After the Race

My dad took this picture about two minutes after I crossed the finish line. I had gotten my finisher's medal and my first ever space blanket (awesome), then picked up two chocolate milks and a banana. I was thrilled about the chocolate milk (evident in the picture). I was hypothetically thrilled about the banana, which I ate the next morning.

Post-Marathon Recovery

The other day (which, by the way, was a Tuesday) I decided to look up information on marathon recovery. Planning for recovery from my first marathon had been easy. I finished the race, thought to myself, "I'm so glad I did that but never again," and promptly flew a couple of thousand miles to visit my sister in her part of the world. This time, after blocking out that never again and the rest of the race as a survival mechanism (thanks, evolution), I ended up really enjoying the experience and feeling empowered by the race: "I just ran 26.2 miles. That's pretty awesome. Wow. Mmm, chocolate milk. So delicious. Ooh, not running. I love this already." Oh wait, that was after the race. Anyway, the race was empowering and I felt afterwards like I had tapped into those awesome superhero powers we're told about in the yoga studio.

Taking this empowerment to the office Tuesday, along with far less pain than I had any business feeling given my semi-questionable adherence to and alterations of my training routine, I looked up post-marathon recovery to answer a question I had: now that I finally get this running thing (or at least have my marathon shuffle down pat), when can I run again? The pages I read told me that marathoners can start light jogging again one week after the race and that full physical recovery, given a sensible and gradual return to exercise, is generally projected at one day per mile of racing. Twenty-six days of recovery, about a month. At least I could be back in action in a week! The websites also spent a great deal of time on mental recovery, usually mentioning this one-week / 26-days physical aspect as almost an afterthought after devoting paragraphs and pages to coping with post-marathon depression-like symptoms. You've spent so much time working towards this one goal, the sites told me, that it can be hard to handle being past it. No matter how your race went, it's time to pick another goal and move your focus to the future to get yourself feeling better. That's interesting, I thought, but not particularly relevant to me. I was feeling GREAT, after all. I could do ANYTHING. If I could have bounced off walls, I would have. That was Tuesday morning.

Let's fast-forward to Thursday morning. I've now had two full days at work (we had Monday off to honor Memorial Day). By full I don't mean full of work, as it's very quiet in the office this week now that the students are gone. Few projects with any deadline whatsoever gives significant time for thinking. Combine the feeling of lower work-day productivity with the post-marathon physical lull and you've got a recipe for dispiritedness. It's already tough to go from spending all your time training to limiting yourself to a long walk or light cardio session each day; couple that with the major goal (there's a marathon on the horizon!) being past and a mental pick-me-up is in order.

Here I can report on one positive step from today and one challenge:
On the positive side, I realized that I have never completed an Olympic-distance triathlon (my shortest and longest triathlon distance thus far is the half ironman) and it wouldn't take a ton of training to finish one. I spent a good amount of time today looking up New England races at the Olympic distance coming up in the next two months. As the recovery guides told me, this is a great time to set a next racing or performance goal.
On the challenging side, I erged today for the first time since the race and my body did not love the experience. I set out to do a light 30 minutes so I didn't go stir-crazy with the lack of non-walking cardio. The first 25 were fine, but the inside of my left knee felt the final five in the same spot it had felt the last few miles of pounding on race day. I finished more out of stubbornness than intelligence, though I suppose that stubbornness helps maintain sanity and self-preservation could be viewed as a form of intelligence.

Though it was clear while erging that my body is still very much rebuilding from all the impact built up on Sunday, I'm still looking forward to a VERY light jog this Sunday. (This time, I'll try to be smart about listening to my body if pain arises.) Until then, I'll work on creating my Olympic-distance training plan.

Marathon Reflections

One of the questions that I was asked on a pre-marathon post was what one should say to motivate a runner on marathon day. This varies depending on whether said runner is at mile 2, 5, 16, 24, or so on. Here are some of the things I found motivating (and one not so much) in Burlington this past weekend:

Before the race: My parents (both there - obviously pretty awesome) let me focus on my mental preparations and were willing to follow me around the starting area and hold the sports drink and various other items I occasionally handed their way. This allowed me lots of time to focus on my race.

Miles 1 - 5: I started the race near five Army National Guard men in full packs. Each of their packs, it turns out, weighed 40 to 45 pounds. I wanted to start out at a slow jog (unlike last time, when I ran my first couple of miles well below my training pace) and ended up sticking near them for about five miles. One advantage of this was that spectators always cheered loudly when they passed (five guys in full camouflage and boots with big packs on running a marathon - wouldn't you cheer for them?) so I got to be surrounded by some of the most vocal spectator support on the course.

