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Two Cities Marathon training, Santa Rosa, and my effing stomach

Two Cities Marathon training, Santa Rosa, and my effing stomach

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In my last post, I said that I had decided to bow out of pacing the 3:33 marathoners at the Santa Rosa Marathon because of the continued stomach issues that I was having, the same stuff that made me back out of TSFM two days pre-race. I’ll take a quick aside here to talk about SR for a second because surely, if you read running news at all, you probably saw earlier this week that many racers ended up running longer than 26.2 miles (in effect, an accidental ultramarathon) because people took a wrong turn before the first 5k and tacked on mileage. A lot of what I read villainized and straight-up blamed the 3:03 pacer – the fastest full pacer there was – for taking the wrong turn and throwing off so many runners behind him, and therefore costing many people their BQs and PRs.

Pacers are human, guys. Even though there were other runners in front of the 3:03 pacer, who also did the same thing, it’s important to realize that pacers can obviously also make mistakes, too. You can miss a turn; you can have a shitty day (literally); you can get sick or injured – whatever. Pacers aren’t infallible. Taking a wrong turn in a marathon course (and especially that early in the SRM course, when you’re essentially running in darkness [early race start time] on dimly-lit streets without a lot of signage or volunteers, and on the part of the course that has a lot of turns) can happen to anyone. I doubt many of us have every turn memorized for our races, let alone for the long ones like marathons. I know I sure as hell have never memorized every turn for any race that I’ve done, and I’ve also come close to making a wrong turn mid-race. I feel awful for the folks who went off course, but I also feel especially awful for the pacer because so many people are assigning blame to him. It’s not his fault. It’s shitty that it happened, no doubt, but hopefully some positive changes will be in effect for future years – things like having more visible course marking at intersections, getting more volunteers at potentially-confusing parts of the race, things like that. I know SRM is talking to the BAA, so who knows? Maybe folks who would have qualified, had it not been for the longer distance, will be able to run Boston in the spring after all.

Anyway, deciding two weeks out from SRM that I wouldn’t be able to pace it because of my ongoing stomach issues was smart. I’ve continued to have “issues” since then – a lot (a lot) of the big D, abdominal pain and discomfort, that sort of thing. The good news is that I don’t have any of the bad stuff like Celiac sprue, ulcerative colitis, or Crohn’s; 9 vials’ worth of bloodwork and an endoscopy verified all of that. The annoying news is that we still don’t know what’s up, so I’m getting some additional testing done, including testing for parasites (!!) that might have set up shop in my body when I was in Kenya. If you want to think about something really disgusting, think about the likelihood that a worm, amoeba, or some other nasty-ass bug could have been living inside you for THE PAST SEVEN YEARS. Oh, and of course, you test for parasites by literally collecting samples of your own shit, so there’s that. #glamorous

nbd
nbd

Hopefully, all this testing will yield some answers, and things will begin to calm down. If it’s in the cards, I’d like to race Two Cities Marathon in early November, so I slowly began training for it a few weeks back. I’m loosely following a trusty Pfitz 55/12 plan, basically doing the prescribed speed stuff and LR stuff but doing whatever I want/whatever the baby will let me for all the other runs during the week. There’s been a lot of stroller running – single or double – and so far, so good. We keep it casual and fun.

Here’s how it’s shaken out so far:

  • 13 weeks out: 30.81 miles (one week what would have been post-TSFM)
    • key workouts: 10 miles of SRM pacing practice with Saurabh; 8:00 avg. It was tough to nail down exactly an 8:07 pace – I tended to swing faster – but it wasn’t impossible, so I thought that I’d still be able to do it.
  • 12 weeks out: 30.10 miles
    • key workout: 9.03 miles of trails at Rancho San Antonio with Saurabh, Tri Greek, and Nina at 8:55 avg for over 1,000′ gain, which was just good for the soul. I hadn’t been to RSA to run since I was pregnant, back in January ’15, so yeah… needless to say, it was a tad more comfortable to run there not being “with child.”
it's pretty there
it’s pretty there

