Countdown to the Pittsburgh Marathon: A Video Tour

From Rich, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has put up a sort of guided video tour of the 2009 Pittsburgh Marathon route: check it out.

The narration is from Marathon consultant Charlie Ban, who has a bunch of interesting things to say about the course: which parts are tough, some pitfalls for runners, and how to attack a hill (which advice I found super-useful and hope to remember come August). He also uses the word “deleterious,” for which I salute him as this is not a word one encounters every day.

It sounds like the Marathon should be a fun time. Even for those of us—sniff, sniff—who won’t be competing. The really good news is that to hear Ban tell it, this year’s registration, plus the huge interest in getting on the waiting list, is a pretty sure sign that the race will succeed and continue for the coming years.

Update + the Possible Beginnings of a Plan

Things have been going well on the weightlifting & running fronts. Mendel and I are now up to somewhere in the 210s when it comes to our benchpress weight!

In the world of running, I’ve kept up my routine of going out three times a week: runs of 4-5 and 3-4 miles during the week, and then a longer run on the weekend. This week I plateaued a bit, doing 10 miles when I had planned to do 12.

(Basically I ran out of time but was also feeling some pain in my knee and getting a little queasy for some reason; I felt pretty weird and woozy the rest of the day, which is something I’ll have to plan for going forward. I think this week I am going to eat more carbs on the days leading up to my long run, rather than just making sure I eat a little something before my run—which is all I’ve done, in terms of planning, prior to the last couple of long runs.)

In other news, I’ve mentioned before my plan to train through the spring and summer for the Philadelphia Marathon. Well, that’s still on.

But—I’ve begun to get worried that 7+ months to train for the Philadelphia race might be just enough time to get sidetracked, hurt myself, or get complacent about my training. Or maybe a simpler way to put it would be that 5 months or more is just way more time than I need to get ready for a marathon. I’m now up to 10 miles on my long runs, and in the next month I fully expect to get that up to 14 miles; by the end of May, I should be up to 18, and I will be disappointed if I am not hitting 20 early this summer. (And this is a very relaxed schedule: I’m basically letting myself hit a certain target—say 12 miles—and then do it again the next week, getting my body acclimated before moving up to the next benchmark.) Twenty or twenty-two miles is about where most marathon guides recommend that a runner top out in his or her training, so in theory I’ll be ready for a marathon in June or July.

With that in mind, I scouted around a site, Marathon Guide, that has a fairly comprehensive “Marathon Calendar.” And what I came up with is pretty interesting: on August 9, in Titusville, Pennsylvania, there is the Drake Well Marathon. Titusville looks to be about 100+ miles from Pittsburgh, north toward Erie. Apparently it boasts the world’s first oil well.

In terms of timing, location, and affordability (the race starts at 7 a.m. so driving from Pittsburgh actually sounds like more of a nightmare than ponying up to stay in a hotel the night before), this could really work out. And since it’s three months before the Philadelphia Marathon, it’s not an either/or proposition: in fact, it could be a nice preparatory race for the bigger Philly race.

I’m still crunching some numbers, but I think this could be a big set-up for my delayed—but not-to-be-denied—first marathon.

A New Record + Some Disappointing News

First, the disappointing news: the Pittsburgh Marathon is closed! Not just the Marathon, but the Half-Marathon, as well as the Relay.

I honestly had not expected this. I didn’t think that Pittsburgh would be a huge spot for the marathon. Who knows whether this is mostly local people signing up—which would make sense since this is the first year the marathon will be back after several years—or if it’s out-of-town runners. Either way, it’s kind of disappointing.

(I’m on the waiting list, but the Marathon organizers started making calls yesterday, and since it’s first-come, first-served, I doubt that they will make it all the way down the list to me.)

Now, the new record, set by Mendel and I last night: 209 pounds on the bench press! This smashes the 199 that we each lifted last week. Not only are we over 200 pounds now but, as Mendel pointed out, we are both now able to lift more than we weigh! I really don’t think I ever thought I’d say that.

