You must be swift as the coursing river (as long as it's the Lazy River) - comments welcome



Such a fantastic race! You ran in perfectly! I'm still amazed at folks like you who can handle that T+D - I would've died (and did when I ran it). Loved the recap!
 


WillRunForPizza said:
Race recap: Space Coast Marathon
Cocoa, FL | November 26, 2023
In which things finally go well

Well, after sleeping for about 14 of the 24 hours following the race, I finally feel almost human again. Marathons, am I right? 😅

As you all know, the past couple of weeks have been a journey. Straining my Achilles two weeks before the marathon put the whole race in doubt, much less any time goals. So I went into this race thinking, "I don't know, I guess we'll just see what happens."

First off, surprise, I did not go to bed at 8 p.m. It was more like 9:15. And then it took me a long time to fall asleep, so when my alarm went off at 2:30, I'd gotten about 4 hours of sleep 😵‍💫 Getting ready and taking the dog out only took 15 minutes longer than I planned, so I ended up leaving my parents' house around 3:45 and got to the race at 4:30. Fortunately that turned out to be plenty early to get a good parking spot just a block from the start line, and I had hardly any wait to pick up my bib. I went back to the car and pinned it on my Star Wars tank with my galaxy Bibboards (clearly this race is right up my alley 😆).

After spending a little while sitting in the car doing nothing, I headed for the start line. I decided to line up with the 4-hour pacer and see how that felt. She said she was planning for even splits throughout the race, which sounded pretty good to me.

View attachment 813882
Waiting in the starting area

As the race got closer, the crowds built, although it was certainly nowhere near as packed as like a Cherry Blossom. I remember thinking that the race announcer wasn't great - he kept repeating the same instructions, which is okay because there were more people each time, but he didn't say much beyond that, nothing inspiring or motivational 🫤 The guy singing the national anthem was also odd. It was like someone once told him he should vary the volume to be more engaging, so he decided that meant he should do one line loud, one line soft, regardless of whether that made sense with the lyrics 🤷‍♀️ But whatever, I wasn't there for the race announcer or the national anthem.

The race itself started with a countdown to launch, where they showed an actual rocket launch on the screen and had CO2 machines blasting up "rocket fuel exhaust" in lieu of a starting gun, which was fun. We headed off...uphill?? Wait, that's not fun at all! Lol, luckily the hill was short and really one of the few on the course.

The first mile or so was very crowded and my slowest by a significant amount. That's most races for you, though, and I'd rather have the first mile of my marathon be a little slow than a little fast. I got separated from the 4-hour pace group but caught back up and stuck with them for a few miles. It was dark. We were running along a road with houses on one side and water on the other, so there wasn't much reason for a lot of lighting. Between the dark and the crowds, I was almost surprised not to see more people trip, although one guy did fall right next to me trying to hop over the curb to pass someone. (He got right back up though.)

After a few miles with the 4-hour pacer, one person in the group noted that our pace seemed a little fast, and I agreed - we'd been running about 8:55 pace according to my watch. I was still feeling very comfortable with the pace, though. (I didn't realize it at the time, but we were on a slight downhill, so that might have been part of the reason for both of those things.) Less comfortable was the crowd - people kept shifting around and almost running into each other, and I was a little worried about falling myself. Since I was good with the pace, I took the opportunity of a gap created by a water stop that I didn't need yet to move ahead of the group. And I never saw them again!*

*This is not literally true, in the sense that I did see them on the "and back" portions of the out-and-backs. But they never caught up with me after I passed them, so it is true in spirit.

Then, however, I was on my own. I focused my sights on three people ahead of me who seemed to be running around the same pace: Bald Guy No Shirt, Green Tank, and Heather. (Heather thoughtfully put her name on the back of her top.) I stuck to them for a bit before passing Bald Guy No Shirt. Green Tank had disappeared somewhere, and shortly after that Heather stepped off to the side, so I was pretty much on my own again.

