Post-marathon limbo

Ain't no mountain high enough...

The state of mind I've been in since Amsterdam marathon two weeks ago, is mildly put, interesting. I had promised myself during the long training period towards the marathon that I would take a good rest of at least two weeks afterwards. I was really looking forward to the rest, but I have perhaps been a bit surprised about how well I embraced it and felt like I didn't want it to end.

The first week of the rest was wonderful. We took a few days off and went to Spain, and it did me really good. Lots of good food and a little too much wine, in particular no running what so ever. Just a short swim one day, and otherwise slow walking mainly for sightseeing. When I saw runners on the beach, I was so happy that I didn't have to run. First alarm bell: "have to"??? I realized the last phases of the marathon training, combined with the worries about injuries, had felt more like something I had to do rather than something I wanted to do.

After coming home I was expecting the will to run to come back quickly, but it did not happen. On the contrary, I have been feeling pretty tired all the time. This past week, I found it hard to get up in the mornings, and felt completely finished in the evenings. A couple of planned (short and slow!) running sessions got canceled because I simply didn't feel up to it. I had good evidence that I did not have to push to get started again before my body felt ready. It is written all over the place that a body needs 2-3 weeks of rest (possibly with some easy training sessions) after a marathon. Although everything feels good, running 42 km makes a lot of small damages to the skeleton, muscles, and tendons. Going back to regular training before the body has had time to repair all these small damages, can result in serious injury. So I was happy to just enjoy the couch a few more days.

But as days passed, I was a bit worried that the will to run did not come back. I was expecting that I would have to limit myself compared how much I wanted to run, but quite the opposite happened. What was happening? Had the marathon taken away my will to run and train? The first Blåmanen race is only a little more than a week away, and I felt like I should get going, albeit easily, if I would have a chance at that. But I couldn't even find motivation to join that race. What? The most wonderful time of the year!? What happened to all that??? "Come on, how can anything like that ever compare to a marathon?" Aha, so that's it? Having completed such a goal that I have been working towards for so long, makes everything else lose importance? Feeling a little high on ourselves, are we? Hmm... not good.

Thursday evening, finally Frank pushed me to go for a run and then some strength training. It didn't feel good at all. I had been very happy about how my legs, tendons, hips and hamstrings felt so good after the race. But as soon as I started running, although extremely slowly, everything felt painful. Nothing felt right. I even discovered that I have an aching shoulder! After the terribly slow run we went for some strength training, and also there I found it difficult to push. I did not dare to strength train the two weeks before the race, so now it felt like I had lost all my muscles. A little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and I was done. Back home, back to the couch.

As bad as the Thursday session felt, I think it was the right thing to do. Already the day after I was feeling a lot better. Tried strength training again, and felt much stronger and infinitely more motivated. Then, yesterday I joined the Melkesyre Saturday uphill intervals. And that turned out to be exactly what I needed and I think it came exactly at the right moment. During the weeks before the race, I could not join these sessions since there was always some long run during the weekends. So I had really missed it and missed being with all my friends. This session gave me a surprisingly quick shift of mind. Before we started I was telling people that I would not run Blåmanen 1, but afterwards I felt pretty confident that I would. I even started to talk about Berlin marathon on the way down. Fortunately my more sensible friends quickly talked me out of it. And fortunately, there is already a quite hairy plan for 2017.

But first Frank and I need to buy new bikes...

Amsterdam marathon 2016

YESSSSS!!!!!

It happened! No injury, no cramps, no hitting the wall, and most things as planned (except the negative split, which became very positive). And it was SO worth it!!! All those months of training, all that worrying, and all the things I was whining about in earlier posts... it was totally worth it!

The week before the race: A sore throat makes me very worried throughout the week. I take the advice of experienced friends and do not run a single meter during the last 7 days. Just rest and drink a lot of lemon juice, hoping for the cold to go away. I am not sure whether this makes things sub-optimal or just perfect. My hamstrings are pretty tight, and perhaps they also need these 7 days to relax and loosen.  My body keeps playing games with me, and makes up new pains here and there, trying everything to prevent the coming hazardous event.

The day before the race: Our big group from Bergen meets at the airport in the morning and we travel together to Amsterdam. For the first time in a long while I feel great, and eager to run.  Arriving at the hotel in Amsterdam I meet my dear friend Berna from Istanbul. We have been looking forward to meeting and running this marathon together, and it is so good to see her. Like at Bergen City half marathon, she joins our Bergen group for the social events. We go and collect our start numbers, we have two carbohydrate heavy meals, and I go to bed at 10 pm, a little later than planned.

