Well, now what?

I had been trying to beat my marathon PR for 5 years, and I just did that at the end of April.  I'd been wanting to lose those 10+ pounds I keep gaining back, and I managed to lose 14 pounds with the help of Medifast.

So now what?  (Besides frame that finish line photo where I PRd the crap out of that marathon...)

That's the question I've been bouncing around for the last few weeks, with a number of ideas bouncing back in response.  After careful consideration (translation: when I remembered to think about it during a long run or right before I fell asleep at night), I think I've nailed down some brand-spanking new goals to work towards regarding my running and my eating and other areas of my life.  Since I know everyone out there is breathless with anticipation, I'll share those shiny new goals below:

1) Run the 2019 Twin Cities Marathon and snag a PR for the course.  My PR for the Twin Cities course is a 4:17 and some change, so the goal is to beat that.  I would love to set a goal of under 4 based on my 4:04 time from Glass City, but I've run Twin Cities many times, and I know how brutal the hills can be on the back half.  This means I'm not foolish enough to try and go under 4 on a course where the hills make people cry their way towards the finish line, but that would be kind of awesome if it magically happened.  What's more realistic and just as ambitious is for me to snag between a 4:05 and a 4:10 on that course, which is what I'm shooting for.  I'll save that under 4 goal for a flatter, spring marathon.

2) Add spicy long runs to the training schedule.  I'm still going to use the My Run Plan app for training, but the cramps, leg fatigue, and general craziness I experienced at mile 21 at the Glass City Marathon made me think I need to practice more running at pace on tired legs.  That's why I'm going to spice up my long runs every few weeks or so with some miles at race pace, probably the middle or end miles.  Because why not run faster when you're already running 20 or so miles?  Piece o' cake.

3) Fix that little nutrition issue I experienced during that marathon of mine.  Slamming into the wall at mile 21 wasn't very fun, kids, so I've got to do something about it--especially with my tendency to do that "run too fast" thing all the time during races.  So, I'm going to add in more gels and some of those cool mini-bananas after mile 13 of all of my long runs and see how that goes.  Those mini-bananas, by the way, are cool because they are sufficiently portable in a running shorts pocket--FYI.

4) Lose 7 more pounds.  Like I've said before, it's amazing how fueling your body properly leads to awesome training runs and PRs...and how when you lose weight doing that you get faster not having to lug those extra pounds around.  Seven pounds lighter still puts me well within a normal weight range for my height, and is sure to put me within range of a nice Twin Cities course PR.

5) Stop tripping over large dog when he runs in front of me.  This one might be a bit of a stretch.

6) Add lower-body strength training to my plan.  I did absolutely no lower-body weight training during that last training cycle, and I felt the difference in strength between the front and back of my legs during the race thanks to all the treadmill running I did.  So the plan this time around is on Fridays (a cross-training day) to add in workouts that build leg strength using body weight exercises only...I'm a little cautious about using heavy weights for leg exercises because I fear aggravating my old left butt injury again.  Hopefully this will even out the huge strength imbalance and my legs can feel tired all at once during my next marathon.

You can tell I'm so excited about this goal.

7) For crying out loud already get enough sleep each night.  It's no fun (and very stupid) running 12 miles of speed after waking up exhausted because you spent yet another night staying up too late worrying about work stuff.  So I have decided (very smartly) to get my butt into bed at the same time every night so I can wake up and run way too many miles before work.  I know I've promised this before, but this time I mean it I swears.  Really.  Going to get into bed early and sleep like a spoiled formerly feral kitten I once knew.

So, you know...just a few goals for this next training cycle.  And by "few" I mean "overachieving at everything, even goal setting."  And now I will overachieve at listing ridiculous statements I call "learnings" but are nothing of the sort:

• I did frame that finish line pic, BTW.  In case you were RUNdering (get it? get it? I crack myself up.)
• I'm not lying about those crazy back-half hills on the Twin Cities course.  There's one at mile 21 that caused me to invent swear words one year because none of the existing ones really fit.
• Having my butt get tired before my quads during a race was a weird feeling.  Weird.
• I'm usually more excited about squats than the pic in the post lets on...but not by much.
• If only we all could sleep the sleep of formerly feral kitties who took over my house and my bed.

Upcoming workouts and stuff:  I start some serious speed and tempo workouts next week...I promise I will blog more about this running abuse than I did during the last training cycle.

Glass City Marathon Recap: I didn't come here to quit.

Because my life lately has been nothing but races and travel and work and very little sleep, I have not had time to sit down and blog about every excruciating detail of my goal marathon two weekends ago...until now, that is.

marathons woop woop!

