By Jared Janzen
Local Yokel Reporter
For the past few years, I’ve been running a full marathon every fall. It’s one of those things that seems like a stupid idea while you’re doing it, but as soon as you finish, you want to do another one.
I signed up for the Des Moines Marathon back in April. The earlier you sign up, the cheaper the price is, so it pays to plan ahead.
What I didn’t account for was an injury that would throw my entire training cycle off track.
I had been training pretty hard in the spring to lay a foundation that I could build on in the summer and early fall. But then in late May, I started having some pretty bad ankle pain. It didn’t just hurt when I ran but also lingered throughout the day. Based on internet research, I self-diagnosed the likely culprit as achilles tendonitis.
During the month of June, I barely ran at all to give my ankle a chance to rest and heal. I attempted to do some cross training on the bike and elliptical, but I didn’t do a good job with consistency.
By July, I was trying to get back into running, but I had lost fitness over the past month, so even short runs made me feel extremely out of shape.
This year, I didn’t follow a pre-written training plan like I normally would. I haven’t been running as many days per week, I haven’t been pushing myself at faster paces as much as I should, and overall, my mileage is considerably down.
Here’s an ugly statistic that will tell you just how unprepared I am to run a marathon. Typically, when I follow an 18-week marathon training plan, I’m usually already running 25 to 30 miles every week before I even start. By late in the training cycle, I’ve built up to 45 to 50 miles every week.
Not so this time around. The most miles I’ve run in a single week for this training cycle is 26.5. So at my peak, I’m doing less than what I would normally do at my base.
There have been other factors at play affecting this training cycle. Moving to Hutchinson and starting work at the Tribune over the summer changed my daily and weekly schedule. The weather in August and September was also unbearably hot.
The good news is that my ankle feels a lot better. It’s not back to normal, but thanks to pampering it with rest, ice and new shoes, it doesn’t bother me like it used to.
For anyone out there who’s never run a marathon but would like to someday, there’s some good advice in this column on what not to do.
Don’t push yourself too hard too fast, because that leads to injury. If you are injured, don’t try to push through it, because you’ll only make it worse.
Don’t think you can run a long distance like this without a proper training plan. The mix of speed and endurance that most training plans suggest will better prepare your body than just running the same distance at the same speed for every workout.
Over the summer, when I wasn’t able to run much, I considered switching distances to run the half marathon in Des Moines instead of the full. But the more I thought about it, I concluded that since I had paid for the full marathon experience, I might as well get what I paid for.
The Des Moines Marathon is now just over a week away. I fully expect this to be my slowest finish time. I fully expect to take lots of walking breaks.
The moral of the story is when things don’t go according to plan, adjust your expectations. I had high hopes at the start of the year that I’d be able to run a personal best at the Des Moines Marathon. Now I just want to get to the finish line.