A recipe for wheezing

Combine 75 degree weather with 76% humidity and a 3 mile run.  Add in the fact that I forgot to take my allergy medicine last night and therefore only took it a few minutes before my run.  What do you get?  Wheezing after the first half mile!  At least I could semi-control the speed and depth of my breathing through the end of the run which is much better than last Wednesday.

Official first day of training...

Mostly still asleep, I hear something that sounds like the alarm going off.  Then it stops with me still basically asleep.  Bennett hit snooze, reset it, or turned it off.  I have no idea.  A minute later some internal sense pulls my body out of sleep.  I turn to Bennett and ask, “Did the alarm actually go off or was I dreaming?”  But no, it is 5:30am and the alarm did indeed go off.  I must have felt the pull of my official training schedule telling me “wake up you lazy slacker!”

Today is the first day of official marathon training!  This first week of training isn’t really any different from how I’ve been running over the past month, but I know the mileage will start adding up soon.  For those of you who are interested, I’m using Hal Higdon’s Novice 1 training schedule with a few modifications.  Since I know my knees do not usually like running three days in a row, I’m rearranging the week day runs to split up the three days in a row of running.  As a result, I am also moving around one of the rest days and the cross training day.  I’m also including lifting and yoga.  Hopefully my modified schedule will work well!  I have the whole schedule entered in an excel spreadsheet with space for comments and everything!

This morning’s run was a great kick off run!  I opted for running on the treadmill to do some hill work.  Although my training plan doesn’t designate specific hill work runs, I am going to include them.  MCM has hills at the beginning and the end!  So, I better be able to run some hills without exhausting myself.  I ran two out of my three miles this morning uphill with varying degrees of incline, something I would have not been able to do a month or so ago when I first started introducing hills into my runs!

The running experiment…

This morning’s run was great!  We ran on the canal trail; one of my favorites.  Six miles of meditative beautiful running…

We tried out several new running items today.  Bennett tried his 4 bottle fuel belt which is definitely a must for the summer!  Bennett also got an arm band for the IPhone so we can track our mileage and pace since we don’t have a Garmin GPS watch.  That worked well.  We also tried Nuun electrolyte tablets, strawberry lemonade flavor.  I have mixed feelings about them.  The flavor was stronger than I was hoping, and wasn’t my favorite taste, but it was still better then drinking lots of the fake sugars in Gatorade.  I think I can tolerate them since electrolytes are necessary, but we will try some other flavors.  The last new thing of the day was as caffeinated Cliff Shot Block.  I can’t tell if the Caffeine helped or not because it was less humid then Wednesdays evil wheezing run, but I do not like the cherry flavor.  I will have to try caffeine in another form and on a more humid day. 

Humidity I hate you!

It’s 5:30am when the alarm goes off.  I am determined to drag myself out of bed this morning after failing to do so yesterday (and several failed days over the past few weeks).  So, I get up and force myself to get ready for a run.  Prerun snack of fig newton’s and water (check)…bathroom (check)…running clothes (check)…feed animals to give food a head start in digesting (check)…running tether so Bennett can run guide (check)…  By 5:40am Bennett and I are heading out the door.  Even though it’s early, its 74 degrees and very humid.  The humidity makes the early morning air feel oppressive as we start our run.  It seems wrong to have to run in the humidity even when we got up early for our run.

The first few blocks of a morning run my legs are still trying to wake up.  I have to keep telling myself that I will hit my running stride and the run will start to feel good.  This morning my legs hit that point somewhere around Lincoln Park, but my lungs never did.  The humidity never agrees with me, but the degree to which it disagrees with me varies.  Today my lungs and the humidity did not get along.  Rather than the early morning run becoming a meditative time with the city only half awake, it was a time to focus on breathing…willing my lungs not to wheeze.  The last half mile of our three mile run I could feel my lungs losing the battle.  This is such a frustrating experience because I know I can run further and faster than I did this morning.  And its runs like these that make me think I am crazy to expect my body to get through so many long runs during the summer.