The other advantage of running near these five was the mental boost the rest of us got from the sheer awesomeness of what they were doing. You're running. Somebody next to you is running in the boots he wore for a year in Iraq (seriously) wearing a 45-pound pack. No matter how fit that guy is (answer: very) there's some part of your brain that thinks, "If he can finish this, so can I." This feeling sticks with you; there were moments in miles 15 and later when I would think about those five guys somewhere else on the course with their packs. I even saw them a mile back around mile 20. If they could finish this, I could too. They did; I did.

Miles 6 - 17: Funny comments and posters tend to be highly motivational here. We non-elite runners aren't the most comfortable we've ever been by now - our bodies are starting to feel the distance by hour two - but our cardiovascular bases are strong so we're not yet in why-are-you-talking-to-me-right-now mode. I appreciated some of the random posters people had come up with, including one with Ryan Gosling's face and some fake quote along the lines of "Hey, I'm looking forward to seeing you at the finish line." There were a few people sitting on their lawn drinking around mile 8 with a sign that said "We're having one for you." Music also helps in this stretch (and on to the end) and the Taiko drummers and assorted local bands helped us get up hills and down flat stretches with relative ease.

Miles 18 - 22: This part is pretty miserable. You've been running for hours, you still have quite a while to go (roughly an hour in my case), every part of your body is either vaguely uncomfortable or very painful, your mind has started to understand why other people think you're crazy for running a marathon, and you aren't yet on the final stretch. The only people I was truly happy to see on this stretch were the volunteers manning the aid stations. They gave me water and gatorade, becoming my new best friends (for the next 45 minutes at least).

As you might have guessed from that mental state, this was the stretch in which I felt greatest annoyance towards a single piece of posterboard. A few minutes after mile 20, jogging through a quiet suburban neighborhood, I ran by a poster that read "Only 6.2 miles to go". I wanted to point out to the creator that 1) I had under 6 miles to go, as we had passed mile 20 a little way back - be accurate, okay - and 2) 6.2 miles is a very long way when you've already run 20 and this sign was 'only' reminding me of the interminable stretch of road ahead. I kept running and kept these comments to myself, trying to return my focus to the less-annoying dull ache that was slowly overtaking every inch of my being.

Miles 23 - 26: This is when an "Only __ miles to go" sign might have been okay. Indeed, one of my favorite signs in this stretch (the Burlington spectators are fantastic) was "The End is Near", held by a friend of the Ryan Gosling signmaker (who had another funny fake quote on the flip side of his poster which he was now displaying). This came around mile 24, when the end was actually under half an hour away and starting to feel relatively quite near. Much later, right as we rounded the final curve, race officials had hung a sign that read "Almost there!" This too felt right.

My favorite motivational comment also came in this stretch. Around mile 19, a woman in the neighborhoods had announced that I won the best smile award. (As I wasn't going to win any speed award, I took this as pretty cool.) She walked past on the bike path on which we finished around mile 23 and said, "I'm rooting for you. You have a great smile." She kept walking and I kept running (well, slowly jogging in what I like to think of as my "marathon shuffle"), but that stuck with me and helped boost me to the finish line. In the end, sincerity wins.

I'm off for a nourishing restorative dinner. Enjoy being able to walk down stairs painfree for the both of us, okay?

Marathon Prep

It's one week before the Burlington Marathon. In 6 1/2 days, I'll be waking up to head to the starting line for my second marathon. My first, Lake Placid 2009, went smoothly, but I decided at the end that it'd probably be smart never to sign up for marathon again. It took me under three years to forget that wise decision and register for Burlington's 26.2. I was reading Runner's World magazine, it was highlighted as having "great spectator support!", I was looking for a challenge -- what was I to do? (If you said not sign up, you're probably my sister and should remember to do good workoutness so you can maintain your 'athletic twin' status.)

The revelation I'd like to share with you today is that the physical preparations are not the most important part of getting ready for a marathon. This should come as a relief to my dad, who has questioned my physical preparation. They are right up there in importance, but tie for first place with the "other stuff" of the final week before the race. What is this other stuff? What a good question!

