running: the dawn

In the days following a marathon I become consumed with analyzing every facet of the race.  I try to figure out what worked and what I want to repeat versus what didn’t work and I need to make adjustments.  Here’s what I’ve come up with post-Rockford:

LOVE IT!

• Coconut Water. I’d never seen or tried coconut water, but Ann had some at the house and was talking about the energy benefits of coconuts.  We each decided to take a bottle of it with us to the start.  While sitting in the car, I decided to read the nutrition facts to see what good it was.  Hello potassium!  Seriously…comparing the potassium, sodium and other standard “electrolytes” to the gu comps and sport beans it was amazing!  And, I’ve always known that bananas are good to eat to prevent cramping and such, but I just don’t enjoy them.  Now, I can just drink me some coconut water!  And it was super tasty.  I’m pretty sure I’m going to have this before every race from now on.
• Cinnamon Crunch Bagels. KT and I went to Panera the night before the race and stocked up on bagels.  I ate a savory one before the race (to balance all the sugary flavors of the chomps and whatnot) and I saved the cinnamon one til we were done running.  Nothing ever tasted so good!  It was amazing!
• Progressive Playlist. My playlist for the race had several different phases.  The songs started out upbeat and energetic.  Just like the start of the race.  Then there was a clump of love songs that make me think of the Mr.  I picked some more upbeat inspirational songs for the hard middle-section.  My favorite was what I placed at the end.  The soundtrack to the musical Wicked started playing in my ears around mile 24.  Perfect.  Songs to sing along with and keep a smile on my face.  LOVED that I crossed the finish line with the words to “Popular” in my ear

Leave it…

• Too Much Fluid. I had to use 8-10 port-a-johns along the course.  I have never had this problem.  I’m still not sure if it was because I was over-hydrating or under-exerting.  Either way I had much more fluids in my body than my body wanted to carry.  Also, I’m sure that it had to do with the time spent on the course, but it still seems excessive. I hope to figure this out in the next few weeks.  I have two more mid-distance runs to experiment with.  Also…does anyone know the difference between drinking water vs. sports drink in the amount of bathroom breaks required?  Like would I have had to “go” less if I had been drinking the powerade as opposed to the water?
• Blisters. I’m not entirely sure what to do.  It seems like no matter what socks I wear, I get blisters on the outside of my big toes.  I understand that with my gait I push off that area and I always end up with a blister there.  In fact, even though I’ve gotten several and now have thick skin there, I seem to get blisters deep under that skin.  I have tried Injini socks and they work well, but I still get blisters.  During the race I wore Writesocks with the double layered goodness…still blisters.  I’ve used bodyglide.  For the race I used vaseline.  Didn’t matter.
• Long Sleeves. I don’t know why I didn’t take my arm warmers…I should have.  I ended up taking off my over shirt at mile 8 and then I had to deal with it for the rest of the day.  It was super annoying, especially with all the bathroom breaks I had to take.  Never again!  Arm warmers for San Diego!
• Shorts. I really really really want to get a running skirt before the marathon.  I mean, the shorts I wore were fine and they’ve done well through the training, but they are not cute in the pictures.  Wow.  Hello thighs.  I’ll have to do some number crunching to see if I can afford one from runningskirts.com, and if I can’t maybe I’ll just suffer through with capris…

And here are some pictures that Ann the Photographer captured from our race:

At the start

Ready to Run

Almost there!

Done and done