As a child, I had exercise and illness induced asthma.  Basically I grew out of it, and for the most part forgot about it.  When I started trying to run, and my lungs suddenly had to process oxygen much faster, I struggled with breathing easily (but don’t we all when we push our fitness level?).  Once I mastered a basic level of running fitness, my lungs only freak out in the extreme cold, humidity, and the rare times I have allergy problems.

I know my body handles weather changes much better than it did two years ago when I started running.  I also know that the more I struggle through these humid runs, the better my body will handle them.  I know everyone has bad running days; that’s part of training.  Sometimes though, you have to hate those people who are out there, running along, lungs functioning perfectly…while I wheeze along, lungs delivering suboptimal levels of oxygen to my poor muscles.  Magically, within a few minutes of finishing my run, my lungs decide to work again…oh how I hate humidity! 

Yoga adventures...

Today we had our last private yoga session, and I’m sad that my individual yoga attention has come to an end.  The individual instruction has helped with my yoga understanding even more than I expected.  It was more than worth the money.  I wish we could have unlimited funds and that I could have weekly private yoga instruction.  I have learned more in the past three sessions than I have in all the past yoga classes I have attended.  Even Bennett has learned to enjoy yoga :)

This adventure into a new type of yoga has taught me a lot.  Previously I had only done Vinyasa yoga, thinking that the constant movement would be more of a challenge and be more fun.  I thought that different types of Hatha yoga would be less physically and mentally engaging, but I was very wrong.  I’ve found I really enjoy the close attention to alignment that Anusara yoga provides.  It can be just as challenging as Vinyasa, more challenging sometimes.  In fact, I found that I had been cheating on certain poses without even knowing it…not using the right muscles because I could make it look right, and after-all we weren’t in that pose for very long. ;)

The close attention to alignment and awareness found in Anusara yoga has been somewhat of an epiphany for me, both in how yoga should be practiced and also in how my own body moves and responds to its own movement.  I am starting to really understand what proper alignment is.  It has really gotten me excited to continue in my yoga practice as both a compliment to my running but also for its own sake.

Heat, humidity, and electrolytes...

So for basically the whole month of June I have been avoiding the heat and humidity and running on our treadmill.  This has been partially to get in some speed and hill work and partially out of laziness.  Avoiding the summer weather, however, could not happen forever so this weekend I decided Bennett and I needed to venture back out in to summer running conditions.  We set out on Saturday for our first run with the running club that I will be training with for the marathon.  Everyone that met for the Saturday run was really nice and chill, with a range of runners both faster and slower than me.  This was exactly the kind of group I was looking for so that made me very happy.

So we set out on our run, me with my two bottle pink fuel belt and Bennett with his little hand held water bottle.  The temperature was in the low 70s and very humid.  We were aiming for an hour run of about 6 miles. 

Well this run showed me some good improvements in my fitness.  Normally with that level of humidity I would be wheezing from early on in the run.  However, my lungs held up pretty well.  I’m really hoping that’s a good sign for the future and not a lucky fluke.  This run, however, reminded both Bennett and me that electrolytes are a must for the summer.  Bennett especially suffered since he’s such a salty sweater…in fact, I thought I almost killed him… 

Luckily we were already planning on some premarathon training running purchases.  The running stores made a nice bit of money on us this weekend…new shoes, new summer running clothes, electrolyte tablets, cliff shot blocks, and new four bottle fuel belts!  Even with 4 bottles I don’t know if that will be enough come August and September when the runs get really long…  I’m hoping I like these electrolyte tablets since I am not a big fan of Gatorade.  And really, I’d be lost without the cliff shot blocks which I love!  Plus, I get to have multiple pairs of running shoes with marathon training!   I got a new pair of Nike Vomeros and I tried to get my Asics Nimbuses but no one wanted to have them in my size; it was very sad.  I will have to get them in a few weeks.  And yes, I realize only running dorks care what kind of shoes I’m wearing…

Running, yoga, and the need for cupcakes...

