One Step at a Time

It's been a couple of days since I finished the marathon. I needed a couple of days to remember what happened on Sunday. The entire day just blurred together for me.

We got up early. I was up by 3:45. Absent mindedly I put my oat meal into another bag and didn't discover it until I got home later that day. To compensate I ate some clif bars. I've been eating wih oatmeal this season but I have eaten clif bars in the past. This is something I need to work into my training routine, eating a variety of foods, to prepare me for when I'm in a hotel or an unfamiliar place.

We walked to downtown Bellevue park. At 5am, it felt just about right for a run. Cool but not too hot. This was going to be a hot day. Most of the team was at the TNT tent when we got there around 5:05. The team congregated outside the tent for the next 20 minutes, applying sunscreen, pinning things to jerseys and making casual talk. We huddled up around 5:20, Bonni and Jim gave us some advice and instructions and we did a big "Go Team!"

We caught the shuttle at 5:30 and arrived at the start line about an hour before the race start. I was definitely feeling the nerves. I just wanted to get it started. The sun was starting to get hotter. 7am rolled around and a 15 minute delay was announced. I was down in the corrals waiting for the race to get started. 7:15 came and the race was started.

I started off too fast. It felt like a nice easy pace but I had trouble slowing down for the 1st 3 miles. I ran the 1st mile in about 10:30 which is too fast for me. Mari ran up alongside me and told me to slow down. I guess too much ardrenalin was going through me. In the future, I might try taking more aggressive walk breaks, especially at the start. The first part was a good run. Running across 520 was a great experience. I wished I slowed down to enjoy it more.

I felt good until we hit Meydenbauer around mile 7.5. There was a crowd of supporters and I gave Kit a high 5. I started to feel the heat get to me. When I got to the top of the first big hill, Jim was there giving us all support. Thanks Jim! I ran all those hills in training but I walked up them this time. I tried to rest of the down hill stretches. I don't remember there being that many hills in training (ahh selective memory) but I also don't rememer it being that hot.

Running up that long stretch of Bellevue Way felt like being roasted in an oven. The sun was starting to become unrelenting at that point. I'm not a quitter but I had to make a decision at mile 11:
a) Go straight and quit. Just finish 13 miles.
b) Take that right turn onto 12th. Go the distance.

I was seriously tempted to go straight. Then I remembered the personal story Kit gave the night before. Remembered how it made me feel when she told her story. I took the left turn. I pulled level with Sam and we chatted until I made a restroom stop.

We hit bridle trails. It was shaded and I walked a lot! I probably walked bridle trails the entire way. I also started to cramp. Jim pulled up to give some words of encouragement.

D: So is this hot?
J: I've been in hotter. But this is pretty hot.

I'm going to miss than man!

Jim gave me two salt pills and told me to take them. He handed me two more and told me to take one every 45 minutes. They helped. My cramping definitely eased up after that.

We got done with Bridle trails around mile 15. I caught up with Sam at that point. After that point, we were inseperable. The next 5 miles were not memorable. There was this really nasty hill in there. And lots of downhills.

I was just trying to get it done at this point. It was awesome to run with Sam. Having her to chat with made everything go a lot easier. We basically ran under the sun and walked under the shade to recover our strength. Glen gave me that invaluable advice around mile 11.

At mile 20, we shouted at a photographer to not take our photos. We were taking a walk break and we didn't want to look bad. :) A moment later, I recognized the photographer as my good friend Riley. I was ecstatic to see him. We had planned this for a while but seeing him out there was a great feeling. Riley ran with us for the next half mile, snapping photos of us with his new camera. Having Riley there gave me a little shot of energy.

Mile 21 - 23 was brutal. It was a pretty stretch of Kirkland running along the water. Being  completely exposed to the sun and having the exhaust from cars driving by made it less than optimal though. We kept moving though. We met Diana, this incredibly cool 60 year old who was going to run 12 marathons this year. She told us about the Chicago marathon that was called off because of the heat. Thankfully it was not as bad at this one.

We hit mile ~24 and we see a familiar figure in this green coaching jersey. Jim! I was so glad to see him I gave him a big hug. I told Jim I could "smell the barn". Jim and I had talked about that during our training runs and I latched onto the phase now. We fast walked up that hill where we met Kathy, another coach. We ran some more and met Jeffery, another coach. We were close and nothing was going to stop us at this point. We walked up 2 hills around mile 25. With the finish line in sight, we busted down that last downhill. My friends Riley and Bob were waiting on 100th just before the finish line. They ran with me that last quarter mile. It was great to have them there. We took a left turn and I used my last ounce of energy to finish strong.

Finally it was done. Definitely a different experience from the first one. I have many thanks to give.

Thanks to Riley and Bob for being there at the finish.

