Things Are Better The Second Time Around

Pouring rain early on a Saturday morning in early fall.  What could be better?  You can hear the rain outside, but you’re all warm and cozy under the covers.  You’re snuggled up with your partner and maybe even a cat or two.  Ah.

But then the damned alarm goes off.  Ah turns to “Aaah!” as you jolt awake and remember why you set your alarm for 5:00 AM.  It’s time for your 20 mile long run. 

Ok, maybe this wasn’t you.  Maybe the first paragraph is almost exactly how you were this past weekend, perhaps substituting the cats for dogs, children, or whatever else crawls into your bed and nuzzles up to you in the middle of the night.  But the second paragraph?  The one about waking up at 5:00 AM to go for a 20 mile run in the rain?  Nope, doesn’t apply.

Well, it did to me.  Saturday I had to do the second and last of my 20 mile long runs in preparation for the NYC Marathon just a mere 3 weeks away (and btw – yikes!).  My running partner and I weren’t running until 7, but with a run that long you have to eat and then let it digest so that your body can tolerate such a long run, but won’t jettison anything along the way.  So, I extricated myself from the husband and cats and went got dressed for my run.

Now, you wouldn’t think a 20 mile run would be so bad if it’s the second one in your training plan, since you already did one and therefore know that you can do it.  Well, it’s actually harder.  You see, the problem this time is that you know roughly how long it’s going to take, and exactly how much it is going to hurt.

I wasn’t looking forward to this run at all.  My running partner Rita and I did our last 20 miler two weeks earlier, and I still had memories of my feet hurting and my self-confidence lost somewhere along the way.  When we had finished our run that time I was completely defeated, knowing that I never would have been able to run another step let alone the extra 6.2 miles I would have to run in the marathon.  On top of all that, this time it was raining and pretty cold for early/mid-October.  Neither Rita nor I wanted to run in the rain (or at all, frankly), but our thought was that the marathon itself could be during a monsoon so we might as well be prepared for it.

At 7 o’clock, after I was fed and digested, Rita and I met up and started our run.  We both had on windbreakers, which for me ended up being completely useless.  First, I was hot after about 5 minutes and tied it around my waist for the rest of the run, and second, it was raining so steadily that staying dry was futile.  Just as we started, Rita commented how we were off on our 20 mile run.  I immediately interjected, “No, I’m not running 20 miles.  I’m running 5.”  Rita looked confused, so I told her “that last 20 miler almost killed me, so I’m only thinking about this run 5 miles at a time.”  Rita allowed me my fantasy, and the first 5 miles were pretty much a breeze (a very wet breeze). 

When we hit 5 miles we slowed to a walk so we could eat our gels and have some water.  Other than being soaked, I felt great.  That’s the best part about being deep into a marathon training plan; after a while, 5 miles starts to feel like nothing.  When we were done eating, Rita remembered my altered sense of reality regarding this run and asked, “OK.  Ready to run 5 miles?” and we turned our walk back into a jog.

This 5 mile set was pretty much as fine as the first.  The rain lessened and got stronger at different intervals, but it never let up.  My socks were still dry enough that I was leaping over puddles rather than going through them, but the leaps were getting a little harder to do (though I’m not sure if it was because my legs were getting tired so jumping was hard, or that it had been raining for so long that the puddles were getting bigger).

Rita and I continued on, chatting about work, family, neighbors, our favorite foods (hey, when you’ve been running almost 2 hours and you’re less than halfway done, you get a little hungry and food becomes a fascinating topic).  Before I knew it, my watch beeped that we were at mile 10.  Halfway!

We slowed to a walk again to have our next serving of chews and water (which didn’t hold a candle to all of the things I was planning on eating when I got home).  I still felt good, though I was definitely more tired.  We also had a problem that we were both getting kind of cold; running for 2 hours in the rain and then slowing to a walk will do that to you. We tried to make our walk break shorter so we could warm up again, but I had trouble getting started.  The problem wasn’t with my body; it was in my brain.  We had just run 10 freaking miles, but we still had 10 miles to go.  I couldn’t do this.  But then I remembered my trick.  I didn’t have to run 10 miles, just 5.  I asked Rita if she was up for a 5 mile run.  She smiled, either liking this method or thinking I was insane and just humoring me, and we picked up our pace again.

