"I play real sports; not try to be the best at exercising"

drquirky wrote: »

Good luck!

Not sure I'd be training for 2 marathons so close to each other- using a plan seems like a good idea. Would certainly consider athletics more of a sport than Irish nationalist political creations like hurling and football and the english public schoolboy makey uppy activity of rugby but thats a totally different conversation lol:D

Most important thing is getting the milage up/ consistent and the times will come

Do you think 17 weeks is too close? Maybe it is but I suppose I can review that once I get though the Viking marathon hopefully unscathed.

Haha I'll keep the tongue in the cheek on that. It was Danny McBride's assertion anyway. (And as if Baseball is a real sport; pfffft.) :P

Gavlor wrote: »

Just make sure you get at least one 20 miler in, preferably 2. You have 4 weekends left before a 3 week taper so I'd consider 19 this w/e, 20 next weekend; 12 the following week if you can manage another 19-20 then well and good. That'll mean you'll finish the marathon.

It has a tough final 6-7 miles so be prepared to suffer a bit regardless of your planned pace.

I had only one planned but I'll try stretch that to two with a few alterations. I had an 18 miler planned for this weekend so I'll stretch that out to 19 and do as you advise for the next 3 weeks.

I know I will suffer all right but as you said I'm only looking to finish so I won't be trying to race round, just get to the finish line in as much of one piece as possible.

slowsteady wrote: »

Welcome to the world of logging Ri na hEireann.

Following the posts so far my two-cents worth are to do the Viking with no serious target in mind, aiming to just enjoy it, and review Dublin towards the end of July based on your recovery weeks post Waterford.

From the 10 miler last Autumn, the Wexford half and your regular winter running you seem to be progressing well. While 17 miler is fine you will ideally need to have at least 2 or 3 20-milers in the bag before your taper. Provided your training can be maintained over the next 7 weeks there is no reason you would not be well able for a marathon at the end of June.

Yeah that's the plan anyway. I don't mind crawling around Waterford. I just wanted to do my home city one with people I know and get around. Time isn't an issue and if it does impinge on my preparations for Dublin I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I did the HM before I had planned because I felt ready to and I was happy enough with it. I know there's a big difference between 1/2 and full but at the time that was my furthest distance and it had no serious stress on my body in the days after.

The plan is to get in 2 20milers now. Had only planned one really but that's just because the plan I got suggested only one. I think it's probably too late and too much to get 3 in at this stage though.

drquirky wrote: »

Sure no worries- just trying to give a bit of advise. I just think its a really bad idea for newbies to do multiple marathons within a short space of time. Build some strength and speed at shorter distances and have a crack at the marathon once a year would be what I think is best. I'm gonna get railed for saying this but lots of the newbies fromDCM 2012 haven't performed at their best in spring marathons and imo the fact that many of them were doing their second marathon within 6 months shouldn't be ignored...

No, I appreciate the advice. Sorry if I came across dismissive. I suppose your approach would be a more sensible option considering I haven't covered the distance before but my main goal is to do a marathon and whilst DCM was my target I decided along the way to include Waterford because of where I was at and the whole local factor. It became a nice goal to work towards knowing I could do my first one with people I know and around a place I know.

With that in mind if the Viking Marathon was to take a lot out of me it wouldn't be the end of the world for me to reconsider Dublin or at least shape my expectations for it by that fact.
I'm really planning on taking Waterford handy so hopefully that will help my recovery and lower the prospect of injury.


Since this is a log I should probably start logging. As I said above I loosely follow the Hal Higdon Novice schedule but jig it around to take account of work commitments and other things. I aim to get out 4 times a week and I do the cross day on the bike some weeks but alternatively I throw in a few km recovery the day after my LSR on the beach, or something like that depending on where I am.

Some weeks I only get out 3 times since I travel a lot at the weekends but I do my LSR every week regardless. When I do only 3 runs I usually just combine the distance of 2 of my midweek runs (like this week). That's been fine up until now but with the midweek distance running increasing over the coming weeks I'm going to try avoid this so as to not be stressing the body with what would effectively be another LSR midweek. It will just mean earlier mornings.

I've been talking in miles but in practice I work in new money so I'll keep the distances metric. As I said I don't have a GPS so I mostly run by feel. My mp3/pedometer gives me an idea on time but the distance seems to be way off no matter how I calibrate it so I use MapMyRun as my barometer.

This week (starting 6/5/13):

Mon: Nada

Tues: 6km in intervals of sorts. Easy first kilometer. Next 3km broken into 500m quick-1km handy-500m quick-1km handy. I did a steady paced 1 km and then looped home with a slow kilometer. Out and back in 30something minutes. I use the short runs just to get a few km at a higher tempo into my legs.

