A small problem with my toe

Two days before Christmas, we were almost done unpacking the important stuff after moving to a new place. (For the first time in either of our lives, we’re actually living inside the Portland city limits! But that’s a story for another time.)

That’s a ceramic platter we have. It weighs nine pounds.  It fell off a chair onto the tip of my left big toe. I was wearing socks and standing on a hardwood floor. The platter hit edge-first. The good news — the platter is fine. The platter thanks you for your concern. My toe hurt like a mother. Here’s a blurry picture of what it looked like a few minutes later, after the searing pain had subsided.

I could wiggle my toe and touching it didn’t seem like it hurt that much — except for the nail — so I didn’t think it was broken. But soon it started to bleed out of the corner of the nail, and once it got going the blood wasn’t stopping. It didn’t hurt much, so we wrapped some paper towels around it and had dinner.

It was still bleeding an hour and a half later. It showed no sign of letting up and I was going through a lot of paper towels. We decided to go to the emergency room. I put on a flip-flop and we drove over. Here’s my toe in the hospital:

After an hour or so of waiting and triage, we saw a nice PA. The best thing about her was that she was also a marathon runner, so she was very sympathetic. Especially after her and my wife talked me into getting an x-ray, and it came back looking like this:

You don’t have to be much of a medical expert to see something wrong on that big toe. That should all be one bone, not five or six. Ouch. Shouldn’t that hurt more? Don’t ask me.

They pressure-bandaged the toe to slow the bleeding and sent me home in one of those open-toed post-surgical shoes. It oozed and bled for about four days; it was such a relief when I no longer needed any bandages. I limped pretty badly for a week and I still have to be very careful if I’m wearing shoes. I saw a podiatrist the week after it happened, but he didn’t give me anything different to do — no casts, splints or boots.

Obviously, I can’t run either. I don’t know exactly how long I’ll be out — I’m supposed to go by how it feels. Six to eight weeks is a good guess though. I’m two weeks and three days into it now.

 

Race Report: 2011 Silver Falls Half Marathon

I have a pretty good streak going: I have finished this race every single year it has been held. (This was its second year.) Here’s my report from last year. You will note that I have reused the same scenic picture. Ah, you’ve seen one giant waterfall with little ant-like people running behind it, you’ve seen them all.

Really, though, it’s a spectacular course. I know someone who runs a half marathon or two every single week, and he ran this one today for the first time, and you should see what nice things he’s saying about it on Facebook. Even if you aren’t a runner, if you live anywhere near here and haven’t been, you should take a trip to Silver Falls State Park and hike around a little — it’s a gem. If you live anywhere near here and are a runner, this is a must-do race. But hurry, because it fills up fast. This year they opened registration on August 1st and it filled up on the 3rd. New next year: they’re going to be doing a full marathon also! If it’s just two loops of the half-marathon course (as seems likely), I’ll probably take a pass on that, though.

I was in mostly decent shape coming into the race. No real aches or pains to speak of; not sick; plantar fasciitis very mild. My biggest problem was that I’d only been putting in 22-26 miles per week for the previous six weeks, to give the aforementioned PF a break. Still, I thought I had a good chance of beating my time here from last year, when I was sick and gimpy.

The course has a lot of uphills and downhills. Here is the elevation profile, as published on the race web page.

As you can see, the race sucks you into going out way too fast during those first four gentle miles. I’m not sure what my pace was but I’d guess it was 7:30 or faster through there. Everybody else seemed to be running fast too. Seriously, this race seemed to have attracted a lot of fast runners this year. The winner posted a time of an hour and eighteen minutes. Look at that elevation profile! Remember that most of it is on wet and/or rocky trails. That’s just insanely fast.

Mile four kind of sucked. I complained about this hill last year, writing “My lungs weren’t giving me enough air and my legs felt heavy.” Well, no duh, that’s actually a pretty steep climb there! I probably got up there faster this time around but it was certainly no easier.

Near mile six, we descended into the gorge via a route that wound behind the North Falls, then we got two miles of mostly-downhill trail, downstream alongside a creek. I was feeling OK and I ran this portion hard. Maybe seven-minute-miles; it’s hard to say since I wasn’t doing manual laps on my Garmin and its accuracy is rubbish in that kind of terrain.

Shortly after mile eight, we started heading upstream along another creek, and then we hit the two big waterfall climbs. The first involved an endless series of stairs; the second only some very steep trails. I knew better this year and just briskly walked these sections, rather than pretending I could run them and then petering out into into a gasping slow trudge.

After that, it was all pretty easy except for (a) the fact that this was my longest run in two months and (b) the sadistic hill they insert just before the finish. At least I was mentally prepared for the hill this time around. I finished in about 1:44:10, which would be a 7:58/mile average pace, and more than six minutes faster than last year. So, mission accomplished there.

Post-race, they had bread, chili, and a roaring fire in the picnic area shelter. They didn’t have finishers medals, if you care about that sort of thing. I don’t, and would much rather have a lower race entry fee. I think it might have been $25 this year? An unbeatable race bargain.

Update: Official Results. 1:44:11, 67th of 454 finishers.

Some pictures of me at the 2011 McKenzie River 50K

Smoke

A picture of the smoke, at its worst, on the highway near the McKenzie River trail run. <Cough, cough.>

Race Report: 2011 McKenzie River Trail Run 50K

(Preliminary) official results

The McKenzie River 50K is usually a pretty easy run, at least as far as thirty-one mile trail races go. Yes, there are a few miles of “technical” rocky trail where you have to pay attention to every footstep. And, yes, there is a bit of climb in the first few miles. But most of the last two-thirds is downhill and you cruise to the finish on miles of soft, gently downhill trail. Usually.

This year, the Shadow Creek forest fire changed all that, closing the upper portions of the route and forcing the organizers to stay away from the ranger station that normally serves as the finish area. The race organizers did a great job coming up with a workable plan at the last moment, and communicating the changes with the runners. The new route was basically an out-and-back, down the river and then back up. There was also a separate 2.5 mile out-and-back at the very start, along the waterfall trail just upstream of Carmen Reservoir.

With the changes, here is what the elevation profile of the course looked like. (Elevation is in feet.)

Hard-core trail runners are looking at this and chuckling a bit — a thousand feet of climb over the last fourteen miles: big deal. Compared to the normal course for this race, though, this was a big change in the “harder” direction. I’d wanted to break five hours but with the new course I knew that would be unlikely.

