I initially planned on starting the 2009 season with a half marathon, followed by a full marathon in the fall. I ended up chaning my mind, because a race up in Madison, WI caught my eye and so I reversed the plan. I decided to do a full in the spring and signed up for the Illinois Marathon in Champaign/Urbana.
I had 14 weeks to train, so I was a few weeks short. I had already been training for the half, so i would only be a few miles short on the missed weeks. The plan that I chose was from Runnersworld.com and it had me doing about 25 miles a week. The schedule gave me a few days off during the week, with long runs on Saturday. The weekly miles were pretty easy and didn't suck up much time, but the Sunday long runs were pretty hard. For the majority of my training, I was running in 20-30 degree weather. At times, my water would turn slushy while I was out running and to this day I have a couple frostbite marks on my upper lip. Here I am after a long run. You can see the serious sweat marks on my shirt.
The longest run I ended up doing prior to the race, was 22 miles. Suprisingly the 22 mile run was much easier than my first 16 mile run. I initially missed my long run one Sunday, because I was sick. I was still sick on Monday and finally felt better on Tuesday. I wasn't going to skip my long run, so I ended up doing it on Tuesday night after work. My plan was to run the Monarch Levee in Chesterfield Valley, twice. It is exactly eight miles round trip, flat, and there is a JohnyOnTheSpot in the middle. I got off work, changed at the office, and headed for the levee. The first four miles hurt pretty good and when I got to the car at eight, I was feeling pretty bad. Shannon met up with me at this point and hooked me up with some additional fluids. The sun started setting and I went back out for the next eight. It was pretty slow going and I figured out pretty quickly that I wasn't 100%. I finally got to the 12 mile mark, ate some GU, and drank some water; I was dieing. I figured if nothing else I could walk back, but I had a new problem .... no more water. It was only 72 degrees outside, but I was sick, out of water, and had 4 miles to go. I headed back slowly but surely. With a couple miles to go, I was hurting bad. I needed fluids. When I finally made it to the car, I took down the extra fluids Shannon dropped off for me, but started shivering. The shivering was quickly followed by naseua. I hung out at my car for about 15 minutes and then headed home. I was still shivering and felt like vomiting, but at least I was done running. Here is a pic of what I looked like after the first eight miles.
I took my temp when I got home and my temp was too low. My temp was 96 degrees and I was still shivering. I attempted to eat, but couldn't get anything down. I took a quick shower and went to bed. I didn't feel much better the next day, but learned a few lessons from my endeavor; never run sick and buy a hydration pack.
Despite the one truly bad run, the rest of my training went well and I missed very few miles on my plan. I tapered the week prior to the Marathon as planned and it was a nice break from the heavy miles.
