DAY TWENTY-NINE – CROSS TRAINING – ONE HOUR
I am still in a funk about recent events in my life, but I dragged my butt to the gym and I did roughly an hour of weight training. I did every exercise that was on my list from when I used to go to the gym 3-4 times a week before I started this marathon training. I was surprised at how many of the exercises I could still do, this many weeks later, although I did have to reduce the resistance on a couple of them. Somehow or another, I ended up with a kink in my neck, though, and it is really driving me nuts. I hope that whatever is out of place finds its way back to where it belongs overnight tonight or I’m going to be really irritated tomorrow. I guess it shouldn’t really interfere with my running too much, but it certainly is obnoxious.

DAY THIRTY – SPEED – 1.7 MILES AT 7 MPH
I did not have a very successful run today. I gave myself plenty of time to ramp up to 7 mph, but once there, I couldn’t maintain it. I logged about a mile and a quarter getting up to speed and then I held the speed for about 7/10ths of a mile and then had to put the speed way down to like 3.5 mph to rest and recover before slowly ramping up to 7 mph again. Once there again, I managed about another quarter mile, but still couldn’t maintain the speed. At that point, it was clear that I was not going to successfully run 1.7 miles at 7 mph and that I had better change my idea about what this run would be.

I decided that I would at least try to cover 1.7 miles at 7 mph, however long that took. I would run at 7 mph for as long as I could, then drop down to about 3.5 and recover, then slowly move the speed up and up and up, to about 5 mph, then move it up more quickly, then just pick a starting point and put it up to 7 mph and try to go at least a quarter mile at that speed. It turned out that I could only hold 7 for about an eighth of a mile at a time. Ay yi yi!

So, I’d slowly ramp up to 7 mph, run that for about an eighth of a mile, then go back down to 3.5 and work my way back up to 7. I knocked off an eighth of a mile at a time until I had run a total of 1.7 miles at 7 mph, although it was, most certainly, not continuous.

By the time I was done with this exercise, I would imagine I did just under 5 miles total, so it’s not like it was a total waste or failure, it just wasn’t quite what I had planned. Hopefully, it’s just because I’m still in a funk over my life events that aren’t getting better and that I’ll have better training runs later this week and have success on my next speed run.

DAY THIRTY-ONE – RACE PACE – 2.2 MILES AT 5.25 MPH
When I saw what faced me today – 2.2 miles at 5.25 mph – I thought, “What a piece of cake!” After yesterday’s fiasco, I was looking forward to what would, in all likelihood, be a very easy run. I went to the gym to use the treadmill and I spent about 3/4 of a mile very slowly warming up to 5.25 mph. Plus, you can only select speeds on the treadmill to the closest tenth of a mile per hour, so I went with 5.3.

It was like a dream. I was just shuffling along, not really working very hard, thinking I was really doing great. Then I noticed that I had only accumulated about 3/10ths of a mile. Uh oh, this is almost too slow. I’m gonna get bored out of my mind before I get anywhere near 2.2 miles. Focus on the T.V.’s. I managed to put myself in front of a set tuned to sports, which doesn’t interest me in the least, and I was too far from more interesting shows to read the subtitles, so I was left with one set at a very oblique angle that had a somewhat interesting show, but I risked a crash to stay watching that set too long, so I tried to focus on my music and other things. Hmm. Not even one mile yet.

I start thinking that although the pace is no problem to keep up, I’m gonna have to keep it up for like 5 or 6 hours on race day. After 5 or 6 hours I may be ready to jump off the Mill Avenue bridge out of sheer boredom, but once I got thinking about doing the actual race, I realized that there’s no way I’ll be bored. There are so many people in the race, watching from the sidelines, cheering, and playing music, that the race will be exciting the whole way.

Then I started thinking about making a race-day playlist of songs and including several songs that will remind me of my dad and then I got sad thinking about my dad and about all the other junk that’s going on in my life right now and then I looked at my mileage again and it was up to 1.8. Wow, time flies when you’re not focusing on when you get to stop running.

I easily hit 2.2 miles and actually wanted to run faster, so I bumped it up to 5.7mph for a little while and got the heart pumping a little bit before slowing down for my cool-down. I also did 15 minutes of weight training because it was written on my training calendar to do so, although I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why I put that on there. Oh well, I’m sure it didn’t hurt.

