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Modesto Marathon big-picture postpartum training overview & goals

Modesto Marathon big-picture postpartum training overview & goals

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Barring catastrophe, I’ll be racing my 26th marathon on Sunday morning and my first 26.2 since giving birth to my second daughter a touch over 7 months ago. I’m letting all that number jargon sink in for a second …

In these final few days before the race, I wanted to put digits to keys and talk about my postpartum training in bigger terms so I can further internalize how everything has gone this time around, over and above what I did by writing training overviews that highlighted each week’s major workouts. Maybe there’s an off-chance that my bantering will help someone out there, but what’s more likely the case is that I just need to talk through some things. 🙂 My marathon training experiences have taught me that it’s really easy (and tempting) to let the day-to-day minutia completely obscure the long-term, big-picture process. The minutia is important, sure, but it’s not the end-all, be-all. Looking at things in their totality – what I’m trying to do here – I think is more beneficial. One bad (or good) run does not a race make.

My yammering makes this all sound much more serious than it needs to be. It’s running. It’s marathoning. It’s all in good fun.

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Modestooooooooooo!

New training

A little back story: after I gave birth to my first daughter in 2011, for the rest of that year and into 2012, I trained as I always had; each week’s training topped out at no more than about 50 mpw (because anything over that would send my ITB into disarray), replete with a weekly long run, some semblance of speed work (typically only 800m or 1mi repeats), and a few rest days each week. On my own accord, at my first marathon postpartum in 2012 (about a year postpartum), I finally got my years-old 3:37 PR down to a 3:34, which was elating. In 2013, that PR went from a 3:34 to a 3:31 (in January at Houston) to a high 3:20 (in April at Eugene) down to a low 3:20 (in October in Chicago), which is where I’ve been (agonizingly, frustratingly) sitting. Don’t get me wrong: I’m proud of my 3:20 (and the low 3:2x I have since posted on hard courses), but I also think that I’m capable of more.

I changed virtually everything about how I approach marathon training from 2012 to 2013 – literally almost everything, from the fuel I take, to the socks that I wear, the number of weekly miles I run (going from a 50 mpw max to closer to 70-75, without ITB issues!)… pretty much if there were a variable in marathon training I could change, I did change it in 2013. In the biggest scheme of things, I attribute the performance gains to a completely different way of training (going from my own ‘kinda wing it kinda base it on prior Boston training approach’ to Pfitzinger), but as is to be expected, when you train the same way for many years – as I have been since 2013 – things might get stale. Your body adjusts. You plateau. (Sidenote: there is always room for error too, obviously. I made some race day mistakes at many of my marathons in 2014, which no doubt hindered me, but I think perpetually training the same way since ’13 also played a huge part).

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post-Houston ’13. A was so little!
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mid-Chicago ’13, I think around mile 17

For this training cycle, I paid Jason Fitzgerald at strengthrunning.com to write a custom plan for me, and I think this was a smart move. I sing his praises routinely because he’s a “real” running coach who obviously knows his stuff. When I was following Pfitz, it was rare that I could ever hit my tempo paces each week for one reason or another. This time around, I gave myself a complete attitude shift and went into each tempo run – ones that I had come to fear, thanks to my Pfitz experience – with a clean slate and just hoped to run what was in me that day… and you know what? My tempo runs were among my strongest each week. I routinely hit the prescribed times, week after week, and I actually kinda came to enjoy the opportunity to “run fast for X minutes” each week. I’ll be damned.

During this training cycle, some weeks I felt like I was still in ultra training mode, doing back-to-back double-digit runs every weekend (with speed stuff on Saturday and LR on Sunday), but that’s what works for my family and me right now, so I just went with it. Though I didn’t race at all during this cycle, early on, in December, I posted an unofficial 5k PR during a tempo run, breaking 20 for the first time, and I’ve never felt stronger on tempos and speed stuff than I have this time around. I posted virtually all of my weekly mileage while pushing a stroller, saving the weekend speed and LR stuff as my time away from the kids, and stroller running (with the big one or with the little one) I think also strengthened me in ways that I wasn’t anticipating.

With all of this in mind, then, I feel like I’m stronger and maybe faster right now than ever – something I didn’t think I’d be saying at just about 7.5 months postpartum. I’m not an idiot and realize that none of this guarantees a PR race, but I’m headed into this race knowing that I’m ready.

