The Joe Nation 2007 NYC Marathon Log

Awesome, Joe. I know nothing about this since my days as a harrier in my youth. Don't peak too early.

None of these workouts are my idea. (Well, the routes are.)

I am following a schedule put together by Bob Glover in The Runner's Handbook. I am lucky enough to be in a class coached by Shelly Glover, a low-key individual who loves running and runners, and her amazing staff of assistants who never fail to be positive.

Joe(I am the slowest runner in the fast group of Intermediates)Nation

That name's familiar, thinking he was with Runner's World or whatever that magazine was.

Today's workout was supposed to combine a short distance (3-6 miles) with a little speedplay or hills. I chose hills seeing as how I live on one.
Overlook Mile

It's all uphill. You know that joke where the father says he had to walk to school and back in the snow and it was uphill both ways. Well, the Overlook Mile IS uphill through 95% of it. You go, natch, up Overlook Terrace to Ft. Washington then uphill to the subway station near Ft. Tryon Park, then you run up Bennett to get back to Overlook. The only down in this route is the elevator at the subway station that takes you down to the bottom of Bennett. No rest for the wicked.

I had a little laugh when I read the phrase - short distance 3-6 miles. Last Friday, when I passed the fifteen mile mark, which was a new distance mark for me, (in this incarnation) I remembered what it had felt like to finish my first five mile loop of the park. It took me an hour and fifty minutes. It takes me fifty minutes now. And that's when I'm loafing along.

I think thinking about this time and distance thing, it's probably better for me to think about time right now on the long runs. Run for four hours and then measure, rather than run twenty miles and see how long it took, but I'm thinking these things before I have had any breakfast.

Joe(48 days to Nov 4)Nation

Okay.
The hill thing was probably too much after Friday's run. I have my first injury - a shin splint- a little one on my left leg which is responding very nicely to me sitting on my expanding ass while holding an ice bag on the sore spot.

I was running to the subway when the thing just leaped up and made me say 'ouchie"

I am going to do a 13 this Friday like the first verse of "Proud Mary."

Joe(Slow and nice)Nation

nice and easy

tortoise and the hare

all that good stuff

Nicey nicey, the better to roar back.

"Running through the pain"s for fools.
Listen to your legs.




I'm trying to get my running program back on track.
They've got me pulling a 3pm to midnight shift which is screwing my
system up big-time.

You may want to explain, JoeNation, what a shin splint is. I know, but others may not.

So I was wandering around my art supply store and ended up in our picture framing department. The framer was finishing a 24" x 36" poster of a cross-country runner from one of the local high schools. A recruiting poster for getting kids to join the team. A lad running towards the camera from a distance of perhaps 10 feet. His arms and legs were chugging along and would presumably keep going. But his eyes, as he stared straight at the camera, looked so weary, so drained of energy or emotion. The eyes are what you see first and last.
It is a haunting photograph that will only appeal to a very, very limited audience of potential runners.

Well, I've had shin splints. I don't know that I can explain their best treatment...

Oops. You're right, realjohnboy (when are you getting to NYC??) this sport like all others is chockablock with jargon.

Shin Splint : Shin splints is a general term used to refer to a painful condition in the shins. It is often caused by running or jumping, and may be very slow to heal.

Shut up.

The front of your shin feels sharply painful and the pain does not lessen as you run. Running uphill increases the discomfort. Treatment includes icing the area (5mins on and 5mins off for a hour or so, Advil or some other anti-inflammation medication and (grrrrrrrrr) rest.

Shut up.

There are also a couple of stretches for the calf and the ankle which give a lot of relief.

First a person should try to remember what the limits are for a slightly paunchy sixty year old white boy and stop acting as if that boy were twenty two again.

IRRATIONAL EXURBERANCE isn't that what Greenspan called it?
I was so pumped on Friday,
and Saturday I floated around beginning to think things like:
I was born to do this.

Well, I was, but one shouldn't think thoughts like that out loud

(the evil green meanies hear such talk and make mischief

[size=7]Yes, I deny the existence of gods but believe firmly in the ability of gremlins and gargoyles to wreak havoc upon my life.[/size]

Okay, not really, but still... .

Enough of that: I think I am back on track. Stopping at the first sign of trouble is always good. I have barely a twinge today.

Joe(I'll let you know)Nation

PS Show of hands: How many people think George should run from Midnight to 3Am?

