Knee

So I'm really concerned about the health of my knees. Last night my right knee tested me by starting to hurt really bad. It was also stiff.

And it was worse this morning. So I took a rest day today and ate a bunch of Advil.

We'll see how it feels Saturday, I guess.

Weather Wackiness

I ran from 11:20 until about noon on yesterday. The sun was peeking through the clouds, the temp was near 60, a breeze was blowing from the south, and I was in shorts and a thin wicking T-shirt. On January 29.

By 9 pm, the temperature was around 9 degrees with a howling west wind. In between, we'd had rain, sleet, and snow.

This weather is so wacky. There's no chance for anyone to get acclimated to any level of warmth or cold. I'm just hoping I get through the next couple of months without a major cold or case of the flu that puts me out of action for a week.

To focus on the actual running, I really can't get over how strong I'm feeling on these Tuesday runs. I usually run the eastern part of the Frostbite Festival course so I get some hills. These are hills which used to knock me out. Now I'm rolling through them--they require effort, of course, but I don't feel exhuasted when I get through them. It's really kind of fun.

And I'm concentrating on doing leg exercises on Wednesdays, my Nautilus workout of the week. This week I actually got up early Monday morning to run 3 miles (3.4 or whatever) and then some Nautilus upper-body work at noon. Wendesdays, though, I make sure to use the leg machines in additon to the upper-body machines. I've been told several times that it's vital to have strong muscles around the knees.

I HAVE to keep my knees healthy this spring. They're going to take a lot of pounding.

Tomorrow is the last 2-mile run on the schedule until we reach the taper weeks, so I'm going to stick pretty close to 2 miles. And then Saturday is 6 miles, the last time I run anything that short on a Saturday until after the marathon. So I'm planning to enjoy both runs.

Slow Distance

Today the schedule called for a 9 mile easy run. I did 9.6 very slow and it wasn't really hard.

I used part of the Interurban trail, which always knocks me out. It's a hiking/biking trail that's basically an abandoned railroad right-of-way that's been paved over. Trails like that to me are just a step up from a treadmill. In other words, they bore me.

Except for a little stretch right after the turnaround, I felt pretty strong the whole way. Oh, how slow was I? I finished in 1:39, which translates to 10:20 per mile. That's a little slower than I really want to go in training, but I'm really trying to focus on piling up miles.

I keep telling myself that I simply want to finish this marathon, that I don't have a time goal. But I can't help thinking about how nice it would be to finish in under 5 hours or maybe even 4:45.

Wimp Day

The temperature was below 10 degrees Fahrenheit at 11 am, but that's not really the reason I wimped out and used the treadmill for today's three-mile run. No, it was the half-inch or so of snow that was on streets and sidewalks.

Who needs a twisted ankle or knee in week 2? Not this boy.

So I really concentrated on running nice and easy for three on the treadmill and I think I actually achieved it.

Rest day tomorrow and then 9 or 10 on Saturday. Forecast is for the low 20s.

Happy Birthday

So as of today I am 51 years old. Did a basic Nautilus workout at noon, came home, and ate Godfather's pizza and drank Cabernet.

At some point I have to write about the fact that it's been almost 7 years since I found out I'm diabetic, and that I manage my glood glucose with diet and exercise with no drugs.

But tonight I'm going to bed.

A Strong Run

We got our snow overnight, but it wasn't much. It certainly wasn't the 1 to 2 inches that had been forecast.

So at lunch time I went for a very nice 5 mile run. The schedule says the run should be easy miles. Well, they were. Sort of. Part of the route I ran was hilly; at least as hilly as Springfield gets.

The thing is, I felt strong. I was concentrating on running a nice, even pace through the hills and it must have worked. Even the last hill, which is a challenge, didn't tear me apart.

It was nice to feel strong during a run. That has not been happening lately.

Re-learning Old Lessons

Today began Week Two. At lunchtime today I went outside and ran 3 miles. It felt great, even though I was really going faster than I should. I noticed that I was out of breath a couple times; that's a sure sign that I'm pushing the pace instead of just running easy.

But I keep re-learning the same old lesson. Like Saturday, when I was getting ready to hit the treadmill at the health club.

I've learned through bitter experience that I need to grease up my toes with petroleum jelly before longer runs. Definitely anything longer than five miles means it's time to use the jelly. Using petroleum jelly provides the protection I need to prevent blisters from forming due to the rubbing of shoe interior against foot.

Saturday I knew I was going to run 8 miles. And I knew that I was going to be on a treadmill, which is a different surface and different feel than pavement. So that's a whole different stress and probably different contact with the shoe. So I made sure to grease up, right?

Hah!

Saturday night I felt a pain on my right foot. I took off my shoe and sock and saw a big, dark red, round blister on my little toe. It looked like a small jelly bean on my foot.

Lesson learned? I hope so.

Hitting the Treadmill

Saturday morning Suzie woke me up barking at the paperboy. We don't get the paper but that doesn't stop her from barking at the guy who delivers to other houses.

I dealt with her and checked Weather Channel. As I recall, it was 3 degrees with a wind chill of 10 below. I had really planned to run no matter what; I've run in colder weather. I've run when the actual temperature was below zero.

But not this time. I just couldn't make myself do it. I went back to bed, and when I got up for the day at 8, the temp was up to 4. Hooo-hah.

