2024: Marquette Half Marathon

A review of my training journal leading up to and through the 2023 Marquette Marathon indicated that I had executed numerous aspects quite well. As is the case while pursuing anything that takes a lifetime of learning, it shed light on opportunities for refinement in several areas that were under my control. The combination of implementing some of those refinements (with help from mentors) made me better and stronger. Though I would have preferred to have at least one favorable day to race the marathon over the past 24-ish weeks, learning to work through the uncertainties of training was a very valuable lesson. Onwards and upwards!

da Past Lessons

Without the kindness of Bernard Kluskens (thank you!), I might have found myself in a precarious situation during the later parts of the 2023 Marquette Marathon. Pushing my limits risking overexertion OR prolonging the strain by walking those final 8-ish miles would have put me in a very deep physiological hole and worse, invited an injury.

A combination of misreading the signs of recovery from Marquette’s heat and humidity, taking the common flu+COVID19 booster shots while not yet recovered, performing yoga poses incorrectly, occasional face-planting while rollerskiing and who knows what else … led to poor quantity and quality of sleep, less than acceptable values of daily vitals, longer than usual recovery from easy runs and workouts felt like a chore through mid-October.

Taking up on Scot‘s words of wisdom (thank you!), all activities remained unstructured through the end of 2023 calendar year. Doing so on Coach Fjeldheim‘s advice from the latter miles of Marquette, I got some professional help from North Coast Running (thanks, Paige and Tyler!) in early 2024 to fix/improve my running form.

Looking back … I had about 260 miles of mostly easy running, 1500+ kilometers of mostly easy cross country skiing and about 18 hours of strength training through the Winter months to starting the 2023 Grandma’s Marathon training. Looking forward … I expected to increase the running volume, intensity and consistency without compromising on cross country skiing or strength training prior to starting this edition’s training.

da Pre-Training Plan

Treating the effects of El Niño and the resulting subpar 2023-24 Winter as a blessing in disguise, I pivoted to running a few times before embarking on the marathon phase training. But a snowstorm within a week of such pivoting (happened twice) and the emotional withdrawals from the FIS World Cup (Minneapolis, MN), the American Birkebeiner (Cable/Hayward, WI) and the US Cross Country Junior National Championships (JNs for short; at Mt. Van Hoevenberg in Lake Placid, NY) had other ideas … and kept me from consistently sticking with running (read: not enough discipline).

Amidst and through the many aforementioned explanations and excuses, I had a little more than 525 miles of running with a healthy sprinkling of intensity, a little less than 750 kilometers of mostly easy cross country skiing and about 15 hours of strength training through the Winter months. A specific 4-week preparation phase leading up to the first day of marathon training block helped my body get adjusted to an increased impact, re-establish consistency in my habits (read: nutrition, hydration, sleep, etc.) and stabilize the relevant vitals (read: resting and working heart rate, heart rate variability, etc.), etc.

4-Week Preparation Phase Summary 2024-03-25 - 2024-04-21 Time in h:mm:ss, distance in miles (and kilometers), and elevation gain in feet (and meters).
Trackable Activities
#	Activity Type	Count	Time	Distance	Elevation Gain
01	Hike	3	1:56:27	3.56 (5.73)	314 (96)
02	Run	30	20:44:54	123.26 (198.45)	2895 (882)
03	Strength	7	3:40:39	-	-
04	Cross Country Ski (Skate)	4	2:18:16	15.26 (24.57)	696 (212)
	Total	44	28:40:16	142.08 (228.75)	3905 (1190)

da Training Plan

Choosing Grandma’s Marathon as the target race for 2024 Summer was an easy decision: listing alphabetically … area, course, Great Lake, logistics and such were very familiar. I signed up for the race and arranged accommodations shortly after the registration opened in 2023 October. The weekly structure of the 9-week plan was designed with an intentionally simplistic progressive overloading. The optimal parts from prior training blocks were retained, the not so relevant parts were removed and parts that I believed would help improve by ability to race a marathon were added.

One advantage of a 9-week training plan and dropping out at mile #14 was that I was not overly fatigued and that I could sensibly continue training for 3 more weeks to (a) experiment with different types of food prior to different types of run (you know, for Science – to identify the cause of lung/chest burning sensation), (b) replace not very marathon-specific workouts with those that were and verify the latter’s efficacy, (c) get familiar with Garmin’s Virtual Partner feature with and without the Training Target setting, and (d) package these lessons and findings into a 6-week training block for the Marquette Marathon (thanks be to Shannon and Stephen for reviewing my plan, and Laura for keeping me accountable with training log). The reasons and rationale behind picking the Marquette Marathon as the target race for 2024 Autumn were pretty much the ones that had led to picking Grandma’s Marathon for the Summer. PLUS … being too far away while I teach my UN5390: Scientific Computing course at Michigan Tech in the Autumn semester wasn’t a sensible option.