My hand is up.

My hand is up...
...upside yo head.

Thursday night, I took my new shoes ( which are a size larger than I bought a year ago. Can your feet grow bigger as you pound the pavement for mile on end?) and ran around the reservoir for a couple after picking up my shirt and number for the Queens Half Marathon.

Ran down the river and around the park yesterday for 14 miles. The shin splint is gone, but now, maybe in compensation, the back of my right knee is sore. That's never been a problem.... where's that ice bag?

So now I'm about skipping the Queens and just doing the training mileage as listed. (Which is a six mile.)

Joe(behaving myself again)Nation

I know you'll miss not running the half m, but that really sounds like the
sensible thing to do.

Iced down the back on the knee yesterday and for a few minutes this morning. Darn thing was stiff all day until about four o'clock when I noticed ---- all was normal. What the... ?

Still not going to Queens, it's insanity. You have to leave midtown at 4AM and get bussed over to the start, then wait for two hours or so for the rest of the busses to get there (4am is the first bus out, so I guess I could chance taking a later one,) ANY way, then you run it and then you wait for the bus to take you back to midtown. They put the thing way out on the North Shore so there really isn't any good way of getting there by subway.

Did I mention how I screwed up yesterday? I had the whole thing planned out. Run down the river (7 miles) then do two laps of the park (6 miles each). Make sure to take plenty of gels and OOPS Jargon Alert!

Gels are these little packets of goop flavored like strawberrys or oranges or bananas which the runner (that's me) slurps down every 45 minutes or so while running. Some runners swear that good old jelly beans work just as well but I can just see myself inhaling a couple of them instead of ingesting them. I've used them in the last two runs of over 13 miles and in three of the four half marathons and I like the way they seem to bring you a burst of good feeling.

So the above run was going to take me something over three hours to do, so I got a fistful of gels out of the cabinet and put them right next to my Fuel belt. (Yes, I have a Fuel Belt)

I fill it full of Gatorade and fill the pocket full of Gels (Strawberry!! Yum) and head out down the river.

I am rumbling along feeling great and loving the way I am actually passing traffic on the West Side Highway (it's rush hour 7:30Am) when I get to the four mile mark and reach back for my first Gel.

>>Crappola! No gel! I forgot to put them IN the belt. So now I have a problem. There is plenty of water on the river and in the park and I have the Gatorade swinging from my hips, but will I really need the extra energy from the gels???

I get my answer about half way around the Park at about the ten mile mark. My right leg is doing that back on the knee thing and my attitude is fading and I start to plot just where and when I will quit. Luckily, just beyond the ten mile point is the statue of Fred LeBow

and the finish miles of the real Marathon. (I planned to run the finish miles twice.) I never let the Coach down. What a guy!

So I chugged, mugged, slugged and bugged my way down Cat Hill and up through the horse carriages and around the corner to the end.

Then I quit.

And a good thing too. I was exhausted all day today and I think it's because of using up a lot of carbohydrates without any replenishment.

Joe(So I'm eating my broccoli, bagel and a little steak.)Nation

Took yesterday off in order to regroup (and do some demolition and re-hanging some rails in the closet.) We took eight boxes and a bag of clothes to Goodwill.
I re-wrote my running schedule.

Joe(back on track)Nation

Did my 20 mile run this morning.

Did it in less than four hours.

Marathon Training 20 mile

Joe(details to follow)Nation

So it appears your injuries from last week are behind you. Great!

By the way, did you hear about the 13 brothers/sisters in a Wisconsin town who got into Guiness by all participating, and finishing, a marathon?
They range in age from mid-30's to mid 50's. A couple or three of them are serius about running. Many of the others barely made it by the cut-off time of 8 hours (=18 minute miles, but 26 of those miles).

When you are running for four hours,( okay, three hours and 57 minutes give or take,) you have a lot of time to think about things. You try to remain aware of your surroundings, especially in the beginning miles downstream from the George Washington Bridge, because the commuters on bicycles zoom by at tremendous speeds. They must ride this route at this time of the day (9am) everyday because they cover the ground with incredible accuracy. I've watched a lot of bike riders, I used to teach long distance cycling, these men and women know their machines and the territory they are traversing. I saw two of them cut between a Parks Department truck and a fence with only an inch to spare on each side and neither one of them appeared to have touched a brake handle. Still even knowing what good riders they are, I keep to the right side of the path and listen for their approach. The path is a little narrow in places and I always keep an eye out for a place to step off if necessary.