Back to Double Digits

I don’t want to jinx myself, but it seems that things are back to normal in terms of running. I haven’t had any real foot, ankle, or shin discomfort to speak of in the last few weeks. This week I did runs of four, three, and 10 miles. The soles of my feet were pretty sore after that last one, but for the most part I have no complaints.

Getting back to running shape, and falling back into a good running routine, have been nice, but a little bittersweet. I’ve decided for sure now that I’m going to put off running the marathon in May, and do “just” the half-marathon. (“Just” is in quotation marks because 13.1 miles is still pretty tough and a pretty long distance to run.) The timing of my getting up to 10 miles is sort of awkward because there are still about six weeks before the race, enough time to keep increasing my weekly mileage, up to maybe 16 or 18 miles on the long runs, but not enough time to get up to 20 or 22 comfortably and to do it with time to ease back on the long runs for a few weeks before the race. So I’m pretty much deciding more firmly on the plan I had hatched about a month ago, to keep training during the summer and do the Philadelphia Marathon in November.

So, expect future blog posts to deal more with the specific challenges of the half-marathon. I’ve been training, so far, as if the half-marathon were just Marathon, Jr., but I can already see that it’s not. I’m hoping to devote some of my training time to speed workouts, which is something that’s gone by the wayside since the fall. One really nice thing about already being up to 10 miles is that I have the time to get really comfortable with that distance and to increase my speed and stamina with it.

I’m making a big deal out of the change, but in a lot of ways nothing will change. It’ll still be a big race and having it ahead of me will be a nice goal to work toward—in this case, I’ll have two nice goals to work toward, as the full marathon will be looming a bit further in the future.

In other news:
My weekly total of 17 is pretty good for me, but it’s not even as high as the weekly-long-run distance that Rich had to do this week: 18 miles! I see that he put up a new “Geezer” blog post, which means he finally made it back.

The comeback trail

I had quite a Sunday, exercise-wise. In the morning, Rich supervised Mendel and I as we went through another junkyard workout: an intense regimen of tire flipping, wheelbarrow pushing, duct-taped watering can toting, cinder block curling, dips from a couple metal posts, and one of the most frustrating exercises I’ve ever done. This last one consisted of stooping down and pulling what Rich calls a “dinosaur egg” out of some nesting inside a tire. The dinosaur egg is some kind of weight or medicine ball bound up with what must be several rolls worth of electrical tape. All this water, as well as dead leaves and dirt and mud, collects in the dinosaur egg’s nest, and with the smooth surface of the ball itself it is a feat to pick the thing up. One then pulls it up to the chest and holds it and dumps it back in the tire.

So, that was early Sunday morning—we met at 7:30 a.m., which with daylight savings time was “really” 6:30. (Every year, at one or the other of the daylight savings days, I seem to get in a debate about the idea that it is “really” an hour earlier or later. I don’t think anyone would disagree, though, that if 7:30 a.m. was only 23 hours ago, to your body it is going to feel like it’s only 6:30.)

Afterwards, I went back to the trail. I ran at the Schenley track, on the gravel track, and then headed down to the trail, running for a total of eight miles. That is more—by a lot—than I have run in some time. What’s more, so far my shins, calves, ankles, and feet feel OK. I’m planning to continue to take it easy—what I’m thinking is two runs during the week and then a long run on Saturday or Sunday—but this is an encouraging sign.

Checking In

It’s been a while since my last post, mainly because there’s been little to report. After my last run, last Wednesday evening, I had more shin splints, and forced myself to go on another break from running. I’ve done some biking since then, but mostly it’s been a somewhat frustrating lapse in any kind of cardio. I’m heading back to the track tonight, though, and am hoping the lay-off—and, this time, some very thorough stretching, plus a warm-up walk—will translate to pain-free running (and an absence of pain after running, which really has been the big thing).

