Sunday, October 18, 2009

Long Runs and Hedge Apples


Week 11 Review - 46.5 miles - 7 hours 19 minutes - 5,900 calories - including long run, tempo run, hill sprint.

I think (and hope) that I've turned the corner on the IT Band/ hip issues from August. Little aches and pains that come with training persist - like sore hamstrings, sore achilles, and a black toenail that is bugging me - but not the dredded hip pain from before.

I've been meaning to touch on the FIRST training plan that I initially started out to follow for this marathon. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 on these matters, as I was injured on the very first day of training. I think a couple of things lead to the initial injury. 1) I based my training time estimates on a 5K that I ran the week before. Looking back, I should have based the training time estimates on an average of the last 2 5K's  - one from July and the faster one in August. I had inproved almost 1:30 from the July to August because of good training, but this was probably not a good estimate to use for the marathon training. 2) I don't believe that my base of miles was NEAR enough. My best guess is that a base of 3-5 previous marathons, or at least 1,500 miles of recent miles should be considered before using this method.

Reading a lot of blogs and message boards from experienced marathoner's, I knew that what I really need is to develop my base milage more. So with this in mind, I'm going to do my best to keep the milage up, and try to run everyday, unless its rest day before a designated long run.


My long run for this week will be my longest run to date - 18 miles. So Saturday rolls around and it is overcast, windy and cold with a lttle rain falling. My plan was to wait until the afternoon to begin the run, as Steph had some things to do in the morning. Carly and I spent time together watching Phinias and Ferb until around 2:00. It was around 49 and overcast and the wind chill was around 41, so I was re-thinking trying it, as the wind is very tough to run in. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that I should just go ahead and try it, so off I went. My plan was to run from the Gateway over to Old Fort then on to Cason Lane trail head and back to the Gateway for the first 12 miles. Then over to the battlefield for the other 6 miles.

Most everything went according to plan. I took it easy, keeping in mind that I wanted to get all 18 miles in the book, and kept the pace around 9:30 per mile. There was a ton of mud in some spots on the greenway towards Cason lane, as the Stones River was really high and some over run was still on the trail making it quite muddy, so there were some slow and tricky places.

I slowed for water breaks at Old Fort and Cason Lane trail heads, and headed back to the car at the Gateway and popped a GU (Mocha Chocolate - umm good.) Onward to the battlefield, and I saw the Mock Orange tree with the Hedge apples strewn on the trail, and the one thought I had was "I hope one of these don't fall on my head, because I'm so tired that I would never be able to dodge one" LOL.

I  finished the long run in 2 hours and 54 minutes averaging 9:45 per mile, which is just fine with me

4 comments:

  1. That's a great time for the long run! Way to go!!

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  2. great weather for a long run. Beauty of the greenway is that it's sheltered from most of the wind.

    I'd be more worried about stepping on one of those hedge apples, than having it fall on my head. The section of the greenway right around 84 lumber always seems to have them laying around. I almost twisted my ankle stepping on one in the dark a few years ago.

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  3. Awesome job! Glad your pain has subsided.

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  4. Dirk - I get lots of practice "avoiding" the Geese poop on the Gateway track, those hedge apples are easy to miss. - LOL

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Thanks for commenting. :)