This past weekend I was in Virginia Beach for my friend’s baby shower. Sticking to a marathon training plan while traveling is never easy. But I was faced with an especially challenging problem on Sunday. I had a 16 mile long run on my training schedule, and I was staring down a 6 hour drive home from the beach that day. Initially I thought my options were to either run and then drive home, or drive home and run. And I didn’t like either of those options. But then I realized Farmville was roughly the halfway point, and I could run at the High Bridge Trail State Park. Let me back up a minute, though.

I arrived in Virginia Beach on Friday. Saturday morning I was up bright and early to run 8 miserable miles in the suffocating humidity. Then my friend and I headed over to the hostess’ house to help set up for the baby shower for my other friend (she’s due October 10!). The party was a lot of fun, and she got so many cute baby clothes. Then we headed back to my friend’s house (where I was staying) to watch the Virginia Tech football game, which started at 8 PM. The game was awesome and we pulled out a big win over Ohio State! But it was 1 AM before I got to bed, and I had been going since 6 AM that morning.

I slept terrible Saturday night and woke up every hour. When 5:30 AM rolled around it was time to get up and hit the road to make the 3.5 hour drive to Farmville. I had planned to arrive in Farmville around 9:30 AM so that I could get my long run done before it got too hot. I was so tired during the drive and was wondering how on Earth I was going to run 16 miles. But once I finally got there it was time to rock and roll, and the only way to get a long run done is to get going. So that’s what I did.

I was pretty lucky weather-wise for this run. It was in the low-70’s at the start and had only crept into the low-80’s by the time I finished. The humidity was only around 60% and there was a slight breeze every now and then. The sky was mostly overcast, too, which helped. I decided to run in the direction of the High Bridge first, which was about 4.5 miles from my starting point. I figured I would do a 10 mile out and back in one direction and then a 6 mile out and back in the other direction. The miles ticked away and before I knew it I was at the High Bridge.

I have talked about this trail, and have run on it, several times in the past. The trail is an old rail bed that is made up of crushed limestone. The trail’s namesake, the High Bridge, is 2,400 feet long (nearly half a mile!) and 125 feet above the Appomattox River. It is also the longest recreational bridge in Virginia and among the longest in the country. I really enjoy running across the bridge, although it makes me a bit dizzy to look down while I do so. Here’s what the bridge looks like from a birds eye view:

Once I crossed the bridge I was at 5 miles, my intended turn around point. But then I decided to run a bit further before heading back to my starting point. The High Bridge Half Marathon and 5K had been the day before, and the mile markers were spray painted on the trail. I just so happened to have started my run at the race start line, so each of the mile markers matched up with my distance. Why not turn this into a personal half marathon?

However, when I arrived at the turnaround point I was still feeling good and decided to carry on to mile 7. I was really amazed that I still felt so fresh. The cooler weather definitely helped, but I don’t know where the energy was coming from. A greasy slice of pizza, baby shower cake, and 4 hours of sleep are not exactly the recommended way to prepare for a long run. When I got to mile 7 I could have gone on to 8 and just made the run a true out and back. But I decided I’d rather turn around. I was 2 miles past the High Bridge and I hadn’t seen anyone, which felt a bit creepy.

On my way back I stopped at a porta john just before arriving back at the bridge (right at mile 9). As I was answering nature’s call, a bee started dive bombing me. He was trapped in the porta john with me! Let me tell you: Nothing will make you pee faster than being trapped in a small enclosure with a stinging insect. I was back on the trail in less than 30 seconds and on my way back across the bridge.

I hit a bit of a low point from miles 10 through 14. But I just tried to focus on the mile I was in, and breaking it down into half mile increments when needed. Slowly but surely the miles ticked off, and I found myself back at my car with just two miles left to go. I should also mention I was right on my long run pace. I had been struggling the past few weeks to hit the pace (I kept running too slow or falling off pace by the end of the run), so it felt great to finally do what I was supposed to be doing.

