Mike's Marathon Training Blog

3.25 treadmill miles

Track work out in Qatar.  It was humid!  Plus 3.35 on the treadmill after some racquetball

Treadmill in Qatar, 3 mins at 7:50-8 pace. 3 minutes 6:15 pace for an hour, plus 5 min cooldown

ON plane all day, finally back in Arizona!

1 mile with both dogs, 1 mile easy on my own.  Trying to settle back in to being home.  I can't wait until my first run again with Blue Pants!

8.2, very nice, took it at what I felt was pretty easy at 7:10's  Faster than expected just getting back to 2500 ft in altitude.  The river run was nice, the new section opened up and its pretty popular.  Got lots of good mornings and hellos, that was a nice change :D  I even saw Laszlo in the back yard on my way back in.

1 mile with both dogs, nice and easy.

1.1 with the dogs

1.4 to the track

.55 warmup

800, 1600, 3200, 1600, 800 @ 6:00 pace with Jeff...he is in much better shape than I at the moment.  Iraq was not great for my running.

.55 cooldown

Overall not bad for the first BPR workout being back here.

Trip down to Bisbee with Laszlo, we will be directing the Bisbee 1000!

Recruit training, Lots of Push ups situps and lunges, another 1.75 miles, probably really about 2 or so, but I know 1.75 for sure.

To Reid Park as a warm up, wow I haven't been this sore in a long time! Thanks for all the lunges last night at Recruit Training Lauren. 3.5 miles

4.75 with BPR, Me, Jeff, LnL and Prithi.  Plus 20 push ups and situps at 6 stops.  Although on two I cut it short to 10 and 15.  Too many push ups and sit ups last night at the Recruit Training.

Ran home, 3.35. Actually felt alright going home, but my legs still feel like bricks!

1.5 miles each way to and from the BPR Tempo run.

10.6 Tempo/MP run with Jeff sandbagging to hang with me.  6:56 pace. 

My legs, more specificly my quads/thighs still feel like bricks, so overall being back in Tucson at 2500ft for less than a week and putting in the most mileage in a week in quite some time, I felt pretty good. 

The AF Marathon is just a week and 2 days away.  I put in a bit more miles and tougher workouts, but I still did not put in any really long runs.  I think Sunday I will go for a 18-20 miler, just to get a bit more towards my race miles.  I am actually anxious to see if the lower mileage and fewer long runs will still have me ready to run Sub-3.  If not, I will be paying for it and will be ready to run the Tucson Marathon in Dec with Jeff.

I think realistically we can run about a 2:45, maybe next year shoot for a 2:37.

We'll have to see how training goes now that I am back though.

Evening--Recruit Training with 2 miles mixed in there.

The toughest 3.1 I have run in a long time, maybe ever.

I did the chalking of the course for tomorrows Run Down Crime 5K. I ran the entire way pushing that thing! Its not too bad on the fairways, but the rough, the soft wet spots and the hills...whew. Its short, wabbly and I am covered in chalk, but I marked the entire course with three and a half bags of chalk in about an hour, hour and a half.

Sabino Canyon, man what a beautiful run.  7.35 miles, I actually felt really good for not being around hills much.  It is quite a climb going up, about 1100 feet or so.  My stomach was not so great, so I cut my run in half, well a little more than half, but I felt better than expected running hills, so I am happy.

Time to knock out some papers for school....

1.25 to the track, .55 mile warm up with Jeff, High Knees, But-kickers, Mt climbers, strides

5x 1 Mile w/ Jeff-- 5:57, 5:57, 5:57, 5:56, 5:46

.6 mile cooldown with Jeff, Phil, and Allison

 Got a ride home with Laszlo and talked about some team stuff. 

Felt really good all day, no issues. I actually feel pretty good about the marathon.

PM--3 miles, plus 50 push ups and sit ups for recruit training

Nice BPR workout this morning with myself, Jeff, Robert (good to see him out) and Prithi, who was a bit later than usual but caught us by going the opposite direction around the park. We stayed together the whole way.

4.85 easy miles. No push ups or situps for me as my marathon is just a few days away and I don't want to be sore at all going in to it.

Early flight to Dayton.  Met with most of the team at the airport, went to dinner wih a couple of the guys from the team.  We actually did quite a bit of walking, more than I hoped for, but its ok.

Good sleep, important to two days before a marathon!

2.1 miles, mostly easy, with a few strides to open it up a litle bit.

Dynamic stretching for 10-15 minutes.

Met Bart Yasso and heard him speak at our dinner, what a character!  He is hilarious and I would LOVE to do his job!  I thought mine took me cool places....

Also I look forward to cheering on Capt Ivan Castro, a blind Iraq War Vet, severely injured in battle.  He has a great heart and a good head on his shoulders.  Even a sense of humor! 

Woke up a bit early, 4 am, for a 6am departure for the race. Ate a peanut butter granola bar and drank some Propel Gatorade.

