaller one was that I didn't get my full maintenance running in this week. Wednesday there just wasn't time, and when I went to make it up on Thursday I only got in ten minutes before a thunderstorm hit. Granted, this is largely my fault - I wouldn't have had to worry about the thunderstorm had I successfully gotten up and done the run Thursday morning like I initially planned before, predictably I suppose, flaking out - but nevertheless. I wore down pretty severely over the final mile of today's run, which could be due to the lack of full maintenance running or could just be because five miles is the most I've ever run (well, I ran 54 minutes of it and walked 18; that's probably four miles and change of running and somewhere between 0.75 and one mile walking, but at any rate it's more combined than I've done before since the 4 miles last week was done at the same interval setting of 3:1), and so I broke down after hitting four, the number I'd successfully done last week without feeling too bad.

Or, it could be because it was FUCKING hot out. I just checked the temperature - 87 with a heat index of 98, according to the Weather Channel. Um, gah. Granted, it's 10:30 right now and I finished around 9:20, but it was already quite hot when we started and only got hotter, and the humidity certainly didn't help. My hat was heavy with sweat by the end; my shirt was sticking to me everywhere; etc. I went through almost two quarts of water, then pounded a Gatorade as soon as I got home. I don't know what it takes to lose multiple pounds through sweating, but if you told me I had, I certainly wouldn't be surprised. At least this time I had the foresight to put sunblock on, because it was richly needed.

Still, I finished five miles without dying even though the morning was about as hot as they're likely to come, so that's a positive. And my right ankle, which started hurting last night when I put weight on it and was still giving me some problems when I got up this morning, actually did not hurt during the run, which was a pleasant surprise (probably has to do with the stability of the shoes). I also had very minimal problems with the left foot - there was brief, partial numbness somewhere between three and four miles, but it passed fairly quickly rather than lingering. If I can avoid having to shell out another 100-150 bucks for new shoes and the tradeoff is two minutes of numbness for every five miles - even if it is the shoes, which the fairly minimal numbness makes me think it might not be - that'd be okay, I think. I'll try rolling out the tendons some more this week and see if things improve further.

Begin week three

Four laps at the park tonight, so 2.67 miles in 37:35, for about a 14-minute-mile pace. I managed to do the whole thing without my left foot going numb, which is the good news. The bad news - not that bad, but still - is that I don't know exactly why it didn't. The reason for that is that I took two ideas suggested on Saturday and implemented both of them. One, suggested by the coach, was using the massage ball on the bottom of my foot to "roll out the tendons," which I did over the weekend. The other, suggested by the other member of my pace group, was adding a minute to my running interval - so I did 4:2 instead of 4:1, running 25:35 of my total time and walking the remaining 12 minutes. Walking has tended to alleviate the numbness when it's come up, and the extra minute did suffice to stave it off the entire time - or, of course, maybe it was the tendon stuff. I think I'll try doing 4:1 again on Wednesday while still using the massage ball tonight and tomorrow and seeing what the results are.

Long run 2: 4 miles

The long run wasn't too bad today. I ran with another member of the group - they like you to run in pairs if you can - and at 14 minutes a mile and just a 3:1 interval, it was about as "leisurely" as running four miles can be, which is to say not especially. But I completed it in 57:30 without much difficulty - the only real hiccup was that on the back half my left foot started getting numb again, and at some point I got a bit of a stinger in my left little toe area, and had to walk one of the three-minute intervals instead of running it just for a little respite. But even with that in mind it wasn't too terrible. The coach suggested using a massage ball on the bottom of my foot to try to roll out the tendons as that could be the problem; I thought my shoe was pretty loose today but it didn't stop the foot from going numb, so presumably that's not it. The running at all is probably the main effect, as we would say in experimental psychology, but there's probably an interaction effect - just what from is not yet clear.

Five miles next week. Probably going to have to start wearing sunblock once the runs go over an hour.

Catching up

Forgot to post after last night's maintenance run, so let's get it out of the way: four 0.66-mile loops in the park, 35 minutes. That's about 13:15 a mile, which is closer to what my pace should be, at least for training purposes, or at least for right now.

