What it really took me to run a half marathon: Part 1

13.1 miles. thirteen point one freakin' miles. Yep, that's how I far I ran this past Sunday. To some, it's a lot, to others, it's pretty normal - for me, it's the second time I've crossed this distance. Except this time it was a lot different. For 8 weeks I trained, ate and mentally prepared myself for this race, only to find out at the 13th hour that it was cancelled due to the government shutdown (Sandy Hook State Park/Beach). With no recourse, I decided to run the worst kind of half marathon I knew of: The half marathon that had no glitz, no glamour, no people cheering you on, no aid stations, no awesome pictures to showoff on instagram / facebook.. nothing. and worst of all no DAMN (you have to say it like that lol) medal waiting for me at the finish line.

I was pretty deliberate to mentally record several thoughts as I was training/running this half. I hope this is as informative as it is entertaining. So brace yourself, lots of broscience is about to rock your world.

Let's talk about nutrition first - that's always the biggest obstacle for me. The last time I ran in 2011, I hit the 'wall' so hard on mile 10 it wasn't even funny. For those of you who are unfamiliar, the wall is what happens when you literally feel like you've run into a brick wall. Low energy levels, low motivation, the desire to quit escalates, you feel like you're running so hard, but you're barely moving faster than a quick jog. It's a pretty shitty feeling and sometimes it's inescapable - sometimes you actually just need to stop.

Anyway, to prevent this, I planned to eat right. What's that mean? It means slowly and progressively ratcheting up my calorie from carbs content in my diet. So what does that mean? My typical diet consists of about 20-30% carbs, 40-50% protein and the rest fats. Essentially, I just try to eat more meat than bread :) Except for a runner, someone who needs sustained endurance, the diet needs to be flipped.

The ramp up period (weeks 1-4) wasn't rocket science - eat more carbs. No problem. pizza, breadsticks, fried rice all happily made their way into my belly. Of course, these aren't quality carbs, but hey, I was running enough to burn them out. The more I was running (see later for time table), the more I felt that my body needed the carbs. More distance = more carbs, more carbs = more energy. As week 5 quickly approached, I had in my mind that a 90% split was the goal for the week before race day. I mean, if you think about it, that's just plain nasty. 90% of all food coming from carbs? No thanks! So for week 5 to7, I moved to somewhere around 50-70%, just gradually and deliberately choosing to eat the white/brown stuff.

Here's where it get's interesting. At the end of week 6 into week 7, I did a full day of prep-carb-loading and SUCCESSFULLY ran 11.62 miles at training pace (9:00/mile). ZERO BONK, ZERO PROBLEMS. It was glorious. This was for sure the product of eating so much damn pizza.. I mean carbs. One last quip about carb-loading for race day is this (Thanks Mike LaMonica for the advice):

• 1 week before  = 70%
• Day before = Doing a full load at lunch time, not at dinner time. This allows the body to fully digest and convert the carbs into stored energy. Eating a nice sized dinner helps, too (but not overboard like for lunch)
• Day off = light breakfast (I had a cliff bar) and some black coffee

Nutrition is just one of the disciplines that needs to be worked on during the training period. The umbrella of discipline covers much more than, it requires sacrifice. So what did I give up?

Oh, I'll tell you what I gave up. Quads. yes, quads. As the natural bi-product of running, my muscles quickly and uniformly adapted from body building to endurance running. Overall, I lost 8 lbs of muscle mass (I stayed at a consistent 9-10% BF range) dropping from 173 to 165, and some days clocking in at 162. It was atrocious. If you're someone who actually trains to put things up and put them down, it's like hell froze over when I started realizing I was giving up my gains brah. As I watched my body shed inches all around, I felt the trade-off run itself up [no pun intend] to how much freakin' energy I had. At the beginning of the program, just a short 8 weeks ago, I was barely putting in the time/energy to run 5 miles. Lately, a 5 mile run was just getting my engine going. I lost a lot of muscle mass, but it showed itself through things like boxing. No wonder why these guys shed weight to fight in a lower weight class. Speed, agility, endurance and stamina all went through the roof. Pretty cool stuff, especially for me who was feeling weighed down by the muscle I was gaining (a good problem to have, I suppose).

Another part of the running discipline was giving up my time. By nature, endurance running is a huge time suck. I trained 3x a week, running anywhere from 2-5 total hours, with double that in prep time / cool down time. The commitment to train for an event requires the discipline of making a meeting and sticking with it. The challenge of a half marathon didn't have time for my excuses, it doesn't care if I trained or if I didn't, because quite frankly, if I didn't train for this half, I would fail. So the proposition was purely black and white. Either I trained and I would succeed, or I would bullshit and I would fail. The choice was mine and if you know anything about me, you already know which way I decided on.

Speaking of which, pride. That in itself is a discpline. To reject it, that is. Although pride finds itself in all areas of my life (of which I constantly fight through), the pride of ignoring pain was something I had to give up; and that stems from knowing when to listen to your body. Everyone wants to be a hero, run like Lance Armstrong (yes, he runs lol), sprint like Usain Bolt, but no one wants to toss in a white towel for a brief minute to recognize that perhaps they're training beyond their ability. I see it all the time, in the gym, outdoors, on the bike, etc. People, including myself, regularly push themselves past the point of good pain, into the realm of damaging pain. This was especially true as I ran my first 5 miles at the beach on week 1. I ran too far, too fast in too little time. My left foot suffered from a lot of endurance fatigue and I was limping for at least a week (you can see it in my run log).

So for me, it's always about knowing when to let my body heal. I have to constantly remind myself that resting and pushing back a training day was far better than sticking to the schedule and risking further injury.

Every training regiment has it's pros and cons, here's my POV:

Pros -

• Better overall health
• Weight management
• Training towards a goal
• Achieving a sense of discipline
• Eating, a lot and staying ripped (don't worry, I won't be posting any swelfies of myself anymore)
• Enjoying the outdoors - street, trail and mountain running
• Runner's "freedom"
• Having my thighs actually fit into the slim jeans that I bought

Cons -

• Having my thighs actually fit into the slim jeans that I bought
• Loss in muscle mass 
• Decrease in strength
• Increase in potential injury