So I did a half marathon

[summilux]

On a dare, I did a half marathon yesterday (Army Run Ottawa). I’ve never been much of a runner. I’ll do it when I travel on business but generally only for short 5km distances. I trained for about 7 weeks and logged something less than 300km on the road. I jumped into the tail end of 18-week training plan, figuring my cycle fitness would transfer. This may not have been the best way to do it, but fortunately I didn’t get injured. Training was much less time-intensive than cycling, a 2-3 hour long run on the weekend and a few hours in total scattered through the week. I didn’t do any riding during training except for my work commute and I’m anxious to get back on a bike now. I miss the adrenalin of a fast ride and I miss the “head popping off” agony of a long steep climb. That said, I liked running much more than I expected. There is a meditative aspect to it. On a bike my mind is constantly working: checking for traffic, looking for potholes and obstacles, thinking about gearing and cadence, checking the Garmin etc. On long slow runs, it’s quite pleasurable to put the brain into neutral and just cruise along.

The race day was quite a treat. There were twenty thousand runners doing 5k, 10k and the half. Milling about a crowd that size was cool. They were also thousands of people lining the course: bands, bagpipers, cheer squads, people in costume, people in wigs. All shouting and screaming and high fiving runners. They really made it special. I had hoped to run a 2’25” half but race day was one of the hottest we’ve had all year. High humidity and no cloud cover made it even worse. I underestimated the toll the heat would take on me and made the mistake of keeping to my race plan. I started to peter out at 12km and at 14km I switched to walking and running. At 18km, the 2:30 pace bunny passed me and I was crushed. I ended up finishing at 2’44”. I’m not happy about the time and I’m pissed that I had to walk part of the course. Oh well, live and learn.

I’ve got friends and family who are encouraging me to do a marathon. My dad ran a lot of them in his day but I don’t know whether I’ll keep running. I’m still pretty sore and I woke up a few times last night with very painful leg cramps. As I am hobbling home from the finish, my non-athletic wife says to me: “One day, you need to make me understand why you do this to yourself.”

[EDS]

Great job. Just know that the jump from half-marathon to marathon is a big one. May make more sense to take another swing at a half first.

[summilux]

For sure no marathon this year. There;s not much time left for proper training. Maybe another half so I can do one without walking.

[roseyscot]

Nice work. For me, running is so boring and slow, I do it as a last resort. I find my mind constantly thinking about how soon it will end. Whereas riding is when my brain relaxes and my body just does its thing. Unless I'm doing a specific workout on the bike, that's different.

A half marathon is something most active people can labor through with limited training. Full marathon is where proper training is needed for most people. Also, some people, myself included, just are not built to run 26.2 miles. My knees really suffer after 15-16 miles.

[sine]

As someone who does run on occasion......great job.

Next up Canadian Ski Marathon

Did this twice.

[summilux]

A half marathon is something most active people can labor through with limited training.

I think that's pretty accurate. The first two weeks of my accelerated training plan were the toughest since I went from not running to doing ~20km/week. As long as your fitness was good and all you wanted to do was finish, I'd bet that doing one long run on the weekend and a mid distance run mid-week would be enough.

[dgaddis]

Nice job. I've never ran that far, most I've done is 10k. For a while a buddy and I were running together, mostly on a dirt path, a few times a week after work. But then I started having issues with my feet hurting. My cardio fitness was fine thanks to riding, and running was never a hard effort, but my running muscles and my feet just weren't used to it, so it was easy to do too much. Once my feet started hurting I was pretty much done running.

A year or so later I off-couched a 5k with a couple buddies, ran the whole thing, a hilly route, finished somewhere under 30mins, which is certainly not fast, but it was fast enough to beat my buddies and that's all I cared about.

I could barely walk for the next few days. Won't do that again!!