The turnaround marked the first quarter of the race. It was a convenient setup, because if I ran each segment in less than an hour, I'd come in under four hours. Even I can do that math! Given everything that had gone wrong over the past two weeks, I didn't know if I'd be able to do that, but I was happy to finish the first ~6.55 miles in somewhere around 58 minutes. Thanks to @striker1064's timer suggestion, I had my first gel at 40 minutes, and things were going well.

As predicted, the conditions were warm and humid - I think the T+D was around 67+64 at the start. On the bright side (pun intended), it was overcast, so even though it was light at this point, I never actually saw the sun. So I didn't feel too bad, and I was still working on my Skratch.

At some point after the turnaround, Bald Guy No Shirt caught up with me again, but based on his breathing less than 10 miles into a marathon, I didn't think he'd be with me long. (I was correct.) I briefly latched on to a few more people over the rest of the first half but none for long. I had another gel, and I did refill my handheld around mile 11 or 12. Then came the moment of truth, the go-no go as it were: it was time for the turnoff for the half marathoners to finish and the marathoners to continue with the race. What would I do??

Hmm, I guess trying to create suspense doesn't work very well when I've already shared my finish time. Oh well.

Anyway, having had only the most minor twinges from my Achilles so far, I decided I was a "go" for the marathon. Gulp, but also yay!

The turnoff took us through a few turns away from the street most of the race was on, until we got back to the south course. I had been a little worried about this part because of the way the race works. The north course and marathon runners start out on the north course, which has a 4-hour time limit. Twenty minutes later, the south course runners start going the other direction. Since the south course is also the second half of the full marathon, it has the same time limit: 7 hours.

View attachment 814150
Space Coast course map

On the one hand, I think it's great to have half marathons with longer time limits so more people can participate. Races should be for everyone who wants to try them. From a more selfish perspective, I was a little worried about having to navigate through walkers. But fortunately most people were good about sharing the course.

Aside from a few moments around mile 15 or 16 where I was thinking, "Oh no, everything hurts and I'm dying already??", I felt really good. I actually passed the 3:50 pacer around then, which didn't seem right, but she was alone and holding her sign upside down, so I thought maybe something had gone wrong and she wasn't actually on that pace anymore. I was pretty sure I wasn't going that fast 😂

Around 17.5, I switched from podcasts to music and it was glorious. A good song is excellent motivation. I don't know what the people going the other way thought about my dramatic lip-syncing, and I don't care 😝

I was getting pretty thirsty, and I ended up filling up my handheld at two consecutive water stops. After that I tried to slow down my drinking a little so I didn't have to stop and use the port-a-potty. At the second turnaround, they had cooling towels, which helped. I squeezed some ice water over my neck and arms and then stuck the towel under my hat until it dried out.

At mile 20, I was still feeling pretty good! I was very excited at that point because my time was a little under 3 hours, so all I had to do to run a sub-4 marathon was finish a 10K in less than an hour, and I was pretty sure I could do that. Woo! I wasn't done yet, but the end was in sight (figuratively). "Go the Distance" came on and I teared up a little 🥲

I wasn't really going any faster, but I kept passing people - other marathon runners, not just the walkers - and no one was passing me. This was also excellent motivation. I love passing people 😉 I even passed the 3:55 pace group (which meant that that the 3:50 pacer did indeed have an issue somewhere - that must be rough).

By mile 23, I felt like I still had some gas in the tank, so I started to pick up the pace a little. I didn't want to go too hard, because 3.2 miles is not nothing, especially when you've already run 23 miles. But I didn't want to leave anything on the course either. I was starting to get tired, but if I could go faster, I would. I filled up my handheld one more time and had my last gel. Let's do this 💪

Those last few miles are kind of a blur. I passed more people. Eventually we turned off the coastal road and started winding around toward the finish...and around, and around. ARE WE FREAKING THERE YET?? I was so ready to be done. Finally the finish line came into view, and I picked up my feet as fast as I could.