The third set of 5 miles was the hardest, and I knew it would be.  We had already run so much, but we weren’t close to the finish, even when this set was over.  I told myself (and may have said it out loud; I was too cold and tired to remember at that point) that the point of this run was to prep for the marathon, so this was like miles 17 to about 21, when you know you’ve done a lot and you are exhausted, but you have quite a long way to go.  I tried to think of some things to keep my going.  I thought about how I was healthy and fit enough to be this cold, wet and tired because I could run for hours at a time.  I thought about my kids who think exercise and vegetables are just a given (though they believe that vegetables come from the freezer.  Hey, I’m a working mom; I do my best).  I remembered that I love doing this because I love the feeling of setting up a big challenge and then succeeding at it.  And suddenly this 5 mile set wasn’t so tough.  Well, it was, but I was feeling less cranky about it.

At mile 15, we slowed down for our third and final nutrition break.  At that point the thought of eating more sweet, sticky chews was really unappealing, but I was starving so I pulled them out and tried to open the package.  And that’s when I realized I had a bit of a problem.  My hands were completely numb. I could see that I was holding my packet of chews, but I couldn’t feel them.  I ripped the packet open with my teeth (and heard my mother in my head yelling at me for doing so), and managed to push the first of the 3 chews out.  But the second one was another story.  I was so cold that I couldn’t move my thumb to push the chew, and I suddenly understood how cats felt next to an unopened can of tuna.

I finally managed to get the chews out of the package, and as we started running we cheered about how we really did only have 5 miles left this time.  By then my shoes and socks were so soaked that I didn’t worry too much about the ill effects of puddles and just ran through them when I couldn’t avoid them.  After a mile or two (which put us at about mile 16 or 17), I noticed Rita slowing down a bit.  She said she was beginning to struggle, so I took over the conversation and talked about anything to distract her from how she was feeling.  She’d done it for me in our last 3 or 4 runs, so I had the method down.  By mile 19 I figured I was driving her batty, so I shut up and let her finish her run in peace.

A millisecond after my watch beeped for mile 19, it displayed its “low battery” message and conked out completely (lesson learned, Alison: don’t forget to CHARGE your watch the night before a 4 hour run, dumb ass).  After I got over my jealousy of my watch being done and not having to endure this run anymore, I told Rita my watch was dead, and that she was in charge of counting the last mile down by 10ths.  Suddenly, each 10^th of a mile seemed longer than the previous one, but finally Rita yelled out “Twenty!”  I stopped dead and was suddenly met by waves of lactic acid creeping into my quads and calves, but I didn’t care.  We did it!  Rita looked at her watch and told me our time.  Even in the pouring rain, we ran this 20 miler over 18 minutes faster than our last one.  Now that is a good training run.

Running in the rain (B'klyn Marathon, 2013)

We limped back to Rita’s house and climbed into her car (and whoever invented heated car seats is my favorite person on this planet) so that she could drive me home by way of Dunkin’ Donuts where we got hot chocolates big enough to climb into.  Once my insides were warm from the hot chocolate and my ass was warm from the seat, I thought about it.  Not only had I run 20 miles, but we’d shaved 18 minutes off our previous time.  And when I thought about it, I knew that I could have run more if I had to.  I was wrong about my original thought; I didn’t know roughly how much less time it was going to take, and I definitely didn’t know how much less it was going to hurt.  Usually I hate being wrong (I’m not really used to it since it happens so rarely :-), but this time I was thrilled.

Now we start to taper our runs down in preparation of the big race on November 2^nd.  And after that, I get to snuggle in bed on a cold, rainy weekend morning.