I decided to listen to some music for the last 2 miles, so I got my iPod hooked up and headed out in the other direction for the final two miles. Just after mile 15, I was running along thinking about how I was on the last mile and I stepped right on a snake! It was just a small green garden-type snake, but it reared its head up and startled me. It turns out I still have pretty good reflexes even after 2.5 hours of running. I totally would have taken a picture of the snake, but there is no crouching down at mile 15. So here’s another one of the trail:

Finally I hit mile 16 and I was done! My joints were a bit achy and my muscles were sore and tired, but I felt great. It felt like such an accomplishment after all of the traveling and minimal amount of sleep from the weekend. After I stretched and changed into a dry set of clothes (and used a Shower Pill athletic body wipe for the first time!) I headed over to a gas station. All I had been thinking about during the last hour of my run was a blue slushie. So I got myself one of those and a chicken sandwich. I didn’t take a picture because I’m pretty sure y’all know what a blue slushie and a sandwich look like.

Once fed, it was time to hit the road. I had about 3 hours left to go. Surprisingly I never felt sleepy on the rest of the drive. I guess it helps to break up a long drive with a run. Next time I’ll probably just keep it between 3 and 6 miles, though. 🙂

This was the best long run I’ve had so far during training. It seemed like everything just kind of came together, which is pretty neat since it happened at the end of a 54 mile week. With the lack of sleep and all of the driving I keep wondering if I’ve reached the point where training is as hard as it’s going to get. I have two more 16 mile long runs, and they come at the end of 56 and 57 mile weeks. So hopefully it will be very similar to this week. Maybe I really can do this Hansons Marathon Method thing.

If you were in my situation, which option would you have picked: run then drive, drive then run, or run in the middle of the drive?
Do you prefer exploring new trails, or do you gravitate towards the old and familiar?

P.S. Funny story – I’m back in Farmville right now. I had to drive here on Monday evening for work and I’m here through this afternoon. I actually did last night’s strength workout (4 x 1.5 miles) over on the good old High Bridge Trail .

I survived another week!! Barely. My dedication to my training plan was really tested this weekend, due to my circumstances. But I was able to stick to it and run all the miles. When you want to do something, you make it work.

Monday- 5 mile easy run on the Dora Trail with Kim. It was Labor Day and we both had the day off, so we were able to meet up in the morning to run together! My legs felt pretty tired, and it was humid outside (hence the foggy picture).

Tuesday- 6 x 1 mile, 400 m recovery for 10 miles total. Surprisingly, this workout went really well and interval-style workouts continue to be my favorite. I have no idea how I feel my strongest on my sixth day in a row of running, but it continues to happen. I guess these brothers know what they’re doing.

Two things to note from this run: My calves continue to be tight and sore, like they have been since week 6 of training. Icing, stretching, and foam rolling have been helping but they’re still bothersome. During this workout my right calf kept kind of seizing up. It wasn’t like a cramp, but more like the muscle would get really tight and kind of squeeze my shin bone. Not sure what’s going on there.

Also, during my cool down mile I started having back spasms. I’ve had ongoing back problems for a couple of years, and usually running doesn’t affect my back in a good or bad way. The spasms were in the muscle on top of my rib cage just below my left shoulder blade. After my run my back muscle was sore and tight and even today when I take a deep breath in I get a radiating pain around my rib cage to the front. No fun.

Wednesday- REST.

Thursday- 8 mile tempo run (i.e. marathon pace run) on the treadmill. Ten miles total with the warm up and cool down. This was a tough one. I just didn’t feel like running when I got home from work, but I got it done. I watched The Princess Diaries while I ran, then got bored of it and switched to Grey’s Anatomy.

Friday- 5 mile easy run in the morning with Sven (the treadmill). I had to drive to a friend’s house in Virginia Beach after work for a Saturday baby shower, so I decided to get my run out of the way in the morning. I watched Mean Girls, which is always entertaining!

Saturday- 8 mile easy run in the morning in Virginia Beach. It was incredibly humid outside, which made for a tough run.

Despite feeling like I was breathing water, I had a hard time sticking to my easy pace. I think it was because it was really flat and I was running at sea level. So I ended up averaging nearly 30 seconds per mile faster than I’m supposed to. I started out in my friend’s neighborhood (whose house I was crashing in for the weekend) and then did an out and back on a sidewalk along a main road. Traffic lights are annoying.

Sunday- 16 mile long run. I was faced with a tricky situation: I needed to drive 6 hours home from the beach and put in a 16 mile long run. I ended up deciding to stop halfway in Farmville and run on a trail I have run on in the past when traveling for work.

This actually ended up being my best long run so far during training. Full details on Wednesday!

