Boston Marathon Training: A Season in Review

Well, we're down to the wire, but at the 11th hour, before foot meets pavement, here are some quick recaps of my Boston Marathon training season. It's the journey that matters, right?

Biggest triumph: Philadelphia Love Run. Went into the race without any real expectations, and wound up smashing my last half marathon PR. I haven’t felt so elated about a run in a long time. Well, probably since Chicago, so I guess it hasn’t been that long....

Biggest obstacle: Getting sick not one, not two, but three times during training. With a close second being all the ice we had this winter. (I really hate treadmills.) And a closer third being the fact that I started a brand new job, with a longer commute and longer hours, right at the beginning of the season.

Best workout: I’m not sure that I had a “best workout” this time around. Instead, I had an awful lot of runs where I felt terrible or underperformed, but a number of good races. There honestly weren’t many workouts that felt effortless, never mind fun. I suppose if I can treat the Night at the Races as a workout, then those 800 and 5k runs at the indoor Armory comprised my best workout. In spite of nerves, I had a lot of fun that night, in no small part due to my awesome teammates and also the fact that I’d never run on an indoor track before. The experience was only sullied by the disastrous timing snafu whereby they forced me to run an extra 200m lap at the end of the 5k and totally misrecorded my time. But hey, I still had fun running it.

Worst workout: The long run at the end of my vacation snowmobiling in Yellowstone National Park. We came back to Salt Lake City, and instead of sightseeing, I went for my long run. It was 7 miles out and 7 miles back, with paces on the way back, and I don’t know if it was the altitude change or dehydration or what, but two miles into the run back my stomach was churning so badly that I threw up and jog/walked the rest of the way back to the hotel. It’s the first long run I actually did not finish.

Biggest Inspiration: I have this teammate who has such incredible drive. She wants to get faster so terribly badly, and I know—in spite of how down she gets on herself sometimes—that she really believes she can get faster. Heck, she is getting faster, and she knows it. It’s just never enough. “What else can I do?” she constantly asks our coach. “Why am I not getting better? Fix me!” And while it isn’t on the official record yet, how much faster and stronger she’s gotten, I know it’s only a matter of time. At which point, that won’t be enough, either. And then she’ll be on to the next one.

Favorite moments: This superlative has to be plural, because it’s impossible to choose just one.

1. In Marython's car, driving from the finish of one of the Boston Buildup races to the train station with three of my teammates. I’m always a little out of touch with pop culture, but in this case I was really late to the party: T-Pain was DJ’ing from the passenger seat, and she turned on “Bad Girlz” by MIA. Now, is that a great song? Depends who you ask. But sitting in that car with three other sweaty, energetic girls, with the music up, bopping along . . . it was just a great feeling. (And of course now I love the song.) So that definitely qualifies as a favorite moment.
2. Walking through the finishing corral at the end of the Philadelphia Love Run. All of a sudden, my boyfriend’s mother and sister ran up to me with these enormous grins on their faces. His whole family was in Philadelphia for the weekend, and they had asked the night before what my goal time for the race was. I had just beaten it by a considerable margin, and they clearly knew. “You’re so awesome!” they gushed. “You beat your time! We saw!” In that moment I felt so much love, the kind you can only feel from family. The kind where other people’s happiness for you is just overwhelming. I am still overwhelmed thinking about it. Definitely a favorite moment.
3. Last but not least, at the Cherry Blossom Ten Miler last weekend: I had started out the race with my teammates and then kind of run off alone because I felt pretty good and it was a nice day and it seemed like the right thing to do. Around mile 7 I heard a familiar voice and suddenly my coach Sasquatch and his wife ran up next to me. We carried along at a clip that was ever-increasing, until I was quite literally panting and straining to keep up underneath a canopy of pink and white blossoms. Sasquatch’s wife wasn’t actually registered to run the race, so she dropped out about a mile before the finish, and he and I finished essentially side by side. Spontaneously—and to my utter surprise—he reached over and gave me a hug. It felt like the kind of hug that said, “I’m proud of you.” And that’s all I really want, I guess: for people I love and respect to be proud of me. So of course it felt awesome. A great way to end my last race before Boston. And thus my third favorite moment.

