jokach's marathon training blog

It never amazes me how fast the humidity can return once we enter August .. I look back just to Monday when I was running early in the morning and saying that my hands were cold because it was about 50 degrees, now tomorrow it should be about 75* with a heat index of close to 80* (yep, before the sun even comes up). That should make my speed workout tomorrow morning interesting .. I think i'll gear up with the fuel belt just to be safe and then work to stay hydrated as best as I can overnight.

The best part is that tomorrow is my 'double session' for the week, which means I have to head out after work (in the REAL heat) for yet another couple recovery miles after doing a speed workout in the morning.. well, the only positive in that is that I have time to rehydrate throughout the day before heading out again.

I'm happy that I decided to follow a REAL training program this summer that takes me away from the same old routine I used to follow when I trained. Its interesting because I just don't know what my schedule looks like for the next upcoming week because I don't look ahead, it always makes it a surprise. I like to keep it that way so I don't know what to expect. The best part is that runs over 12 miles actually feel pretty easy now .. and I feel like i'm in much better shape than I had been before (and I look better too). I'm not sure how I'm not losing any weight in this whole thing, but as long as i'm running better, thats what the goal is.

Just to prove to myself that I'm willing to embrace change in my routine, I expect to run a 5K for the first time in about 2 years. Next weekend my training plan tells me that I should race a 10K or 15K, but I can't find one locally, so instead i'll just do a 5K over here in Alburtis and then sum it up with a short recovery run after that. I also expect to find a 10K or 15K race the following weekend when i'm in Connecticut visiting the in-laws. I don't expect to do great in either one, but its part of Mesocycle 3, Race Preparation and reminds me how far i've come. I really bombed out in April when I ran a 4 mile race because I just wasn't prepared.. this time I expect to be.

So change in the routine is good .. change in weather, change in training, running some shorter races .. it can only lead to good things as far as I can see it.

Its been a wild week so far with so many things to write about, I just know I won't have enough time to write about it all right now. I completed 71 miles this week, mostly speed runs (a mix of GA, vo2's, half marathon pace and marathon pace), but surprisingly today was the best run of them all. My training run today was a long run of 20 miles, with 14 miles being at my marathon pace .. I've struggled a bit with long runs (primarily due to the heat), but hit this one out of the park by running it exactly at pace.

The reason I hit it out of the park is that the last few Saturdays have been so warm that my long runs have been a struggle, and I was running then 10-15% slower than my marathon pace. I figured I wouldn't be able to keep the pace today, but found that I ran better by running at pace then by running it slow. I have to admit I was terribly tired at the end, but I did it and actually wanted to keep going, but remembered that I do need to stick to the training.

On my travels today I passed a lady who appeared to be training for a race of some length (either a half or full marathon) and wasn't doing so well. I saw her in the distance stretching up against a tree, bright red and looking like she hit the wall but I managed to give her a little encouragement that she appreciated. I just told her to hang in there, you're looking good, and she got on her way .. she knew I was training for something since I had my normal gear (yep, I looked like I marathon runner today).

The only bad part of my run today though was that my Garmin watch didn't make the trip today. It froze up on me last night when I was trying to update my workout, and I had to let the battery go dead in order to get it back, but it didn't die fast enough. I got through by mentally marking the important milestones on my run and just using my old watch .. regardless, it turned out good. It was strange not running with my Garmin, I did miss it.

I got my new shoes today as well, its getting harder and harder to find the Mizuno's that I like since they are the last model .. but I can still find them out there on the web (sometimes at a pretty low price). I'll have to upgrade to the latest model sometime in the future, but not until I have to.

The last thing I have to say today is that I took some time to start analyzing the Rochester marathon course and found out that over 12 miles of it is a trail run. I wasn't expecting another trail course this fall, especially one in a bigger city marathon (or maybe Rochester isn't really a bigger city????) This means I'll have to get my trail run legs on in the next few weeks ..

Maybe I'll update during the week, i'm just so busy these days (and tired from training). I find myself getting up at 4:30-5am each morning to get in 10 or 12 or 15 miles, whatever the day has to offer, then I have to goto work and by the time I get home and eat, i'm ready for bed. Well, it'll all be worth it this fall, i'm feeling good so far, I hope it keeps up.

Its been awhile since I posted something as I just returned from vacation this past week and then from some other travels around the state, but its never enough to keep me from sticking to my training.

I spent last week in North Wildwood, which means I got to run the beach, the boardwalk and all the little communities that I love so much. It was brutally hot though, even at 5:30 in the morning, but I got through it by taking lots of water with me on my mid-long runs. It was the first week of mesocycle 2, which added more organized speed training to my already built up endurance training. I really felt the burn of the workouts by Friday morning though.. I left the beach on Thursday to head towards Pittsburgh, but stopped and spent the night at a Hampton Inn in Somerset, PA since it was a long drive. I managed to find myself the hardest course I ran in a long time (not on purpose) .. it wiped me out totally for the week, not to mention that it was brutally hot out Friday morning. This course was hilly, windy and on narrow roads out in the country, it was kind of spooky...

This past week also started up what I call my "double sessions", where I have a morning run and an evening run. Thankfully its only once a week I have to do them but it does offer some change to the normal routine and i'm convinced more than ever that I prefer running in the morning rather than in the evening. Anyway, its generally a shorter distance that I have to run in the evening (4-5 miles) and the "Advanced Marathoning" book states that doing recovery runs like this actually helps me recover faster .. for example instead of getting in 10 miles this morning, I did 6 this morning and 4 this evening. I'm not sure if it works or not, but I guess we'll see in a few weeks.

