1. A recap - VICTORY! Shockingly, even to myself, I not only BEAT my best time (which, mind you, was in my early 20's, more than 10 years ago!) with a 3:38:01, which I NEVER even dreamed I could do, but the time was good enough to qualify for Boston, again, a dream come true. AND best yet, I ran a solid race where I negative split.. .meaning my 2nd half was faster than the 1st half. Okay, okay, I'll be honest, it was within 20 seconds, but really, most people go minutes and minutes over, so even coming that close is a negative split enough for me!!!!
2. Below is an article I wrote for my Oak Park Runners Club, with some pics, that they asked me to do. Kinda general stuff, but just to fill some void before I write my novel of everything about the marathon. Want to write it as detailed as possible because when I train for the Boston marathon (hopefully will smoothly get in!), want to know everything that I did because it worked!!!!
Soo... stay tuned, more to come!!!
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10+ Year Marathon Comeback – The 2014 Dubai Marathon
Here I am in 2014, a good 10+ years after my PW at the
London Marathon. I had run several back to back marathons in a short period of
time, but by the time the 4th rolled around, I realized I was NOT
having fun anymore and was just tired of running. The PW marked the finale
decision of putting a hiatus to marathon running. The next 10 years passed with
me getting into triathlons (including two ½ ironmen races) and probably more
than a dozen ½ marathons, which I particularly enjoy. Did I miss or even have
to run the desire to run a marathon – not a chance!
Flash forward 10 years, and I find myself living in Dubai
and a part of a massive running group that is known as an “endurance club” and
caters group runs towards the Dubai Marathon. Last year I didn’t hear the end
of it that I didn’t run it, despite my excuses of being home in Chicago for a
bulk of the “peak” training. After my friend came all the way out here to run
it in 2013, I then made the decision that it was time, the hours of training
preparations and the pain of running the marathon were vague at best and when
another Chicago friend decided he would come out for a visit and to run it too,
10 years after his last marathon, I was sold.
But then… umm… now what?
Here are a few things about my training for the Dubai
Marathon, the 10 year gap, and everything in between that worked for me:
- -The importance of running groups: My first marathon I trained by myself, and…. It was NOT fun and I didn’t enjoy the training whatsoever. Then I discovered the good ‘ol Oak Park Runners Club and that changed everything – met great like-minded athletes, challenged myself more than I would normally, and FINALLY was able to incessantly talk about running stuff without having non-running friends roll their eyes at me. Nowadays the Dubai Creek Striders is serving that purpose, but of course I always have OPRC at heart. Fortunately majority of the people in this group were training for the Dubai marathon, so the runs were all catered towards the marathon - this included interval training, which I now swear by, and also the progressive longer runs. Running groups has also brought me a great group of friends and was a key to helping with my adjustment as an expat here.
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- Dee, Lyn-Si, Jez, myself, and Lal post marathon
· -Cross and strength training: When I first
started running marathons in the early 2000’s, I ran. And ran. And ran. Just
felt I had NO time for other sports or activities and thought, when you train
for a marathon, the more hours on your feet the better, right? Around that
time, I was doing a volunteer stint at a physical therapy clinic in preparation
for starting grad school in physical therapy, and talking with a therapist about
running, and he asked me, “Sooo, what do you do for strength training?” I then
let out a nice chuckle and said, “Strength training? Bah! Who needs that? I’m
running!” Ahhh….. how foolish I was. Professionally and personally, I can’t say
enough about the importance of strength training and cross training. Back then
I’m sure it was talked about, I just ignored it, but I feel now it is much more
acknowledged and respected than before. Soo… now that I am older and wiser and
have 6+ years of PT experience and being an athlete myself, this time around I
lessened my running to 3-4 days a week and incorporate strength training and
cross-training of swimming, spinning, and yoga. Each of those helped in their
own ways and also made the running more enjoyable because I wasn’t bored from
it!
