I have a race of my own to report on

As the phrase is these days, "I did a thing!" And that thing was, stay injury free for at least a month and participate in a race. I pulled my hamstring on October 5, took 3 weeks off with a few rides and even a swim, then did a few walk-jogs before jumping right  into a full on long run on November 5. Seriously, I ran two times that week and then went 13 miles. I figured if I could survive another month, I'd do the Blue & Gray Half on Sunday, December 4. I told my new watch that I wanted to do this activity and it told me I was going to run slowly. 

My training plan was to listen to the watch's coaching daily suggestions. Most days, it told me to run 8:45 pace for about 40 minutes. I never did that. I'd look ahead to see it would tell me to do some sprinting workouts (10 x 15 seconds at 4:15 pace) or to do a long run, but then I'd take the next two days off and the workouts would disappear. I think the only time I actually listened to the watch was on Thursday, December 1. 10 minute warm up, 20 minutes at 7:00 (tempo pace, allegedly), 10 minutes down. I did it, but struggled to run within the desired range of 6:45-7 something. It was too fast (pats self on back.) So that was it, I was trained and ready to run the half. My coach (re: watch) thought I'd run 1:27-mid.

Graham believed in me though. He thought that I'd be able to run faster than that, but wasn't quite sold on my belief that muscle memory would get me into the low 6's. I was cautiously optimistic, giving KC estimated times around the course in the 6:20-6:30 range. I decided to wear Tim's Alphaflys to give myself the best chance of success, and the weather turned out to be warm enough that I went straight singlet and gloves.

I got an exciting text on race week that Sallie and Chris Post would be joining me on race day-- Chris racing and Sallie long-running/spectating. They met me at my house at 6am, and honestly, running away from the house with Chris to warm up was the highlight of the morning-- just having someone to run with from my doorstep again. The warmup was everything I could have possibly hoped-- brief, filled with conversation, and uneventful. We grabbed Sallie along the way once she was parked behind my car, and wrapped up pretty quickly. I knew that my body could sense that a hard effort was coming, because I started to get some lower back pain. Typical.

It was very cold, but sunny and calm. As we approached gun time and I started to strip down, the national anthem began to play and I worried that I'd somehow lost 5 minutes, or they'd elected to start early because of a dog parade or something on the canal path later that day. Needless to say, the race did not go off early and I made it to the line just fine. Brian Flynn was doing strides off the line as I walked down the hill to make my way there. We exchanged pleasantries and then I moved on to Chris, where I jokingly confirmed to him my earlier suspicion that Brian would be there. Then Chris went off to do strides (notice that I am not doing that) and Brian asked me who he was. I wish I'd told him that he was a super fast out of towner, but I told him his name and said not to worry. I didn't recognize anyone else of consequence around the starting area. I saw the race director and thanked her for the entry to the race, even if my finish would be inconsequential.

Hired Help

Hello Internet! I logged into Blogger today and saw that I have a draft post written about running a half-marathon in December 2022, where I never actually started running the race in the post. Maybe I'll post it one day as a candy-bag. But today, I'm here to talk about the last 71 days, not a race that was almost two years ago.

On July 27, 2024, the weather was nice. As I'm not a meteorologist, I usually just pay attention to the temperature and the chance of precipitation, but I recall being told that the dew point was going to be low. And so it was when Justin and I met at 6 to run. He started before me in order to get in 14-15 miles, and I was just trying to get out the door. It was my second double-digit distance run since June 1. I felt like the run was uneventful. Justin, however, was inspired by how "easy" he felt averaging 7:37 pace with me by his side, and started saying ridiculous things, like that I should run the Indianapolis Marathon in November, that I should go pace him, and that he would pay for me to do it. I brushed off his suggestions as "The Runner's High," and thought nothing of it.

A week later, we ran again, and he was persistent. As I do enjoy long runs and general training for the marathon, and didn't find his goal pace (3:00 - 3:15) to be particularly challenging, I started to consider it, and asked him if I could think about it. He didn't want me to wait too long as he didn't want to pay for an expensive flight, so he agreed to give me a month.