A Little LOVE in Philly

It's a funny thing when success takes you by surprise. You work and work and work toward this one goal, and then, sometimes, if you're lucky and the stars align, some other totally unexpected wonderful thing happens.

I wasn't trying to PR a half marathon this marathon cycle. I felt tired coming out of the Chicago Marathon and, realistically, I was doing considerably less speed work to prepare for the Boston Marathon than I'd done for Chicago. Honestly, I'd only signed up for the Philadelphia Love Run as a sort of "fitness test," and also because my teammate T-Pain wanted some company. (That's a nickname for an actual teammate, not me pretending I run with a hip-hop artist. Although in New York, I suppose it's possible.) At practice the week before, I'd asked my coach Squatch, "Am I racing this?" His response: "Why not?"

Even up until the night before the race, however, I wasn't totally sure how much I had to give to this race. "You have two choices," Squatch told me on the phone. "You can either see what you've got here, or do it at Cherry Blossom." The Cherry Blossom race was two weeks later and three miles shorter--a 10-mile race rather than 13.1. However, the prospect of waiting in suspense for two weeks to see what my body was going to do didn't sound good for someone as obsessive as I am. So I said, "I think I want to race tomorrow." And that's what I did.

You know when you have those blissed-out races where you feel 100% amazing from start to finish? (Okay, I think I've only had maybe one or two of those in my life, but still. They do happen.) Well this race was not like that.

Standing at the starting line, I was shivering wishing I had brought better gloves, and T-Pain was crunching around in her throwaway mylar suit. When the gun went off I opened the first 5k at an average pace of 6:44/mile, somehow still ending up behind the 7min/mi pacer by the end of that third mile. (I'm now convinced that he was running entirely too fast. But at the time, I was seriously concerned.)

I knew that to hit my coach's "conservative" expectation (1:27:00), I had to average 6:38/mile, so I set about doing my pickups: running the first 90 seconds of each mile hard and then settling back into an easier pace until I reached the next mile marker. There was wind hitting me squarely in the face, and my legs did not feel effortless in the slightest, especially when we came to the main hill of the race. T-Pain had told me about this hill, and while not a mountain, it was certainly still an obstacle. My pace increased--because I stink at running hills--but I tried to talk myself down by reassuring my brain that my legs would go faster on the downhill, just like they always did. And lo and behold, they did.

There was one more pesky, shallower hill to conquer, and then, after a nice gradual downhill, we were suddenly coming into the last 5k stretch. My legs finally felt pretty decent, and I recognized a man in a blue shirt who had been jockeying with me earlier in the race. He seemed to be running a pretty even pace, so I decided, "Okay, if I can keep up with him for a while, let's see how that goes." So I settled in beside him.

Mile 11 clicked in at 6:15/mile. "Wow," I thought, "this is really working!" Almost simultaneously, the guy looked my way. "Nice pace," he told me. "Thanks," I replied. "But don't fall back. I'm counting on you!" He shook his head. "I think that was my fastest mile ever." We could already see the marker for Mile 12. "Well," I told him, "get ready for one even faster!" We clocked mile 12 at 6:13/mile. And my legs--they still had more to give! "Here we go," I announced and took off.

I crossed the finish line essentially by myself. There was one guy in a florescent green jacket who I'd been gaining on in that last mile, but he dropped me handily in the final 800 meters. And there were no other women in sight. But as I rounded the bend and saw the finish line, I knew I had it: a PR. And a great one at that.

My half marathon before this one was my fastest to date: 1:27:21. And I was really proud of that race. I'd worked hard to break the 1:28 barrier. By comparison, though, this race was almost staggering. Dropping almost two minutes? Running the last mile of the race in 5:57? I couldn't have asked for more.

And then I got a medal in the mail. 3rd place Female 25-29.

Thank you Philadelphia. I love you too.

Race Length	Finishing Time	Average Pace	Overall Place	Gender Place	Age Group Place (F25-29)
13.1 mi	1:25:29	6:31/mile	73 / 40,567	9 / 6,305	3 / 907

Smartphone "smart"-thoughts

The rumors are true: I've bitten the bullet. Taken the leap. Given in . . . and purchased my first smartphone.

I am now a true 21st century millennial. Or something like that.