Mental preparation, which includes steeling for the boredom of 5 hours on the course for some of us non-lovers of running, begins well in advance of the final week. It starts with the motivation to get out and complete every training run that we make it through and builds from there. Even with four months of training, there's still a lot to do in the final week to be mentally and physically ready on race day. Here are a few of my plans for the week ahead:

• Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. There are risks to overhydrating during the race (the primary being hyponatremia), but hydrating in advance helps minimize chances of racing dehydrated. By drinking water and sports drinks constantly for the week leading up to the race, you put your body in camel-mode, storing as much fluid as possible for those hours on the course.
• Just add salt. Speaking of fluids and hyponatremia, it's essential to get enough salt into your body in the days before a race. Imagine going on a jog around the block. You might break into a sweat coming up the final length, right? Now imagine hour four of that jog around the block in 75-degree heat. Marathoners sweat a lot because they're out on the course for so long. The weather projections for Burlington suggest it'll be 75 and sunny that day, beautiful for Memorial Day weekend but a little less lovely for the race. In good news, sweet potatoes taste delicious with added salt.
• Rest your legs. My legs and feet will have a big morning on Sunday so I'm aiming to give them as much rest as possible between now and then. A few final taper runs and some nice off-day erging will keep my muscles fresh; I'll alternate these with tons of stretching and some quality couch time. This is one of the few times in life when it's not ideal to be up and active. 
• Get familiar with the course. This goes into those mental preparations for staving off boredom and making it through the tough stretches. My planning always includes finding a course map and description to review ahead of time. I've printed out the map of the Burlington course and started committing the lengths of the four loops to memory. This may seem silly, but it'd seem less so if you were running up the six-block-long hill at mile 15 wondering if the elevation would ever end. At that point, it's useful to know that it's all flat-to-downhill from there. Also, there will be Taiko drummers at the hill to encourage us on - how cool is that? I also use the course map to plan out motivational strategies for the race. I know, for example, that mile 14 will probably be easier than mile 12 because 14 a) is on the back of an out-and-back and b) parallels Lake Champlain. If 12 is tough, I want to have a few mental strategies ready to go.
• Plan for race day. Every detail can affect a race experience: what time you'll pick up your race packet the day before, whether you'll have a late-night snack before the race and what you'll have for breakfast the morning of, what you'll wear during the race (important!), what time you'll head to the course, etc. Race morning has enough going on without the realization that you forgot your sunscreen or ran out of your pre-race sports drink. Here's a situation in which planning is a very good thing.

This week is not the time to rack up a lot of miles as the week already has over 26 in store, but is the time to sit on the couch, enjoy the saltiest pretzels the store had with some hummus, and keep my waterbottle constantly full. It should be a pretty great week.

For more on pre-race preparations, check out No Meat Athlete's post here.
For more on being a marathon spectator, check out this guide by Tom McGrath. Absolutely stick to his final point (Parental who may be tempted by this, remember that other runners may hear what you utter in jest). Until we can see the finish line around 26.1 miles, we are not "almost there". Once we can, we'll be too exhausted to notice much of anything you say and already preparing for that post-race chocolate milk.

On Sports (part 2)

[For part 1, see my previous post here.]

I have a guess what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Wow, rugby sounds less than parent-friendly." A sport in which a moderate concussion is a 'mild' injury compared to a broken collarbone...that's second on your list? You might even be doubting my list-making skills, wondering what sporting events could be less ideal for parental attendance. First, I'll point out that cheerleading has more injuries than rugby and football tends to have long-term issues with brain damage among professional players (we won't get into boxing). Second, I'll continue my list with two sports that have competitions which 1) take all day and 2) may largely take place miles (literally) from wonderfully supportive spectators.

After careful consideration, I have reversed the order of these sports from my original plan. I'll look forward to your feedback.

A Spectator-Friendliness Guide, continued

3. Distance Triathlons / Marathons

     I group these two together because they're essentially the same sport on some level. An athlete decides that it'd be a good idea to do something crazy and chooses an event that involves months of physical training for hours of grueling individual endurance. Friends, hearing the athlete has registered for said event, announce to the athlete, "Wow, you must be crazy!" Close friends cheerfully add, "But we already knew that." The athlete takes this as a point of pride rather than a moment for reconsideration. The athlete is, after all, probably just a little bit crazy to think said event is a good idea.

     The athlete trains for months, often alone (sometimes in the dark, though I'm one for daylight running myself), and is super-excited to have parentals attending the event. They dutifully drive to some remote location for the race. For triathlons, this is a place which has that ideal balance of 1.2 or so miles of lake in which to swim, a 56-mile bike loop on which traffic can be controlled during the race, and 13.1 miles of quiet streets for running. Rolling hills are optional. 

     The day before the race, the athlete excitedly drags the parentals along to race packet pickup and may encourage them that it'd be "so fun" to drive 20 or so miles of course (hint: it probably wouldn't, but it can be an incredibly valuable preparation tool nonetheless). After an enjoyable afternoon, the athlete spends the evening alternately nursing a series of sports drinks and a waterbottle and refuses to talk to anyone due to pre-race nerves and mental preparations. (I like to use this time to go to a movie, which my parents hopefully appreciate given the alternatives.)

