Rocking out in Portland

Geez.  Over three weeks since the last time I posted, huh?  It hasn't been for lack of topics--more for lack of time.  Work has been busy leading up to the end of the year.  And then traveling for the holidays and a wedding.  Three weeks just kinda appeared eventually.

Anywho, so I'm clearing out my backlog of post topics with my very delayed music post for the Portland Marathon.  Below is my playlist from the race.  You can go here for a basic outline of the process.

It took me about four hours to compile this playlist--longer than it took me to run the race!  But I have to say, I really like this mix.  I listed to the majority of it, all the way down to Don't Stop Believein' with a minimal amount of skips.  Usually I end up listening to only half of the songs because I pause the music so much to establish my own cadence.  I've enjoyed this mix so much that I haven't switched it out for another in the months since the Marathon--granted I've done very light running until this week (official first week fo training for Austin!).

• Proud Mary; Tina Turner
• Empire State of Mind (Part II) Broken Down; Alicia Keys
• Crown of Love; Arcade Fire
• Wouldn't It Be Nice; The Beach Boys
• Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'; Michael Jackson
• Every Little Thing; Valley Lodge
• A Whole Lot Better; Brendan Benson
• You Make My Dreams; Daryl Hall & John Oates
• Time to Pretend; MGMT
• American Slang; The Gaslight Anthem
• Roxanne; The Police
• Pick Up the Phone; Dragonette
• This Bed; Alicia Keys
• Garbage Day; Brendan Benson
• 1901; Phoenix
• Haiti; Arcade Fire
• In The Hospital; Friendly Fires
• Human; The Killers
• Home; Edward Sharpe & The Magnificent Zeros
• Renegade; Styx
• Natural Disaster; Plain White T's
• All of My Loving; Valley Lodge
• Rebellion (Lies); Arcade Fire
• For Reasons Unknown; The Killers
• Feel Like Taking You Home; Brendan Benson
• Always Where I Need to Be; The Kooks
• Sins of My Youth; Neon Trees
• Two Doors Down; Mystery Jets
• That Girl; Plain White T's
• Hanging On; Valley Lodge
• That's Not My Name; The Ting Tings
• Lasso; Phoenix
• Take Me Out; Franz Ferdinand
• Uprising; Muse
• Neighborhood #3 (Power Out); Arcade Fire
• Mr. Brightside; The Killers
• I'm Actual; The Format
• I Really Want You; Plain White T's
• I Can't Win; The Strokes
• Lisztomania; Phoenix
• Long Road to Ruin; Foo Fighters
• Percussion Gun; White Rabbits
• Wake Up; Arcade Fire
• Animal; Neon Trees
• I Don't Wanna Dance; Hey Monday
• Show Me What I'm Looking for; Carolina Liar
• Come on Eileen; Dexy's Midnight Runners
• Heartbreak Stroll; The Raveonettes
• Love Today; Mika
• Zero; Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• Don't Stop Believin'; Journey
• 1983; Neon Trees
• Spotlight; Mute Math
• I'm Not Over; Carolina Liar
• Juicebox; The Strokes
• I Gotta Feeling; Black Eyed Peas
• Beat It; Fall Out Boy
• The Pretender; Foo Fighters
• Let's Dance to Joy Division; The Wombats
• Move Along; The All-American Rejects

Twenty-Six Miles through a Lake, Part III

Race statistics are like porn to runners, and Portland had no shortage of runner’s porn.

Starting off with the basics here's how I did:

Looking at these stats, Portland is actually now the best race I've run (on paper).  While I didn't get a PR I did finish in the top 18% of overall finishers, the only time I've done better than that was the Warrior Dash a few weeks back--and that wasn't really a running contest.  For Gender place, it's a tie with the Delaware Marathon at top 30%, and for age group it's my best Marathon performance by 1%.  I'm interpreting these numbers to mean that even that I may have been having a crappy day, everyone else was having a crappier day--which makes me feel better about the whole race.  It lets me know I didn't completely squander this easy course. 

