As I told you in my first post, I have signed up for my very first marathon now, and I will run it in a little more than 2 weeks. This weekend I was supposed to run my longest long run, 20 miles. Unfortunately, I have an injury in my hip, and I had to stop at 11 miles as it was just too painful to even walk. Now I'm stressed about that, and not having run enough the last couple of weeks due to my injury. Please please tell me that I made the right desicion to stop at 11 miles instead of crawling through 20 miles and perhaps not being able to run the marathon at all!
Another problem - yesterday was Norway's national holiday, which meant lots of food and a 2 pounds weight gain this morning. Add that to my unsuccessful long run, and you have a very frustrated runner here, almost ready to give up! Sigh...
How long were your other long runs? If you've done a couple of 18s and followed your training schedule up to this point, you might be ok, especially if you're just running to finish rather than with a time goal. Don't try to make up for the 20miler now though, since you should be tapering. Forcing yourself to finish 20 miles even if it meant injury wouldn't have been a great idea either. Good luck!
Thank you, Only_Me! I know you're right, but at the same time I'm sure you know how stressful it is when you can't run as much as you want to. I have run 16, 18, 20 and 25 km, and my plan was to run a 30 km this Sunday. I have no other goal than to finish before the race closes (6 hours), so I hope I will be OK. I just have to find the right balance between resting my hip and getting in enough kms the next couple of weeks. Are you too training for a marathon by the way?
Great advise from OnlyMe... I have no advise about the running since I am a novice myself. My advise is about the 2# weight gain, it's probably only water from the sodium of the food you're not used to... Just forget about it, eat clean from now on, drink your water and everything will be fine...
I ran a marathon in January, and my longest training run was 18 miles. It was a disaster. But my training plan had been consistent up until then, and even though my longest successful training run was 16 miles, I finished the marathon comfortably (as comfortably as it gets for marathons anyway), and very close to my original time goals. So my advice for what it's worth, bearing in mind we are all different: 1) Only Me is right, get some rest during your taper and make sure that hip gets as healed up as it can. If your hip is more seriously injured, consider postponing the race until you are healed--one day isn't worth permanent damage no matter how hard you've worked. 2) Eat well and keep well hydrated during your taper. This is not a good time to try to lose weight, and in fact you might gain a couple of pounds as your body stores some water, like Ilene said (I used to gain about 5 lbs right before). Your body needs this and it will help you during the run. It will melt away right after the race when your eating returns to normal. 3) After you've healed up, followed your training plan (consistently, and not necessarily perfectly) and eaten and hydrated well, the biggest hurdle to finishing the marathon is mental. You CAN finish the marathon, and you have to work on visualizing yourself doing that. It isn't easy and no matter how prepared you are, it will hurt, so some mental work always helps. We all have resources we aren't usually aware of, and a marathon is one of those experiences that shows us that. It is quite remarkable.
Thank you so much, Ilene and Anne! Ilene - I know that the "gain" is just water, but I stress out all the same. Thanks for putting it in perspective for me! Anne - it's great to hear that you had a shorter than optimal longest run too, and that you were able to finish. I will remember to eat and drink properly, get enough protein to restore my muscles, and rest more than I "want to" so that I can rest my hip. Thanks for reminding me that the marathon is mental - I'm sure that at some point during the last half of my marathon I have to think of nothing but that... Which marathon did you run, what was your goals and how did you train for it? Please tell us, I'm sure I'm not the only one here thinking and dreaming of running a marathon, and feeling unsure if I can do it or not!
Anine- Sounds like you have gotten some great advice. Good luck on your marathon! Please join us in the Cool Runners forum and let us know about your experiance. I will be running a half-marathon this fall. If all goes well I hope to try a full marathon next year and would love to hear about yours.
Anine, I'm only training for halfs at this point. I did my first one on may 8th and I'm planning on another for the end of August, with a 10k next month. I have 3 young kids (6, 3, 1) and don't want to take the extra time to train for a full until they're a bit more self sufficient and until I'm a bit faster (local marathon course has a 5:30 close I think).
I ran the Rock'n'Roll Marathon in Phoenix, a race I highly recommend. My goal was simply to finish, but I was pretty sure I could beat a 5h30m time and my dream time was 5h for that race. I did 5h12m. I followed a run/walk strategy where I walked for the first minute of every mile, except the first mile and the last 0.2. I stuck to that pretty well except for a bad patch at about mile 22 where I walked for most of the mile. After that I discovered that it hurt as much to walk as to run and running was faster, so I went back to running!
My training was pretty standard, run 3-4x/week, long run every other weekend up to 18mi, except that I do triathlon, so my training plans are always very heavy on cross-training with a lot of intense biking and swimming--helps prevent injury, and lets me do more with less total mileage. I also lift weights about 2x/week until I hit my taper, when I can't afford the muscle breakdown anymore. One day a week of total rest--butt planted firmly on couch--since rest is so important when you are putting that kind of stress on your body. Also a 1-3 week taper, depending on the distance of the race (marathon is ideally 3 wks), where workouts remain intense, but they get shorter and short to reduce training load.
I also eat extra carbs the week of the race, lower GL carbs earlier in the week, moving to higher GL carbs later in the week. It will cause me to gain 5 lbs or so of water weight, but I find my performance is uniformly 10% faster when I do this and I just feel better. It is also important for me to take in carbs & salt during the race, Gatorade or sports gels, or I will have a serious bonk between 16 & 20 miles, just totally run out of gas, and there is nothing worse than that (that's what happened on my last long run, except I bonked at about 12 mi since I was in calorie deficit during training and depleted to start out with). My weight does funny things right after the race--once I gained 10 lbs because my electrolytes were so out of whack, but it always settles down after about a week.
Can't wait to do my next one, but I need to finish making this baby first! Do come over to the Cool Runners thread. So many people doing first miles, 5K, 10Ks, halfs, etc it is very inspirational!
Long run blues
