Columbus Marathon: Weeks 11-13

Finally! Time to taper
On Sunday, I finally got to my last long run of 20 miles, and now there are less than three weeks until marathon day.  And that last 20 miler was a grunt!!!  Work and other commitments forced me to miss a couple runs and cram a couple other together so I was already tired and sore before I started.  I didn't care how long it took.  I was just glad to finish.

I have had better trainings with more miles and faster paces.  I've done a lot more speed work in the other training plans, with the exception of New York.  However, I am happy with how things turned out this time around, and I can't make up for anything missed or lost in the last 13 weeks. Now, I will be dialing back the miles over next two weeks, and with any luck my legs will totally recover by race day.

Columbus will be marathon #5 in 20 months.  There are people that race more frequently than that, but I sure am not going to ever be one of them. I already decided that my next marathon will be Chicago in October of 2012, and I'll put everything I have into that to see if I can't make it back to Boston in April 2014.  For now, I'm beat.  I'm looking forward to recovering enough over the next three weeks to be respectable in Columbus, but I am running it for fun and not a PR.

All that said, I didn't feel a tug when registration for the 2012 Boston Marathon opened a couple weeks ago.  My 3:17:29 qualified me for 2012 had I chosen to register.  However, with the new registration process, I don't know yet if my BQ time was fast enough to have gotten me in.  And now it doesn't matter because I was able to resist that tug and not go and do something totally insane...like try to get in.

I am looking forward to this one because Columbus is a great city, and they put on a good marathon.  Plus, starting a marathon with fireworks should be very cool!

Columbus Marathon: Weeks 8-10

Goal revision and future marathons
With the end of Week 10, there are now only three full weeks of hard training for the Columbus Marathon before I begin my three-week taper.  It is clear at this point that I am not going to be in a position to challenge the PR I set in Boston, and I am trying to take the pressure off myself a little bit at a time.

I would love to say that after the slow start of the first seven weeks of training that I lit it up the last three weeks.  While I am pleased with the outcome, it was not without significant obstacles.  Without making too big a deal about it, it is clear that that the fall I took in the backyard early in my training had long lasting effects.  After the tailbone pain started to subside, I had severe back spasms - first in my neck and then in my mid-back - in subsequent weeks.  While most of that is now largely resolved, it affected both the quantity and quality of my training runs - as did the ridiculously hot weather that persisted until just last week.

Breaking up the monotony of long solo runs on the weekends will be my participation in the Denver Half Marathon this weekend.  I will not be attempting any PR's, but just getting back the feeling of running in a timed event with other people around me.  I would have done it long before now, but life sort of got in the way and prevented that from happening.

In many ways, this training cycle is like the weeks leading up to the New York City Marathon.  I knew I was not going to try to set a PR, but I was also pressuring myself to get all my runs in.  While that marathon nearly killed me, what I wrote in Week 10 of that training cycle is still valid:

1. I am running the New York Marathon for fun - and not trying to set a PR, and;
2. Running is supposed to be fun no matter what...and not something to be stressed about. It mostly defeats the purpose!

 Advice taken. Attitude checked.

Columbus is a great city, and I am looking  forward to seeing it from a perspective I have not seen before.  17,000 of us will take off from the start in the shadow of the state capitol, and the 6000 marathoners will say goodbye to the half-marathoners before taking a loop around the northern part of the city - including The Ohio State University.  The course is fairly flat and not too difficult.  An 8:00 minute/mile pace puts me across the finish line in under 3:30 hours, which will be just fine with me.

2011 Columbus Marathon Complete Course Overview from dan farkas on Vimeo.

*****

I also recently made a decision about my next marathon.  For the first time since the fall of 2009, I won't have to worry about starting a new training cycle for a marathon immediately after I finish the one in front of me.  Since the time I ran my first half marathon in June 2009 through this  October's marathon, I will have run 5 marathons, 4 half marathons, 5 10k's, and numerous 5k's.  Races and training runs total 2800 miles since March of 2008, and I think my body is starting to talk to me now.

After October, my next marathon will be in the fall of 2012.  I'll register and train for the Chicago Marathon, which is one of the biggies I want to check off my "bucket list."  Between now and then?  Shorter races - nothing more than a half-marathon.

My lovely bride is skeptical...which could be valid.  :)