I should note there are discrepancies between some of the reporting (finish time, number of runners, etc.) depending on where you get them from.  I went with the numbers on the results website since those appear to be the most robust.

The race also recorded quite a few split times.  I find this funny because the race didn't have clocks at the mile markers, but they did have timing mats to record splits.  I would think that you would want to provide clocks before providing splits.  Anywho, here's how I was pacing during various parts of the race, looks like I was doing pretty well (but notice there is no split for the final 5 miles):

It's pretty cool that the race provided all these stats.  Especially since it didn't register when I marked the finish on Fenny--the Garmin download says I ran for 36.7 miles in 7:21:15.  Even though I got every split on the course, I didn't get the most important one--despite race pictures showing me hitting my watch while I crossed the finish line!

In addition to the splits above, there were some cool graphics that the results website provided.  This first screen shows my placing in the various groups in a graph form.  But the coolest thing on this page is the box on the bottom right where it reports how many I passed (223!!) in the last 10K and how many people passed me (just 26?).  That's a huge ego boost.

This second screen has interesting ways of presenting my averages during the race (average mile, average kilometer, average speed).  There is also a diagram of the finish area when I crossed the finish line.  I have no idea how they did this, but it shows everyone that was immediately before and after me in the race.  And when you hover over those dots on the site, the name and time difference pops up underneath the dot.  Pretty freakin' cool.

This last screen is also interesting.  The map shows you 1) where you were when the overall winner finished, 2) where you were when the female winner finished, and 3) where the average runner was when you finished the race.  There's also that bar chart off to the right with average speed for each quarter of the race.  On the site if you hover over those numbers it provides the exact timing and distance for those splits.  Pretty cool.

Now that I've looked at the numbers I realize that things weren't that bad.  This was actually a good race.  The bitching and griping has to be done in order to come to the conclusion that the bitching and griping aren't all that necessary: I still conquered the Marathon (again!!) and I still ran my best.

Twenty-Six Miles through a Lake, Part II

The Splits:

Mile 1: 8:51 (recorded as 1.17 miles)

Mile 2: 9:28

Mile 3: 9:09

Mile 4: 8:32

Mile 5: 8:38

Mile 6: 8:25

Mile 7: 8:51

Mile 8: 8:33

Mile 9: 8:20

Mile 10: 8:25

Mile 11: 8:20

Mile 12: 8:55

Mile 13: 8:24

Mile 14: 9:03

Mile 15: 8:00

Mile 16: 8:32

Mile 17: 8:55

Mile 18: 8:18

Mile 19: 7:46 (recorded as .9 miles)

Mile 20: 9:41 (recorded as 1.12 miles)

Mile 21: 8:29

Mile 22: 8:24

Mile 23: 8:42

Mile 24: 8:38

Mile 25: 9:21

Mile 26: ???

Mile 26.2: ???

The Story:

To say I was happy with this race would be a lie.  Fortunately, with time all races develop a particular patina where I appreciate the things I gained while training and while on the course and overall the memory becomes a series of positive takeaways instead of a chain of challenges that systematically bore me down.   Unfortunately, this race hasn’t completely developed that patina yet.  It still feels like a non-accomplishment that I need to trick myself into believing was a great achievement.

What is holding me back from enjoying this race as yet another triumph over the Marathon is that I am tired of complaining.  Every time I run a race I have a series of excuses and bitchings as to why it wasn’t my perfect race. 

As a seasoned Marathoner I feel I don’t have the right to complain anymore.  I lost that right somewhere along the way because at this point I know what to expect, I know what I’ve signed up for, I know how to prepare for it, and I know what will happen afterward.  If this all caught me by surprise I’d be correct to complain about it.  But I know what’s coming and I do prepare for it.  So it still catches me off guard when after a race all I can list is the things that went wrong and the things I can improve for next time.

