This was my second time on the route
, which (for those of you who know Pullman) starts from my house on Colorado, winds past Reaney Park to Bishop, then cuts off onto Johnson Road, (across from the professional mall) and out past Old Moscow road to Sand. This part was new territory for me until I started running it, so I wouldn't be surprised if no one else reading this has been out there. It's basically a back way to Moscow, through the wheat fields with the occasional farm house. After a mile or two on Sand, I hang a left onto Brown Road which is unpaved gravel but other than that basically more of the same. After another few miles, Brown rejoins with Old Moscow road and the University of Idaho water tower appears over the rolling hills. The gravel gives way to pavement about the same time as the wheat fields turn into the U of I golf course. That road spits me out at the traffic light by WinCo, then I merge with the Bill Chipman trail between Pullman and Moscow and head back to Pullman.
If you want a closer look, here is the actual google map.
My routine for these long runs - anything that will take me more than an hour and a half - is to first drive the route and plant water and energy along the way. I expected this one to take about 2 hours 40 minutes since that's what it took last time, so I laid out two pit stops along the way, one just before Moscow and one three quarters of the way back along the Chipman trail. There are these energy packets they make especially for long distance runners and cyclists that are supposed to have the right balance of suger and other things your body needs, in carefully measured doses. Maybe I'll use those eventually, but for now I'm cheap so I use plastic bags with two orange slice gummy candies. I was reading this running magazine that questioned several elite runners about what they use to refuel on long runs. Most used different varieties of those energy packs, but this one Olympian said she just sucks on a couple of Swedish fish. I figure if she can make it to the Olympics doing that, it will work fine for me.
The pace for a long run, according to the online literature, should be 30 to 60 seconds slower per mile than your intended marathon pace. Now, I don't know how long it will take me to run the Seattle marathon, but I do have a goal. When I was trying to predict my marathon time, I came across this running calculator that lets you input your race times at any distance and spits out predictions about your times for all other distances. The caveat, of course, is that those are your predicted times in other races after proper training. For instance, if you can run a 5 mile race in 40 minutes, the running calculator predicts you can run a marathon in just under 4 hours. But, of course running 5 miles doesn't mean you can finish a marathon - you have to do the training, which ideally takes 18 weeks plus a pre-training mileage buildup stage.
My 10k race time at the end of the summer was around 42 minutes, so the running calculator tells me that I can run a marathon in 3 hours and 17 minutes. That sounded like a pretty good goal to me, until I started reading a bit more and realized that there's this big deal in the marathon world: qualifying for the Boston marathon. Apparently this is one of the more prestigous marathons and since so many people want in they make you qualify by running a certain time in another marathon first. The qualifying time changes based on age and gender. Of course, as a 23 year old male they're not cutting me any slack, but qualifying for the Boston is still a far cry from going to the Olympics. The time for my age group is 3 hours 10 minutes. Now, I don't have any particular interest in running the Boston marathon at this point. I've never really thought about it. But, that time is only 7 minutes faster than my own predicted marathon time. My competitive nature just won't let me settle for a goal that some running calculator spits out - I've got to give 3 hours 10 minutes a shot.
As you may remember from my last post, however, my training for this marathon is anything but proper. I therefore have little to no idea whether I will be able to achieve 3 hours 10 minutes. To be honest, it doesn't matter that much - this is my first marathon, so what have I got to lose? If I go out too fast and crap out at mile 20, it will just be a rookie mistake and no big deal. If go out and easily finish in 3 hours 20 minutes, though, I would always wonder if I could have pushed just a bit harder and qualified for the Boston marathon during my first time ever running 26.2 miles. Seems like a no brainer to me.
So, I have my goal marathon pace. It turns out that 3 hours 10 minutes in a marathon translates into about 7 minutes 15 seconds per mile. Since the Seattle marathon has a series of wicked hills that start at mile 20, I'm going to assume I will be slower for those last 6 miles, and I'll have to go faster for the first 20. Let's make it a nice round 7 minutes per mile. That means I should be running my long runs, like today, at about 7:30 or 8:00 per mile.
I cruised the first 5 miles or so out to Sand road. It's kind of hard to know how fast I'm going exactly, because I haven't measured out any distance markers. It's all just estimates. It was light out until I hit Brown road, and then dusk started settling in. The first 10 miles of a long run are pretty nice, more like going for a walk because the point is not to exert yourself too much. I was really enjoying a beautiful fall day, I think the temperature was warmer than it has been recently. My shorts and two layers of shirt, headband, and gloves were perfect. I ordered some long spandex for the colder weather and they should be here in the next couple of weeks, hopefully just in time for the nasty weather.
I was kind of worried about this one house on Brown road, because last time I ran some dogs chased me there. It was just twilight when I passed today, and the thankfully the dogs were nowhere to be seen. Instead, there were four kids in the yard playing football. It was really awesome to just watch them play as I went by. It reminded me of my brother Scott, because they were about his age, and then they reminded me of myself. I could remember when I used to play in the yard, watching the traffic on the road go by. Today I was the traffic watching the kids go by.
