Week 10
"Rest up. It’s time for a nap"

Week 11
"Guilt and the long distance runner"

Week 12
"The long and shorts of it"

Week 13 - 16
Week 17 - Marathon
 

Week 9
"Today’s weather may suck"

Al Sleet was comedian George Carlin’s "hippy-dippy weatherman from Wonderful WINO radio," a fellow with too much of something in his morning coffee. "Heyyy man," he’d intone with a noticeable slur, "the weather for tonight is dark. Continuing dark throughout the night with lighter periods by morning."

Like the inescapable reality of death and taxes, we marathon runners cannot avoid weather. I use "we" since I’m halfway through the training and figure I’ve earned something.

Ottawa’s January to April weather is often rotten. That’s not rotten in the sense of it being a little cool or a tad windy or a bit damp. I mean rotten as in bone-jarring cold, toque-lifting windy, and slushy damp.

Here, we slop through six seasons. Between summer and fall, just before the snow, is a period of moist chills I call the moist chill season. Then, as winter slithers into spring, we experience temperature fluctuations that can have us in shorts one day and three layers the next.

When the National Capital runner’s weekend was pushed back two weeks to May 30, there was uniform rejoicing. We would do less training in the January freeze and more on dry pavement. Everyone forgot the weeks in between stay much the same.

For instance, the morning after the first day of spring, we ran 26 k. I had a good night’s rest and ate well early in the morning. I felt great. It was only when I stepped outside I realized I was truly mad.

In the 10 metres between front door and car, a blustery wind punctuated with spikes of snow pellets bit into me. The gusts reached 50 km per hour. To put it in perspective, that’s about half of a hurricane force wind and certainly enough to warrant CNN disaster area coverage. Where there was no wind, the temperatures seemed to inch up as spring’s sun fought through the overcast. This created slush.

It’s the kind of cold, yucky slush that makes you dance over and around it, hoping you don’t immerse your $150 running shoes in a puddle. Turns out, no amount of hopping helped. My feet found a bunch of puddles that were camouflaged like wet mines beneath tiny mounds of snow.

My group, the 430’s, would trundle along through city streets chatting away until we’d hit an open spot like fields or the bridges over the Ottawa River. Suddenly, all talk stopped. We turned our faces away from the biting wind. Some covered exposed ears. Occasionally, each step felt like I was jogging uphill in deep sand. I could hear people’s laboured breathing. A few, myself included, groaned, as if searching for someone to blame it on. I recall one gust of wind shot by me as I was trying to take a swig from my water bottle. Most of the liquid splattered onto my jacket.

We all know better than to think the rest of our early spring runs will be without some sort of weather anomaly. At the end of that most horrible run, all the 430’s swore the experience had not just chilled and dampened us, it had toughened us.

Still, from now on, I may first consult an Indian weather rock my neighbour, a native Canadian, told me about.

It has four inscriptions: If white, snowing. If wet, raining. If hot, sunny. If gone, windy.

Isn’t that all a marathoner needs to know?
 

Week 10:
"Rest up. It’s time for a nap"

According to the particle theory, molecules in matter speed up as heat is applied to them. In the case of liquids, the more heat applied, the more the molecules move until eventually some escape and evaporate as a gas.

I’m almost certain that stuff is true because I taught grade 9 science one year and it was the only unit I fully understood myself.

Now, though, I’m not so sure. I ran for over 3 hours at the beginning of week 10. After the first hour, my molecules began to tire. The fatigue continued unabated for the duration of the run. It began in my ankles as the lower level, or steerage, molecules struggled to move fast enough to keep me vertical. As if in collusion, my knee joint molecules quickly joined in.

Each time the 430’s reached the one minute walk in the 10-and-1’s, I could sense a molecular revolution brewing in my joints. It didn’t matter what fuel I dumped into my body. Joint, muscle, and other sinew molecules were collectively slowing down.

This was in direct contravention of the particle theory and didn’t make sense. The thousands of footsteps should have kept my internal cell temperatures warm enough to toast a bagel and certainly warm enough for my wee atoms to continue their happy hopping.

After 29 k, they all stopped hopping. This was a good thing since it was also the end of the run. I guess molecules need to rest, too, since for the next two hours I received nasty internal signals to choose a horizontal position.

I wasn’t horizontal driving home, but it was close enough to confuse the molecules, which explains why rising out of the driver’s seat at home took a full three minutes. I sat in the kitchen icing my knees while eating half of what was in the refrigerator, grabbed the newspaper, and headed for the couch.

Horizontal at last. Between the ice and the lack of movement, the molecules chose the perfect time to revert to their original solid state. I slowly sunk into a deep slumber, as every molecule let out a soft ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

That night, eight hours after the run, I was still sleepy. Evidently the body’s muscle cells take enough of a beating during long marathon training runs that they prefer to share their misery with other cells. Like bones, eyelids, lips, even some biological functions. All told, my molecules were in a sorry state.

It wasn’t much better the next morning either. Less stiff, but still achy tired. A full day after the long run, molecules had rejuvenated to the point where they not so much hopped as tiptoed.

I’m now in tune with my body’s sounds, particularly the screaming and whining of fatigued molecules. I’m training them to increase their tolerance for Gatorade and gels, but I know they have a finite patience level. Soon after long runs, I need to be horizontal. In fact, I’d been doing a lot of sleeping in recent weeks as I tried to coerce my body into thinking it was more tired than it was. I’ve given in. That’s in, not up.

I always knew rest was part of training. I just never imagined sleep was such an integral part of resting. My molecules have more zip now and seem convinced they can sustain their hopping for longer periods. I hope they can, too, just so long as they don’t choose to go from their liquid state to the next one.

