Tag: training

Rock ‘n’ Roll Savannah Marathon – Savannah, GA (2015)

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This is it, the race I’ve been training for, albeit for only 7 weeks, but this is the race where I will break 5:00 and get my much anticipated marathon finisher jacket! 

Spoiler alert: as most of you may have heard by now, the race was black flagged around 9:45am which diverted the marathon runners at various stages of the race due to heat and humidity. Unfortunately, I was one of those runners. But, let’s back up a little.

I was running this race with my friend Beth, and we headed out of Charlotte early Friday morning to get down to Savannah (about a 4 hour drive) early enough to hit the expo before we ran into major Friday afternoon traffic. The expo was really easy to get to, though the parking situation was a little tight, especially for a convention center, and we grabbed our bibs, made sure we were in the same corral and then wandered around the expo to check out what the vendors were offering. We found one booth where the people were calling out asking who was running the marathon, so we went over and they had us make signs that their school would be waving during the second half of the marathon the next day – an awesome way to recognize all the runners! 

We didn’t spend too much time at the expo and instead headed to the hotel to get off our feet and figure out our dinner plans. As expected, most places were already completely booked with over 20,000 runners in town for the race. Since we were south of the city, we were able to find something fairly easily, with only a 30 minute wait for a table. After dinner, we headed to Wal-Mart to pick up some last-minute supplies and we clearly were a little delirious as we tried on little kids monster slippers (Beth) and got really excited about find an 18-pack of Twix for $10 (me). It was a great distraction and once we found what we actually needed, we went back to the hotel for an early bedtime and an even earlier wakeup call. 

We got up at 4:30, grabbed our gear and headed to the parking garage we had pre-paid for. There was a lot of traffic to get into the garage, but it was definitely a lot easier than trying to find a random location to park in a city we didn’t know anything about. We had about a half mile walk to both the start and finish (this was a point to point race), so it ended up being an ideal location to park. 


It was hot and humid as we walked to the start line and we knew it was only going to get worse once the sun came up. The moss-covered trees were a great backdrop for the start of the race and we got there about half an hour before the race started. There were a ton of people in the start area, with spectators and runners mingling about. The best advice we got all morning was from another runner who told us to head to the portapotties near the last corral – the lines there were so much shorter that it was easily worth the short walk to find them. We had about 30 minutes after the official race start before our corral started and we positioned ourselves near the front of our corral. For this race, there were two full corrals with people expecting to finish at the 5:00 mark and the two others on the bookends also having 5:00 finishers too, so we were definitely in the thick of runners, though as we realized later, most of these people were doing the half, just at the pace we were going for in the marathon. 

One of Beth’s running club friends, Jennifer, joined us in the corral and as we were talking, we realized that each of us was doing our second marathon and none of us felt great about the first one. Jennifer was telling us about the hills in Savannah since she had done this race last year and I mentioned the hills in the Pittsburgh Marathon and she immediately asked me if I had done the Galloway training group last year, which I had and then she said, “You’ve been my unnamed hero! I’ve been talking about you for a year and a half and never knew your name. I couldn’t believe you were going to go run by yourself – you’re a total badass!” Last spring, since the training group was only gearing up to the half marathon distance, I would go run a few miles before meeting up with the group to do the official training runs and apparently I made an impression. That definitely made my morning! 

Since there were so many people, we opted to skip the first two walk cycles and try to get to an area that was more spread out before we walked. We ended up catching up to the corral in front of us, so unfortunately, this never really happened on the half marathon course – there were a ton of people everywhere!

  • Mile 1 – 10:20
  • Mile 2 – 10:18
  • Mile 3 – 10:47
  • Mile 4 – 10:20
  • Mile 5 – 10:41
  • Mile 6 – 10:03
  • Mile 7 – 11:32
  • Mile 8 – 10:19
  • Mile 9 – 11:50
  • Mile 10 – 11:21
  • Mile 11 – 11:44
  • Mile 12 – 11:16
  • Mile 13 – 11:09

Around the 13.5 mile marker, I was told to turn around. Beth had called me just a minute or so before that and let me know she was waiting for me next to a bunch of cops who were turning people around and there was another guy ahead of where she was who was turning people around, so I called her back and told her to come to me. While I was waiting for her, I found Jennifer and we both waited until Beth came to meet us. 