 

    • the other key workout: 15 miles with 13 at SRM pacing practice pace at 8:01 avg. I literally thought about whether I should be pacing at SRM for the entire 15 miles, and ultimately, the fact that I had to think about it – and the small detail that it felt way harder than it should have (thanks, stomach) – made me decide it wouldn’t be wise for me to just show up and hope for the best.
  • 11 weeks out: 36.06 miles
    • key workout: LR 14 with 9 at GMP (7:40, 7:30, 7:29, 7:31, 7:16, 7:27, 7:32, 7:27, 7:26). This felt pretty good. It was nice to run faster than a GA pace for a long run for a change, and in the process, since I was running through Alviso (where you’re surrounded by water), everything looked the same and I managed to overshoot the distance, hope for the best by taking a turn that I didn’t know for certain would lead me back to the main road, and alas – making it back. Thank you, Levi’s Stadium in the distance, for being a makeshift compass.
surely you can see how it could get confusing after a while...
surely you can see how it could get confusing after a while…

 

  • 10 weeks out (just last week): 45.27 miles
    • key workouts: just shy of 8 miles with 4 at tempo (7:08, 7, 6:56, 7:01) with a side of OMG WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH MY STOMACH. I started the warm-up feeling like things would turn south; they did; I thought I was in the clear; I wasn’t; and at mile 3 of my tempo, I could choose to either stop my watch (which I don’t like to do during a tempo run) to go have “an emergency” in the woods … or wear my own diarrhea. I barely finished the run and promptly stayed in bed, in the fetal position, until 5pm that night. Coincidentally, the last time I had been that sick was the antepenultimate day before TSFM, and this time around, I got sick the day before the Santa Rose Marathon. Gah, foresight. Thank you.
    • the other key workout: 17.37 miles of trails (3,621′ gain) running up and down Monument, “EMS,” Mt. Allison, and Mission Peaks with Saurabh and Marc at 11:13 avg. Anyone who lives in the Bay Area should put this run on their list. It’s just awesome. For not running these trails in a long time, I felt pretty good on them, and magically, even though WWIII was going on internally the day before, my stomach felt great. I should write a separate post about this run, if for no other reason than to have a reason to post more photos from it.
14063245_1739074633019036_846667595_n
I’ve posted all of these pics on IG already, but that’s ok

 

Four peaks, a touch over 17 miles and over 3600' of gain, and it took us five miles to get above the fog. #worthit #runwolfpack #runSJ #teamrunthebay #runlocal #seenonmyrun #nofilternecessary
it took five miles to get above the fog, and once we got up top, we watched it slowly creep in. So cool.

After ascending and descending Monument Peak and then the unnamed "EMS" Peak, we three headed over to run up and down Mount Allison. On our way down, we were treated with this gem of a view of Mission Peak popping up over the fog (look closely). We got over to Mission with juuuuust enough time for a few photos before the fog ate it all up. What places running can take us. Hot damn. [PC: Marc!] #runwolfpack #runlocal #teamrunthebay #runSJ #seenonmyrun #nofilternecessary #fogust #armswingheavilyinfluencedbyalotofstrollerrunning #latergram

Leaving Monument Peak and heading for --> "Mt EMS" --> then Mt Allison --> Mission Peak. Squint, and look at nine o'clock to find @bhasin and @marckrejci. Such good stuff! #latergram #runwolfpack #runSJ #runlocal #teamrunthebay #seenonmyrun #nofilternecessary

 

Rio-inspired. (Another gem from this morning's 17, atop Monument Peak). #runwolfpack #runSJ #runlocal #teamrunthebay #nofilternecessary PC: Marc!
HAIIIIIII,  MOM!!!!!!!! (this one and the other one of me: PC – Marc)

 

Other things: I’ve substituted a lot of my predawn running for stroller mileage later in the day, which I’d like to think is making me stronger. If nothing else, my transverse abdominus says what’s up to me near-daily now, and man, after a few days of DS running, my upper body was SORE. If I can swing it with my schedule, I’d like to alternate my long runs between roads and trails, saving the flat or rolling-roads for long runs with workouts in them (like GMP) and spending time on trails when the goal is purely mileage-based. While TCM isn’t a trail marathon, I think there’s some benefit to including trail mileage – even if only a little – in each week’s volume. We’ll see though. There are other things I want to incorporate into my schedule each week – formalized strength work and some amounts of yoga come immediately to mind – so I’ve just got to a) care and b) make it a priority.

