Marathon #12 – Am I Insane?

In a couple days now I will be running my next full marathon. Number 12! Wow, I feel accomplished by that and saddened at the same time knowing that I’ve made 11 failed attempts at running a sub-4 hour marathon. :o(

I’ve been thinking a lot about my marathon career this week and I thought about one of the funniest quotes I’ve ever heard:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting different results.

- Albert Einstein

I feel that this is where I have ended up in my marathon career. I decide to run a race, I develop a new training plan, I plan to switch up my training somehow to improve my performance (track workouts, tempo runs, weight training, yoga, hill training etc.), each time I fall short of the full goal due to life, work, or travel, and each time I get to those last few days before the race I look back at my training schedule with regret, and start to feel apprehensive about putting all I’ve got to the test one more time.

I can see the finish line…

In many of my long runs I use visualization techniques. I picture coming into the finish chute, seeing the finish line, seeing the clock read 3:XX:XX. Sometimes I picture the smiling faces of friends and family who I know will be at the race. Almost every time the thought of this brings me to tears. Wow, okay, just typing that right now got me a little misty! I’ve pictured achieving my goal so many times, and so many times now I haven’t. Realizing that makes me want to cry too!

Trying Hills on for Size

The most significant change I’ve made to my training for this upcoming race was incorporating hill repeats. I started out in the first half of my training with one speed workout a week (usually on a treadmill looking like a crazy person running at 8.6 speed), and finished the second half of my training with one hill repeat day per week. I have to admit that after the first few weeks going at the hills, I felt noticeably stronger as a runner. I haven’t felt such a significant change like that in years! It felt great, and I’m now more confident on all grades of inclines. (For more about my runs in the park, check out my blog Ode to Balboa Park).

Running is a mental sport, and usually at the sight of a hill I’d have an internal meltdown, convince myself I couldn’t do it and would have to walk - actually TRUDGE sadly up the hill. I trudge no more! I still don’t enjoy hills but feel that I can beat them. With a little determination of course!

Training in Review

I developed a 14 week training plan for this race with runs scheduled for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday. In reality I probably only ran 4 of the 5 scheduled days on most weeks. I was also scheduled to run from 21 to 40 miles per week, and ended up only running 15-34. Hey, I travel a lot. It’s extremely hard to get the miles in on the road after a long day on my feet in heels.

Of the 411 miles I’ve had scheduled I’ve run 319 ~ 78% of what I should have. Hey, it’s a C+! Being above average is good enough right?

Daily Mile

I’ve been tracking my training online via Daily Mile since last year when David and I started training for the Marine Corps Marathon. So far I’ve logged 895 miles on this site. Wow! I could have run to Phoenix and back!

For those of you not familiar with Daily Mile, it’s like Facebook for athletes. You can find friends and track each other’s training. Its fun to not only see your own workouts for the week, but your friend’s as well! It’s also nice to get (and give) encouraging notes to your friends as you share successes and challenges that come up along the way.

Thanks Martin for all of your encouraging words!

Rock Runners

One other change to my training for this race is that I recently joined a running group! I’ve been running for a couple months now with the Rock Runners from my church, the Rock Church! The church is incredibly large and has an amazing variety of ministries, many of them being sports ministries. I had seen that there was a running group late last year and thought about joining, but for some reason I held back and never got more information. One day though when I was on the Rock’s website I thought what am I waiting for? I’m going to do it.

And you what? Its one of the best decisions I’ve ever made! I love the people in the running group and feel that our Saturday group runs are the highlight of my training. I’m surprised I had never noticed the group before since we run along the San Diego Harbor, right where I’ve done almost all of my long runs since I’ve moved here!

Thanks Rock Runners for the support! And special thanks to my friend Stacey for making each session more fun and entertaining as we trod on for miles and miles!

Here Comes Raceday

I can’t believe that tomorrow is Friday, and the official start of race weekend! My friend Christina is coming in from San Francisco to run the Half Marathon and I’m so excited for her visit! We are planning on going to dinner at my new favorite restaurant tomorrow night (Café Sevilla – most AMAZING tapas ever!), we’ll carbo load on pasta somewhere Saturday night, and then Sunday morning is the big day!

Sadly the race start time was moved up and the race now starts at 6:15am. :o( I will probably have to get up at 4am to have enough time to have coffee and breakfast and to allow enough time to digest. Luckily I live only a couple miles from the start and we won’t have to go far to get there.

Support

Please send good thoughts and prayers for me this weekend! I have tried so many times to break 4 hours and its killing me each time I miss it. I know that I have the physical fitness to do it, I just need to have the confidence in myself to keep pushing myself when I’m tired. My mantra during the race will be stay confident, feel strong, have fun, and be grateful. I know I can do it, I just haven’t yet done it.