Luckily, Melissa was home this weekend and eager to use the Health Club where I work. So we went there at 3 in the afternoon and hit the treadmills. I did my 8 miles on a treadmill and hated it. I had brought along my Bruce Springsteen concert DVD in hopes that it would make the time pass more quickly. Didn't work.

I kept thinking about Dick Beardsley, who said he routinely does 20-mile runs on his treadmill because winter conditions in North Dakota (or maybe Minnesota) are too brutal for training. It's bad enough that Beardsley can finish 20 miles in two hours in his fifties. The fact that he can do such a workout on a treadmill really depresses me.

Oh, and even though I thought I used a liberal amount of Body Glide, I ended up with a bloody nipple. It was too much fun.

After the workout, we went to D'Arcy's for horseshoes and Harp lager as an advance celebration of my birthday. So the day wasn't a total loss.

Laying the foundation

I was 15 years old and watching the Munich Olympics on TV the day that Frank Shorter became the first American to win the marathon in over 60 years. I can still remember Marty Liquori's voice telling Frank not to worry, that the runner in the Finnish uniform who had entered the Olympic stadium ahead of Shorter had to be an imposter.

I know that I was upset that someone had decided that this was a great moment to rain on someone's parade by running into the stadium and circling the track as if they had actually been the one to win the marathon (they even had someone running with them carrying a Finnish flag). I know that I was concerned that Frank Shorter was upset about the whole thing.

I know I had those emotions. I must have had them--everyone did.

But what I remember was thinking what a great feeling Shorter must have, knowing that he had already run nearly 26 miles and was now less than a lap around the track away from finishing the marathon. I remember thinking, GOD, that must be a great feeling.

That moment, that thought, began a lifelong obsession with the marathon.

Okay, so obession is a strong word. I obviously have not been obsessed. I have not spent every waking moment thinking about running a marathon. My running history has, in fact, been an on-and-off thing. There have been times when I was really committed to running and times when I was really devoted to my couch.

But the marathon has always been able to get my attention. In the years after Shorter's Olympic win, I bought a few books about the marathon. I got really fascinated with the Boston Marathon and became a fan of Boston Billy, Bill Rodgers. I can still remember sitting in a bar my senior year at Illinois State University (I spent a lot of my senior year in bars) the day that Rodgers won the 1979 Boston Marathon.

I don't remember what channel the bar had on the TV (this was back when only a few bars had ONE television, let alone a bank of TVs), but there was a news break in which the on-air guy mentioned that American Bill Rodgers had won the Boston Marathon in record time. I remember seeing Rodgers coming across the finish line and my buddies joking with me about even caring about the race.

I remember the Sunday morning in 1984 when the women finally got their own Olympic marathon and Joan Benoit took off like a rocket. She immediately took the lead position and I actually yelled at my TV. "Slow down, you can't lead the marathon from beginning to end!"

Yeah, I was the expert. Joan won that race.

For a lot of years I didn't think much about marathons. But in the last few years it's been getting back into my thoughts. I know more and more people who have run the race. I got to meet Dick Beardsley, an elite marathoner back in the early 80s who had the Duel in the Sun with Alberto Salazar. Beardsley talked about how marathon philosophies and training have evolved since he was one of the top runners, and I drank it all in.

Then the Springfield Road Runners Club brought Bill Rodgers to speak at our annual dinner. I was like a kid at Christmas time; I had really followed his career during my college days when he was winning the Boston and New York City marathons seemingly every year. The day after the dinner, he was at the local running store signing books and talking to everyone. And I started getting The Talk.

You should think about running a marathon.

You're a strong runner. You're goal oriented.

You could do it.

Look, I'm over 50. I'm 230 pounds on a 5-9 frame. I'm a 10 minute-per-mile runner no matter what I try to do.

And I'm training for my first marathon.

I wish I could point to a single point when I really made the decision to prepare for a marathon. I wish there was a moment like watching Frank Shorter entering the Olympic Stadium in Munich or watching Bill Rodgers finish a cold, rainy Boston marathon. I know that a conversation I had with a woman who ran in the abbreviated Chicago maratohon of 2007 had a lot to do with changing my mind, because she's built a lot like me and runs even slower. Part of her advice was to find a spring marathon so I could train in relatively good weather instead of putting in 20-mile runs during late August here in central Illinois.

And then I discovered Green Bay. The Cellcom Green Bay Marathon is run in late May, which means the long training runs are in April, when it can still be cool in central Illinois. That means my long training runs won't be in severe heat and humidity and probably won't be in bone chilling cold.

Not only that, but the final mile of the Cellcom Green Bay Marathon goes through Lambeau Field, the very place where Bart Starr played, where Vince Lombardi paced the sidelines, where Dallas lost the NFL championship on a last-second quarterback sneak in subzero weather. Marathoners aren't my only heroes.

Preparing to marathon may be the dumbest thing I've ever attempted to do. It will doubtless be the most difficult thing I've ever attempted as well. I expect pain and hardship and fatigue.

But there's one thing that I've heard from everyone who has finished a marathon, one thing I can't wait to find out. The sense of accomplishment, the deep feeling of satisfaction, was shared by all of them, even those who said they would never attempt another marathon. Every one of them said that feeling was worth all the pain and effort.

That's what I'm looking forward to feeling.