Marathon Training Update + Big Announcement

I know a lot of you have been enjoying seeing a daily breakdown of my workouts, and I will return to that leading up to the marathon, but since it’s been a hot minute since my last update, I’m just going to give you the general idea of what’s been happening.

I left off my last update with happy news–after spending almost two weeks nursing a knee injury, I had gone for a short run and felt great. I was back in action!

LOLZ. Nope.

No exaggeration, a mere couple hours after I hit publish on that post I was standing around with my friend watching the Super Bowl and my knee started to throb and swell back up out of nowhere. Was it from the brief run I had done earlier? Was it from standing on it for a prolonged period of time? Was it the two beers I had? Was it bad karma for all the times I hid in the woods during cross-country practice in high school? Am I now doomed to never finish a marathon because I was a corner-cutting punk during my early running career?? That must be it. Sonofabitch.

Luckily the swelling went down after some icing and elevation and didn’t return. Still, I didn’t want to risk really injuring myself so I took yet another week off from running. After some motivational self talks, I felt good about the decision because there’s a big difference between taking a week off from running and a week off from training, and I definitely was still training. I did yoga almost every single day that week. I was loving megaformer workouts because of how effectively they challenge lateral movement (good compliment to the front-back plane of running!). I did low-impact cardio on the spin bike, doing back-to-back classes some days, switching it up between Recycle, Vélo-City & Soul Cycle. I did as much as I could without putting undo stress on my knee.

I returned to running after almost three weeks off and felt great. No pain, so swelling, totally healed. My first long run post-injury was 13 miles and I even got a new PR for my half marathon by four minutes (1:54)! A couple days later I went for a short 5-mile run and felt like I was flying. I was so amped to hit the rest of my marathon training hard.

LOLZ. Nope again.

Last week I came down with the worst cold I’ve had in a long time. I think it’s the crazy weather changes we’ve been having in Boston (20 degrees one day, 60 the next) because it seems to be going around. I felt so completely drained of energy all last week I could barely get through teaching my classes. I’d finish up and then have to immediately take a four-hour nap. There was no way I could have gone on a long-distance run. Luckily, five days of being sick is more like a speed bump than the red light my knee injury was, so it didn’t throw me off too much. I started to feel better by the weekend and on Sunday I went for my longest run of training: 16 miles. 

I’ve never run that far in my life, and completing it gave me the best high. I actually looked down at my legs at the end and thought to myself, you have the ability to run 16 miles, how fucking cool is that?! I said it out loud, too, which would explain the weird looks …

What got me even more excited though was how good I felt after the run and today. I’m not even that sore! I take that as a good indication my body is where it needs to be regarding strength and endurance, and that I’m taking enough time to stretch and roll out after workouts. Yesterday’s run gave me the upmost confidence that despite the minor setbacks throughout my training, I will be able to run 26.2 miles on race day.

Which is a damn good thing considering the upgrade to my running status I got a few weeks ago…

I’m Running Boston as a Guide!

When Andrea Croak from Team With a Vision told me that I, along with Heather Armstrong, would be guiding athlete Simon Wheatcroft, my first reaction was actually confusion. Simon is an ULTRA MARATHONER. He ran from Boston to NYC and then completed the New York marathon. I almost wrote back to Andrea: Hey I think you have the wrong number, this is Nicole, not Shalane Flanagan. 

After being reassured that, while Simon can probably run 700 more miles than me, my projected pace for the marathon is adequate, the significance of this opportunity fully sank in, and as cliche as it is, I truly do feel honored. It gives more meaning to the whole training process and I feel a deep sense of gratitude for the experience. Not only is Simon, who started losing his vision at age 17, flat-out inspirational (watch this video), but Heather’s blog dooce has been crushing it for fifteen years, a success to which I aspire with P&I. To say I’m motivated by my team would be a flimsy understatement, but ya know what, I’ve been up since 4AM so flimsy understatement will have to do.

If you’re feeling inspired, you can donate to my fundraiser for Team With a Vision benefiting the Massachusetts Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired HERE. All donations, regardless of size, fill me to the brim with gratitude.

Anyone else training for Boston? How’s it going for you? Biggest challenges so far? Advice to share? Let’s chat in the comments!