The morning of the race: Up early. Frank, Berna and I do not want a hotel breakfast. We have brought a lot of instant oatmeal, which is my standard pre-race meal, and we have that with coffee. I don't feel great and eager to run anymore. We go early to the Olympic Stadium, where the start is. It turns out to be a good idea, as there are long queues at the toilets. A last pre-race energy bar and a last sip of red beet juice. Ready but not enthusiastic. Fortunately, Berna has loads of positive energy, some of it transfers to me as well.

Minutes before the start: I am in my start group, warming up, jumping up and down. The feeling is strange. So incredibly many people. I am alone, Frank and Berna are in different groups. I expect my friends from Bergen to be in the same group as Frank. Suddenly "Ten Feet Tall" starts playing on the loudspeakers. I take this as a good sign. Just before start, my good friend Ove finds me in the crowd and wishes me luck. So happy to discover that I am not all alone. I get a little bit more strength. Still not really up to this, but hey, we start moving, and suddenly I am running! As I pass below the start sign I push the start button of my watch. "God, please don't let this become a big embarrassment..."

First 10 kilometers: I have a plan aiming for a finish time around 4 hours. The plan is to start with pace 5:53, then go to 5:46, 5:41, and then decrease pace to 5:34 after the 29th kilometer. For every pace, there is a matching heart rate that I am not suppose to go above. I try to take it easy for the first kilometers, I run much slower than the 4 hrs balloon, but still my pace ends up around 5:40, a little too fast. Heart rate is fine, though, so I don't worry too much about this. I keep an average of 5:45 pace for this piece, heart rate is fine, legs feel good, but I have a feeling of limbo. It is difficult to describe. For the first time in my life, I am participating in a race which I am not sure to be able to finish.

10-15 km: I need music. I was planning to save it for later, not use all my ammunition at once, but I want it now. I put it on at around 12 km. At 13th km, at the tunes of "I need a hero",  I suddenly feel a rush of positive energy. The pace is still 5:45, heart rate is perfect, and I start feeling that this might go well. I become very emotional, and even a few teardrops fall.  It is like it first hits me now: "I am actually running a marathon!!!". The parts of the course I was dreading are much more enjoyable than I was expecting. I am entertained, kilometers pass fast.

15-20 km: We are by a river, there is no shade from the sun. I find this part a bit too monotonous. I take an energy gel before every single water station, and slow down to take two cups of water at each of them. I swallow a cramp-fix tablet, too. I look forward to these water stations and they seem to come quicker and quicker, which is a good sign.

20-25 km: The other side of the river. A strong smell of agricultural fertilizer feels disturbing. I try to concentrate on other things. So many different types of people, so many various body shapes, ages, clothes, running styles, costumes, shoes... I am amused. It feels great to pass 21.1 km, although my watch shows 21.3. I prepare myself that I will be running 42.5 km instead of 42.2. My pace worsens a little, it is around 5:50 now, and half-way time is a minute behind schedule. Heart rate is good, I feel fine, so I am not worried. I am counting on that passing half way will give renewed energy.

25-30 km: Around me people are starting to walk. Already?? Some of them stop completely. To stretch a bit, and then they try to continue. I am supposed to speed up now, but it is impossible. Heart rate is still pleasant, and I have the energy, but legs are becoming stiff in a strange way. It is as if there is a thin layer of wet concrete on them that is slowly hardening. At some point pace is as bad as 6:45 and 7, and I am getting worried. But I manage to bring it up to closer to 6. Below 6 seems impossible now, and I am a little hesitant to push harder yet.

30-35 km: I am dreading the 35th km. I have heard so many stories of people having to stop exactly at this point. This is supposed to be the distance where many different mechanisms kick in, and I have never run this far before. Passing 34 feels nice, I am now farther than I have ever run before. 35 comes, I take my gel, nothing happens. Things are steady, no wall, no injury, no big pain, I am OK. I am now pretty confident that I will finish decently. But I also swear "I will never do this again". People are dropping like flies around me. I had read about this beforehand, but I am still surprised by the extent of it. It is motivating and demotivating at the same time. What if something suddenly happens to me, too?