In addition to what I learned from the formal learning environments organized by the CXC, US Ski and Snowboard and USA Track and Field, an incomplete and in exhaustive list of podcasts and publications – sorted alphabetically or by the date of publication – I found relevant and useful along the way are included below for my own quick reference down the road.

1. Podcasts
   1. Boston Marathon
   2. Hidden Brain – via Angela and Brian
   3. Marathon Talk
   4. Some Work, All Play
   5. Threshold – via MikeY
2. Peer-reviewed journal articles
   1. The Psychology of The Marathoner: Of One Mind and Many, Sports Medicine, vol. 37, p. 404, 2007
   2. Hitting The Wall In The Marathon: Phenomenological Characteristics and Associations with Expectancy, Gender, and Running History, Psychology of Sport and Exercise, vol. 9, p. 177, 2008
   3. A Trade-Off Between Cognitive and Physical Performance, With Relative Preservation of Brain Function, Scientific Reports, vol. 7, #13709, 2017
   4. The Effects of Facial Expression and Relaxation Cues on Movement Economy, Physiological, and Perceptual Responses During Running, Psychology of Sport and Exercise, vol. 34, p. 20, 2018
   5. Risk Taking Runners Slow More In The Marathon, Frontiers In Psychology, vol. 10, #333, 2019
3. Books
   1. A Practice of Mountains by Andrea Mead Lawrence and Sara Burnaby – via Deena Kastor
   2. On Pace by Matt Fitzgerald
   3. Running Throughout Time by Dr. Roger Robinson – via Dr. Roger Robinson
   4. Sabbath by Wayne Muller – via a dear friend
   5. Wintering by Katherine May – via Josh at Sports Rack in Marquette, MI

The old (and unashamed to admit, stubborn and perfectionist) me would have thought of the potential RSV in week #04 and certifiable COVID-19 in week #06 of the Grandma’s Marathon buildup as well as the plantar fascia pain in weeks #04 through #06 of the Marquette Marathon buildup as losing valuable training days or would have been hard-headed to push through to the finish. The new and improving me (I am still stubborn but in a more sensible and SISU way), in the spirit of Wabi-sabi (and its common implementation – Kintsugi – that goes far beyond pottery) and other findings, treated these as the inevitable realities of training and blessings that kept me from overtraining (or worse, a longer term injury).

The stuff learned from the aforementioned formal and informal settings and discussions and research had shown that nothing good came out of making up missed workouts or worse yet, from the hero sessions. So, I didn’t. They had also shown how to work with the healthcare system (and resume training only when cleared), sensibly modify the schedule or use other training modalities and believe in others’ belief of my abilities when my own was in shorter supply. So, I did.

Mostly training solo – to, through and beyond 2024 Grandma’s Marathon …. and to and through the 2024 Marquette Marathon weekend – got me to implement a key concept I learned during US Ski and Snowboard Coaches Development from Coach Bryan Fish – gamification, a simple yet profound concept and practice that keeps our children in the sport by making their experience fun – into my long runs. Doing so made it that much easier to incorporate chunking (how I finally learned to mindfully chunk my runs – thanks to a book recommendation from Jason Cork – is in my 2023 Grandma’s Marathon report) and earn negative splits without sandbagging. These solo outings also brought some (re-)revelations and here are some of them.

1. 1. Path and road aren’t always the same.
   2. Common practice and best practice aren’t necessarily the same. 
   3. Easy doesn’t always have to be slow and fast doesn’t always have to be hard.
   4. Majoring in the minors and the 1% (incremental) change approach aren’t necessarily the same.
   5. Progress may not always be linear, and invisibility of progress doesn’t imply an ineffectiveness of the process.

As in recent recaps, the table below provides a bird’s eye view of the trackable activities for the 6 weeks leading up to Marquette. The beautiful orange-yellow button below the table unveils a more expansive view with a relatively grander summary of the planned schedule, my compliance with it, some annotations made along the way and a treasure trove of interactive delights. If interested in the details of my individual activities, kindly check out my Strava profile.

6-Week Marathon Phase Summary 2024-07-22 - 2024-09-01 Time in h:mm:ss, distance in miles (and kilometers), and elevation gain in feet (and meters).
Trackable Activities
#	Activity Type	Count	Time	Distance	Elevation Gain
01	Bike	11	8:15:17	87.59 (141.02)	29 (9)
02	Hike	8	6:45:55	15.98 (25.73)	1181 (360)
03	Run	32	34:21:36	210.66 (339.16)	6918 (2109)
04	Strength	7	4:21:02	-	-
	Total	58	53:43:50	314.23 (505.91)	8128 (2477)

Compliance matrix is my attempt at visualizaing the micro commitments to the plan and incremental progress during the training block (and subsequently reviewing it without the rose-tinted shades). Completing an activity as planned earns 1.00, completing it with some modification(s) earns 0.50 and cancelling/skipping it earns 0.00. The earned compliance score for this training block was 31.00 out of a possible 42 (73.81%).