And I was finished! I crossed the line, stopped my watch, and staggered over to the barricade to hold myself up for a minute. I was 111% done. I didn't have an official time yet, but my watch said 26.2 miles, 3:50:09. YES!! I was happy. Also tired.

After a second hanging onto the barricade, I got myself together to pick up my GINORMOUS medal. Seriously, this thing is huge. I made my dog model it when I got back.

View attachment 814159
My dog wearing the giant Space Coast medal

They also had water and more cooling towels right at the finish, along with finisher beach towels, which was kind of a cool piece of swag. The theme of this race series is Mission to Mars, and this year's race was Viking I, so everything is Mars/Viking-themed.

View attachment 814164
Space Coast long-sleeved technical shirt (which a surprising number of people wore on race day despite the warm and humid weather), "mission" patch, medal, and finisher towel

After a Very Long Walk, I made it to the post-race snacks. Chocolate milk was great. They also had pancakes, bananas, mini muffins, and beer. I saw some people with pizza, but I couldn't find it. So food and drink offerings were only okay compared with the cool swag. I walked around for a while so my legs wouldn't stiffen up too much, then headed home feeling exhausted and sore but thrilled with my performance.

I didn't remember enough about individual miles to do a mile-by-mile recap, but I am very happy with this chart:
View attachment 814165
Strava race analysis chart - look, my 3rd and 6th 5K splits are exactly the same! That's cool.

The consistency! The amazing thing is, I had no idea what I was capable of running when I started the race. I just told my body, "Today we are running a marathon," and my body said, "Okay, this is how fast we can go," and somehow that worked?? That makes no sense; I had never really raced a marathon before, only tried to finish. And yet somehow I ran a 6-minute negative split and was pretty even from about mile 2-23. (AND it matched up almost perfectly with those last two M effort intervals from Thursday's run!) How does that even happen? I have no idea, but I am very proud of my execution in this race.

My fueling was also consistent thanks to my timer. I had 5 gels, half a liter of Skratch, and 1.5 liters of plain water throughout the race. I also took some cups of water to dump on myself as it got warmer and humid-er.

I'm pretty sure no one passed me for at least the second half of the race, which is pretty cool. I didn't really speed up until the last few miles, so that means that I judged my effort really well compared to all the people I passed. And I came in 5th in my age group! (That would never happen in DC 🤣) Official time: 3:50:43 😮😁🙌

I did struggle a bit after the race. My legs were sore and I had all kinds of blisters and chafing, but I could deal with that. The real problem was the massive headache and the nausea it caused. It made it hard to eat much even though I knew my body really needed food. But after a LOT of sleep, I felt mostly better by Monday afternoon, and today (Tuesday) I am only a little sore. My Achilles, which miraculously barely bothered me at all during the race, is maybe a little extra tired but still doesn't actually hurt, so hooray for soft wave/Graston/eccentric calf raises/a few extra days of rest!

Overall I think I did about as well as I possibly could have, and I was very happy with my performance. So naturally, I finished the race thinking, "Wow, if this is what I can do with an Achilles strain, a messed-up taper, and warm and humid weather, what could I get with better circumstances?" 🤪



I'm never going to be able to stop doing marathons, am I 🙈
Click to expand...
Nice race.
Welcome to having a running problem.
;-)
 
Building a training plan, part 14: Recovery
In which I take a break

Part 1: What am I thinking??
Part 2: Sources
Part 3: Principles
Part 4: Elements of training
Part 5: Mental training
Part 6: Mile plan 1.0
Part 7: Mile plan 2.0
Part 8: Workouts
Part 9: Periodization
Part 10: Marathon plan 1.0
Part 11: Marathon plan 2.0
Part 12: Mile training reflections (and marathon plan 3.0)
Part 13: Marathon training check-in

Boy, running a marathon at the end of November really makes it feel like the year is done now. What do you mean, there's still a month left in 2023?? That's not even really a thing 😝

The good news is, that makes it a lot easier to take some downtime. Any future goals seem distant, the only races I have on the calendar for the next few months are at Disney, and if I don't feel motivated to do much of anything, it's all good.

