Eyjafjallajokull (update)

Looks like old man volcano is chilling out... or at least the EU was willing to bow to pressure from the airline industry to open up the sky for travel. Flights have been rolling steadily since last night.

Game on. Heading to the airport in a bit.

I'm starting to accept the fact that I'm going to have to run a marathon in a few days. Nerves are getting wiry.

Eyjafjallajokull

OK, so here's a fun wrench that I've been dealt in the last week:

The beautiful island of Iceland has decided to blow up - literally! Iceland is known for its numerous volcano's and hot springs, many of which are buried or surround by glaciers. Well guess what - one decided to blow up.

"Eyjafjallajokull" (pronounced "try to fucking screw Robert's London Marathon plans")... has been erupting on and off for the last month. A week ago, part of the volcano, which is essentially covered with a glacier, started to get violent. Lava, magma, glacial ice, and ash have been getting blasted 30,000 feet into the atmosphere. Combine that with the current heavy jet stream, and the result is Norther Europe is getting heavily shit upon . Hence, flights all over the continent have been cancelled for the last week - particularly in London!!! About 75% of all flights in Europe altogether have been cancelled in the last week!!

Ummm, not the ideal concern I'd like to have in the days leading up to my marathon! The whole experience is still a pretty surreal for me, as I feel like I'm in a bit of "marathon denial mode" - but this isn't helping any of my pre-marathon nerves.

Travel plans could be hosed. Sarah and I are supposed to leave for London tomorrow afternoon. I have no clue what the odds of that actually happening are. We're basically on a day-to-day basis. WTF!?! Apparently, London just now is opening up for some air traffic however, most US bound flights are still cancelled. It remains to be seen whether UK bound flights from Chicago will be starting back up today. I'll know more in a few hours. Leaving tomorrow is a crapshoot.

Let's not even get into the conversation that the air quality in London is crap right now too! I've seen comments that suggest the streets are slowly getting covered in dust. Not good.

The icing on the cake: I didn't opt for the European Volcano Trip Insurance with our travel plans.... We'll easily be hosed on maybe $2,000 worth of reservations that won't be refundable.

Eyjafjallajokull-whatever-yer-name-is can continue to erupt for the next 12 months or as long as it wants to, and spew massive ash plumes into the atmosphere every other day. ...Just a friendly reminder that mother nature rules above all else. Gotta keep an even keel.

Better

For the first time in 6 months, I finally feel like I'm getting into shape. Unfortunately, I feel like I'm maybe 3-4 weeks shy from being in a much better condition (as opposed to peaking)... and instead I'm gonna force a marathon in about a week.

I've pulled together a few good workouts in the past :

* 4/9 - 22 miles on a Friday night after a long day at work.
The first 10 were easy @ 7:15s. The next 6 were progressing from 6:45 to 6:20. Then 5 miles @ 6:15 progressing to 6:00. Final mile was a cool down. This was one of those pinnacle long runs where I just had to force myself to run faster and faster, slowly pulling a trigger. I finished strong and didn't have any troubles whatsoever.

* 4/12 - 12 w/ 8 miles tempo.
There was a good headwind for the first few miles of the run, but that clearly came back to help me towards the end. Goal was to start out at marathon pace into the wind, progress towards 1/2 marathon pace, then go nuts at the end. It went perfectly.... 6:09, 6:00, 6:08, 5:50, 5:44, 5:44, 5:29, 5:23 = 5:48 avg. A massive negative split. I finished feeling gassed, but not toasted. I plowed right through any lactic acid. I could've easily thrown in another couple miles (of course, slower than 5:23).

* 4/14 - Yasso 10x 800s.
In my mind, this is a key workout. I've said it before, I'll say it again - If I can't do these things at 2:40 reps, then I shouldn't even considering thinking about a low 2:40s marathon. I ran an average of 2:36. Unfortunately, the faster ones were earlier (going 2:33-35s). I did hang on through the end though (finishing 2:37-38s). 80 seconds rest. The last time I did this workout in the fall, I gave myself an extra 10 seconds rest. This tells me that I can have some confidence in running low 2:40s in London.

