Chicago Marathon Training Week 13
Mon – 7.04, 9:42 pace
Wed – 7.54, 9:16 pace including 4 x 1 mile intervals
Thu – 6.00, 9:21 Faster 2nd Half
Fri – 4.00, 9:21 pace
Sun – 20.01, 10:03 pace – total time 3:20:57
Total miles for the week – 44.59.
This was a big week for me. It included my second 20-miler and totaled 44.59 miles for the most I’ve run in one week. This was also a big week, since I would be pushing my left leg, so I was anxious to see how it would react. The good news is, I had no pain at all during the week (including today after the 20-miler). Yeah!
My 2
0-miler went well considering an old friend showed up again (see here and here).
The first 6 miles saw just a little bit of drizzle, but the following 2.5 – 3 saw a downpour. Fortunately, it let up after that and didn’t start up again until around mile 19.5. I was back at my car around the 5 mile mark and considered dropping off my iPod Shuffle, but thought for sure the rain had stopped. Boy was I wrong and after my Shuffle stopped working, I really wished I had left it in the car (Good news again – I tried the whole “put it in rice to dry out trick” and it appears to be working again). So, I spent well over half of my 20 miles in silence, which was actually perfectly fine. I somehow survived just listening to my brain work overtime.
I had a very good BG run also. I tested around 170 when I got up (5:15 AM… ouch). Was at 157 at 4.5 miles, 147 at 9 miles and at 115 at 14 miles. After testing at 170 in the morning, I gave myself a small correction bolus of probably half the normal amount and ate a packet of peanut butter crackers about 10 minutes before I started. During the run I had a few Triberry GUs (can’t remember exactly how many) and a combination of Gatorade, G2 and water spread out along my route.
Normally my basal is like this…
- 12 – 10 AM: .8 units
- 10 – 2 PM: .7 units
- 2 – 7:30 PM: .5 units
- 7:30 – 12 PM: .8 units
For my morning runs I use a basal pattern. What seems to be working…
- 12 – 4 AM: .8 units
- 4 – 5 AM: .4 units
- 5 – 6 AM: .35 units – My run started at 6 AM.
- 6 – 9 AM: .75 units
The keys are lowering my basal 2 hours prior to the start of my run (Notice the .05 unit change at 1 hour before? Some serious tweaking going on there.) and then going back to a more normal level about 30 minutes before the finish to prevent a big spike at the end.
Testing every 4 to 5 miles works well. After the initial test, which is the one that can be the crazy one, I can feel pretty comfortable about what will happen over the next 50 minutes or so and I can make decisions on when to eat a GU and/or have Gatorade.
Folks… it’s time to Taper! 19 days to go.
