2011 was a pretty good year for me race-wise. I had PR's (that's Personal Records for you non athletic types) at the 10k distance, the half marathon, at KneeKnacker 50k and I ran a pretty tough 100k (Vancouver 100). My friend Bob talked me into signing up for a road marathon when he saw some of my stats and was adamant that I could run a 3:20 based on McMillan Tables. I've always liked the ultra cliché, "If you can run fast, run far", but what the hell.... Bob really knows marathon, so who was I to argue. I was actually already registered for Portland, courtesy of friend Åsa (xmas present), so it sounded like a great idea.
Wanting to run fast, I started thinking about how I might be able to pull it off. Last year I started running in Vibram FiveFingers because I was interested in the whole barefoot running movement and wanted to see what all the hype was about. I'm a natural heal striker, but had noticed that my heart rate and perceived effort always dropped when I tried forefoot running. My Sister has always been much faster than me, but when we went on our first run together after I had been running in my Fives, she asked me to slow down about 4k in, and I didn't even feel winded. That's when I knew I needed to change my running style permanently
I came off BMO half marathon with a PR and a bit of a calf strain, so I had to dial back the forefoot running for a while. I restarted my forefoot running during my Portland ramp up. I was doing speed training at the track entirely barefoot once/wk and I was focusing on forefoot running while doing my long road runs. The whole disaster really started one weekend when I went out for a 3 hour trail run with BFF Meg, who I was helping train for her first ultra. During that run I found that I was naturally forefoot running and felt pretty fast. Clearly my road work was having an impact on my trail running. The next day I had to do my long road run and noticed part way through that my left soleus was really tight, presumably from the previous day. It wasn't painful, but I should have listened to my body- stopped an walked home. I took a day off and the following day ran barefoot at the track. Part way through my track workout my calf/soleus was quite painful, so I cut the workout short and ended up limping the next day.
A few days later I participated in a beer mile (4 beers and 4 laps of a 400m track). I knew I shouldn't be running, but couldn't help myself. Beer and running!!! Can you blame me? Suffice it to say I finished the final lap limping across the finish line in 4th place. This was the start of 7 weeks of not being able to run. Since the only part of triathlon that I have any proficiency in is the running, I took this as an opportunity to improve my cycling and swimming.
This was all well and good, but the next thing I knew Portland was upon me and I hadn't run more than 5k once/wk to check if my calf had healed. 3 days before Portland I went out and ran 7k to see where my calf was at. I felt pretty damn good, but of course there's nothing like a 7 week taper to make you feel like a rock star..... on a short run.
I had enough common sense to know that I had no business doing a full marathon, having been off for nearly two months and not having run more than 26k on the road in years. Since Meg and other friends were doing the race, I still wanted to go down - what was I to do? My plan was simple: downgrade to the half. I'm an ultrarunner for Christ's sake; surely I should have no problem pulling a half out of my........ ear. Sounded great in theory, but when I showed up for packet pickup they wouldn't allow me to downgrade. "For real?!?"
Not sure if it was spite, pride, ego or stupidity, but I said, "Fine! I guess I'll run the full then!". Ha!
(Stay tuned for Part 2, the race)
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