Syttende Mai 20 mile 10 mile run

Around the beginning of May, I signed up for the Syttende Mai 20 mile run.  This was before I had run the marathon, and I was ambitious.  There weren't many runs in general that are 20 milers, and I didn't really want to miss it.

But a week after the marathon, I was doubting it.  On a five mile run, something went wonky and my knee was giving me some issues.  Nothing serious, per se, but I noticed it when I had been sitting for a long time and put pressure on the kneecap by crossing my legs.  I started to rethink my choices.

Button to get into festival events.

Come Friday, I email the Stoughton Chamber of Commerce and ask to downgrade to the 10 mile run.  It took me a while to make that decision.  It was hard to determine if the reluctance to take on the 20 mile run was out of deference to the limits of my body and possible injuries or if it was a lack of faith and willingness to take on difficult tasks.  Ultimately, what convinced me was logistics.

The 20 mile and 10 mile run are both point to point.  The 20 mile run starts at the Capitol in Madison and ends in downtown Stoughton.  The 10 mile run starts at the midway point and has the same course.  There's also an untimed 17 mile walk that starts at the Badger Bowl.  The runs and the walk are both part of the Syttende Mai (Seventeenth of May in Norwegian) festival in Stoughton.  There are shuttles before and after the race that runs from Stoughton to Madison.  Since my friend Barry was running the 10 miler, I figured logistically, it'd make more sense to stick with him.

Running shoes search and the Saucony Virratas

In my opinion, running shoes are by far the most important piece of equipment to running.  It's not fun to run in cotton shirts and shorts, but even that is preferable to running in dri-fit clothing and the wrong shoes.

I'm not a shoe girl.  I'm not one of those people who owns a closet of hundreds of dollars worth of shoes.  I wear my $16 flip flops in the summer, and my $35 on sale Merrell in the fall.  The most I've ever spent on a pair of shoes was $120 on a pair of black boots.  When it comes to running shoes though, I've always been more willing to drop the chunk of change.  I imagine that running shoes have grown to be a huge industry.  New designs and models come out often and with the recent trend towards running, companies are tapping into that industry.  Barry, who these days shows up to races with more than one pair of running shoes, reminds me of the days when he'd go shoe shopping and there would be two choices: racing shoes or training shoes.

Post Goal Race

Two days after the Flying Pig Marathon, I felt completely 100%.  Speedy recoveries always amaze me.  It's like I feel proud of my own body for bouncing back as quickly and as well as it does.  By Tuesday evening, I felt strong and invincible.  In retrospect, my slower pace for the marathon is what contributed to my complete lack of injury.  Because I was so much slower than my usual pace, I was mostly just trudging along.

Usually after a race, a couple of miles the day or two after helps tremendously with recovery.  I didn't feel like I needed it after Flying Pig, but I was going to get back out there and run a few miles on Wednesday anyway.  Unfortunately, I pulled some kind of muscle in my neck on Wednesday and I was in all kinds of pain.  My head only had about a 140 degree turn radius before I felt some kind of pain.  So on Wednesday, I was back to remembering the fragility of my body.  Running a marathon damaged nothing.  Doing nothing hurt a neck muscle. 

It's Friday and that pain has subsided.  Now the neck just feels like I slept on it funny.  I plan to go out there tomorrow and do a loop around the Arboretum.  I signed up to run 20 miles next Saturday.  Yes, it was kind of crazy when I had signed up to do it.  I was thinking that I didn't want to let all my hard work training for the marathon just melt away.  Barry had recommended that I at least wait until I got through Flying Pig, but I knew that a race was the best way to ensure that I wouldn't just sit on my butt for the next 5 weeks eating ice cream.  Mmm, ice cream.

I'm thinking about my next marathon and have started looking into marathons in the fall.  I'd like to run one sooner than that, but summers aren't kind to marathon runners.  The only problem is I'm not sure where I'll be in the fall.  Meanwhile though, my goal for the summer is a sub-2:00 half marathon.  I'm signed up for the Madison Mini-Marathon, which I also ran and loved last year.  I'm also eyeing the Fort Atkinson Half marathon in the middle of June.  I'd like to start incorporating some quality runs into my training, i.e. tempo runs, interval training, hill climbs, etc and I kind of want to use the Fort Atkinson Half and the Madison Mini as comparisons for a before and after.

But who knows.  I always feel a bit lazy after a goal race. 

Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati

The Flying Pig Marathon has some really good reviews.  And I can't disagree with what others have to say, but I do really wish my first marathon wasn't on this course. 

Cincinnati folks are big supporters of the Flying Pig marathon.  There were so many people out on the course with entertainment.  Random strangers were standing on the side of the road, in front of their businesses or their houses handing out bottles of water, gummy bears, bananas, paper towels, etc.  There was constantly someone around cheering you on.  There are water stops at EVERY mile.  I had to skip a few to avoid taking in too much fluids.  I also liked that the water stops were placed in the middle of each mile.  It helped mentally to convince myself to make it first to the next mile marker, then the water stop, then the next mile marker.  I ran the last 6 miles that way. There were even non-race sponsored live entertainment.  It's a pretty awesome race if you're not focused on time.  It's also a scenic course.  The views at the top of the hill in Eden Park give a gorgeous outlook of the river.  At one point we even cross the bridge over to Kentucky for a couple of miles.  There's a course tour on the website that I should've read before running so I could recognize some of the major landmarks. 

Unfortunately, the course is also really really hilly.  Others online have said that the major hills are from about mile 3.5 to mile 8, and then after that it's gentle rolling hills.  I would disagree with that.  The hills after are anything but gentle.  And as a first time marathoner, come mile 22, I really needed flat road or downhills to carry me to the end and not have to dig deep to find the will to tackle yet another hill.