For the second run in a row, I had the odd experience of my left foot getting a bit numb near the end of the run. This is a bit concerning, although also a bit strange because it's not like this is the first two times I've gone running - it didn't happen last Saturday, for instance, and I covered the most distance that day, although the numbness stops when I switch to a walk and I probably spent more total time walking that day, though not that much more. I tried loosening the laces on my left shoe but it didn't seem to do much, although maybe they could be loosened more. It's also possible it's some sort of stretching issue. Either way I'll ask the coach what she thinks this Saturday, because I don't think I can run 20+ miles on one numb foot.

Begin week two

Since I was put into the 3:1 pace group, I opted to reduce my maintenance run from the 5:1 I had tried last Wednesday to a 4:1 instead. It was okay, I guess, but there really is nothing like starting to run to make you realize just how out of shape you are. As usual, stopping certainly felt pretty awesome.

I traced a 0.66-mile loop around Peterson Park, then ran it four times. Each loop took about eight minutes, putting me on a 12-minute-mile pace - so I guess I could have run it appreciably slower if I wanted, with my pace group being 14-minute miles, but whatever. Running a little faster on the weekdays will presumably just make the long Saturday runs easier. Total distance, including the piece of running and walking back towards the house from the park to finish the last 4:1 interval, was about 2.87 miles; total time was just under 35 minutes.

12 miles an hour = about 5 hours and 15 minutes over marathon distance. But I ran less than 3 miles - only about 11% of a marathon - and was quite ready to finish, so there's a long way to go before I can really feel confident that I could maintain anything resembling that speed over an entire course, obviously.

Long run 1: 3 miles

Every Saturday morning we have the "long run" with the entire training group, coaches, and all that. Most weeks it's at Foster Avenue Beach at 8 am, as it was today, though I got there about 45 minutes early to make sure I knew where everything was, to find parking (which turned out to be plentiful), and to discuss with the coach how to operate my running watch (they had sent out instructions but I tend to learn better hands-on).

Today's run determined what pace groups we would get placed in for future runs. I finished the three miles - some running, some walking, a quick bathroom break around mile 2 - in 38:07, putting me in the 14:00 pace group, meaning that in future weeks I'll be expected to target 14-minute miles. This sounds doable enough - I hesitate to say "easy" since the mileage climbs pretty steadily. Four miles next week, ten miles by July 30, and as high as 26 miles on November 19 (three weeks before the actual marathon - gotta prove you can finish that distance, I guess). Now, at 14-minute miles it would take me six hours to finish a marathon, but (a) the training pace is intentionally lower than the race pace and (b) hopefully I can pick it up anyway.

The shortest 60 seconds of your life

I actually made it through a true maintenance run session today - 30 minutes, alternation between a five-minute jog and one minute of walking. I'd like to say it got easier as it went along but I think I'd probably be lying - I did get a bit of a side stitch a couple minutes in and managed to push through it, and I probably felt my best somewhere around the midway point, but when I was done I was so ready to be done. I came back in the house and inhaled a Gatorade, which I don't think had ever tasted better in my life.

One thing interval training does is cast a light on the way our brain perceives time differently in different situations. The five minutes of running pretty much feels like forever, especially the first couple. I would check my watch hoping to see a number that indicated I was close to being able to stop, only to see that I'd only been jogging for about 90 seconds. Even more so, the walk interval is, as I put in the post title, the shortest 60 seconds of your entire life. It feels like about 20 seconds. I would watch the timer tick over the five-minute mark, slow to a walk, breathe, then look back down and see that the walk break was already half over. It was kind of insane. On Monday I gave up on trying to hold to a single minute for just that reason; today I decided not to cheat and was able to make it all the way. This, of course, is a good sign, with the first long run looming on Saturday morning.

