4:39.

i ran today, and i finished. i am overjoyed. i completed a 26 mile 385 yard race.

i had hoped to finish in 4:22, but i was 16 minutes shy of that. apparently john and i ran an average of 8:12 miles from mile 14 to mile 18. we had absolutely no intention of running that fast, and it haunted us both. i had to walk a little on belle isle. and then i had to walk a little more around 21 miles. and i pretty much walked almost all the way from mile 22 to mile 25. but i finished the last 1.2 miles on the run. everything hurt. it started with my quadriceps, and then it moved to my feet. my hamstrings started to tighten up, and i even got a bit of a stomach ache.

around mile 25.5, my friend, dave, from church showed up on the sidelines to cheer me on. he also greeted me in the finish area to congratulate me. he finished in an amazing 3:48. his excitement for me at the end really helped me along to the finish.

and right after i finished, my wife called my name. i was so happy to see her and so overwhelmed with the emotion of actually finishing a marathon that i ran straight to her and gave her a kiss through the fence. i think that made my day.

i feel bad, though, because john really found some pain around mile 18. he had been trailing me but within eyesight for about a mile, but i forgot to keep track of him for another mile, and he fell off from me. i didn't see him again, and i was afraid he had passed me without me noticing. but he was shortly behind me, finishing in 4:46.

we were both in pain. it took me a long time to make it to the car. we would walk and stop. i had to sit down a lot. john told me that he would walk about 20 steps and then sit down. at this point in the day, after largely laying around on the couch, i am feeling much better. i'm still quite sore, but it doesn't hurt to move, stand up, sit down, and i'm not getting any spontaneous cramps.

i'd also like to congratulate amy chu, another co-worker, who finished in 4:29, and jamie shinko, another church friend who ran the third leg in the relay. i assume she finished and feels amazing about it. she usually doesn't run much farther than 2 miles, so to run a 6 mile leg was quite an accomplishment for her. it reminds me of the first (and only) competetive 10k i ran. previous to that, i was working really hard to run 3 miles consistently.

i also ran into a former colleague, erez. he called out, "is it you?" to me as he was running past. i think i have lost a fair amount of weight since the last time i saw him. this was around the 4:10 mark. he said he was having knee pain and should have finished 90 minutes earlier. but i was glad he didn't so that we had a chance to see each other again.

so congratulations to john, dave, amy, jamie, and erez. and for whomever is reading this, thanks for following my path to this race.

robb.

GREAT weather (how embarrassing).

it looks like the weather is going to be phenomenal on sunday. the overnight low is 45, and the high is 62, meaning the bulk of the race will be in the mid 50s. partly cloudy, and chance of rain is 20%. this is perfect running weather.

*****

why 6053? because it's my bib number. or so i thought.

i guess i had the dumb when i created this blog, because i checked my registration email, and it clearly says my bib number is 6350. how i got 6053 is kind of beyond me. but i'm glad i didn't get custom sunglasses with 6053 etched in the lenses.

*****

i finished my last training run today at lunch. we did a very easy 2 miles. now i wait (and eat) until sunday morning.

you can follow my progress with either my last name (zimmerman) or my bib number (6350) at http://www.detroitmarathon.com.

robb.

robb.

6 days (carb up).

i woke up this morning and had a big bowl of brown rice with soy sauce and green chili chutney. (for the uninitiated, green chili chutney is a very spicy green chili paste used in indian cooking. it rivals sriracha vietnamese hot sauce for its flavor and hotness.) i will be eating a metric shit ton of rice and pasta this week, in a time-honored practice called "carbo-loading."

essentially, i am trying to cram as much carbohydrate energy into my body as possible so that i can be stored in my muscles as glycogen. the more glycogen, the farther i can run without pain. it's probably time for me to re-read the chapter in "martahon" about the week before the race. that is where i'm drawing this wisdom from.


i did another fast, compact 15 miles on the bike yesterday. every good week of training was preceed by a sunday bike ride.

the weather this weekend is going to be absolutely amazing. saturday is sunny with a high of 55. we're going to see msu v. osu in east lansing. it will be cool and comfortable pre-game, and get a comfortably fall chilly as the game wears on. sunday is partly cloudy and high of 57 with a 10% chance of rain. the temperature at race start will be in the low 40s. this is about perfect running weather. i can wear shorts and a longsleeve shirt for the whole race without much issues at either end.

and i will keep telling myself, "i can do it, i can do it, i can do it."

robb.

no rest for the weary.

i went running with my friend, dave, from church. the last time i ran with dave was in july, when i first ran 10 miles. it was a difficult run for me, and we finished in 1:45, which is a 10:18 pace. we only ran 8 miles today, but his watch charted us at a 9:07 pace, with our fastest mile at 8:40 (mile 7) and the slowest at 9:28. our last two miles were 8:40 and 8:45 pace.

it's funny because we agreed beforehand to go slow. i thought we were going closer to 10:00, but it felt fine, so we stuck with it. i don't think i'll go that fast for the race. but it seems increasingly realistic to beat a 10:00 pace. dave is hoping to beat 4 hours, which is close to 9:00 per mile. (9:00 works out to 3:55:48.) if i run at my 20 mile pace, i'll finish in 4:17:28.

my left arch is a little sore, but i'm going to ice it for the rest of the morning. (and by that, i mean i'll alternate 20 minutes ice, 20 minutes without. i will not be all ice, all the time for another hour.) i took last thursday off to give it rest. now that i know it's a real issue, hopefully all i need to do is ice it, and it won't be a problem for the race.