Yesterday taught me a good lesson; walking around all afternoon and evening is not a good idea after a morning’s hard work out.  I think this lesson will become more and more important as training picks up intensity.  Normally I think nothing of spending the afternoon and evening walking around DC.  Walking is not exercise for me; it’s a fact of life/a normal activity.  I needed to buy a dress for my friend’s wedding, and after failing at finding anything in Pentagon City last weekend, walking all over Georgetown was a necessity.  Then of course after that dinner and dessert (cupcakes in Columbia Heights had to happen).  This would normally be no problem except for how much I had punished my legs that morning…

A six mile post breakfast Saturday run is nothing new.  I have done it many times in the past, and more recently, that has been the distance of my Saturday long runs for the past few weeks.  So, no big deal.  I thought it would be a great idea to challenge myself and run the second half faster than the first half.  This lead to a much more challenging run than I had planned.  Also, not a big deal except Bennett and I had a yoga class to go to yesterday. 

Partially as a treat for being done with school for forever, and because I’ve always wanted to, Bennett and I are doing a few private yoga sessions.  Even though I’ve done yoga in the past, I really think this will help strengthen my yoga foundation before starting in a larger class.  So our class (which was awesome!) focused on legs and hips.  For a runner this is great, and our instructor did an excellent job of working us very hard.  I definitely walked out of the yoga studio with legs that were…well…tired…

So after hours of failed dress shopping (and walking) in Georgetown, I had a truly yummy dinner in DuPont, and then we headed to Columbia Heights for some yummy cupcakes.  Oh and have I mentioned my tendency to walk up metro escalators all the time?  After eating my chocolate raspberry cupcake, I stood up and noticed that my legs were shaking… Yes shaking.  Apparently I had truly maxed them out for the day and I still had the walk home from the metro to manage.  So, Note to self:  running plus yoga plus walking around the rest of the day is not a good idea!

Waiting is the hardest...

In February I registered for the Marine Corps Marathon (MCM), my first marathon, and in the months since then, I have been nervously, excitedly, and impatiently waiting for training to start in the end of June.  Wednesday, however, I signed up for my running charity, Run to Remember, which raises money for the National Hospice Foundation and hospice care.  So even though my official 18 week training schedule will not begin till the last week in June, I have decided that marathon training season has started!  I hope this blog will give me an outlet for the highs and lows of training; help hold me accountable; and let my friends and family follow my training.

The idea of running a marathon has been floating around in the back of my head ever since I started running, but I don’t think I actually ever thought I’d be brave enough to take on the challenge.  This January, however, something just clicked and I wanted this year to be the year to try it!

For me, signing up for a marathon is not as simple as deciding I want to run one.  To run outside, I need a running partner to guide me (too bad guide dogs can’t guide while running, right?).  This means finding someone who wants to train with me and run the same race as me at my speed.  Although some runs can, and will, be run on a treadmill, the bulk of training needs to be outside.  I had no friends that were able or interested in training for a marathon.  In spite of my best efforts, I could not convince my husband that he wanted to run a marathon, although he happily offered to drive me to long runs and run during the week with me.  So I turned to the local running clubs for a long run and race day running partner.  I was very happy with the responses I got to the emails I sent out, and surprisingly, I actually had quite a few choices of who to run with.  This is especially great since I am not a particularly fast runner.  Having never run with someone I am not very comfortable with, this will be one more part of the challenge of the experience. 

The next months between now and October 30 are going to be about challenge, dedication, and personal growth.  Running a marathon isn’t just about the physical demands of running 26.2 miles.  It’s about having the dedication to stick with an intense running schedule over 18 weeks.  It’s about making sure I make smart nutrition choices so as not to undermine my running efforts.  It's about trusting that I can train my body to this high level of athletic achievement. It’s trusting in someone who at the moment I’ve never met to guide me through weeks of long runs leading up to navigating a race field of 30,000.  The months between now and October 30 are going to be about putting all of my physical and mental effort into a goal that has become very important to me.