13.1 Miles

Some places can’t handle a sudden deluge of rain.  The right most lane is a small lake, and I can’t see what’s directly ahead of me.  After being stuck in slow moving traffic for two hours, I do a u-turn and park at the mall.

It’s less than a mile from work.  I’ll just walk the rest of the way.

The first side street dead-ends into a small river.  Tow trucks are pulling cars that are stuck.

The second side street further north looks promising, but there’s another car is stranded in a basin of rain water.  Water creeps up the green grassy sides of the road and disappears in water.

In defeat, I return to my car.

As I approach the pedestrian gate, I notice a second camera aimed at me.  Like the first, it protrudes from the wall, but points in the opposite direction.  An inner bronze ring, reflected from the disappearing sunset, surrounds the dark eye of the camera.

Although I’m not a huge book worm, chapters four through ten of Ultramarathon Man gives me enough mental pep to want to run until I fall flat on my face.  I find it fascinating to read about someone who pushes themselves to extremes and what happens when they do.

Personally, I consider a long run nine miles.  This will change in the Fall when I increase that to 20 miles.  However, I am reading about someone who:

• Runs all night long, stopping by a Taco Bell to refuel or phoning for a pizza delivery at an intersection.
• Stops at an aid station to have his blisters lanced and filled with Krazy Glue.
• Runs a marathon to the South Pole, tucking three heating pads in each shoe to keep his feet warm.

The simplicity and non-materialism of running are spoken of which I’m familiar with, but there are plenty of things discussed that I was not aware of.  Beginning with one extreme, the book logically climbs to another extreme of increasing difficulty of his experiences with the following races:

• A 50 mile race.
• Western States 100 mile race.
• Badwater.
• A marathon to the South Pole.

My interest falters after his 100 mile race as things begin to become repetitive, but it is recaptured at chapter 14 when Dean runs 199 mile relay race by himself.

Jokingly she concludes, “Oh, so you do do nothing all day!”  She steps away from the table.

“She doesn’t know?”

“Know what?” I ask.

“About your hobby.”

I reply, “No.”

A heat wave rolls in this weekend.  Personnel outside are drenched in sweat early this morning.  I wonder how they do it.

Escaping to a local air conditioned bookstore, I type in a keyword marathon into the computer terminal and press enter.  Five or six books appear, I press on a title with my finger and see a show map button.

These books are not located in the Health section but reside in Sports, across the aisle from the Logic Puzzle and Sudoku books.  Treated windows overlook the parking lot and a lone road that leads nowhere.  A developer and a local utilities company are debating on who is responsible for installing utilities along a closed segment of connecting road.

Turning my attention to the shelf of books, guns and soccer hold eye level positions.  My eyes scan downward looking for the letter R.  Sorted Alphabetically by Sport. Running books occupy two shelves, and I take a seat on the floor to look at them.

Yes, my friends, running is that low on the totem pole.

Among the training guides, I laugh at some of the book titles.  Others cause me to stop and pull the book from the shelf to get a closer look at it.  I do find what I am looking for and take another with me for entertainment value.

After letting the pedestrain gate slam shut, I notice a camera aimed at me.  It’s one of those small black cameras that you notice when driving up to an ATM; however, this one has a ring of white unlit LED lights around it.  It protrudes from the entrance wall and points at the sidewalk.

That wasn’t there yesterday.

Prior to the first one, I thought that I set a reasonable expectation for completing a marathon: running it in its entirety.  I have done plenty of half marathons, running them without resorting to any walking, albeit a little sore afterward.

After an unexpectedly walking the last ten miles, I completed my first marathon in approximately six hours.  This is disappointing because I had an impression that I could knock one out in four to four and a half hours.  Since then, I’ve partially ran two additional marathons with the same disappointing outcome.  I finish them, but there is quite a bit of walking involved. By 9:30 a.m. the Florida sun beats down on you.  The weather is always a toss-up, as it usual turns out to be a warm and humid day. Rarely is it cold. Within an hour of the sun’s torment, I melt away into the growing parade of walkers.

In an out-of-state marathon, I experimented with run/walking it. The race started with mid-morning with temperatures climbing into the low 50s, 35^oF cooler than my past Florida marathons. That time I readjusted my expectations and I was going to run/walk it. I did, finishing with my fastest marathon time five minutes shy of five hours.

Did I mention I was slow? Does that really matter? Probably not.

The 2010 Walt Disney World (WDW) marathon will be my fifth.  Preparing for marathons is an evolving process as I am still in the process of figuring it out. I do think placing regular walk breaks into a marathon, Gallowalking, is one of the keys to make it less daunting, at least for me. This year I will make the following changes in preparing for this one:

• Run five days a week instead of six.
• Begin long runs no earlier than 5:30 a.m. I need to get accustomed to feeling the sun beating down on me.
• Run/walk long runs 14 miles or more. If the long run to be run/walked, also run/walk the run the day before.

I will attempt to follow Hal Higdon’s Intermediate II training schedule which is freely available on the web here.  Looking at the weekend running distances for each Saturday and Sunday, we have the following graph.

The WDW marathon is on Sunday, January 10th, 2010.  Working 18 weeks back, this gives me a start date of Monday, September 13th, 2009.  This year problem weekends that normally conflict with the schedule are avoided as those weeks involve long runs of 12 miles:

• Thanksgiving falls on week 12.
• The Gulf Beaches half marathon falls on week 14.
• Christmas falls on week 16.

I find weeks 10 through 15 challenging as the weekend mileage peeks at 30 miles, and I downgrade to the easier intermediate schedule in attempt keep up with it.  This year, I’ll “hang on” by run/walking long runs at week 7 and carrying that forward to the end of the training program.

Come race day, I will run/walk the marathon as planned.

The initial excitement of signing-up for it passes.  I run the idea of doing a second one by the person who got me to sign-up for the first one two years ago, and I detect a hint of interest.  The second person that I ask who has also done one responds with an outright no.

There are three commemorative pins to choose from for 2010:  one for the half, one for the full marathon and the Goofy one.  You can get all three of them if you really, really wanted to.  Two years ago, there was only one pin to optionally purchase at time of registration.  My 2008 15th anniversary Mickey marathon pin is tucked away in a drawer somewhere with breeding dust bunnies.

Oh, what the heck.  I choose the Goofy pin and click next.

Great.  There is an additional $20 processing fee for registering on-line.  I remove the pin from the cart bringing the cost of registration down to $304.03.

The 2008 Goofy registration with a commemorative pin set me back $250.16.

In the midst of deciding whether or not to run her first marathon at Disney, I ask my cousin why doesn’t she do the Goofy one.

Eventually she asks me the classic question:  “If I sign-up for it will you run it with me?”