HALF MARATHON WRITE UP

BACKGROUND

This is the soundtrack of my life

As I wrote earlier in my strongman comp write-up, I’d been plagued by boredom and apathy during my most recent bout of training, and was losing the spark from strongman.  Somewhere in the midst of all of that I had the bright idea to run my first half-marathon.  My wife is a distance runner, having run something like 26 half marathons and 2 fulls, and having been around her during all this time, I had absorbed a lot of distance running through osmosis but never really participated.  Slowly, it worked its way into me, and eventually I found myself wanting to do a half marathon of my own.  In truth, the seed got planted about 2 years ago, when she ran a race in the middle of a snowstorm on a mountain in Montana, because, in truth, that looked awesome and something right up my alley, but logistics prevented me from being able to participate until this point.

And as I mentioned: I was still training for a strongman competition while also training for my half marathon.  I’m very good at making bad decisions.  But it also meant that my running training was pretty limited.  I settled on running twice a week on top of lifting 4 times a week and an events day 1 day a week.  This shook out to needing to have one 2 a day per week, which ended up being on my press day on Monday.  I’d run in the AM and lift right after lunch.  I’d then squat on Tues, Bench on Wed, do a long run on Thurs, day off on Friday, Deadlift on Sat and events on Sun.  This was, of course, on an ideal week.  Life occasionally gets in the way, such as working the night shift 3 weeks in a row at one point during the training.  I had a lot of time during the day to train, but since I wanted to walk my kid to school and pick them up, things got compromised.  In addition, I know I’m not the first strongman to run half marathons, and that there were most likely better plans out there, but I’m having more fun doing things the way I want to do them versus the “best” way to do them.

Of my 2 runs, I’d do a 6.55 mile run on Monday.  Math whizzes will note that this is half the distance of a half marathon, or a quarter marathon.  This initially started because I wanted to see if I could even do that, because there very well was a possibility I bit off more than I could chew.  Prior to starting this endeavor, the furthest I had run in about 10 years was 4.5 miles, and that was the week before I started the training process, going out with the Mrs on a day when we both had the day off.  It’s something that re-lit the spark to try for the half marathon.  About 17 years ago I was running 8 miles a day, every day, and in the summer I bumped it up to 16…but again, that was 17 years ago…and 50lbs ago. 

Bit of a difference

After the success of that 6.55 mile run, I wanted to see what I could really push for on distance.  I set my first long distance run for 8 miles: my previous max distance.  Having experienced success with that, I went to 9 the next week, then 10, then went back down to 8, as it was the week of my strongman competition and I did not want to go too stupidly far, and then back to 6.55 the week of the race.  I was told that, if I could run 10, I could finish the race, so I was going to put that theory to the test.

I picked a pace of 6.3 mph to start, which was a 9:30 mile.  I’ve run faster miles before (to include recently, during Murph, while wearing a weighted vest), but I needed a comfortable pace that would allow me to get in the miles without dying.  Each week, for the 6.55 mile run, I’d up the pace by .1 mph, while the distance runs remained 6.3.  In addition, I had the treadmill incline set to 1 until my very last run, at which point, I set it to 2.  My wife’s treadmill is naturally at an incline, so this meant I was running up a pretty decent incline in training.  And yes: aside from the initial 4.5 mile run and 1 run on a weekend, all of my training was on a treadmill.  With me missing 20% of my meniscus in my left knee, the treadmill cuts out a lot of pain. 

GOALS

Yeah that about sums it up

Lots of folks asked me if I had a time goal for this, and I did not.  My goals were simple: I wanted to never stop running, I wanted to take no water breaks, and I wanted to keep up with my wife the whole time.  This was ultimately a way to spend time together, and it did me no good if I couldn’t keep up.

RACE DAY

We all draw inspiration from somewhere...

15 days after taking 4^th out of 10 in a strongman competition while weighing in 15lbs under the weight limit, I stepped up to the starting line of my first half marathon, with my wife beside me.  It was a brisk 40 degrees and I made a spectacle of myself by being the only person in shorts and a t-shirt (technically an underarmor style compression shirt), but I would rather be cold at the start and breathe easy during the run than warm at the start and fading from heat during the run.  I stole a page from David Goggins playbook and wore a knit cap and some gloves, to keep my ears and fingers warm.  I also made sure to fuel up with a zero carb Rockstar, 2 poptarts and a quest bar.  You know: the good stuff.

My wife asked what I needed from her, and I laid it out that I needed her to keep pace.  I knew that my first instinct would be to sprint out the gate and then spend the whole race dying.  I don’t do well with other runners in front of me, and I always want to overtake them to get them out of my field of view.  She did awesome, as our first mile was a 9:40, and it felt very sustainable.  Apparently, we moved much faster after that first mile based off my wife’s watch.

My wife could tell I was having trouble finding my rhythm for about the first 2.5 miles, and was adjusting her speed to help me maintain my pacing.  She wasn’t wrong too: within the first 2 miles I was already wondering if I had made a mistake.  I felt very good physically, but the mental weight of having to run for so long was intimidating.  I’ve done a lot of hard workouts, but I’ve never flat out moved for 2 hours nonstop before.  Just a new kind of suck.