Going into Modesto, after running a satisfying Berkeley time on not-HM-specific training, I wanted to post a training cycle that I could be proud of, and I am. That in and of itself is gratifying. A strong race would be the icing.

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Strength stuff

It’s so easy and tempting to be a lazy runner – a runner who only runs – and I have been that way before. We all know how important it is to do the ancillary stuff, but it’s not fun; it’s not “sexy” like posting a ton of miles; and at the end of the day, it’s just tedious. Coming into this training cycle fresh off my pregnancy and childbirth, I wanted to make sure that everything was in “working order,” which was what led me to including postpartum-targeted core and strength week nearly every week, usually a couple times a week, if I got my shit together (read: used my 20-minute windows of time wisely). I enjoyed the Moms Into Fitness DVDs during my second pregnancy and continued with the 30 day core program throughout this cycle, and while obviously the strength of my transverse abdominus isn’t going to dictate how quickly or well I can cover 26.2 miles, taking the time each week to account for muscle imbalances and weaknesses that pregnancy (and childbirth) has wrought has been time well spent, as far as I’m concerned. I think paying attention to these little details has helped me even in my day-to-day life now, too, since my lower back no longer feels shot at the end of the day. Bonus: I’m pretty sure the strength stuff helped lean me out a bit and made me lose some weight/inches. Honestly, I think anyone would benefit from these DVDs, and especially so if you’ve had a child, and the workouts are totally manageable (~20-30 minutes). I’m a big fan now (and yup, I’ve paid for all of ’em… nothing sponsored here). I’ll keep this in my repertoire for sure.

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I break shit now

 Fueling

As I wrote before about breastfeeding and training, fueling appropriately has become paramount not only to get me through training runs but also so my body can make milk for my growing babe. What this has meant for my training, aside from the fact that I feel like I should own shares in my local grocery stores, is simply that I have to eat before I run – even if it means I’m making myself eat and drink at 3 or 4am – because otherwise I will legit feel like I’m drunk while I’m running. (It sounds funny, but let me assure you: it sucks). Admittedly, I have felt pretty silly eating prior to “just” a 3 or 4 or 5 mile run, but experience quickly taught me in this cycle that this was non-negotiable. Chalk this up to listening to your body, gang. (Case in point: I thought having a banana before a 6 mile speed sesh on Wednesday would be sufficient. Negative. I spent the better part of this run trying to stay upright and not end up in someone’s front lawn).

Throughout this cycle, I also took the time to experiment with different types of gels and gus, taking a step away from the Accel Gels that I’ve been using since Houston ’13. Ideally, I’d like to find something vegan (since AG has whey in it), so I tried various types of Gu (ugh), Huma (super ugh), and Honey Stinger (the gels are decent, the waffles are delicious, but the overarching honey issue doesn’t help my vegan cause). Ultimately, I ended up fueling most of my LRs with the HS waffles and will probably alternate between those and AG come race day. Palatability is hard to come by (for me) with this stuff, so if you have some recommendations of a brand you really like – especially if it’s vegan – I’m all ears. I’d say that I eat vegan 99% of the time; this is part of that 1% where I defer to my self-ascribed “almost vegan” label.

The bullshit of the motherhood handicap

As I wrote before, training for a marathon while breastfeeding has been doable with some planning and creativity (and flexibility). Obviously, my children are more important than my marathoning hobby. That said, I am a human with interests beyond my children (as hard as it may be to believe that moms can want to do things aside from being with their children 24/7/365), and I want to do well at this race and in future races. I’ve trained for Modesto as best as I can, posting 95% of my prescribed mileage – and yes, I did the math; I’m so stoked to be returning to “my people” for the first time in over a year; and as is usually the case, I have so enjoyed just the process of marathon training. The race, the product, is important, sure, but in the grand scheme, it’s kinda got nothing on the hours and hours and hours of training, the process, I’ve posted to get there.

