Marathon log week 6

 

    I finished my sixth week of marathon training. The game plan for last week was this:  Tues. 4 miles, Wed. 7 miles, Thurs. 4 miles rest day, Sat. 7 miles and Sun. 14 miles. What can I say, it was all going amazingly well until Sunday came along and hit me over the head. First of all, I have to tell you, if you ever see a status on my facebook and it says something like  "I'm running with Nike etc" when you "like" that while I'm running, it send cowbells and cheers into my headphones and it is so encouraging to me. I wanted to say thank you to all my cheers over the weekend, I don't know why cowbells are so motivating but they are.It must be that I know at that moment, you think I can accomplish this too. Thank you!
     I think I need to look at my training from this point on as phase 2. Here is why. Since January all of my training has been indoors and I have been killing it. I told you last week that I have a sensor in my shoe and an app I use to monitor my distance inside. I told you that they contradict each other right? Well what if they're both wrong? dun dun dun. Sunday was the first beautiful day I was able to get outside the rec center and run. The snow was melted on the path and it was a warm 39 degrees when I started. I bought a new app to show me running routes near by and I discussed them the night before with Ian, to mark out the best path. I had a decent sized carb filled breakfast and went out to meet the day. All of my reading this last week convinced me to run slower than I thought necessary to make it through the mileage, but I wasn't prepared for the course I had picked. Hills....so many hills. One of my apps reads it like this
Mile 1 ascent: 312 feet descent: 139 feet
Mile 2 ascent: 215 feet descent: 204 feet
Mile 3 ascent :255 feet descent: 169 feet
 I won't keep listing it but most of these are a higher climb than it was a descent. I ran slow and kept my heart rate low but I just could not believe how long it took me to get my miles in. I ran for 3 hours. 3 hours. At that point the sensor in my shoe said I had completed 14.5 miles and the app said I only did 12.5. Two miles is a HUGE difference at that point!  To say the least I was disappointed. Not only were the apps recording my time at least 4 minutes slower a mile but also recording that I couldn't complete 14 miles in three hours. It just doesn't seem right.
      So here are my thoughts. I need a garmin GPS watch. I don't wan't to under train but I really don't want to over train either. I learned, while I laid on the couch yesterday, unable to move, that the GPS chip in our phones are generally smaller than in a GPS watch. Since smart phones can do so many things, like a swiss army knife, they may not be able to do them all extremely well. I also learned that my Nike sensor in my shoe is 90% accurate. I don't know how I feel about that quite yet. If I have in fact not been getting in as many miles as I think I have and if my pace is as slow outside as it was yesterday I might need to change to a novice training program. At this point there is no need to convince myself to run intermediate mileage if this whole time I have been running fewer miles that I thought. UGH , that's frustrating .
     Okay here are the positive things. I had a beautiful morning yesterday on a trail I had never experienced before.

See, it was literally gorgeous!
 

Also, I am so glad that I have seen these possible training discrepancies now, instead of on race day. Also, if I switch to the Novice program, I am right on track, yesterday would have been a 12 mile run . A few more great things about yesterday: I ran past a water park I didn't know existed. It warmed up to 68 and I took a nap! Good day, huh?
        I started reading the book "Marathon" by Hal Higdon, it is very appropriate for someone to read before they've ran their first. I was also reading "The New Rules of Marathon and Half Marathon Nutrition : A cutting edge Plan to Fuel your Body Beyond the Wall" by Matt Fitzgerald and although I've learned a lot, it's very technical and more for people trying to improve their times. I have a goal to reach the finish line in under 4:30. However, if I am being realistic and if I am listening to the experience from these books, my real goal needs to be: to simply finish, uninjured and smiling, preferably. I gotta say that does not sound as impressive as 4:30. But I need to be realistic.
   One thing that I read repetitively this week, was that most runners need to slow down in their training. The only way to improve in running is to run more and the only way to run more (or the most) is to run slow. The moral : Run slow and you live to run another day. Also, I have read over and over that it is better to reach the starting line undertrained than to over train and never reach it or, reach it at the level of burnout.
   Well thank you for listening to me ramble. I realize this might not be as interesting to you if you're not training for a marathon. But I love your support and I love the challenge of figuring it all out myself. So next week the intermediate program works up to 15 miles and the novice program runs 13. I will let you know how it turns out.

In case you needed a visual aid of what that might look like....you're welcome