This Labour Day weekend, I’ll be in Toronto for a wedding, a bar mitzvah and, possibly, a 32K run. On Sunday, it will be four weeks until race weekend – the ideal time to peak in mileage during this marathon training schedule. However, knowing our busy family schedule, I had ruled out the possibility of a monster run this weekend.
Then I started thinking, “Why not?”
On Saturday night, we’ll be staying at my parents place in Pickering, Ontario, which is a suburb of Toronto. They live right near a waterfront trail which stretches along LakeOntario for miles. As a result, it will be easy to map out a 32K route – just run 16K along the lakeshore, then turn around and come back.
My kind, supportive family has agreed to help out. My kids and their grandparents will meet me at the half-way point with water refills. And I’m hoping I might be able to talk my sister into biking part of the route with me, just to keep me company. The Runner I Married will join the water station crew after squeezing in his run.
My only worry about this whole endeavour (other than the bit where I run 20 miles) is how I’ll feel for the rest of the day. I am wearing a pair of grey patent-leather gladiator-style sandals with a higher-than-usual heel to the wedding. I *heart* these shoes. They are so sexy, which is not – don’t be shocked – my usual look. The heels are about 3 inches and it will probably kill me to wear them. But I will leave a damned-fine looking corpse.
Since I started training for the marathon last May, it’s safe to say that things have gone from bad to worse. My pace has been slower for each run, and even more significantly, I’ve been feeling just terrible. That’s pretty discouraging, considering that I’m supposedly trying to improve my marathon finish time by a whopping 36 minutes.
Then -- lucky me! – I discovered that I have low iron. Why lucky? Because it’s an easy fix. I can take pills to make me faster without having to lie to Congress or anyone else. How cool is that?
And I am, finally, getting faster. It’s been easy to track my improvement over my last three long runs:
Three Sundays ago: I had taken the preceding week off from running because I figured that over-training was my problem. I started out on my 26K run with the very modest ambition of not logging RWOS #4.Mission accomplished. But it wasn’t pretty.
Average pace per kilometre: 6:30 minutes (i.e. it took me an average of 6 minutes and 30 seconds to complete each kilometre).
How I felt: Like hell.
Two Sundays ago: I started iron supplements and reduced my mileage, planning a long run of between 12 and 15 kilometres. It felt weird to run so little just when I should be working my way up to the longest runs in my training schedule – but it felt sensible, too. And it worked. For the first time in weeks, I felt like I could actually moderate my pace throughout the run. I was even able to speed up a little at the end.
Average pace: 6:15 min/km.
How I felt: Like hell. Again.
Last Sunday: Following coach Barb’s instructions, I headed out for a 20K run, with instructions to shorten it to 18K, if I didn’t feel well. My aim was to see if I could comfortably maintain last week’s 6:15 pace. When I clocked the first three kilometres at around 5:50 min/km, I thought I was going too fast. But I simply couldn’t slow down. I was having an incredible run, and after 15 kilometres, still maintaining that pace with little trouble. I wasn’t just feeling a bit better – I felt fantastic.
Average pace: 5:48 min/km.
How I felt: Heavenly.
I can’t wait until next week. I’m trying to temper my expectations and get ready for some potential set backs as I quickly ramp up my miles. On the other hand, I’m feeling more hopeful about my capabilities than I have in ages.
Here’s the adjusted long run schedule I’m considering, heading in to the last few weeks before the marathon:
Imagine you decide to bake a cake. You’ve picked the right recipe, cleaned the kitchen, carved out some time from your busy schedule, found the baking pans, bought the ingredients and mixed them up. As you put it in the perfectly-preheated oven you think: this is going to be amazing. Then 20 minutes later, the power fails.
That’s how it feels to me when I end up walking it in after a long run. It feels like a waste of effort – like I’m stuck with a half-baked cake. I sometimes loathe the thought of heading out the door for a run, but I absolutely hate starting a run and not being able to finish. It’s incredibly frustrating.
In fact, on my last failed long run, I felt my eyes welling up with tears as I walked it in. I was so tired and discouraged. I felt like a failure. Then I felt silly. Because running is a hobby, done for fitness and fun. It’s nothing to cry about.
And that got me thinking about the scene in “A League of Their Own” where Tom Hanks, playing the manager of a women’s baseball team, tells one of the players, “There’s no crying in baseball!” Which started me laughing. Which made me look like a crazy person. So basically, everything was back to normal.
You can read a lot of books, it don’t make you smart.
Kiss a lot of fools, don’t mean you’ve got a heart.
Walk a million miles, don’t mean that you’ve travelled.
You can make a perfect plan and see it all
Unravel.
-- Lynn Miles
I think it all started the week I gave blood. Up until that point, I was feeling pretty good about my running routine. I was sticking to my schedule, even sneaking in a couple of extra runs, and seeing results in my speed sessions at the track.
The evening after my blood donation, I ran into my coach at a group run at our local running store. I told her it had been several hours since I’d given blood, and that I didn’t expect to feel any ill effects. “Hmmm,” she said, “It can take weeks to recover after you’ve donated blood. You may see an impact in your performance.” But I was skeptical. After all, this was my 33rd donation, and I’d never seen any impact on my running performance in the past. The running gods heard my hubris … and they laughed.
At first, it seemed I was right. I felt okay for a few days and a couple of short runs. Then it all went to hell in a hand basket. I did my first Runner’s Walk of Shame (RWOS) in Montrealon a 22K outing. And since then, I’ve done so many RWOS’s that yes, I need the acronym.
Basically, I’ve felt awful on every run – tired, slow, out of breath and a little nauseous. Two weeks ago, I ran in a 5K race and clocked a time over a minute slower than my previous 5K only a month earlier.* The next day, out on a 24K long run, I found myself clutching a traffic light pole and wondering if I was going to pass out. I eked out 22K and ended up logging RWOS #2.
By now, you’re probably starting to put two and two together and figure out where this is headed. Me? I’m a little slower on the uptake. I figured it was a combination of heat and overtraining and decide to take a little time off. That helped a little. I managed to run 26K the following week, albeit at a very slow pace. No RWOS that day, although I logged #3 just two days later, after running hills.
As luck would have it, my annual physical was this week. I felt pretty silly saying, “Doctor, I can’t run 25K without getting tired”. But I have to hand it to my family physician – she took my concerns seriously. As soon as she mentioned iron levels, it all fell into place. Of course! Blood tests confirmed that my levels are low, and now I’m taking 300 mg a day until my sluggish blood perks up a bit.
It’s great to know why I’ve been feeling so draggy, to know it’s an easy fix and that relief is on the horizon. On the other hand, I’m worried about what this does to my marathon training schedule. Just when I should be peaking in my mileage, I need to cut back. My coach Barb recommends sticking to my regular speed/hill runs but significantly decreasing mileage on long runs for a couple of weeks. Much as the reluctant runner side of me loveshaving an excuse to run less, the terrified runner in me dreads the leap from 15K to 32K a couple of weeks from now.
Has anyone else struggled with low iron levels? How long did it take before you started feeling back to normal?
* Though I ended up second in my age category. Top three is a new experience for me. Small “woohoo”, tempered by the fact that I would have been first if I’d run my 5K time from a month earlier. Much as I hate to do it, I’ll record my race results here, so I remember them later:
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