Enjoy your long weekend!

trail running while pregnant

trail running while pregnant

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It’s fairly easy and straightforward to find information on the web related to running during pregnancy. Something that has surprised me a bit is that not many women have written about their experiences trail running while pregnant. In a way, I guess it kinda makes sense, because:

a) trail running generally necessitates access to trails, or a trail system of some sort, and these might be geographically hard to come by, based on where you live;

b) I would surmise that there are probably fewer self-described female trail runners out there than there are non-trail (roads) runners; and

c) trail running while pregnant kinda sounds a touch counterintuitive… at least to me, anyway. My first hyperbolic mental image immediately goes to a super-pregnant, late third trimester (35+ weeks) woman schlepping up the side of a mountain, with her uterus leading the way, or better yet, said woman with said uterus flying on a downhill, nimbly jumping over rocks and ditches with amazing grace and an impressively high cadence so as to avoid going ass-over-teakettle for a thousand feet of descent. The images seem… unlikely, at best.

 

unsurprisingly, that jacket no longer fits me as well as it once did. also, I was still pregnant for another 4 weeks after this pic was taken!
yeah, no trail running in Chicago in 2011. unsurprisingly, that jacket no longer fits me as well as it once did. also, I was still pregnant for another 4 weeks after this pic was taken; hellloooo, uterus!

 

buuuuuuuuuuut I’m here to tell you that, at least based on my experiences–and certainly, clearly, I am not an expert, and I am only an experiment of one–trail running while pregnant can be done, and I think it can be damn good for you during pregnancy.

Some background

If you’ve read me for a bit, you know that my life, until late 2013, was in the midwest, between Ohio and Chicago, until we moved to Silicon Valley. I didn’t begin running–or marathon training, specifically–until 2007, in Chicago, and while we lived there, I ran through about 36 weeks of my almost 41-week pregnancy with my daughter. If you live in Chicago proper or have even a crude geographical knowledge of the Chicago area, you’ll know that trail running–in the sense of not just off-pavement running, but also running on terrain that throws some healthy amounts of ascents and descents at you, as well as some technical (read: root-strewn, rocky, uneven) grounding, is a bit hard to come by: not absolutely impossible to find, just not plentiful and readily accessible. Needless to say, though I was fortunately able to run through most of my first pregnancy, I posted absolutely zero pregnant miles on trails.

swoon. #chicago
very flat land, yes, but… swoon. #chicago

 

Once my family and I moved to the Bay Area, thanks to the gracious folks in my running community here, I was quickly introduced to some incredibly beautiful and humbling-as-all-hell trail systems; in fact, within my first 14 or so days of living here, I ran on three different trail systems and probably encountered more elevation and technical footing differences in those three runs than I had in all of my runs in Chicago and Ohio, over the previous 7 years, combined.

fun-running in Marin
getting my ass handed to me in Marin with TSFM ’14 gang

 

being a dork at the top (one of the tops!) at Alum Rock here in SJ
being a dork at the top (one of the tops!) at Alum Rock here in SJ

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2014, I ran just shy of 2,600 miles, and while I don’t know the figures off the top of my head, a lot of those miles– I’d wager about 60% of my LR miles between September and December, when I was in the throes of 50k training for Woodside–came from running trails. The learning curve to run on trails can be steep (god, that pun was horrible), but it is incredibly rewarding and (I think) is making me into a much stronger and (eventually, when I’m no longer pregnant) faster runner.

