Greg McElhatton

A few weeks ago, I went into work early, then around lunchtime tried to use the pool then. Mornings at the rec center near my office can be a little crazy crowded, so I thought that this might be a good way to get some exercise without having to fight for a lane. I was thrilled, then, to get there and find multiple lanes entirely empty. Heaven! Doubly so since mornings have gotten more and more busy over the past month at the pool.

Since then I’d gone for a few lunchtime swims, and with great success. That seems to have been put on hold, though, now that school is out. Julie and I went to the rec center on Monday and discovered that summer camp is now running from 12-3:30pm every day for about two months, taking up almost the entire pool. Ack! So, I finally buckled down and signed up for a lap swimming class through Arlington County’s rec centers and got the final slot; it starts next Monday evening and runs for eight weeks. So that should be fun, at least, and it locks in some time that I will get a good swim in.

I do find it a little funny, though, that now it’s summer the indoor pool that is suddenly so crazy busy. Shouldn’t people be flocking to the outdoor ones?

On a different (running) note, while I enjoy my old Garmin Forerunner 301, I’ve been starting to think it might be a good idea to upgrade it to one that holds onto a signal stronger. The new Garmin Forerunner 405 looks lovely, is nice and small, is supposed to be super-accurate, and you don’t have to plug it in to get the data onto your computer. It also, by all reports, doesn’t work if it gets at all wet. After reading a dozen reviews from runners who all started it with, “I sweat a lot when I run, and this thing is useless as a result…” I realized that the 405 is not for me. There’s the 305, which was the previous model, that I can consider. Much less expensive, but a litle clunky.

Alternately I’m half-tempted to go for the rather-inexpensive 50, which doesn’t use a GPS but a foot-pod instead and which is supposedly pretty accurate. If it is accurate, well, it would certainly make me not have to worry about GPS signals anymore, but instead I guess there’s always the worry that I might have a foot chopped off. (I suspect at the end of the day I will just stick with what I have for now.)

What do you do when your race is cancelled halfway through the experience?

I suppose I should backtrack a bit. After scratching the Philadelphia Marathon in November 2008, followed up by gallbladder removal surgery in early December, I more or less had to start over when it came to training this January. I knew I would need about four months to really get the distance back up, so I signed up for the Potomac River Run Marathon scheduled for May 3rd. It’s a small marathon, in its sixth year, with less than 1000 people signed up.

I got up to 18 miles in early March, then ran the National Half Marathon with pretty good results. Since then, though, I’ve been having some slight issues between a strained tendon and just general free time. After the marathon I tried the run-two-12-milers (instead of one 20 miler) plan, and while I’d hoped to get one more long distance weekend in between it and the marathon, other problems kept it from happening.

So, I knew going into the marathon that I wouldn’t pick up a PR. It was a little disappointing because while 2007′s PR was a good finish time, I also knew I could’ve done better had it not been for the infamous “Greg almost gets hit by a car” incident and I was looking forward to break it. But it just wasn’t in the cards, and with feeling sick and run down the day before, it more or less cinched my feelings that I shouldn’t even try to do so.

Meanwhile, in what was a strange turn of events, seven days before the marathon, the race director sent out an e-mail about the start of the race. It was scheduled to start at 7am and run until 1pm. However, the National Park Service had issued them their permit and instead they had to be done by 11am. So, the start time of the race was changing; there was now an “open start” and you could head out any time between 5:30 and 7am. (The sun itself doesn’t rise until a little after 6am, I might add.) Now, I knew I wasn’t running a sub-4 hour marathon, it just wasn’t in the cards. So, I talked it over with Charlie, and we got to the race site (he was running the half marathon) a little after 5:30, and headed over the start line at 5:44am even as we were drizzled on.

The Potomac River Run Marathon is a slightly odd course; you run along the Mount Vernon Trail, and if you’re tackling the half marathon option you head out approximately 6.55 miles, turn around, and run back. If you’re running the full marathon, you do that twice. Once the rain stopped about two miles into the course, it was actually really pretty. Just a lot of beautiful scenery involving the Potomac River and wildlife. A lot of rolling hills, unfortunately, but oh well. Also, bizarrely, no mile markers aside from miles 1, 13, 14, 25, and 26. (And of course, me without my Garmin.) So, I just look my time, and enjoyed the experience.

I got back to the start and prepared to head out a second time, when Charlie ran up next to me and started jogging along side. “I need to let you know something,” he said. “They cancelled the race.”

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There’s nothing quite like trying to figure out if you’ve got pre-race jitters, or if you’re generally not doing well. I think anyone who’s had the pre-race jitters will agree that they are awfully hard to tell apart from one another!

