Random Runs

So I am training for a marathon.  Actually, that's not entirely accurate.  I'm planning to run a marathon - the New York City Marathon, on November 6  - and I am not training for it to my satisfaction, which is the source of my angst in this post.

I started out well.  I ran the Brooklyn Half somewhat faster than my goal time of 2:24 (I am not a fast runner; usually, I am a stubborn one, although as you will see my stubbornness has not been holding up this summer) and, after a short break, resumed regular weekday treadmill runs (which increased in distance, over the course of the spring and early summer, from three to five miles) and weekly or biweekly long runs of about 12 miles.  I planned for July and the first part of August to be my first phase of ramping up the mileage.  I wanted to lock in significant gains in these six weeks because I'll be away the second half of August and when I return there will only be about ten weeks (of which I'll need to taper and rest at least three) before the marathon.

This did not go as planned.  The first weekend of July I was out of town and did not do a long run.  The second weekend, I ran 14 miles.  The third weekend, I spontaneously truncated my planned 15-miler due to heat, dehydration, and friction burns.  The third weekend, I actually cancelled my long run entirely (in my defense, it was been record-breakingly hot that week).  The fourth weekend, I was out of town; I had hoped to do a fifteen-mile run on Friday morning, but because it was pouring rain I decided to wait until the gym opened which meant shortening my run to ten miles.  And now I am sick, which means - while I did a five-mile run yesterday at a reasonable pace - any long-run plans for the weekend need to be tentative.

When I write it down like this, it doesn't look so bad.  In a month of blistering heat and two weekends out of town, I did three runs of at least ten miles, and completed them all without significant breaks or walking (by contrast, when I trained for my first marathon four years ago, walking breaks comprised probably around 10% of every run).  But all of this doesn't change the fact that I'll be in Ireland the last two weeks of August (biking for half of it, which means my running during the trip will be limited, although it is to be hoped that this intense cross-training will have positive spillover effects on my running) and that when I return I'll have only a few weeks to force myself into reasonable marathon-running shape.  I'm still hoping to get in a fifteen-miler before I go (assuming the weather and my heat-sensitive skin cooperate), but that doesn't entirely alleviate my apprehension about the very steep road I'll have ahead of me when I return.