Packing for a marathon

I've never been particularly good about packing. Part of the reason, I think, is that I don't like making lists. This has gotten me into trouble, most notably when I went on a hike with two sets of raingear, but no spoon or cup (fair warning, I swear like a sailor in that blog post).

But given that I've been training for nearly a year for this marathon, I've decided to break down and make a list. A bit of googling for "marathon checklist" and "marathon packing list" came up with some examples, but not all of them seemed particularly well-thought-out. One list, for example, listed "running shoes" as an "essential" carry-on item, but suggested packing your shorts and singlet in your checked luggage. I mean, sure, if your luggage was lost, you could run a race naked, but where would you attach your bib? More than one list suggests Body Glide as a "might be handy" item. As in: If your thighs and nipples were chafed raw during the marathon, it might have been handy if you had packed the Body Glide.

I think I like the Runner's World checklists the best of the ones I found. They actually offer several different lists depending on how far you're travelling for the race. Here's my list, which takes their "overnight race" list and updates / refines it for my own needs (I removed "film" and added card reader to the camera item, for example!).

Pre-race:

• Race / Hotel / Flight / Car rental info in PDF on iPhone and computer
• Body Glide
• Band-aids
• Sunscreen (in ziploc w/gels & toothpaste)
• Fruit and Granola bars for flight (buy bottle of water at airport)
• Camera / Card reader
• Extra cash/credit cards
• Street clothes and shoes
• Toiletries including a travel-sized first aid kit
• Watch with alarm for race-day wake-up
• Buy food for race-day breakfast in advance when I arrive
• Computer / iPad / cords / iPhone charger
• Compression socks for flights/post-race/the race itself if it's colder than expected.

Race:

• Shoes, orthotics if necessary
• Singlet
• Short-sleeve compression shirt
• Long-sleeve compression shirt
• Hat
• Shorts
• Spi-Belt to hold gels/bib
• Compression underwear
• Socks
• Gloves, which will probably be tossed after a few miles if worn at all
• GPS and charger
• Racing prescription sunglasses. Contact lenses as backup.
• Old sweats I can toss after a few miles
• Gels - in easily accessible ziploc for security checkpoint!
• Knee brace 

Post-race:

• Extra socks
• Extra shirt and shorts/pants
• Waterproof jacket
• Ibuprofen
• Towel
• Plastic bag for ice, dirty clothes, etc.

Tourism items:

• Binoculars

I think I should be able to fit all this in a carry-on duffel bag plus a small computer bag. The nice thing about going to a big race with a giant expo and arriving two days early is that if there's something I forgot (or didn't know I needed), I can always buy it there.

Details of today's workout are below:

The weather in Big Sur

With any luck, by precisely one week from now I will have finished my first marathon. The Big Sur Marathon starts at 6:45 a.m. on May 1, so if I run a 3:30 marathon, I'll finish somewhere between 10:15 and 10:20, depending on how long it takes me to make my way across the starting line. That's around 1:15 Eastern Time, or about an hour ago as I write this.

While here in Davidson it's currently about 80 degrees and very humid, in Carmel, California, where the race starts and ends, the temperature is a much more manageable 50 degrees. Weather.com now has the forecast all the way out to race day; here's how it looks:

If this is what we get on race day, I'll absolutely take it. Sure, it's a bit warmer than I'd like (though I imagine it might only be around 57 or 58 when I finish), but there's very little wind, and I'd rather have a bright sunny day to enjoy the views by than a cooler, cloudy or rainy day.

My main concern is actually the wind. I've read many race reports describing 20- to 30-mph winds at Big Sur. The number one piece of advice for runners in the wind: Get behind a big guy. That's a problem when you're the big guy!

I've been following the weather in Big Sur for the past couple of weeks and the main thing I've noticed is that it's very consistent; usually in the upper 40s overnight and around 60 during the day. What changes the most is the wind. The other concern for runners is the cool mornings. Because we all have to be bussed to the start, we'll be arriving 1.5 to 3 hours early, and it could be in the 40s. While that's a great temperature to run in, it's rather cold for standing / sitting around. I'm going to bring an old pair of sweats to wear to the race, and be prepared to just throw them away once the run starts. In my past races, however, I've found that as the start-time approaches, I'm usually warm enough just from adrenaline, so I can safely check my sweats and still have plenty of time to get to the start.

I'll keep my eye on the weather as race day approaches, but for now, things are looking great. I can't wait!

Details of today's workout are below

Too many miles on a taper?

My training schedule calls for a 13-mile run this weekend, just one week before my race. After the miles I've been logging as I train for this race, 13 doesn't seem like much to me, but my running companions have been telling me that's too far to be running just a week before the race.