The reason behind my big move is a little underwhelming. As a late adopter of pretty much every technology, I've determined that you can ask quite a bit of people. You can ask them for directions (because your phone doesn't have Google maps). You can ask ask them to email you pictures (because photos don't register visibly on your tiny phone screen). You can ask them not to send you emoticons (because they just show up as little squares).

Eventually, however, there will be one "ask" too much. And that "ask" came a few weeks ago, when my phone stopped receiving group messages. (Long story short, the "messages" all showed up blank.) I'd been asking for a lot of special treatment from my friends and family, and generally they'd complied, but this was one thing I simply could not ask: I could not ask to receive a special individual text every time they went to send a group message. I just couldn't.

After several days of feverishly reading online reviews and agonizing to my boyfriend over what phone to get (Apple or Android? Which version? Which size? I'd have to live with this decision!), I finally decided to go with the iPhone 5s. My reasoning was that it should sync nicely with my Macbook and iPad, and I already had some experience with the device, having borrowed an iPhone for my international business travels in Canada a few months ago. Also, the size was a big factor. I wanted something that would still fit into my pocket, and female pants are not made to accommodate electronics. Or wallets. Or anything, really.

Now that I've had the phone for a few weeks, I decided it was time to publicly evaluate my decision. Honestly, I'm not sure I made the right choice. In relation to my initial reasons for getting this particular phone, I did make the right choice. I was able start using it right away to do all of the things I wanted it to do: find directions, check my email, join Instagram (because yes, I was feeling left out.) I can fit the phone into (most of) my pants pockets. And it receives photos, emoticons, and group texts flawlessly.

However, the battery life is terrible. One of my reasons for staying off the smartphone bandwagon was their terribly short battery life. Several years ago, when Hurricane Sandy hit, all of the local smartphone owners were crawling around the floors of grocery stores and delis looking for outlets, and my little slide phone was going strong--its battery lasted 4 days without recharging! So I thought that if I waited long enough, limited battery life would no longer be an issue with smartphones.

I was wrong.

On a typical day, I probably text a handful of people a few times. I might check Facebook for a grand total of two minutes, and the weather for another thirty seconds. Once or twice a week, I might talk on the phone for an hour, max, or use the maps app to locate a street. No matter how little I use my phone, though, by the end of the day my battery is eighty percent drained.

Which leaves me with my four-year-old iPod to listen to podcasts on my mile-long walk between the subway station and my office, because I'm afraid that if I try to listen to them on my iPhone, the thing might die on me. How sad!

Instead of developing an electric car, Apple should direct its resources toward improving the battery life of mobile devices. Because now that gadgets can listen to you, talk to you, and give you advice, directions, updates, and reminders all around the world, the next real hurdle is eliminating consumer paranoia that their beloved device might run out of juice and leave them stranded, alone.

If we wanted to be alone, we wouldn't have a smartphone at all. We could go live in a cave. Or underwater.

And of course, if that's too extreme, there's always the Off button.

The Thing About Picking Up the Phone

Here's the thing about picking up the phone: no one does it anymore. Everyone has smartphones that text and ichat and snapchat and email. And when we do pick up the phone to make a call, nine times out of ten we wind up talking to an automated system instead of a real person.

Therefore, when we are finally forced to talk to a real person--never mind a real person we don't know--on the phone, well . . . I for one find it terrifying!

I bring all of this up because for the first time in my life, I am forced to face this very task on an almost-daily basis. And I can't avoid it or put it off or write a letter instead. It's part of my job.

For anyone not in the know, after six-plus years of service at Wiley, I left last November and joined CenterForce, a five-person conference company based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Although I've been there for nearly three months already, I've put off writing anything about my new job because, honestly, I wasn't sure what to say.

Essentially, I didn't want to judge the experience prematurely. Change is hard, new jobs are hard, new coworkers all sitting five feet apart is hard . . . so I didn't want my emotions to cloud my judgement when I finally sat down to write about the experience. Even now I cannot really say that I'm writing emotion-free. When anyone asks "how I like my new job," all I can really say is, "Wait and ask me again in 6 months." Because maybe by then I'll feel like I know what I'm doing. Maybe.

But now I know I can at least say with confidence: my new job involves making phone calls. Lots of phone calls. To literal strangers.

And it. Is. Terrifying.