Why trail running can (potentially) be a good match for pregnant running

I think you get my picture by now, that trail running and I only go back as far as last year, and only really in earnest beginning sometime around September. I’m not an expert on how to run trails, by any stretch of the imagination, nor am I a medical professional or espouse my views online as if I were one, but my personal, non-professional runner, non-medical professional experiences have been showing me that trail running has been intersecting with my pregnancy running quite nicely.

By the time I ran my trail 50k in mid-December 2014, I was already (but unknowingly) pregnant; if my math is right, KD was already about 4-5 weeks gestational age. That means that I posted my final peak of my 50k training–the final long long (24+ miles) runs and the final trail runs–as well as the actual 50k event, that had over 5,000 feet of gain, pregnant. Post-50k, and post-first-trimester annoyances that mostly left me horizontal, on the couch, willing for all the dizziness and nausea to disappear, most weekend long runs that I’ve done have been on trails here in SJ and on trails that usually throw 2,000+ feet of gain at me and varying amounts of technicality. None of this is a veiled attempt at humble-bragging; in fact, it’s far from it. If anything, I’m simply a pretty average female distance runner whose experiences show that trail running and hell, even ultra running while pregnant, are doable.

50k'ing at about 4-5w preg
50k’ing at about 4-5w preg

 

So– if you’ve been running trails before you were pregnant and thus, already have some familiarity and prowess with them, why is it worth continuing (based, of course, on the blessing of your medical team and the health of your pregnancy)? Here’s what I’m thinking:

1) trails will naturally slow you down; it’s a given. It’s harder to run when you’re running up a super steep grade, and sometimes, it actually makes more sense to power-walk (or hike) up ascents than it does to unduly tax yourself. Ask any pregnant runner about how her running immediately changed once she became pregnant, and I’d wager that she’d say that her speed dropped pretty substantially, pretty quickly.  Trails can help keep you accountable (to yourself) so that you don’t try to be a hero and hit paces that you can hit when you’re in the best running shape of your life.  You’re not going to break any records during your pregnant running; seriously, just enjoy the roses for a change. Hell, take pictures of ’em, while you’re at it.

conversely, you can stop and gawk at the huge crowd of wild turkeys you see mid-run. (cred: Saurabh)
or, if not roses, you can stop and gawk at the huge crowd of wild turkeys you see mid-run. ( cred: Saurabh)

 

2) trails inherently work lots of ancillary muscle groups that, in turn, can make you incredibly stronger and more efficient–both on trails (over time) and on roads (I think somewhat sooner).  More directly related to pregnancy, I think that strengthening our ancillary muscle groups, a la trail running, can help make us more comfortable during the latter stages of pregnancy and help get us strong for the rigor of labor and delivery. Additionally, strengthening ancillary muscle groups, especially in our core, becomes incredibly important during pregnancy simply because your growing uterus, lovely as though it may be, can really eff up your body and make you hella uncomfortable (there’s a reason that super-pregnant women tend to walk the way they do). Trail running can work your big muscle groups and the little ancillary guys in ways that roads can’t–or can’t as easily–and I think it could potentially pay dividends come L&D day. Fun fact: I distinctly remember from my first pregnancy that I felt like every.single.part of me was pregnant, not just my midsection, and surprisingly, the sorest part on me after a ten-hour, non-medicated water birth was my forearms. They burned for daaaaaaays (weird, right?). I wonder how trail running affect’s a pregnant woman’s forearm strength… kidding… sorta…

 

3) pregnancy can be really effin’ stressful and anxiety-inducing, and trail running can be the antithesis of that–cathartic, a mental respite, and literally forcing you to take a breath of fresh air and think “big picture.” Bringing life into this world is really awesome–don’t get me wrong–but it can also be really, really scary because there are roughly a gazillion unknowns. There’s only so much you can control in pregnancy (just like in life, in general), and sometimes it can feel especially overwhelming, in no small part due to the raging hormones that are coursing through your body for a solid 37-40 weeks. Trail running can be an excellent outlet, away from the stress of life and traffic (especially important if you’re urban), noise–everything, really–at least temporarily, and sometimes, escaping to nature, or escaping to somewhere within ourselves (as hippy-dippy as that sounds) can do WONDERS. Taking a step back can allow us to enjoy the process (and the view!) that is pregnancy/life before returning to the grind.