For me at this level of fitness, 13 miles at a relatively easy pace doesn't take much out of me. I could see if a person had done a more minimalistic training regimen, a run this long wouldn't be a great idea. After all, it's possible you could get injured, and then all that hard work would have been wasted. On the other hand, there are lots of ways to get injured even if you didn't run at all. All told, this week I'll be running about 42 miles. The last time I ran so little in a week was last December. I even ran farther than that the week of my ski trip to Colorado. Next week I'll be cutting down the miles even more, to just 28 miles (not counting the marathon itself). That's less than half of what I did at peak intensity. So although in some ways it seems like I'm running a lot of miles during this taper, it definitely feels like a taper. I have no doubt that I will be very well-rested come race day.

Since tomorrow is Easter, the DART group decided to do their long run this morning. I met up at CVS with Chad, Matt, Tim, Jeff, David, Chad's neighbor, whose name I've forgotten, and a new guy, Jacob, who was in town visiting family.

Matt, Tim, Jacob and I took off at a relatively fast pace on a hilly route up Grey road. Miles 1, 2, and 3 were 8:19, 7:54, and 8:00 on a leg that included 121 feet of climbing. When we got to the top of the hill, we waited for the rest of the group, then took off again with Chad joining us in the faster group. After Mile 4 clicked in at 7:39, I decided I probably shouldn't be running this 13-miler at near-tempo-pace, so I slowed down and waited for ultra-runners David and Jeff to catch up. My Mile 5 pace was 9:19. Then the three of us rattled off a series of 8:30-ish miles, all the way down Shearer Road to the new greenway in River Run, and out the other side of River Run. I was a little surprised to find that I wasn't feeling great on these miles, which were a little hilly but shouldn't have given me too much trouble. With two miles left to go, Jeff split off to do some more hill work, and David headed home. I decided I should pick up the pace for the finish, and completed uphill Miles 12 and 13 in 8:13 and 7:53, and felt good doing it. It's another case where speeding up can sometimes make you feel better during a long run. The finish of this run definitely gave me a nice confidence boost going into Big Sur.

My average pace for the 13.16-mile run was 8:20 per mile, which is actually nearly the same as my official pace for the National Half Marathon. Not bad at all!

Details of today's run are below.

More strategizing for Big Sur

My primary goal for the Big Sur Marathon is to run it in 3:30:00 or better. That's an 8-minute pace, which is fairly ambitious for a first marathon, especially since my half-marathon PR pace is only 7:51 (yes, I'm almost certainly faster than that now, but you never know until you actually run the race).

What's the best way to run your target time in a marathon? There's a bit of debate about this, but most research points to an even pace. Just run a consistent pace throughout, with some adjustments for terrain, and you've got the best chance of success. I've read a few articles suggesting that it might be slightly more efficient to run the first half a little faster, but not much -- perhaps only 5 to 10 seconds per mile faster than the second half. For me that would be a 7:55 pace for the first half and an 8:05 pace for the second half. That's really not much different than running a consistent pace throughout. What's more, Big Sur's first half is tougher than the second half this year, so running a consistent pace would effectively mean you're running harder at the start.

That said, I'm not sure how easy it is going to be to run a consistent pace on such a hilly course. How slow do you go on the uphills? How fast on the downhills? My experiences with hill training suggest that I slow down by 15-30 seconds per mile on uphills, and I speed up about the same amount on the downhills. I think I'm going to have to do this primarily by feel, and by consistently monitoring my progress. With the exception of the short Point Lobos loop, the hills are pretty consistent throughout the course. So I should be able to monitor my average pace throughout the race and get a very good sense of how I'm doing.

But what if I'm feeling good, say, around the halfway point? Should I go faster? At this point in my running career, I don't think I have enough experience to make that call. I've never run a marathon, so I don't know what "feeling good" feels like. On long runs, I've noticed that the first 10+ miles are always quite easy unless I've gone out exceptionally hard. I'm certainly not going to do that at Big Sur, so chances are I'll be feeling pretty good at the halfway point. What's unknown is what's beyond that. If I bump up the pace to 7:30 starting at Mile 13, I might have to slow down to a 9-minute pace at Mile 20; that's not a good trade-off! I think it's better just to try to maintain as close to an 8-minute pace as possible this time around. Maybe I could speed things up incrementally if I'm still feeling good at Mile 20, but at that point I won't be able to make up a whole lot of time. Big Sur is not the place to try to run a 3:25:00!

Fortunately, this race does have a 3:30:00 pace team, so the simplest strategy is just to run with the group. Running with a group has the added bonus of motivating you to do better. If I can stay with the team for 26.2 miles, I will have qualified for Boston on an exceptionally difficult marathon course. If I fall off the pace, I'll do what I can to keep a 9:00 pace. I've run better than a 9:00 pace in 22-mile training runs, so hopefully finishing in 3:56:00 or better should not be a problem. Supposing I just slow down to that pace for the second half, I'd still be better than a 3:45:00, which isn't bad for a first marathon.

Details of today's training run are below:

One last tempo run

As I mentioned Tuesday, I've been substituting tempo runs for other types of speed work for the last few weeks. This afternoon, I ran my last tempo run before Big Sur. I still can't quite believe that I'll be getting on a plane for California just one week from tomorrow!

