Marathon Post 2: 70 days

Why am I doing this?

Today I ran 17.6 miles. Quinn, on his bicycle and wearing a new Camelbak hydration pack, was my support crew. It took us about 2 hrs and 35 minutes. That time includes a ten minute pee and snack stop at Lake Lansing Park, and probably several more minutes spent waiting on traffic signals. But I'd have to drop 21 minutes off that to have done it at my marathon goal pace of 7:38 (that's min:sec per mile).

Believe it or not, it's actually quite a challenge to run for 2 1/2 hours - whatever the pace. It makes my legs tired. It makes my stomach hurt. It makes my toe nails fall off. So I guess it's going pretty well, all things considered.

For the last couple of weeks my mileage has topped 40 miles per week. I've run 135 miles in the last 4 weeks. Quinn has been at my side for nearly all of those miles, and Abbey has probably been there for at least half of them.

The biggest problem I'm having is with my toes. I started this training with new pair of size 12 Nike Zoom Elites. They've served me well in the past. But as the mileage creeped over 10 miles, I started having toe trouble. I've lost three toe nails so far this year. So I switched to a size 12 Nike Zoom Triax, which I bought a year ago, but had not worn much because they weren't very cushy and they seemed a little wide. But the width seemed to help my toes. I still didn't like the feel under foot, so now I'm in a pair of Asic 2140s that seem really nice. They are a B width, very comfortable under foot, and my toes have been doing better. I'm actually rotating the three pairs of shoes, which seems to help lessen blisters and calluses, but using the Asics for all my long runs. I thought the Asics had eliminated the toe nail problems, but I think today's long run killed one of my brand new nails on a toe where the old purple dead nail hasn't even come off yet. Most of the experienced distance runners I've talked with have pretty much said, "Welcome to marathon training."

Will I make my goal of running a 3 hr and 20 minute marathon? Not if you do the math on today's pace, but the race is still weeks away. I'm running my shorter runs of seven or eight miles well under that needed pace. Either way, it doesn't really matter whether I hit that qualifying time, but it's fun to have a lofty goal to push me through the training.