Outside the Comfort Zone

When asked, my advice for those training for a marathon is that the most important thing is the long runs.  Sure it's great to get in some faster stuff during the week.  Hills are great.  Cross training is too often neglected.  But if you want to finish the marathon, you simply cannot skip the long runs.  You should build up to the distance of at least 20 miles, with the last one being about three weeks before the race.Well, I've followed my advice.  I've put in the months of training.  I've gotten up early on Saturday mornings for long runs.  I've even dragged myself to the track for speed work, and tried to do some cross training.  But I had a big challenge last weekend for my final 20 miler.  My family was taking a trip to Cincinnati.

I thought about trying to do 20 before we left or after we got back, but neither of those options seemed like it was going to work.  I also promised my wife that my run wouldn't get in the way of our family trip.  Unfortunately, I have never run in Cincinnati before, and didn't know the city very well.  So this was going to be a challenge.

In the car, on the way there, however, I found a solution.  Since the marathon I'm training for is the same weekend as the big marathon in Cincinnati, I figured there must be training groups there who were on a similar schedule.  And there were.

The official Cincinnati 'Flying Pig Marathon' training group is sponsored by a local running store.  When I called, they said I was welcome to join them at 8am Saturday morning for their 20 mile run.  My only payment would be to buy the training group organizer a beer. 

It sounded good to me.  Even better was the fact they were meeting pretty close to my downtown hotel and planned to run much of the Flying Pig marathon course as part of their run.  So I met up with a large group of several hundred runners, and found my appropriate pace group, and we were off.  I'm wearing the red hat in the middle of the group on the left.

This was the third 20 miler of my training program, but I made sure the others were on flat ground.  I've run plenty of hills on shorter runs, but a 20 miler is daunting enough to me that I much prefer to avoid hills when I'm gonna be ought there more than 2:30. 

That was not possible in Cincinnati.  It is a city full of hills!  But beggars can't be choosers.  We started just over the river in Kentucky at a place called Newport on the Levee.  We crossed over the river and ran past the new Baseball stadium, which played host to a Reds-Cubs game later that day.  I enjoyed a beautiful run that crossed the Ohio river several times on the various bridges.  We crossed through town traveling through several historic neighborhoods and parks.  One of the highlights was at about mile ten, when we had about a mile long uphill.  Then after about mile 14, we had a steady downhill for about another mile.  My legs were pretty beat up by the end.  But I finished, and felt better for it!

It was also a good reminder of how friendly and generous runners can be.  They took me into the group, made sure I didn't get lost, and shared fluids and gels at the water stops.  We enjoyed some good conversation along the way, and made the miles a lot easier to get through.

My wife even brought my support crew along in the minivan to meet me at the finish!  Don't worry, they got to enjoy a trip to the zoo that afternoon!   As for me, however, it was a memorable run, and I am grateful to the folks at 'The Running Spot' store for letting me join them.  It remains to be seen what kind of marathon my training has prepared me for.  Anything can happen on race day, but as I begin the taper phase of  training, I feel good, and prepared to run fast.  Oh and I owe the training director a beer! 

Hey, and good luck to all my friends heading to Boston this weekend.  It's gonna be a great race!

I'll see you on the roads.....

 
 
 

Comments

[Antivirus_man]

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[JOBS_frend]

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[school_dubl]

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[Rental]

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[Rental]

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