One note worth mentioning here, concerning the running, is that I had no discomfort during my Wednesday-night run. I may be overthinking it, but I believe that was because I returned to my normal stride, which is a bit longer than the stride I started trying to adopt a couple months ago. Basically, I shortened my stride because of something I read about the stress on the knees that’s often caused by overstriding, so that your feet are not fully beneath your weight and the knees get more than their share of stress. It sounded good, and so I started taking shorter strides. What I should have asked myself is, “Do your knees hurt?” The answer would have been, “No, not really.” My response to myself would have been, “Then I guess I don’t need to change my stride,” and I probably would have listened to myself.

My plan for here on out, then, is to stride naturally. Rich recently mentioned an interesting way of striding, which is to run as if on a treadmill. It sounds like a good thing, as it would lessen some of the stress of impact on your feet and knees. But I feel like I’ve learned my lesson as far as trying to change my stride. My main concern at this point is to avoid injuries and build my mileage up toward May 3, which suddenly doesn’t seem so far away.

On a more fun note, because it was freakishly warm and nice in Pittsburgh yesterday, last night Rich put Mendel and I through our paces outside his studio, out in his back yard. It wasn’t our normal Wednesday night double session, but it certainly duplicated the workout. (I can vouch for that because I’m much more sore today than I’m accustomed to being.) We lifted watering cans covered in duct tape and filled with sand and bricks. We hit a tire with an axe. We did curls with a concrete-and-steel kebab. We did dips on a pair of metal poles planted in Rich’s yard. And—by far the most challenging, and for me the most eventful—we crouched down and flipped over a massive tire (from some kind of construction equipment). I say that it was “eventful” because at one point while lifting the tire end, my footing gave out and I ended up flat on my face with a lot of mud flying up from the tire’s landing and splattering all over my face. I didn’t realize it until later, but there were pretty big chunks of mud caked on my forehead and chin and in my hair. I’m hoping it’s the kind of mud that clears up your skin. That would be great.

Finally, Rich has started yet another new project. This time it’s a humor blog relating to the marathon—which, if you’ve ever trained for a marathon, you know that a little humor is necessary if you’re going to maintain your sanity. His first entry is here.

Status Update: More leg troubles

I will have to stop writing upbeat posts, like I did last time. Maybe I’m just being superstitious, but it seems like shortly afterward I run into trouble.

So it was this past week. After my long Wednesday evening run (I went about 6 miles through rain and brief hail, which felt better than it probably sounds), I experienced some nasty shin splints that only got worse as the weekend came along. I’ve had shin splints before, and know how to take care of them: rest and ice are the two big things. So I skipped my planned Thursday run, hoping to be in better shape for Sunday’s long run.

But the shin splints have persisted, and I ended up putting off the long run, or any run at all. I’ve gotten on an exercise bike a few times, and I’m hopefully going to go swimming at least once this week. My plan, at the moment, is to do a fairly short run on Wednesday evening, then rest Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and shoot for a longer run on Sunday, stopping to walk fairly regularly so that I can stay sort of checked in as to how my shins are feeling.

All of this would be no big deal if I were just trying to jog more often, or “just” trying to get in shape. But I’ve found that having the marathon looming (11 weeks from now, as of this writing) makes the whole thing seem much more ominous. I’m aware, maybe too aware, of the danger zone that I’m entering: shin splints require time and care to heal, but I have a particular schedule in mind for the marathon, and at some point I will have to move up the ladder and do some pretty long runs. The trick, and the place where the danger comes in, is to run longer distances without ramping my mileage up so suddenly that I risk getting injured again.

I had actually sort of written the marathon off for a day or so, thinking I could safely train for and run the half-marathon and then shoot for a marathon some time during the summer or fall: the Philadelphia Marathon has already been on my mind. (It’s sort of the perfect set-up for me because my family lives in Philadelphia and the race is on November 22, meaning I could go home, do the race, and then completely gorge myself at Thanksgiving with zero guilt as far as pigging out: I’ll need to replenish all the calories I lost.)