35-40 km: It is now a struggle to keep the pace as close to 6 as possible: I drop to 6:20s 6:30s. I am amazed that it is not possible to go faster when my heart rate is so low. I want to push it to above 160, but my legs won't let me. I have never raced with so pleasant HR before. Did I start too easy? Too hard? Or perhaps just perfect, and this is simply unavoidable with respect to my amount of training? "Negative split, my ass" I am thinking now. What was that pace calculator making me believe? Every time I try to push a little harder, there is something that feels like the start of something that can stop me completely, so I rather concentrate on keeping things under control. It is pretty tough now. I had imagined that I would be so happy at 36 km, just 6 left. But the feeling at this point is far from happiness. People are screaming "Bravo", "You are a hero", etc. I can hardly concentrate. I hear my name being shouted several times. People are so nice, they read the names on the start numbers and shout them out. I was smiling to such things earlier in the race, but I have hard time smiling now.

40 km - finish: We are in the park. "Come on, less than the distance around Store Lungegårdsvannet is left now" I tell myself. I also remind myself that it was much more painful at the last kilometers of Oslo half marathon. Surprisingly there is a water station just 2 km before finish. Why not? I also drink there. People are stopping. So many people walking now. Some quitting. So close to the finish?? More spectators, more cheering. They want to give me a high five. I have no energy to respond. Then I see the "500 meters to finish" sign and to my surprise I start smiling really big. Almost laughing. I enter the stadium, it says "175 meters". Really? That long still?? Last meters are the longest but I am running whereas most people are walking, or rather limping. 50 meters left. My right hand folds to a fist and goes up in the air. Surprising, that, too. I pass the finish line with my right fist punching the air above my head. The watch says 4:17:18.

After finish: My friends and Frank have been waiting for me. So many hugs. My goodness I am so lucky. So many pictures. We get our medals. I want to lie down. Frank is in worse shape than me. He was struggling with serious cramps for the last 7 km. We lie down a bit and relax. Getting down to the ground is hard. Knees won't bend. Fortunately no injuries or no big pain anywhere for any of us. We all finish healthy. Our dedicated training pays off. I am so happy. I have no more to say. I am so happy.

Who knows? Maybe I will do it again after all ;-)

Marathon training IV : Taper time!

It's the best part of every race training!

Tapering is gradually decreasing the amount of training towards a race. The length of the taper period depends on the length of the race; the longer the race, the longer the taper. For a marathon, the proven formula seems to be 50% training the week before the race (day 14 - day 7) and very little training to full rest the week of the race (day 6 - day 0). The good thing is that it does not depend on how hard you have been training or at what level you are. The recipe of halving your training and then reducing it to almost zero seems to be the correct one for everybody.

Norwegian marathon queen Grete Waitz explained at several occasions that whenever she was injured or sick before a race, and thus forced to a complete rest, she performed better than ever. It was after such incidents that she set some of her most spectacular world records. Still, if she was not injured or sick, she found it impossible to take a full rest. This seems to be the case for most athletes. Although everybody knows that rest before a race is important, and there is no way to improve your form during the last two weeks, psychologically we are all afraid of losing form if we rest too much.

All books about training explain that the effect of a form-improving training comes after about two weeks. So during the last 14 days before a race, it is too late to train to get better. It is of course still good to have a few runs, even some intervals, so that the body does not "forget" the feeling of speed and endurance. However the most important thing before a race is to give the body and the legs enough rest, time to heal the small pains here and there, and a huge surplus of energy. After a hard training session, the body is broken down; it takes some days before things get repaired and the body adjusts itself to a higher level of training. This is the idea behind how hard exercise improves our form. Once the body is done with the repairing from the last exercise session and the adjusted improvement, it is ready for new exercise. If exercise does not come at that point, there come a few days of excess energy. The clue is to plan the race day to coincide exactly with the time of this excess energy.

Taper time practice should be either so light or so short that we have more energy after each exercise session than before. This way we build up energy towards the race. I have taken this literally. After a surprisingly easy 30 km last Sunday, my taper time started pretty hectic. It has been a busy week with 10 hour working days, and the planned training sessions simply did not work. On Tuesday we were supposed to have intervals, but I felt so exhausted that I simply had a super slow 11 km zone 1 session while Frank did his intervals. On Thursday, though, my body felt ready and eager, and I had a great interval session, which worked exactly by the book: more energy after the session than before. Yesterday, I was planning a shorter and lighter interval session, but it simply did not feel right. After the unusually exhausting week, I felt like resting and sleeping the whole day, and I did exactly that. Today, a run of 15-16 km is planned, the speed depending on the feeling. And then I plan my last run before the race to be on Tuesday.