In order to set this right I need to embrace complaint as part of the process; have a bit of catharsis before the euphoria.  It’s only through a thorough hashing of 100 things that I perceive to have gone wrong that I can truly inventory and appreciate the 1,000 things that went right.  With this in mind I will proceed with the complaints.

While running this race I knew about four miles in that it would be a long race.  The miles weren’t passing by as quickly as they normally do during a race.  This isn’t a comment on my speed, it a comment on my mental state.  Usually I can get about halfway through a race just on excitement and the real racing doesn’t come until after the halfway mark.  But with this race I remember specifically looking at my watch before Mile Five and thinking “OK, when is this going to be over?”  That was bad.

Of course I blame the rain for this, but I also blame my reliance on my Garmin too.  At the start I knew the GPS signal wasn’t registering, so my splits would be a bit off.  But then my first split came back at 8:51: about appropriate for the first cluttered mile of a race if I’m shooting for an 8:24 pace.  However, I didn’t see until after I loaded the race into my computer that the GPS signal registered within the first block of the race and that the first split registered as 1.17 miles instead of one so that I had a pace of 7:35 for that first mile.  Now that probably explains why it felt so difficult to get into a proper pace during those first few miles, which probably explains the erratic pacing later in the race too.

A brutal truth about this race is that large chunks of it are just not pretty.  I can count at least nine miles (five through 11 and 13 through 16) that went through warehouse districts, large rail yards, or remote strips of highway lined by industrial businesses with large parking lots.  And it’s not the race directors’ fault.  The geography of Portland is essentially a valley: stray too far away from downtown/the river and you run into hills.  It is actually quite an accomplishment that there is only one significant hill on the entire course.  But those lonely miles do take a toll on you, especially the strip from Mile 13 to 16.

Speaking of the hill, it was a mighty climb and I loved every single second of it.  With everything else on the course virtually flat, it was a relief to climb up the 205 foot rise of the St. Johns Bridge.  My quads came alive with power, their stores of energy finally being tapped.  I passed people left and right, as if it were the easiest thing to do.  This was the part of the race I loved the most—and I felt a little sad once I reached the peak knowing that there were essentially no more hills for the rest of the race.

On the other side of the bridge the crowds were great and essentially did not stop until the next bridge some seven miles later.  Actually, I was really impressed with the crowd turnout at this race.  Portlanders were great at coming out in the non-stop rain and cheering on runners.  The kids were also never afraid to take a hi-five from a soaked runner.  The volunteer turnout was also incredible: each water station easily had 25 people handing out liquids and for a race of 12,000 that is a luxurious ratio (I never had to worry about getting water).

The only bad thing about this the race after the St. Johns Bridge was that to the right you basically had an uninterrupted view of downtown (the finish line) behind a whitewash fog.  Something about that made the finish line seem so far away.  It was also in these miles that I started to feel the absence of my water bottle.  I noticed halfway between water stations that I wanted water and that I couldn’t turn to my hand and get it.  While I had appreciated having both hands free during the race, I saw that I really needed a steady flow of liquids during these last six or so miles.

Besides the rain, missing water bottle, and choppy pacing I really thought I was doing well.  And up until Mile 24 I was still looking at a PR—not 3:40, but something like 3:45 or 3:46.  Then it just all got really hairy after that.  Since the halfway point I could feel my stomach aching for more food (despite a steady schedule of GU every 45 minutes).  I could also feel cramps going through my abdomen (a sure sign that I should have stayed in that port-o-potty a little longer before the race).  Knowing that the finish line was close only made those sensations worse.

Despite only having two miles to go I couldn’t muster up enough good thoughts to keep me plowing through.  Or maybe I had forgotten to focus on the good thoughts once I got to this point. 