 

the view makes the work worthwhile; how's that for a metaphor? (from AR in 9/14)
the view makes the work worthwhile; how’s that for a metaphor? also, this gem is unfiltered; nature is that gorgeous, gang!!! (from AR in 9/14)

 

4) trail running, which usually means that you’re running on softer surfaces compared to roads, often means that the surface can be more forgiving to your joints and in turn, can lead to faster recoveries. Running on softer surfaces–and thus, feeling less impact from each footfall–can become really important with pregnancy, especially as you continue to gain weight and really begin to “feel” pregnant. By the time I gained about 5 pounds in this pregnancy, I immediately noticed that my body felt more achy post-run–something that it rarely does–and that switching shoes and switching my training volume to be more trails-based made a significant difference.

posting fewer miles these days, but the LRs on these gems > anything on roads (#amIconverting??!)
posting fewer miles these days, but the LRs on these gems > anything on roads (#amIconverting??!)

 

5) I think trail running can be more mentally and physically challenging than roads–particularly if you’re significantly faster on roads than you are on trails–yet having experiences being out there (running) for long periods of time can do wonders for mental toughness. I don’t think mental toughness is the most singularly important aspect to laboring and subsequently birthing a child, but I do think it can matter. Running a marathon (or ultra, or HM, or whatever) isn’t like childbirth–they’re completely different processes, with only passing and visceral, at best, similarities; I’m simply maintaining that the time you spend running trails can give you ample opportunities to practice getting comfortable with reflection and introspection–those little “moments with myself” that I often talk about–that, in turn, you can also use when you’re in the throes of having your baby. I promise you that I never once thought about some obscure run I posted when I was pregnant, when I was in the throes of bearing down or getting through a contraction, but I **can** tell you that I was already quite familiar with the potentially weird and awkward process of talking to myself–of getting inside my own head–when I was laboring. That probably makes me sound a little left of center, but I think you get what I mean.

YMMV; please don’t sue me if my ruminations don’t match your experiences or expectations

Like I said, I’m not an expert on any of this and am only basing it on my own experiences being pregnant twice now and on my experiences running on trails in the past year. Of course, I welcome (and would love!) your input and insight. I would dig it if I could continue to run trails for the rest of my pregnancy, so long as I’m feeling well/everything is healthy/my midwives give me their blessings, so I’ll probably circle back on this topic somewhere down the line. Being pregnant is akin to being in an experiment of one, so I can’t promise you that your experiences will mirror mine… but I will say that so far, I’ve really enjoyed my pregnant trail miles significantly more than what I’ve posted on roads. It will make for some fun story-telling to Kiddo Dos once s/he arrives. this one time, I was running up this hill, and there were thirty wild turkeys in the field next to me! THIRTY! and this other time, going up this other hill, the wind was blowing about 40 mph, and my face got so windburned that it hurt for days, and my eyes wouldn’t stop watering…! and this other time…

For some more general resources about trails v. roads running:

http://www.runnersworld.com/trail-running-training/why-road-runners-should-run-trails
http://www.theclymb.com/stories/out-there/6-mind-body-benefits-trail-running/
http://www.active.com/running/articles/5-reasons-to-try-trail-running
http://www.rockcreekrunner.com/2013/08/29/trail-running-prevents-injuries/
http://running.competitor.com/2014/06/training/the-importance-of-varying-your-running-surfaces_5889
http://running.competitor.com/2014/07/training/hit-the-dirt-why-and-how-to-run-off-road_31737
http://home.trainingpeaks.com/blog/article/three-trail-running-specific-workouts