8 more days. i'm starting to get restless. i can really feel the difference in the decreased mileage the last two weeks. i have a lot of extra energy, and i'm getting very motivated for the race. i'm going to be a little ball of energy next week. we're going to msu v. osu in east lansing, so in addition to the game excitement, i'll be completely coiled for the race, too.

8 more days. 8 more miles.

robb.

running in the cold.

i think the jetstream has a calendar. in the week preceding october 1, the high temperatures were 79, 75, 68, 72, 63, 62. since october 1, the high temperatures have been 54, 56, 53, 55, 59, 58. considering that my 12 mile run was up north on saturday morning (low of 32), i had to switch very quickly from running in a t-shirt and sweating on 30th to running in long sleeves and still being very chilled.

i did a fair amount of running last winter in sub-freezing, snow on the ground and ice on the sidewalks conditions. i have a cross-country skiing jacket that is great for running in these conditions. but i don't remember having so many issues with keeping comfortable in these conditions in the past.

my sister-in-law got me a wonderful longsleeve running shirt last christmas, and as soon as i signed up, i planned to use it for the race. now i'm not sure it will be warm enough. i have also tried double-layering my warm weather compression longsleeve with a shortsleeve warm weather shirt.

i will be wearing that today (currently 60) and see how it goes. if i feel ok today (and saturday, therefore, was colder than i realized or would expect the race to be), i should be fine.

robb.

fighting the sense of accomplishment.

saturday was sobering.

all last week, after i had my massage, running wasn't as easy as i might have hoped. i don't know if it was because i didn't spend nearly the time on the bike on sunday as i should have, or if the massage helped alleviate even more pain after my peak training week. (perhaps the massage made it worse; i don't know.) but it wasn't easy like i had expected the decreasing distance to be.

to make matters worse, i never committed to saturday's 12 mile run like i should have. in many respects, it was very much like my 14 mile run -- the course was a straight line from start to finish and it was a lot harder than i would have thought. i felt like i had been running forever, and i looked at my watch to see 46 minutes had passes.

so i ended up walking some stretches between 10 miles and the end. i still finished under a 10:00 pace, but i had run the first 7 miles at a 9:00 pace, so i slowed considerably.

to fix this, i got out on the bike for a strong 49:00 minutes, covering about 13 miles. it is not the longest i've gone, but i should be tapering back my cross training at this point, too, and i put a lot of energy into it. in the past, my best weeks have come after a good bike ride on sunday. so expect this week to feel a lot better.

and it should, not only because my mileage decreases drastically this week (21 miles total), but also because i am under two weeks to the race. i think it was a good reality check to have a bad run on saturday, because my biggest concern was feeling too much like i had already accomplished my goal after running 20 miles. and the fear of another run like saturday's will hopefully keep me focused in the last two weeks before the race.

a short 4 miles tomorrow. i will try to go at lunch, as sarah and i may be laying grass seed and mulch tomorrow evening before the sun goes down.

robb.

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.

perseverance (in san francisco).

nevermind that i'm on vacation. i ran 7.5 miles in san francisco this evening. the city is known for its hills, and they worked me over pretty good. nevertheless, i ran a 10:00 pace over this course.

this is how my training has worked while on vacation. last friday was my very difficult 15 mile run. saturday was a travel day, and then we did a 2.5 mile loop through muir woods in marin county. i took sunday off, as well, because we were eating lunch at the french laundry. why take the whole day just for lunch? because lunch took us four and a half hours. i had the vegetable tasting menu, in all its 9 course glory.

i got up early monday morning and ran 1.5 miles into the west foothills of the napa valley, and then i ran 1.5 miles back. i think i took it easy and managed a 9-ish pace. i took tuesday off, because we had a coupe winery tours and went to santa rosa to buy a new digital camera.

wendesday, i ran across the napa valley to silverado trail and back, 4 miles in 32:20 (8:05). that evening we drove into the city. today we woke up early for a tour of angel island and alcatraz. then we wandered around pier 39 and up through the city back to the hotel. after spending the whole day psyching myself up quietly and mentally preparing for a physically draining run after a long day, i got dressed and got out and ran.

and i feel great. which is not to say there weren't a couple times i wanted to quit running and walk back, but i had to laugh at myself, considering how i've felt in some of my previous runs. hills or not, i know i can run through a little discomfort. i've gotten soft this week. it is definitely getting harder to run day in and day out, but i know i can do it. so i have to do it.

i'm glad i did today.

robb.