On the other side of the Broadway Bridge I started to feel the weight of the previous miles upon me.  My knees were starting to worry me because for the preceding weeks they had been aching more than usual and feeling weird and for some reason I couldn’t find my heating pad to make them feel better.  Trying to envision the finish line was useless because of all the tall buildings and street names were unfamiliar—I had no idea where it was and could only tell you it was not close enough.

All of these things compounded into a weird heart burn/stomach cramp/gas bubble/stitch flare up concentrated in the area at the bottom of my chest sternum.  I felt myself start to hobble and then uncontrollably started walking.

“Fuck,” is all I could say.  Less than a mile to the finish line and I had to stop to walk.  I felt like I let myself down, but it was something I could recover from.  About 30 seconds later I picked it up again set on making it to the finish from there.  But a minute or two later I stopped again from the same pain.  The second walking break felt like failure.  That was where I realized that the PR would not happen and that I felt I let the race get the best of me.  That hurt in a way that was trivial (I was still going to finish a Marathon!) and soul shattering (I couldn’t perform despite my hardest effort).  And that is the same thing that prevents me from coming to good terms with Portland today. 

When I felt better and finally recognized where I was (only four blocks from the finish line) I started running determined to not stop until the finish line.  And I did.  I unzipped my wind breaker (never ended up taking it off due to the rain) to show my bib number, which had my name printed in all caps on it.  Sure enough people started yelling my name.  Though it was vain it was great.  Despite the shortcomings of the previous mile, I crossed the finish line as I always do: running hard and strong, blasting any doubt that I once again defeated the juggernaut.

Final Numbers:

Net Time: 3:49:00

Overall place: 1388/7835 (top 18% of finishers)

Men: 1025/3407 (top 30%)

M25-29: 160/437 (top 37%)

Twenty-Six Miles through a Lake, Part I

Marathons are run come hell or high water.  Well, I got the latter.

The forecast I posted ten days prior of partly cloudly and 62 never happened.  The very next day the forecast changed to 50% chance of showers and only went up from there.  Even the night before the race, when the local weather man forecasted the rain to start an hour after the race start—even that delay didn’t happen.

This was my first race in the northwest and fate had decided it was going to be a quintessential experience, climate and all.  When we got to the lobby and looked out the front doors my heart sank.  Sheets of rain were dancing across the street.  A curtain of water was pouring over the awning.  We huddled under our one umbrella and went out into the downpour. 

As we walked the ten blocks to staging area, more and more runners joined the trek.  Some were carrying umbrellas, others wearing ponchos—several pragmatic ones were wearing garbage bags.  I thought the garbage bag was a good idea: the jacket I was wearing was no match for the elements, one minute out from under the umbrella and I’d be soaked.

A block away from the starting area we ducked out of the crowd and into a covered area in front of a building.  It was still very dark, the rain and clouds prevented any light.  I went through my stretches while I was still mostly dry and had the space.  I started eating an apple, but knew that I probably didn’t have quite enough food inside of me.  For the previous 72 hours I had been a nervous wreck between staying up late to pack, squeezing a ten hour work day into seven, taking a transcontinental flight, all mixed with the anxiety that comes with a Marathon.  And when I get stressed, I don’t eat—my stomach just locks up, to the point that the day before I had to force myself to eat lunch and dinner because I just didn’t have an appetite.

Even while eating the apple, I could feel my body saying “I don’t want this.”  Getting down two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches earlier that morning was already a major effort.  But I forced myself to eat as much as possible of the apple as you can see here in the moments before I entered the starting corrals:





Note: when I said “human baggage” I actually meant the people accompanying the runners (like Wifey was accompanying me) not their actual personal effects.

It doesn’t come out so well in the video but I was mentally stuck between “I don’t want to run in the rain,” “I don’t want to be on camera,” “where is the nearest port-o-potty,” and “how much more of this apple can I take?”  The surroundings were equally discordant: runners trying to stay dry under ledges, a giant crowd of runners trying to get through one gate in the fence, marshals calling out directions, humming generators from the flood lights, the faint smell of port-o-potties.