Thanks to all the people who supported me by contributing to my fund raising campaign all season.

Thanks to the TNT coaches, staff, volunteers, team mates and everyone else who got me to the start line and cheered me throughout the race.

Thanks to Sam for keeping my spirits up those last couple of miles. I'll miss running with her and all my other great team mates every Saturday.

Thanks to Mari, Glen, Jeffery and Kathy for being out there with us.

Thanks to Jim, our coach and fearless leader, for getting us well prepared to run this marathon and helping me to realize that I might have a touch of crazy.

Thanks to Kit for being my inspiration, helping me to appreciate what I have and being the reason we're out there.

Thanks to Bonni without whom none of this would never have happened.

Thanks to my sweetheart, Sheila, for waking up every Saturday morning and listening to my endless whining about training, nutrition, hydration and aches.

It's almost time. I was struggling to come up with words to describe how I feel at this moment. The last marathon I was oncall right up until the day before. I was stressed out about the high severity ticket that had come in Thursday. I handed it off to another person (pre-arranged) Saturday morning and did not have time to collect my thoughts before the race. That might have been a good thing or bad thing. I don't know.

I worry of course. It's my nature. The Seattle PI reports the weather is going to be hot on Sunday. We've been training in unusually cold weather. I worry that I'll melt under the heat. I worry that I don't have the strength to finish. It's best not to worry about the things that I can't control. Training with Jim has taught me that. All I need to focus on is the right pace. Getting into a groove and feeling right about being out there. Sharing the course with my team mates and coach for one last time. Being grateful for being able to do this.

Training is done.

**Rocky Balboa - Training Montage**

That's how the season felt. With the up and downs of training. I find the Rocky movies the best expression of how I feel sometimes. I just have one final round left this season:

Rocky Balboa - Final Round

The last five days have been gone by quickly. I've spent the last week or so making sure that I've gotten lots of water and V8 (Jim's suggestion). This has been a good training season for me. I feel a little nervous but I'm much calmer than I was the last time.

Seven days until the marathon.

We've been tapering for the last two weeks after the 20 miler. The previous weekend was spent on Tiger mountain running 12 miles.

Yesterday was our last team practice as we ran 8 miles around the Greenlake area. This has been a great training season for me, I've been extremely privileged to work with Jim (coach) and a core group of team mates.  I felt a touch of melancholy at the thought of not seeing Jim, Kit, and the team every Saturday. When you start out marathon training, it's uncomfortable. Going outside when its dark, wet, cold (or a combination) is hard. It's hard to motivate yourself sometimes. When you do it with a group, that you bond with over the course of the season, going out to run no longer becomes uncomfortable. It becomes something you get done.

On our very last Thursday run, me and Jim chatted while we warmed up around the park. He talked about how a marathon is a training exercise, how that when I got it done I would miss waking up early on those Saturday mornings. For him, the greatest pleasure was the discipline of setting a plan and executing on it. The main event is in many ways a victory lap for those months and months of preparation that was required.

Throughout the season, Kit has been an incredible source of inspiration for me. The ability to do what she has done and live with CLL. She's always shown up at our Saturday practices even though it drains her energy deeply. Having her at the coldest days of the season handing out hand warmers was a great motivator for me to keep moving. Like her, many CLL patients fight constant challenges to keep a sense of normalcy.

Unlike them, I have one final challenge left this season. One long run to get done.

This was it.

After about 4 months of training, we hit the Snoqualmie Valley River Trail for our 20 miler. This is the longest training run of our season. The weather was not going to cooperate as it dropped a ton on rain on us. Fortunately the tree cover helped to shelter us from some of the precipitation. Thankfully the weather was warmish. As usual I was wearing shorts and didn't have anything to cover my legs.

This was the last and final test to work out the how I'm going to run the marathon. The plan is to alternate 5 minutes of running with a 1 minute of walking. That seems to be the right combination for me. During the 20 miler, it left me fairly fresh for the latter half (though I did slow down slightly).

At the end of the trail, some Team in Training volunteers held out a finish line for me. Instinctively I picked up the pace for the last couple of yards. Lisa gave me a little medal to celebrate our longest run and a bag of treats to remind us of the little things over the course of the season.

Afterward we headed to Jim's (coach) place for a celebration of sorts. Coach became the grill master and I wolfed down a nice juicy burger. The season is drawing to close. The entire team has worked really hard and everybody is stronger and faster than when we first started. Only one challenge still remains at the end of June.

If my calculations are correct, we have 24 days till race day. Time has definitely flow by this weekend.

Last weekend, we made a trip back to Preston, site of the infamous Snow Day run. How would the warmer weather and the improved fitness feel? It felt great! I really focused on being smooth and steady for this run. Keeping in mind that I want the effort to be easy. I just need to get the distance done at a reasonable pace. That mental process helped. I felt strong and fluid for most of the run. No sudden unexpected fatigue at any point in the race.