The last major highlight is that my right knee has started to flair up again .. its not painful, just sore. It got this way back in 2006 and 2007 when i was working real hard on training, so its a good sign, I just have to not push it. I took an actual day off this weekend by not doing anything on Sunday, not even a bike ride. It felt good to not have to get up early or do anything physical.

So as the sun starts to rise later, it offers me cooler temperatures for my early morning runs. I did like running in the early morning sunshine, but I'd prefer to stay cool if I can. Hopefully as the weather heats up, it won't hinder my training as I'm getting closer and closer to the Rochester marathon ..

My long week seems to have wrapped up with an even longer weekend ... It started out on Saturday as I had a 20 miler scheduled, but somehow I found a way to hit the wall at about mile 17 or so and because of that, I ended up wrapping up the run at just 19 miles instead because I didn't feel like pushing it was going to do me any good based on the way I felt.

It was extremely warm on Saturday and that sun was HOT, but I think I know where I may have gone wrong in my preparation .. I just don't think I hydrated enough Friday into Saturday before I headed out for the run. I had my fuel belt on (approx 30oz of water), plus I stopped at a water fountain at mile 6 and then stopped for a 20oz water at around mile 13 .. I also took down two gels in that time, so i'm not sure I did too bad from that angle, however I was completely dehydrated by mile 17 anyway, even with all those provisions ... When I weighed myself after I got back, I was almost 10 pounds under my starting weight, and that was after I had consumed another 32oz of Gatorade. It was pretty scary and I looked kind of thin...

The one major thing I did notice though that could have contributed to the issues was that when I was running east into the direct sunlight, it almost felt like I was melting, literally like my skin was dripping off me .. Thankfully the whole run wasn't in that direction, so I had the opportunity to cool off running into the light breeze from the west. I tried to get out pretty early to beat the heat, but I didn't get out as early I think I would have wanted to. I ended up heading out around 6:15am, instead of around 5:30 like I would have liked to however i'm not sure if that made any difference in the run.

So I was terribly disappointed yesterday, but I still got a good week of training in regardless. I've wrapped up the endurance mesocycle and am now heading into the endurance and speed portion which means .. DOUBLE SESSIONS! Great, running in the morning, and running in the evening, it should be fun. I'm glad that I started to ride my bike 2 nights a week to get used of working out after work, because i'm going to need it now..

Speaking of my bike, that brings me to the second part of my weekend that made it 'long' .. I headed out for around 18-20 miles on my bike. I picked a nice open road course heading out route 222 to Kutztown, real nice scenery and roads (so I thought). I've always feared getting a flat tire and being far away from home, and well, it happened today. I noticed it after I hit a railroad crossing pretty hard although i'm not sure that is what caused the flat.. the good thing is that I was only 2 miles from home.

My experience was a miserable one, its great that I had a road patching kit, but I didn't know how to use it or how I would even know where to patch. I was able to get enough CO2 into the tire to get it home, which is when the real fun started. I learned how to take the wheel off, pull the tube off, find the hole, patch the hole and put it back together. I also realized that I have Presta tire valves (didn't know there were two types)... The good thing is that I now know that I should carry a spare tube with me because I have NO idea how I would find a hole in a tube on the side of the road, it'd be easier to just put a new tube in it and be on my way.

I'm expecting this week to be better ... i'll be at the beach, so a change in scenery although the training doesn't let up. I've switched two days around so I don't have to try and get 15 miles in while on vacation, thats kind of tough.

Its possible that I'm going to attempt a duathlon or a triathlon next year and maybe ease up on the marathons .. i've got the urge to try something new, I just have to get better at cycling and swimming. My wife thinks i'm crazy, but she thought the same thing when I said I wanted to do my first marathon, and look at me now.

Lets hope for nice weather this week while i'm at the beach .. no blog updates until Saturday at the earliest.

I can definitely feel the intensity of my training picking up this week. I'm in week 4 of the 12 week training plan and its hard to think that just 2 weeks ago I was saying how I wish things would pick up. I'm in the final week of the endurance portion of the training before changing the focus to speed and intensity, which I can't imagine is any easier. Its amazing that when I put my mind to it, I can squeak out 15 miles before I go to work (like my Tuesday run)... and yet again I have another 13 miles scheduled for tomorrow, its brutal. I guess you can say that the miles aren't what kills me, its the fact that I've got to go to work for 9-10 hours afterward. Then yesterday I even got in a 6 mile bike ride when I got home from work ... my Garmin watch calculated that in total yesterday, I burned 2700 calories. Thank heavens it was a rest day today ..

I've been pretty busy so far this summer, and it doesn't get any easier as I head to the beach next week for vacation and then out to Pittsburgh to take my son on a college visit at the end of the week.. it will be a challenge for me to keep with the training both Friday and Saturday next week since I have so many miles to drive over those couple days, but i'm sure i'll survive.

One good thing is that the weather has completely turned around from just a week ago, and i'm actually not complaining. Last week was so hot and humid .. and although this week its still hot, its rained on every run since Saturday, so i'm kind of getting used to it. Its quite refreshing to have that cool rain hitting you when you're hot ..

So training is good, i'm losing weight, feeling strong and not burnt out ... just a little tired from getting up early. These are the days that I wait for .. if I think back to the winter time this past year when I couldn't wait for the nice weather to get here, I just wish it would last longer .. (maybe I should move further south, who knows)