I kissed my videographer goodbye and wiggled into the mob.

Once past the security fence I went immediately to the port-o-potty lines.  Geez, there are never enough of these.  Right before my turn to go in I decided to go for quick 30 second jog around an empty area of the start.  When I hopped back in line I was ready to, um, go.

After the pitch black port-o-potty there was about 10 minutes left before the start of the race.  I went over to my starting corral.  Not sure how, but somehow I was placed in the second corral just behind the elites/really fast people.  I found a dry spot off to the side under a tree and waited. 

At this point the rain had gone from downpour to drizzle to almost gone back to drizzle.  I just accepted the fact that I was going to have to run in the rain for this race and that I would be very wet.  I thought of the previous times that I had run in the rain and nothing bad happened then—I was just running wet.  And then I realized: I left my water bottle with Wifey.  I had meant to grab it when I grabbed the apple, but didn’t.  I scanned the crowd near the fence to spot her umbrella, but no luck.  And with only minutes before the start I couldn’t step out and find her.

I hadn’t run a race without a water bottle in years.  And I had run all my other Marathons with a water bottle.  Funny, it was going to be my wettest race ever, but my first without a water bottle.

As they sounded the wheelchair start I went over my basic game plan: get down to an 8:24 pace as quickly as possible and then hold it for as long as possible.  That pace would get me a 3:40 finish.  I also remembered to turn on my Garmin.

After the horn sounded for the runner start I figured that all the corrals would be released at once.  But when my corral (B) shifted to where corral A was they held us back.  Not only had they corralled runners according to pace, but they were spacing apart the corral releases by about a minute.  Something I think was very smart.

In the seconds before they released my corral I looked at my Garmin, it still hadn’t registered a GPS signal.  Uh oh.  It was taking longer than it should to get the signal, probably because of the weather and tall buildings surrounding the start.  So I assumed I would have some choppy splits for the first couple miles: one more atypical thing to juggle during this race. 

And then they counted down for our start:

A rough transition back

So I can't hide that I've had a hard time blogging over the past few months.  It's been hard with work to find the time like I used to, and when I do find time I'm not inspired to write.  It sucks.  It really and truly does.

Then, when I was inspired to write in the days before the Portland Marathon we were rushing to pack and tie up loose ends before we left.

After the race, well, I was on vacation.  And despite the best intentions of writing up my race report cozied up in a hotel bed, we never had a day where we got to be lazy around the room for a morning.

And now, we've stepped back into the shit-storm that is our normal life.  Sigh.

Race report is coming.  And I promise: it will be a wet one.

Ten days to go

Marathon Fever. It has snuck up on me this time. When I turned on the TV this morning and realized it was Oct 1 and that the Portland Marathon was only 10 days way I realized that I had been showing symptoms all week. I’ve visited the Marathon’s website at least twice a day this whole week. I carefully analyzed the starting and finishing area maps, scoping out ideal entry and exit points. Despite the fact that the Portland Marathon is just a piece of a much longer Portland vacation, I only have eyes for this race for next ten days.

It’s such a great feeling to have, especially since I didn’t get these kinds of butterflies with the Delaware Marathon.

The only problem? It has essentially rained every morning this week. And we’re not talking wimpy rain here—the cover from our grill has blown off and dowels from our tomato plants have been pulled out of the ground. But I must take it for what it is: Mother Nature is forcing me to taper. And since I suck at tapering as much as the next guy, this coaching by weather might just do the trick.

PS--Did I mention that the race day is now in the 10-day forecast?  It looks like it's going to be a perfect day:

Self-sabotage

Over the past two weeks (yikes has it really been that long since I've posted?) I've done a couple things out of the ordinary, both of which have had their own detrimental effects on running and that I will now grossly exaggerate.

The Dark Art of Bicycling
I took the Monday before Labor Day off to use up the last of my summer bonus days from work and decided it would be fun to rent a bike for the day and ride around the city.  Knowing my hatred for riders and that I haven't ridden a bike in years, this could only be described a momentary bout of hysteria.

