Sunday, March 10, 2013

Putting in the Work

With my “A” qualifier out of the way and a training group not letting me off the hook easy, I embarked on a solid month of running. A canceled marathon disrupted my push for 7 marathons in 6 weeks, but I still got in some running. First I hooked up with Lindsey for a casual 3:17. A week later I cruised a nice, even split 3:12. Two marathons, 6 days apart in under 3:20, giving me confidence for the long race. Things were going well.

A year ago I ran the Deloitte marathon in Pretoria but missed the start by more than 8 minutes due to poor parking and inconvenient registration. Determined not to make the same mistake this year, I arrived 1 hour early. It didn’t help. After the obligatory 1 mile walk (past the start) to the registration, I stood in line for 40 minutes, inching forward to packet pick-up, past it, and into the end of a line. It never moved, so as I looked ahead I saw chaos. A guy was standing on the table shouting out names. Since only about 100 people of the many that entered could fit in the room, most of these didn’t get taken. Meanwhile, people started grabbing the boxes with numbers and flipping through them on their own. They would look then pass most into the crowd. This couldn’t end well and the people tightened around me. I squeezed out content to not have a number when an official traded me a sticker for my confirmation. At least I was in.

I staggered through the hills conserving as much energy as possible. After all, it was a double marathon weekend, and the first of the races was one of the hardest in the country. While I can’t say it was an enjoying experience, it was a great simulation for the climbs of Comrades. As the heat climbed, I pounded on, mostly alone, and ran 3:23, quite well for that course.

The next morning I was back at it. Thankfully it was a flatter course that wound throughout a township area of SOWETO. Content to go it alone, I ultimately hooked up with a triathlete in his first marathon. We held a good pace through the half and then decided to roll it in for his Comrades “B” qualifier. While I cannot say it was 100% easy, I did manage to run pretty smooth and put a 3:17 for my 2nd marathon of the weekend.

My week’s mileage was 91, my highest for a non-ultra week ever, and I had done a month worth of solid running. But I paid for it and my next week of running was very poor. Then I went to Kenya, and while there, took 3 days off on safari. When I could run, I did 4 days of 30-40 min on a beach or road in amazing humidity. Throw on all you can eat buffets, free drinks, and a respiratory tract infection, and you could say I was in bad shape. Then after traveling 13 hours home, I arrived at 1:30am, was asleep by 3am, and the alarm snapped me away at 4:00am with 90 min of shuteye for 42 hours. I had a race to run.

While I can say that I have felt loads better, my latest marathon was uneventful. Running with some club mates, we passed halfway easy. I had zero ambition to up the pace and ran continently with Cliff, a guy I ran with back in the 1st of the 4 marathon push. We ran 3:17 flat and I realized two things: first, I can run a marathon off of a week of damn near nothing, and second, it hurts like a bugger to do so.

Either way, I am doing plenty of work and after these two down weeks, and my plan is to have a very strong March and April. That way, I will feel that I have done ample work going into Comrades.