But yes, I have a marathon tomorrow. I won’t lie, I don’t feel prepared. Several stumbling blocks were hit along the way, plus for my final long run I did the whole “two shorter runs over two days instead of one huge run,” which is a movement gaining a lot of traction in the running community. Really, that was more or less what I was doing for the Philadelphia Marathon last fall, but of course that race never happened so the experiment was a wash. I could end up rocking it out, we’ll see. But add in that the start time of the race got shifted from 7am to 5:30am, and the threat of rain, and I am feeling even less confident than ever. In my head I’m not even shooting for a personal record tomorrow; just finish under the new time constraints and get it over with.

In the meanwhile, though, I’m trying to stay hydrated while my body does its best to make me not hydrated. If nothing else, I do like this photo that I took (using a lens and a tripod that were both birthday presents!) so see, it’s not a loss.

Also, I have accomplished absolutely nothing today. Normally that’s ok but I suspect tomorrow might be a lot of the same. Oops. Oh well.

It’s going to be an odd, odd morning tomorrow. Hopefully if nothing else I will get a good story out of it all.

Yesterday, I finally got back on the horse, so to speak. With having missed the Philadelphia Marathon in November due to illness, this was my first double-digit mileage race in a year. As a result, I won’t lie—I was more than a little worried, doubly so since I’ve been training entirely on my own for both this and the Potomac River Run Marathon in May.

To make matters slightly tougher, even though I’ve run the National Half Marathon all four years, now, starting last year they changed the course for the half marathon option. In past years, it was an almost entirely flat course. 2008 and 2009′s course, though, has a long slow climb for miles 5-8 (followed by a swift drop for miles 9-10), and then one more hill at mile 12. When I ran this course in 2008, I ended up several minutes slower than my previous year’s time, thanks to burning out on the hills and choking at the end.

This year, happily, that ended up not being the case. I ended up with a much more consistent pace, and an overall much better feeling about the race in general. I never felt beaten down like I had last year, and while I now look back and think that there are spots that I could have pushed a little harder, it’s ultimately a big victory. With that in mind, though, there were some things I feel like I need to remember in what I did right and what I did wrong.

Things I Did Right

• This year, I successfully found one of the official pace groups to start the race with. I’d used the 4:00 (full marathon) group  in 2007 and it worked out really well. Having found the 3:55 group (which is an 8:58min/mile pace), I figured they would be good to run with. Aside from a slightly slow first mile due to crowding, miles 2-4 were good, with the second mile even making up the lost time from the first. That said, when the hill started at mile 5? They took off, so to speak. They were about a block ahead of mile by the time I hit marker 5 (and I was all of 11 seconds off of the pace, so I hadn’t slowed down that much), and were completely out of sight by marker 6. Yeesh. I never caught them, either, and my finish time was only 30 seconds off of their projected finish. Oh well. Still, I felt like I was smart to stick with them, but also didn’t get pulled into the craziness. That said, I now wish I’d latched onto the 3:50 group, who knows how that would have worked?
• This year, I also had the good sense to really think about how I was going to handle the course. I told myself that if I picked up a little bit of time on the uphill that I would just make it up on the way back, and because I had the plan in place that’s exactly what happened. As it was, only mile 7 was where I gained any significant time (33 seconds) and I burnt that all back off the next few miles.

Things I Did Wrong

• I ended up seriously dehydrated this race, and it’s my own fault. Towards the end of last year I started running with Gatorade in my water bottle instead of water. It certainly seems like a smart idea, but the reality is that I don’t actually find Gatorade terribly refreshing. So unless I’m really, really thirsty… I don’t drink it. I ended up drinking less than half of my water bottle the entire race, and at the very end (with about a tenth of a mile to go) it was definitely starting to catch up with me, feeling a little crampy. Then, as soon as I was handled some bottled water, I drank the entire thing in about 5 seconds flat. So from now on, I’ll stick to grabbing a cup of Gatorade at water stops and using that to get the electrolytes back into my body, and carry water. Sure, it was a cool day out, but I sweat a lot and dehydrate easily. Not smart in the slightest.
• Also, on a similar note, I really need to wait until closer to the start to get into the entrance corrals. I spent the entire race needing to use the bathroom, but (unlike last year) ended up just gritting my teeth and bearing it the whole way through, since every available stop along the way had a huge line. Not smart.
• I also really need to drop 5-10 pounds. There is no way around it. I’d gotten rid of a few earlier this year but they mysteriously came back in the past couple of weeks, just in time for the race. Hmph.

Overall, I’m really happy with this year’s finish. I think I could have done better had I really pushed it, but I have a full marathon in six weeks, so this was the way to handle it. And, should I run the race again next year, I feel like this new course is no longer my nemesis. Yay!

(9:15, 8:43, 8:58, 9:00, 9:09, 9:00, 9:33, 8:52, 8:52, 8:40, 8:57, 9:16, 8:50, 0:50)

It was unseasonably warm in the DC area today—I believe the high hit 60 degrees—which was perfect for my 12-mile run today.