I ran the Glass City Marathon on April 28th as my goal spring marathon. You can read all about my progress to this race in my previous posts, so I'll spare you all of the gruesome and tedious training details here.  But I will say this - I came into this race having a) done every single workout on the training plan the way it was written, b) eaten food with real nutrition in it the whole time, c) lost 14 pounds during training, d) a strange confidence about hitting my goal time (anything under a 4:10, with a 4:05 being a best-case scenario), a confidence which I haven't had in a LONG time, and e) kick-ass dinosaur shorts (see pic above).

The week leading up to race day, I was in this weird anxious/confident/omg am I really going to do this 26 miles is a loooong way mood, which lasted the entire 5-hour drive to Toledo and into the wee hours of the morning before the race.  Thankfully I was staying with awesome friends who put me up over the weekend, and spending time with them the night before helped keep my mind off how anxious-excited I was.

The morning of the race I woke up at 3:30 AM so I could do all the usual pre-race stuff: coffee, breakfast, worry, body-glide most of my body, almost forget my race bib on the way out the door, and hope mother nature would call before I left for the start line.  The last task eluded me, so I got to the race site extra early so I could jog a mile to see what shook out.  The mile jog worked, and after hanging up with mother nature I got to sit around and be nervous for about 30 minutes.

The best anxious-excited-worried-didn't get enough sleep-face EVER

In case you're wondering, I did wear that shirt to remind myself not to let any excuses get in the way of my goal...and because I haven't been able to properly fit into it in a long time, so it was a nice reminder of all the weight-loss work I'd put in over the last few months.  (Plus I didn't want a huge baggy shirt flippity-flapping against me for 4 hours.)

By this time you're probably wondering if I ever actually made it to the start line.  Well, I did, and I was so focused I didn't even snap any start line pics.  Or any pics during the race, for that matter, and when that happens, kids, you KNOW I'm in serious racing mode. Speaking of the racing, let's walk through this race of mine, but let's do it by the miles.

Miles 1-5:

I started the race with the 4:10 pacer (a 9:33 pace), and the original plan was to stick with him until the half and then leave him in the dust and do a 9:20 to the end of the race.  I hung with him until a little after mile 3, where of course mother nature had to call and say "hi" again because I obviously had one too many cups of coffee that morning.  After leaving the port-a-john (and thankfully not having to wait in line forever to use it), I kicked it into high gear to try and catch back up to him.  I told myself not to overdo it, but I ended up running mile 4 in around 8:36 (zoinks!) and mile 5 in around a 9:05.  I wondered briefly if I would regret this later on in the race--and now you'll have to read onwards to see if that was the case, so ha ha fooled you guys into reading more of my brain drool.


Miles 6-9:

This is where pacer guy became super-duper annoying.  Now, I appreciate pacers immensely, don't get me wrong - they helped me run my entire first marathon without walking once.  However, when you're trying to run a steady 9:33 pace and pacer guy keeps randomly speeding up and slowing down several times within a mile, I tend to get a tad irked.  So, to spare my mental state for the race, pacer guy had to be ditched in mile 9.  And by "ditched" I mean "Now I am free to run too fast all by myself wheeeeee"


Miles 10-17:

I was feeling pretty darn awesome during these miles, running between 9:10 and 8:50 pace for all those miles.  I paced another woman from miles 10-14, and at mile 11 I ditched the throw-away long-sleeved shirt I was wearing...not because it was getting to warm for it, but because I knew a race photographer was coming up and I wanted my bib (that was attached to my "Excuses Suck" shirt) visible.  And boy did that race photographer capture my arm raise in all of its weird, race-hugging glory.

But by mile 17 I was noticing something...I was getting tired, which is to be expected.  Part of the reason you do long runs is to help you learn how to run through this kind of tired.  However, I was noticing that my hammies and glutes were feeling pretty fatigued, and I thought it was pretty darn weird for just the backs of my legs to get tired.  This was just a prelude of things to come....


Miles 18-24:

In mile 18 the backs of my legs were more noticeably fatigued, and then in mile 19 I ran up the only major hill in the race.  This hill was more of a struggle than I wanted it to be, but I pressed onwards, trying to think about things that would motivate me to just keep going: thinking about all the training I'd put in, all of the veggies I had grudgingly eaten in the name of performance, and sometimes bribing myself by promising myself new running shoes or a new puppy if I kept running.

And then in mile 20 I noticed that the fronts of my legs were now super tired, joining the backs in one big "hey woman what are you DOING up there to us" chorus.

I made it to mile 21, where they were handing out gels.  I grabbed one, shoved it in my pocket, and an overwhelming fatigue crashed over me.

I had hit the wall.  Hard.  I had never really crashed into the wall this hard before, but I'm pretty sure it's because I trained for a 9:20 pace, not a between 9:10 and 8:50 pace.  And even though I had been slamming down a gel every 3 miles, it apparently wasn't enough to keep me from the great big bonk.