DAY THIRTY-TWO – EASY – 2.3 MILES at 4.5 MPH
Who’da thought running consisted of so much MATH? I have a hard time doing math to begin with and when you raise my heart rate to double it’s normal rate, I have serious difficulty performing even simple arithmetic in my head.

Today’s run was an easy 2.3 miles, so I set the distance alert on my GPS to repeat each 1.15 miles. That would give me an alert when it was time to turn around and when it was time to quit. The first alert worked great. It went off at 1.15 miles and I turned around. I was watching the mileage accumulate and when I saw it go to 2.0, I thought, “Great, only .15 miles left.” However, I noticed that I was really nowhere near my house yet, so I wondered what was wrong. On my GPS, 2.15 miles came and went without an alert and I was somewhat puzzled until I realized that .15 plus .15 cannot possibly equal .15, but would have to equal .30. I shook my head at my incredibly poor math skills and jogged out the remaining .15 mile with ease.

Other than my flashbacks to high school algebra, today’s run was incredibly easy. I only had to keep a pace of 4.5 mph and I know now that that is simply just too slow for me to run, so I didn’t even try to run that slow, I just made sure I stayed above that speed. I averaged about 5.7 mph which is even above my race pace target speed of 5.25, so I felt good about that speed.

Since this was my easy run, I imagined that I was running miles 25 and 26 of the marathon and that I had already been running 4 1/2 hours and that I was very tired and almost done with the marathon and that I just had to keep plodding along at any pace that was over walking speed. I tried to get in touch with how tired I’ll be at miles 25 and 26 and practice the mental discipline I’ll need to keep myself going when I most desperately want to quit. Hopefully when the real mile 25 comes along, I will remember today’s run and just keep myself moving, knowing the end is near.

I think I finally managed to chase off the kink I’ve had in my neck for two days. I thumped it with a Homedics back massager a couple of times and I think I finally shook it loose. However, it seems to have migrated to my intestines and it appears interested in making an intermittent and disruptive exit at this time. I hope that’s all it is and that I’m not getting a flu or some other bug.

DAY THIRTY-THREE – PACER – 4 MILES AT 5 MPH = 12 MINUTE MILE PACE
Summer is officially over in Phoenix! When I left my house today, it was actually a little chilly. Okay, so it was probably 75 degrees and the sun wasn’t even up yet, but hey, I’m spoiled. I ran well today and was blessed with the confidence that somehow or another, I’m going to get this marathon done. I was also pleased to find out that 5 mph is probably too slow for me, too. It looks like I’m not being able to vary my speed a whole lot, but that I am managing to slowly drag it upwards, so that’s good. That was one of my main goals for this marathon, to improve my running speed in order to decrease the total time it would take me to complete the marathon. I want to get it done faster than my only other marathon time which was like 6 hours and 15 minutes. That was just TOO LONG. I am still shooting for a 4:59 marathon and it’s looking like that might be possible. Yeah!!!

DAY THIRTY-FOUR – REST
Rest? You gotta be kidding! Spent the day at the Art of Recovery expo and must have walked 5 miles in the Phoenix Civic Center, celebrating recovery.

DAY THIRTY-FIVE – LONG – 3.2 MILES AT 6.1 MPH
Today’s run went pretty well. I was still not able to keep up the 6.1 mph at all times, and needed to stop and walk twice – to drink water, bring my heart rate back to normal, and rest a little bit before starting back up again, but that was an improvement over past long runs where I needed to stop every mile. Additionally, my GPS says my average speed was 6.3 mph, so I must have been doing well over 6.1 mph at times in order to compensate for the times I walked or let my speed drop below 6.1 while I was jogging.

Three-point-two miles did not seem very long and that was cool. I again imagined I was running the very end of the marathon – miles 24, 25, 26, and the final point-two mile that finishes the race. That helped me push myself when there was only about a mile remaining and my energy was lagging. I just kept imagining I had already been running all day, there was only a little distance left, and as soon as I finished, I could STOP!

At the end of FIVE WEEKS, this seems to be going too well to be true. I hope this persists for another FIFTEEN WEEKS!