6-Week Marathon Training: Schedule, Compliance, Notes and Eye Candies

 

da Race Weekend

My gracious boss granted me Friday afternoon off. The drive to Marquette with Greta included usual pit stops and was uneventful. Picking the race packet at the Superior Dome and catching up with friends I hadn’t seen in a while was a breeze. After a quick bite of the ever delicious Tery Linn from the Dia de Los Tacos, I made a quick trip to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain with a quick stop at the iconic Phil’s 550 Store. The views from the top were spectacular to say the least, and so were the conversations with Marlene and John at the top (they were from London, UK) and Anthony on the way down (he was visiting from Georgia for the marathon). Shortly after a hearty meal with Ruth, I called it a night at Jess–Tim residence in Gwinn.

As is usually the case, the race day morning came early but not before a full night of quality sleep. A rejuvenating cup of strong brew from Contrast Coffee helped wake up all senses and I got to watch a glorious Sunrise over Lake Superior while catching up with Sam near the finish line. Conversations with Kristin made waiting for the bus and the bus ride to the start of the half marathon go by fairly quickly. Purposefully picking one of the last rides ensured that there wasn’t too much time to stand around near the start line. Implementing what Todd had taught me helped stay mobile and active, and get myself ready to run with Bernard as soon as the race director, Kevin, blasted the starter’s pistol.

Weather conditions hh:mm, temperature (what was, what it felt like and dew point), wind, humidity, pressure, air density, visibility, sky and UV index
Start	09:00, 64/64/57 F, 4 mph W, 78%, 965.5 mbar, 1.1489, 6, Clear sky, UVI 1
Middle	09:51, 69/69/59 F, 9 mph W, 71%, 979.4 mbar, 1.154, 6, Clear sky, UVI 2
End	10:41, 73/73/62 F, 5 mph WSW, 67%, 991.4 mbar, 1.1588, 6, Few clouds, UVI 3
Air quality	32, PM2.5

Goal vs Reality Goal: 13.11 mi in 1:32:22 (7:02 min/mi) Reality: 13.19 mi in 1:40.51.0 (7:37 min/mi)
#	Lap Distance mi	Lap Pace min/mile	Lap Elevation feet	Total Distance mi	Total Time h:mm:ss	Total Elevation feet	Total Pace min/mile	Projected Finish Time h:mm:ss	Differential Goal Time h:mm:ss
01	1.00	6:58	16↑ 95↓	1.00	0:06:58	16↑ 95↓	6:58	1:31:19	0:01:03
02	1.00	6:57	0↑ 13↓	2.00	0:13:55	16↑ 108↓	6:57	1:31:06	0:01:16
03	1.00	7:19	3↑ 0↓	3.00	0:21:14	19↑ 108↓	7:04	1:32:38	0:00:16
04	1.00	7:22	49↑ 69↓	4.00	0:28:37	68↑ 177↓	7:09	1:33:44	0:01:22
05	1.00	7:24	7↑ 49↓	5.00	0:36:01	75↑ 226↓	7:12	1:34:23	0:02:01
06	1.00	7:09	0↑ 128↓	6.00	0:43:10	75↑ 354↓	7:11	1:34:10	0:01:48
07	1.00	6:57	0↑ 135↓	7.00	0:50:07	75↑ 489↓	7:09	1:33:44	0:01:22
08	1.00	6:54	0↑ 135↓	8.00	0:57:01	75↑ 624↓	7:07	1:33:18	0:00:56
09	1.00	7:25	0↑ 108↓	9.00	1:04:27	75↑ 732↓	7:09	1:33:44	0:01:22
10	1.00	9:18	0↑ 102↓	10.00	1:13:45	75↑ 834↓	7:22	1:36:34	0:04:12
11	1.00	9:01	10↑ 20↓	11.00	1:22:47	85↑ 854↓	7:31	1:38:32	0:06:10
12	1.00	8:49	10↑ 16↓	12.00	1:31:37	95↑ 870↓	7:38	1:40:04	0:07:42
13	1.00	7:54	0↑ 0↓	13.00	1:39:31	95↑ 870↓	7:39	1:40:17	0:07:55
14	0.19	7:15	3↑ 0↓	13.19	1:40:54	98↑ 870↓	7:38	1:40:04	0:07:42
The final cumulative time, 1:40:54, may not match the official time (1:40.51.0) owing to rounding errors. Starting my watch a few seconds before the start and stopping it a few seconds after crossing the finish line can be an additional reason for this discrepancy. The overall distance, 13.19 mi, may not match the designated (or certified) event distance (13.11 mi) owing to idiosyncrasies associated with GPS data collection OR my inability to take the tangents OR the aforementioned early start/late stop reasons, and in some rare cases, incorrectly measured (or advertised) courses or DNFs. As a result, the cumulative pace and the projected finish time might not match the official values as well.