But talking to Rich during our weight session* last night, I realized there are a few things I can do to make training less risky and still give myself a good shot at being ready for the Pittsburgh Marathon in May. I had been going off the Runner’s World marathon guide for beginners, trying to follow it to a T: in this case, that meant going for runs on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I realized I’d had success, just a month or so ago now, staggering my runs so that I did not go out on consecutive days. I also did well with some other “rules” that I imposed on myself: namely, keeping to flat surfaces. I’ve noted that I don’t really like driving to go run, or running on monotonous tracks. But it looks like that’s what’s in store for me. I am hoping that by following the Runner’s World regimen a little more loosely—I think the main thing will be trying, eventually, to do the number of total weekly miles that they indicate—I can give myself a shot at tackling this marathon come that first weekend in May. Another good idea that Rich had was to intersperse walking and running, which should spare my ankles, calves, and shins while letting me “do” these progressively longer runs of 12, 13, 14 miles. I want to reach a point of being able to run these longer distances without stopping—I’d really worry about doing 26.2 miles if I couldn’t get up past around 18-20 miles before the race date—but the best and safest way to accomplish that may be to swallow my pride a little and walk some of these runs.

*I’d like to note that I’ve smashed my personal bench-press record, of 170 pounds. The new record—the ink is not even dry in my personal record book—is 185. I am deeply impressed at myself. This is a full 100 pounds more weight than what I started at, back in October. Even more impressive, 185 is what I have been thinking of as “Mendel Territory.” If you could see Mendel’s beast-like arms and hear the awesome groaning he emits as he throws up these Herculean stacks of weights, you would surely understand why I am so full of myself this morning.

Back on track

I am just about back on track as far as the marathon schedule goes. In my last post I incorrectly reported that it was Week 7; it was only Week 6. That little slip-up made a big difference, it turned out, since the weekday long run was only five miles, which I was more than up to. And the long run of the week, which I completed on Sunday, was listed in my book as “10K-15K,” which I believe I converted correctly to be somewhere between six and eight miles. I did about seven and a half, so I feel good about where I stand. (I am worried, though, about next week’s 12-mile Sunday run, and am considering going off-schedule and only doing about 10 miles, just so I don’t hurt myself. I’ll have to see how I feel later in the week.)

The weather finally cleared up around Pittsburgh, and both weekend days were much warmer and clearer, and by Sunday afternoon all but the hardest-packed of the ice had melted and evaporated. I ran on the gravel track at Schenley Park, which was in good shape although still wet and kind of gluey. It wasn’t until I returned home that I noticed my shoes and pants were absolutely caked with sand-colored mud.

Hopefully the warm weather will continue. I’ve been experiencing some more stiffness in my ankle and Achilles area, and after my run I had some pretty bad cramping in my calf. I can’t blame the cold weather entirely, but I think it makes things stiffer and a little slower to warm up.

Three Days Running

Don’t call it a comeback, but over the weekend I ran on three consecutive days. All three times were outside and, most encouraging of all, all three were longer runs than I had been managing before:

Friday: 4 miles (through the Schenley Park trail)
Saturday: 6 miles (also through the Schenley Park trail)
Sunday: 4-5 miles* along Beechwood Boulevard (*this one is something of an educated guess as far as the exact distance)

Actually, the most encouraging thing may be that I haven’t experienced any real ankle or foot pain yet, which as I’ve noted in the recent past and in the more distant past, has been kind of a big worry for me. I’ve been monitoring it closely and a little worriedly.

Despite the lack of foot pain and the longer miles this weekend, I remain a bit behind where I want to be. I’m following the Runner’s World “Novice” workout (similar, but not identical, to this one). I’m entering Week 7 today, so the mileage I did over the weekend I’m considering part of Week 6. Week 6 culminated in a long run of 10-13 miles. I’m a bit frustrated at being so far off the pace, for two reasons: 1) those six miles on Saturday sort of destroyed me; 2) Rich and I got up to 10 miles, and I went on at least three 10-mile runs back in December. Where did all that stamina and energy go?