Now, did I mention that the race turned out to be on the hottest day of the year? And that the whole area was a little smoky from those forest fires? Not that I’m making excuses. At least the bees (or wasps, or whatever they are) along the course decided to ignore me again. A lot of people do get stung every year and 2011 didn’t seem like it was an exception. (So much for my theory that the smoke would calm down the bees :-)

I don’t mean to be negative though. This is a beautiful, gorgeous, incredible trail and it was great just to be out there running it. I love this race.

We had no problems getting to the 7:30 start from our motel room 25 miles away. It wasn’t hot yet — probably in the mid 50s — but it was the first time I can remember not actually getting cold at one of these early-morning race starts. Earlier, I had a cup of coffee in the motel room, and that helped gear up my digestive system to properly do what it was supposed to pre-race, if you get my meaning.

I went a bit faster off the starting line than I usually would, because I didn’t want to get caught too far back when we reached the tight single-track trail a few hundred meters farther along. Of course, this meant I was up with people who were probably in better shape than me, and the first uphill mile proved challenging. I felt like I was having trouble getting enough air, and no doubt I was — probably not because anything was wrong, just because I was running hard to keep my place in line.

Fitness-wise, I was a mixed bag coming into the race. My weekly mileage and long runs had been adequate but nothing spectacular. My taper was too long. I had tweaked my back doing nothing at all on Wednesday, and that still bothered me a bit. My left foot hurt.

After a bit more than a mile of uphills and steps along the spectacular waterfall section of the McKenzie headwaters, we crossed a little bridge to the north/east side of the river and headed back downhill through the first tricky steep section. I had no problem keeping up with the people around me here. I enjoyed all the downhills, including the rocky, volcanic boulder strewn “cheese grater” sections. I got through the race without any falls, and only twisted my ankle once, which is still one time to many, but is a lot better than I did last year.

Soon, we passed a little water-only aid station and could look down the hill through the trees to our left and see where we started. From here on out it was an out-and-back course, and every nice downhill plunge plagued me with thoughts of having to run back up it so many miles later.

Sweetie was going to see me at the aid stations again this year, and this time we decided that as long as she was “crewing” me, she should really crew me. With that in mind, we brought two handheld water bottles, so we could swap out. We also brought a cooler, which we filled with ice that morning at the motel, so that when we did swap out, I’d be getting ice water. Without even having discussed it, Sweetie started putting gels and pretzels into the handle pockets on the water bottles, which cut my aid station stopped time to literally zero seconds. The trickiest part of getting through the aid stations was waving off the official volunteers who wanted to take my bottle to refill it. They were doing exactly what they should — great volunteers.

After five or ten miles, I stopped noticing my aching back, which was good. My foot, though, stayed painful through the entire run. It never became a sharp pain, though, and after a while it stopped getting worse, so it wasn’t a major concern.

Predictably, I ran strongly for about 25 miles, then we hit the technical section below the famous Blue Pool, this time in the uphill direction. Soon, I was sucking wind. My legs felt OK but my heart rate was too high and I was breathing too hard. The heat probably was having some effect on me too, but it was hard to tell while running — I just felt bad.

The aid stations that had seemed so close together on the way down now seemed about three times further apart on the way up. They said it was five miles to the finish after the last one; it took forever. I started walking a lot. I wondered why I did this to myself. Eventually I made it.

Official results: 5:09:48 (Which is an average pace of 9:58/mile, if the course was an accurate 50K). 37th out of 151 finishers.

Tough 26

I suppose it is good once in a while to run yourself into the ground, then force yourself to keep on going. That happened to me on Saturday, twenty miles into a 25.6-mile run in Forest Park.

I started at the Leif Erickson trailhead (at the top of Thurman Road) but turned off almost immediately, for almost a mile on the sharply uphill Wild Cherry Trail. After that it was basically a loop, more than 14 miles north on Wildwood and more than 9 miles south coming back on Leif. (Other connecting trails were Dogwood and Springville Road.)

I took the whole run slowly, but I already had a lot of miles on my legs from earlier in the week, and it got hard for me shortly after getting back onto Leif. Fortunately, Leif is (relatively) flat and (mostly) downhill in that direction. So I was able to keep shuffling along the whole way, with only the occasional walk break. It was mentally tough, though. I was taking it mile-by-mile, treating each new whole number on the every-quarter-mile mileposts as a little victory.

Eventually I finished, in about 4:35. My feet hurt quite a bit, but have gotten much better since.

Still Running After All These Weeks

Hola, amigos. I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya, but at least the running has been going better than the writing. July and August have been good training months. I’ve had three recent weeks with more than 40 miles of running, and recent long runs of 19, 21, and 18 miles. Tomorrow I’m doing about 26 miles in Forest Park, which will give me 50 miles for the week. I’ve been feeling pretty good. My biggest worries are my left foot, ankle and calf, which get tight in various places between runs, especially when sitting at my desk at work.

Stress and Rest

The last few weeks have found me in a pretty consistent training pattern. Monday I’ll feel good and run hard. Tuesday I’ll struggle some through an easy run. Monday’s fast pace is still catching up to me during Wednesday’s run, too, and I start to feel some worrying aches and pains in my feet, ankles, or calves. Thursday is a rest day, but on Friday I’m still not feeling great during an easy run. Then I do my long run on Saturday, which feels iffy for five or six miles then gets better. After the long run, all those aches and pains somehow seem to reset themselves, and after a super-slow two-mile recovery run on Sunday, I’m good to run hard again Monday.

It’s probably a pretty good stress-then-rest training pattern, if I manage not to overdo it and get injured.  My current plan has me doing about 45 miles this week and the next, then dropping down to 40  for something of a rest week. After that it’s a peak week of about 50 miles, before three tapering weeks heading into the McKenzie River 50K.

 

 

Wildwood 19

I almost didn’t feel like going through the hassle of driving to a trail to run this morning, instead thinking about doing a street run from my house. But then I remembered that I I had bought a shiny new pair of trail shoes earlier in the week (Brooks Adrenaline GTSes) and that gave me all the motivation I needed. I drove out to the Germantown Road trailhead and ran 19 slow miles on Wildwood.

The first five miles weren’t that great. My ankles and calves felt sore and I was having some stomach trouble. I took care of the latter (don’t ask) and eventually my legs warmed up and/or capitulated to the inevitable and stopped troubling me. The middle ten miles were pretty good. I was taking it very easy, making this run much more about time-on-my-feet than anything else. The last few miles weren’t bad, either, really, but after three hours out there I was ready to be done.

