Now that I've reached my goal, I'm able to sit down and reflect on the past year's ups and downs. Starting last year heading into the 2015 Grandma's marathon Kimi and I had an awesome training buildup. We nailed every workout, and felt incredibly strong. We both had the same target goal of going sub 2:37. Unfortunately, a tree limb had a different idea for how my final 3 weeks were going to go heading into the race. During our 24 mile long run 3 weeks out, I reached up to brush off a tree limb while heading down the Frisco trail instead of running around it and 'BAM!' there it went! Something got me right in my ring finger in the proximal-inter-phalangeal joint. Who knew that something so simple could be the start of a series of dominoes that would derail my running for a while. My finger swelled to a point that I was afraid I might actually lose the finger since my ring was stuck on the finger and pressure was building around it. I was fortunate that I was able to talk a jeweler into cutting the ring off, but that wasn't the end of it. The finger still didn't want to bend and I was starting to get really concerned since I use my hands quite intensely every day in order to treat patients. This became quite the stressful event for me. Just a few days before the marathon, I started having side stitch issues during the 2 mile shake'm out runs. I couldn't make it more than a mile without being bent over with pain in my right abdomen. This is never a good feeling right before a marathon. I had to change my game plan mentally right before the race. Kimi and I were planning to run stride for stride together for the entire race to hit our goal. I decided to just do what I could and if/when the side stitch gets me, I would just have to let Kimi go and I'd be on my own the rest of the way. Much to my surprise, I made it through 20 miles without the side-stitch getting me. Then it happened. I just let Kimi go and she went on to run the best marathon of her life so far. I did manage to regather myself and still ran a decent time but was a bit disappointed since I knew that I was in much better shape than what I got to show on that day.
Following that race, I had a rash break out on the right side of my abdomen. Sure enough, I ended up with a small shingles outbreak (I can still feel the effects of this occasionally, bleh! and the finger still doesn't bend the same to this day!).
It didn't take me long to pick out my next target marathon. The Twin Cities marathon in October was about 15 weeks away. Not ideal, but I thought I would be able to bounce back and be mentally and physically prepared in time for it so why not. Kimi could run the USA 10 mile Championships and I would run the marathon. Training for this went really well. I nailed pretty much every workout and some of them were faster than I'd ever done before. I thought this one would have a good shot of going under the 6 min/mile barrier as I headed into it. I ran a great race through 23, and probably ran a bit too great since I was on pace for a 2:35 with only 5k to go. That's when the wheels fell off and I just couldn't keep it together. I ended up having to stop and walk a bit as the legs tied up. Then I got it going again and just did keep myself under 2:40 for a finish time. Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed again.
I didn't let myself get too discouraged though. I was hoping to hit my goal at TCM but after I didn't, I started to get the idea that perhaps I should run the L.A. Marathon in February, the day after Kimi was set to run in the Olympic Trials Marathon. This would make my 3rd marathon in 7 months. I never thought I'd run that many in such a short amount of time. I think Kimi even wanted me to run the L.A. Marathon so that she'd have me training right along side her all winter long. Training was going really well until 2 weeks out from L.A. Once again, we had been nailing every workout. Two weeks out, I had some more unfortunate luck. I managed to strain one of my left quadriceps muscles. I immediately started getting treatment from Kimi and also started ramping up my own personal treatments as well. I was having so many issues that I could hardly run on the leg so I just simply took time off while getting treatment in hopes that I might at least be able to run the marathon as a long training run. Four days before the race, I was feeling pretty normal so I decided I'd do a bit of an up tempo effort to just challenge my quad a bit. Much to my surprise, it didn't bother me and I ran fairly decent for the short tempo run. Once again, this changed my race plan. I decided to go into the race with the idea of starting off conservative and feeling it out as I went. In the back of my mind, I thought I might be able to run a decent time but I was unsure at what point I would really start picking up the pace. I covered the first 4 miles at about 6:45 pace feeling pretty good. Then I slowly started dropping the pace a bit. By the 10 mile mark, I was pretty confident in my leg so I really started rolling. I clipped off a lot of miles just under 6 min pace but the damage had already been done in regards to reaching my original goal. A big takeaway from this race was that I completed it, and ran strong all the way through the finish having practiced my nutrition intake that Cassie Dimmick (dietitian at Achieving Your Best, LLC) and I had been working on over the last several months. I managed a 2:42:45 which shocked me!
My focus finally shifted back to the Grandma's Marathon. I had run this race the 3 previous years and knew that the course and weather had typically been conducive for fast running. I assumed that this year would be no different. For the entire training cycle, I just had a feeling that this was going to be a hot year at the Grandma's marathon. This was solely based on the fact that April was really warm here and that it was getting unseasonably warm here early. With that in mind, I made an extra effort to keep my shirt on during warm runs to try to get myself a little more mentally and physically adapted to a possible warmer race condition. This year, I was going it alone for the Grandma's marathon. Kimi had decided that she wanted to target a fast half marathon so our training would have to be a little different in our buildups. We did the same workouts for the most part but many times, I would simply add more distance to the workout than she would do. All of our training went extremely well and we were both maintaining pretty solid health headed into this years race (I made sure not to touch any tree limbs or do anything that might freakishly injure myself).
Now, all that was left is to get to Duluth, hope for good weather, and execute the race plan!
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