The last couple of weeks I've been amazed at the progress I've made this season. For the same amount of effort, this is the strongest and fastest I've been. I've started to buy into Jim's (Coach) training philosophy (trails and hills).

It's week 13 already. Time has passed by so quickly this season. It seemed like I only started training. This is the 1st of the long runs we'll be doing on the Snoqualmie Valley River Trail. This week was an 18 miler. In two weeks we do a 20 miler out here.

The drive out here was beautiful. It was the furthest we had driven out to go run. The weather was near perfect. Maybe a tad hot but good for getting acclimatized to summer weather. I also used this run to think about how I wanted to tackle the marathon. I set off on a 5/1 run walk. I've been getting stronger this season and I've been starting my long runs too fast. I went slow for the 1st 9 miles and then turned it up a notch going to my regular 10/1 run walk. After about 30 minutes I realized I was going too strongly and settled back on a 5/1 run walk. It was a good idea too. I was just about out of gas when I finished 18 miles.

The trail was nice. Peaceful and tranquil. Paved quite well. There were a couple of sections that had a bunch of little rocks which hurt when I landed directly on them.

This upcoming week is a down week to help us recover from the long run. I'm feeling pretty good. I'm not feeling as tired as usual.

Week 12 was out on the Sammamish River Trail. It was a flat paved asphalt path. A little change up from the dirt trails we've been running the last couple of weeks. I've run on the trail lots of times over the last couple of years (I ran my 1st half marathon on it). This was also supposed to be an easy "rest" week run for the team.

What I didn't expect was how much the heat affected me. This was the hottest day of the year so far. Having grown up in Singapore, I'm used to heat but it might take me a week or two to get acclimatized to it.

Going out I felt good. The legs and body felt strong. I had picked up a big bruise on my waist the day before (played Whirlyball the day before). It was all good until about the 8 mile mark. The sun was out in all it's glory and the asphalt was just radiating heat. I pack water but that didn't seem to help with the heat. I poured water over my head to keep cool and that provided short relief.

After I got done with the run, I broke out my stash of water in the car and shared it with everyone. Everybody really needed it.

Week 11 was at Lake Youngs. The plan was to do the 9 mile loop around Lake Youngs and then a 7 mile out and back for 16 miles.

As my body has started getting stronger, I find myself starting too strongly. Having run with my team mates for the last 3 months, I have a general idea on how hard I'm pushing myself by gauging my position with theirs. I've been trying to pace S & L. If I stay behind them in the early going, I don't find myself fading at the end. S & L were nursing injuries this last week and I flew past them. That was a mistake.

The last mile or two of the Lake Youngs loop consist of a long uphill stretch of 148th. I was still feeling pretty strong at the start of the stretch and I flew up those hills. Big mistake. The out and back leg required me to tackle those hills again and I was hurting bad. I pushed through my exhaustion and finished. I even had enough left to tackle that one last big hill before the finish.

I'm definitely enjoying hills a lot more. The hill work that I've been doing seems to be paying off dividends. I'm tackling hills with more confidence the last couple of weeks.

The funny thing is that this course took roughly the same time as the 15 miler we did the Redmond watershed even though it was a mile longer.

Week 10 marks roughly the half way point to the marathon. Counting week 11, we have about 2 months left before the marathon.

This week's long run was a the Redmond watershed. It would consist of 3 loops and a little extra loop for a total of 15 miles. Next to the marathon (and maybe 2 of it's longest long runs) this is one of my longest runs ever.

I approached the run a little tired and pensive. My big right toe has been achy and my right calf has been feeling a little tight this week. I've rested, iced, massaged and used ibuprofen. It's gotten a little better every day this week but I was pretty close to skipping today. I didn't.....

The first loop around the watershed went well. I felt light. I felt good. It was nice to have Justin and Kathy around that first loop. Conversations with running partners always makes a run go smoother. The second loop was a lot harder, I was mostly by myself. The little rocks on the trail became increasingly treacherous as I rolled my ankles a number of times. Every time that happened, I got frustrated. A couple of times, I yelled at myself.

The third loop was a completely different experience. Coach K has talked a lot about running with your brain off. That third loop felt a lot like that. My brain became this detached entity outside my body. A couple of times I got scared because I didn't see the trail makers. I was concerned I was lost. But I kept going and eventually I reached a junction and saw our trail marker on the floor. I caught up with Sam and Lonnie around this point and she was not running well. I ran with them for a little bit before going ahead of them. Sam is a much strong runner than me so I hoping it's not anything too serious. I got done with the third loop and did the extra loop. I was a machine at that point focusing my will on getting it done.

Finally I got done and I'm happy that I did. It was tough run but I'm glad that it got done.