More about my marathon... sorry

You are not tired of my bragging about my first marathon, are you? :-) I am certainly not bored yet so here it goes.

Update on my after the marathon recovery:

day 0: I am functioning quite well. Made a few stops during my two hour drive home to stretch my legs and, I am sure, that helped a lot; sure, I am stiff and there is some pain but nothing to whine about

day1: morning -- pain in my knees, pain in my feet, Achilles tendons hate my guts, quads agree with Achilles tendons. Walking down the stairs is close to impossible

           afternoon -- some pain in my left foot (tied my timing chip too tight, silly me); knees a bit stiff but improving rapidly; I make sure I do not sit for more than a few minutes

           evening -- I am actually able to run a little. It is a very slow and guarded run but after a couple of minutes all my muscles are relaxed and there is no tendon pain. I keep the run very short because I am a chicken and worry I might kill myself if I keep on going

day 2: no pain at all; knees stiff but I can get to my coffee downstairs without having to hold on to the railing. I call that huge improvement over day 1

            early afternoon run, still very short and slow feels very, very good

I think I am ready for another marathon. :-) Right!!!

I've been thinking a lot about training advice out there, and future challenges.

I borrowed this from Sacramento ABC News site
I am sure they won't mind

According to everything I have read about training for a marathon, I should not have been able to make that distance. My training fell appart weeks before the race. Unlike my motivation, pain in my Achilles tendons would not leave me so I ran way too little. My fueling strategy during the race actually never took off. The only thing I did 'right' was hydration and electrolyte replacement. 

True, I did not race, I just ran at a rather comfortable pace; still, most experts will tell you about glycogen stores, walls, bonking, and so on. And then there is Timothy Noakes, a running researcher from South Africa, author of the Lore of Running bible that might be summed up that all of our running problems are in our heads. OK, he does not really say that but comes close to it. So maybe the fact that I did manage to take all the pressure off myself helped me achieve my goal, which was to cover 26.2mi before they closed the course. Not only did I manage that but finished in the time I was not even dreaming of aiming for. 

It will be interesting to see if I will be able to feel so relaxed the next time I run a marathon because I am sure I will want to do another one, and I am also quite sure, knowing me, that I will want to better my time. Will that bit of added pressure mess up with how I run my number two?
Another question that comes to mind is if the source of my training difficulties was not entirely in my head. All the aches and pains, stitches, cramps, you name it, all could have been generated by my lazy brain. I need a brain transplant, that's for sure, alternatively I can try and train the one I have.

And that brings me to my future challenges. I will probably wait with doing another road marathon. If Big Sur Marathon registration was not closed already I would have probably signed up for that one. I am quite sure I will want to do CIM again. Before then I am thinking of trail races (runs, not races, in my case). Pacific Coast Trail Runs people are well know in our area for well organized events. I am looking at their schedules and thinking that maybe this is something I would enjoy, you know: me and nature plus running - good combo. But as always, I am open to suggestions and ideas so keep them coming, friends. 

I know that some of you have run marathons not necessarily following the traditional advice of experts. I would love to hear from you: what training dogmas did you manage to break and still ran a good race? Maybe together we can revolutionize the sport. 

And now, drum roll, please, for the electronic badge I got in the (e)mail. I think it is quite neat, but I was surprised quite a bit that claiming it would automatically post it to my Facebook profile. I purposefully  did not click on the 'share' button, and still, it appeared there - magic, I tell you. Pure magic.