Overall, I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to do the race I wanted on Saturday, but I’m also glad that I didn’t have to make the decision of whether or not to continue racing. There had already been times were I would forget to eat during my walk break and while I still felt pretty good, I was definitely overheating. Around mile 6, I started grabbing a water at each stop to dump on my head / wrists / neck to try to cool myself down a little bit. That did work for awhile, but before I would get to the next water stop, it was like I had never done that. I was able to get some ice cubes from a couple of the water stops which was amazing! By the time I hit the split of the half and the full (around 12 miles), I had already gone through my 2 litre hydration pack and this was the time when I was starting to contemplate what it would really take for me to finish the race. I’m surprised my time didn’t suffer as much as I thought it had, but I knew I was going to struggle through the rest of the race. 

We ended up walking the entire way back to the finish line because we decided that we should just use this race as a long training run and not exhaust ourselves any more because we may still be able to salvage another marathon this fall, so we walked for about 3 miles and jogged into the finish line, got our mostly unearned medals and made our way through the finishers chute. 

 

sad faces at the finish

Rock ‘n’ Roll allowed all marathoners to pick up their finishers jacket and we joked about adding an asterisk to the jacket because no one really felt like they earned it. Affected runners have also received a coupon code good for a free Rock ‘n’ Roll race any time within the next year, so Beth and I are definitely going to find a fun one to go to next year. I understand why people are upset about this race and there are other factors that, if true, are certainly unacceptable (running out of water within the first 6 miles, volunteers giving away medals to kids / family members instead of just runners, etc.), but I’m glad that Rock ‘n’ Roll made the decision when they did and didn’t rely on runners to make the right decision based on the weather. I know I wasn’t going to quit unless I absolutely had to and that’s not a good thing when you’re talking about heat-related health issues.

Official marathon training

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Since I was doing so many half marathons this summer, I didn’t actually start training for my marathon until mid-September. I was going to start increasing my mileage with the Great Smoky Mountain race, but ended up pushing it off another week. 

For this training cycle, I was most concerned about how to train for the super flat Rock ‘n’ Roll Savannah marathon course. Looking at the elevation profile, you would think this course has major hills, but if you look closely, the course maxes out at less than 60′. Given all of that, I decided to focus my training runs on the greenway that is closest to my house since I could easily add mileage to extend the 12 miles I actually run on the greenway. 


My first training run was an 18-miler and I continued my walk/run pattern (5 minutes running, 1 minute walking) and mostly just ran by feel, not worrying about my time. I ended up with an average pace of 11:00. My goal for the marathon was to break 5 hours (11:27 pace), so this was definitely a surprise to be able to run it this fast. 
My second training run was a 20-mile run, just a week later and I ran virtually the same course, though I added some hills in the beginning, running through my own neighborhood. This run was much harder and I averaged about a 12:30 pace. I had a lot of technical issues with this run trying to get my watch to work correctly and then switching to my phone app instead, but in general it was just a much harder run than the week before. I think the lesson I learned from this one was that I need at least a week in between my long runs in order to fully recover.  
The good news about the 18 and 20 milers being back-to back is that I was able to get back onto my official plan and space out my remaining long runs with shorter runs in between. On October 3, I did a short 10-mile run on the same flat course again and managed a 10:54 pace. 


The weekend after that, I actually got to do a training run with my friend Beth who was going to be doing the marathon with me. She was in an official training group on Saturdays, so we only managed a couple of runs together. For this run, we were doing the Thunder Road first half preview run and added a few extra miles onto it to get a full 17 in. It was really nice to finally have people to run with and the group of ladies I ran with were awesome! We kept up a 12:00 pace with all the fun hills that Thunder Road has to offer. 
 
Next up is my last long training run of this cycle combined with my third running of the Myrtle Beach Mini Marathon. 

Catching up on August

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It’s been a full month since I last posted and a lot has happened in that time. I just got back from my second Westward Adventure trip, though this time I headed out to New Mexico and Oregon for even more running and hiking fun! In early August I was cleared to start playing pick-up soccer and got put on a 4-week training plan to get me up to full-speed soccer. The goal was to have me ready to play by the beginning of September when the woman’s league started. 