Our Oregon slugs have grown large this year.

Of Trail Signs Old and New

In Forest Park, the old classic trail signs, like this:

…are slowly being replaced with a new generation of signs, like this:

The old ones are made of painted wood, apparently hand-stenciled. They could degrade fairly quickly in our wet conditions, but they must have been pretty inexpensive to replace. To my eye, they had a classic look that fit in well in the woods.

The new signs are metal or metal laminated over plastic, printed in a heavy Helvetica typeface, with some additional “Forest Park” and “Portland Parks and Recreation” lettering in the margins. Precluding vandalism (an unfortunately common problem in the park) they could probably last forever. To me, they look wrong, and somehow cheap. I’m glad they kept the trapezoidal shape. I wish they had used a stencil typeface. Helvetica’s modern, clean look just grates on me in this context.

What do you think?

Anyway, I took these pictures during my 16-mile run on Wildwood on Saturday. Two more miles today, in the pouring rain, gave me a 41-mile week, which is not bad. I’m still feeling slow and out-of-shape and still wrestling with various aches and pains, ranging from a sore back to top-of-foot aches and most things in between at one time or another. But I think it’s getting better.

Augh! Summer!

Most people probably say we had a crappy spring in Portland this year, but except for some rain, it’s been ideal for running. Warm enough for shorts and short sleeves, but still nice and cool. But today it was in the 80s, and I’m as far from acclimatized to the heat as you can get. That made my lunchtime run a bit of a struggle toward the end. I’m also generally not in the greatest shape right now. Just as I was starting to recover from the Vancouver Marathon, I came down with a cold, so the last couple of weeks have been pretty sorry as far as training goes. I figure it will be at least another week before I feel like I’m kind of back into normal shape, plus — if the hot weather sticks around — it will take another week after that before I’m more-or-less acclimatized.

Feels like starting over

My thighs are still quite sore from Sunday’s marathon, but I went out for a two-mile jog anyway, just to let my legs know I still expect things from them. It was painful, but not in an alarming way. All the pain was in the muscles, none in the knees, ankles, or feet. My legs will get better quickly.

That’s my last road marathon for a while. My next goal race is the McKenzie River Trail Run, a stunningly beautiful 50K in September. I’m out to break five hours there. I am looking forward to hitting the trails for training this summer.

Race Report: 2011 Vancouver USA Marathon

Why are marathons always so early? Who wants to get up at five a.m. for a seven a.m. start time? Well, there’s a good reason for it in the summer months, at least: the later it gets, the hotter it might be. But that wasn’t a problem today — it was fully cloudy with fairly stable temperatures in the upper 50s all morning. Pretty perfect marathon weather. But of course we still had to get up early.

Driving through Portland and across the Columbia to get to downtown Vancouver took less than 25 minutes at that hour (OK, missing traffic is another good thing about the early times) and finding parking wasn’t hard. I had an hour to kill before the start, which I used up by going to the bathroom time and time again.

They said there were about a 1000 runners in the marathon, and 1800 more starting the half-marathon later. One thousand people is a good size for a marathon: low-key, but you won’t have to spend much time running alone. There was plenty of room in the start chute. I lined up between the 3:40 pacers and the 3:20 pacers.

I guess I felt pretty good the first miles. I didn’t have much trouble settling into the run and all my body parts seemed to be cooperating. After maybe three miles, I noticed that I was starting to reel in the 3:20 group, which had been way ahead of me shortly after the start. I decided to catch up to them, not so much because I wanted to run 3:20 (I didn’t think I had it in me) but more to ensure that I’d have a good number of runners around me. Why? I find running in cadence with a crowd somewhat hypnotizing. It makes the time pass quickly and lets you just focus on running smoothly.

I took quite a while to catch them, though. By mile seven I was among the stragglers trailing behind the group; by mile eight I had caught the pacer. I stayed right in the group for the next seven miles.

Now, this was the first running of this marathon, and I think it might be the first time these organizers had put on a marathon at all. So I don’t want to be too negative. Was the course perfect up to this point? No. It had a few issues, mostly to do with unnecessary turns and the general hassles that come along with running on the shoulders of roads with live traffic. Nothing bad, and nothing unexpected. There were also some very nice parts on bike paths along the river. I suppose it’s also a ding against a supposedly “full-service” type of marathon that they didn’t have any split pads at all, not even at 13.1. In fact, 13.1 wasn’t marked. (They did have good mile markers though.) Anyway, I’m trying to say these are minor things.

But what happened as we came back into downtown Vancouver around mile 15 of the race was a major problem. We merged into the half marathoners. The slow trailing end of the half marathoners. Who were about a mile and a half into their race. Which followed, from that point, the same route of the full marathon. It’s interesting to contemplate what happens in this situation: you’ll be continually having to get around people for the next 11 miles, because you can never catch up to the half marathon runners who are going the same pace as you.

In any event, this was a clusterfuck. The pace group quickly splintered up, unable to maintain cohesion while pushing through the walkers and joggers. There were a lot of them. On some narrow paths. This problem was acute for three miles, serious for three more, and then only mildly annoying after that (because the half had an extra out-and-back that the full didn’t at that point, which meant we got to kind of instantly fast-forward past a lot of them.)

There’s no excuse for this. The race organizers should have seen this coming from miles away (so to speak). The best solution is to not have a half, or run it on a different day. Second best, run it on a completely different route. Third best, start it at the same time as the full — the crowding at the start would be bad, but it is dwarfed by the badness of doing it the way they did.

Anyway, back to the race. I had pulled a little ahead of the 3:20 pacer while we all played dodge-em with the half runners. Around mile 20, the crowds were thinning a bit and the course took a fairly steep uphill, so I slowed down and let her catch me. (A guy paced the first half and a girl the second.)  I was pretty much the only one in the “pace group” at this point. My thighs were starting to hurt and the hill took a lot out of me. It leveled off for a bit, then there was a mild downhill. After that, a steep downhill.

“Oh no!” I said to the pacer, referring to the damage that sharp downhill was going to do to me legs.

“Oh no!” responded almost everyone around us, referring to the freight train that was about to cut us off at the bottom of the hill.

