What I Learned From the Maine Coast Marathon

I signed up for the Maine Coast Marathon several months ago, knowing full well the race would be sandwiched between two weddings on opposite coasts. I figured I could pull it off pretty easily -- the trip to San Francisco was one week before the race, amid my taper, and the trip to Disney World three days after the race would offer a nice recovery opportunity. (For the uninitiated, a typical day at Disney requires several miles of walking.) 

For the most part, I did pull it off. I fell short of my lofty goal (a BQ of 3:05) and my more realistic goal (a PR under 3:13), but I ran the race I wanted, for the most part. I'd planned to run negative splits, starting with 7:20s and finishing with sub-6:50s en route to that BQ. This worked well -- that is, up until Mile 19 or so, when the sun, the heat and the pace starting to take their toll. (Any other year, 70-degree temperatures might have been bearable, but after training through the Polar Vortex, not so much.) 

My finishing time, 3:16:15, ranks as my third or fourth best. (I can't remember, really.) I'm still several minutes faster than I was at 21, which is great, and more than half an hour faster than my worst marathon, so I really can't complain. 

Of course, there's a lesson here. I concocted my negative split plan a whopping two weeks before race day. (Great idea, Beastwood.) This means I did none of my long runs as progression runs, which means I wasn't physically prepared to run faster deeper into the race. I thought I was, of course, having made easy work of my tempo runs, often exceeding my target paces by 15 seconds per mile. It takes more than two weeks -- and two weeks of taper at that -- to prepare yourself for a race strategy that you've never employed.

That said, I got the hard part of the marathon right: I started slowly, stayed that way and kept to my target paces for three-quarters of the race. Next time, I'll set less ambitious splits -- and, more importantly, I'll train for those negative splits from the beginning. Setting goals is important, after all, and now I have two clear-cut ones for training for marathon #11. Now, about that sunshine...

11 Ways Running Gets Easier As You Get Older

Last week, I wrote about 11 reasons running gets harder as you get older. I got quite a bit of feedback, much along the lines of “glad I’m not the only one.”

In that post, I also promised to follow up with ways running gets easier as you get older. I’ve been running since 15, so I’d like to think I’ve picked up a lesson or two -- or, in this case, 11, along the way. (Note: As before, these are completely unscientific, just anecdotal.)

1. You know your legs better. This is probably the most important point of all. You know the difference between “I can keep running” pain, “I need to slow down” pain, “I need to walk” pain and “I need to collapse on the side of the road” pain. This can’t prevent injuries entirely, but it can help keep them from getting serious. 
2. Your know your body better. This is different than the first point. When I was younger, I often pushed myself to the point of exhaustion. Sometimes it worked, but it often didn’t -- my high school team always seemed to peak in the middle of the season, not at the end. As I’ve aged, I’ve come to discover the difference between being genuinely fatigued (in which case I take a day off, or at the very least a nap) and simply tired (in which case I suck it up). 
3. You know yourself better. If 90 percent of baseball is half mental, I’d be willing to bet 90 percent of running is all mental. When you’re just getting started, you question yourself at every turn -- about the distance you’re running, the clothes you’re wearing, the goal you’re setting and so on. Over time, these doubts subside, and you’re increasingly able to trust your training -- and yourself. 
4. Passing people younger than you at the end of a race is far more embarrassing for the passee than when it's the other way around.
5. You’ve experienced disappointment, whether through running or life itself. By now, we’ve all bonked a race -- or an exam, job interview, first date, home improvement project, sales presentation or heaven knows what else. Needing to skip a workout or missing a race goal no longer induces panic. 
6. You know how to set goals. Scott Fishman suggests setting three goals before a race, paraphrased here as the ideal, nothing-goes-wrong goal, the realistic goal based on your fitness level and the everything-hurts-and-wait-is-that-snow? goal. I nodded many times as I read Fishman’s post. Anyone who’s been running for a while knows that roughly 10 million things can affect how you run on any given day, so setting a single (often lofty) goal is shortsighted and counter-intuitive. 
7. You really can eat whatever the heck you want. Within reason, of course; I embrace a pretty healthy diet. But the amount of food I consume in a single sitting, especially in the midst of marathon training, literally frightens the uninitiated. 
8. You can afford it. Yes, running is a relatively inexpensive sport, but to do it right -- with the proper shoes, clothes, watch and other equipment -- you do need to spend a bit more cold, hard cash than you likely had back when you drove a crappy car and lived in a crappy apartment with crappy roommates.  Plus, what’s the fun of running without racing every once in a while? 
9. You’ve accepted who you are. I am not a before-the-crack-of-dawn runner, so I’ve all but given up trying to wake up while it’s dark out to run. It took many years, and many failed attempts to run early in the morning, to realize this. I don’t plan for morning runs (unless I’m racing, of course) and therefore can’t feel bad about missing them. 
10. You can help others. As I get older, more friends take up running. Many have questions -- about shoes, pain, speed, racing and so on. Having been around the block, I can (and happily do) offer advice when and where appropriate. Really, it’s the least I can do. 
11. Above all, you’re not an idiot. Once, after a bad high school cross country race, I decided to punish myself and do my cooldown barefoot. That was pretty freakin’ dumb. 

