i am officially on the backslope towards the race!

the internet connection at my in-laws was not working for some reason unbeknownst to me, so i was unable to write about saturday's run over the weekend.

somewhere about 16 miles, i couldn't help but think about what i was going to post. in my head, it sounded something like this: "i killed it. i stepped up and slayed it." about the 18th mile, though, i encountered a difficult hill that was far more traumatic than i thought. and then when i took me longer to reach 36th street than i had expected, i kind of broke down a little and walked for 45 seconds.

but in the end, i finished in 3 hours and 17 minutes (9:51), which was three minutes faster than i had reasonably hoped to finish. if i had run at my 18 mile pace (10:13), i would have finished over 7 minutes later than i did. this is progress, and it is far better than i had expected. and i had no pain like i did for the last couple miles of my 18 mile run.

shortly after i finished, i had a thought that i never wanted to run that far ever again, but after encouragement from my wife, mom, and in-laws, i am confident i'll feel as fine as anyone could after running 26 miles 385 yards. my mom, especially, helped. she told me that she had absolutely no doubt in her mind that i would finish the race. barring the bizarre, she's probably right.

*****

john and i set out to run 5 miles and stop at subway for lunch today. it ended up being almost 6 miles, and we finished around 53 minutes (i forgot to stop my timer), which is about 9:20 per mile. i am supposed to run 8 tomorrow evening, and then only 4 on thursday. my mileage is decreasing! i'm starting to conserve energy for the race.

*****

sarah has asked me to figure out how far i've run through the course of training thus far. she has (and i have, really) been struggling to grasp the sheer distances i've run. even though i was awake for, and can remember the entirety of, my 20 mile run on saturday, it's still difficult to really appreciate how far that is to run all at once. and combined with three mid-week runs of 5, 10, and 5 miles, i ran 40 miles last week. that is most of the way from my parents' house to my former dorm at michigan state, and hour's drive away.

so i just did a quick calculation including today, and i have run 368 miles since commencing my training on june 17. by the time i have run the race, i will have run 449.2 miles. that is the equivalent of running from my house to marquette, MI in the upper penninsula. it would put me about 60 miles shy of ottawa, ON, the national capital of canada. i'd be about 20 miles past madison, WI or 30 miles past of elizabethtown, KY, an easy mid-way point for my parents' drive down to visit us in meridian, MS.

it's hard to imagine.

robb.

10 miles. 93 minutes.

i cut a minute (!) off my first ten mile time. i took energy beforehand, and that seems to make all the difference. i felt great the whole way; i felt strong, and i felt comfortable. and i wasn't worn out at the end. my legs feel great.

i am taking bagels to work tomorrow morning. i think i will eat two. and it's birthday cake day. and it's jeans day.

robb.

this is a big week.

this week is my peak in training. i run my longest run on saturday, 20 miles. i started with a good 5 mile run at lunch yesterday with john. my legs felt great because i got out on the bike on sunday. i did an hour and a half through royal oak, birmingham, southfield, and berkley.

i have 10 miles tonight. i think i will replicate my first 10 mile run.

one thing that i was thinking about regarding my performance in last week's 9 mile run and last saturday's 14 mile run was that i didn't take energy *before* the run. i have no plans to take energy during the run tonight, but i will be eating a package of honey stinger chews beforehand to fuel my run. the times i've run the best, i've taken energy before starting, and then as needed during the course of the run.

i'm still a little intimidated by the 20 mile run, but my confidence is growing. since my legs felt great yesterday and feel good so far today, i am not as worried about it. we'll see how i feel tomorrow during my run, but maybe i'll survive it with a little less pain than i expect.

today's run will be the barometer.

robb.

ack.

google earth, my best friend in the whole wide world, is telling me that my plan tomorrow is actually for 15.5 miles, not 14 like i'd had in my mind. worse, i've been telling people all week that this is my plan. i can't back out now, so this is the plan i've hatched.

i will jog the first half-mile (from my house to cody park) and then walk to 12 mile and main street. this will put me a mile closer to work, a mere 14.5 miles from my destination. at that point i will stretch and relax, and then depart.

victory is mine.

robb.

msu v. ND.

michigan state is a considerably better team than notre dame.

if i were setting odds for the game, i'd think 8 or 9 points is reasonable. if i were picking straight up, i'd definitely take state. but i have a sneaking suspicion ND will make it much closer. i am simply unable to bring myself to believe that we will beat them that badly on saturday.