That's pretty much my recovery plan too. I'm becoming a big believer in making more intuitive judgments about training and racing, so I'm mostly playing it by ear. Here is the plan:

1. No running for at least two weeks.
2. Other than that, do what seems good.

And that's pretty much it.

I would have been a bit more flexible with the two weeks of not running at all, but since I strained my Achilles, I want to make sure it has time to fully heal before I start running again. If I think it needs more time, I will give it more time. But even aside from that, I wanted to give myself a bit more time off from running than the week I did in January, so I probably would have taken at least 10 days off regardless.

I'm open to doing some light cycling/aqua jogging/strength/Pilates/yoga/whatever in the meantime, but so far I haven't. Last time I think I was going crazy about three days after the marathon and jumped on the exercise bike just so I could feel something 😅 So far this time I have not felt the need to do anything more than walk the dog. Partly that's because it's actually been kind of a busy week, and partly this marathon, not surprisingly, took a lot more out of me, and it's taken longer for me to feel mostly normal again. I'm not worried about it; when I feel like doing something, I will.

taking a break.jpg
My dog nodding off on the couch. He also does not feel like doing anything.

I might be a little more concerned about my lack of motivation, but recently I've been learning about the importance of downtime for making progress overall. Intuitively, it seems like training should be linear: you do the work, and then you get better, and then you do more work, and then you get more better, and so on and so on ad infinitum.

Interestingly (and occasionally annoyingly), though, that's not actually how it works. You can't just build from your peak; you have to take a step back and give your body - and mind - time to recover from the last peak before you can work towards a new one. Plus, your body can really only peak 2-3 times a year, so you have to be a little thoughtful about your timing.

Taking a break from serious training also gives you time to focus on other things, whether completely unrelated to fitness or some aspect of training you've neglected, like strength or form. Personally, I'm going to use this time to try to work in some more yoga, to help with mobility and balance.

After these two-ish weeks, I do plan on returning to regular running, but slowly. I'll probably start out running 3-4 miles every other day and build up from there. The general timeline I anticipate:

0-2 weeks post-marathon: no running
2-3 weeks: short, easy runs every other day at most
3-4 weeks: 4-5 days/week with a "long" run of 6-8 miles
4-5 weeks: long run of 8-10 miles
6 weeks: WDW Half

By then I should be actually recovered from the marathon and be ready to think about what comes next, which I think will be a separate post 😄

IMG_3183.jpg
I haven't quite been doing absolutely nothing - I went kayaking with manatees yesterday! Here's a floaty potato sticking its nose out of the water to breathe.
 
I love your dog. And the manatee.

You're so right about the importance of rest. I've been seriously writing since 2010 and I've had months, even whole years where I didn't write at all. Some stretches were due to life stuff (getting married, new baby and the pandemic), and other times I just needed to rest my brain. Whenever I came back to writing, the words flowed a lot better. When I took a few weeks off running during vacation I thought coming back would be a slog, but it didn't feel bad at all!
 
Building a training plan, part 15: How'd I do?
In which we finally wrap things up

Part 1: What am I thinking??
Part 2: Sources
Part 3: Principles
Part 4: Elements of training
Part 5: Mental training
Part 6: Mile plan 1.0
Part 7: Mile plan 2.0
Part 8: Workouts
Part 9: Periodization
Part 10: Marathon plan 1.0
Part 11: Marathon plan 2.0
Part 12: Mile training reflections (and marathon plan 3.0)
Part 13: Marathon training check-in
Part 14: Recovery

I like marathons. I even like marathon training.

Marathon recovery sucks.