Having outlined how running is both worse and better when you’re older, I’ve decided to take some time and think about an answer to the question that these two posts have sparked: Is running more fun when you’re younger or older?

11 Ways Running Gets Harder As You Get Older

On a recent run, as I learned the hard way that 90 minutes between eating and running apparently is no longer sufficient, I came to realize that running gets harder as you get older. Naturally, a few miles later, I felt fantastic and was convinced that running actually gets easier as you get older.

Both statements are true. Certain aspects of running improve with age; others, not so much. This post will focus on how (and why) running gets harder as you get older. I’ll cover the positive stuff in a subsequent post. (Note: None of this is actually scientific.)

1. You need rest. This comes in two forms: Sleep and days off. In my 20s, I could party into the wee hours of the morning, wake up a few hours later, and run a PR. You probably could, too. Now? Hangovers last two days. Forget it.
2. You need to stretch constantly. Did you stretch after every workout in high school? Didn’t think so. Now, if you don’t stretch before you get into bed, it’s highly unlikely you’ll be able to get out of it the next morning. In fact, you should probably be stretching right now.
3. Everything hurts. Even when you rest, stretch and foam roll, you’re sore. You can’t complain about it, either, because then everyone will just tell you to stop running.
4. You need more downtime. As a result of everything described above, I usually need at least one day off after a hard workout -- sometimes two days.Same goes for bouncing back from races.
5. Life gets in the way. You have a real job, real relationships, a home you actually care about keeping clean, a car that you don’t always want to smell like wet running shoes, pets, children, in-laws, school and 47 million other things to get in the way of training. This means running in the morning when you're tired, running at night when you're tired or running in the middle of the day when you're tired. Awesome.
6. Your GI system gets sensitive. Back in the day, I used to eat dinner and run 45 minutes later. That was fun. Now my body apparently needs two hours to process a banana and some yogurt.
7. You have to watch what you eat. Sure, publicly we brag about eating “whatever we want,” but privately we carefully measure out portions of proteins, carbs, fat and water so we don’t gain or lose too much weight. It’s a far cry from literally eating whatever we wanted while we ran in high school and college.
8. You have to pee more. Didn’t wait in those pre-race PortaPotty lines in the halcyon days of your youth, did you? And just reading about having to pee made you have to pee, didn’t it?
9. It’s more complicated. I started running in 1995. It took six years for me to even buy a watch. Now I wear a GPS-enabled watch that tracks distance, pace and time and input that data to a website that lets me track every workout. Oh, and then there are the shoes….
10. It’s too hot. Now it’s too cold. Sensitivity to temperature only increases as you age. The days of wearing only shorts and a long-sleeve T-shirt on a 30-degree day are long gone.
11. You never have leftovers. After running for more than 18 years, I need such ridiculous amounts of food to fuel my metabolism that I never get a doggie bag from restaurants, I need to cook for four if I want leftovers at dinner, and friends and family gawk whenever I eat.

