This is Marathon Training.

While most people my age spend their Sundays recovering from the bar hopping and all-night boozing that filled their Saturday nights (and often early Sunday mornings), a marathon-hopeful will most likely be recovering from another stamina challenge:  the Sunday Long Run.

Yup.  You know you are in the midst of marathon training when your Sunday morning long runs start kicking your butt so hard that the remainder of your day is filled with your Sunday afternoon long naps.  I often think of Humpty Dumpty in those first few hours after a long run…my body is so wrecked that I am literally in survival mode, trying to put together the pieces again.

This week’s Sunday long run, which happened to be in my parents’ hometown, brought back so many memories of the worst of last year’s marathon training.  For starters, the heat and humidity of Eastern North Carolina in August is unbearable.  Even after making sure to get an early start Sunday morning after I got sick from dehydration after a challenging (and disappointing) run Friday night (even my post-run Carolina Brewery IPA from my ole college town, Chapel Hill, didn’t taste as good as it should), I struggled through the heat as I tried to maintain 18 miles at a hard 7:30 mile pace.  While I only ran roughly eight miles around City Lake, Rocky Mount’s man-made lake that was completed in 1933 by the WPA, I may as well have swum in it.  Walking back into my parents’ home, I had sweat dripping – not just from my body – but literally from my running shorts! 

As I peeled my running clothes off my body like I used to struggle out of my wet, summer swim team suit as a little girl, I almost knocked myself out with the smell of my own stench.  Yes – the smell of ammonia is one that the marathon trainee gets to know well.  However, the smell is not coming from some cleaning supplies lying around the bathroom floor, but instead from her own body as amino acids are broken down as fuel after all glycogen stores have been depleted. 

While it is argued that breaking down your amino acids, the building blocks of protein, should be avoided, I am in the camp of those (including some elite marathoners who choose to intentionally train on empty) that believe as long as you immediately restore your protein, there are benefits to running on depleted glycogen stores.  Some people – like the elites I am referring to – believe that running on empty will condition their body to more efficiently burn fat (which is typically burned more during easier activities such as walking or slow running) rather than glycogen (which is needed for high-intensity exercise), thereby increasing their fuel source during a marathon.  While I am not 100% convinced that running on depleted stores of glycogen will increase one’s fat-burning ability, I do believe that it is important to teach yourself to run hard when you have nothing left.  No matter how much pasta you eat before or Gatorade you chug during, you will never have enough glycogen stores to outlast a marathon.  So, in my book (or I guess you should say blog), you better learn to hit that wall now and keep on running.

In addition to the brutal heat, I also had flashbacks to accidently startling people as I passed by them during my later miles.  Even though I like to think my footsteps are light, I think there are other reasons why my presence may scare them…my appearance.  No one is ever going to win a beauty contest after putting in 18-miles, especially me, but with our bulging veins, eyes and hungered, haggard look, it is not surprising that people make room for us to run by.  To top it off, the humidity of this time of year can do wonders for our hair.  Who needs to spend hours teasing and waste a can of hairspray when they could just go running?

My Biggest Ponytail Ever - Post Long Run 2012

A quote from Uta Pippig, 1994 Boston and ING New York City Marathon winner, that I read in Kara Goucher’s Running for Women seems to sum it up.  “A woman naturally thinks about how she looks, and the marathon beats you up so much that you look terrible at the end.  You do not happily go before the cameras.  You just primp yourself as best you can and tell yourself, well, what can I do about it?”

Yes – between the brutal, sweaty long runs, the chafing, the big hair, the black toenails (or no toenails), and the oh-so-attractive running shorts and racerback tan lines, I am feeling all the effects of marathon training this week. However, as I lie in my bed on a Sunday afternoon with aching legs, I am comforted by a thought:  Every time a runner breaks her body down on a Sunday long-run while training for a marathon, the body will build itself back – But when it does, it will be stronger.

MCM Training Week Nine: 63 Miles 

This Week’s Beer Choice: Carolina Brewery Flagship IPA (Chapel Hill, NC)