Unfortunately 4 days after I officially graduated my physical therapy training program, I was playing pick-up and felt another pop in my the same knee, just a week and a half before I was scheduled to leave for the Ragnar trail relay in Angel Fire, New Mexico. 24 hours later I was back at the physical therapy office. They used some ultrasound on my knee and got me on the stationary bike trying to work out some of the swelling and get some range of motion back in my knee. When I mentioned I had a race the following weekend, they looked at me like I was crazy and said “we’ll see” at which point I said “did I mention I’m going to New Mexico for this race?!” They were not very encouraging about the race, but told me to come back a few days later and see how I felt then. 

After a few days of rest, I was able to walk normally again and my second appointment went much better. They even let me run on a treadmill at a 12:00 pace and told me to take it easy over the weekend. By early the next week, they were able to fully test my knee and decided I still had enough of an ACL to keep my knee from moving the way it’s not supposed to, so I was cleared to run the two races that I had signed up for, which was good because I was leaving in two days! 

Stay tuned for a full recap of Ragnar Trail Angel Fire, New Mexico, Oregon and the Hardesty Hardcore trail race!

DC update

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Well, it’s official – I’ve moved down to the half marathon for the March 14 race. Last weekend I went out and just wasn’t up to the 16 miler I had on the calendar. After looking at my training schedule again and evaluating my goal for my second marathon (beating the 5-hour mark), I decided it wasn’t worth trying to push myself right now toward something I’m not sure I can meet given the 10 weeks before the race. So, I’m moving back to the half marathon and plan to pick out another marathon later this year for my goal race.

Today’s run was a 5-miler in “warmer” weather at a balmy 31 degrees! I started off with a 4:1 run / walk ratio, but I mixed it up a bit, going 1:30 running to 1 minute walk during the latter half of the run. I’m still please with my overall pace for the run though because I stayed under 11 minutes, but I definitely slowed down as I went.

  • Mile 1 – 9:49
  • Mile 2 – 11:00
  • Mile 3 – 10:50
  • Mile 4 – 11:32
  • Mile 5 – 11:35
Average pace: 10:57

I’m still participating in the 30-day #RagnarTraining challenge and you can follow my progress on Instagram @meanderingechoes. I’m planning to complete the 30-day challenge, though I’m a few days behind, so I’ll be doing some catch up! 

How’s your winter running going? 

Weekly training update

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This was my last full training week before the marathon, so my goal was again between 15-19 miles and I ended up hitting 22.34 miles with some extra soccer thrown in on Thursday night. 

Sunday – pick-up soccer, 5.15 miles. 

Monday – off

Tuesday – 7 v 7 soccer, 3.44 miles. Our games this season is split between turf and grass fields and this week was our first game on the grass field. The field is bigger than the turf field we normally use, so they moved the goal up to the 6 yard line to reduce the length of the field… but about half of the end line doesn’t have any actual lines, so it’s really just up to the discretion of the players / referee as to whether or not the ball went out. There was also a giant puddle in one of the corners which would completely stop the ball if it happened over that way (extra defender!). It was a tough-fought game and we ended up winning 1-0.

Wednesday – off

Thursday – 11 v 11 soccer, 6.95 miles. My team had the late game this week, so I headed to the other field to pick up some paperwork and one of the teams was only going to have 10 players, so they asked me to stay for the first half. I felt a little out of sorts trying to play with that team because we started with only 7 players on the field and had to add people as they arrived which meant trying to move people around into different positions while the game was going on. At halftime, I headed over to the other field to play with my team. My team ended up losing 4-1, but I think it was a good game and the other team had some really great shots.

Friday – off

Saturday – long run, 6.8 miles (11:18 pace).

How did your week go? Did you hit your goals?

Last long run

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It’s official, I’ve done my last long run before the marathon next weekend. I went out early this morning to do 5-7 miles and this time I actually stuck within that range! Last week, I was planning to do the same, but I ended up doing closer to 10 miles. Today, I headed to the greenway uptown to take advantage of the great weather and some flatter roads, but I did incorporate a pretty good hill about halfway through my run so that it wasn’t completely flat, but still pretty close.

