Cayman Islands Marathon Training and Other Reflections on Running

We’re almost at the two week countdown to the Cayman Islands Marathon!! Wow. Did time ever creep up quickly! A Saturday evening post this week, since I’ll be traveling most of the day tomorrow. Yes, I’m off on yet another trip. In the 8 weeks from the end of September to the end of November, I’ll have spent 4 of them off island. Not that I’m complaining! A week in Boston, a week in LA/San Francisco, a week in NYC and early Sunday morning I’m off to Boston again for a week. I got in quite a bit of running during each trip and it was fantastic to run in cooler temps, zero humidity and to explore new running routes.

4 weeks until the Cayman Islands Marathon! Getting closer and closer to taper time! This post is a day late because I’m in New York and yesterday was the New York Marathon! CONGRATS to all who ran the race! It was an absolutely perfect day for running. The temperature was ideal, there was practically no wind and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Getting a race day with conditions like these doesn’t come along often. No wonder a new course record was set! I hope everyone enjoyed themselves out there!

5 weeks until the Cayman Islands Marathon! I can't believe we're getting SO close to race day! Congrats to all those who participated in the Halloween 10-10-10 race out in the East End this morning. I've heard from those who took part that it was great fun. I had planned to race but my week just worked out better for me to do my long run Saturday and then a short run this morning. Plus, this meant I was able to get to an AWESOME 90 minute yoga class this morning at Bliss!!!

6 weeks until the Cayman Islands Marathon! I missed posting last Sunday but it was a great day so I’ll talk a little bit about it. At 4:30am, 13 of us took on a point-to-point long run from Grand Harbour to Rum Point. We were all at different points in our training cycles so some ran the full route, some ran the last 15 miles and some ran the last 11 miles. No matter the distance, getting to Rum Point was a great accomplishment for everyone! I do want to mention that all of us got picked up at Rum Point…except for Crazy James Murray  who as part of his 100 mile training, turned right around and ran BACK to Grand Harbour. Awesome! I flew out later that day to Los Angeles, spent a couple days there for work, and then flew to San Francisco, where I spent the rest of the week for work and got home last night.  While I was in San Francisco I went for an incredible long run with one of my girlfriends who lives out there – our route took us across the Golden Gate bridge. Very cool.

8 weeks until the Cayman Islands Marathon! After a couple weeks of okay but not awesome feeling hard runs, I feel like I hopefully hit a breakthrough this week. My hard runs were tough but I felt strong the entire time. I LOVE runs like that! Don’t we all :).  Last week was a cut-back week so I’m sure giving my body some rest and recovery helped a lot too. I noticed that the one blog post I’ve written that’s received significantly more hits than any others was when I posted my training schedule. So…before I get into this week’s topic of running safety, I’ll post the details of my actual training week that just ended in the hopes that this is of some interest to people reading. You’ll note that while the type of run I did each day stays true to what I posted in my previous entry, the detail might be different. This is part of the flexibility I spoke of when structuring a training plan and allowing for life, how your body feels, etc. I don’t think I’ve ever NOT rearranged my week from I started out with.

9 weeks until the Cayman Islands Marathon! I know I didn’t post last Sunday but I was off island for a week attending a wedding and going to some client meetings. Sorry! I have three more trips coming up before the race so I will do my best to write entries in advance so I can post them when I’m away. This actually leads perfectly into my topic of discussion for the week: training and traveling.

11 weeks until the Cayman Islands Marathon! The time is flying by! I had another great week of training but the highlight of the week was participating in race #1 of 3 in the Fidelity 2 Mile Race Series on Saturday morning. There aren’t any races over the summer (thank goodness because the weather is way too gross to consider racing) so when the Fidelity 2 Mile Series rolls around it always puts a smile on my face because I know we’ve know officially started fall racing season. Unfortunately, this is the third year in a row that I’ll miss one of the Fidelity races. I’m off island for race #2 but am looking forward to race #3. Hope to see you there!

12 weeks until the Cayman Islands Marathon! This week I nailed my hard runs and hit my target mileage. Can’t ask for more than that! The highlight of my week was the 90 minute deep tissue massage I had on Saturday at Body Works. Regular deep tissue massage is one of my strategies for staying injury-free, which is what I’m going to discuss in this week’s post.

13 weeks to go until the Cayman Islands Marathon! Another solid week of training is in the books. I’ve had an overwhelming request for detail of my training schedule (okay, so three people asked) so I’ll post some specifics.

There are now 14 weeks until the Cayman Islands Marathon. I’m more shocked that in 14 weeks we’ll be into December than anything else. Where did the year go?? My training went well this week - I hit my planned mileage target and nailed the two hard runs that were scheduled. I still have a loooong way to go with respect to what my “fast” pace is for those runs, but that will improve with time and sticking to the program. I’m happy be able to write that I didn’t quit or shorten the hard portion of those runs, which is something I’m definitely guilty of doing! 5 x 1000m intervals? After suffering through the pain of the first 3 or 4, I can easily convince myself that’s good enough and bail on the rest. Let’s be honest, running isn’t always easy. But there’s a reason why the quote “If it was easy, everyone would do it” exists.

“That just isn’t physically possible”. Those were the words I thought to myself as I was running towards the finish line of the 2003 Ottawa Half Marathon, while watching runners on the other side of the pylons cross the halfway point of the marathon. It was my first half marathon, the longest I had ever ran before and the thought of running DOUBLE the distance seemed completely out of the realm of possibility. If anyone had told me then that 8 years later I would have finished 15 marathons, I would have laughed.