Today is December 1…and a start of another month of serious training. Interesting to say that I am using a marathon as a training run for an ultra. That's insane. but I guess that's just the way it is for a runner. See you out on the road or trail!
Now…today is December 16, a day after my second marathon at the McAllen Inaugural Marathon. Glad to announce I got my inaugural PR, too. (Did I use the word inaugural correctly, Donna?)
My first marathon time was 5:05…this time I finished in 4:24, and nowhere near as beat up as the first one. I DID lose around 5 minutes having to walk in to a convenience store to pee@mile 18 or so. Note to McAllen: more portapotties on the marathon route, please. Nevertheless, the weather was perfect yesterday, so I think that played the biggest role in my PR.
Interestingly, on my first marathon I relied heavily on Powerade, but none at the correct saturation was offered at the race, so bonk city, baby.
This training cycle, I did NOT use much Powerade at all in training and really only for post-run recovery. I fared much better with this technique, knowing that aid stations would either have diluted gatorade or none at all.
I also tried something new for nutrition: bananas. They actually worked well for me in training (even though my buddies made fun of me) and worked well at staving off the cramping in the race.
I managed to stick pretty much to German's plan for me and averaged the 10:00 pace per mile.
I still fell off pace at the last 3-4 miles, though. I attribute it to not really training much this time: I ran a 30K trail race just a few weeks ago.
The main training run that I found critical? The 18 mile long run with built-in tempo miles, 10K pace, MP, etc. that I did that one time with David, Cyndi, Ben and Jesse. I find that this technique on a couple of 20+milers will be my key to…gulp…a 4:00 marathon.
SO…Bandera in 4 weeks…no time to do those recommended marathon recovery weeks…gotta get back on the training! See you at Bandera!! 50K time!
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