The Morning After, or Thank You, Lance Armstrong

As I finished my longest run ever and tapped on the "End workout" button on my iPhone, I heard Lance Armstrong's voice on my earphones saying "Congratulations, that was your longest distance run so far." Or something to that effect. Normally, I would have been thrilled to hear those words, but I was so tired, so worn out, and my cramps were soooo killing me, that I really didn't care much about the voice recording that Nike+ so thoughtfully provides for runners when they obtain a new PR (personal record). I wouldn't have minded if Lance, clad in his trademark yellow and black sports suit, suddenly materialized to pat me on the back, but nah, of course that wasn't happening.

I ran a full 25-kilometer stretch in 3 hours and 3 minutes. My longest run so far. Yoo-hoo!



That was two weeks ago. The week before that, I ran 21 km in 2h:30m. And just last week, I tapered down to 16 km. This Sunday, I'm supposed to do 29 km. Omigosh! The very thought makes my heart beat faster already, but a girl's gotta do what she gotta do.

So far, that's how my (very erratic) marathon training plan has been going. It's far from ideal, and there's barely two months of training left before the big day: December 5, the QC International Marathon, and my maiden full marathon.

I only do the long runs because I'm so busy with housework and stuff, but I hope to increase my number of runs per week, to include shorter distances and, who knows, maybe interval runs if I can squeeze them in.

What I've discovered as my biggest potential problem come marathon day is -- them darn cramps! I've noticed that after an hour of continuous running, I'd start to feel some cramping on my left shin. (My shins have always been my Achilles' heel.) Then by 2 hours, it'd be so painful that I'd have to walk a bit before running again.

But last week, the cramps didn't appear until after about two hours of running. That's progress I'm really happy about. It helped that I've been hydrating up to three days before a scheduled long run. I drink a few liters of water each day (and make frequent visits to the bathroom too). The next diet change I'll do is to drink milk regularly and maybe take calcium supplements. I hope these measures do work to eliminate the cramps altogether.

The morning after a long run, I notice that I don't feel as bad as I used to in the past. The typical morning-after limp is still there, but it's much reduced now. Going up and down the stairs is also more manageable; I remember having to really do it slow before and hold on to the sides of the stairs because my legs were really sore. Now things are so much better and I'm happy with the progress I'm making :-)

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can really make 29 km this weekend.

Big Plans

Before we know it, the -ber months are here already! Time does fly by sooooo fast. It seems like just yesterday, I was in high school; now I have a teen-age daughter in high school!

Speaking of the -ber months, December is not that far away. I hear that there are displays of Christmas decors in some malls already. But for me, what's really special about December is that I'm fervently hoping to run my first full marathon on the fifth of the month. I should have been in training since August, but I was fasting then, so I'm just starting my *serious* runs this week. (Yes, I quit fasting even before Eid el-Fitr, because hindi ko na kaya! I had a vomiting and trembling fit last week, and felt really weak and bad, so I thought it's time to stop starving myself. God will understand.) So now I have just about 12 weeks to prepare for the full 42-km run. Tsk-tsk. Looks like I'm cramming again, just like in college.

I'm following this training program called the Marathon Coach, made by the Running Method. It's convenient for me because I have it on my iPhone as an app, and my iPhone goes with me whenever and wherever I run. The program's different from other training plans I've looked at. For one thing, its runs are in time measurements (50 minutes, 2 hours, etc.) rather than in kilometer distances. For another, for a twelve-week program, it appears much less rigorous than others.

That observation had me worried yesterday, as I was looking at other training programs. I've seen two that recommend a 21- or 23-km run on the first week of training. This is so because there are only 12 weeks instead of the customary minimum 16 weeks of training, and so it's supposed to be fast-tracked and a little intense. Meanwhile, in the Marathon Coach plan, only 50-minute runs are recommended for the first week. What a big difference.

I gave it some thought, and I decided I'd shoot for a 20-km-ish run this weekend. Thinking about this long run scares me a bit, but it's a run I'm looking forward to nonetheless :-) If I do make it, I'll try to adopt the other, more demanding training programs. But if I can't manage it, I'll stick with the Marathon Coach plan.

I'm glad I'm running again. Yesterday, I had a great night's sleep, the best I've had in weeks. I attribute it to my tiring pace run earlier in the day. It was very pleasantly exhausting, and I slept like a baby because of it.

Some screenshots of the Marathon Coach iPhone app: