What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

With the marathon one week away it’s time for me to really come up with my game plan.

All week long I’ve been getting myself pumped up and ready by trying to do all things running – except of course run too much. I finished the book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I’ll include some excerpts I loved at the end of this post. The beginning was a little slow, but overall I loved the book and loved how I could completely relate to all that he was saying. I copied another bloggers idea for displaying her race numbers and made a race number collage in my room. I still have tons of numbers left so when I find another suitable frame I may make another one!! I’m still working on Bart Yasso’s book but hopefully will finish it this week. By the way he will be at the expo for anyone who wants to meet him!!

I finally decided that even though I’m just borrowing a Garmin I was going to download the software so I could really analyze how I ran at Freedom’s Run. It has surprised me and so I will share the details

Mile 1 – 7:45 – Most of the first mile was on a dirt trail in a field
Mile 2 – 7:35
Mile 3 - 7:19
Mile 4 – 7:31 – Part of this mile was on cobblestones
Mile 5 – 7:52 – This was where I encountered the spiral staircase
Mile 6 – 7:46 – For the next 10 miles we ran on packed dirt/gravel/rocks/leaves
Mile 7 – 7:44
Mile 8 – 7:35
Mile 9 – 7:42
Mile 10 – 7:43
Mile 11 – 7:42
Mile 12 – 7:38
Mile 13 – 7:31
Mile 14 – 7:36
Mile 15 – 8:37 – Left the trail of the C&O Canal and faced the first giant hill
Mile 16 - 8:00 – Still climbing the hills
Mile 17 – 7:39 – Still thought I had a shot at 3:30 and that the hills were over
Mile 18 – 8:16 – Smaller hills
Mile 19 – 9:01 – Back to the big hills
Mile 20 – 8:18 – Hills
Mile 21 – 8:33 – More hills
Mile 22 – 8:37 – Even more hills as we start to leave the battlefield
Mile 23 – 10:35 – At this point I don’t think I realized how fast I was still running – I should have never given up. This was when I started walking.
Mile 24 – 9:36 – Still walking
Mile 25 – 9:22 – Meet up with my husband who tells me to stop walking and run
Mile 26 – 9:09 – Supposedly downhill but felt like I was climbing the whole time
Mile 26.2 – 2:05

So the awesome thing about the garmin, which I didn’t know it did – is that it lays out in each mile the ascents and descents. The overall ascent for the course was 3,606 feet and the overall descent for the race was 3,751 feet. HOLY CRA*!

Looking at the Freedom’s Run course it starts at about 251 feet and the highest point was 580 feet. For Marine Corps Marathon it starts around 0 feet and only goes up to 160 feet. Seriously from now on I am going to really pay attention to the elevation charts before signing up for a marathon. I personally don’t like super flat races like Chicago. I feel like my legs work to hard the whole time rather than getting a small break on any declines. However it doesn’t matter if you descend 3,751 feet if you have to climb 3,606 feet to get there. So a relatively flatter course is sounding fantastic right now!

So how does this all make me feel? Well it makes me feel hopeful that I can do better on Sunday. I hope that I haven’t lost any fitness by tapering for one marathon, running it and then re-tapering for another one. In exactly one week I’ll find out!

I’ll end this post with some quotes from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

“It’s precisely because of the pain, that we can get the feeling, through the process, of really being alive – or at least a partial sense of it. Your quality of experience is based not on standards such as time or ranking, but on finally awakening to an awareness of the fluidity within action itself.”

“Long-distance running(more or less, for better or worse) has molded me into the person I am today, and I’m hoping it will remain a part of my life for as long as possible. I’ll be happy if running and I can grow old together. There may not seem to be much logic to it, but it’s the life I’ve chosen for myself.”

“Thus the seasons come and go, and the years pass by. I’ll age one more year, and probably finish another novel. One by one, I’ll face the tasks before me and complete them best I can. Focusing on each stride forward, but at the same time taking a long-range view, scanning the scenery as far ahead as I can. I am, after all, a long-distance runner.”