Weds: Working early til later than expected(could have gone out before work had I known). Had to eat dinner late in work so didn't feel like going out just before bed with a full stomach. Carried this distance over to Thurs.

Thurs: I'm conscious of the fact that the hill in the Viking marathon at Tramore, which comes pretty far into the race, is a monster so I've been trying to work in steeper longer hills into my runs. Working in Cork is ideal for this really.

The combined distance of Weds + Thurs' run was 19 km. As I said I'm mindful of not overdoing the midweek distances so I did about 17km and change at a handy pace on a loop I went round twice incorporating 2 steep hills and a couple long gradual ones. Took about 1 hour 40mins.

Fri:
Sat:
Sun:

Weds (15/5): 4 and a bit miles in just over 32 and a half minutes. Bit of a headwind but turned into a nice tailwind towards the end.




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Out of curiousity, how accurate or not is MapMyRun? I'm assuming it's a bit out.

Right, I've been awful at keeping this up. I haven't made any updates in nearly two weeks and at this stage I won't remember all my sessions or when I did them etc. Deadlines in work have meant little time to log but they have also affected my running which isn't ideal. Last week I missed a good chunk of midweek mileage which I didn't get to make up. I'm just going to write it off as I think trying to make it up would be counter productive. The rest made my 20miler on Monday much less onerous though. (Don't know if this is good or not?)

Anyway.

Mon 27/5: Just over 20 miles and it took around 3 and a half hours. I was sore enough the day after but got out for a few recover miles.

Haven't been keeping on top of this. I moved house a few weeks ago and I'm having issues with internet connection so didn't get much chance to log my runs.

I'm into the taper now and I got all my runs in over the past few weeks with the exception of one LSR, but it couldn't be helped. I managed to get in two 20 milers altogether and I'd be relatively confident of being able to get around but I know the last 6 miles will be very tough on the legs and, probably more importantly, the mind. The tapering concept seems so alien to me at this stage with all the build-up; it seems counterintuitive to take the foot off the pedal but I'll just have to resist the urge to stay out for those extra miles.

I still don't know what pace I'm going to go with and I do regret now not having given the pace much thought. It's a toss up between 4.15 and 4.30. I might go with the 4.30 pacers and see how the legs feel 20 miles in and take it from there.

Only getting around to this now; where to start? It certainly was a tough day at the office but I'm delighted to have completed my first marathon. In hindsight drquirky was probably right in a lot of what he advised earlier in this log and I don't think I fully respected what a huge undertaking the marathon is. I managed to get around in 4:27:xx but only just. The level of suffering I did and the length of time I had to endure it for makes me shudder just thinking about it, even now a few days later (although the legs thankfully feel back to normal this morning).

Unfortunately, I let the whole occasion take over and my plan ultimately led to the most horrible second half of a marathon I could have ever imagined. I settled on a plan that involved starting out with the 4hr pacers and staying with them for maybe the first 3 or 4 kilometres to give the pent-up energy a bit of a release (this idea came from a friend who is a seasoned marathoner). I planned on easing the pace a little then, thinking the 4.15 pacers would be with me in a matter of minutes and I could stay with that group and hopefully get around the course with them egging me on. Maybe if I had of stuck to this plan that would have happened, but stupidly I didn't.

Alarm bells should have gone off when I was still cruising along with the 4hr pacers at the HM point; they eventually did and it was not long after. When I hit the HM marker a few minutes short of 2hrs I knew I was after getting way ahead of myself but the legs were still feeling good. So rather than undergo some damage control at this point I decided to throw my original - and already deviated-from - plan out the window. My new plan was that I'd keep going at the 4hr pace until I needed to slow up and I was thinking that by then I'd have enough of a time-cushion to take me home respectably enough and I thought I'd be able to drop the pace enough to give the legs the rest they needed once the later miles starting hitting.

The notion that my legs were grand at the HM point must have been some sort of delusion I had convinced myself of because from mile 14 through to 17 in Tramore I went from really enjoying my first marathon experience - albeit a little worried about how much ahead of myself I was - to realising that getting home was now going to be a gargantuan task.

The hill just after veering left before the Prom in Tramore (Strand St) done the damage, both physically and mentally . Half way up it I realised I was in serious trouble so I probably should have slowed to a crawl, but I was thinking what goes up must come down and I maintained my pace to the top comforting myself in the knowledge that the descent on the other side will do the work for me and give my legs a rest. This was not the case. By the time I reached the summit of what seemed to be Everest and lifted my head the lactic flowed through my calves and I was only just 14.5 miles in - disaster! I really didn't know what to do at that stage. I hadn't really struggled to any significant degree in training until around 17 or 18 miles but then again I had been running those miles at even more of a snail's pace. I just bit my lip and persevered until about 17.5 miles feeling my pace slowing fairly rapidly. Around 17.5 miles I decided to break the seal. In reality I didn't need to pee that badly but the idea of a 30 second break closed the deal for me and that was the single worst call I made during the run.