I picked up the bike from one of the bike shops around Central Park and got my bearings by doing a small loop around the park.  Then I rode down along the Hudson to meet Wifey for lunch near her office in Soho.  After a lunch of empanadas and rice and beans I headed back up the Hudson all the way to the George Washington Bridge.  Then crossed the Bridge over to the Jersey Palisades park--where I realized how hard steep uphills are on a bike.  After taking a nap in the park I crossed back over to New York and rode down to Central Park and returned the bike about an hour early (mostly because my ass area was hurting from the seat).

After riding about 25 miles around the New York City area I picked up a couple things.  First off, I was surprised at how easy it was to get around the city with a bike.  Even the parts where there weren't bike lanes and I was riding in traffic, car drivers seemed to be just fine with me riding in their lanes.  Second, I seemed to be the only one on a bike obeying traffic lights--riders were just whizzing about not really paying attention to traffic signals, staying in bike lanes, or going with traffic.  No wonder there is so much angst against them: they act like pedestrians when they're really more like cars.

The last thing I noticed is that I was actually enjoying myself riding around on a bike.  I don't know if I'd be ready to take it on in the exercise/fitness sense, but it is a fun way to get around.

Barefoot Beach Running Part Duex
Fast forward to about a week later, when we're with my family for Labor Day staying at a hotel on Ft. Lauderdale beach.  Looking to spice up my eight mile run I decide I'll do it barefoot in the sand, since I had a good experience back on South Padre Island.

My first footstep in the sand tells me instantly that this was a bad idea.  The sand on the gulf coast was fine and compact, this Ft. Lauderdale sand was the complete opposite: coarse and soft.  Every foot step suck deep into the sand.  Later on I would liken it to a car being stuck in first car: lots of stopping power but no speed.  I tried running on the waterline, but that only felt harder.  I tried running in the tracks of the tractors that come out early to smooth the sand, but it was only minimal improvement.

About a mile in I gave up on the sand and moved on to the sidewalk.  A huge improvement, but it was much more rough on my feet.  After the turnaround (around the 4.5 mile mark) I checked out my feet.  Sure enough there were huge blisters on my toes exactly where they had developed last time I went barefoot running.  But then there were also big round blisters (about the size of a quarter) directly below each of my ring toes.  With the blisters I had an awful time on the sidewalk, so I would weave back and forth from sand to sidewalk.

Eventually, I just gave up and walked the last mile to the hotel in the sand.  Not my proudest moment.  The good thing is that the blisters on my toes I was able to drain that night (oh how much goo was in them!).  The round ones under my ring toes seemed to be much deeper under the skin, so much so that I thought that they were calluses.  But last night I finally got in there with a needle and sure enough an pinkish/grayish goo came out.  Sorry, no pictures.  Definitely will be more picky about my barefoot running in the future.

The smells of running

I did a good chunk of yesterday's 18-miler in Central Park--about nine miles.  While I was running I noticed a smell all throughout the park.  It was vaguely of incense, and that could make sense if there was a street vendor selling incense nearby, but I was smelling this all over the park.   

The NYRR was having a Marathon training run, so maybe it had something to do with that?  Then I noticed some red powdery stuff on the cobblestones near Tavern on the Green where the smell was particularly strong--perhaps that was it?  It most definitely was not the horse poop smell that dominates the loop from the sixth avenue entrance to the grand army plaza exit.  I never figured it out, but I was relieved when I left the park and no longer had to smell it.

But this makes me think that smelling is a bigger part of running than you would initially imagine.  I mean the whole process of running really is an exercise in breathing right?  In through your nose, out through your mouth. So it makes sense that you end up smelling a lot while running.  And from all that, you start to identify certain smells with running.

