More weather

Thought I'd throw another weather update out this morning. It's still early and the variance in different forecasts shows the weather people still aren't real sure what it's going to do Sunday. Depending on what forecast you look at, they have the low ranging from the low 50's to the low 60's. And the highs ranging from the low 60's to the upper 60's. All those temperature ranges wouldn't be too bad, although I hope the low in the lower 50's is the accurate prediction. The rain chances are of much more interest IMO. They are all saying chances of scattered thunderstorms and giving chances ranging between 30 and 40%.

Here's Sunday's forecast from the Weather Channel's website.

Weather Channel...hoping for a lower low temp.

They're tending toward lower rain chances but warmer temps. And here's KOCO tv's forecast.

KOCO channel 5...nice low, but don't like the rain chances.

So, I think it's still anyone's guess as to what we'll end up with Sunday morning. At least it doesn't look like it's going to be like it is today. Warm morning and a high around 90!

Weather

I know it's pretty useless to watch the weather much until a day or two before the race (last year they were unsure about rain until the morning of the marathon), but I can't help keeping an eye on the extended forecasts. Right now, the local weather people are predicting a warm week but cooling off some and chances of rain toward the weekend. Channel 5's extended forecast sounded pretty good this morning. A low of 50 and a high of 68 Sunday. But also a 30% chance of rain. I sure don't want a repeat of last year, but if those temps end up being accurate and it doesn't get rainy, you couldn't ask for much better weather this time of year in Oklahoma.

Countdown....1 week

The marathon is one week away.  I'm pretty excited about it this year compared to last year when I had much more trepidation.  Last year was my first big race at such a long distance.  I did the half marathon but really felt like I finished poorly.  My legs gave out on me starting after mile 10 so the last 3 miles were a chore.  I feel like I've trained much better this year from the standpoint of getting longer training runs in.  Last year I only went 9 or 10 miles in my training and only did that a few times.  This year I've done better about completing long runs in my training.  I have routinely run 8 and 9 miles during the week and often was able to get in a 13 or 14 mile run on the weekend.  I don't think I'll have a problem with my legs giving out on me like they did last year.

Yesterday (Saturday) I met Rendon at the Chesapeake boathouse for a 13 mile training run.  This will be Rendon's first long distance race as he just started running this year.  He and I ran in an 8K race in February so he could experience a race environment but this is stepping up quite a bit.  He has put in at least a couple of long training runs of 13 miles or so but I'm not sure exactly how many he's done.  I know I've been running more than he has but then I'm much older so I need the training worse.

Anyway, we met at the Chesapeake boathouse at 7 am on Saturday.  The weather was ideal for running.  There was hardly any wind at all and the temperature was about 49 or 50 when we started.  We headed west on the north side of the river.  I really enjoy running along the river as it is scenic, you don't have to worry about cars, and you also get to see other runners which always inspires me.  Rendon started out very strong so I let him lead out.  He was probably running at about an 8:40 p/mile pace which is a little faster than I usually start out so I lagged behind a little bit.  Rendon ran strong for 5 miles and then started to slow down a bit.  I finally caught him a little after passing May avenue.  At Portland avenue we crossed over the river and ran on the south side.  We continued west almost to Meridian where the trail ends and you have to turn around.  It had been about 7 miles so we walked while I ate my GU pack.  Rendon had already eaten his.  He had vanilla bean and I had chocolate.  I liked the chocolate and Rendon said the vanilla bean was also pretty tasty.  We probably walked for about a minute to a minute and a half and then resumed our run.  My legs felt strong and I just seemed to be in a good groove so I continued on at about an 8:40 pace which is where Rendon started us at the beginning.  We saw some rowers on the river including the OU women's team.  They were also having some Olympic tryouts this weekend for kayaking so there were some others out there too.  We ran back east on the south side of the river until we got to Robinson and then crossed over back to the north side.  There's a small water fountain in a park by the cross over so I stopped and got some water.  Rendon did the same thing when he crossed over.  DG Productions sponsors several races around the city for runners and they were holding an event for victims of sexual abuse (green ribbon).  As I was coming down the final 1/10th mile to the finish line the race started so I found myself running against the tide of runners starting their race.  I had to move off the path onto the grass in order not to collide with other people.  I guess I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Plus, it was at the beginning of their race so they hadn't really had a chance to disperse very much and were pretty tightly packed.  I finally gave up and stopped my running app with a hundred yards to go or so.  My GPS showed the run to be 13.84 miles.  When I got to the finish line I noticed the track continues around on the south side of the river so I think it's just one big loop.  If I had known that I could have not crossed over at Robinson and just run back to the finish line on the south side of the river and avoided all the traffic.  Lesson learned.  My time was 2:02:54 which felt really good.  I had stopped a few times to look around, guide Rendon since he didn't know the route, and feel I could have run even faster if it had been the race.  So I feel good about next week and I hope everyone else does too.

I know R Jay and Curtis are doing the full marathon so they've got a big test ahead of them.  Maybe I can run a full one at some point but I knew I wasn't ready after trying a 17 mile run back in late February or early March.  I'm excited to see everyone at the race.  I will miss Thais dearly but it makes me happy that we can run in the Memorial Marathon in memory of our sister.  It's neat that Leslie and Elfriede are going to run the 5K too.