·
- -The beauty of sleep and eating before long runs:
I was like many of us in our 20’s that could get away with minimal sleep and be
full steam ahead – for school, work, running, anything! I would stay up late,
wake up at the last possible minute, do a long run on an empty stomach, and be
fine for the rest of the day. Ohh… how things change. Now if I don’t get at
least 6 ½ to 7 hours a sleep at night, not only am I cranky, but also not
functioning and my performance is meager at best. The week before marathon I
made a point to get between 7-8 hours of sleep so was well rested for the big
race. I also now abide by the eating breakfast before running, which entails
getting up even earlier to have time for digestion and hence going to bed even
earlier - something that wouldn’t have crossed my mind a decade ago. These two
things have made an enormous difference for me in both my physical and mental
stamina.
· -Outside conditions: While my friend was
suffering from the worst Chicago winter seen in almost 2 decades for his
training prep, “Chi-beria,” Dubai was having a particularly “cool” winter. The
temperatures in the mornings got down to the 40’s, up to the 60’s and 70’s
during the day, and then back down to the 50’s in the evenings. This is what
some may call “perfect” running weather, but for us spoiled with heat most year
around, we coined the term “Dubai-eria” because we had to revert from tank tops
to t-shirts (still shorts though) – gasp! Hahaha.
· -Oak Park comes to Dubai: Just a few days before
the marathon, I got a message from long-time OPRC runner Fred Fedewa (who has
moved but keeps in the loop with OPRC) that he was coming to Dubai for a
business trip! Fred met me and my friend out for our carbo-loading in front of
the grand fountain display in front of the Dubai Mall and Burj Kalifa, the
world’s tallest building. We compared stories of comebacks as Fred had taken a
23 year gap between marathons, so my measly 10 year comeback was nothing. Fred
had some great running stories and was super motivating, which I really
appreciated the positive energy. He was also awesome enough to wear his Oak
Park Runners Club t-shirt!
· - Gizmos: As you can imagine, technology has
advanced 10-fold in the last decade, particularly with Garmin and other GPS
watches. Nowadays you have everything from pacing, elevation, calories,
cadence, proposed recovery time, and even I ran with someone that had her kids’
voice recording on her phone that offered words of encouragement every mile or
so. What?!?! Although I definitely see how these things are beneficial and can
make trainings much more efficient, call me old-fashioned, but I like to go old
school with haphazardly using my cheap $40 TIMEX Ironman Target watch and just running
how I feel. I also have the vivid memory of my last 2 marathons (including my
PW) that I got so intense and put so much pressure on myself on watching my
splits that when I was off, I just started mentally checking out. I also didn’t
adjust well to being off pace of being too slow or too fast and then having to
run either slower or faster to lose or gain time when I maybe felt the opposite.
So here we are 10+ years later and during my training, enough people had the
beeping and buzzing of the Garmin’s that I really didn’t need anything. After
awhile, I was able to gauge my pace fairly accurately without any help from
gizmos. Come marathon I did exactly that… used my TIMEX watch, started it at
the start, but because I used it so rarely, I accidently pressed “stop” instead
of “reset” at the 10km mark and that was
that. Oops. The course was marked in kilometers, and I gave myself 0-10km,
10-21km, 21-30km, 30k-42km pace goals, basically starting off slow, which I
did, going into what I called ‘cruise control’ mode, and then finishing strong,
which I did. My last leg was the 2nd fastest split and my 1st
leg the slowest. It was spot on how I felt – NO “pressure” from watches and
felt strong the whole way.
Soo there you have it. More than a decade later, not only
get a PR of 3:38:01, which I never dreamed I could do, I got a negative split,
AND qualified for Boston (I’m hoping to be Boston bound in 2015!).
My advice is challenge yourself, try the old-fashioned way
of running based on how you feel, you may be surprised!!
Happy running!
From Chicago to Dubai! Ed and I after the marathon (hmph, he looks more fresh than I do, but then again, he ran a 3:59:58 and I ran a 3:38:01, hehe)
Anil stretching me after the marathon - painful, but felt so good afterwards and was able to walk somewhat normally!
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