SUMMER TRAINING RECAP

One of dozens of Sunstone weekday runs this summer.

Oops, I did not mean to go that long between posting. Broken record, I know.

Let's recap summer training for the Portland Marathon though! It was basically a repeat of last summer. I was able to slowly work my way up and hit my first 20 mile run in early August. What seemed impossible just a few months prior was indeed very possible. After that milestone I felt confident enough to actually sign up for the Portland Marathon (when you do your hometown race you have the privilege of pretending you don't have to do it).

The runs were a lot like last year. Mostly alone and slow. The twenty mile run took over four hours with my pit stops. However, I did nut up and wake up early enough to hit some 8am Sunstone runs, which was a major accomplishment. The problem there is, even though I'm going to a group run, nobody is really running an 11:00/mile. So I end up running by myself anyways. At least it is a different course and there is the novelty of seeing people and waving 'hi' along the way. One run I even had a companion for most of it. However, for the most part, the long runs are slow, independent affairs.

It was all going smooth until this last week. I had a couple of weekends packed with stuff where it was going to be hard to do the long runs. However, this came right after a long ramp up to twenty miles, so a brief lull in training to recharge made sense and actually might have been beneficial. I squeezed in a 14 mile run (deathmarch in heat, so it was a great workout) and then was all set to hit my second 20 on that third weekend. Well, I got horribly ill. A really bad stomach flu of some sort. I was up all night throwing up (on my birthday!) and then the next few days I just felt terrible. On the day I was supposed to do my long run I went out and tried to do four miles and almost passed out after three. Still sick!

I'm back healthy now, but the fact I haven't done any distance in three and a half weeks, other than the one 14 miler, is not great. I'm unsure how much fitness I have lost. So I don't know if I can do 20 this weekend, or if I should try for 16 and hopefully hit 20 the next week. That would be two weeks before the marathon, one week later on the final 20 than usual, but I've done that before and it worked out fine. At this point tapering to give my body rest is not an issue. So we'll see. I couldn't have gotten that out of shape in a few weeks, right?

As for my body, Cosentyx seems to be working pretty well! I think it is a definite upgrade over Simponi. So that's been encouraging. Like before, I'm not completely cured, but most of the time my psoriatic arthritis feels like an afterthought. Overall, I am pleased with the medication change.

This winter I may think about working on speed a little bit. Maybe that's optimistic, just getting outside to run in the winter is a challenge, but I think my body might be in the spot to increase my speed. If I could be doing long runs at 10:00/mile next year instead of 11:00, that would be huge. Not only do they get done quicker, but I might actually have some people to run with.

Anyways, that's the update. The Portland Marathon is just a few weekends away and at the moment I'm not feeling so confident, but hopefully the next two weekends will restore that belief.