I leave today to travel to the Eternal City, Rome, Italy for my 3rd marathon. I’m both excited and nervous. All 3 marathon training cycles have been wrought with a few Burnt Toast moments…
My first marathon was supposed to be the New York City Marathon in 2012. I trained, tapered, went to NYC, actually managed to pick up my packet & number and then returned home after the race was cancelled.
I managed to get into the 20th Anniversary Walt Disney Marathon, but tweaked my knee in an extreme downhill race in Fountain Hills, AZ about a month before the race, and even worse, I went out for a short run 2 weeks before the race and felt like my foot was broken. So forced taper it was, but I was able to run the race and even better felt better after the marathon than I did before!! Who would have thought?
Considering it was 85 degrees and about 80% humidity, and I was still in minor pain 2 days before the race, I was pretty happy with my time of 5:09. I ran walked using 1:1 intervals and walked most of mile 25 before running it in.
Then I ran 3 more half marathons in 6 weeks and ended up with plantar fasciitis. Big suprise there. 🙂
I claimed my NYC entry for 2013 and started training. I upped my run/walk interval – I’m a huge fan of Jeff Galloway’s Run Walk Run method (more on that in a future post) – to 2:1, got a coach & a nutritionist and was determined to drop my marathon time. As I ran thru the summer and got closer to my second marathon, a disturbing trend was developing…the hamstring pain that was previously just a minor nag, was becoming more and more of an annoyance and not just when I was running. It was starting to become where I was in pain the majority of my day. I continued running, as we runners do, and did in fact run the 2013 ING (last year for ING) New York City Marathon with over 50,000 other runners. It was absolutely amazing and I dropped 35 minutes from my first marathon!! This was doing 2:1 intervals pretty much the whole way, although, I did do a bit more walking in mile 18 before getting my act back together & finishing strong.
Fast forward to now…I’ll post more on my hamstring again in future posts. I started training for the Rome Marathon on January 1 and 12 weeks later will run marathon #3. This time, after dealing with my hamstring and doing PT, getting a new coach, etc. it was determined that the run/walk/run method that I loved was causing me more pain. So I started running straight after 2 months off.
Running is never easy, but when you are so used to one method, a new one is even harder. 11.5 weeks later and I still struggle to not walk during a run, short or long. I know I am capable but the run/walk/run mindset was one that I religiously practiced for almost 3 years.
I will never forget the first time in over a year, I when I ran completely pain free!! It was such an amazing feeling and almost weird having had some sort of pain during every run all thru 2013.
I have been so incredibly fortunate to be able to run all of my marathons so far in amazing places. Walt Disney World, New York City and now Rome. In the end, as much as I have time goals and to run a certain way, I am so grateful for the opportunity to get to do this and not only that, I get to do it in amazing places!!
Do you like to travel for races?