A month from August 3 would give me the opportunity to see if I could even train consistently. That has been the biggest struggle since moving to Fredericksburg 3 years ago. On a good week, I'd run twice with Greg during the weekdays, twice on the weekend, and maybe one other time as a workout. On a bad week, I might run two times or less. If I wasn't injured. I just keep getting injured, which I guess is a part of getting old and overdoing it every once in a while. But a month would let me see if I could get some mileage in my legs, and run most days.

Week 1 (August 5 - 11)
The first week of thinking got off to an OK start with a Tuesday workout. But I wasn't feeling it the next day, and actually stopped a run 2 minutes in on Thursday because I was hurting too much. I didn't do much on the weekdays because Greg was out of town and I was trying to watch track live during the Olympics, with some of the races starting at 4:00 AM EST. I was trying to make a jump in my long run, but it was hot and miserable, so I only got in 14.

Weekly summary: 6 runs, 40.84 miles. Long run of 14.1 miles.

Week 2 (August 12 - 18)
Started off easy for two days, then took off Wednesday. Worked out with the group on Thursday, and was planning to stop to go to the bathroom, but then I rolled my ankle really badly and that pain caused me to forget about needing to go to the bathroom. I figured that if I slowed down, it would hurt more, so we ran that workout pretty quickly. I took the rest of the week pretty easy, as I wanted to make sure my ankle wasn't seriously hurt.

Weekly summary: 6 runs, 39.83 miles. Long run of 7.2 miles.

Week 3 (August 19 - 25)
I read the text wrong and missed the workout, so ran a workout on pure hate by myself on the track. My easy days were more like hard days that were slow, as my recovery needs are getting pretty high. These days are only 4 miles, but my heart rate is still pretty high. I worked out a second time this week, on Friday, and almost did about the same thing each day but once on the track and once on the roads. I had great weather for the long run and finished off the week feeling pretty good, especially about the prospects of running the marathon with Justin.

Weekly summary: 7 runs, 53.79 miles. Long run of 16.1 miles.

Justin and my hotel room

Week 4 (August 26 - September 1)
The workout on Wednesday was 40 minutes at marathon pace, and I was pretty nervous about doing that. I probably should have mentioned that in addition to Justin running the marathon, Jared and Shawn are too, albeit with faster goal paces. So when doing these workouts, there's Justin's pace (6:51-7:15), and their paces which are more in the 6:20-6:30 range. I'm not necessarily holding myself back to run with Justin, because I figure he wants me to be in better shape than him, so that it is easy for me to run his marathon pace and I can drag him through the finish if necessary. So, 40 minutes at marathon pace... I knew I was going to run it faster than his goal marathon pace. And I was nervous, because it was a longer effort than I'd done. But the workout went well and I went home resolved to run the race. Greg had told me he could probably get me a free entry from Brooks, as they're a big sponsor. As his nickname would indicate, he did come through with the coupon code and I registered for the race that day. I did another workout on Friday, with a long cooldown, and another solid long run to celebrate the Labor Day weekend. Justin booked my plane ticket on Friday morning. He already had a hotel room booked and I'll bunk with him. 

Weekly summary: 7 runs, 57:08 miles. Long run of 16.8 miles.

That's where the story of my decision making could end. I said to give me a month, and I didn't take that long for me to determine that I could run with some level of consistency and commit myself to training for a marathon on November 9. But I'm also enjoying it a lot. I like training! And apparently it's a lot of fun when it's not super hard. Since Labor Day, I've only taken two days off. I've had two 20-milers that were the slowest of my life, and I'm averaging 60 miles a week for the last four weeks. My goal is to run one workout and one long run a week. Sometimes I do a second workout, sometimes the long run is the workout. Sometimes they go well, sometimes they don't. But I'm having a blast. So to those of you reading this, if you ever want someone to pace you for a marathon, I'll be your hired help. I won't come to Virginia Beach though.