I started walking.  I was pissed off.  I was tired.  I was bummed.

And then I thought, "I didn't come here to quit."

That thought made me sit mentally upright. Damn straight I didn't freaking didn't come here to quit.  I couldn't quit.  I worked just too damn hard to get here and I was doing amazing with my pace--so amazing, in fact, that the race app kept whispering seductively yet robotically in my earbuds that I was on track to finish in 4:02.  So I took a little inventory of how I was feeling and decided that there was no way in hell was I going to give up on my goal to finish under 4:10--I was just going to slow WAY down for the next few miles...but I was going to keep on going.

I didn't come here to quit.  Damn freaking straight.

Miles 22-24 were slow.  Like 10:30-ish to 11-ish slow, even though I thought I was running so much faster.  But I kept telling myself I was moving in a forward direction, and that was OK--I wasn't giving up.  Just altering the plan, that's all.  The plan got altered even further when just before mile 23 my left calf began to cramp and seize, and that's when I started 30 second walks until the cramp subsided a bit, and then I would start shuffling along again.  At mile 23 I sucked down a gel, which according to the original plan was a mile early.  But with the calf cramps setting in, I thought it would be a good idea to get some sort of nutrients into me.  At this point a gel couldn't hurt, right?


Miles 25-26.2:

Turns out that nope, that gel definitely couldn't hurt--it allowed me to run miles 25 and 26 at a much faster clip (9:46 and 9:16, to be exact).  My calf was still cramping and I was still talking mini-walk breaks, but I was picking up speed and getting closer and closer to that finish line.  About half a mile before the finish I had a major cramp in my left calf and had to stop and walk for a full minute before it calmed down enough for me to start running again.  But after that I sailed toward the finish line, legs aching but determined to get there, stupid calf cramps and all.

After all, I didn't come here to quit.  I came here to achieve my goal of running under a 4:10, and that's what I did, walking and calf cramping and gritting my teeth to cross the finish line in 4:04:18.

Here's me not quitting.  And finishing.

Remember that I said earlier that a 4:05 would have been a best-case scenario...and here I was with a 4:04 and some change.  I thought I would be more emotional at seeing this shiny new PR after crossing the finish line since I've been trying to PR for 5 years, but my glucose-deprived brain could only think, "Gee, I guess paying $64 bucks for that training plan app was worth it after all."

Yep.  That's my brain for you.  *sigh*

My brain also almost forgot to ring the PR bell on the way to the car, but thankfully it remembered and asked very nice but total strangers to take her picture doing it.

Ring-a-ding-ding time for a PR

My left calf celebrated that PR by cramping so severely after I got in the car that I was pretty much immobilized for a solid 5 minutes with my mouth wide open in a silent scream. Good times.  Why do I do this again? (For the bling.  Duh.)

Anyway, on the way home I started getting a little bummed about the last part of the race with all the walking and the cramping and the slowing down.  But I had to remind myself that I didn't quit, and I got a PR I wouldn't have even thought possible when I started training all the way back in January.  In fact, when comparing my marathon in December (BMW Dallas) and Glass City, the improvement in fitness and performance is pretty damn obvious.

Going from an almost 5:15 to a 4:04 in 5 months needs to be celebrated, not frowned upon just because of a few bad miles at the end of the race.  I think sometimes we runners get so caught up in what went wrong that we forget to celebrate what went exceedingly right.  Or we get busy planning for the next race, already thinking about how we can get an even better time without stopping to think about how crazy good the time is that we just got.  And we don't stop and think about how crazy good it is that we had the strength, discipline, and courage to try and run 26.2 (!!) miles as fast as we could in the first place.

Instead of the usual stupid nonsensical learnings I spew forth at the end of a post, I'm going to leave my real and true learnings from this marathon experience as a reminder to me for future races..and as a list for anyone else who finds anything they could use to help them train for their next race.  Enjoy.

• Run all the runs.  Skipping workouts won't get you to your goal. (Unless you're injured...then skip away until you're healed.)
• Food is fuel. Choose food for the way it will feed your body so that next half marathon you have to run before work will be a breeze instead of something you just "get through."
• The lighter you are, the faster you'll be.  I'm pretty sure losing 14 pounds had a huge part to play in that shiny new PR.
• A "let's see if I can do this" mindset gets you much farther than a "I don't know if I can do this" mindset when it comes to looking at the crazy workouts the training plan cooks up for you.
• Dinosaur shorts.  Get some.
• Consistency--and just keep showing up--is the key to success.
• You don't train for a race just to show up and quit.  Ever.

So what's the next race?  Well, now that I live in the land of hills and coyote packs that collectively howl at 3 AM, it will be to PR at Twin Cities...I'm aiming to take down my course PR of 4:17.  Stay tuned, kids.