I’m sure there are more than 11 ways running gets harder as you get older, but these are the ones that came to mind immediately. What did I miss?

Running in the Dark: Another Cautionary Tale

When you get down to it, you try to avoid two things when running in the dark: Falling down and getting hit by a car. (Yes, you try to avoid these things running in sunlight, too, but darkness magnifies the difficulty of the tasks.)

Earlier this winter, I offered a cautionary tale about what can happen on even your most familiar running routes. I let my guard down for a second, and I fell down.

Getting hit by a car also happens when you, or the driver of the car, let your guard down for a second. Obviously, you should pay attention at every intersection and street crossing, erring on the side of caution. Most people are lousy drivers, after all.

Now, you can't control how other people will drive, but you can control how you appear to them. One way to make sure drivers see you is to dress like this:

I hit most of the colors of the rainbow here: Red shoes, blue hat, green shirt, yellow vest, black tights and pasty white skin. And this doesn't even include my headlamp, which I put on after snapping this pic when I realized how dark it was outside.

Do I have any evidence that, had I dressed otherwise, a car would have hit me? No. But I imagine I was pretty hard to miss.

Don't Be Afraid to Run Naked (At the Wrist, That Is)

At my day job, covering technology, there’s a lot of talk about fitness apps and fitness gadgets and wearable tech and, in the context of healthcare, the quantified self. (Full disclosure: I contributed to the hype by creating a list of tech for the athletes on your Christmas list. To further prove I am a sellout, I made it a slideshow, too.)

There’s definitely value in tracking all this data. When you’re training, you need to make sure you’re hitting the right pace and distance -- and, frankly, it’s much easier to log that information and study it later if it comes from a fancy watch or smartphone. (Full disclosure, again, which makes sense since I put "naked" in the headline: I track my runs using dailymile.)

However, there’s also a downside to having so much data. It’s easy to fret over, especially when targets are missed. It doesn’t take into account that, say, your tempo run in 22-degree weather on snow- and ice-covered sidewalks couldn’t possibly happen at goal pace (as has been the case so often this winter). It’s not just times, too; steps taken in a day, miles run in a month, weight lost (or gained) or other numbers can quickly become obsessions -- and the problem can be further exacerbated when all this information gets shared on social media sites.

I fully recognize the benefit to aggregating and sharing this information. If you've started, and especially if you've started as a means of motivation, there's no point in returning to the 20th century and "guessing" how far, fast and long you've run.

Every once in a while, though, it pays to unplug. On an easy day, the watch stays home. On the first few runs after my post-marathon rest, the watch stays home. On days when the weather's terrible, and pace goals go out the window, the watch stays home (or freezes). On a rushed race day, the watch (often accidentally) stays home.

Running unplugged offers a few benefits. It helps to run "by feel," without constantly staring at your watch. It prepares you for situations when your watch fails you. It lets you clear your head, since you're not focusing on every little detail of your run. It lets you enjoy the scenery. It lets you return to your roots, to the freedom of running around your backyard or park for hours as a child, and appreciate our sport even more.

It certainly isn't easy. Like any routine, running with a watch is a hard habit to break. But if you have an easy run in your future, it might be worth leaving the watch behind and just seeing what happens.

Who knows? It just might be the start of a new routine.

It's Not Where You Start, It's Where You Finish

Near the beginning of the Super Sunday 5, during the period when everyone is either heading to the start line or waiting for a vacant bathroom, the race announcer said something over the loudspeaker that, in my years of racing, I’ve never heard before. 

As everyone staked a claim to a small patch of asphalt that, for the next few minutes, would belong to nobody else, the announcer made the usual remark that slower runners should move farther back. Then, to assuage everyone’s fears, he added, “The race isn’t won in the first 100 meters.” 

For someone with a nasty habit of starting races like a bat out of hell, this stuck with me -- especially since, as the crowd gathered, the blue-and-orange START banner seemed to get farther and farther away. 

I lamented about getting boxed in at the start several months ago, in my James Joyce Ramble recap. Back then, I chalked it up to a lack of confidence; I’d bonked badly in a marathon a few months before and remained on the proverbial comeback trail. 