Rest assured: it can always be worse

Once mile 3 hit, I seemed to be in a better place.  The view was great, we were running by a lake, there was a nice breeze, and we were away from the crowd.  I was able to take in the sights and experience what I was experiencing.  I also could be more aware of how I was running.  The treadmill taught me how to lengthen my stride, and my wife kept giving me quick pointers, like keeping my head up on the uphill portions, letting gravity carry me on the downhill, keeping my arms loose, etc.  She was basically a quick reference running encyclopedia, and incredibly helpful for a first timer.

From here, it was a pretty enjoyable experience, at least as enjoyable as running can be.  I settled into a good groove of fast enough movement while still being sustainable as far as the heart and lungs go.  I had to contend with my right foot up to my knee going numb and then coming back constantly.   I imagine my shoes burned through their padding and my thudding stride wasn’t helping.  But even that was just a minor annoyance.  My wife and I seemed to be pacing off each other at this point, where sometimes I’d catch up to her and sometimes she’d catch up to me.  She’d grab water at the stations and drink it on the move and I’d slow down a touch so she had a chance to drink.

Once I hit the 10 mile mark, I had reached uncharted waters.  I had literally never run further than that in my life.  I said out loud “alright, almost there”, and my wife offered a sound that I’m pretty sure was laughing at my naivety.  She was right too, because it’s amazing how goddamn far those miles after the 10 mark are compared to the rest.  10 to 11 wasn’t awful, but 11 to 12 felt like forever.  I never experienced the infamous “wall”, but I definitely stopped having a good time at one point.  At the 12 mile point, I started grunting and growling a lot, trying to get the pain out of my body.  I was experiencing muscle cramps in my quads, which was a new one for me.  I’m sure my lack of water was at play there, but I made my choices.

We ended up crossing the finish line at 2:00:36.  I was honestly very impressed by that.  With the pacing I had set, I was anticipating a 2:10:00 finish, but somewhere along the line we had apparently picked up speed.  I never asked my wife how fast we were running because I didn’t want the mind-screw that came with it and I knew my stupid competitive side would come out at one point.  I just wanted to experience this run.  That said, I think we had a sub 2 in us that day if we set out with that goal.  A little frustrating in that we actually passed the 2 hour finish pacelead, but apparently he’s like one of those taxis with a “not in service” sign up, because he was apparently done pacing at the time we passed him.  But a minor inconvenience really.  We were ecstatic with the finish.

TAKEAWAYS AND LESSONS LEARNED

The big thing here is the value of General Physical Preparedness (GPP).  So many folks in lifting just plain don’t get what this is, but it’s your ability to perform when the need arises, irrespective of what that need may be.  I may compete in strongman, sure, but I keep myself fit across a bunch of different domains, and it meant that, when the time came to prep for the half, I didn’t need to spend much time focusing that general fitness toward a specific task.  And I’m not saying this as though I crushed a half marathon and set a record, but considering people need a 9 week plan with 3 running workouts a week to get from the couch to running a 5k, I think that I could go over 4 times that distance training in fewer weeks with less workouts is saying SOMETHING.

I also got to continually appreciate the value of nutrition as it relates to recovery.  And as much as I would love to say I ate super clean this whole time and it was all chicken breasts and salads, that just wasn’t reality.  I still kept carbs on the lower side for my day to day meals, but on my long run days it was common for me to hit up Taco Bell and get the $5 Nacho Box just to mainline calories and carbs.  Having to focus on getting bigger AND stronger AND better at running meant that overrecovery was better than underrecovery, and I put on about 7lbs in the process, some of it muscle, some of it fat.  But hey, guess what: that means you CAN get bigger and stronger while running.  But those of you that want to use running to lose weight are crazy.  You need to recover from running, and that means eating MORE.  If you want to lose weight, eat less and dial back the activity, because you’re hurting without those calories.

Good socks go a long way.  I was wearing some cheapo cotton socks and got some bad hotspots in my first run.  My wife immediately identified the issue and found me some decent running socks.  Went a long way toward letting me continue in my training.  Similar experience too with cheap t-shirts and nipple chafe.  It’s why I wore underarmor on race day.

Pain tolerance is a skill that translates across disciplines, and can compensate for a lack of ability as it relates to endurance activities.

Having a good running partner is HUGE on race day, especially if you’ve been primarily relying on a treadmill.  There’s no way I woulda had the results I had without it.  I got pushed when I needed to, and I held back when I needed to hold back.

THE FUTURE

Considering everyone already thinks I'm an Ironman when I say I'm a strongman...

I genuinely have no idea if I’m going to run another one of these.  It will always depend on how my schedule is looking.  I have a strongman competition coming up in April, and at some point I also want to run the Deep Water Badass program, neither of which is conducive toward distance running, and though I proved that you CAN accomplish both at the same time, it’s also true that dedicating yourself to one or the other will make you better compared to splitting your attention.  Still, like everything, this was an experience, I recommend everyone have it, at least once.