Ocean Beach, San Francisco

Ocean Beach, San Francisco

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Sundays are for long runs... and for visiting Mom

Let's try a Half Marathon!

This post is dedicated to my mom, my biggest fan ever.

In my last post, I spoke of slow progression and no master plan.  I spent most of 2011 rehabbing from a nasty spell with ITBS and furthering the changes to my running form.  I was able to do a few local 5K’s in the fall of that year so things were looking up.  I even completed a local Thanksgiving Turkey Trot at a 5 mile distance.  
I was progressing well to these next distances and after some consideration, I began looking into running a Half Marathon. I had already doubled my race distance from 5k (3.1 miles) to 10k (6.2 miles) so why not double again to 13.1 miles! 

As I said in my earlier posts, as you move up in distance, (from 5K to 10K to Half Marathon, etc.) there are fewer of these races and they are strategically placed in spring or autumn. So I found a Half Marathon scheduled at Rutgers University (yes, the site of my first ever 5k charity run) and since I lived and worked very near the campus, this seemed an appropriate venue.  I signed up for the event and my friend Bob -– who had completed multiple Full Marathons by this time -- offered to support me and run the race with me. He was somewhat off of his marathon training cycle and would use this as an opportunity to get back onto his training.

We both registered and I began a 15-week training program from January to April race day.  At times through the training I felt really confident and things were progressing well.  At other times – after a Sunday long training run of 9 miles or so – I would ask myself if it was really possible to reach the 13.1 mile distance.

My training plan

I had selected a training program of running 3 times per week. When it comes to running training plans, there are as many opinions as there are runners. So I won’t get into that debate here except to say that I chose the 3-day plan because I felt I needed at least 1 day off between training days. If you select a 4 or 5 day running plan, you are going to have to run back-to-back days – it’s that 7 days in a week math thing (more to come on this concept in future posts about marathon training).  The plan went well and as with most running plans, the plan included a Sunday long run (this is where you stretch your overall distance toward that goal of 13.1 miles) and two other shorter distances per week where I would run “intervals” and “tempo” runs. Intervals are training runs that alternate faster and slower paces as a way to advance your overall capacity. Tempo runs are very grueling where you run a fairly long distance at a pace that is faster than you plan to run for the Half Marathon.  And then Sunday was the increasingly longer distance week after week.

Visits with Mom

Lots of memories
Right around the time that I began to train for this first Half Marathon, my mom was in declining health and I took the opportunity to do my weekly long runs at a county park nearby where she lived. This was 50 miles from my home but served as a great way to combine my weekly visits with her. On Sunday morning, I would drive to her house for a quick hello (and bathroom visit) and then head out to the county park for my run.  Afterwards I would return to my mom’s house and we would visit. Sometimes I would pick up a pizza or Chinese food to share for lunch. We would often watch the NY Giants games or whatever other NFL games were on TV while thumbing through the Sunday New York Daily News and Sunday Post and talking about the upcoming baseball season.


This map to the left shows the route through the Saddle River County Park system.   To think that I used to go to these parks 30+ years ago to hang out with friends and play frisbee and softball and touch football.

These Sunday visits with my mom were very enjoyable and I am certain had a strong contribution to my evolving enjoyment with running. As I believe happens for other beginner runners, I would enter each Sunday with eager anticipation to get to a new longest distance and then finish the day with new and more nagging discomforts and pains. But with this additional time spent with my mom, the overall tone of my Sundays was overwhelmingly positive. 

Race time

Race week quickly came around and the entire experience of a Half Marathon was a considerable notch above the local 5 and 10K races that I had done.  The Rutgers Unite Half Marathon has over 3,000 runners and so the logistics take on a different scale. Most of these larger races require the runners to retrieve their race packets the day before. Since I live and work nearby to the Rutgers campus, this worked out fine. I arranged to pick up my friend Bob at the New Brunswick NJ Transit station on Saturday afternoon and then we went to the Rutgers campus to retrieve our packets.