I haven't started running again yet. I feel blah and grumpy. Also I miss running. At least I know what to expect this time, I guess (slowness and struggle). And not running has given me time to follow @Naomeri's example and make 5 kinds of cookie dough this week. Unrelated: I think I have gained several pounds since the marathon 🤣

damp.jpg
Another non-running-time accomplishment: bathing the dog. Here he is standing in the hallway looking very damp and put-upon

Anyway, the point of this post is not cookies, baths, or even how long it takes to recover from a marathon (for-freaking-ever). It's to review the training plan I came up with and share what I learned from the process and the execution.

First, some stats. Over 16 weeks, my plan resulted in:

🛣️ 724 miles run, excluding the marathon (out of 738 planned and was on track for about 757 pre-Achilles strain)

🏃‍♀️ 90 runs, excluding the marathon (out of 94 planned)

🏋️‍♀️ 24h 12m strength/mobility training

📈 Peak week of 57.3 miles (highest ever)

🗓️ Peak month (October) of 240 miles (highest ever)

🏅 7-minute HM PR in week 6 (1:45)

🏆 46-minute M PR in week 16 (3:50)

🤕 1 Achilles strain

Actually, that's mostly pretty good. My main goal was to run the marathon in under 4 hours, and I definitely did that. If it weren't for the Achilles issue, I would have called this a complete success. (Also if it weren't for the Achilles issue, I would have had my 94 runs, 750+ miles, and possibly an extra 5-10 minutes in the race, but we don't talk about that.)

GIF of Bruno poking his head out from behind a painting and then ducking back. We don't talk about Bruno either.

Was the strain related to my training plan? Can't say for sure, but it did happen right after the peak week of the plan which included a perhaps-higher-than-advisable proportion of faster-than-easy running. So I guess my first takeaway is: Don't put a 10-mile tempo and a marathon simulator in the same week. Possibly should have seen that one coming.

But that's a pretty specific conclusion, albeit easy to follow as a result. What else did I learn from this whole process? In no particular order, here are some thoughts:

It's hard to recover from an all-out HM while marathon training. Remember when I did my mid-plan check-in and was so. SO. tired? And then I magically felt better a few days later and was never that tired again? Yeah. Pretty sure that was the race. I think a half is too long for me to race during marathon training. I would consider a 10K, or using a HM as a training run of some kind, but I wouldn't do another full-out race in the middle of marathon training. It's too much. YMMV.

Chunking works. I did most of my tempo (i.e. marathon pace) runs as single blocks during long runs. But I also did a few MP interval sessions, and I think I like that way better. So next time, instead of 6 miles easy + 9 miles @ MP + 1 mile CD, I might do something like 1 mile easy + 3 x 4 miles @ MP/1 mile easy. Breaking it up makes the whole run go by faster. It's probably still good to have some longer-duration runs at MP, but I think in future plans I'll do most of them as intervals.

Mix it up. I really like including different paces in the same workout. I did a little of this, but in my next plan I'd like to incorporate more. I think it's both good for training and more engaging mentally.

16 weeks is enough. I know some plans, especially for the marathon, get up to 18-20 weeks, but by about week 13, I was getting pretty tired. I like marathon training, but it is a lot. So I think I will probably keep my training plans to 16 weeks max, which should be fine since I'm starting from a pretty solid base at any given time.

More core? As I said in week 8, I'd like to incorporate more core work into my training in the future. I also want to keep doing the other strength and mobility work, so fitting it in is the real challenge.

Account for heat. Also from mid-plan. I will have to make some of the early workouts easier than normal for the next marathon cycle because it will be hot again.

Run by effort. Towards the end of the plan, and particularly while dealing with the strain, I found myself doing more effort- than pace-based runs. I am in general pretty bad at hitting specific paces, but I actually do okay with effort if I have some idea of how it should feel. I think you do probably need to target paces sometimes, especially early on, so that you know what the effort should feel like, but I plan to do more of my running based on effort in the future.

I was actually pretty happy with my plan for the most part. I liked being able to organize things the way I wanted, incorporate strength and mobility work, and make changes when I needed to. It was an interesting process, and I'll probably keep doing it and making tweaks along the way as I learn and get advice from you all. Thanks for following along!
 
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