Not sure of the distance today. I just ran to the end of the east-west street up the block and back a few times; MapMyRun has that at 0.8 miles out and back, and I did it either three or four times. Since my pace is around ten minutes per mile and I ran a total of 25 minutes, I probably did three total times out and back for 2.4 miles, plus a smidge extra for the 5 minutes of walking. Saturday's run is three miles. Honestly, I'm pretty sure I can run myself into cardiovascular shape; the real question is (a) whether my legs hold up and (b) whether I can do the right kind of eating and all that. My legs felt pretty good the last couple of days compared to how they felt after my run on the previous Monday, when they hurt basically all week; some of that is probably getting the shoe situation fixed up and some of it is probably better stretching, but either way that hopefully bodes well for the future. I could feel my shin splints today and I'm about to ice them but it's not the kind of pain it was a year ago when I tried running and just couldn't. I also have avoided running on cement sidewalks the last two times out, in favor of asphalt, which has a bit more give and so is better on the knees. I think it's been noticeable. As for eating, I tried the tactic of eating shortly before the run today and it might have helped a bit. I also probably need to hydrate more consistently throughout the day, although it tends to be annoying to do so because so much of it comes right back out and I hate going to the bathroom every 20 minutes like I'm eighty years old. Oh well.

Begin week one

Saturday was the initial training meeting where we met the coaches, met the other runners (there's a couple dozen and I'm actually not the most out of shape! Although I'm probably the second-most out of shape) and got some info. The first actual long run is this coming Saturday, which means today was the first official "maintenance run." Of course, at the moment I'm not exactly maintaining anything. I did a total of 20 minutes running and 10 minutes walking - we're supposed to do 30-45 minutes of pure interval work which at 30 minutes should be more like 25 minutes of running, but give me a break, it's my first one. I did five minutes, then walked one, then ran five, then walked one, then ran five, then walked three, then ran five, and finally walked five. Total distance covered: 2.43 miles, of which about 2 was running. So while the total distance was less than last time, at least I devoted much more time to the running itself. And I seem to be holding a decent 10-minute mile pace, at least over the course of the full run. Let's see how things go on Wednesday for the second maintenance run; last week I was too sore and blistered to go again, but new technical socks and insoles have fixed that problem (at least for the time being) so the only question will be how my muscles feel. Prediction: they don't feel that great.

Good news, bad news

Good news: I'm jump-starting this blog as a chronicle of my attempt to run the Honolulu Marathon on December 11, 2011. That also means a name change; I'm going with "The Marathon Diaries" for now.

Bad news: more boring blogging from me!

So, the good news. Training starts June 11. I didn't want to go in completely cold so I went out jogging today when I got home from work; the temperature had dropped into the high 80s from a high of 93, and it was still relatively steamy when I stepped outside, but hey, Honolulu will be warm, right? (Although the marathon starts around 5 am specifically to deal with that fact.)

On the training page they say to run 30-45 minutes on Mondays and Wednesdays, do 40 minutes or so of no-impact cross-training on Tuesdays and Thursdays, rest on Friday, and then do the big run with the class on Saturday. (Sundays is more cross-training.) So, I figured, let's see if I can run anything like that on the first try.

Well, not quite. I was outside for 46:30 total, in the following breakdowns:

0:00-5:00: brisk walk, 0.33 mi
5:00-12:00: jogging, 0.75 mi
12:00-22:00: walking, 0.5 mi
22:00-30:00: jogging, 0.78 mi
30:00-40:00: walking, 0.5 mi
40:00-46:30: jogging, 0.66 mi

So 21:30 of jogging (though not consecutively) and 25:00 of walking. About 3.5 miles total, with about 2.2 of that coming from the jogging. (So I only need to do that 12 more times!) Could be worse, and actually the jogging felt like it was getting easier as I would start up again each time. Well, the cardiovascular part of it did. The part that did not makes up the real bad news...

I seem to have acquired a blister. Maybe midway through I could feel an irritation on the left bottom side of my right foot, apparently where it was rubbing against the edge of the insole. I tried to adjust this with no success and ended up soldiering through it to get home, but upon taking my shoe off I was greeted with a red spot of quite tender skin that, if it can't already be called a blister, certainly looks destined to be one. Now I have no idea what to do. I know I shouldn't run again, even in different shoes, until it heals - but how long is that going to be? And can I walk around much at all? I guess I can have Alma pick me up some of those moleskin doughnuts or something. But, this kind of sucks. And what does this mean for the future? I guess once the blister heals I can wear moleskin or something until the shoes are more broken in - I had to wear moleskin on the backs of my ankles for several weeks with the walking shoes I got last summer - but hopefully this is not the start of any serious trend that's going to put a massive crimp in my marathon plans before they've really even started.