My job is to recruit high-level executives who handle intellectual property at companies to come and speak at our conferences. (Imagine Susie Q:  a corporate lawyer who deals with IBM technology patents--when they're filed, who's trying to use the technology illegally, etc. That's who we want.) Basically, I comb the internet for these people and then email them an invitation. If they don't respond, I might email them another invitation. And if they still don't respond, I start calling.

Every time I pick up the phone, my heart rate speeds up. Yet I know it's an irrational fear. My head tells me, "Allison, what's the worst that can happen? That you'll stutter and sound like an idiot? That they'll yell at you? Hang up on you? Who cares! You'll never see them again!" And based on my--albeit limited--experience, none of these things are likely to happen. Everyone I've spoken with so far has been very polite and oftentimes even nice. No one seems angry or annoyed.

So what am I so afraid of?

Honestly, I am not sure. What I do know is that I'm out of practice with talking to complete strangers (especially strangers who seem much more "important" than me), and I'm out of practice calling people who aren't my friends or family, and all this lack of practice makes me very very nervous when it comes time to dial a new number.

However, if nothing else, I'm getting lots of practice these days. So now it's just a matter of getting that heart rate down and banishing the feeling of dread that always climbs into my gut when I pick up the receiver. Fingers crossed that such a day comes soon. In the meantime, you'll have to excuse me, but I have a phone call to make.

Chicago Marathon: A Success Story

Put in the work. Do the job. Reap the rewards.

If only running a marathon were that easy.

But sometimes it is.  For me, this time, in Chicago, it was.

When I say “easy,” I am talking about running between 40 and 60 miles per week for months at a time. So no, not exactly “easy.” Frankly, the work required was daunting—but I took it one day at a time, and I did it. When I was told to do core work after an hour-and-a-half workout, I did it. Drills, lunges, speed work, tempo runs, doubles, long runs—I did all of it. And when I was told to rest, I did that, too. Because why hire a coach if you don’t follow his instructions? He was the expert, and I was relying on his expertise to make me faster. Therefore, I had to do what he said. The worst possible thing would be to cross the finish line at Chicago looking over my shoulder at runs I had fluffed or core work I had skipped, wondering if they would have made a difference. Regret always leaves a sour taste, and I wanted Chicago to taste victory-sweet.

However, you can be the hardest worker on the planet and not even make it to the start line. I got lucky. Bad injuries happen to good athletes. No matter how health- and safety-conscious you are, nothing can guarantee that one day, some joint or muscle in your body won’t suddenly rebel, or maybe you’ll trip, or you might accidentally drink out of the same water glass as a kid who had bronchitis. You just never know.

So I got lucky—really lucky. I didn’t get injured. I didn’t get sick. Therefore, the only thing in my way was my own brain, and I was determined to smack that sucker around if it tried to give me problems.

Which brings me to the night before the marathon. I was staying with Coach J___’s family and another teammate in an Airbnb—basically a rich family’s very lavish apartment, which they had rented out to us—and so I had heard him giving other athletes pre-race talks all day. He had cooked us dinner, and now that it was closing in on my bedtime, I was starting to worry that he might not intend to give me a “talk” at all. What if he didn’t? After all this very specific, very instructive training, was I supposed to just run this on my own? Could I manage that? At long last I finally asked him outright. After a bit of jesting derision, he asked me what I thought I was going to run, what my body thought I was going to run.

I don’t like listening to my body, because my body complains a lot. However, based on how I had been running lately, I was pretty confident I would PR this race. The question was, by how much. To date, I had only managed to drop a few minutes at a time at any given race, so I assumed that this race would be no different. In fact, I thought it was quite ambitious of me to say I expected to run around 3:10-3:13. My last marathon, just the previous fall in NYC, had been 3:18 high. In my opinion, eight minutes was a lot of time to drop in less than a year.

In any event, that’s I told him: I thought I’d run somewhere between 3:10-3:13. And here was the defining moment of my whole Chicago marathon experience. J___ looked straight at me and shook his head. “Wrong direction.” I looked at him strangely, so he clarified, “What A___ did today? 3:05? You can do that—if you want to.”

