Run for Minutes

"Run for minutes instead of miles. If you're feeling great, you may go 6 miles in 50 minutes; if you're not, you may go 4.5." ~ @GregMcMillan, Greg McMillan, head coach of McMillan Running

Or, if the race officials/volunteers have marked the course incorrectly, run over half a mile longer than intended.

When I first decided to run a marathon, I had never run more than 7.24 miles (that was the length of the longest Hood to Coast leg that I had ever run; it was also the first H2C leg I ever ran. It's amazing I kept running). I was constantly asked if I had run a 5k or a half-marathon and the answer was constantly no. I just decided skip the little stuff and go straight for the crazy. Don't worry, I did train; I'm not that crazy.

This time around, a little wiser and experienced, I've stretched my training over a longer time period in the hope that I'll be more prepared for the marathon. And I added a half-marathon as a "test," to see if I was on track with my training. That "test" half was last Sunday.

There I am, in the pink

I had a goal for this race, to finish in under two and a half hours. This was an ambitious goal but what is the point of a goal if it is too easy? My goal for my last marathon was just to finish, and since I had never run that distance before, that was an ambitious goal. But now with a marathon under my belt, I felt it was time to have personal record goals.

I felt good for the first seven miles. I kept a steady pace, I passed several people (always an ego-booster). It was warm but not overly so and there was a little shade dappling the gently rolling hills of Forest Grove. Then it got warmer and I started wondering where the next water table was. The gently rolling hills started to roll a little bit more and a little less gently. The shade disappeared.

The good news was that the turn-around was close. For about a mile, I had been seeing runners who were ahead of me passing me going the other direction. I was finally seeing runners that I recognized and then I turned a corner and saw the turn-around just a little ways away. One lady that I had passed early on passed me (always an ego-buster) but I kept in my head and didn't try to run her race.

But the miles were passing more and more slowly. The turn-around was at eight miles, the ninth mile felt slightly stretched, ten was long and hot, eleven felt like a mile and a half. There was no shade and no water except for the greenhouses on either side of the road with their irrigation systems going full-blast, inside. It felt like an obscure form of torture (make someone run eleven miles then put cooling, lovely water behind a fence... evil). Mile twelve started and then went straight up. Seriously, a steep hill at between mile eleven and twelve? With a curve in it? I couldn't see the end. I had already started walking and doing the "run to that sign, then you can walk to the next sign, and repeat" but I got to the hill and it was just walking at that point.

After finally dragging myself to the top, I saw the twelfth mile marker, sitting next to nirvana, the last water station. I chugged two cups of water and poured another on my head. It wasn't much but it was enough. I staggered on, made the final few turns and somehow found it in me to power through to the finish.

Somewhere after mile eight, I had stripped down to my sports bra and running skirt. I'm a fairly modest person and I'm not particularly fond of my mid-section. I've never been one to run around in just a sports bra but one thing I have realized in my years on a rowing team and my years as a runner, people get uncomfortable enough, hot enough, sweaty enough, and they will do what ever they need to do to feel better (looking at that photo now, I don't look nearly as bad as I thought I did). Anything that could get me moderately cooler was a-okay by me and if people had a problem with it, well, they could run a half-marathon off a short pier for all I cared at that moment.

Here's the thing though. A runner got lost during this race and my ride/spectator/shanghaied volunteer extraordinaire was looking for a woman in a pink top, not a green one. I didn't arrive at the finish line by 2:30.00 and by 2:40.00, she was starting to worry a little. But I came in at 2:43.59 and I felt good about that time and she was able to recognize me early enough to get a few photos of my coming in. So it all worked out, even though I didn't make my time.

Actually, here's the real kicker. When I got home, I mapped the course so that I could log the race on the website I use to track my training. I didn't run 13.1 miles. I ran 13.75 miles. The race organizers had marked the course incorrectly and extended the turn-around too far. Even with intermittent walking and the evil hill, my pace was under the 12-minute mark. For me, that's really good and I'm very proud of that.

This last weekend, I was supposed to run for 17 miles but I had to cut my run short due to some pretty bad chafing (BodyGlide is my friend and I forgot to bring her along on this run) so instead of running for miles, I ran for the time I planned. Today, I mapped that run to log it online. Guess what? I ran 13.1 miles exactly.