Not so perfect was that with all the snow we had last week, I ended up having to regularly slow down and dodge huge sheets of ice. All that speeding up and slowing down gets old, and it’s hard to really find yourself in a good rhythm. Ah well.

Afterwards, though, I was doing a calf stretch and staring up at the sky and thought to myself, “My run may have been rather bleah, but it sure is a beautiful day.” And that it certainly was. It made all the frustration almost worth it.

(Meanwhile, we should in theory be getting more snow in about 28 hours. Yeesh.)

My plan today was to get up early and run some mile repeats at my gym’s indoor track. Unfortunately, my gym’s hours are tied to Arlington County schools, and they had a delayed opening.

Undaunted, I squeezed my run in right after work. Not when I’d have preferred it, because I was planning on watching Top Chef and making some homemade soup for dinner… but there’s time for everything! It’s all good.

Charlie and I are up in the Hamptons over the New Year holiday with some friends, and today Michael decided he was heading over to the gym for an hour. Now, I’d brought my running gear with me, but all the snow on the ground (and a lack of sidewalks near the house) has meant that I hadn’t actually done any actual running. So, I offered to come along to the Sag Harbor Gym.

That’s when Michael warned me that to discourage tourists in the summer from overrunning the place, that it costs $25 for a day pass. Ouch. But still, I needed the exercise (Michael and Kyle have been cooking up a storm of delicious food and I have been eating like I’m preparing for hibernation) so I changed and away we went. I did wish I had some shorts to wear, since I’d only packed workout pants, but still not too bad.

Well, the last time I ran was Thanksgiving, so it’s been a while. (And I only ran twice in November if I remember correctly, between illnesses and such.) And honestly, I was expecting nothing. Hoping for six miles, but we’d see what happened. As it turned out, I managed five miles at a 10min/mile pace. Not my old pace, but I knew I wasn’t going to just jump back in like everything was a-ok. When I finished up the first 30 minute segment on the treadmill, I was beat, and I walked for a few minutes while deciding if I was going to switch to another piece of equipment or not. In the end I ran again, but knew 3 more miles just wasn’t on the agenda (and that was ok with me).

I’m really pleased, though. It’s the start of getting back up to speed again, and it feels good to start moving. (Even if it’s in place on a treadmill.) In terms of a mental “you’re starting to get back to normal” jolt? So worth every buck. And as much as I’ve been enjoying my vacation, it makes me eager to get home so I can continue that process (carefully, worry not). Yay!

Hopefully everyone else has had a great New Year so far. I’m pretty pleased with all three days of it.

So. If (and I do mean if) I end up not running the Philadelphia Marathon, now what? One of the real downsides to the idea of having to scratch the Philadelphia Marathon is that it’s really one of the last marathons of the year on the East Coast. If this had happened before, say, Marine Corps or NYC, I’d have had Richmond or Philly to fall back on. Not the case here.

Anyway, the most obvious answer is, “Throw away this year’s training.” Well, not literally, but you know what I mean. Just move on and that’s that, no marathon until next fall, maybe run a 10K or something in the meanwhile. Training for a winter/spring marathon means being held hostage at least in part to the potentially bad weather out there, which can sometimes make things a wee bit problematic. Alternately, I could target a winter/spring race, of which there are four options on the table, each with their own pros and cons.

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Well, the plan was to get up this morning and hit my last long run before the Philadelphia Marathon; something in the 20-23 mile range. It’s supposed to be a beautiful day out to boot, and I have to say I was genuinely looking forward to it.

Except… well… on Thursday when I went for my run, I took a slight misstep at one point and my right foot went perpendicular to the ground; you know, that moment where suddenly your foot has rotated over 90 degrees and your ankle says, “Please stop that right now!” I immediately recovered and kept going (I’ve done that a thousand times before!) and I figured that was that.

Well, I noticed at the office on Friday afternoon that the right side of my ankle was starting to hurt a little bit. Uh oh. And it kept hurting for the rest of the day. So, when I got up this morning and it was still hurting? I regretfully decided to scratch the run. 20+ miles on an achy ankle just seems like a stupid plan. So now I’m going to play it by ear. If it’s fine tomorrow I might tackle it then. Or I can do it next weekend (I should be fine with just a two-week taper if I have to), and really give myself a lot of extra healing time. For that matter, on Election Day I’ve been looking into volunteering possibilities, so maybe I could take care of it before that begins. We’ll see.

The irony of this happening right as I finally revamped my old, outdated MarathonGreg website is not lost on me, incidentally. (Some of the content still needs to be moved over—a small selection of photographs for starters!—but I’d say it’s about 90% done.) Ah well.