MCM Week 13: Luck or Hard Work?

Week 13 is always strange; you’ve been training for 3 months straight and although you’ve been trusting the process, you’re close enough to race day to question whether you should change anything. Am I running far enough in my slow runs? Are my tempo runs fast enough? Am I not fully recovered, or just mentally burned out? I had to change my plans to balance my energy for this week, or else I wouldn’t get close to the volume needed.

Here's the plan breakout for Week 13:

·       Sunday – 13 miles Tempo: 1.5 miles WU, 10 miles @ MP, 1.5 miles CD

·       Monday – 6 miles Easy

·       Tuesday – 10.5 miles Strength: 1.5 miles WU, 3 miles MP-10, 2 miles MP-10, 1 mile MP-10 w/ 0.5 mile jog, 1.5 miles CD

·       Wednesday – Crosstrain

·       Thursday – 13 miles Tempo: 1.5 miles WU, 2 x 4 miles @ MP w/ 1 mile jog, 1.5 mile CD

·       Friday – 6 miles Easy

·       Saturday – 10 miles Easy

What actually happened:

·       Sunday – 20 miles Long (to Red Bank)

·       Monday – Rest

·       Tuesday – 10 miles Tempo

·       Wednesday – Heavy Lifting

·       Thursday – 12 miles Tempo

·       Friday – 10 miles

·       Saturday – Beach Yoga

For the past two marathon training cycles, I included a 20-miler a few weeks out to help me with my pacing and overall confidence in race performance. When looking at our Big A## Calendar, I knew that we had a bunch of social activities coming up on the weekends that would affect my training. If I followed the training plan exactly, I wouldn’t be able to fit in 20 miles (a 3-hour commitment) plus the necessary recovery time (at least another 3 hours before considering anything social). It was now or never, so I made sure I went to bed early Saturday night to prepare for my usual Sunday long run.

Though a bit humid, it was so nice to be running in 65 degree temperatures instead of in the 80s and 90s from just a few weeks before. Of course, I wanted to start at sunrise but my body wasn’t ready until 8 a.m. I put on some tunes, stuck to my fueling plan, and took my time. I headed south on Route 36 toward Sea Bright, went over the bridge into Rumson, and ran all the way to Red Bank. While in Red Bank at around the 10 mile mark, I was multitasking by taking in another gel, swapping the empty water bottles in my front vest pockets for full ones from my backpack pocket, and trying to stay oriented because I had to take a turn so I wouldn’t have to wait and cross multiple confusing traffic lights. As I’m doing all this, I feel a car following me. I’m breathing heavy (being 10 miles into a run and alarmed by the stalking), and I think this car is about to park, so I speed up to get away from it, but it pulls up to me with the windows down. I keep going because I don’t want to deal with whatever this car wants, but they follow me a little more and this woman yells out, “EXCUSE ME! Where’s Red Bank?”. The question is vague, I can’t stop running, and I have no patience for people who spook me on my run, so I snap back with an exaggerated shrug, “I have no idea where I am, I’m not from here, and have to run 20 miles!”. I see an outdoor café a block ahead of us and point there, alluding them to ask the people sitting outside comfortably instead of the person with extreme focus and labored breathing. It really threw me out of my zone and I grumbled a bit on the way back. The run mostly felt good because I went slow. I felt anxiety coming on a few hours later and wondered if this volume of running is messing with my hormones, including cortisol. For this run and many others like it, the workout itself would feel fine but I’d have these physical symptoms at rest.

My body could have handled a recovery run on Monday morning, but I decided to make this a full rest day. I walked early morning to take some photos of the sunrise and at work to keep my legs from getting too tight from working at the desk all day and commuting.

Sunrise recovery walk on my rest day

I worked from home on Tuesday to finally go to the doctor and address what has been happening to me. I ran 10 speedy miles early morning on the flat Henry Hudson Trail that felt great. At my appointment around noon, my pulse, blood pressure, oxygen, etc. were all “spectacular” numbers that I “have nothing to worry about because you’re young and running a marathon”. I told the doctor everything, and she gave me a Rx to try as needed for anxiety attacks and ran some bloodwork. I felt rushed and like I barely got answers, but at least I now have a little “security blanket” just in case I have another bad anxiety attack to take the edge off.

I worked on strength at the gym on Wednesday, but I couldn’t go as heavy as I wanted. My right knee was acting a little weird again, so I focused on my form. I had a bit of a migraine, and it was excruciatingly humid out, so I was glad I wasn’t running this day. I had too much to do at work; lots of admin in the morning, being the captain for our Heart Walk onsite at lunch, and all my clients squished together in the afternoon.

I ran 12 miles Tempo on Thursday, which was a mile off of the plan because I slightly miscalculated the distance to Sandy Hook and back. For any out-and-back run from our apartment, I prefer to run a little bit farther away before turning around so that I have a built-in recovery walk the rest of the way home. However, because I planned on grabbing a bagel in town before my walk home, I accidentally turned around at the point I normally would if I wasn’t getting a bagel. I was speedy in the first half, then when the clouds opened up I slowed down significantly from the humidity. I was glad to be working from home again because I was beat; I would not be able to be my normal cheerful self in front of people after this effort. I was able to be productive with my work and firing off emails without being interrupted by our members taking a break from their own work.

As I had been doing for the past few weeks, I swapped the Friday and Saturday mileage. I ran 10 speedy miles on the Henry Hudson Trail on Friday morning at around 7:30, and only Beach Yoga on Saturday. If I also ran, I would not have energy for my friend’s birthday celebration at an apple orchard later that day. I have not been drinking alcohol during marathon training, so I skipped the wine in favor of frozen apple cider smoothies and apple cider doughnuts, in which the sweetness gave me its own form of headache.

I was about 6.5 miles short on the planned volume, but I was glad that my long run reached 20 miles weeks before I needed it, and the other runs this week were all in double digits. Endurance is what will matter most of all. I made it through a stressful week and only had 5 more to go until the big day.