Not knowing what paces I could reach or hold (read: no speed work in the last 3 weeks) and expecting congestion in the first mile along the narrow and snaking course, my racing plan was run the first miles sensibly and once the course merges with the Iron Ore Heritage Trail, go bat shit crazy. While that initial mile retained its narrow and snaking nature, it wasn’t nearly as congested and the racing plan was upgraded on the fly to just go bat shit crazy. In what seemed like a poetic symmetry, I got to run the first 8-ish miles with Bernard at a fairly good (and pretty fast to me to) pace … our effort/pace fluctuating in compliance with the course profile and terrain.

Out of the blue, I bonked shortly after the 8.5-mile mark and took the next 3.5-ish miles to work through. Relative to the first 8.5-ish miles, those 3.5-ish miles felt very very slow. Just as I thought this was a fitting end to a frustrating Summer of inconsistent training, a short burst of energy from an unknown source helped me pickup the effort and finish fairly strong. The 5k splits along the way (rounded to the nearest 5th second) were 22:00, 22:40, 22:40 and 27:40, and final 0.75-ish miles, albeit at 8:00 min/mile, felt pretty fast. The official finish time was 1:40:50.8 – good for 60/506 overall, 45/208 in gender and 7/33 in my age group. Just like last year, it was rather humbling to see that finish time in spite of inconsistent training, very little running in the weeks leading up to the event and bonking for about 25% of the racing distance on a hot-ish day … something that I used to dream about in peak fitness with proper training on an ideal day not all that long ago.

Process-Based Goals In order of importance
P1	Train well - using the plan as a guide and seeking help and making necessary adjustments to accommodate sufficient recovery, absorption and adaptation.	Yes
P2	Toe the start line healthy, and with good energy and positive intent.	Yes
P3	Do things that one would not normally do on race day, try to blow up and see what comes of it	Yes

After ingesting several cups of hydration (trust me, just water and electrolytes) and a sandwich (or two, I lost count), Bernard and I hung around near the finish line – chatting with new finishers and waiting for the arrival of the quartet of our maiden marathoners: Greta (3:48:10), Ivan (4:28:18), Swapnil (3:55:04) and Trevor (4:37:21). The ice bath/cold therapy in the holy waters of Lake Superior felt … cold at first … but heavenly once I let them do their thing, and went a long long way in ensuring I wasn’t stiff or sore the rest of the day.

Sticking around the finish area for a while longer, I got to see and catch up with plenty of good and kind folks/friends – many known and some newly/recently made. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the sustained good energy that the athletes and coaches of the Northern Michigan University, Queen City Running Company staff and lovely Marquette-ers brought to the expo, the starting area, all along the course and at the finish. Their presence, work (much of it behind the scenes) and support made the event very memorable!

After few more Tery Linns from the Dia de Los Tacos (I was hungry) and a young adult beverage from the Ore Dock Brewing Company (and I was thirsty too), Greta and I headed back to Houghton. The drive was punctuated with stops to admire Mother Nature’s handiwork a couple times but otherwise smooth and uneventful.

da Takeaways

All in all, the short and sweet training block from mid 2024 March through late 2024 August brought me quite a bit of joy, a few frustrations and plethora of valuable lessons – in spite of never having consistently trained for more than 3 weeks at any point during this stretch. If the statement – the more you eff around, the more you find out – is true, then I believe I found out few more things … about myself, and about what works, when and why. And more importantly, some of what doesn’t work and why as well. As is always the case … there is always more to find out and in turn, there is more to eff around in the days, weeks, months and seasons to come.

For the immediate now, it’s time for a bit of resting and rejoicing (and no We Are On To Cincinnati this time around, yay!), and a lot of gratituding … towards the folks who guided me through the past 24-ish weeks (and then some) and taught me not to scratch every metaphorical itch, and to my healthcare team that got me ready not only in time for this event but helped me run as well as I did … far exceeding my own expectations … with ZERO plantar fascia pain before, during or after! May their magical hands and caring minds be forever blessed!!

 

Thanks be to

the rejections and opportunities life has brought my way, event folks (organizers, sponsors, volunteers, timers, law enforcement officials, photographers, fellow participants and spectators) and my family of good friends, mentors and coaches in and outside of my community for all the unexpected, undeserved and unrewarded acts of kindness and constant encouragement as well as offerings of constructive criticism to improve myself as a human and an athlete. I am eternally grateful to all those who let me train with them, who shared their meals and experiences with me, who helped keep me in good health, who helped me stay the course, and who cheered me on from home or along the course.