As I was running on the greenway, part of it went through an art & craft festival and farther on there was some type of festival featuring food and crafts from around the world. The first group was set up close to uptown, street side and the second group was in a local park with the vendors set up around a lake.

  • Mile 1 – 12:10

  • Mile 2 – 10:54
  • Mile 3 – 11:59 <– GU & removing some layers
  • Mile 4 – 11:04
  • Mile 5 – 11:13
  • Mile 6 – 10:34
  • Last .8 – 11:10 <– picture time!

How was your Saturday? Did you get a long run in?

Weekly training update

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I took more days off this week than I was planning to, but I made up for it on the days that I did get my running in. I was targeting 15-19 miles and came in at 18.94 miles, so I’m happy with that, but I’ll definitely have to keep an eye on my miles during these last 2 weeks before the marathon – I don’t want to slack off too much and now that playoff hockey has started, I have to make sure to fit in my runs before the games start! 

Sunday – pick-up soccer, 6.63 miles. I actually played a lot of soccer that I wasn’t expecting to again. I went out for my normal pick-up game on Sunday afternoon and then later in the evening, I had to pick up some paperwork from another player from the women’s league and was asked to play for their 7 v 7 game. The convinced me to play goalie! I didn’t do too bad, but the 3 goals they did score were over my head into the corner, so definitely a good shot by their players. The team I was on ended up winning 5-3 and after the 7 v 7 game, we played pick-up for 30 minutes. Lots of soccer the day after my 23.5 mile run, so I was very sore once I sat down for awhile.

Monday – off

Tuesday – 7 v 7 soccer, 2.61 miles. We won the game and it was a good start to the season. We’re still having some issues with people showing up on time to start the games, but we’ll see if that trend continues this week since we have added a couple of new players who (hopefully) will show up on time! 

Wednesday – off

Thursday – off. We didn’t have any women’s games this week because of spring break and lots of people planning to be out of town, so instead we held a social at one of our sponsors. It was nice to get to talk with everyone from the different teams, especially since we all recognized one another, but we hardly ever get the chance to just sit and talk with one another during the season. 

Friday – off

Saturday – long run, 9.7 miles (11:33 pace).

How did your week go? Did you hit your goals?


Rain, rain, go away…

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I had planned to spend this weekend working in the yard again, but it’s been raining since yesterday evening, so I knew I wasn’t going to get any yard work done. Luckily, it looks like tomorrow will be beautiful and all of the flowers I planted last weekend are surviving the thorough watering they’ve received this week, so tomorrow will be all about planting in the garden.

The good news is that the temperature has jumped significantly since the middle of last week, so even though it rained all day, it was still warm enough for me to be able to get in a good long run. I was hoping for around 7 miles, but since I didn’t really map out my route and I had to turn around due to some flooding, I ended up going a little longer than that. I wasn’t expecting to see anyone on my run since it was rainy, but I got passed around mile 3 (not too far onto the trail portion of my run) by a man and his dog – the dog was just trotting along behind him and was very disciplined, didn’t even look my way when he passed me. I wish my dogs were that well-trained! There are several sections of the greenway that are on boardwalks over swampy areas and the first one I went on was fine, but a little after mile 5 I ran into a completely flooded area (bottom right picture), so that’s when I had to turn around and figure out a different route home. 

  • Mile 1 – 11:11
  • Mile 2 – 11:38
  • Mile 3 – 11:26
  • Mile 4 – 11:48
  • Mile 5 – 11:35
  • Mile 6 – 12:05 <– includes time looking at the map to figure out the fastest way back home
  • Mile 7 – 10:50 <– good portion of downhill
  • Mile 8 – 11:50 <– long wait for 2 stoplights
  • MIle 9 – 10:31
  • Last .7 – 12:57 <– IT band pain requiring extra walk breaks
Overall pace: 11:33


One thing that I realized after the Kentucky half marathon is that I have more IT band pain when I run faster and when my legs are cold. After having to stop for several minutes waiting for stoplights near the end of mile 8, I definitely started to get a chill from the rainy weather, so I wasn’t really surprised at the IT band pain. I think the biggest take-away is to try to figure out a way to keep my legs warm when I run. I’m hoping this won’t be an issue for the marathon (I’m actually more concerned that the weather will be too warm for me), but I’ll just have to pack lots of options for race day.

