Week 9 - 12
Week 13 - 16
Week 17 - Marathon
 

Week Five
"My achy-braky heart"


One day in week five, I nearly died. Back to that later.

What’s the result of the following mathematical formula?

Take 220, subtract your age, add 50% of your age, subtract twice your weight, then multiply it by the lesser of either the cost of your running shoes or money spent on bagels in the last month.

The result – an approximation, I believe – will determine one end of the heart’s training zone. The other is near another zone, twilight perhaps.

I’ve never doubted the importance of heart rate monitoring. Once, while studying phys.ed. in university, I was to attempt a complex gymnastics stunt. It may have been a forward roll, but the memory fades. Anyway, my body was contorted into an uncomfortable shape and my heart smacked against my chest. Was I about to suffer heart failure? This was before actually doing the stunt. It turns out the smacking sensation was the result of three spotters slapping my chest and cooing, "You can do this, Richard. You’re brutal, but you can do this."

Years later, I have finally learned a practical application for knowing where the carotid artery is. The same goes for all those other quaint terms I used struggle to remember, like lactic acid, maximum oxygen uptake, anaerobic threshold, and target heart rate.

At the Week Five clinic, we began hill runs and had to monitor our heart rates before and after each short sprint. My physiology trickled back so that I can now use all those words in one sentence.

"While trying to stay within my target heart rate zones and increase my anaerobic threshold, I aim to maximize oxygen uptake, stem the tide of lactic acid, that naughty by-product of muscle contraction, and grope my neck in search of a carotid artery which is pounding mercilessly."

To be sure, checking your heart rate while running is not easy. That’s probably why some in the group invested in heart monitors, though most seemed content with the neck grope. Fortunately, my heart was cooperating nicely by staying within the required range, as long as I didn’t try anything heroic. The heart, I recall from the physiology classes in which I stayed awake, is a remarkably adaptable and resilient organ.

I believed it when I was in my 20’s and the biggest stress on my heart was what shade of plaid bellbottoms would impress which girl.

Running hours on end hadn’t been mentioned.

I now monitor my heart rate on runs. It began the day after the clinic, during a 10k tempo run. I was facing traffic along the shoulder of a two-lane road with a double white line down its middle. I’d just done a heart check and it was behaving admirably. I reached for my water bottle and took a sip.

I was about to return the bottle to its holder when I felt from the rear a tremendous gush of wind that blew the bottle sideways.

A car, a blue Intrepid to be exact, had just blown by me on the wrong side of the road, in a no passing zone, at about twice the speed limit.

For an instant, I expected to be crushed which was ridiculous since the car was now long gone. In the next instant, I longed to be faster than a speeding bullet so I could catch the jerk and pummel him (her?) with…um…my water bottle.

Instead, I stopped. And groped my neck.

My heart had barely blipped. I smiled.

Week Six:
"Do I have any syndromes?"

The first time I heard the term PFS, our instructor, a chiropractor, used it in the middle of a sentence. He slurred past it to something else, but it left me wondering what the devil the connection was between marathon running and that, uh, female problem. It was only when he referred to it again while rubbing his knee that I clued in.

This past week, a massage therapist also mentioned PFS, then added ITB, poked around shin splints, prodded at tight hams, tickled plantar fasciitis, but smartly avoided achilles tendonitis. By the end, I was certain I needed a reservation at a chronic care facility very, very soon.

Injuries, they both maintained, are often a part of marathon running. This was something I hadn’t considered when I started. My conscious me knew from hockey experience that indeed athletes got hurt. Bodies slamming into boards and each other meant the inevitable. It never dawned on me that slamming my feet onto pavement a few thousand times each evening might produce anything other than discomfort.

Fortunately, I’m not yet injured, at least not in the narrow definition of it. The massage therapist asked a few questions and hands went up. I wasn’t sure.

Patellar-femoral syndrome? Yes, well no, well just a little when I descend stairs. Does that count?

Ilio-tibal band strain? Not really. If you don’t count when I try to change direction.

Shin splints? No. None. Definitely not…actually just once…one run, but it went away.

Tight hams? Not hams. Just one ham, the right one. Stubbornly so. I stretch and stretch and it eases a bit then comes back. Is that an injury or merely a recurring nuisance? There doesn’t seem to be a medical definition in sports for nuisance.

Plantar fasciitis? Haven’t had that. Besides, any word with so many of the same vowel is best ignored.

Achilles tendonitis? Injured no. Tight yes. Does that mean strained? Do I therefore have a syndrome?

He also touched on back problems, which could be related to hip problems or knee problems or ankle problems. I’ve had a sore lower back for some time, aggravated only by peculiar movements like skating with a hockey stick. Running doesn’t seem to have bothered it much. Still, I almost expect the sum of my training runs will lead to something worse. Like a new syndrome.

I’ll call it HABS – Hockey Aggravated Back Syndrome, ideal for the Montreal Canadiens fans.

One third through the training plan and I’ve had a whack of nuisances but little else more serious. Sometimes though it’s tough to get sympathy. I was taking the garbage down the stairs the other day, gingerly placing my right foot on each lower step knowing my PFS might act up.

For weeks, I’ve avoided anyone at home seeing me after a run, especially the long ones, when I might move more slowly and carefully.

I looked up. My wife was watching me. At that very moment, my right toes touched the stair. A pain shot up from my patella, traversed the sartorius, danced across the gracilis, bounced along the rectus femoris, and pinged into my vastus lateralis, all in about two seconds. My knee buckled slightly as the garbage bag swayed into the staircase opening and hovered over the dog’s head.

"I’m fine," I said with a wince.

"Uh-huh," she said. "Marathon, eh?"

"Look," I replied. "Everyone gets these things. It’s just a – a syndrome."