Gas.
 

Week 11:
"Guilt and the long distance runner"

Good intentions are inversely related to degrees of guilt. The greater my desire to adhere to the running program exactly as designed, the more I’ve felt like a colossal cheat when I’ve missed a day.

The guilt came crashing down on me at the beginning of week 11, the Sunday of a 19 k run. I’d spent the last couple of months helping two hockey teams in their playoff drives. Team A was advancing to a provincial championship weekend, Team B was in the midst of its final playoff series. Traipsing from game to game and rink to rink presented me with daunting scheduling changes. I’d vowed I would not, could not, miss my runs.

Of course, the short ones weren’t a problem. Those had been easy to squeeze in between arriving home from work and eating dinner before heading to a game.

But that 19 k Sunday run loomed like a dark cloud on the horizon, and the horizon was only days away.

What if I didn’t do the 19 k on Sunday morning? What would happen to my body’s progression to marathon wellness if I skipped a short Saturday run, did the 19 k on Saturday instead, and did nothing on Sunday? How would my body feel by hill day on Tuesday if I’d taken off both Sunday and Monday, rather than the usual just Monday? Most importantly, could I cope with the guilt?

As it turned out, my body and the hockey teams conspired against me. Here’s why I was miserable by Wednesday:

• Friday night: game with Team B ends at 10 pm. Drive 3 hours to tournament for Team A. Bed at 2 am.
• Saturday:wake up at 8:30 am, groggy and rubber-legged. Too late for early morning run before scouting 10 am semi-final. Body thanks me.
  Our semi-final goes to triple overtime and we lose. Game over at 4 pm. Return to quarters too depressed to run. Endomorphins want no part of a recuperation. Will run 19 k early Sunday.
• Sunday: Bronze medal game at 10 am. Not enough time to squeeze in the 19 k. Besides, weather is blustery, cold and damp. Too many excuses to figure out which one to eliminate. I opt to use them all.
  Home at 5 pm. Have not run since Thursday. Must be at rink at 7 pm for Team B’s next playoff game. No time to run. Legs are twitching. Rest of body remains convinced this is not the time. Grab some food and a nap instead. Home at 11 pm. Went entire weekend without a run. I keep it a secret.
• Monday: Normally a day off from running. Good time to stick to the schedule. I take Monday off. Have not run in four days.
• Tuesday: Race home from work, do the hills near my home rather than with the running club, eat, go to rink for another playoff game. Win championship, celebrate, home at 2 am
• Wednesday: Fatigued. Heart pings ‘cause it knows I’ve have lied to myself. Feel like I’ve crawled through a swamp. Legs okay though. No wonder. Return to routine. No apparent harsh side effects of having skipped the 19 k.

Sometimes, life pulls a nasty and gets in the way. Heck, at least I munched on power bars all weekend.

Week 12 will begin with a jaunty 29 k. I’m going to wear shorts and smile away the guilt.
 

Week 12:
"The long and shorts of it"

It’s probably true we never shake off miserable schoolday memories. One day early in my grade nine year, I jogged out to meet my phys. ed. classmates. I wore the standard issue white cotton shorts that were baggy enough to contain three of me.

A particularly annoying kid snapped, "What happened to you, chicken legs?" Amused by himself, he chuckled and scampered away.

Fortunately, a few days later – a Friday, I believe – I reached puberty and my scrawny legs sprouted teeny hairs. I may have had sad looking pins, but at least they were now a man’s. Anyway, chickens don’t have knees.

Since then, I’ve courageously coped with legs that never filled out shorts very well through decades of beach walks and summer lounging.

The up side of training in Ottawa has been how much of it was spent in non-shorts weather. With the marathon pushed back two weeks to May 30, the majority of my runs were spent in long layers.

In fact, I’ve frequently found myself with clothing conundrums. During winter’s darkest hours, I’d wear three layers on top, tights and occasionally a light shell over them to cut the bite from the cold winds. By March, the choices for long Sunday runs became more confounding.

Jacket + long sleeve shirt + tights? Jacket + short sleeve shirt + tights? Long sleeve + short sleeve + tights? Long sleeve + tights?

This was not to mention the choices between toque or cap and mittens versus gloves. I made the mistake of running barehanded when the temperature was slightly above zero Celsius. When I got home, I couldn’t manipulate the zipper on my jacket and had to pull it over my head.

A sidebar to the longer Sunday treks was that I became more chilled the longer we ran. I’d heard that at some marathons, blankets are thrown over people as they finish to retain body heat. We didn’t have that luxury at the end of a 23 or 29 k run so I’d chosen to keep my jacket on even as the temperature inched into the double digits. Meanwhile, other members of the 430’s peeled off a layer and ran in just shirts.

On the other hand, I did become the first in the group to attempt the Sunday run in shorts. Mind you, they were almost knee-length and not quite the normal summer wear. Part of this was practicality. It was now April, mild enough for my legs not to feel a chill. The other part was pre-marathon mental preparation. On May 30, I’d have to run in summer shorts. It would be the final layering down of clothing from what I’d started wearing in January.

A small part of me hoped, too, that all this road pounding might transform my pins into anatomically perfect masterpieces. Perhaps by the end of May I could be close enough to trying the slit-up-the-side shorts.

You know, the ones Ben Hur wore because he needed the leg freedom to row for his life at ramming speed on a Roman galley.

The ones I dare not even attempt to wear around my daughter who commented when she saw me in tights, "You’re not wearing those, are you?"

So then, the slit is out.