The hills on this route are negligible until Brown intersects with Old Moscow road, and then there are a few nasty ones. I powered through them as full dark set in, then picked up my first cache of goodies and descended into Moscow. I was still running fine, but the legs were definitely feeling fatigued after the hills. Last time I ran 20, I felt it all over my legs but especially the quads. This time, it was all in the butt. I guess that's good that the focal point of muscle fatigue changed places, maybe that means my legs are changing.
Running past the Palouse mall is probably the most disheartening point in the run. My legs are tired, but I realize that I'm still in Moscow. This is not close to home. This is where I don't come very often, despite five dollar blocks of cheddar cheese, because it takes a bit of effort even with a car. But, I don't have a car, it's dark, and there's only one way to get home so I keep running. One distraction in this section is that the Chipman trail has mile markers. This allows me to measure my pace. I determined that I was still cruising along. My first mile on the trail came in at 7:10.
Side note for everyone who hasn't been reading about long run strategy recently, long runs build endurance and apparently you don't get any extra endurance benefit out of running them faster. In fact, you get less benefit. Endurance is built by getting your effort level up to a fairly minimal benchmark, then maintaining for a long time. By going faster on long runs, you spend less time on the road meaning less endurance building.
So, my 7:10 mile was a bit fast for a long run, but no matter how many times I read that I SHOULD NOT RUN TOO FAST ON THE LONG RUNS I can't shake the desire to test myself and try to feel whether this marathon is going to be possible. So, I don't slow down.
Running on the Chipman trail after dark is a surreal experience. The temperature was much lower than it had been earlier, so I was very thankful for my headband and gloves. Strangely, my left toes felt like they were sweating profusely because they were squishing and squelching around in my sock. I made a mental note but didn't think much of it because I was too focused on the trail. Whenever a car's headlights hit my eyes, the path itself became invisible and only the tall grass on either side could be seen framing the way ahead. When those lights were in my eyes, all I could see was that grass stretching ahead with a black soup floating between and stretching into the distance. Then the headlights would leave, the gray path would come into focus, and the stars would become distractingly brilliant until obliterated by the next car. This was the pattern for 6 miles of trail.
Even though I did not try to slow down, I apparently did because the next few miles averaged between 7:20 and 7:30. By the time I crossed the Pullman Moscow highway and started towards the bear cages on Airport road, I was really hurting. That last water bottle and orange slice didn't rejuvenate me like the first ones. But, the lights of Pullman were in sight and that's some good motivation.
I finished out the run in 2 hours 36 minutes, about 3 minutes slower than last time, with an overall pace of about 7:30. I didn't slow down much at the end, so either my total distance calculation is off (a definite possibility, because I just use the google maps figure) or I was going quite a bit slower for the first half of the run. My pace was fast, which encourages me about my marathon goal, but then again my legs were completely exhausted. Extreme exhaustion is not really supposed to happen on long runs if they are properly executed. Proper execution involves the right pace and the right build-up, both of which are questionable in my case. My correct pace, based on my actual predicted marathon time, should probably not be faster than 7:45 per mile. And, I have certainly not built up in the recommended way to my long runs. My weekly mileage has been erratic. On the one hand, I feel proud because I can still handle them even without the right preparation, but on the other hand I know it's a risky. The point of building up slowly is not just to make the runs possible, but also to avoid injury and to get your joints used to the long impact sessions. Apparently, your knees and ankles can actually be conditioned to perform better as well. Don't get me wrong, I have worked up to these 20 mile runs, but not as slowly as is recommended. As I write this, my legs are spent and although my knees don't exactly hurt, they are also weak in a way that's difficult to describe. I'll just have to cross my fingers and pay a lot of attention to how I feel over the next few days and weeks to avoid injury.
When I began the cool down walk, my attention was again drawn to the squelch in my left toes. As I passed under a street light, I realized that my left foot was not sweating any more than my right. Panic struck when I saw this.
I couldn't believe it was my foot, because there was nothing that hurt. Even when I went inside and took the picture, nothing was hurting. But to look at the blood, you would think a toe was missing. I'll spare you the pictures of my bloody sock and toes, but when it was all cleaned up all I could find was the tiniest of scratches on the side of my middle toe, the little piggy who had roast beef. It had been getting nudged by the nail of the littler toe next to it, the little piggy who had none. Poetic, isn't it? After a conversation with Naysa the conclusion was that the capillary beds in my tissue were activated by the running, and that just made it keep bleeding despite the miniscule injury. Anyway, I'm happy because it's a great running wound story with a convincing bloody shoe visual aid, all in exchange for very little actual pain.So, that's it for now. Big landmarks remaining are the 20 miler planned for two weeks from today, then the marathon 3 weeks after that. I'll keep posting here, perhaps more briefly, as the littler runs happen through the week. Check back in if you need a good procrastination tool, or in the unlikely case that you have an inexplicable interest in my training run times and thoughts.
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