i don't know why. this is a team that needed a gift of a goalline turnover by SDSU to win the opener, at home. they also needed six turnovers from a bad UM team in order to win that game. UM and SDSU might be two of the worst teams in college football this year. they are both definitely bottom-third teams. (and it boggles my mind to honestly assess UM at that level. they are *way* worse than i thought they could possibly be this season.)

anyway, i take MSU straight-up, but i'll take ND with the points. i think the final score will be in the realm of 31-24, or maybe as close as 31-27. i'm pretty set on MSU scoring a special teams or defensive touchdown. and ringer definitely gets his two.

go green!

robb.

stiff legs/looking ahead.

i did 5 miles on tuesday in 42:42 (8:33). this is way faster than i need to be going at this point in my training. and i paid for it last night. not that i felt bad during my 9.23 mile run in 93 minutes (10:05), but my legs have been sore since i finished including all of today. i'm glad i only have 5 miles to run tonight. it was a little warm last night, and i was trying to run to a pulse of 140. it was very difficult, and part of the reason why i ran so slow. since i wasn't taking an water or energy for the run, though, i thought it would be better to go slow and conserve energy. i'm not proving anything to myself or anyone else by going faster.

and i don't want to overtrain. this is a step-back week, so why would i waste the rest my body needs by going fast?

*****

i got curious today and looked into possible 20 mile courses for next weekend in grand rapids. it turns out the distance is too far to simply embellish the runs i have done from my parents' house before. so i had to go in a largely different direction -- the unsettled east towards lowell.

this will be good as these roads are not often travelled, and they should be reasonably empty and safe on a saturday morning. it's so remote i couldn't use google earth, so i created a personalized map in google maps. (zoom in on the map to see the course. it's 20 miles exactly.)


View Larger Map



i'm already mentally preparing.

robb.

we don't know.

i got a late start on saturday morning. and it took me all of the three hours i expected it might. but i finished my 18 mile run, and i wasn't in too bad of shape, considering. my left thigh started to get a little sore, and then the muscle above the inside of my left ankle started to hurt. so the last two miles were pretty uncomfortable. but it really didn't hurt bad enough to stop running, and the one time i considered it, i reminded myself that i had 8 more miles to go to finish the race. i finished in 3:04 (10:13), which is a little slower than i had hoped. i think i sped up a little around 10 or 12 miles, and that made the difference.

when i hit the 17 mile marker, i envisioned it as the 25.2 mile point. the last mile was a lot easier, mentally, knowing that i was coming to the end of a grueling run. but it is sobering to think that in two weeks i will run my longest training run, and that i will still be 6.2 miles short of the total distance. that's an entire hour at my marathon pace. it is not insignificant, even if it is a fractional length of the race.

****

i was telling a friend at work whom i haven't seen in a while about my training. i showed him the schedule of long-runs, starting with 6 miles on june 20. and i was struck by how amazing this training has been. i told him that i had no idea what my body was capable of doing until i did it. i had no idea what i am capable of doing with a good plan and some applied effort. i'd like to believe i'm reasonably athletic, but i don't think there's anything special about me. i think this thought really applies to everyone. so i'll say it again.

we have no idea what we are capable of doing with a good plan and some applied effort.

i don't know if anyone other than my parents read this blog, but i think it's an important idea to put out into the world. it took me until i was 25 to realize i didn't have to be overweight. it took me until i was 25 to reach my point where i couldn't continue lying to myself about my weight, my appearance, and how i eat. it took me until i was 25 to overcome family influence and habit. it took me until i was 25 to have the discipline to do what is right without making excuses.

in that respect, i suppose this training is a microcosm of what i've already been able to accomplish in my life. at the same time, it feels bigger and greater. i'm never finished. there is always more i can do, always more i should do. now that i've established a new paradigm for living, i'm exploring the limit. i suspect i'm nowhere near my peak, and in that respect, i'm still at the beginning.

i have no idea what i'm capable of doing.

for that reason, i have to keep working. and it starts with finishing this marathon.

robb.

