Lessons learned from a big, hot mess

All the stuff I got from the Boogie Marathon

Readers may have noticed that it has been two weeks since the Boogie Night marathon that I ran and there hasn't been nary a post from me. Normally I would have posted earlier, but as the title of this post implies, things did not go well. To be honest, it has taken me almost this long to process things in my mind and get myself back into the running groove (I actually started the draft of this in the middle of last week, so about 10 days). Now I'm trying to identify what positives I can from the experience along with any lessons learned.

Before getting into what I gleaned from this latest running adventure, let me go over how things panned out. First things first - the official time was 4 hours 50 minutes 50 seconds, making it the slowest of the three marathons I have run. As you may recall from my last post before the race, I was worried about the impact of the heat, the impact of the course having more hills than I anticipated, and my own assessment of where I was with regard to long runs (tending to fade badly after about 15 miles). All of these concerns turned out to be on point (I wish I wasn't right).

Marathon training plan #3 complete

Graph of average pace during my Boogie Nights Marathon training plan

Almost immediately after my last marathon was completed, the Blue Ridge Marathon, back in April I jumped right into a new training plan for the Boogie Marathon. Seven weeks later I have completed that training plan and tomorrow I will be running the marathon. This training plan was different from the other two I completed in that I had an abbreviated schedule to work with. Instead of at least 16 weeks in between events to prepare, I only had seven weeks. That meant a lot of work to customize a training plan and I had to compress stuff, like the taper period, to make it all fit. On the flip side, I expected I should still be in pretty good shape after coming off two marathons and around 35 or more straight weeks of training. So it is time to look back and see how things went.

Quick Product Review: GU Energy Flask and big bags of gel

GU Energy Flask with a couple 15-serving pouches

One of the things I learned last year while growing in this running hobby (lifestyle?) was all about fueling myself during long runs. As I delved into how to complete runs that lasted well over an hour I was introduced to a variety of quick to ingest "foods" that were meant specifically to help runners. Since then, I have pretty much settled on using GU Energy Gels for fuel during long runs (although the oranges that were available at one aide station during the Rocket City Marathon were absolutely delicious and hit the spot). I imagine there are a lot of other people out there using GU gels and they seem to be popular with race organizers who provide the packets at aid stations.

As I am prepping for an upcoming marathon, I recently found myself running low once again on gel packets. In the past, I've ordered boxes of the packets direct from GU. This time around though I decided to try something a little bit different as GU has introduced new 15-serving pouches of their gel. These do require something to hold a smaller amount while running though (I suppose one could carry a whole 15-serving bag) and for that, they have a new GU Energy Flask. After receiving them last week, I did give them a try during my final long run this past Sunday (really it was too short for fuel to be used at only 10.0 miles, but I did not want the marathon to be the first time I used the new flask). Read on for my thoughts.

Carbs...ugghhh

For the past month, I've been trying to stick to a low carb, high protein diet. This was in response to two things. After hitting my goal weight last fall, I've pretty much been in maintenance mode. I tried a little bit during the winter and early spring months to lose a little more weight but didn't really get anywhere since I was also eating for my Blue Ridge Marathon training. With the marathon out of the way, I felt I could be a little more aggressive with dieting. I also noticed, especially during April, that even though I was staying within an acceptable range of my goal weight (basically goal +5 lbs), my weight was always at or above that goal and I'd rather be bouncing both above and below the goal. The other goal though is to get my body fat percentage down a little bit lower than where it is. Which means trying to get my body to burn more fat.

Everything seems so compressed

As I have alluded to in a couple previous posts, I have resumed my marathon training post-Blue Ridge Marathon. This round is a bit different from previous training plans though. The reason is because the next marathon I plan to run is the Bethel Hill Moonlight Boogie Marathon on June 10th. That is only seven weeks after the Blue Ridge Marathon, meaning I have a short turnaround time. I decided to give this a try because running marathons in such close time will be a new challenge for me and this was about the closest I could find to something I could fit into my schedule.

In the past, for all of my running events, I have used full 16-week training plans. That includes last year's half marathon, the Rocket City Marathon, and the Blue Ridge Marathon. In addition to the full training plans, I also had some time after each race before the next training plan started during which I was just trying to maintain. With only 7 weeks between events, I am having to modify the training plan to fit in the time available and I had to pretty much jump right back into training right away.

Mental focus and the big picture

Yesterday when I weighed myself I discovered I had gained 3.5 lbs. This was on the day following a new low weight for me and despite eating essentially the same thing I eat every day for the past 2 weeks and total calories for the day being well below maintenance levels. I pretty much have to figure this is all water weight (or the low from the previous day was due to some dehydration) and my body trying to compensate for possibly being dehydrated and slightly undernourished the day before.

It is in these situations where dieting gets to be a real challenge. Despite what appears to be a setback, I have to mentally tell myself to stick to the plan and let it work. One way to do that is to look to the ongoing trend and where it is heading. In my case it is still downward overall. Even with this apparent setback, I'm still down from just a couple weeks ago when I started my latest weight loss efforts.

Highs and lows in a single week

The draft of this post has been sitting in the queue for a few days and before I get too far behind, figured I better just push it on out whether ready or not.

Last week was technically a recovery week for me after completing the Blue Ridge Marathon on April 22nd. In the past, I always took a good week for recovery including 4-5 days of no running. However, I have plans to run another marathon in June with only seven weeks separating it from the BRM. Which means I have an unusually short training window. This will be my first time running an event with less than the full time available for a regular training regimen. So even though it was a recovery week, I could not back off too much as I need to start building back up fairly quickly. Look for an outline/discussion on the training plan I put together (maybe sometime this weekend).