To the finisher go the spoils

Justin and I will fly to Indianapolis on Friday, the day before the race. Shawn is flying up that day too, and Jared is driving with his family. Hopefully we make it to the expo before Cole Hocker leaves, so that he and I can go get vaccinated together afterwards. Then the race is Saturday morning, I plan to celebrate at Giordano's in Downtown Indy, then Justin and I will fly back later that afternoon. Bing-bang-boom. 

I'll try to let you know how it goes sometime within the next two years.

Guest Post: Natalie Anstey, Cal International Marathon

As previously mentioned, and with little additional fanfare, here is the CIM race report from former William & Mary Math Club President Natalie Anstey!

Training

After PR-ing at the Brooklyn Half (1:45:xx) on a warm and muggy May ‘22 day, I let myself dream big, and picked a goal I once thought would never be remotely achievable. I decided to shoot for a BQ time, which for females 40-44 (yay, aging/leveling up!) is 3:40. This would be a BIG jump, as my time in Philadelphia in November 2021 was 3:54:xx, which was a ~26 minute PR from my previous marathon in Charlotte. Nonetheless, I felt confident in my fitness gained over the pandemic, with consistent base miles, cross training on my spin bike, and weekly strength training (including daily core since February 2021). I was committed to putting in the work to take a good shot at a BQ race. I had actually registered for the 2022 California International Marathon in late April (gotta take advantage of early-bird pricing!). The race has a great reputation for PR/BQ/OTQ chasers, and I was now one of those runners.

My summer running plan was to build up my base miles, do a weekly track workout, and complete a weekly long run. Then, plot twist! On May 31st, I started experiencing sharp pain on the right side of my core. For some reason, I attributed it to my track workout that morning, when a friend suggested I change my arm swing. I was like, oh, I’ve pulled an ab muscle because of messing with my arm swing. After a few days of intermittent intense pain, a light bulb went off in my head- this was not from a pulled muscle. It reminded me of the pain I experienced when I had a kidney stone a few years ago. A few trips to various doctors confirmed that something was wrong with my gallbladder (30 gallstones!) and it had to come out.

Surgery was on June 18th. Recovery time was supposed to be 4-6 weeks of no running, no core work, and no lifting anything heavy. I tried to follow that, though I convinced a nurse to clear me to start running lightly after a couple of weeks if I promised not to do anything intense. I didn’t want to do any damage internally and my incision site wounds were still healing, so I took it easy. I was getting antsy and feeling like my BQ goal for CIM was out of the question, and maybe my body wouldn’t be up for marathon training after surgery/time off from running. It was at this point that I asked Bert to help make me a training plan. Because he’s a nice guy (Editor's note: I really am.) and isn’t busy enough with four kids and a full-time job, Bert agreed. A 16 week plan was to begin in mid-August. The plan until then was to not get hurt.

I made it to the start of the training plan not-hurt, so that was my first success. Bert had a Google spreadsheet semi-filled in with some workouts and long runs for the 16 weeks. My mind was a little blown when I saw the number of 18+ runs and the pace work within some of those runs. For reference, my previous marathon training plan had three 18 milers and a single 20 miler. Bert’s plan had three 18ers, two 20ers, and a 22 miler. I just couldn’t imagine getting to the point where I could go 18-20-18 (with pace)-20 (with pace)-22-18 on consecutive weekends. Not to mention the workouts that Bert started filling in. I was very intimidated, and a little worried about getting injured with the increase in volume and intensity. However, for the most part, I was able to stick to the plan, only needing to shorten a long run and miss the next day’s run when I rolled my foot during a hurricane-aftermath run. I was feeling good about how I was absorbing the training, and actually started feeling on track for my A goal.

  

Then, the week of Thanksgiving, came a cold that lingered for far too long. I knew it was kinda bad when I had to take afternoon naps a couple of days the weekend after Thanksgiving (one week before the race). I tried not to worry when it was the day before we were flying out to Sacramento and I had a coughing fit on my run with Lori and Chad that led to dry-heaving. Encouragement from friends, Bert, and Mitch helped to ease nerves about my cold, and I tried to remember that this was just a race. With that in mind, we flew out to Sacramento late on Friday, with our friends, Anthony and Chas, also on our flight for the race.