Yep, we got stopped by a train. I didn’t let it bother me. One of the good things about the stop was that there was an aid station right next to the tracks (on our side), so I got to have a leisurely drink of Gatorade. It was a very long train, but it was moving very fast. The total time I lost was somewhere between a minute or two.

After that, I kept up with the pace group (which re-formed a little) for another three miles, then let them go ahead. I was surprised and pleased to have held onto them for as long as I had. My legs didn’t have much left in them at this point, and any little uphills were killing me. Miles 25 and 26 were a slow jog, interrupted by the occasional uphill walk. I was still happy.

My finish time was (according to my watch) 3:25:12. My second-fasted marathon. I’ll take it.

Edit: Official results. 3:25:11 (7:50/mile average). 75th of 798 finishers, 63/408 men, 15/78 men 40-44.

Geez, I’m running a marathon tomorrow!

That’s right! Sunday! Sunday! SUNDAY! One day only! Your faithful blogger will be running in the Inaugural Zeroth Annual Vancouver USA 26.2 mile marathon!

Starting around seven in the morning Vancouver, Washington time, you can track me live on a little map here. Which will be awesome.

I’m not going into this with any fixed time goals; I’m just going to see how it goes. Just lying around on the couch a couple of days ago, I got a terrible cramp in my calf, so actually running 26 miles should be great.

Not the ideal training schedule

It’s two weeks until my next marathon, the inaugural Vancouver USA Marathon. (Vancouver is in Washington, right across the Columbia River from Portland.) Ideally, then, I would already have been tapering some this weekend. Things have been far from ideal, though: it is only in the last few weeks that I have begun to feel confident once more in my left knee. I hadn’t done any runs longer than 15 miles since Boston. And last weekend  we were vacationing in Ashland. Which was great, but even doing the couple of shorter runs I did manage to squeeze in (a 6.5 and a 7, both in the beautiful hills up above Lithia Park) felt heroic.

So here I am with two weeks left and I ran twenty miles yesterday. Which also happened to be the hottest day out of the last 273 in Portland. The high was in the low 80s, which isn’t normally that bad, but after a very long cold and wet spring, my body wasn’t ready for it.

Knowing it would be warm, and that I wasn’t in great shape, and that I didn’t have a lot of time to recover, I made sure to run the 20 miles very slowly — I averaged ten minute miles. That’s not quite as slow as it sounds, because there were a lot of hills along the way, but it was still pretty pokey.

I ran along a lot of unfamiliar roads and paths, including the weird bike paths along 26 between 217 and the zoo. Exploring is fun. My body held up well, especially my knee. Looks like I’ll definitely be running Vancouver.

So far barefoot running is working out great for me

I was feeling pretty good last week until Thursday, when I offended the god of running shoes by trying a very short barefoot jog. I have read many stories of injury-prone people finding more success by ditching their shoes, and I thought it was worth a try, as an experiment at least. Could it build up foot and ankle strength while reducing strain on my knees?

My first try was just four-tenth of a mile, with walk breaks. I’m doing it entirely barefoot, rather than in minimalist shoes, in order to force myself to build up very slowly. I found a smooth concrete path in the park and tried it out on a sunny day. I was surprised that it felt great on the soles of my feet. It felt invigorating, like a foot massage. I didn’t really want to stop after one lap, but I did.

That evening, I mowed our hilly, uneven lawn. My right ankle started to hurt. The next morning it was still hurting a little and some right-side sciatica  was making itself known. It may have been sympathetic pain accompanying the ankle, or I may have stressed my back; I don’t know. By Saturday afternoon the sciatica was fairly painful. I made it through 13 miles Sunday Morning OK though.

Now my sciatica still hurts, plus I think I might be coming down with a cold. You’re probably thinking that the cold has nothing to do with having run barefoot. But maybe the god of running shoes is a jealous god, and a mean one.

Update

Sorry about the quiet blog lately — there just hasn’t been much going on. I’m continuing to rebuild after Boston. Last weekend I ran six easy miles on Friday, then tried for 10 on Saturday. I made it to about nine and a quarter before my knee started feeling funny,  and I walk-jogged the last bit. I was also very worn out, much more so than I normally would be by a ten-mile run.

This week I’ve had a fairly normal (if light) training schedule, with a fast six-miler on Monday, three recovery miles Tuesday, six pretty easy Wednesday, and five miles at a moderate pace Thursday. I’ve had no knee pain, but even these shorter runs have felt like a lot of running.

It’s a rest day today, then I’m hoping to do 13 on Saturday.

Knee-Jerk Reactions

As you may recall, my left knee got tight and painful during the Boston marathon. I’ve had this happen before. It didn’t surprise me when it was sore for a couple of days afterwards. And it didn’t surprise me when running more than a few miles made it sore again in the following weeks.

So it was a pleasant surprise yesterday when I ran a full six miles with no pain or tightness. I’m not going to fool myself about being fully recovered. It stiffened up a little during the drive home. I’m still going to take it easy getting back into my regular running routine. There’s still a fair chance I’ll take a pass on running the Vancouver USA Marathon on June 19th. But it was a nice surprise nonetheless.

The vacation is over

After Boston, my legs were tender as hell and my left knee was sore. I didn’t run at all for a week — walking up and down the four big flights of stairs to our Manhattan hotel room was quite enough exercise, thanks. Actually, we walked a lot in New York, which was fine. In four and a half days, we managed to see two Broadway shows, visit four major museums, and eat at three “destination” restaurants. Running never crossed my mind.

Monday, I ran with my regular running group. I should have been smarter than to just go out and run like I normally would. I should have eased back into it. I thought I was ready. After four or five miles, though, my legs were giving out and my knee — which hadn’t bothered me in a few days — was hurting again. I made it six miles, but probably shouldn’t have.

(Then again, there’s a kind of freedom I’m feeling right now, with no goal races coming up. If I want to do stupid things and tie myself in knots, now’s as good a time as any for it. Yes, I’m registered for the Vancouver USA marathon on June 19th, about seven weeks from now, but I don’t find myself fretting about it — what will be will be, for that one.)

I rested Tuesday and Wednesday. Today at lunch I did what I should have done Monday: headed out by myself, very slow and easy, for a short four-mile run. My knee made it about three miles before it complained at all. Good enough.

Race Report: 2011 Boston Marathon

I apologize for how late this is; after the marathon, I was on vacation for a while and only had my phone. Composing a full-blown race report by phone was not going to happen. Plus I was really busy overeating and overdrinking.