This weekend, though, I directed my ire toward the runners gathering around me. Perhaps I was jealous that they’d located their friends and exchanged pleasantries while I stared ahead in solitude. Perhaps I was a bit chilly. Perhaps their perfectly matching outfits turned me off. Whatever it was, I wanted them gone -- even though, like me, they’d paid to run a race with the express mission of raising money to kick cancer’s ass. 

My ire continued after the gun, when the murderous, thieving horde of peasants refused to part like the Red Sea so I could get to the front of the pack. And it continued when I passed the 1-mile mark about 20 seconds slower than my goal pace, even after adjusting for the gun vs. chip time split. (I also left my watch at home. That may have contributed to my mood.) 

Then a funny thing happened: I got stronger. I wasn’t gassed from an unnecessarily fast start. The gradual hills that lead into Harvard Square didn’t bother me. I didn’t start losing ground to folks who had started even farther back. I actually maintained a constant pace for the duration of the race and finished with the same 5-mile time I ran back in April on a flatter course. 

Sure, I didn’t PR, but I’ve accepted that I can’t PR all the time. (I ran a sub-30 minute 5-miler back in college. That’s never happening again.) I also learned that, sure enough, you don’t win a 5-mile race in the first 100 meters. Finally, I was reminded that it really doesn’t matter where you start but, rather, where you finish.

Running on the Dreadmill: Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

Most runners hate treadmills. They prefer to be outdoors, breathing in fresh air, enjoying the scenery and not enduring the monotony of staring at a tiny little screen (or themselves in a mirror) for the duration of a workout. 

I don’t like treadmills. I also don’t like running on an icy track, as taking a digger would mean hobbling home in in below-freezing temperatures. Nor do I like running in extreme heat, which often happens when I travel for business (see: Las Vegas in late August). 

The treadmill, then, is a necessary evil. Given the choice, of course, I’d pound the pavement or head to the track, but I’m not going to postpone a workout simply because I need to hit the gym. 

When I do need to run on the treadmill, here’s how I pass the time. 

Workouts with easy math. I usually do speed work on the treadmill -- it’s not really that much more monotonous than running on a track, it goes by quickly and I don’t have to feel guilty about not adjusting the incline. “Easy math” means intervals that require little to no rational thought. Repeat miles, 800s or 400s -- all easy fractions of a mile -- at the same pace? Yes. A 1200, 1000, 800, 600 and 400, all at a different pace? No thanks. (This does mean I have to juggle the training schedule sometimes, but, like I said, it’s better than skipping the workout altogether.) 

A slow warmup. On land, my warmups tends to fall around 9:00/mile or faster. I go a bit slower on the treadmill (10:00/mile), largely because of the aforementioned easy math (10 is easier to add to other numbers than 9) but also because it forces me to actually take it easy when I warm up. 

Music. I pick an album or playlist that’s at least as long as my workout. That way I’m not fumbling with my iPod (third generation, baby!) when I’m trying to cruise through an 800. I avoid TV; since I do track workouts, and I have to frequently bump the speed up and down, I find TV too distracting. 

Water. Most gyms are hot and dry, so I bring more water with me than I probably need. (After all, if I have to pee, the bathroom is right there -- and not behind a tree.) 

Towel. Unless you want to use rough paper towels to wipe your face, you should bring an old, ratty towel with you. In a pinch, an old, ratty T-shirt will do. 

Incline. On the rare occasion when I’m just running on the treadmill for the sake of running, I bump the incline up a couple percentage points. This adds some necessary resistance. 

Walk. After my cooldown, I walk for at least a minute. If I jump off the treadmill right away, I feel loopy, as though my body should still be moving. Walking (at 3 miles an hour or so) makes this weird feeling go away. 

The next time you find yourself faced with the horrible burden of running on a treadmill, don’t think twice. It’s alright. 

(I know the Dylan version better than Joan Baez. Sorry.)

If nothing else, you should be marveling at the ability to run several miles without actually moving. That’s pretty freaking cool.