2 Weeks to Napa: Training done!

This Sunday was my last 20 miler at two weeks to race. That makes a total of 3, which I feel is better than only one or two. At least it seems to work for me.

For the next two weeks I'm in the 'taper':  we want to bounce back from all the running stress, but we want to preserve our conditioning at the same time. On race day, we should be fully rested and recovered from the heavy training but still very fit.

Typical marathon schedules for beginners have only one 20 miler, and have it 3 weeks before the race ...i..e a longer taper. After I got experienced I felt I was losing too much conditioning with 3 weeks...and I've met many multi-marathon runners that feel the same.

It was great weather for my run: cold (35F!) , clear and sunny. But 5 miles into my run I found a roadblock!:

The ped/bike underpass of highway 101 was closed due to flooding of the river which had left a ton of mud.

Argh! What to do? Eventually I found my way back to the Shoreline road overpass of 101 and connected up with the Steven's Creek trail again.

The air was super clean from all the rain we've had and it was truly a wonderful day! 

For various reasons I couldn't do my 20 miler until Monday (a holiday) and so I'd had two rest days after my last run: legs feeling pretty fresh. Eventually it warmed up enough that I could shuck my jacket and it was totally perfect running weather.

When I came to the Charleston Slough Levee I found this:

Can you see the little white dots? They are Black Crowned Night Herons. I see them often but in this case there were 30+ of them! ( A "siege" of herons). Each one was spaced out from the next by 3-5 feet (let's get close...but not too close) and they went on and on. I have no idea why they were doing this.

They look like this when they are closer:

I have been running the baylands for 12 years and have never seen so many in one place! Usually they are quite solitary. 

My run went really well and I managed to speed up a bit in the second half for an overall pace of 10:37 min/mile.  I have been pondering my marathon goal pace and after this run I think that a 10:40 pace might be reasonable.

If I take my first Napa Marathon pace (my first marathon) of 10:05 and scale it to my current age (10 years older) that suggests 10:51 as my pace. That's pretty close to 10:40. 

But more telling was that I felt pretty good at the end of my 20 miles and thought I could have easily handle another 6. Granted Napa has some hills which will cost a few minutes. But I'll also be more tapered and feeling even more full of beans (I hope). 

The long and short of all this thinking is: assuming we have good cool weather and not huge headwinds on race day I think 10:40 m/m is a good starting pace. If I'm right I'll finish strong, with no walking, and with close to even splits for first half vs second half.

You heard it here first!

4 weeks to Napa Valley Marathon and a Double Rainbow

 4 Weeks out and my second of three 20 mile long runs this Sunday. 

There was a threat of rain....I got up at 6am to hit a weather window until 11am that looked like it would be fairly good

And indeed it was magical! For ~1.5 hours my run had views of this beautiful double rainbow. (Sorry for the tilt ...pano feature not easy to use)

All the other runners/bikers/walkers were taking zillions of pics too 8)

The rainbow was so bright you can see (in the pic on the right) the reflection of the rainbow in the water.

As for the run, I took it slow as I had already run 26 miles in 4 runs earlier this week, with some hard running mixed in, so I was not feeling as strong as I might. Total for the week is 46 miles, one of my higher weeks. 


I'm feeling good in general and slowly getting stronger. 


My hip feels totally normal now: I have no soreness or any feeling different than my left hip. My right hip has more flexibility than it did pre-op, actually. (That joint was not properly formed..one reason why it wore out so fast)

Thinking about race pace,  my current notion is 10:45 min/mile. I will re-evaluate in two weeks after my last 20 miler.

The last pic is of the new boardwalk from the nature center, across the salt marsh, out to the south bay. They did a great job. 

NB I just checked and next Sunday will be exactly one year since my first outdoor run, post-op! Whoo-hoo!