     On race day, the athlete insists on getting to the course sometime around sunrise to settle in and stretch out before the event. Bib number securely pinned on, the athlete spends an hour or so at the course getting ready to go. Finally, the race starts and they're off! Wait, where did they go? Oh right, you won't see your racer for the next 45 minutes. At that point, she or he will jog past and wave merrily before disappearing for another 30 minutes to 3 1/2 hours. Sometime between 5 and 8 hours from the beginning of the race, the athlete will cross the finish line in an exhausted state, capable only of such intellectually stimulating conversation as how much salt has accumulated on the athlete's arm from 5 to 8 hours of sweat. (No really, it is pretty cool.)

     Though you may only actually see your athlete racing for one to two percent of distance triathlons and marathons, they have three distinct advantages over sport #4 on this list:

     a. You get to see other racers while you wait for your athlete. Though it may take me 5 to 8 hours to finish, it takes other people only 2 1/2 or 3 1/2 hours. People are passing through visible transition points pretty much constantly, unlike in some sports (see below).

     b. You can leave and return throughout the event. Your athlete is hungry? Tough luck - 7 miles to go, should have made better nutrition plans. You're hungry? There's a cafe down the road and it'll be 2 hours until your athlete returns again. Mmm, doesn't that muffin taste sweeter when you know the self-inflicted pain and sweat your athlete is enduring right now? Sure does.

     c. Your presence and support make a difference. When you cheer in swimming, athletes are unlikely to hear more than one in every fifteen words after leaving the block. When you cheer in rugby, athletes are buffered from your cheering by the twenty other players between you and them. You may not be entirely sure when to cheer anyway, since there's a lot happening and you can't even see the ball under the pile of people. When you cheer during a distance event, athletes notice. Two of my favorite distance racing memories are my mom waving the poster she'd made (the race had a poster-making table for spectators) for my triathlon as I cruised by on my bike and my parents laughing at the face I made after drinking a lemon-lime sports drink (the only option available, it's also my least favorite) around mile 18 of my first marathon. Athletes have several hours on the course to appreciate your presence and take in every word you say.

4. Crew

     It is time for the most spectator-unfriendly sport in which I've competed. I love crew. I think it's one of the greatest sports ever. I find the water and the rhythm of the sport calming and wonderful. That said, I get that it can be an awful sport to watch. I provide an example to illustrate:

     During one race in my first year of competition, it was raining. No, pouring. We got out on the water to warm up - our coach insisted we spend far longer than any other team warming up so it was an hour before the race - and paddled around wishing we had brought warm clothing. Instead, we had left our sweatshirts because we didn't want them to get wet and weigh down the boat. Eventually, it started to hail. When we finally raced, we lined up towards one end of the stretch of river visible to spectators from the shoreline. We proceeded to race further toward that end and out of view; a parent with binoculars might catch the first thirty or forty seconds through the precipitation. We raced over a mile away then rowed calmly back to announce to our parents, amidst shivers, that we had won. Five of us spent the next two hours in my mom's car, cranking the heat up to 85 degrees and probably getting her seats slightly damp. Our lovely spectators spent the entire day in horribly cold weather and got to see almost seven percent of our race from hundreds of yards away. At least we won, right?

     The problem with crew is not that my coach always insisted on my team arriving far earlier than necessary, sometimes before the host team. The problem is more endemic to the sport. It is that you simply don't know what to expect for ninety percent of races. At a major race like the Head of the Charles, you know that you can camp out on a bridge to see a solid two minutes of action. At most races, that certainty does not exist. You might see the first half of a race or two minutes in the middle or even the end(!). You might actually see none of it at all.

     I end with an anecdote:

     The summer after my first year, I competed in a coxed four at Canadian Henley. My parents (I told you they were amazing!) dutifully drove to Ontario to watch the weekend of races. In the heat, my boat had gotten off to a slow start but finished strong and made it to finals. In the finals, we again got off to a rather abysmal start. Our coach, only able to see the first 500 of the 2,000 meters of the course, figured we had finished last or very near it. We returned to the dock jubilant over a second-place finish! Our coach told us multiple times that he didn't believe we had finished that high, assuming it was a joke right up until the results were posted. At least in the other sports, you generally have a good idea during the event how it'll end.

This concludes my ranking of the spectator-friendliness factor of the sports in which I've competed. I'm open to suggestions for future sports in which to compete.