There are two major smells that dominate my weekday runs in Astoria.  First, there is the stench from the power plant.  Or it might be a broken sewer pipe as someone posted on a photocopied flyer taped up throughout Astoria Park.  Either way, on a bad day the smell can invade the whole neighborhood and can be really upsetting to a run.  

The second smell, and forgive me for sounding creepy, is the smell of over-perfumed Astorians walking by in the morning.  I don't exactly know why, but my neighbors, both male and female, love perfume--or heavy scented soap.  Every time I pass someone I swear I can smell one of my dad's colognes or the smell of my first grade teacher.  It's eerie and comforting at the same time.

The are some random other smells I associate with running.  For about two weeks in June/July every year the Jasmine trees in Astoria park bloom and the smell pervades the track--this marks the beginning of fall Marathon training season.  There is the car exhaust smell from doing hill repeats on the Queensboro Bridge--absolutely choking if the wind is not in your favor.  There's also my own scent, the one that I swear sometimes smells like chardonnay and the reason I try to find a seat in the corner when I take the subway home after a long run.

Update on training for Portland

I seem to be at a lack of interesting things to say.  So under the guise of "this blog is record of my running history" I figured I should check in on how training is going for Portland.

Things are going well--not incredible, but well.  I'm hitting all my runs without having to do crazy rescheduling of runs or life.  Tempo runs continue to be an issue for me: it is the one type of run that disagrees with my stomach (and I wonder if it has become psychological trigger at this point).  I thought that I hadn't been able to get my repeats down to my fastest speeds, but after comparing against my training this time last year, I actually am on par with my better times and have actually cranked out a few new records for training splits.  I've also noticed that my long runs have gone exceptionally well: the most difficulty I've had was yesterday's 17 miler, and that was mostly because I had to do a series of loops at the end to make my mileage and meet up with Wifey.

Ever since I threw out a perfectly good pair of shoes, I've been running in the same Brooks Adrenalines for every run. This is the first time in years that I've only used one pair of shoes and I feel like I'm blasting through this pair.  And my feet have noticed it too: all of a sudden I'm getting all these new aches and pains in parts of my feet that never hurt.  All this means that I have to order a second pair ASAP.

This definitely has not been a repeat of training for NYCM.  I made leaps and bounds during that training cycle because it was the first time I had trained entirely outdoors (no scheduled treadmill runs).  But, even more importantly, it has been a huge improvement over my last training cycle in preparation for Delaware.  This has been a much more positive experience and I definitely feel better about my running this time around.  However, Delaware did lead to a PR come race day--which makes me wonder if I might need some of the bad training to have something to work against on race day.

What did I sign up for?

There is one key feature missing from my training plan for the Portland Marathon: a Half-Marathon.  For my past four Marathons I've run a Half halfway through training as a gut check for the Marathon and as a convient way to get another state off the list.  As it turns out, it's never really a gut check.  I run the race knowing that it's not the "serious" race I'm training for.  Also, I'm running out of neighboring states to run in, so the half-way Half-Marathon doesn't help with the 50 state goal.

However, always being game when someone suggests a run/race, I did just sign up for a race a few weeks before Portland.  But this race is not a Half-Marathon or 10K or 5K or anything that resembles a standard running event.  It is a nuts crazy uphill, obstacle laden 3.23 mile race called the Warrior Dash.

This race takes place on Windham Mountain, which is a ski slope during the winter.  During the race not only do you zig zag up and down a ski slope, but you also:

1. High step through a series of tires
2. Jump over a wall
3. Crawl through a pipe
4. Navigate a forest
5. Wade through a swamp
6. Run across a gully on thin wooden planks
7. Run over a rickety wooden bridge
8. Run through a wide stream
9. Climb cargo nets
10. Scale a wall of slate bricks
11. Go down a mud slide
12. Leap over a line of flames
13.  Scramble through a mud pit under barbed wire

And there is no further description than what is on the website.  There is no walk through or detailed orientation of what the obstacles entangle.  That's all part of the challenge.  Even though I've never done anything like this before and it's completely out of my typical races, I'm really friggin excited!