This is all kinda tangential to a point I want to make about being able to run a good marathon and be a mom. There’s this great, super-quick article about how Kara Goucher (a mom to a five-year-old) placed fourth at the Oly trials – becoming an alternate for Rio – and how reporters characterize her. She basically says that she has conflicted views about being labeled this type of runner or that type of runner and a mom (emphasis necessary) because to her, when reporters recognize her as such, it’s almost like a “consolation prize,” like “oh, well, at least you’ll always have your son,” implying that yes, you may not fulfill your immediate career goal (like qualifying for Rio) but at the end of the day, oh well, you’re a mom, and you being a mom matters more than being able to represent your country in the Olympics or do well in your career. It feeds into the shitty and forever-old “having it all” mentality that fuels the dumbass mommy wars (career versus family, etc.), from which I stay far, far away. It’s bullshit because we moms can want to compete and perform at our highest abilities and still be moms. One does not negate the other.

While I obviously don’t have to deal with this on the order of magnitude that Kara Goucher does, I nonetheless identify with her a bit. Any race performance I post is on me; no one in my family cares about my marathoning hobby as much as I do. Even with my two kiddos at home, the beings whom I have literally grown and whose livelihoods I have sustained (am sustaining), being a mom (times two) doesn’t handicap my ability or my desire to post a decent marathon. Sure, it has made for more-complicated-than-usual training and has necessitated some creativity and flexibility at times. What it hasn’t made me is weak; if anything, it has made me even more fiercely competitive with myself and even more eager to chip away at my potential in this grueling endeavor. If I have a shitty run, my first thought isn’t about wanting to go be with my children; it’s about what I can do next time to improve. I want to show my family, my impressionable girls, what can happen if they work hard toward realizing a goal, and in the process, I want to prove it to myself, too. In sum: yes, I am a mother, and I’m also a runner. I want to kick ass at both.

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they rule

Goals

Ah, goals. It wouldn’t be a final training overview and goals recap without talking about race day goals. It’d be easy—so easy—to slap a number here that would dictate my success on Sunday, but I’m not going to; it’s just much too short-sighted. A time on a clock only tells this much (pretend I’m showing you a tiny, tiny amount) of the story.

My singular goal for my running in 2016 was to go forth and kick ass. This is as nebulous a goal as there ever was, and I kinda like it that way. I could say that I want to go for a certain time on race day, but I don’t really know what that is right now and won’t really know until I start running. So much on race day is in our control, obviously, but I think it’s also important to acknowledge that so much more is beyond us. Sometimes the best (if not the only) thing we can do is show up for the ride and maintain a positive attitude.

My plan, then? To go forth and kick ass.

I will see what’s in the tank on Sunday and will execute accordingly.

It will be a blast, and I am so excited – thrilled – to be out there.

Thanks for the encouragement throughout the training cycle 🙂 xoxo

the long-distance runner is (voluntarily) lonely no more

the long-distance runner is (voluntarily) lonely no more

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The backstory to this post is that I wrote it for The SF Marathon’s blog, since I’m a social media ambassador for the race (and totally want you to run it! It’s so fun). I’ve had the great pleasure of having family visiting for about the past month, so between all the wonderful family QT and just general life happenings — all good things, all good things — sitting down (or rather, standing) to write hasn’t been much of a priority. I have notes scribbled out, ready to be made coherent, for a handful of posts, so now that life is back to its regularly-scheduled-programming, perhaps my blog-posting regularity (eh), too, will commence. We’ll see. Anyway — yay running. Here you go; I think many of you (my team! my people) will totally get this.

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People often ascribe some element of martyrdom to running. It doesn’t really seem to matter if you’re going for a little jaunt around your ‘hood one morning before work or putting in hours upon hours (and miles upon miles) during training for a half, full, or ultramarathon; for whatever reason, if you willingly run, people seem to think that you’re martyring yourself to a fruitless and futile endeavor, one characterized by literally doing the same thing – putting one foot in front of the other – hundreds of thousands of times.

To say that you’re a runner is to give many people the idea that you’ve taken upon the badge of honor that has begotten runners and joggers alike for the past few decades: a loner, someone who’d rather spend time with his or her thoughts than with other sentient beings. Becoming a runner is to add yet another character to the ongoing saga of “the loneliness of the long-distance runner,” a mythology surrounding our sport since the jogging boom of the 1970s. To be a runner is to live in isolation, away from every_one and every_thing, to be forever an introvert, and to be happiest when being alone.

Except that running isn’t a solitary endeavor. It’s as much a team sport as any out there.