Pre-race

Saturday morning we took a fairly early direct flight between Portland and Boston. I was expecting that there would be other marathoners on the plane, but I wasn’t expecting just how many. It was the skinniest plane-load of people I’ve ever seen. Alaska Airlines should have given us all a refund on their fuel costs. Here was a picture one of the flight attendants took; everyone standing or leaning into the aisle is running the marathon. You can just make me out at the farthest back, right side, light blue shirt.

It was after five by the time we checked in at our hotel. (We stayed at the Back Bay Hilton, which was a pretty good location, but I think the perfect hotel would be a little farther east, and thus closer to both the finish area exits and the place where you catch the school buses in the morning.) The rest of Saturday, we had time only to rest up a little, go out for dinner, and get some sleep.

Sunday morning, I got packet pickup out of the way early. Like many large marathons, you went over to one person handing out a certain numeric range of bib numbers. It being so early, most of them had no lines at all in front of them. Mine had five or six people though. Grumble grumble. The volunteers doing this were so nice, congratulating everyone and shaking their hands good luck.

Once I got my bib number, it was a short walk to the t-shirt pickup area. Which had the best idea right next to it:

All races should have this. I started with a small, and it was too tight, so I traded up to a perfectly-fitting medium.

I have heard that the expo at the Boston Marathon is a real zoo, so crowded you can barely move. Shortly after nine on Sunday, though, it was easy enough to look around. I had no interest in buying clothes or anything though, so I kept it pretty quick, just grabbing an impromptu breakfast of free samples (Greek yogurt, and, oddly, saffron-flavored rice) and a few other free goodies.  I did enjoy Brooks’ M*A*S*H-themed tent:

Business done, I strolled back to the hotel then we spent the rest of Saturday having a little fun: cannolis at Mike’s Bakery and enormous lobster rolls at Neptune Oyster (both in the North End), then the Isabella Stewart Gardner art museum. Yes, too much time on my feet. We lounged around in the late afternoon and retired early after a light Italian dinner, though.

Race-day morning

The marathon starts at 10, but I had to get up at 5:30 to go catch one of the school buses that take 20,000 people or so out to the start in Hopkinton. Not that I got much sleep that night, anyway. The buses were lined up on Tremont Street alongside the Boston Commons, more than a mile from my hotel. I took the T (Boston’s subway) to get there. At my station, they were letting marathoners on free, but there had to be an attendant around to do that, so I’m not sure how much it could be relied on. I had bought a seven-day transit pass anyway; it was fairly inexpensive and it was one less thing to worry about. It was just before six and there were only a handful of marathoners in my subway car, so I thought maybe I’d missed the rush, but when we got out at Boylston station, there were already big crowds. The buses board between the Boylston and Park T stations (on the Green Line).  From what I could see, getting out at Park would have been better because the lines were shorter on that end.

Anyway, the buses that were sitting there were already full, but enough walking eventually got me into a short enough line that I was able to board in the second wave. It was a short wait, but it was cold in the wind. The weather was sunny, cool, and quite windy — but it would be a tailwind for the race. Even in several layers of throw-away sweats, I was glad to get out of the cold.

The bus ride was very long. Twenty-six miles is a long way. We seemed to be deep out in the country by the time we were finally let off at Hopkinton High School, whose grounds were transformed into the “Athlete’s Village” for this one day.

Big damp lawns, enormous tents, plenty of portable toilets, and the world’s longest line for free coffee: that was athlete’s village, my home for the next three hours. A lot of that time was spent in that coffee line. If you wanted water, Gatorade, bananas, or bagels, it was easy… but coffee was the A-ticket ride. I talked to one Michigan guy originally from the Ukraine and one Wisconsin gal originally from Bulgaria while waiting. His second Boston, her first. Here’s the picture the race photos guy took of me in line:

I guess I was pretty excited. Like me, everyone carried around the official bag-check bag with their bib number prominently displayed on it. The bib numbers aren’t arbitrary: the faster the qualifying time, the lower the number. My 7604 is squarely in the “mediocre male runner” range. People with numbers under 300 were scary. I got to thinking about how much different regular life would be if we all had to display numbers like this — maybe SAT scores or something.

Eventually the first wave of runners was called down to the start line. From athlete’s village, that’s a 3/4 mile walk. I know, cruel, right? Well, what can you do?

I was in the second-to-last corral of the first wave. Here’s a picture looking backward at the start, toward the front of last corral:

A few more minutes of standing around and we were finally off, for the 115th running of the Boston Marathon.

The actual race thing, itself

I think it may have been too long since the race for me to give any sort of accurate mile-by-mile recaps, so bear with me if this gets kind of stream-of-consciousness.

At the start, I felt good, and I felt confident. I wasn’t sick or injured. I felt well-trained, rested, and ready to go.

The pack wasn’t as crushing at the start as I had feared it might be, and I had no problem running my own pace down the long steep hill out of Hopkinton. As I had planned, I warmed up through that first mile in a super easy eight minutes. Switching to 7:40s for the next four miles was easy too. I liked the crowd in front of the biker bar in Ashland, all in their leathers cheering while “Highway to Hell” blasted out of their speakers. The first half of the race also had plenty of spots where there weren’t roaring crowds. That wasn’t a bad thing — by the end of the race, I’d be feeling some crowd fatigue.

My main impression of the first 12 miles of the race is that it was longer than I expected. I know that sounds dumb. It’s just that it’s so easy to say “Hopkinton, Ashland, Framingham, Natick, Wellesley” and I just kind of felt surprised by how long it actually took to make it through each of those townships. Between miles five and 15, I was aiming for 7:25 miles. I brought them all in between 7:20 and 7:26, but they definitely got harder as it went on. The Boston course has few extended level sections. Almost every step is a little bit downhill or a little bit uphill. It took its toll on me. The tailwind was great, but the sun blasting down was also a problem. I had sunscreen on, but I didn’t put it on my forehead — having it drip into my eyes is death — and maybe not enough elsewhere. I totally should have worn a cap.

The famous Wellesley college girls around mile 12 were loud but not unbearable. I saw one “kiss me I’m from Oregon” sign, but I wasn’t stopping for kisses. (Actually I don’t think I saw any runners around me do so. We’re all so serious. Well, all except for the guy running in the gorilla suit. Or the guy in the tutu. Or the ones in the crazy wigs. But generally, you know, serious.)