There was a short shakeout run on the next morning, put on by CIM. It was raining a bunch and cold, and no one was in a hurry to leave our hotel to head a block over for the meetup. I met a nice Canadian lady, Carmela, while waiting in the lobby to leave, and we grabbed free Run in Rabbit t-shirts from the RiR shakeout group that was starting from the hotel. We chatted during the 2 mile shake-out, and exchanged numbers so we could meet up later and make plans for race morning. A trip to the Expo and a pep talk from Bert later, and things were starting to feel REAL. We grabbed pizza with Anthony, and then turned in for the night.

The Race

I woke up at 2:45 AM, before my 3:30 AM alarm, but had gotten at least 6.5 hours of sleep and felt pretty rested. (Editor's note: I LOVE being on the East Coast and racing on the West Coast. Time zone changes for the win!) Carmela and I met in the lobby at 4:35 AM to walk to the bus pick-up spot. It was lightly raining and the rain poncho that I bought for $5 at the expo came in handy. I also had on throwaway shoes, socks, pants, and jacket. I ate stuff I can’t remember anymore before I left the hotel (maybe half of a Picky Bar and banana?), and brought graham crackers to munch on since there was a long time before the race started at 7 am. Unfortunately, I forgot my water bottle at the hotel. (Editor's note: WHAT?!?!?)

The bus ride was not my favorite- warm, crowded, with a loud annoying guy sitting catty-corner from me. I sat next to a nice guy who was running his first marathon and asked for tips. Hope he did well. I got very antsy toward the end of the bus ride as motion sickness was kicking in a little, and was happy to get off the bus to get fresh air. My legs were feeling a little wobbly from the beginnings of motion sickness. Carmela and I hit up the wall of porta potties, and then hung out at a nearby gas station where a bunch of runners were waiting out of the rain. I changed out of wet throwaway socks and shoes into dry socks and racing shoes. (Editor's note: carbon fiber?) Then I tossed donation pants and poncho, but kept on my throwaway jacket until I warmed up. We headed to corral area and I lined up with 3:40 pacer. Carmela and I exchanged one last good luck hug as she headed to the 3:30 pacer. While waiting at the start, a nice lady named Amy standing next to me asked me about my plans. So I told her I would start with the 3:40 group and hopefully, I’d feel good toward the end and get ahead of them. She was hoping for the same and asked if she could stick with me. So, I now had a race buddy (new thing for me).

At 7 am, the race got off to a start. (Editor's note: Only 1258 words before the race even starts? Amateur race report.) The 3:40 pacers started a little hot and we tried not to get too wrapped up in their pace. They seemed to settle in after a bit, but would sometimes surge and then slow again. I shed my jacket in mile two, and she shed hers a mile later. Amy and I stuck together, and chatted a little here and there. She remarked that is was warmer than she expected and also hillier (she was not wrong, but I was feeling okay on the uphills. Little did I know that it was probably the downhills doing more damage). Miles ticked by and so did 5k markers. I like having both on course to have more landmarks to count down. I looked for Mitch at mile 6 and didn’t see him, but apparently he was there and also couldn’t see me tucked in the 3:40 pack. I did see him a little after mile 7, which was exciting. Anyway, miles ticked by and we kept on trucking. I did my best at water stations to pinch the cups and drink the water, but sometimes got water up my nose or started coughing. I lost Amy on a hill somewhere, and every so often I’d look back to try to spot her. No dice after a while, so I concluded she had dropped back (she ended up dropping at the half, but has Tokyo Marathon coming up in March).

The 3:40 pace group crossed the halfway mat in 1:49, and that confirmed the slightly fast pace for the 3:40 group. I didn’t feel too concerned at that point. I spotted Mitch again around mile 14, and was again very excited to see him. Big smile on my face, etc. However, the feet started feeling heavy a few miles later and I started needing to play mental games. I was also starting to feel a bit nauseous, especially by the smell of increasingly stronger Runner BO (one lady’s smelly hydration pack caused me to choke back my gag reflex). I backed off the pace group a little to get some breathing room and fresher air. Spoiler alert: I never caught up with them again.