Marathon movie

I had hoped to get some video shot last year and put together a little movie of our race at the Memorial Marathon. However, the bad weather kept that from happening. I'm really sorry we couldn't get that done, since that was our last opportunity to get one made with Thais.

I want to try again this year though. Lyndsey is going to try to shoot some video with my camera and we'll see what we can get. Maybe Sherry can shoot some too. Obviously we'd like to get as much video of our family participating as we can, but that will be a challenge with over 20,000 people running. But even some short snatches can be incorporated with other shots of the the event, so I'm optimistic that we can get enough to put something together.

If you have a digital camera, it almost certainly will shoot video. This is awfully late, but if any of you have a chance, it would be great to shoot a couple of short bits of you training. Just something like a shot of the road/trail where you're running and you coming into view then running by the camera. Or a shot of you running off into the distance. Any little bits like this could be used in a movie. Here's a real short example I shot w/my iPhone of Ross during one of our runs by the Oklahoma River.

If we can't get enough shot to make something worthwhile, I can save everything and then try to get some more the next time we're running together...here, or maybe SLC next year and combine it all into a single movie.

The Memorial Marathon is coming up fast.

The Memorial Marathon is less than two weeks away now. I ran my last "long" long run this just passed weekend. I had hoped to go over 20 miles this time (ran a 20-miler 3 weeks ago), hopefully 22 or 23, but ended up just doing 20.

As you know I've been dealing with a chronic ankle problem for over a year now. Usually it's just irritating but when my mileage really starts going up, it begins getting worse and starts making my foot hurt too. After the 20 miler three weeks ago, it was really sore for several days. The following weekend I thought I should cut back the long run quite a bit to ease up on the ankle. Ross and I ran the trails along Oklahoma River, just under thirteen and a half miles. My ankle and foot felt much better after that run than they had after my previous two long runs.

I had hoped to get a long run in while we were all in Salt Lake City last week, but couldn't find the 3 hour block of time I would have needed so I ended up going almost a week with no running at all. I decided that was a good thing/bad thing. It seems taking almost a week off did my ankle a lot of good. It's felt much better and on the two weekday runs I did last week it held up well. I ran fairly hard on those runs too. Of course the bad thing is that I'm running the full marathon and I really need to be getting all the miles in that I can, so a week off, three weeks before the event is not great timing. But considering with Saturday's long run, I've run 31 miles this past week and the ankle feels pretty good today, the time off was probably worth it.

I'm really glad that Curtis will be running the full marathon with me. I have a real tendency to start running too fast if I'm feeling good, and I'm hoping Curtis will be able to help me keep my pace down, especially early. On my long run Saturday, I kept the pace between 9:00 and 9:30 for the first 8 miles, but began picking up the pace at that point, running mile 9 in 8:42. I ran at the Oklahoma River and for the first 9 I ran out the north side of the river four and a half miles then back. So after the 9th mile I was at the car and stopped to drink some water and took a 5 or 6 minute break.

Then I took off for another 11 (or hopefully more) miles, crossing over the the south side of the river this time. I was still feeling good...I slowed my pace a bit, to around 8:50/mile, but still faster than I should be running for a marathon. I kept that pace through 13 miles. Finally on the 14th mile everything began to catch up with me. I began to quickly run out of energy and started increasing the frequency and length of my walking breaks. At the end of mile 16 I stopped and rested for 4 or 5 minutes then slogged on. The last 4 miles were really a grind. As I finished the 18th mile I began getting muscle spasms in my calves and would have to stop for a few moments before continuing.

Gray, warm, humid and windy. :P

When I arrived back at the Chesapeake Boathouse where I had parked, I was at 19.9 miles. As mentioned at the top of this post, I had intended to run over 20 miles...maybe 22 or 23, but I had nothing left now and decided 19.9 was all I was going to get that day. So this run was actually worse than my previous 20 mile run. I was definitely feeling discouraged and worried about going 6 more miles in two weeks.

But I'm telling myself I had a lot of things working against me Saturday. The weather was way less than ideal: it was a very warm morning. 72 degrees when I got up just after 5:30. The humidity was high and it was very windy, between 20 and 30 mph. On top of being warm and humid, since I was running by the river and didn't want to carry any water with me, I had to run a 9 mile stretch with nothing to drink, then an 11 mile stretch. I also forgot to bring any Gu with me which may have given me a boost at the halfway point. I can't control the weather we get on race day, but I can control my pace and fuel and fluid intake, so hopefully, better management of those factors will help me. And, in my experience, running with someone makes it easier to push thru when your body starts wanting you to give up.

Mile 18, running directly into the 20+ mph wind.

You're supposed to taper back your miles two or three weeks before your marathon. I'm not going to cut my weekday miles back much if at all since I really haven't been running as many miles during the week as I should be anyway. I will take it easy next weekend though. I'm planning on doing a 10 - 12 mile long run which really does feel pretty easy to me after the long runs I've been doing over the past couple of months.

I'm hoping we get lucky on the weather. A morning like today would be great...low 50s, sunshine and the high for the day only around 70. Really looking forward to seeing everyone again, under better circumstances than a week ago. I hope everyone else is ready!