I decided to try to set a PR based on the course based on the fact that if you don't try to, you never will. Fairly stupid since my longest training run was 15.6 miles in one day.

At the starting line I met Bill, looking to run a 2:55, sounded reasonable and we ran together for quite a bit. I had to put the reigns on him often as he kept naturally going fast.  The first two miles included a 200ft climb so we did them nice and easy as a good warm up, mile 3 was a 6:24...too fast.  Slowed back to aound 6:40 and kept it there for a while.  We had a decent group of about 6 guys for a while.  We hit 1:28:10 at the half and I was feeling better than expected.

Bill and a couple others dropped off the group around mile 17 at a water stop. It left just myself and two nice guys, Jeff and Cody. We mainted sub 7's until mile 21 and we had a long slow climb, not steep, but enough to slow you down when you are tired.  At this point I began to fall apart.  Miles 21-26 were: 7:08, 7:41, 7:24, 8:07, 8:11 and a whopping 9:36.  As you can tell I was fading fast.  I had to focus to run straight, especially the  last few miles, in which I barely made it to the finish.  I should have stopped and walked, but I was to stubborn and proud.  I will cover the finish in a minute...

Another issue incurred at mile 21 was that we joined the Half Marathoners, but we joined the course with the group running about 2 hrs.  We were passing them left and right and in and out, it was pretty ridiculous.  Runners were not giving way to the faster Marathoners and many were wearing iPods and could not hear us calling out our passing of them, so they did not move.  The water stops were not prepared for the masses and the halfers were stopping dead to drink, right in front of us.  There was also a stop or two without water ready for us.

Back to the end of the race...I was wobbly and all over the place, I was disappointed to see that the run would actually go long.  I was so ready to be done!  At this point I was slowed to almost a 10 minute mile, but I kept moving my feet.  I was getting passed and not feeling well at all.  I finally made the last turn to the finish and I crossed the first chip mat, not realizing it was another 20 meters to the finish line chip mat.  A nice girl tried to help me across the line and I shrugged her off as I was worried that I would be DQ'd for accepting assitance.  I got the assitance nonetheless as I just about collapsed after the first mat and the medics basically carried me across the line. The time was around 3:07, pretty bad since I was at 3:03 at 26!

The medics took me directly to the med tent, admistered an IV, took my blood pressure, pulse, etc and then smothered me with ice.  I didn't think it was too hot out, I think I just over exerted myself.  My feet did feel extremely hot around mile 23 though and I heard some others comment on the heat of their feet too....just weird.  So after a bit of icing and a second bag of IV fluid, I convinced the nurse to re-assess me before sending me to the ER as they originally wanted to do.  I threw up about 5 times and was in the care of the medics for about an hour total.  They eventually called our Major Command team organizers over and they went and got me some water, bananas and chips...really nice of them.  Once the second IV was done I was released and I went and got some more gatorade, chips, etc.  I felt much better and went and sat at our SUV's with our team.  Everyone was very supportive and awesome!

My main lessons learned from this are: 1. Don't try to set a PR when you know your training was sub-par. 2. Be smarter than stubborn and walk if you can't even run straight.  It's just a marathon... 3. Having a good team and support network is awesome! 4. I better train my butt off for the Tucson Marathon in Dec. No shortcuts this time....

 Update: I am on the results now, 3:07:30, 43 O'all and 9th in AG, not too shabby.  Next year I will be much better!

One mile warm up at the track, Dynamic stretching (logging .25) for all of those.

5x 1000 We ran about 6:40-7:15 pace, I ran with Stacey. First time I met her, very nice girl and pretty quick.  We kept our conversation most of the night. As for the run, I am still recovering from my marathon and I feel pretty good.

.25 cooldown and went back and talked to Laszlo about some of the team stuff.

BPR workout at Reid Park.  4.85 miles with Jeff, plus 5 sets of 40 Pushups and Situps.  They got tough, I need to get better on them.

8.1 Miles with Jeff along the River Path. We ran the first 3/4 mile with everyone, Amanda, Joe and Lauren.  Our first mile was 8:21 we maintained sub 7's for a bit, then backed down since I am still recovering from the marathon. Jeff had an emergency pit-stop around 3.5 miles, then caught back up with me.  We finished fairly strong, but slower due to the winds and the darkness. It was dark for the last 2 miles.  All in all, I felt great, legs were a little more tired than a normal 8 miler, which shows my recovery is not done.  Overall pace was 7:21/mile.  Not bad at all especially with an 8:21 first mile.

Nice hour long hike with the dogs. 36th St. Park

.5 runnig around at the catalina trail race.  Did timing with Laszlo

4 miles on the bike to and from LnL's

13 miles on the bike. Round trip to work

.6 warm up plus lots of dynamic stretching

5 x 100, 200, 400,   800

      13     34    74     2:44

      15     37    80     2:47 

      15     38    78     2:45

      16      37    79    2:47

      15     37     78    2:45

.25 cooldown

about 20 miles of riding my bike today.