My 4 week vacation in France is almost over, and progress was made. But I'm still far behind from any marathon training plan. The 2013 edition of the Chicago marathon is in a month, and my long run has been... 10 miles. That is 38.17% of the marathon distance. And that's still far from the 16-18 mile long runs recommended in the literature. So, am I fucked? Should I give up? Should I rip off my tendon and still give it a try? I haven't decided yet.
Let's start by a snapshot of my vacation in south of France.
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| Me in love / eating a croissant / jumping into freezing water / riding my 1947 Jeep |
Wow - VACATION. I thought this period of the year will never arrive. Agreed, I had an amazing vacation in April but it was somewhat tainted by the Boston bombings (see that
post). My girlfriend came to France with me for a week. One morning, I put the alarm clock at 7:00 am because I wanted to go for a long run. She wasn't happy about that. To say she was merely "cranky" is an understatement. But then after a few miles we discovered what only the early birds get a chance to see.
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| La Rivière Éspérance: Here's to hopeful thinking for the marathon... |
This time, we ran 8 miles. It wasn't easy, there was an elevation drop of about 300m at the beginning and then 300m back up at the end. But we' were glad we did it, although I had some medium, medium-high pain in my extensor tendon after the run. Luckily, it went away after a couple of days.
Then I came back to Paris, put my girlfriend back on the Air Putain (yep, Air France) plane for Boston, and I kept training, this time on relatively flat trails. I've done a couple of other 8 mile workouts, and then I finally decided to increase the distance to 10 mi. Surprisingly, the pain in my foot was really not that bad, and my legs were strong. The weak link, this time, was the general fatigue and my heart. It was a hot day in Paris, and I decided to run at 2 pm when it was very sunny and about 88°F. I had a heart rate monitor and I averaged 167 bpm over 2 hours. My average speed was 5 mph but it includes some stretching. Still pretty lame. That gives me an estimated marathon finish time of... 5 hours and 14 minutes...
Well, I'm telling you my friends, I will be VERY HAPPY if I get to finish this fucking thing, even if I have to run with grandmas (which I have no doubts I will). In fact, it's barely impossible. Right now, my weekly mileage is about 20 mi and my longest run was 10 mi. According to my book, 5 weeks from the marathon, I should average 50 mi a week and I should have done a 16 mi long run. See? I'm screwed. But you know what? I'll keep training until the very last day and only that day I'll decide if I give it a shot or not.
I decided to do a last long run on Sunday, September 15, 2013. I will run until the pain in my tendon is "medium", or 16 miles, or 3 hours, whatever comes first. I will have my girlfriend ride her bike next to me so she can feed me with Gatorade, croissants, and foie gras (flashforward she's tired of riding her bike and I only run an hour...).
Dear readers, I'm in the home stretch of my training now. If you have any last minute recommendations, insults or gifts you wanna ship me, please go ahead. I promise if I resign during the race, you'll never ever hear from me again... so this is your last chance.
God Bless America (and my tendon).
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Bye guys!
-Pinky and the brain (she's the brain, obviously) |