By mile 13, I noticed a little pain in my quads. Isn’t that too early? Isn’t that a bad sign? Yes, and yes, as it will turn out.

Miles 15 through 21 were the Newton hills, a series of four extended uphills culminating in Heartbreak Hill. In between the uphills were some moderately steep downhills as well. This is a lot of hill work at this stage of a “fast” road marathon. My race plan had me dropping back down to 7:40 miles for it.

I came pretty close to that through mile 20. The first hill was easy, the second was a tester, the third was tough, and the last — Heartbreak — was torture. Huffing and puffing hard, the best I could do for mile 21 was 8:06. Far from a disaster. Now all I  had to do was “coast” to the downhill finish. Right? Ha.

There’s a serious downhill after Heartbreak and it hurt my legs to run it. My left knee had also started to bother me as I made my way through the hills, almost certainly because my tightening left quads had been pulling it out of alignment. I did some exaggerated high-kick steps to try to stretch it out, which helped a little. My knee wasn’t really the problem, anyway — it was the pain in my quads that was going to break me.

Somewhere after mile 22 I grabbed a cup of water at an aid station and slowed to a walk to drink it, instead of gulping on the run as usual. It  was an act of psychological capitulation: the race had beat me. I got to running again pretty quickly that time, but I was also thinking this: “if I jog along slower, it will hurt less. I’m not going to meet my goals. I just don’t want to hurt as badly.” My discarded race plan called for 7:25s, but my split for mile 22 was 7:36. Mile 23, 7:54. Mile 24, 8:37. Then it got ugly.

I walked a lot in the last two miles and let me say clearly: that sucks. It sucks tenfold at Boston, where people in the crowd scream at you, picking you out by bib number: “Hey! 7604! IT’S THE BOSTON MARATHON! You Can Do This!” Such pressure works — I would lurch into a jog and get a cheer out of them, while I muttered “bastards” under my breath.

Jog. Walk. Jog. Walk. Sucks. Mile 25: 10:30. Mile 26: 10:42.

Finally we rounded the last two corners and the finish line was in sight, maybe a third of a mile away. With a fixed target to focus on, I was able to jog the rest of the way in. With my goals shot and feeling a little boosted by the crowd, I decided to take my phone out of its armband and snap a few pictures of the crowd and the finish line.

Much later I looked at the pictures and saw shots like this:

I wasn’t mentally there enough to point my phone the right way to take a picture. I remember pointing the screen at what I was photographing, instead of — say — the lens. What I don’t remember is smirking for the official finish-line shot:

After that, I stopped running

Then I was through the finish line, out of hell and into… purgatory. There was a lot of congestion in the finisher’s area. And I wasn’t feeling OK. This surprised me. I had thought that I had more-or-less just psychologically failed this race, or at the most any problems I had were in my legs. But after a few minutes of standing around in the finish area crowds, I was feeling pretty wonky. “Am-I-going-to-pass-out?” wonky. I considered going to the medical tent. But sweetie was waiting for me. I kept moving. I kept conscious. Good enough. I did get lost trying to find the family reunion area, but I still say that wasn’t my fault.

The smirk stuck around a while.

Ah well, all’s well that ends well. My problems were nothing another trip to the North End that evening for some marvelous red-sauce Italian food and plenty of red wine couldn’t fix.

Here’s what was in the mail when we got back to Portland.

3:27:45. A 7:56/mile average pace. You know what, that’s still my second fastest marathon. I’ll stop whining now.

Lessons learned:

1. If it’s sunny, wear a cap.
2. 40 miles a week might be enough for me for a flat marathon, but if I’m going for a goal time on a rolling one, I probably need more.
3. Boston’s fun, but not life-changing. I’m sure your local marathon is awesome too.

Boston Marathon : brief results

I think I might have had a 3:25 in me today, but surely not the 3:17 I was going for. The first 19 were fun and right on plan, but my quads got a bit sore around mile 13 — way too early for a great day. The last two Newton hills did a number on my overall energy levels, then the subsequent downhill issued the death warrant on my thighs. I lost 10 minutes in my walk/jog deathmarch over the last three excruciating miles.

Time: 3:27:45.

Safely in Boston

The trip here went really well. Everything was on time and the plane was in a pretty good mood, since at least half the people on it were bound for the marathon.  Everyone on the plane was so skinny! The airline probably saved a lot of money on fuel on that flight.

It was a bit of a hike to the baggage claim area and our one checked bag was already there waiting. Right next to that was a ticket machine for the T, and the bus stop we needed to get to the T station was right there too. The bus showed up in about a minute,  then one bus and two subway rides later and we were at our hotel. Hauling our bags around on the trains wasn’t bad – many others were doing it too.

And we’re off… (Bonus Live Tracking)

We’re getting on one of those new-fangled “aeroplane” contraptions tomorrow morning and flying to Boston. I won’t be blogging much, since writing on a phone, even a smart one, is a real chore for me. But! By way of special apology bonus! I offer you: Minute-by-minute live tracking of my position during the race! This is not a service that the Boston Marathon offers for every runner; no, this is something special I am doing just for you, my six loyal readers.

I will have a smartphone strapped to my arm. Via the magic of GPS, it will know where it is. Every 20 seconds or so it will attempt to talk over the cell phone data network to a server somewhere and tell that server where it is. That server in turn offers up web pages letting you see my position in Google Maps. It’s just like in Veronica Mars when she hides the little tracking devices on naughty people’s cars, only mine is a $450 cell phone that I wouldn’t want to just throw away in order to help one of my high school pals.

Enjoy!

Boston Obsession: Boston Marathon Weather Forecast — five-day forecasts now included

Some sources are predicting things to be a little warmer than they did yesterday and some a little cooler. There’s still almost nobody predicting rain. Winds are still supposed to be from the west or southwest. Runners could hardly ask for better. It’s a little too perfect if you ask me — a vast conspiracy of meteorologists all having some fun at our expense, knowing full well it’s going to be sleet and 33 from six to ten in the morning, then the sun will come out and temperatures will soar to 91 by noon. Just sayin’.

WBZ – 66/38, partly cloudy with possible showers. That’s up five degrees from their guess yesterday and is inching into definitely-a-bit-too-warm territory. Then again, they no longer think Tuesday is going to be over 60, so the warming trend doesn’t seem to be a stable system.

