Objective: (Tapering) Practice marathon pace (or effort, as the case was). 3 mi
easy, 3 mi MP (adjusted for hills) - ran out of time for the cool down.
See below... 5:30 AM: 46F, light rain, breeze ~7 mph 15 min strength work
My 3
MP mile was a little short due to running out of time; last .1 was
jogged/walked for a cool down. Splits: 12:26, 11:14, 11:39 (2 big
hills), 9:21, 9:26, 9:11. I was trying very hard to keep the effort
even, beginning the MP section on my little ~400 meters of flat sidewalk on Ridge St.
to dial in the effort level (shooting for 9:10). But I must say, the
pace was actually all over the place, probably because of hills. A bit
distressing was the fact that it really felt kind of hard. I have run
enough marathons to know how different it feels on race day, with that
last week of taper (fresh legs!) and the excitement of the race. But
that is an intellectual fact, one that has to work hard to break
through the emotional information: "I cannot possibly do this for 4
hours! I am doomed!" lol :)
Here is a little food for thought about running shoes. Oh
yes, there is definitely a part of me that likes these subversive,
fringe, and anti-establishment ideas. ;) That is the libertarian in
me. But I would go even farther off the beaten track than this article
(which asserts that high priced running shoes weaken the feet and cause
injuries), in that I believe we live in an Injury Culture that actually
promotes pain. There are constant subliminal messages telling
us that injury is inevitable (such as "running hurts your knees," and
"high mileage leads not to stronger bodies but rather to injured ones"). The messages appear in magazines (most of which now feature a column on injuries in every issue), blogs and internet forums, and are used by the brain to create credible psychosomatic pains. The physical mechanism for the pain is the closure of capillaries by the brain. The
purpose of the pain is to protect us, through distraction, from severe
anxiety and anger. But it must seem like a credible injury or the
distraction will not work, hence the advantage of "epidemic" type
illness or injuries.
I know I have mentioned this phenomenon on my blog before, but the
very interesting article above makes me want to mention it again,
because widespread publicity regarding an injury type is crucial to the
psychosomatic process. Years ago, there was a lot of publicity about
tennis elbow -- and more people got it. Carpal tunnel syndrome also
had its heyday. I am not saying that no one really gets these
disorders (or true running injuries), but that many instances of them
are actually psychosomatic. I am also not saying that psychosomatic
injuries are "all in a person's head." The pain is totally physical
(the closing of capillaries) and very real and horrible, but in these
cases it is generated by the brain for psychological reasons and can only be cured through psychological means. I
am not making this up; it is well documented. (Probably the most
extensive single bibliography of research reports can be found in this book.) I
do hope I'm not sounding preachy. Somewhere out there, possibly here
in blogland, someone has this problem. About 6 years ago, that someone
was me, so I keep bringing it up from time to time in hopes of helping
another person, as I was once helped. :)
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