On Sports (part 1)

In case you weren't aware, I consider myself an athlete. (My sister won the prize of 'the athletic twin' while I get to be the one who could run five miles if so inspired -- this way, we both win!)

The other day, I was going for a run jog as I am in "marathon training mode". Two weeks out from the race, I wanted to make sure I'll be able to survive. (It seems highly likely at this point.) As I was running, I thought about my sports history. I thought about how wonderfully supportive my parents are; they've made it to every sporting event I can recall, including one in Canada, beyond the never-ending string of college rugby games. Thinking about the hours upon hours they endured of waiting for me to compete got me reflecting on the fact that I've never actually competed in a spectator-friendly sport. Unlike other parents, they never seemed to wise up and try to get me into soccer or basketball. Instead, I can thank my dad for suggesting a string of increasingly hard-to-enjoy-viewing sports. (I take full credit myself for selecting the third item on the list.)

I now present the sports in which I have competed by rank of projected enjoyment to parents in attendance:

A Spectator-Friendliness Guide

1. Swimming

     "Yes," you say, "swimming!" You're thinking about what a great sport swimming is. You're thinking about how it's a wonderfully dynamic full-body workout and mixes things up with four different competitive strokes. You're not thinking about spending eight hours on a Saturday (and, quite possibly, on Sunday as well) sitting in a muggy, overheated room watching other people's children go back and forth in a 25-yard pool.

     As a swim parent, you generally rely on your child for information about said child's event, heat, and lane. All children look about the same upon donning cap and goggles. You'll be able to tell boys events from girls events, but may or may not recognize that your child's best friend of seven years is winning heat four right now.

     Another thing about swimming is that everything can come down to a matter of hundredths of seconds. You wait five hours for Susie to compete in the 100 yard freestyle then spend two hours trying to cheer her up on the car ride back from New Hampshire when her time is 1 minute, 10.04 seconds and her personal best time ever is 1 minute, 10.01 seconds. It doesn't matter that she earned her best time last week. She wants to be better and she wants to be better right now.

     Swimming tops the spectator-friendliness list because it fosters patience and perseverance, encourages children to learn to entertain themselves for hours on end (during laps every day at practice), and allows viewers to see the entirety of every race and generally be sure of the outcome -- who came in first is rarely in doubt. The fact that said race takes somewhere between 27 seconds and 7 minutes of the 8+ hours you're spending on hard bleachers, fully dressed, in a glorified steam room is not enough to move swimming down from its place of pride.

2. Rugby

     Rugby, like swimming, is conducive to viewing in that spectators can see the whole field at any given time. Some parts of the field may be a bit harder to see than others -- imagine watching football from the sidelines rather than the stands -- but it's overall visible. Rugby can sometimes take place on sunny days, which is nice for fans. Rugby can sometimes take place on rainy days, which is not as nice. That said, the weather is not one of the top two factors in spectator-unfriendliness.

     Factor 1: It's often unclear what is happening in the game. This stems in part from the fact that rugby rules can be a mystery even to veteran players and said rules stipulate that play may continue for long periods of time after a rule violation before the referee calls a penalty ("playing the advantage"). It stems in part from the fact that much of rugby involves eighteen people crowded around a ball while twelve more hang back staring at them and waiting intently to get said ball. When they do finally get the ball, they will pass it among themselves for five seconds, get it far away from the large group, and get tackled. This makes the eighteen people curse the twelve for making them run so far when they're already tired. Repeat for eighty minutes. Good luck recognizing your child in the various people-piles that accumulate throughout the game.

     Factor 2: Sometimes rugby players get injured. Gymnasts rack up far more injuries and cheerleaders top the list, soccer players have their ACL tears, but ruggers get such an array of injuries that the spectating experience can be nerve-wracking for parents. Will it be a concussion, a black eye, a sprained ankle? Some days there are no injuries, others a few.
     To illustrate the above factors, let me provide a brief example: Some friends and I recently attended a rugby game in which a friend was playing. We arrived about ten minutes after the start and subsequently had no idea what the score was for the entirety of the game. We had been watching the happily injury-free game for about seventy minutes when our friend got the ball again and ran sixty yards on a breakaway. As she was touching the ball down to score, three opponents caught up to her. She was tackled into the ground, whoever tackled her lacked proper form, and she ended up with a broken jaw. We spent the next six hours with her in the emergency room. She was happy to learn, while there, that her team had won the game. None of us had known the score.
     Though my only rugby injury in four years was a sprained ankle, rugby is not the most spectator-friendly sport for parents. That said, it's still second on the list as it allows for actual spectating.

Coming in part 2: Two sports in which you may never see your athlete compete.