Total Miles: 54 miles (a new weekly mileage PR!!)

This is part two of my random things from August. If you missed part 1, you can find it HERE.

1. Earlier this month I got a bird feeder! Barry and I were at the local hardware shop and it caught my eye. Barry likes to indulge me, I think, and surprised me by agreeing to get one. We have it hung up in the tree outside our dining room window. I haven’t seen any birds on it, yet, but I’m keeping watch! Remember all the baby birds in my hanging baskets last summer?

2. I have a friend/coworker (she was a friend from college before she became a coworker) who is having a baby boy in October. Her baby shower is this weekend. One of the things I got her was this onesie. She’s also a fellow Hokie Alum, so I hope she likes it. Start em young, and raise em right!

3. Remember when I was trying to decide what to do with my race bibs? Well for now they are staying on the wall. I finally decided to just add another column for my most recent race bibs (the one on the far left below).

I have run eleven races so far this year (remember it’s race palooza! Where I run any and all races I want). So hanging this new column has created another conundrum – it’s full and I have plenty of races left in 2014. I kind of feel like I’m back where I started with this one 🙂

4. I still subscribe to StrideBox each month and this month there were two products I was really excited about. First was a new flavor of 2nd Surge energy gel: pina colada. Second was an energy wafer from Power Bar, a new product for them. I tried the new energy gel during a tempo run and ended up hating it, haha. It was too coconut-y for me.

If you remember, I don’t like coconut. You may be wondering why I thought I might like the pina colada flavor. It’s because I’ve had other pina colada-flavored things that I did like. I guess the pineapple just has to outweigh the coconut flavor for me to like it. However, I loved the Power Bar wafer (and failed to take a picture before eating it).

It tasted a lot like a sugar wafer, with a berry filling. I would definitely eat this as a light pre-race snack. Now I just have to actually find them in a store in our area!

5. Check out this awesome view I had from the top of Draper Mountain one morning last week. We don’t get mountain peaks poking up through the clouds much on the East Coast.

The clouds kind of looked like an ocean, and my dad said they looked thick enough to walk on. It was really neat to see!

Do you enjoy going to baby showers? I think they’re fun, especially when it’s for someone’s first baby (like my coworker)
Do you have any ties to college teams?
Have you tried any new foods or running fuel lately? I made green peppers stuffed with sausage the other night, and they were pretty good!

Last night I had my first strength workout with the Hansons Marathon Method. My schedule called for 6 x 1 mile repeats, with 400m recovery in between. I felt the same way about this first strength workout as I did about my first track workout (12 x 400m): terrified. But despite these Hanson brothers seeming crazy, they continue to outsmart me by knowing what I’m capable of better than I do. And by that I mean the workout went pretty well.

I headed over to Bisset Park, because most of the trail runs along the river and is flat. These strength workouts are too long to be done on a track, so the Hansons recommend finding a flat stretch of trail and that’s what I did. I even figured out how to use the interval setting on my Garmin…. mostly. We’ll get to that in a second.

I started out with a 1.25 mile warm up. I had my interval workout set up on my watch to include a warm up, and it displayed the lap time on top and the distance on the bottom. Good enough. Once I finished my warm up I hit the lap button and took off on my first interval. Less than two minutes later I glanced down at my watch and I saw 0.86 on top and 6 on the bottom. What the heck!? Where’s my pace? Where’s my time?? I had no idea. So I ran the first one mile repeat blind. I suck at packing, guys. Once I finished my first mile and the recovery, I stopped briefly to figure things out… and realized all my other screens were still there. I just had to scroll through. Good grief! So I quickly changed the settings so I would only see the interval screen (which displayed the distance and the number interval I was on) and a second screen that would have my current lap time and lap distance. Things went more smoothly from there. My goal was 10:08 for each mile repeat, 10 seconds faster than marathon pace.

Mile 1 – 9:40 (running blind)
Mile 2 – 9:52 (okay, so that one was my fault)
Mile 3 – 9:53 (well, at least slower than #2…)

I think I run these a bit fast because I’m afraid of missing the interval. The 400m recoveries felt pretty short, but I felt pretty strong throughout the workout. It was tough, don’t get me wrong. Did I mention it was close to 90 degrees at the start of my run, and had only cooled down to 80 by the finish?

