Two months ago if I was told that I would complete a 20+ miler on Christmas Eve I would have laughed. 2 months ago I was recovering from an achilles/ankle injury which kept me from running Steamtown Marathon in October. I was devastated. Steamtown was going to be my first ever marathon. But I slowly recovered from whatever sort of injury I had going on and began running again by the end of October and the beginning of November. Nothing special, just 3 or 4 miles a few times a week. My goal was to run the Pumpkin Pie 5k on Turkey Day. Surprisingly, I was able to increase my mileage leading into this 5k. The shortest distance I was running was 6 miles. I ran the Pumpkin Pie and continued running ever since. After that race Matt came up with a marathon training program for me to follow. Nothing too severe, but he said if I could complete all of these runs I would be able to run a marathon. I had my eyes set on the ING Miami Marathon, January 29th, 2012.
So this past week my training schedule had me running an 8 mile run on Tuesday and a 20 or 20+ mile run on Saturday. I was extremely nervous about running a 20 miler. I have never run over 15. I did a 15 mile run 2 weeks before this week and around mile 14, I cracked. This made me nervous to run 20 because if I cracked at 14, I still have 6 more miles to run!
This week I made sure to stay consistent with my nutrition and hydration. I drank alot of GuBrew (electrolytes) and coconut water. I made sure to take my supplements as required and drank chocolate milk for recovery after every workout. Friday I swam 2000 yards to get my heart rate up and to get the blood flowing. I made a pasta dinner, packed a bottle of gu brew and water. I ate before I went to work, and I ate again when I got home from work. Set my alarm for 7:30am and went to bed. Matt told me to act as if this was a race, do everything that you would normally do the night before a race and the morning of the race.
7:30am- I woke up, made a bagel with butter and drank a cup of coffee. Added some more songs to my Ipod, put a bandaid on my toe that rubbed from the 8 miler, put body glide on to prevent chafing, put biofreeze on my shins, calves and ankles, got dressed and was out the door before 8:15am.
I got to the trail, turned on my garmin, ipod, situated my fuel belt (which had 6+ vanilla clif bar gels, 2 bottles with orange gu brew and 2 larger bottles of water), stretched a little, and I was off by 8:30am.
I was very anxious miles 1-5. I was extremely nervous about running 20 miles because I had no idea what to expect. I was told to take the first 10 miles easy, relax. After mile 5, I was able to relax. I guess I had a lot of nerves to run out of my system. I started taking my gels after mile 5, and every 45 minutes after that. I ran the first 10 miles effortlessly and I was feeling great! Anxiety creeped up again after 10 miles, I started to remember how my 15 miler felt 2 weeks before. However, as miles 11, 12, 13 and 14 ticked away I was surprised how great I felt. I ran 15 better than I ran 15 two weeks before. I ran 15 close to 2 minutes faster. And then it was into no man's land for me...
Miles 16 and 17 still felt decent but I could tell I have never been there before. My legs started to feel heavy. Mile 18 was a treat. I cracked. By cracked I mean that my legs felt like lead and I wanted to stop. If I had an excuse to stop I probably would have used it. But I kept moving forward. Matt told me afterwards that I should have eventually started taking my gels every 30 minutes to prevent from cracking. I will keep that in mind next time.
Mile 19 I got a burst of energy or adrenaline, whichever. I realized that I was 1 mile away from completing 20 miles. Mile 19.5 I was ecstatic. I had feeling back in my legs and I pushed forward.
20 miles, I became extremely emotional. Not because I was hurting or tired but because I have tried to run 20 + miles for over 3 years now and have failed every time. I always had some sort of an injury. But this time I succeeded. I told myself to run past 20 miles, after all, a marathon is 26.2. So I kept running but was still emotional.
I finished the 3 hour plus training day with a total of 22 miles. That includes a lengthy cool down. I've been told many times by other marathoners about the pain that you feel once you stop running. That it hits you like a brick. Well, I felt that. But I can't say that it was so much pain in my legs as it was in my feet.
Ecstatic. But then the nerves kicked in again. I found myself questioning whether I would recover properly? Did I hurt myself? How was I going to feel the next day?
It's so funny, when Matt was training to run Steamtown in October, I couldn't understand why he was always tired. Why his legs were sore. Why he couldn't sit down, but instead fall down onto the couch or a chair. Well, I now understand, because that is exactly what I have been doing.
So, I am a little over 4 weeks away from Miami. That means I will be slowly transitioning into a taper! 2 days after running over 20 miles, and I feel great. My legs are still sore, but nothing hurts.
4 weeks and counting. Tick tock.
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