2008 course announced.

download the .pdf here.

disappointingly, due to the construction on I-75, i won't be able to run through mexicantown. but the bridge and tunnel border crossings are still there, as is the run around belle isle.

robb.

i can't eat enough.

i did 9 miles tonight after work. my pace wasn't extremely fast (1:24/9:17), but it was pretty reasonable considering i didn't really feel up to it all day. i felt fresh at the end of the run, but i didn't have to stop to walk at any point. so it was a new personal best for distance without stopping.

i also realized how hard it is to eat enough while training. i have 18 miles to run on saturday, so i'm trying to carbo-load for that. and yet, today i felt full all day, like i had eaten a lot, but i'm not sure i ate enough. i had 2 eggs, 2 pieces of low-calorie toast, some butter, and a bowl of cereal for breakfast. this is a lot, about 13 weight watchers points (which is roughly 1,300 calories). for lunch i had a footlong veggie sub at subway (9 points) with a bag of chips (4 points) for another 1,000 calories. according to weight watchers, i should be eating 22 to 27 points a day in order to lose weight.

running burns about 100 calories per mile. factoring in my weight and pace, according to one calculator i burned another 1,300 calories. that is another large meal. i had a brownie this afternoon, for about 300 calories, and a 390 calorie energy bar after my run. that means i had to eat another 500 calories tonight or risk eating too little and starving my body.

it's actually difficult. it can be fun eaing virtually whatever and whenever i want, but it can also be hard to keep eating when i'm used to stopping. (and i know it'll be hard to slow back down when i'm recovering from the race.)

i'm not as concerned about 18 miles on saturday, since i felt so fresh today and last saturday. i hope it's not too hard, because i have a line on tickets to the msu game saturday at noon. 5 miles at lunch tomorrow, and then rest and eating lots of rice on friday.

robb.

4 more miles today.

i ran 4 miles today. it was kind of easy, though i was feeling light-headed at the beginning. it comes with the territory of running at lunch.

i ran 12 miles with my friend, john, last saturday. he got the crazy-fool notion that he should run the capital city river run half-marathon in lansing on september 28. so we devised a plan for his last three weeks of training, and his longest pre-race run coincided with my 12-mile step-back week. we finished in 1:53 (9:25), taking energy at 6 miles. the course was mostly dirt roads, and included some cows and a few dogs as spectators. john lives between fowlerville and webberville, east of lansing, near I-96. it gets pretty remote less than a mile from the exit.

for the first time in a few weeks, i also got out on the bike sunday. it was great. i was out for about an hour and twenty minutes. i don't know exactly how long, because i stopped my watch at a red light and neglected to restart it. so it was frozen at 40 minutes for some time. it had to ahve been longer than my 14 mile ride, though, because i went farther north and had to backtrack to get west. i kind-of lost my way a little bit in beverly hills, too.

the end result, though, is that my legs feel fine, which is good. i have 9 miles tomorrow and 5 more on thursday before saturday's big 18 mile run. i am doing my long runs around 6am, since that is when the race will begin. i'll be crawling out of bed saturday around 5am or 5:30am. i have to be done before state's noon game against FAU.

robb.

19 miles of northern california.

in chronological order, here are the maps of the running i did on vacation. while i ended up skipping my 16 mile run, i am pretty pleased that i ran 19 miles during the week long vacation.


monday, 25 august.


wednesday, 27 august:



thursday, 28 august:



saturday, 30 august:



robb.

a personal best.

i did an 8 mile run today. this is noteworthy because it's the longest i've ever run without stopping to walk, whether for traffic or for energy and hydration or for any other reason. for this alone i'd be very proud, but i guess the hills in san francisco did me well, because i also ran at an 8:42 pace for a total time of 67 minutes. this is very fast for me for this distance, and my pulse was pretty manageable the whole time. i wasn't strictly at 150bpm, so i will have to take it easy during tomorrow's 5 mile run, but i wasn't at 170 most of the way, either.

this was my course:



















google earth on sarah's laptop was on the fritz while we were in california, so i wasn't able to chart my running courses there. i will probably do so retroactively and post them tomorrow (or, at least, soon).

i am running 12 miles saturday, and then 18 miles comes down like a hammer on the 13th.

robb.

a slight adjustment.

i decided i won't do my 16 mile run. i would rather focus on running the week 12 schedule including a 12 mile run this weekend than try to force in a 16 mile run some time while still trying to "step back" this week. running near 40 miles (16 + 12 + 17 scheduled mid-week miles = 43 miles) in a week is not a step back for me, but more aggressive than my schedule calls for at any point during training.

so while i'm disappointed i won't be running to work this week, it'll be a good rest for my legs for the 18 mile run i'm scheduled to do on september 13.

i'm doing 4 miles at lunch today.

robb.