The Death of Speed

While in southern Texas over Fourth of July weekend, just missing a hurricane and eating more BBQ than I thought possible, I had an epiphany: speed is not my thing.

We were visiting a close friend in McAllen, TX July 1-6. I had full intentions of keeping up my Summer of Speed training while on vacation, but one night in central AC and I couldn't wake myself up before 9am.  It was great and horrible at the same time.  For all the luxuries that New York City has for some reason central AC still hasn't caught on--even in my current apartment building which is only three years old.  If you have been to southern Texas, you know that you need to get out there at dawn if you're going to do any kind of physical activity, so 9am was not an option.

For a couple nights we stayed on South Padre Island and being across the street from the beach was too much to ignore.  Our first morning there I fought off the siren song of central AC and forced myself out the door by 7:30...barefoot.  That's right.  Not only was I going to run on the beach--which I've never done--I was also going to do it barefoot.  I figured when else would I have a chance to do this?

I stashed my flip-flops under the boardwalk in hopes that no one would find them.  The sun was bright and pretty high already, but the strong breeze and reduced temps left over from the hurricane made it downright tolerable.  I set off going south for three miles and then returning, for a total of six miles.  I didn't set any speed requirement since I've never run barefoot or on sand before.

The sand was fine, compact, and mostly free of shells/debris; ideal for running.  I noticed immediately that my heels had to go further down during each stride and that my calves were stretching out.  But after the first half-mile I was totally down with the form and stride adjustments.

By the turnaround I could feel something on the bottom of my feet, but I figured that I hadn't stepped on anything.  At mile four I stopped and finally checked my feet.  Sure enough I hadn't stepped on anything, but I had managed to form three blisters on my feet.  I took a bit of a walking break and then managed to run for the last 1.25 miles.

After that run I felt great, better than any of my runs in the past month.  It was a long, sweaty, sustained effort.  While I didn't do any sexy speediness, I felt like I got a real workout.

That night I mentioned to Wifey that I wasn't really feeling the whole Summer of Speed thing.  I wasn't digging the workouts.  I couldn't find races.  I missed the long runs.  And I had a nagging fear that I wouldn't be ready for an October Marathon if I was running 5Ks all summer.  Now, don't get me wrong.  During Marathon training I love speed workouts.  Track repeats, tempo runs, hill repeats--I love doing them all when they offer a break from the long slow runs that are also baked into Marathon training.  Doing them exclusively turns out to not be so much fun.

In talking to Wifey I realized that I should just drop the Summer of Speed and focus instead on a Fall Marathon.  It would getting me doing the runs I want to do and get me back on the 50 State track.  It sounded like a plan (once again, I don't see the most obvious answer).

Now, you might remember/recall that I was planning on running the Virginia Beach RnR Half on Labor Day and then the Mount Desert Island Marathon in October.  Well, over the past couple of months both of those have fallen through.  We were going to go to Virginia Beach with the family for a weeklong vacation, but scheduling and costs prevented that from happening.  So I was going to save this race for another year.  But then I realized that Virginia and Maine were basically the only remaining states within driving distance.  All other states are pretty much fly only.  So I planted the bug in my mind (and Wifey's) to do a "destination" Marathon.

A couple cities came to mind--someone even suggested Denver--but once Wifey said Portland, Oregon, my ears perked up.  I looked up the race and started getting excited.  We've wanted to go to Portland for a while now and a Marathon near our Anniversary would be a perfect excuse to go.  On reading further it looked like a great race that wasn't too big plus there is a big wine region next door, the ocean an hour away, Mt. St. Helen across the state line, and a slew of quirky hotels--I was sold.

So my next race will be the Portland Marathon on Oct, 10 (that's 10/10/10) after which we're going to enjoy a week's worth of vacation involving lots of drinking and an active volcano.  Hurray!