On the other hand, having been there before, I have little doubt that I can get back there soon. The main worry/temptation is to try to leapfrog over the next week or so to make up for lost time, and in so doing to risk injuring myself. With the weather looking reliably terrible in Pittsburgh over the next few weeks (and with Punxsutawney Phil predicting six more weeks of winter), it’ll be tough enough to get out on some quality runs without having to take days off.

Realistically, I think that getting thrown off my pace won’t deter me from completing my training, and I’m determined that it won’t stop me from running the marathon. But it might be the difference between going for some of the goals I’d had in mind, in terms of a certain time (in the 4 to 4 1/2 hour range), and aiming to finish the race without having to stop and walk. From the geeky, wordy tone of this blog it might not be apparent, but I can be somewhat competitive and the prospect of not just finishing the marathon but doing it with a fairly decent time was kind of a big motivating factor for me, and something I was excited about.

So, that is my report on the weekend’s running activities. In unrelated news, the Pittsburgh Steelers won their NFL-best sixth Super Bowl title yesterday in a thrilling come-from-behind win over the Arizona Cardinals. It was a great game, and Pittsburgh subsequently went nuts. Here’s Rich’s dispatch from just before the game, in which he comments on the aftermath of the Steelers’ 2006 win, when Pittsburgh also went nuts.

Notes on Winter Running

This past Friday it was unseasonably warm in Pittsburgh. On top of the nasty cold snap the region had been experiencing, the sudden spring-like weather was very nice indeed.

One would have been justified in expecting, as I expected, that this would be ideal running weather. But of course, one would have been wrong, as I was wrong. The warm snap meant all the snow from the past weeks had melted, but, frustrating my expectations, it had not yet gone anywhere by the time I got home from work and got over to Schenley Park to do my run. The snow had turned to water and the hardened snow had softened and together they turned the wooded trail, the gravel track, and the “real” track to great oval-shaped puddles that were very messy to run on. I ended up doing the best I could for a while, then quitting the tracks for the asphalt road that wends through the park, and following that for about a mile and a half until it dead-ended and then rejoining the wooded trail and sloshing my way back to my car. It was a run of about the distance I was looking for—2 1/2 to 3 miles—but it was hard-earned with all the wetness everywhere and the constant squishing sounds.

Sunday, though, was worse. The nice day on Friday was little more than a memory, as temperatures had fallen over Friday evening, turning all that melted-but-not-yet-drained snow into great patches and sporadic little weirdly shaped curlicues of hard ice that lay over the wooded trail and the gravel track and the “real” track, making them even more difficult to traverse than they had been on Friday. (I know that some people, Rich included, don’t mind running on ice and even feel more comfortable running on it than walking on ice, but I’m pretty much terrified of going at any speed faster than walking and losing control of my body, so I decline to run on ice.) I had an even more frustrating first attempt and failure at running on the gravel track, and then returned to the asphalt road.

The result of my defecting a second time, though, ended up being positive, because once I got going on the flat, dry, non-slippery road, I didn’t want to stop. (I should mention that I’d planned on doing my long run for the week on Sunday, something (a long run) I haven’t been able to do in a few weeks, so I was not about to be turned back after one or two tentative miles jogging gingerly on ice.) So I didn’t: I crossed the bridge into Oakland, going along Boulevard of the Allies and turning up past Magee Women’s Hospital and running through Oakland, cutting behind Carnegie Mellon University past the Phipps Conservatory on my way back to Schenley Park. It was probably, all told, a little less than the six miles I had planned for the day, but the positive aspect of doing this impromptu road run was that I got back to running on the street without having to worry too much about it beforehand. It’s much more fun than running half a dozen times around an oval, and I hope to gradually build on Sunday’s run and do some more scenic runs in the weeks and months ahead.