By mile 18, I noticed I just couldn’t move my feet faster though it felt like I was trying. Pace slowed a few seconds, so nothing super dramatic, but it was still concerning. The nausea was not helping me feel any better. In mile 19, I made a bargain to get to mile 20, at which point I could stop running and drop out of the race. Once I hit the mile 20 marker, I pulled off to the right and basically started to cry and cough and dry-heave, which led to barfing up some gel and water. In my mind, I was dropping out and had failed big time and was generally feeling terrible. I texted Mitch, but he didn’t text back so I called him and let him know what was going on. He encouraged me to not give up and to finish the race, since I was so close (10k feels like a long way after you’ve hit the wall). So, off I went again, trying to regroup my mind and legs. Around this point, I think the 3:45 pace group ran by and I was with them for a little. At mile 21, I stopped on bridge and thought again about quitting. From here, it was a series of mental games with myself. Bargained to get to the next 5k mat, knowing I had friends tracking me. Then bargained to get to mile 22, where I said it was only 4 miles and I could do that even if it was super hard. I let myself walk through the water stations in the last 10k, and just trudged on to the finish. Finally, it was the last mile, and I saw Mitch one last time outside of our hotel, which was close to the finish. At this point, I had no idea what my time was because I had stopped my watch when I thought I was dropping, and also because I never programmed my new-to-me watch to show total elapsed time on any of the screens. Instead, it said 26.32/26.32. I just knew I didn’t accomplish my A goal or B goal. I got my medal and post-race disposable jacket (better than a mylar blanket!), snapped an obligatory pic, and then started crying when I saw Mitch walking to meet me. A friend texted me congrats with my time, which I still didn’t know. 3:48:47, a 6 minute PR that beat my C goal.

This was my fifth marathon and I had just run a time I wouldn’t have dreamed about a year ago, and here I was feeling crushed. Luckily, Mitch and my running friends understood how I was feeling, and let me be a little dramatic and sad about it (which I am still doing by writing this guest blog post) (Editor's note: Alec Lorenzoni would hardly call this dramatic). Anyway, now that I am a week removed from CIM, I am feeling better about how the race turned out. Now that CIM is done, I’m ready to enjoy family time and holiday festivities, as well as more spinning and strength again. I’m sure it won’t be too long until the race itch comes back though. A huge thanks to Bert for putting together my training plan, offering advice and support, and making sure I was still having fun. He’s definitely the best free coach I’ve ever had! 10/10 would recommend (Editor's note: If you'd run faster, I'd probably start charging people. Ouch! Too soon?).

www.bertthoughts.gov.www/bertthoughts

I'm very proud of Natalie. When we started this phase of our relationship, she admitted to me that she had no idea that when we were all off running in college that we weren't just jogging easy. Workouts were a new concept to her. Then she went to Orange Theory or something and learned that you can try harder at exercising (an oversimplification of her epiphany). To say that she was green is an understatement... and she's turned herself into quite the little runner. And she just jumped right into whatever I threw at her. Her workouts were all going so well this fall, I was overly confident that she was very fit. And I still believe that. But you have to run the race on that day, and sometimes that is hard. I was fitter than I'd ever been in April 2015, but then ran poorly. I believe that if CIM had been a week later, Natalie would have run a lot faster. She's a different runner now than she was a year ago, and three years ago, when she was first foolish enough to engage in coaching with me. All those miles in her legs and all those workouts don't go away. She just has to keep it up, as it all cumulatively builds into muscle memory (which is very real).

As I mentioned before, this race was on Sam's birthday. KC and I were busy building him a new loft bed while she was running, and I had my phone sitting in the room with the tracking up for her and Thomas Adam. I was anxious watching her splits clipping off consistently under 8:20 pace for the first two hours, worried that she might be going out too fast in less than ideal conditions. We were crestfallen when she went AWOL at the 35K for a while. After she finally hit that timing mat, I got a text from Mitch letting me know she was still alive and was going to make it to the finish. She got back after it and dropped her pace back down, but the damage was already done. She was short of her A and B goals. We tier our goals for a reason though, and for her to walk away with a PR and ahead of her C goal (which I think was her realistic goal back in the spring) is cause for celebration. Which I'm glad to say that she did. But geez, look at that Nuun water bottle in the background after the race! Runner nerd.