WHDH – 54/36. “Mostly sunny start, then some afternoon clouds. Windy and comfortable. Highs in the mid 50s.” This is the one to root for, assuming they mean W or SW winds.

WCBV - 62/40. Partly cloudy. SW breeze.

AccuWeather - 58/31. Partly sunny W winds at 19mph, gusts to 44mph. That low temperature could make for a chilly wait in Hopkinton.

National Weather Service – “Mostly cloudy. Highs in the mid 60s. Lows in the upper 40s.”

Most other sources are in broad agreement with this sampling.

 

 

Boston Obsession: Boston Marathon Weather Forecast getting a little warmer?

All of the Boston Marathon weather forecasts seem to have moved the same way overnight: a little warmer, and maybe a little breezier. Those breezes are still supposed to be from the west or southwest though — tailwinds, in other words. Most of the predicted highs are in the low 60s now, which isn’t too bad, since most of  our running will be done before it gets that warm. Predicted lows range from 38 to 47. Almost nobody is predicting rain — the rain on Saturday or Sunday is supposed to blow out of the area by Monday.

Both WHDH and WBZ are predicting Tuesday to be seven degrees warmer than Monday, so keep an eye out for the patterns accelerating and leaving us running in the mid-60s, which would be bad.

WHDH: 60/41 mostly cloudy. “Becoming cloudy and mild with highs near 60. Stiff wind.”

WBZ: 61/38 partly cloudy. No new marathon weather blog post yet. Here is their detailed marathon forecast blog post. They are starting to sound kind of confident.

National Weather Service: Mostly sunny. Highs in the upper 50s.

MSN: 58/45 partly cloudy. Winds W 18 mph.

AccuWeather: 58/40 partial sunshine. Winds WSW 18 mph, gusts to 40.

ForeCa: 64/43. partly cloudy. Winds SW 15 mph.

IntelliCast (and Weather Channel):  64/47. “Few showers… plenty of sun.” Winds WSW 13 mph.

Boston Obsession: Boston Marathon Weather Forecasts — now with more guesses!

Monday, April 18th is now in-range for seven-day forecasts, so I was able to dig up more forecasts.

WHDH is the Boston NBC affiliate. Local stations can be a good source for forecasts, since they often have an actual human being involved, rather than just leaving it entirely to some computer model. I’m not saying that makes it any more accurate, but that homey human touch just adds a certain something, yeah? They predict: High 53, low 37, mostly cloudy.

WBZ is the CBS station. High 55, low 40, partly sunny. Update: Pete points out in the comments that the WBZ weatherperson has an in-depth blog post (one of a series) about the marathon-day weather. He says there’s a weekend storm system that will either be just passing or long gone by Monday, but either way it should be pretty dry, with either a WSW or NW wind. (WSW is ideal.)

The National Weather Service probably also has real people on the job, though a cadre of soulless bureaucratic meteorologists might not be your idea of  the homey human touch. Highs in the lower 50s, partly sunny.

WeatherBug chimes in with: High 55, partly sunny.

MSN says High 52, Low 32, showers.

AccuWeather? High 57, Low 42, clouds and sun. Winds 22 mph from the WSW, gusts to 40mph.

ForeCa: High 64, low 45, partly cloudy. Winds 11 mph from the W.

Intellicast: High 56, low 40, partly cloudy. Winds 13 MPH from the SW.

All in all, this would be pretty good marathon weather. These forecasts will probably still change though.

Training update

I’m deep in the middle of tapering for Boston but haven’t had much in the way of the usual tweaking yet. No mysterious sharp pains, no feeling completely exhausted and out of shape. I guess it’s a good thing.

Saturday’s long run was just 12 miles. Almost every step of the way was up or down a hill though, so some real effort went into it. The last stretch was a more-than-moderate downhill, and I went ahead and let my legs fly, clocking in somewhere near 6:45 for that mile.

Boston Obsession: Boston Marathon Forecast, one-week-to-go edition

Here are today’s forecasts for Boston’s weather on April 18. (Well, Wellesley’s weather, really.)

Intellicast (and the Weather Channel): High 54, Low 39. Partly cloudy. 10% chance of rain. Winds 13 mph from the west.

Foreca: High 54, Low 37. Partly cloudy. 5% chance of rain all day. Winds 11 mph from the west.

Accuweather: High 54, Low 35. Partly sunny. Winds 15 mph from the north, gusts to 40 mph.

MSN: High 51, Low 33. Partly cloudy. 0% chance of rain. Winds 17 mph from the west.

Looks like there’s a general consensus today that there will be nice marathon weather on Patriot’s Day. I believe those west winds would be perfect as well. But it’s still early and these forecasts will surely keep changing.

 

 

Boston Obsession: Weather Update — the 10-day forecasts are here! The 10-day forecasts are here!

Actually, as I look around the web, there aren’t as many sources making 10-day forecasts as I was expecting. Here are the ones I found for April 18th in Boston though. Actually, I’m looking at the forecasts in Wellesley now instead of the city of Boston. Wellseley is halfway along the marathon course and won’t be as influenced by the Atlantic.

Bing has a page where they show the 10-day forecasts from three different sources. From left to right here, the sources are Intellicast, Foreca, and AccuWeather.

These three sources are clearly colluding with each other to generate similar fake forecasts. My advice would be to continue to not believe a word of it.

MSN (where I found the link to that Bing page) has a different forecast entirely.

The Weather Channel’s  forecast is so similar to Intellicast’s that I’m thinking they might be using the same program to generate it. But why the one degree differences?

So there you have it. We still know nothing.

Boston Obsession: Weather forecast — 11 days to go

Looks like there is one more day until Monday April 18th starts falling into the “10 day forecast” that most of the weather sites have. (The way I count, that’s 10 days away right now, but I’m not counting today and they are.) So, one last time, we are stuck with just AccuWeather’s eerily random guesswork.

Sunny and 59! Sounds ideal. Remember, it’s a fiction. For real data, please check out the historical weather averages for the day.

Boston Obsession: AccuWeather is just messing with us now

Yes, it’s another daily spin of AccuWeather’s wheel-of-extended-forecast-fun! What’s today’s weather forecast for Boston on April 18th?

High of 50, low of 39, “bit of rain, snow”! That high is a full 21 degrees lower than yesterday’s! I’ll give this to AccuWeather: one of their last four forecasts will probably be pretty close to right.

Boston Obsession: More Marathon Weather Forecasting

Let’s review:

On Monday, AccuWeather said it was going to be 46 and sunny in Boston on April 18th.