Reality

The reality of all this is that I had a stress fracture. I broke my foot. I was at my peak performance a little over 5 months ago. I was then forced to take about 2-1/2 months completely off. So I'm now only about 2-1/2 to 3 months back into my running.

Rule of thumb: It takes you twice your down time to get back to where you started. After all of my garbage running and down time over the last handful of years, I firmly believe that. If you take 1 week off, it takes you almost 2 weeks to get your fitness back. I took 2-1/2 months, and it'll take me 5 months of hard training to get back. I'm half to where I was in October. It will likely take until June or July to fully hit my stride again... probably longer, since I'll still have to recover from London.


I say this because in spite of a decent 20x 400m workout last night (jogged a 200m recovery - basically not allowing myself to fully rest between reps).... I still felt unsatisfied. The workout went very smooth, I held my splits, I even picked it up in the second half.

However, Jason was running 5x 1000s at a faster pace than my 400s. He eventually lapped me. Late in my workout, some of the other elite guys started running. I think they were doing 1600s... they were going at least my pace. (aka, potentially easing into sub 5min mile repeats). At one point, one of them blew by me like I was standing still.

It was very humbling. I actually felt embarrassed. Jesus, I was doing measly 400s!! I felt that there's no way I'm even in the same league as these guys. I was the piece of shit slow kid, and in their way on the track. Not a single one of the other "elites" even acknowledged me. I'm on their team! Or are I? Maybe I'm just the pity fuck?

On my lonely cool down, I came to my reality - I've only been running about 2-1/2 months; I've just started to right the ship. I'm half way to getting back in shape.

I have a marathon in a little over 2 weeks, and I'm far from where I wanted to be when I signed up for the damn thing... but its thousands of miles away and costs too much to bail on. Maybe it'll be dubbed the London Lay-up, but hey, at least I'm heading in the right direction.

Cramming

Last week got the ball rolling. Now its just a matter of hanging on for as long as I can....

-14 miles last Friday after work.

-23 miles on Saturday morning in Barrington (avg likely 6:50ish).

-12 miles on Sunday around noon.

That's 49 miles all within like 40 hours.

Socially my life has gone down the tubes. I'm in bed by 9:30 every night. Get up, go to work for 10 hours, come home, run a couple of hours, eat, go to bed. Such is the life of trying to cram for a marathon.

Since the weekend,

-I doubled for the second week in a row on Tuesday, w/ 6mi tempo after work. Tempo was solid, considering an 18 mile day - 6:00 down to high 5:40's, but I had some help from a wind at my back.

-Tracked last night with a variance of 200 cut downs. 4 sets of 4x 200, with an easy 200 jog in between reps (roughly 75 sec)... reps were consistent w/ #1 = 35-34, #2 = 34-33, #3 = 33-32, #4 = 32-31.
Looking back at my fall workouts, we ran with on 45 sec rest, and did 3 reps going 35, 33, 31.


All in all - Cramming is the only way to describe it... and quickly. I'm not terribly sore, but my legs no longer feel fresh. Calves feel like balloons. I'm tired. I'm hungry, but afraid to eat too much during the day as it'll upset my run.

The shins/calves are the only notable pains. They're better than they were a month ago, but keep tightening up with every 5-6 day streak. Massages have helped a lot. It's been a week since Sarah's had the chance to work on me though. I can tell. I'm stuck taking Aleve once or twice a day to reduce the swelling. I should probably suck it up and start wearing compression stocks while I'm not running.

Basically have 2 more weeks to cram in miles, then cut back for about a week and a half days. It all boils down to about 3-1/2 weeks of 80+ miles with as much quality as possible. Not your ideal marathon training, but its gonna have to do.