Since the race started at 8:00 AM on Sunday, the plan was for Bob to stay at our house Saturday night and then we could head out to the race together on Sunday. A Half Marathon is a considerable step up from my previous longest races and so it was great to have Bob with me to reinforce the discipline in nutrition and hydration on Saturday evening and Sunday morning before the race.

We arrived and found parking on the Rutgers campus on a mild April morning, temperatures in the 40's.  Getting situated into the start corrals was a new experience for me and the nerves and anticipation were growing.  Bob was committed to pacing for me and although this was my first Half Marathon, I was fairly consistent with my Sunday long runs to know that I would strive for a pace just above 9:00 minutes per mile -- this would put me in position to beat the 2 hour mark for the 13.1 miles.

My first Half Marathon, lots more runners than a local 5k!

Did you hear the one about the ITBS?

I won't go into a full race recap here but I will mention that the Rutgers Unite Half Marathon is run in partnership with CGI Racing and they do a phenomenal job.  Support services for the runners are great, hydration stations are well placed and well staffed and the course is a very interesting layout that takes us through many of the Rutgers University campuses from Busch to Livingston, back to Busch and over to New Brunswick for a finish on College Ave.

Things were going very well and Bob continued to notify me that we were ahead of pace through the first 5 miles. With a target pace of 9:05, it seemed that we were cruising at 8:45 - 8:50 and Bob (and I) were concerned that I might outrun my conditioning and "hit the wall".  In fact, keeping this aggressive pace was actually helping me to employ the changes that I had implemented in my running form.  I was focused on a rapid turnover rate -- the pace at which the next foot hits the ground -- as this is one of the best techniques to alleviate the cumulative affect of distance running. 

But then ... as we approached mile 7, I turned to Bob and said "left knee". That was all he needed to hear me say, he knew of my chronic problem with ITBS and we both knew that I had tweaked it.  Sometimes I find that if I lose concentration as the course turns distinctly up-hill, I may not lean into the grade correctly and I hyper extend my left knee in the first few strides of the inclined grade.  Seems that was all it took and here I was, only at the half-way point.  

I insisted on continuing and Bob pushed me to think twice about it.  I told him to go on ahead and maintain his pace but since he was only running the race to pace me, he chose to stay with me to provide support.  Well, in retrospect I should have stopped. As I have explained about ITBS before, it wasn't going to get any better.  Only worse.  ITBS is not like a cramp, it wasn't a case of stopping for a few minutes, doing some stretching and then moving ahead. 

So I forged ahead in considerable pain. Every footfall on my left side would aggravate the ITBS and of course, I was beginning to alter/modify my running form to attempt to alleviate the pain.  Two wrongs don't make a right! This went on for another 3 miles and then the course takes a steep decline down to the Johnson Park area.  I chose to walk down that steep pathway because downhill strides would hurt even more.  Then we pushed on through miles 10 to 12 and I was committed to finish.  I urged Bob to go on ahead -- at least to shoot for the 2 hour mark -- and that I would meet up with him at the finish.  

Wouldn't you know it, my final time was 2:00:52, just a minute off of the 2 hour mark. My wife -- my ultimate cheering section -- was there at the finish to meet us and to capture this picture.  

Then the task of walking back to where my wife had parked her car so she could shuttle us back to the original start line where I had parked earlier that morning. My mom was one of the first people that I called to let her know that I was alive and well.  She congratulated me and said that she was proud of what I had accomplished (good thing I didn't tell her too much about my leg;).

Well the pain in my left knee and leg was pretty bad and I recall a really bad night's sleep.  As I said earlier, I probably shouldn't have finished the race and I am fortunate that I didn't experience any longer-term complications.

I was convinced that I was on the right track with the the changes that I was incorporating into my running form and I was eager to recover from this setback so that I could further that progress. This would be essential if I was going to be able to go on enjoying this crazy sport that I appeared to be hooked on!