As with most of my blog posts, I will end this abruptly just to press publish.

Fools who engage in coaching with Bert

Hey Internet, it's me! With Elon Musk taking over Twitter, I felt it was time to reassert my dominance over your newsfeed before the trolls start paying a monthly fee to bump me down further than you're willing to scroll.

The first fool

Sometime prior to the last post I made (December 2019), Natalie Anstey, nee Yip, asked me if I'd be willing to give her a training plan for the 2020 Shamrock Half Marathon. She knew that we'd be having twins shortly before that, and offered to compensate me with diapers and hand-me-downs. I happily agreed and embarked in my first non-KC experience of formally telling someone what to do for running. She was pretty green, and I was pretty conservative. I drew from my own history in half-marathon buildups, some training plans I saved out of Runner's World (circa May - July, 2004), and a lot of input from her about her limitations. She was incredulous about some of the things that I asked her to do, and her runner friends in Davidson told her that I was crazy. Training was going pretty well until a few weeks before the race when there was a global pandemic and the race was cancelled.

For a while after that, she kept running. She did weird running group things and revisited my workouts, running races in Savannah (faster than my brother) and Brooklyn. Sometimes she would text me and ask "what should I do tomorrow at the track?" and I would just make up something at random to see if I could break her. But she was hooked on my wackadoo training. Partially because her husband paid an undisclosed amount of money to someone on Instagram to coach him and then got ghosted for the last few weeks before his race, and I've never managed to ghost someone for more than a day. I love the attention too much!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, Natalie ended up signing up for the cheat code known as the California International Marathon (CIM for short) in Sacramento. The race was held on December 4, 2022, and I was her coach. I made a spreadsheet that we shared and threw workouts into it, and we also used the Garmin Clipboard app so that I could program workouts for her (which I sometimes did) and she could upload them for me to view all the data easily (which she always did). This app was better than looking at her runs through Strava, and I didn't have to scroll around to find it. I got a notification every time she uploaded a run.

Right before the race, I told her that she needed to do a guest blog post, which she has, and I am going to share here (in another post, of course. Gotta get those clicks!) It's a little shorter than some of my posts, but like I said, she's pretty green. We still haven't even actually talked on the phone much about the race after-the-fact (we're more text-based coaching), so I'm looking forward to reading this myself to find out what happened! That's not me throwing shade-- we're both busy. Her race was on Sam's birthday, so I was pretty busy, and then she had a nice leisure trip in California visiting friends.

Another fool

Not to be forgotten in this introductory post, a few weeks after Natalie started her training cycle, my brother-in-law, Chip, reached out to ask if I could coach him to run the Houston Marathon! I agreed, thinking I could give them similar training, albeit six weeks later. Then he changed his mind and said he was going to do the Mississippi Gulf Coast Marathon a week after CIM, so I had to get my butt in gear for both of them. Coaching the two of them was different. Chip has run a few marathons before, but largely was not new to running. He caught the bug sometime in college when KC and I were dating, after an admittedly non-serious attempt at track in high school. He successfully coaches a high school team in Mississippi, so he has a lot more experience coaching than I do. Both Natalie and Chip have limitations to the time that they can commit to running. Natalie does a lot of cross training on her Pelotons (I feel like that term is synonymous with the bike-- what do you say for a treadmill?) and really tried to do exactly what I told her, while Chip probably took more liberties in making discretionary changes. It's important for both of them to be able to do that, because I really only told them the workouts and long runs... they filled in the blanks between to set their own mileage and recovery. And they both did a great job in their buildups. It was exciting to watch them do the work, run their long runs, race along the way, and I thought that they were both going to crush their respective races.

Check back in a little bit after I wiggle around with the formatting on Natalie's post. Chip's race report is TBD. He says he only does guest podcasts, and I'm yet to break into that medium successfully.