On Tuesday, 55 and rainy.

Today? 71 and partly sunny.

Well, that’s only a 25 degree swing. I am entirely sure looking at this extended forecast is still totally worthwhile. Yup.

PS: 71 would be a bit too warm. Let’s tone it down, guys.

Boston Obsession: Boston Marathon weather forecast update

AccuWeather‘s guess for April 18th in Boston is currently: rain, with a high of 55 and a low of 41.

Take it with many many grains of salt.

18 on Terwilliger

To make up for the wimpy flatness of last week’s long run, I did my eighteen miles this Saturday up and down the full length of Terwilliger Boulevard. I started just north of Barbur, headed north to downtown, than back to the car and south through Tryon Creek park to Lake Oswego. That got me back to the car again with 15 miles done, so I did one more three-mile out-and-back to the north. I’m glad to have my last long run before Boston done.

Boston Obsession: Weather Forecast Update

With two weeks left until the marathon, the long-term forecasts are starting to cover marathon day. AccuWeather says sunny, with a chilly high of 46 and a frigid low of 34. Most other sites seem to have a 10-day forecast window, so there will be more guesses on Thursday or Friday.

 

Boston Obsession: My race plan

Things have been coming together nicely the last month and even though I could wish I were faster or had a few more weeks of training left, all-in-all I am bullish about my chances of running a respectable time in Boston. Here is a look at the Boston Marathon’s elevation profile:

Here’s how I plan to run it.

Miles 0-1: 8:00/mile. On a big downhill, that is going to feel slow. Thousands of people will be passing me. I am saving my legs for later.

Miles  1-5: 7:40/mile. That should feel pretty easy. This is still mostly downhill, and still a warm-up. I should feel fresh at the five mile marker.

Miles 5-15: 7:25/mile. The course is at its flattest in here. Make hay while the sun shines.

Miles 15-21: 7:40/mile. The Newton hills. Start things off right by taking it easy down the big hill at 15, then tackle four hills over five miles. This probably won’t feel easy. It may feel very bad indeed.

Miles 21-26.2: 7:25/mile. Ow ow ow ow ow. It’s mostly downhill. Here’s hoping my legs have something left for that.

If I follow the plan exactly, that’s a 3:17:24, about a minute under my current PR, which was set on a much easier course. (And without jet-lag. And where I was used to the weather.)

Eugene Marathon route changes for 2011

I’m not running Eugene this year, but I was interested to note a few route changes from 2010. I love the way Eugene keeps working to improve their course! Here is a PDF of their 2011 route. The changes are:

• The north-west-south jog just after mile one turns west on 21st instead of 18th. This means the course doesn’t cross itself, like it did last year. I doubt there were any problems last year with the crossing (the slowest walkers should have cleared it before the lead runners came through again), but it sure looked odd on the map.
• Heading back north through miles 6.5-7.5, the course no longer takes narrow bike paths through Amazon Park, instead running alongside the park on a road (Amazon Parkway). This is a huge improvement — hitting those narrow paths so soon into the race was a serious crowding problem. It also eliminates an annoying  unexpected turn up onto a curb. Just last year, I said “I’m a little surprised they haven’t rerouted onto Amazon Parkway instead of using the bike paths.”
• Last year, due to construction issues I believe, the marathon route didn’t cross over the Willamette at the Knickerbocker footbridge but continued out toward Springfield on Franklin. This year things are back to normal: the marathoners and half-marathoners both cross the footbridge, then split off, the half runners heading West through Alton Baker and the full runners heading east on bike trails toward Springfield. Taking Franklin may have been a little faster (fewer turns) but it was terribly lonely and dreary.
• Not a change,  but worth noting: they’ve kept 2010′s retooled return route from Springfield, which basically stays on Centennial until Autzen Stadium. (The 2009 route turned south on Rainbow to get back to the river.) This way is less scenic, and involves an overpass over I5, but it does serve to keep the marathon route fully separated from the half-marathon route after they split.

Kudos for the improvements.

22

I probably should have picked a route with more hills for Saturday’s 22-miler, my longest run during my Boston training cycle, but, well, I didn’t feel like it. Instead I did a clockwise Sellwood-to-Steel-Bridge loop, then an out-and-back along the Springwater trail out to I5. I started off feeling stiff and running slowly, but every mile got a little better, and by the last few I was hitting 7:45s or better fairly easily. It is a nice feeling when you get stronger and faster as a run goes by.

Boston Obsession: The Weather

What’s the weather like in Boston on marathon day, April 18th? WeatherSpark says (for Logan Airport):

The temperature typically varies from 44°F to 54°F and is rarely below 37°F or above 67°F. The coolest hours of the day are from 2am to 8am with the coldest at 6am, at which time the temperature is below 47°F three days out of four. The warmest hours of the day are from 11am to 6pm with the hottest at 3pm, at which time the temperature is above 47°F three days out of four.

And

There is a 50% chance that precipitation will be observed at some point during the day. The average liquid-equivalent quantity of precipitation is 0.12 inches. Among only those days for which there is at least some precipitation, the average is 0.29 inches and the total rarely exceeds 0.73 inches. When precipitation does occur it is most often in the form of moderate rain (37% of days with precipitation have at worst moderate rain), slight rain (36% of days with precipitation have at worst slight rain), slight snow (9% of days with precipitation have at worst slight snow), and heavy rain (6% of days with precipitation have at worst heavy rain).

It’s still too far out to give any kind of real forecast for this year, of course.

So how’s that training going anyway?

Yes, in addition to obsessing about every inch of the marathon route (and making dinner reservations for every night we’re spending in Boston) I’ve been continuing to actually, you know, train. This Saturday was a step-down long run for me,  just 15 miles. I didn’t run them fast but it was still a tiring effort. I have been feeling drained from all the running more often than not in the last few weeks. This is probably an appropriate way to feel at this stage of the training cycle, but it still makes me worry a little about being out of shape or having some medical condition. (I don’t think I am out of shape and nor do I think I have a medical condition — I just like to worry.)

 

My last six months of weekly running mileage

 

On the plus side, all my nagging injuries seem to have packed up their bags and left town. Feet, ankles, knees — all feel good. I haven’t felt so solidly well since summer 2010… and writing that, I realize what a very long time that has been. No matter what my time is in Boston, I’ll consider it a win as long as I finish and remain uninjured.