5 to 42 km in a Year or How NOT to Train for a Marathon

If you've met me in the past year, chances are that I've been rambling on about running, marathons, split times or the like. Since my next race is less than two weeks from now, and training is almost over, I've decided to put together how I prepared. This is mostly to show what you shouldn't do if you want to run a marathon. Seriously, go read someone who knows what they are talking about. In case you are still here, here's my story:

 

It all begins in gloomy Redmond...

Lovely Microsoft sign some 200m from my place.(Image: WikiMedia)

So, last summer I was interning in Microsoft. Which was great on its own, but I made the rather unfortunate choice to live in Redmond. Which is also relatively fine if you are thinking "downtown" Redmond, but that was a few miles away. In fact, the only attractions within walking (2 mile) distance from me were Microsoft's campus and a lonely Trader Joe's, where I got groceries. And the highway. Oh, did I mention I wasn't driving?

That's just to say I didn't have a lot to do on weekdays after work. Ok, that's a lie -- I was still doing XIOSim work and writing a journal paper for the lab. But I didn't have anything fun to do on weekdays. And that was driving me nuts. Throw in some personal drama for color and you'll understand why I needed to blow off some steam. So I decided to get a bit more serious with running.

Don't get me wrong, I've always enjoyed running. I've been caught saying that "you feel immortal" after a good run. At that point, "a good run" referred to a 5K. I was doing one every week or so, and my times were in the 21-25:00 range in flat Cambridge. I decided to up that to three times a week and try to hit 22:00 on my rather hilly Redmond loop.

All was going well with that plan. My 5K times were more in the 25-30:00 range but slowly creeping downwards. The hills were stressing muscles that I never knew existed and I was generally feeling fitter. The occasional hike surely helped with that. Then one day at lunch, Doug Burger mentioned in passing "when I ran my second marathon", which reminded me that such a thing exists. Being the enthusiast that I am, I got hooked up and decided I needed to finish one. To have a real goal, I decided to do that before the end of college. With 9 months to go, that was quite far away. I had absolutely no idea how to train for it or anything of the sort. But I thought I'd figure it out somehow...

Back to Cambridge, getting serious about that marathon thing...

So, summer was over, I was back in Cambridge and continuing my training. I hadn't bothered to look up any specific training programs, my plan was "to run a lot". More out of necessity than by design (switching the place where I lived), I increased my workout length to a more respectable 8-9 km. I started collecting stats and stabilized my pace around 4:50-5:00 / km. One day in October I ran across a friend midway, joined her for a longer loop and saw I could easily do 12.5 km, so that became my new route. It took me until late November to bring my pace on the new loop from 5:10 / km back down to 5:00 / km. I was aiming for three workouts a week, but school and research had hit hard, so I usually managed to squeeze in two.

As early as September, I had registered for the Memorial Day Marathon in late May near Lenox, MA. My criteria were that it was in Massachusetts, it was close to my graduation goal and was a much lower-key event than a big city marathon. Only later was I to find out minor details like the fact that its tagline was "the toughest race in the East" (arguable), or that the last 10 km were a steady incline, or that temperatures in Western Mass around that time were easily north of 30 C / 90 F. But regardless, I could proudly tell people that I was training for a marathon.

That whole training part had its ups and downs. I was travelling all through December, so it was virtually a blank month. Then, January was so freezing that I had great incentive to go fast -- my pace for the 12.5K loop was steadily down to 4:40 / km, which meant another distance increase to 14.5 km at about 5:00. By the end of February, I did my first half-marathon distance at a steady 4:59 / km for a 1:43:12 time! Things were looking really good. I made the plan to do two shorter runs and a half-distance every week...

Workaholism + injury + graduation -- training goes south...

Needless to say, that plan never came to. March meant recruiting season for grad schools, several job interviews and spring break. I took something like 10-15 flights in the span of a month and definitely spent more time away than back in Cambridge. Oh, I had also just started TF-ing a course on software engineering and had a research paper deadline. By the way, I'll always remember the paper as the one I wrote by the pool in Cancun, with a coffee mug instead of a mochito -- the things we do for science...

Once that mess was somewhat sorted out, I was eager to get back to my training plan. In fact, so eager that I overdid myself. In April, I started nursing something that felt remarkably like shin splints and an ankle needing its rest. I covered a decent distance (see graph at the end), but there was often a good amount of pain involved. I would often set out on a 21 km run only to return after the first 4-5 km, knowing that I needed to keep my ankle in good shape for the marathon the following month.

Prospective scientists changing the world. Or something.

Speaking of the following month, that was also almost completely lost for training. Part of it was me nursing my ankle and tapering before the race. But in all honesty, it was mostly lack of time. We had just assembled a team for the HELIX project, and were on a mad death march to submit a paper to MICRO in early June. I mean, really mad. We were literally living in the lab, and it was a good day when an air bed materialized there. For me, it was also graduation time, which meant last chance of seeing my college friends, as well as family coming all the way from back home to see me get a diploma. So, training was one of the first things I gave up (after sleep). When people asked me about my marathon attempt, I was telling them I had a new preparation strategy -- not to run.

 

Me at MDM 2012

Memorial Day Marathon -- "almost" there...

So, race day came, and I left the lab (remember we were living there?) at 4 am after a hour nap to drive for 3 hours to Lenox. Oh, also after a 5-second hesitation of whether I'm nuts enough to attempt a marathon in my current state. That was, severely sleep-deprived, not having run at all in a couple of weeks, and recently sporting a cold or some similar bug. Needless to say, I decided it was well worth a shot, devoured a chocolate bar, stuffed some tissues in my shorts pocket for the cold, and went to the start line.

After the start, I had a blast. Seriously, never felt better. After 8-9 km all traces of the cold were gone, I was pumping in split times steadily around 5:00-5:10 and didn't feel anything. The downhill slope was giving me hints of feeling shin splints again, but small changes to my stride were enough to fix that. For the first time in a while, I genuinely thought that I could finish.

I reached half-distance with a time around 1:50:00-1:55:00. At that point, the heat was pretty much in full blast and I was starting to feel quite tired. I had heard experienced runners speaking about 'the wall' and was wondering if I was reaching something like that. Decided, not for the moment. Around 24 km, my pace had dropped off significantly and I had started to feel a very familiar pain in my ankle that was only getting stronger. It didn't help that I was getting to the inclined part of the course. I tried running with weight shifted on my other ankle, but it reacted in a very similar way (I would also pay for that dearly in the following two weeks). This went on for a while, but around 27 km the pain was so strong that I became worried I might do some real damage to my body. It was game over at that point and time to be sensible. I limped for a kilometer to the nearest aid station and got a ride to the finish line from there.

 

 Recovery and return to normalcy...

Recovering after my first attempt was relatively painful. Especially with the ankle on which I'd shifted my weight, which would give me a hard time for the next week or two, and I was happily limping around. I tried a short recovery run a week after, but needed at least two weeks before feeling completely comfortable. I didn't have that much time though -- as early as April I had registered for the San Francisco Marathon in late July and needed to prepare for that. I was following the same strategy of two short(er) week runs and a longer weekend run / hike for that and am just reaching the point where I need to start winding down before the race. Wish me luck... But if you want to get any moral from this overly long post, it probably sums up to "don't spend the last two/three months before a race without running"... Isn't it simple...

Total distances for the past six months (km, lower bound due to a few GPS failures)