Marathon vaccine

Had another nice run yesterday, 21 miles in 3:54-again averaging out to exactly on pace to finish my 5 hour marathon (11:07 per mile, according to Mr. Garmin). I’m left with 1 hour and six minutes to run 5.2 miles. It’s a little close for comfort considering I was wiped out yesterday, but I imagine the fitness level will increase enough that I can squeak it out. I wish I had one more week to throw in a 23 mile run, but I knew when I started I would barely have enough time to get enough training in. I will finish off next week with a fast ten miler and then it’s go time in Seattle.

I have some lovely pictures of my bloody shirt, blood soaked sock and bloody toes, but god knows when I’ll actually get them off the camera so I figured I’d at least post my run and add the pictures later.

I’m finding my weekly long run more than adequate for preparation. It takes me a solid week to fully recover and I don’t see the benefit of re-damaging myself with another run midweek (or god forbid the three other runs I had originally scheduled). My pace is on par with previous marathon performances, which involved more frequent training and a lot more visits to the various doctors to help me with my poor abused ITBs-the conventional wisdom of “if it hurts when you do that, stop doing that” is pretty much all you need to know to prevent injury. If it doesn’t stop hurting in a few weeks after not doing that, THEN see a doctor. Otherwise, save your money. Advil, heat/cold, rest. That will be $600.

Drinking the conventional marathon training cool-ade, I didn’t think I could possibly finish a marathon without monster mileage, fartleks, intervals and all the other crazy stuff people have thought up. There is still pain involved, but with weekly long runs, the pain goes away in two days and I’m ready to rock with a full week of rest. I look forward to carrying this over to my triathlon training. One long run, bike swim and maybe a weight session per week is the extent of my training plans from now on. I’ll never win with a training scheme like that, but winning is doing races for the rest of my life.