But once you get into the rhythm of your surroundings, at about Ten Mile Park (that means it's ten miles from the south end of Manhattan) about three miles into the run, you can finally slide into musing and amusing yourself. One thing that struck me on Friday was I think in larger chunks of ground now. When three miles was my limit or my goal or both, I thought about getting to the next corner or the next painted telephone pole, sometimes my marker would be just the next traffic light. Now, on a twenty mile run, I break things into three mile blocks or six mile blocks.
I had to keep reminding myself, as I planned what I was going to do at Mile Eighteen, that I was still only at Mile Seven and to take it easy, but my brain kept saying, "Hey, we're visualizing success here. So, get with the visualizations already." Then I'd say to myself, "You're right and Oh good, only two miles to the water stop." Two miles is now just a hop around the block.

There's some music on my player that I no longer like to hear. When the opening chords come on, I reach over and fast forward past the song and promise myself that I am going to delete that song before the next run. I never do it. "Six Days till We say We're Sorry" is still on the player. Fast forward.

There is a point at which you know you are going a little nuts. For me, it happens when I try to add together the 45 minute intervals between the gels. (see above) I twice added 45 and 45 and 45 and got two hours and twenty five minutes. (It's difficult to think in the base 60 while trying to suck the rest of the Gatorade out of the PowerBelt Bottles) Then, I thought about stopping at one of the stands to buy a bottle of Gatorade. That was a great debate. You should have been there.
First, one side of my mind said "Great! Let's do that!"
(I really didn't need more Gatorade, I think that side of my mind was trying to sabotage the operation.)
The other side of my mind said "You are out of your mind. You only have a twenty dollar bill."
"So?" says saboteur brain.
"So, by the time you stop, find out if he's GOT Gatorade and if it's cold and get it and the change and put the change in the little bitty pocket of your belt, it will be really really hard to get going again."
"Will it be really cold?" Evil provocateur cheese brain asked, "Can we get two?"
"How will you open one if your hands are both filled?" said honest, upstanding, road running true pure mind.
"We'll think of something."
(Like Stopping.)
As it turned out, pure of heart brain won out and we did not stop for anything except to gulp some water at the fountain at the North End and the fountain by Coach LeBow's Statue.

A word about running up Fifth Ave:
It was the right thing to do. It allowed me to see the actual course we will be finishing on and get a sense of how far it is from the edge of the Park to the Gate into the Park. (A million billion miles plus ten steps.) There is, despite my coach's admonition NOT to run in the street, plenty of room to run in the street. There is almost half a lane between the parked cars and the lane where the moving cars are. (All of them are coming at you from behind and not all of them are as good at driving as the biking commuters are at riding, but there were no problems.)

The only thing you have to watch out for is the busses. Those open places on the curb are where the busses pull in to stop for passengers. I learned to look at the faces of the people waiting for the bus. If they looked bored to death I continued to trot along, but if their eyes were getting wider by the second and some had the look about them that said "Christ, the bus is going to smack that idiot and I am going to be late for work." then I would burst into a sprint crossing past the open area just before the bus swooped in. (Just two swoops in a mile and a half.)

I came into the park at Mile Eighteen (my previous long distance record) and looked forward to doing two more miles plus a little more to the end. I had a slug of water, I took a gel, I swooped off down the broad expanse of parkway towards the finish. The rain that had threatened all morning completely disappeared and the bluest sky was above and beyond me all the way down Cat Hill and around the South End and up the two little molehills to the Tavern on the Green. 20.3 miles.

When you run that far you are supposed to keep walking for at least another twenty minutes. I did. I walked back to the vendor on the hill and asked for a cold Gatorade.

Joe(He only had Snapple.)Nation

Brilliant writing, as always.

I gotta try me some of that running again.
But tomorrow is the Biking Day. No matter what.
Today, I got into my bike gear, and kept sitting about... Then I decided to face the reality - I'm not going biking. It was a long week, I'm tired.... so I changed into gym clothes instead...and kept sitting about. The i changed into my party clothes and went to meet Gautam (who was singing praises to Joe Nation.) Tomorrow I will go and bike. I will.