A___ was one of my teammates, whom J___ trained remotely since she lived in Connecticut. That very day, she had run the Hartford marathon in an amazing time of 3 hours and 5 minutes. I couldn’t believe J___ was telling me I could do that. Me? Really

Really, though, any shocked questions were just superficial thoughts. Inside my real brain, inside my heart of hearts, 3:05 had just become my new goal. If he thought I could do it, and I trusted him to know what I could or couldn’t do, then that was exactly what I’d go out there and try to do.

I immediately logged onto my computer and looked up A___’s Hartford Marathon results. From what I could tell, she averaged a pace of 7:06/mile. 7:06. That’s what I had to do. Oh boy.

Fast forward to the start line. This was a race of firsts, and one of those firsts left my hands empty, nervously clenching and unclenching. I had no iPod. This was the first marathon I would run without music. The lack of music didn’t make me nervous, because I had been training without music for most of my long runs, but it felt strange not to be holding anything. Plus, on top of that, I kept looking at my stupid Garmin watch, trying to make sure it didn’t go to sleep after it had finally picked up satellite signal. But then the national anthem started playing and I stopped paying attention—just like I have in so many other races. And by the time I looked down again, it was because I needed to start my watch because my foot was about to cross the first timing mat . . . and the thing had conked out.

Are you kidding me??? I thought. After all that, I’m going to have to run this whole race trying to calculate my pace times off of the course clocks? This time, however, the Garmin gods were on my side. I pushed the button to pick up satellite signal again, and in about fifteen seconds the watch clicked in. This was going to be my day.

The first few miles flew by. There were so many spectators that I had to start an internal chant to keep from being swept up in the fervor and excitement of the race. Relax. Relax. Relax. I felt good, but I needed to keep feeling good, and that meant controlling my pace, even though my body felt primed to go.

In our previous evening’s talk, J___  had indicated that I should take the first 5 miles easy and then settle into a rhythm for the next 8. At mile 13, I was to “throw down” a hard mile, and then ease up again and focus on picking up the pace in the first minute of every mile for the next 7 miles. At that point, there would only be five miles left. “And then,” he told me, shrugging, “it’s just how much you want it.”

The first 13 miles were honestly a cakewalk. All I had to do was count to five (“Five easy miles”) and then count to eight (“Lock in for the next eight”). I felt euphoric because the whole time, I could tell that my body had more to give. For that hard 14^th mile, the one J___ had told me to “throw down fast,” I cruised past runners, dreamily wondering if I could keep this pace up for the rest of the race. But I knew that was a pipe dream—I was only halfway done, and New York had taught me that those last six miles can feel like sixty—so I eased back up at the 14 mile marker and ate some of my jellybeans (which, while delicious and a much more palatable consistency than gel, require inconvenient amounts of chewing before ingestion).

Counting down the next 7 miles—and their corresponding 1-minute pickups, as assigned by J___—was a bit harder, because changing speeds mid-race is just . . . well it’s hard. It takes discipline. Fortunately, this was something I had done in workouts leading up to the race, so I was used to telling my legs to shut up and move.

And then there were five. Five measly miles. “At this point, it’s how much you want it,” J___ had told me the night before. And not only did I want it, I knew I had it. I had time in the bank, because I had averaged between 6:55-7:05/mile up until this point in the race, and somehow I still didn’t feel like death. I pushed the pace as hard as I dared, and at mile 25, when I saw J___ and his megaphone on the roadside, shouting at me to “just hang on,” I stopped wondering if I should keep holding back. Now was not the time to think. Now was the time to run.

The last 800m were excruciating. But the last 800m of any race are excruciating. The finish line is so close and yet so far. Your legs ache and your lungs strain and you know you’re almost there but the pain isn’t over yet, so you can’t let up. Shut up legs. Shut up legs. Shut up legs.

And then I was there. Across the finish line. I had envisioned this moment back at mile three, at mile eight, at nearly every mile in the first half of the race when I realized that I was running at sub-7:10 pace and I wasn’t even tired. Would I cry? Would I laugh? How would it feel? In those 3 hours, 3 minutes, and 42 seconds of running, I think I cycled through every single one of those emotions. I had played them all out, and so they were no longer available to me. I just felt done. And I was.

I had done it.

Race Length	Finishing Time	Average Pace	Overall Place	Gender Place	Age Group Place (F25-29)
26.2 mi	3:03:42	7:01/mile	1,300 / 40,567	156 / 18,390	55 / 3,987