Only once I stopped was I truly able to feel to burn in my quads, hamstrings, calves and groin. Getting moving again was excruciating and the stopping for a piddle at 17.5 miles resulted in about 3 miles of stop-starting-stretching awfulness which I'll never forget. I should mention at this point that I had also lost plasters around 5km in; by mile 15 or so I looked like I was preparing to breastfeed vampires.

It took a long long time to get to the 20 mile marker and somewhere along the road back from Tramore the 4:15 pacers caught up with me. I think I may have given up were it not for one of the 4.15 lads. He was shouting encouragement to everyone and marshalling the group by running back and forth between those who were struggling and about to pull up. He swept me up along the way and made sure I knew that if I could still walk I could run. I managed to hold on to this group for about a mile until their legs were just moving too fast for mine.

One of the most disheartening periods of the marathon came then. The 4.15 pacers had long gone off into the distance when I eventually reached the Green Road. Miles 22-24 were the most mind-numbing and lonely minutes of the race and possibly my life. My legs were well and truly spent by this stage and a combination of the sh*tty surface and the fact that at one stage there wasn't one runner visible in front or behind me for about 3-400 meters made this stretch of road unbearable. It didn't feel like I was even part of a marathon at this point. There were no runners or spectators around and the potholed road was like an obstacle course for aching muscles. If I have one criticism of the race it is that the second half of the course is mostly awful, both in terms of the quality of the surface and the atmosphere.

When I was coming off the Green Road I started to wonder when the 4.30 pacers would catch me. I kept looking over my shoulder trying to hold off the inevitable and sure enough by Tesco Ballybeg the balloons streamed out from behind the roundabout I had just ran through about a minute earlier. This gave me a bit of a boost strangely. The foreboding feeling of waiting for them was terrible but once I saw them I kicked on. After picking the pace up for a few minutes everything began to cramp all at once. First a quad went, then a calf and then my hammys. Every time I straightened one muscle to relieve a cramp another contracted immediately and eventually I just accepted the home strait would be run on a number of cramps and the fast I got home the faster I could get rid of them.

One cramp put the brakes on about a mile and a half from home so I looked around and saw the 4.30 pacers behind. I slowed right down until they were level with me and asked if they were on time. I was so disorientated at this stage I had no idea of the actual time I was on and was just going off the pacers whenever I came across them. The lads said they were so I was happy to keep in their small group and get home within the 4.30. It's only now that I truly appreciate the importance of having some benchmark for pace. I don't think I could have maintained enough pace to get in under 4.30 if I hadn't seen these pacers so I must really invest in a Garmin because it really does matter having an idea of how you're going timewise in order to motivate yourself to keep the legs moving.

The last mile seemed to go on for an age but once the small crowds appeared on the way to the RSC I kicked on home, the downhill finish being much appreciated. The relief of entering the track was something else. Just knowing that I was home and dry and finishing a marathon made it all worthwhile even if at that stage the buzz in the stadium was dying down. When I turned for the last 50m or so and saw the clock on 4:27 I was happy enough given how much the whole race unravelled and given that it was touch and go for a while whether I'd make it round at all.

Many lessons were learned but I am happy that I did my home city marathon despite not being as ready as I could/should have been. I spent all day Saturday and Sunday proclaiming how one marathon is enough and that the pain of those last miles aren't worth it but today, the Wednesday after, I'm thinking I can't possibly leave it at 4:27 and be happy with myself so I'm assessing where to go from here.

On a final note (apologies for the novella) I have to say that the organisation of the race was fantastic. I know there was an error with the distance but for a first-timer that had no bearing on me and mistakes do happen. The water/lucozade/gel stations were plentiful, well manned and the people volunteering at them really made the day. All things considered fair play to the organisers on what is a great advertisement for Waterford.

Went for my first post-marathon jog last night. Had been walking a fair bit each day because the legs were so stiff but they were fine running once I opened them up a little and managed 6.75km in 33 minutes before the strain of the legs was a little uncomfortable.

I'm just going to run for fun over the next few weeks until I have some sort of goal to aim for. I feel like I should sign up for a 10k/miler soon to see if the marathon helps any bit with the times.

Probably won't bother logging until I have something to aim for since I'm pretty bad at keeping it up anyway. I also need to invest in a GPS watch so I'm thinking of getting the Forerunner 10 since it seems the cheapest and most cheerful entry watch. Any recommendations?

To date my PBs are:

10 miles: - 01:22:45 - South-East Solas Centre Run for Life 2012

Half-Marathon: - 01:53:22 - Wexford Half Marathon 2013

Marathon: - 04:27:53 - Waterford Viking Marathon 2013

As pitiful and all as those look at least I have a benchmark to work from.