I know many of my friends will be running closer to the race, but my experience with my own body is that a lot of rest helps me during a race. Last year at the Stoltzekleiven race, the four full days of complete rest before the race was exactly what helped me with a new BP. For Bergen City half marathon in 2014, I was forced to rest due to illness, and it gave me an extreme boost for the race. For Oslo half marathon in 2014, I trained too much and too close to the race, which cost me towards the end of the race. When Frank tried my advice for this year's Bergen City half marathon, he had a new PB. So, next week I will try to go home from work at normal hours, relax on the couch, eat my carbs, go to bed early, sleep as much as I can, stretch lightly, and try to convince Frank to give me a few leg massages.

The feeling that there is actually nothing more I can do is quite elevating.

Marathon training III : Keeping up the motivation until the end

Through pain and frustration. Through rain and wind...

Thursday evening Frank and I went for a 14 km tempo run. There was a storm outside. We waited as long as we could for the rain to stop, but it simply got worse and worse, and in the end we just went. We got really soaked, the wind was against us no matter which direction we ran, and despite the high effort, we were pretty cold the whole time.

What gives the motivation to go ahead with such a session? For me, it was the fact that I had not run the day before, and practice for the rest of the week was tightly scheduled due to work and family obligations. So if I skipped that run, there would be no chance to do it another day and I would loose one more practice before Amsterdam. These days I am loosing a lot practices compared to my program already, so I simply could not afford to miss that run.

I cannot train as much as would like to, as various parts of my body (yes, there are more now than just the hamstrings) let me know very clearly when they advise me to skip a day of running. And having learned the hard way, I do listen to these body parts, and take it easy when things start acting up. I try to calm them down with ice and compression, and after a day or two, I try to catch up with the training when they let me.

It is quite demotivating be unable to train to be at your best. On the other hand, perhaps my body can never take marathon training more than this level, and in that sense this is as good as I can get. Although my lungs and muscles would have managed more, my tendons are holding back. From time to time, I do really want to give up the whole idea of running a marathon. It happens that I am so worried about possible injuries and lacking performance that  I have trouble sleeping at night, which again affects training performance. Doing bad at training adds to the stress about the race, and it all becomes a vicious cycle....

But then comes a good practice where I feel fast and strong, and it wipes away all the frustration, and I feel wonderful again. So, how do I manage to pull myself up and get going again so that the good practice actually happens? I don't know, to be honest. I think it is a bit like how I motivate myself to finish a long run. Just think one small portion at a time, concentrate on the next task, adjust myself to the situation, and go on as best as I can.

Because this is exactly how it is during a long run. Some friends ask me how it is possible to do these long runs of 30 km or more once a week. I must admit I find it hard. The first time I had a run that was longer than a half marathon was in Istanbul in June. I ran 24 km all alone. It was hot, but I had planned the whole thing very carefully in my head. I would reward myself at some milestones. I knew that there was a gas station at 6 km and at 12 km, so I promised myself to stop and have a cold drink at 6, 12, and 18 km, as well as a big breakfast at the end. Then, during the run, I only needed to concentrate and motivate myself until the next stop. It worked pretty well, and since then I applied it to all the longer and longer runs.

Of course running with a group of friends helps a lot. But my friends whom I am training for the marathon with are all faster than me, and although Frank always runs back and forth to never leave me all alone, I end up running half the distance by myself. (Which is good practice actually, as I will be on my own during the race as well.)  So I still look forward to the stops. There are always three stops: after 1/4 of the distance, then at half, and then at 3/4. I only think until the next stop and try to ignore rest of the distance. Before every stop I feel exhausted, but after taking a gel and some water I am good to go for another round. I hope this will help me during the race itself as well. I will try to concentrate on one water station at a time.

Sometimes I wonder whether I started to prepare this training a little too early. Who knows? Just a month ago, I was painfree and feeling wonderful and excited about the race and about my performance possibilities. So if I had started my marathon training a month later than I did, perhaps I would be at my best now? We cannot know. Some of my much faster and more experienced friends got injured during taper time just before a race, after completing a their training program successfully. Whereas others are training hard, getting better, and having a great time looking forward to the next race. There is no correct answer that fits all. The most important thing is to not compare oneself with others.

Although it is a race, it is not a competition with anyone else than myself.