During interval number 4 I inhaled a bunch of bugs. It immediately made me gag and I actually threw up in the grass on the side of the trail without ever stopping. You’re welcome for that visual. But now you know how bad A I am 🙂 Seriously, though, it sucks to run when it’s so buggy out.

Mile 4 – 10:10 (see what happens when I back off towards the end to hit 10:08… oh and the bug incident)
Mile 5 – 9:52 (well, we’re back to the 9:50’s)
Mile 6 – 9:58 (close, but no cigar)

Overall this workout went really well, which surprised me. It was double the work load from my track workouts, with less rest relative to the interval length. I think I will be doing the rest of my strength runs at Bisset Park. I may even try this week’s tempo run there (on Thursday), since I’ve been in a kind of funk with those runs.

It looks like Tuesday workouts continue to be my favorite. Next week I’ve got 4 x 1.5 mile repeats, with 800m recovery in between. Harder or easier than this week? We shall see. Oh! I meant to mention when I completed my interval workout my Garmin displayed “Workout Complete!” and played some celebration music. (no joke) If that doesn’t make you want to complete an interval workout, I don’t know what will!

Have you ever swallowed a bunch of bugs?
Has anyone else ever used the interval setting on their GPS watch? Very confusing at first, but ended up working really well!

How is it September already!? I can’t believe I am into the double digits for training weeks, and over halfway there! With that being said, training did start to wear on me a bit this week. Lately it’s felt like all I do is go to work, come home and run, fix dinner, and then go to bed. But I’m sticking with it, and am keeping in mind that it’s only 8 more weeks and then I get to run my race.

Monday- 7 mile easy run on the Dora and New River Trails. This was an ‘easy’ run on my schedule and I ran it within my easy pace range, but it was anything other than easy. My legs were super tired from the 15 mile long run I had done the day before. But it was a really pretty day out.

Tuesday- 4 x 1200m track workout with 400m recovery in between. This workout totaled 6 miles and was my final track workout of training. There were some guys lining the football field, getting ready for the first high school game of the season, so I got to watch them work while I ran. I think I’d rather do a track workout than paint all those lines 🙂 If I was in charge it would be the most crooked field you’d ever seen!

Wednesday- Rest day.

Thursday- 8 mile tempo run, 10 miles total with the warm-up and cool down. I did this run in the evening over on the Dora and New River Trails. It was pretty hot and humid out, which made for a tough run. I had a rough time getting through the first 4 miles of the tempo portion, but I was running a gradual uphill from mile 1.5 through 4 (miles 2.5 through 5 below).

Once I turned around to head back, I was able to run a better pace and ended up averaging about 10 seconds faster per mile than my intended tempo pace (same thing as marathon pace).

Friday- 5 mile easy run with Sven. My legs were really tired from Thursday’s run, but it felt good to get my muscles working and to stretch out afterward. I had to run on the treadmill because I had lasagna in the oven that had to be tended to twice during my run 🙂

Saturday- 8 mile easy run with Sven. Our Saturday was packed full so I had to get up early and get this run done before the sun came up. I pretty much went non-stop from 5:00 AM to 11:00 PM that day, including going to the first Virginia Tech football game of the season (where I got to tailgate with Deb!).

Barry and I ended up with pretty sweet seats. Especially considering we were ticketless heading into the stadium, and bought these from a guy right before heading in for the game. 🙂

My cousin is on the team for his second year. He didn’t get much playing time last year, but he saw some action in the game on Saturday. He’s number 57, and he plays left guard.

Sunday- 10 mile long run on the Dora and New River Trails. This was a pretty tough run for me, due in part to my long day on Saturday. It’s not ideal when you are going non-stop all day and then don’t eat dinner until 11 PM. So I didn’t get up as early as I should have and also got to deal with the heat and humidity (it was in the mid-80’s at the end of my run).

I ended up running about 10 seconds per mile slower than what my long run pace is supposed to be. But honestly I was surprised I even managed that. I kind of wanted to just lay down on the side of the trail and take a nap in the shade. I did get passed by a truck on the trail at one point, which woke me up a bit. It was one of the Department of Conservation and Recreation employees, who manage the trail (since it’s technically a state park). The picture is blurry, but you can see the truck in the distance.

Total Miles: 46 miles
August Total: 192.95 miles (the most I’ve ever run in a single month!!)