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I had been training for over 30 weeks.  I was all set to travel to Chicago for my first marathon.  Five days before leaving, I caught a bad cold.  It was awful.  I was really upset because I worked so hard and had a goal time in mind. I started searching the web to see all the ways I could heal from a cold in 5 days.  I figured there was no way I could run my best with a severe cold.

Forget about running my best.  Negative doubts started to set in and I was wondering if I could run at all.  Was it safe?  Several articles I read said it was a bad idea to run.  A few said that if it’s a cold above the neck it’s ok to run, but below the neck or if I had a fever, not to run.  I gave in to the fear and left for Chicago on Friday figuring I would just struggle to finish and not worry at all about how fast I ran.  That was really hard, because I like to compete.

In desperation, I started searching the web again on Friday night (two nights before the race.)  I found an article entitled, “Don’t Starve a Cold of Exercise.“  This was all I needed.  It totally changed my mindset around and freed me up to run hard.

The key paragraphs for me were:

The first question was: Does a cold affect your ability to exercise? To address that, the researchers recruited 24 men and 21 women ages 18 to 29 and of varying levels of fitness who agreed to be deliberately infected with a rhinovirus, which is responsible for about a third of all colds. Another group of 10 young men and women served as controls; they were not infected.

At the start of the study, the investigators tested all of the subjects, assessing their lung functions and exercise capacity. Then a cold virus was dropped into the noses of 45 of the subjects, and all caught head colds. Two days later, when their cold symptoms were at their worst, the subjects exercised by running on treadmills at moderate and intense levels. The researchers reported that having a cold had no effect on either lung function or exercise capacity.

“I was surprised their lung function wasn’t impaired,” Dr. Kaminsky said. “I was surprised their overall exercise performance wasn’t impaired, even though they were reporting feeling fatigued.”

He said he also tested the subjects at different points in the exercise sessions, from moderate to intense effort, and found that their colds had no effect on their metabolic responses.

Holding on to those thoughts and thinking of all the reasons I was running, I ran a 3:39:05 for my first marathon!

So if you’re not feeling well, if you’ve got a common cold, and you need to run, go for it!

Adjusting Expectations to Reality

I learned a valuable lesson regarding running this weekend.  Performance expectations need to be adjusted based on the weather conditions.

Over the last several weeks of training I have been timing some of my longer runs.  I wanted to get an idea of what goal pace I should set for the Marine Corps Half Marathon on May 17, 2009.  Two weeks ago I ran a fifteen miler and logged an 8:08 pace.  It was not an easy run, nor was it very hard.

This past weekend I planned on running a half marathon and using that as my worst case pace for the race.  My intention was to mimic the race day experience.  I was to wake-up at 5AM, have breakfast, and start running at 7AM.  My goal was to run a 7:45 pace.  I was up at 4:30AM only to fall back asleep for another two hours.  By the time I finished breakfast and digested my food, it was about 10:15AM.

I loaded up my fuel belt with gatorade and started running.  The first 4.5 miles of my run I maintained a 7:42 pace but it seemed I was working harder than usual to do it.  By the time the second 4.5 miles was done my pace had slipped to 7:48.  And I was laboring, big-time to keep it going.  Around the 10 mile mark, I bonked.  My pace was at 8:00.

This was the first time I experienced the wall to this degree.  Instead of being a hero and pushing through the last 3.1 miles, I took a left hand turn and walked home.  I was frustrated.  I felt strong when I started and was running some excellent times.  What happened?

It turns out it was simply the weather.  Most of my previous timed runs were in close to ideal running conditions with temperatures in the 45 to 60 degree range.  When I ran on Saturday it was in the high 70’s when I started and climbing quickly.  I realized I was hot and sweating more but figured I only needed to drink a little more gatorade.  After a bit of research I found the following at Jeff Galloway’s training tips.

The hot and sticky days of summer are here. Make sure that you are making some adjustments in your running. Most runners begin to slow down at 55 degrees and start suffering at 65 degrees. Of course, the body can adapt to heat stress and push the threshold up a bit, but you usually can’t run as fast on a 75 degee day as on a 45 degree one. High humidity is also a major problem. It’s like a wet blanket; it doesn’t allow much evaporation or perspiration and your body heat builds up.

If you try to run too hard in hot or humid conditions you’ll hit “the wall” sooner than expected. Trying to maintain a goal pace in heat is like going out too fast early in the race. Temperatures generally increase hour by hour; therefore you must adjust your pace for the temperature expected at the end of the race.

Adjusting Race Pace for Heat: Estimated temperature at finish – Slower than goal pace – 8 min mile becomes…
55-60 degrees – 1% – 8:05
60-65 degrees – 3% – 8:15
65-70 degrees – 5% – 8:25
70-75 degrees – 7% – 8:35
75-80 degrees – 12% – 8:58
80-85 degrees – 20% – 9:35
Above 85 degrees – Forget it… run for fun

* Note: This chart is based upon my own experience in the heat and talking to other runners. It has no scientific verification.

No wonder I hit the wall so hard.  Boink!  I’ll try again this Saturday and make sure I start at 7:00AM.  Race day is less than 3 weeks away!

I am using my Garmin Forerunner 305 to time training runs.  Right now I have a subscription to Motion Based that allows me to log the runs.  They provide a nice RSS feed also.

Today was my first training run.  After warming up I ran 5, 1K intervals with a 400 meter rest interval between each.  The goal was to run them at a 1K’s at 4:07 pace.  I misremembered the goal pace time at the track and ended up running them at a 4:02 pace.

My iTunes playlist needs some work.  I have lots of worship songs on it, but not all of them are good for speed work if you get my drift.

During my runs I planned to have some focused prayer time for the children who will be benefited by your contributions.  That is not likely to happen during the speed work runs.  They are short, concentrated, and require a lot of effort from me.  My mind was focused on maintaining the pace and finishing.  During the rest interval I was able to pray.  The long runs will be a good time to pray also.