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November 27, 2005
Week No. 7
REASON NO. 20 FOR RUNNING A MARATHON
Running a marathon will instill in me a physical “toughness� that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
For most people, their life “experiences� provide them a frame of reference from which to judge their abilities. Ask someone if they could run a 5k race, most people will reflect back upon the days they were in shape, and decide that they could do it (forgetting about the years of neglect their body has been subjected to). Ask a woman about extreme pain, and she will more than likely use childbirth as a frame of reference.
My “frame of reference� for pain and endurance was my first half-marathon. The date was January 1, 2004, and the weather had been absolutely horrible for the previous week.
The start was at Shasta Dam, then we were supposed to run down the old railroad trail (nice gentle grade) to Caldwell Park in Redding. But, mother nature had other plans for us. After 3 days to heavy rain, wind and snow, the trail was blown out with downed trees, washed out bridges and culverts – so the race directors had to make a quick alternate route – and this included surface streets with lots of hills.
The run started out at 39 degrees, with 40 mile per hour winds, and a slush/rain falling. The first challenge was getting started – nobody told us where the starting point was, so we stood in the rain for about 30 minutes waiting. Then we had to cross a blown out bridge – which involved walking across through a 2-foot deep stream of ice-cold water. Then, we proceeded to run the remaining miles with totally soaked feet. My knowledge about sports nutrition was about zero at this point in my training, so my race preparation consisted of a bottle of Gatorade. About 20 minutes from the end of the race, I found “the wall� that long distance runners frequently talk about. I remember thinking, as I was finally approaching the finish, of Julie Moss in the 1982 Iron Man Race – she was leading the race, until just a few hundred feet from the finish her body gave out. She tried several times to continue walking or running, but she could not stand up. She ended up crawling to the finish, but only after being passed by another runner and losing that particular race. As I was struggling to put one painful foot in front of the other, suddenly crawling the rest of the way did not seem like that bad of an option.
I did finish, vertical, and under my own power. This is the first race that my brother and I ran together, and he beat me by almost 10 minutes. I was cold, wet, could just barely walk, and I was starving yet half sick to my stomach at the same time. Even with all that happening, I was one of the happiest guys on the earth when I crossed that finish line.
From that point forward, I knew that I could take on a tremendous challenge successfully. It gave me a new frame of reference for pain, my tolerance to pain, and how well I can perform in adverse conditions
Training is starting to get a little harder. Last week was a recovery week, which was good. It helped my muscles and joints rebuild from the pounding, and by the end of the weekend I felt really good. Monday was a rest day, Tuesday was a treadmill workout using a hill program. Did 4 miles of hills, varying from 1% up to 10% grade. Wednesday I was up at 4:30 getting ready for my 6-mile run, and had a real hard time getting moving. Spent more than an hour surfing the web and writing in my blog, using the excuse that I had to finish my coffee and let my body warmed up before my run. Luckily our office is closed today, so I can go in a little later than normal. I finally got out and finished the run, and it went surprisingly well. Thursday I did my quick 3-mile run early, before we left for the Bay area for Thanksgiving. Friday was a rest day (except for a couple of hours of tennis). Saturday was my first “long� run for quite a while, an 11-mile run. After much debate, I decided to run on the track at the local high school near where we were staying. It has a hard packed sand surface, and really went pretty well (other than being very, very boring). I tracked the lap times, and my goal was to keep the entire 11 miles less than 10-minute miles. I finished the 44 laps in 1 hour 47 minutes, which was well under my goal for this training session. My wife came out and ran 5 laps with me – she is training for her first ever 5k, on the same day of my marathon. I was great seeing her out running, and to have a little company.
Overall, the long run was somewhat uneventful – a little knee pain for an hour or so afterwards, then everything was good for the rest of the weekend. It still just blows me away that I (the non-athlete) can do an 11 mile run, then put in a full day working on my mother-in-law’s house, then go place tennis for an hour or two, and then go out to dinner.
Sunday was another rest/travel day, and then we finally got home around 4:00 PM. I turned on my computer, checked the weather real quick, and holy smokes, the National Weather Service has issued a Snow Advisory for Paradise. That’s just great, that should make for an interesting Monday.
Stay tuned for our first snow report!!!!
Posted by Dennis at November 27, 2005 07:57 PM