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January 08, 2006
Week No. 13
REASON NO. 14 FOR RUNNING A MARATHON
Not many people can finish a marathon – and I like being able to do things that 99.90% of Americans cannot do.
Completion of this marathon will put me in pretty elite company. It is estimated that only about 300,000 people a year finish a marathon. This is out of the 300,000,000 population in the United States. This means that only about 1 out of every 1000 people in the United States are capable of running a marathon in any particular year.
To meet the challenge of running 26.2 miles in less than 5.5 hours, I have been following a fairly intense training program. This training program was preceded by about 4 years of pretty consistent training in swimming, biking and running. Hopefully this level of fitness will allow me to finish this race with some element of form, and within the 5 ½ hours allowed at this event.
This week started out with a four-mile hill run in Paradise on Tuesday, then an evening 8 mile run around Durham on Wednesday. I felt just a little beat up on Thursday, so I postponed my Thursday run until Friday, when I ran 4 miles up the Memorial Trailway in Paradise.
Saturday was a cross training day, so my wife and I went to the gym, she ran her first ever 2.5 miles on the treadmill, and I spend about 40 minutes in the pool working on TI drills.
Sunday was my long run – and this week it was 20 miles. This is the longest run of my life, and I was just a little apprehensive. I plotted out my route the night before, and carefully put my water, food and equipment together.
A good general rule is that a runner burns about 100 calories per mile. That means that I will have to consume somewhere near 1500 to 2000 calories to keep from crashing on this run. I packed 8 gels (90 calories each), a chocolate power bar (200 calories), 24 ounces of Accelerade (about 200 calories), 70 ounces of water in my Camelback, a separate 24 ounce bottle of water, a banana and an orange, and my latest “secret weapon�, a Red Bull Energy Drink. After trying to stuff all this into my fuel belt, I finally gave up and drove to the halfway point, and dropped off the water bottle, two of the gels, the banana and orange and Red Bull.
The run went really, really well. The most eventful part of the run was when a couple of dogs came out to either attack or greet me. I pulled out my pepper spray just in case – and they ended up being harmless. I put the pepper spray back in my belt, and didn’t think about it again. I rubbed my face with my gloves at some point during the run, and suddenly my whole face lit up like it was on fire!! Apparently the pepper spray had leaked, and I transferred it too my face from my gloves. For about 20 minutes, I had to really struggle to see, and to keep my motivation to keep going. Eventually the problem went away as quickly as it started.
The rest of the run was pretty uneventful. I started at 8:00 AM, and finished right around 11:30 AM. I was plenty tired at the end, but still “had something left�. This was a great run, because it made me realize that I can do this – I will be able to finish 26.2 miles.
My wife and son greeted me at the driveway with a smoothie and a hug – It was a great feeling to be back, and to have that huge running milestone under my belt.
Rest of the day was pretty slow, updated my blog, went into Chico and played some “low speed� tennis with my wife and son.
Posted by Dennis at January 8, 2006 08:18 PM