There are so many elements to the running community that seem to have withstood the test of time simply because they’re tradition. It’s practically sacrilege to have anything pre-race but pasta, evidenced by many races’ Marathon Eve pasta feeds, wherein many a runner will stuff him- or herself to the gills with the starchy carbohydrate in part to top off glycogen stores (one can hope) but mostly, I’d guess, out of deference to the tradition. Similarly, many in the running community and those who support us perpetuate this ongoing mythology of “the loneliness of the long distance runner,” conjuring images of runners out there pounding pavement each morning to the tune of … nothing.

While the pasta/carbohydrate loading pre-marathon might have a glimmer of basis in science, I’m calling bullshit on “the loneliness of the long distance runner.”

Thanks to the explosion of social media over the past few years and many runners’ willingness to put themselves and their training out there – creating blogs, twitter and instagram profiles, facebook pages, and creating and maintaining training groups through platforms like Strava, Dailymile, or MeetUp – if you’re a) even minutely connected to the internet and b) a runner, chances are you can easily connect yourself with a team (or three).

Running can, of course, be a solitary and singular endeavor – and many people revel in that quiet time to themselves, a time when they don’t need to stress about their work, family, or any other obligation – but it doesn’t have to be.

Maybe this proclamation is a bit melodramatic, but to run – to be a runner – is to connect yourself with prior millenia’s worth of history, dating all the way back to our earliest ancestors whose lives and livelihoods literally depended on their ability to run. Surely I can’t speak for you, but I think it’s pretty badass to (willingly!) do something our ancestors did so long ago. Not many other sports have been around for nearly the entirety of life as we know it.

Running as a team – running and training with friends – brings with it a lot of practical components that can be beneficial. Of course there’s the accountability aspect – because you’d probably feel like an ass if you left your partner high and dry in the predawn hours, when you’re supposed to be out running – but there are also many other ways that running with a team/with friends can help you, such as giving you more opportunities to run a variety of paces (slower or faster than you’d usually run), which in turn might actually make you a better (read: stronger, faster, fitter, healthier) runner. By actively being involved in a community of runners, you can also forge and cultivate some incredible friendships, and you might also find various avenues to link service with your running, since so many races (including TSFM) give you the option to run on behalf of a charity and to fundraise. It’s a pretty cool thing to be able to use a hobby like running to benefit some social good.

In the absence of physically running in real life with a team, social media can also be an acceptable way to join forces with runners near and far – and in the process, create your own virtual team (and even complete a virtual race, if you’re so inclined). Sometimes  overbooked life schedules preclude us from meeting up with our buddies for a run, but virtual teams – virtual accountability, if you will – can also be a lot of fun. It can get the job done.

When you train alongside someone (in real life or virtually), you’re giving yourself a buddy with whom you can incessantly “talk shop” about training, racing, running, or anything else that’s on your mind. Your team “gets it” – all the highs and lows of training, the momentary boosts of confidence and the crippling effects of anxiety and doubt – because chances are, your team is going through the motions just as much as you are.

Running and training for endurance events invariably give us opportunities to be raw and vulnerable as we set goals and work our asses off to realize them. Having a team is to have a sounding board through every step, every mile, of the process, and in our moments of confidence, anxiety, dismay, excitement, and the entire emotional gamut in between, your team’s got your back. Even when you’re running by yourself – because no one can run your race but you – your team’s in your back pocket.

So many people have run before you, and so many more will come after you. The greater running community is like one big hippy dippy happy family, singing kum-by-yah as we run mile after mile each month, sometimes praising our decision to run for fun and other times wondering what the hell is wrong with us that we’d voluntarily enlist ourselves in such a challenging activity.

In the most non-patronizing way possible: your team gets you. Your team understands. We do this for all the same reasons that you do (give or take).

Runners are a welcoming bunch, and I encourage you to put yourself out there and connect with some, either with clubs in your area or with the virtual running community. I think you’ll be surprised how much more enriching this sport becomes once you realize that yes, while no one else can run your mileage but you, being on a running team isn’t an oxymoron. If there’s any doubt in your mind, just watch the USA women’s Olympic Qualifying Trials from the LA Marathon on 2/13/16. I don’t want to reveal any spoilers (in the off-chance you haven’t already seen the ending), but believe me: the OQT will assure you that running is as team-based an endeavor as they come. I dare you not to tear up.