With that, I took out the garbage.
 

Week Seven:
"In search of the flat hill"

It was inevitable, I suppose.

Of all the people I’ve consulted about marathon preparation, not one was kind enough to inform me there’d be times I’d hate it, that some days the thought of running anywhere but to the bathroom would make me moan.

Perhaps once you’ve completed the marathon, the training’s daily details are lost in the excitement of having met a lofty goal. Marathoners said little about particular moments in the months before the event. They barely remember the long training runs and learning to energize the body with fluids or gels. The various types of short runs – tempos, intervals, fartlek etc. – have slithered into the nether regions of their memories, only occasionally and minimally retrieved in the form of passing glances back.

Except for hills. Everyone remembers those. But, like other components of the training, veteran marathoners don’t divulge to us rookies the true challenges. We are left to discover them on our own. In fact, even publishing this journal about hill training might be construed as a betrayal. You see, I am going to reveal why it is so easy to hate marathon training.

The consensus is hills are a necessity, something I’d long accepted for tobogganing. Evidently, marathoners need to build strength, and hill training is the way to do it. I’d been reading ahead in my program. Although the schedule said hills in week 7, it was always some distant ugliness.

Let’s get something straight right off. Hills are not fun. For one thing, they’re mostly up. I’ve searched and have been disappointed to learn there are no down hills which don’t require an up run at some point. Even an up walk is challenging.

My training hill is a 1.5 km long road that curves like a dog’s leg. It’s broken into chunks of about 400 m hill and 300 m flat, almost as if the road engineers pitied anyone who would dare cycle or run up the darn thing. The steepest part is at the top, about 200 m of a cliff-like grade which winter drivers recognize as a hazard. So do runners.

In bygone years when I prepped for 10 k races, mere child’s play now of course, that road was a weekly challenge. I like to think it helped my 10 k times. Then again, I might have achieved the same results if I’d just run up my rather steep front lawn’s hill 748 times, dragging the lawn mower for extra anaerobic punch.

I was supposed to achieve about 85% of my maximum heart rate running the hill intervals. After the first one, I was saddened to learn I’d peaked at 115%. This meant both good and bad news. The bad news was I would drop dead any second. The good news was I’d only have to do one hill.

By the last two intervals, my legs had doubled in weight. I pumped my arms, pretending to reach out with each stride as if grasping some invisible rope to pull me up. I could not smile. I could not drink from my water bottle. I could not see the faces of drivers zipping past me who must have been shaking their heads at the bewildering sight, as in, what the heck is that middle-aged guy thinking?

Once at the top, I sucked in a few deep breaths, checked my heart rate, peered about to ensure I was still vertical, then finally jogged home.

When I reached my driveway, I looked up at my house.

Stairs.

Good God, I thought. Is there no end to it?

 

Week Eight:
"Week 8 – Run for the money"

There has been one consistent theme of the marathon program. I am constantly buying "stuff." Most of it resembles food.

For instance, halfway through Sunday’s 23 k training run, my stomach gurgled. It wasn’t one of those loud wavy gurgles. Instead, this gurgle was more of a minor flutter. It happened a few times, too, enough to indicate my internal organs were looking for a way to get my attention.

"Feed me," they seemed to be saying in a weak impression of the man-eating plant in Little Shop of Horrors. "Feed me soon."

I’m told the body’s response to food during long runs carries perhaps a half hour delay for the energy molecules to find their way to the muscles. In other words, feeding my system at this point would provide a kick 5 k from now.

My problem was two-fold. One, I was becoming ravenously hungry. Two, there’s only so much stuff you can carry with you, short of running with a shopping cart.

Some weeks back, I’d begun experiments with energy foods. Neither I nor my body had yet reached any conclusions about which worked best so the experiments continued. Gels, bite-sized morsels of energy bars, diluted gatorade, full-bore gatorade, water, even organic fruit chews, a name which suggested something loftier than what they tasted like - jujubes for jocks.

The fortunate part about long runs in an Ottawa winter is that you have to wear a jacket and the jacket has a pouch. Between the pouch and my water belt and a tiny clip-on bottle, I thought I’d carried enough energy boosters to last a week. When the fluttering gurgles began, all I had to do was wait for the one-minute walk intervals during the 10-and-1’s, reach down and suck back the nutrients. By the end of the run, I was stiff-legged but less hungry.

To my shock, my bottles and pouch were empty. I tried to recall just how much I’d packed before the run. The clip-on bottle had contained two gel packs with water and the jacket pouch two more gel packs, a bag of fruit chews, and bits of bagels. It was all gone.

Worse, I was hungry again. In fact, when I began to stretch on the floor of the Running Room store, I felt the irresistible gravitational pull of the energy food display. It yanked me from my spot, shot me downstairs to grab my wallet, and dragged me back up where I promptly bought more "stuff" for the upcoming 26 k run.

Across the street from the store is a conveniently located bagel bakery. I’ve already been there three times in two months to stock up. I’m beginning to wonder if there’s collusion between the two businesses. As well, I’ve single-handedly doubled the value of Chiquita banana stock.

Soon, I’ll need new socks. My running cap is grimy and I have but one short-sleeve shirt left that can’t stand by itself. I’ve had my eye on a nifty 4-bottle belt. Within a couple of weeks, I’ll need new shoes.

The other day, I did a naughty thing. I estimated how much I’d spent after eight weeks on necessities like foods, clothing, and registration fees – without the new socks, belt or shoes. The total was well over $200. By the time of the marathon, it will likely triple.

I’m spending but I’m reaping great satisfaction from the experience, the runner’s equivalent to the business world’s cost-benefit analysis.

Besides, I’ve developed a taste for chocolate-flavoured gels.