Are you running this weekend?

Weekly training update

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This week was my highest mileage week for my marathon training and only the second time I exceeded my goal mileage. I was aiming for 33 – 37 miles and ended up with 37.4 miles, though I am still getting my weekly short runs in during soccer games and not actually with just runs, but so far so good and I’ll just try to stay safe while I’m on the field!


Sunday – pick-up soccer, 3.5 miles

Monday – 7 v 7 soccer, 2.81 miles. I randomly got asked by one of my friends to sub for her since she was sick and we ended up playing against my old team. There were a lot of “traitor” taunts coming from the sidelines while I was on the field, but it was fun to play against my old teammates – it was just like our Sunday pick-up soccer games, but this time the goals actually counted for something.

Tuesday – off

Wednesday – off

Thursday – 11 v 11 soccer, 7.58 miles. One of our teams was down to 6 players and asked me to help them out on Thursday, so I ended up playing 2 full games Thursday night. Both teams that I played with won 1-0, so it was a good night!

Friday – off

Saturday – long run – RaceFest half marathon, 23.51 miles, 11:32 pace. 

How did your week go? Did you hit your goals?

Race #5: Charlotte RaceFest half marathon

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Today was the big day that I was worried about when I first started this training plan. The plan was to run 5-7 miles before the race then complete the half marathon and finish up with a 3-5 mile run home. Last night I checked out the potential routes and the fastest route home was about 3.5 miles, so I knew I needed to get in about 6.5 miles before the race started. I decided to get up around 5:00 in order to get out of the house by 5:30 – that gave me 1.5 hours to get my miles in before meeting up with the rest of the team and get to the start line by 7:30. 

Side note – the dogs stayed in doggie daycare Thursday morning to Friday afternoon and were dead to the world Friday night. I let them outside this morning when I got up and as soon as they came inside, they went straight back to bed!

My route took me 6.5 miles from my house to the start line, then through the half marathon course, and finally 4 miles back home. I knew the route would be hilly, but the half marathon course was tough (miles 6.5 – about mile 20 below)! 

Mile 1 – 11:40
Mile 2 – 11:26
Mile 3 – 11:25
Mile 4 – 11:42
Mile 5 – 11:05
Mile 6 – 11:19

Average pace 11:26

The first mile was pretty rough, but then I got into the groove of things. It was really nice  out and there wasn’t much traffic on the road, so I put on some music and just jammed out while running down the road in the dark! By the time I got to the start of the race, the sun was starting to come up and there were some beautiful pinks highlighting the sky.
Mile 7 – 12:25
Mile 8 – 11:28
Mile 9 – 11:36
Mile 10 – 11:18
Mile 11 – 10:47
Mile 12 – 10:37

Average pace 11:22

The start of the race was really crowded, so my first mile was slower than I had hoped, but I really just ran by feel again, so as I started to do the math in my head about how fast I was running, I was really surprised to be so much faster than my expected 12 minute  per mile pace.

Mile 13 – 11:08
Mile 14 – 11:43
Mile 15 – 10:36
Mile 16 – 11:02
Mile 17 – 11:53
Mile 18 – 11:34

Average pace 11:19


I finished the half marathon right around mile 20 and while I didn’t spend too much time at the post-race party, I definitely felt my legs tighten up from even that little bit of stopping to talk with a friend. I also had to spend a little bit of time waiting for stoplights once I started my trek back home. During one of my breaks, I stretched out my calves and that stopped them from completely cramping up. 

Mile 19 – 11:25
Mile 20 – 11:20
Mile 21 – 11:24
Mile 22 – 13:08
Mile 23 – 13:04
Last .51 – 11:54

Average pace 12:02

Official time: 2:28:11
Overall pace 11:32

I crossed the finish line with the clock showing just around 2:30, so I knew I had run much faster than my half marathon 2 weeks ago. I definitely wasn’t expecting to run that fast, and I paid for it the last few miles with cramping and IT band issues. The lesson learned from this is that I shouldn’t stop for any amount of time during my marathon and that I really need to be aware of my speed during the first half of the race even if I’m feeling good. 

Did you race this weekend?