Weekly Distance

4 weeks until the marathon and this was a successful training week.  My long run was 28.4 miles which is about 2 miles over the marathon distance.  Many training programs never have you run the entire distance and I think this is a huge mistake.  Ive always felt that you can make it through the marathon once you get to mile 22 but you will hurt unless your used to running the enitre distance.  I wanted to run 30 miles but i was short on time and I started hurting around mile 24. 

I received a comment from someone on why I run.  I thought that was interesting and never really thought about it.  I see people that have a difficult time running and i'm no different but I think I have a genetic disposition to it.  Its important for me that my children see how I strive to be as healthy as I can.  Too many children anymore are severely obese and I wont let that happen to my kids.  Recently I was in the Netherlands on a business trip and someone asked me where I was from.  I told them I was from the U.S. and they laughed and said "no way".  They continued to tell me that everyone from the U.S. is overwieght and has no appreciation for exercise, they immediately assumed I was from Canada.  I think that to answer the question as to why I run, I would say that I run to remain healthy and to demonstrate to my family how important that is.  I will clearly never win any races but going the distance is more important to me than actually winning the race.  As a result of my running my children will have a healthy appreciation for exercise and their own eating habits.

Running through the pain

This was a difficult week of training.  After my 22 mile jaunt last weekend I was fairly sore and my legs were tight.  In the spirit of things I had a calmer week.  I spent a good deal of time cross training in order to prepare for the next week.  I took the advice of another runner and had accupuncture done on my legs.  It could be mental but the accupuncture worked wonders.  I cant say enough good things about accupuncture.  Im not a fan of needles but it seemed to work.

This is what I need to accomplish this week.  I need to run 14 miles on Monday,  & Wednesday and on Saturday I will repeat my marathon mileage (26 miles).  Once i'm through this mileage I will taper down for Duke City Marathon. 

A friend convinced me to train for an ultra-marathon.  This distance is something more then i've ever done but I thought I would go for it.  I will be running 50 miles (yes this is non-stop) in January.  Im not sure if my body is physically ready for this and my wife thinks im insane to even try.  Some part of me wants to try this so that I may prove that I can do this.  For right now I want to focus on a decent marathon then I will set my goals a bit further.

I read a book once about a guy who would run these 100 miles races about once a month.  He claimed his body became accustomed to running the distance.  I think people like this have some type of sickness.  Physiologically, I believe some people have won the genetic lottery in terms of physical ability.  Im clearly not one of those people but I would like to at least try to see what I can do.

Marathon - long run

Each year I prep to run 2 marathons, one in the spring and one in the fall.  With work projects my training was cut short this year.  Recently I read an article on the Runners World web site, article on late entry.  Since I normally run each about 6 miles a day and have done many half-marathons I thought I would give this a shot.  In order to test the water (so to speak) I decided to run 22 miles in order to make sure I still have the legs to do the distance.

Everything started off well.  I consumed my pre-run ritual of oatmeal and coffee.  I began running at 7am and ran on the nature trail from Alameda to Bridge and back.  I set my pace back to to 9:30 a mile in order to be sure I could cover the distance.  Once I left the halfway point at mile 14 I started feeling tired.  I started questioning whether I could do this. I struggled through the next 5 miles and got a second wind around mile 20.   The last 4 miles felt good and at the end of the day I put in 24.3 miles, 2 miles short of marathon distance.

The question at this point is not how well I run this marathon but if I can actually do it.  On race day I can struggle through a couple miles to finish but is it worth it? My body was pushed to the limit and i'm not sure how much stress I should put on it.  There is 5 weeks to the marathon so in my next post i'll focus on my recovery and nutrition.

Comment about website content

I am an engineer who works with developing B2B software.  This link http://www-2000.ibm.com/partnerworld/pwhome.nsf/weblook/pub_ben_valuepack.html represents a project which I work on.  Specifically we have made improvements to demonstrate what advantages we offer.  I've never thought to critique the contents but now that i'm being asked I can see areas that can be signifigantly improved with respect to content.

Here is an intersting point.  I develop software for business partners and no where within the benefits section do we ever mention this.  This is an enormous advantage.  We currently make the account executives follow up with this type of information to disseminate to the the business parter.  From a marketing persepctive this is awful, we should be advertising this type of activity to demonstrate how involved we are.  Instead we pursue such a formal route of communication.