The plan was to run 4 miles at a 7:30 pace, with a warm-up and cool-down. Chad, Christie, Joe, and I met at the CVS at 6 p.m. for a trail run. I didn't think anyone wanted to run as fast as me, so I ran with the group at an easy pace for two miles, then took off.

As usual for me, the first mile of the tempo section was a little on the quick side, 7:13. I was pretty tired at this point. I tried to slow things down for Mile 2, and ended up slowing down a little too much: 7:55. However, I think this is a section that the Garmin measures short (see this post), so my pace was probably actually about 7:40. Mile 3 was 7:34, and Mile 4, with a steep uphill finish, was 7:41. Overall my pace (without adjusting for Garmin error) was 7:36 for the 4 tempo miles. Then I slowed down for an abbreviated cooldown, a little less than a mile into town, and met back up with the group.

In my experience, the trails add at least 15 seconds a mile to your time, so the equivalent road pace would have been about 7:20. Perhaps I took these miles a little too fast! I guess we'll find out on tomorrow's run, which will be another easy recovery run.

Details of today's run are below:

The curse of the Internet's long memory

Yesterday I was surfing around and found this article about Boston Marathon registration, indicating that the registration process would start later, in October rather than September.

What I failed to notice is that this article was referring to 2010 registration for the 2011 marathon. You know, the one that they just ran on Monday? Next year's registration is going to be in September, not October.

In the meantime I had spun all sorts of ideas about running a fall marathon to try to qualify for Boston. On this morning's run with Mark, Marc, and Chad, I had convinced myself that I should not bother running the Steamboat Marathon and instead focus my training on an October race.

Then I got home and started looking around for confirmation of the date and couldn't find any additional information about next year's registration, and finally realized my error. Oops.

So that means I'll be running the Big Sur Marathon in a week and a half, and Steamboat five weeks after that. It's not ideal, but I think that gives me the best shot at putting up a good time for Boston. Any later in the summer and it's almost certainly going to be too hot to run a Boston qualifier.

As of right now I'd rate my chances of actually qualifying somewhere around 20 percent. I'd either need to run a spectacular race at Big Sur in my first-ever marathon on a very difficult course, or recover amazingly quickly and do it at Steamboat just five weeks later rather than the recommended six-month marathon recovery time!

If I don't qualify at either of those races, I'll take some time to reassess whether I want to train seriously for Boston. In 2013 the qualifying time will be 5 minutes faster, so it will be that much harder to qualify. On the other hand, I could pick a marathon on a faster course and give myself a better shot at qualifying. And I'd have more time to train for it. Fortunately, I don't have to make that decision right now.

Details of today's run are below.

This is tapering?

One of the key tenets of tapering is that you decrease your mileage, but not your intensity. You make up for lack of distance with speed work. The only problem for me has been that if I run too fast, I tend to aggravate my IT band injuries. Tempo runs at, say, a 7:30 pace, aren't too much of a problem, but any faster than that and my legs tend to be shot for several days afterwards. My workout schedule features two types of workouts that are faster than that pace: Intervals, and strides. With that in mind, I've taken those workouts out of my program and replaced them with a few tempo runs -- short- to medium-distance runs at faster than marathon pace. Tempo runs take a lot out of you, though, so I can't do quite as many tempo runs as I would strides.

So here's what my workout plan was originally for this week:

• M: rest
• T: 7 mile medium pace run + 8 X 100-meter strides
• W: 4 mile recovery run
• Th: 3 X 1600-meter intervals at 5K race pace
• F: 5 mile recovery run
• S: 5 mile recovery run + 6 X 100-meter strides
• Sun: 13 mile run

Here's how I modified it:

• M: rest
• T: 6.3 mile tempo run
• W: 4 mile recovery run
• Th: 8 mile run with middle 4 at 7:30 pace
• F: 5 mile recovery run
• S: 5 mile recovery run
• Sun: 13 mile run

So Tuesday and Thursday are now tempo runs, and I've gone from three speed days to two. My mileage is much shorter than in recent weeks, a total of about 41 miles, but the intensity is still the same.

In the spirit of my reduced-mileage plan, today instead of running into town, I just drove in for the DART run. Chad, Jeremy, and Chris G. were there, but so were two new runners, Adam and Sarah. As it turned out, Adam is pretty fast, and I ended up running with him. We went out quickly: Miles 1, 2, and 3 were 7:34, 7:14, 6:51. As we started in on Mile 4 I realized I wasn't going to be able to maintain that pace, so I told Adam that he should feel free to take off if he wanted. He said he thought he had started off a little too fast as well, so we both slowed down. Miles 4 and 5 were 7:28 and 7:45. I didn't have much left for Mile 6 but managed a 7:31, and we cruised in for the final 0.37 miles at a 7:17 pace. The pace was uneven, but we still averaged a very respectable 7:23. I told Adam that was about as fast as I ever ran that loop, but he seemed pretty tired as well, so hopefully he won't decide we're too slow for him.

I'm definitely looking forward to a 10-minute pace on my recovery run tomorrow. Details of today's run are below: