Plan B. Lemons to lemonade and all that.

Three weeks ago my marathon training was going awesome. I’d just finished up the best first half of a marathon training block I’ve ever had and felt perfectly in control doing it.

It was the week of 10/14, henceforth to be known as Week 1.  I was planning a recovery week with a rust-buster 5k (Run Like Hell) at the end, and then was going to jump back into marathon training the following week, with 5 solid weeks of training and 2 weeks of taper on the horizon.

Week 1, or the clusterfuck of life begins.

In hindsight, Week 1 really wasn’t that bad, it was just the setup for Week 2 and Week 3.

I had to travel for work, and the schedule went a little something like this:

Tuesday: up at 5 am, run an 18 mile workout (in which I kicked all of the ass, thank you very much), eat, dress, shower, head out to a meeting in Hillsboro, head back to the office, head to the airport, two flights with a layover, dinner, arrive at hotel at 10 pm. 17 hour day.

Wednesday: up at 3 am for a 30 minute jog (yes, the jury is out on the stupidity of that), meet group at 4:30, drive 2 hours to site, walk around on site til noon, drive 75 minutes to next site, walk around on site til 5, drive 45 minutes back to home base, dinner, arrive at hotel at 9 pm. 18 hour day.

Thursday: up at 4:30 am for an hour run, BREAKFAST (yay, real food!!), meet group at 7:30 am, sit in a conference room until 5 pm, dinner, two more flights with layover, home from airport at 12:30 am. 20 hour day.

You get my drift. Not enough sleep, not enough real food, legs jammed in airplane seats, legs jammed in cars, legs forced to walk around for hours one day and forced to sit in a conference room all day the next. When Sunday’s race rolled around, my legs were irritable, to say the least. I knew I wasn’t going to have my best race legs under me, and that dampened my enthusiasm for the race, but I also knew I was pretty damn fit, so I did my best to stay positive.

Cue the train.

Anyone who has run a race in downtown Portland is familiar with the trains. Most downtown race courses cross train tracks at one point or another, and you may not be aware of this fact, but trains have the complete right of way 100% of the time. They will not wait, they will not be re-scheduled. They will come when they come, you won’t know when that will be, and you WILL stop and wait for them.

During the Run Like Hell races this year, that meant that the half marathoners got stopped at mile 12, the 10kers got stopped at either mile 1 or mile 3, and the 5kers? Well, we were on the start line, so we never even got started. Of all 3 groups, that should make us the lucky ones, but here’s the kicker: the train was stopped on the tracks for 70 minutes. 70 minutes!! And of course no one thinks it’s going to be more than a few minutes, so at first we just stood there and waited. After about 10 minutes, I left the start area to start re-warming up. I warmed up about 4 different times, and still I was not very warm when the gun went off!

By the time we finally started, it was pretty hard to care that much about racing. My only real goal was to run so hard my legs turned to rubber when I crossed the finish line, but I couldn’t quite get there. I ran a good effort, but had way too much left at the end, and felt recovered about 3 seconds after I finished. My official time was 17:33, and given the short course, that equates to about 17:45 for a real 5k.

So, not awesome, but not too bad under the circumstances.

I’ll take it, I thought to myself, onward and upward. Bring on the last marathon training block and kicking ass at CIM.

Week 2, or where things start to get serious.

More work related travel loomed that week, but it was only a one night trip, so I hoped it wouldn’t be too disruptive. Tuesday morning I got an easy 11 miles in before heading to the airport. I was feeling a little low energy, but no big deal, right? Another long travel day jammed in an airplane window seat, ending in Houston, followed by a 4:30 am alarm Wednesday morning.

Except this time when the alarm went off, I almost ignored it. I did not feel terrific. Not at all.

But I got up, got in a token 6 miles and climbed back into bed for a few minutes. I couldn’t point to any specific problems yet, but something was off. I suffered through another 15 hour day, which blessedly ended with catching an earlier flight home, but the plane ride back to Portland was a nightmare. Flying when you’re just starting to get sick is so painful. The changes in air pressure, the inability to get comfortable, being jammed in another window seat…  it’s torturous. 

Thursday I stayed home from work and took the day off running. I told myself that one day off would take care of everything. One full day of rest and I’d be right back at it the next day. Just a little cold, right?

And you know what? I did feel better when I woke up on Friday morning. I did my morning run and went to work. See? Everything's fine.

Midway through the day, however, my stomach started to hurt. I did my evening run anyway, but it was pretty unpleasant. I immediately flopped on the couch afterwards, wondering what I'd eaten that day to cause such fury in my guts.

I'll just lie here and it'll go away in a few minutes, I thought. Twenty minutes later, I was literally losing my lunch.

I must have food poisoning, I told myself, and I was not too pleased about that idea. I’ve had food poisoning once before, and let me just say, it was a long night.

Well, it was a long night once again, and when the vomiting finally subsided, I was exhausted. I remained almost entirely horizontal all day Saturday, rising once to go out to brunch, which for me involved eating one piece of bread and a few potatoes and pushing the rest of the food around my plate. Anyone who has ever eaten a meal with me should be properly alarmed at the idea of me "pushing food around my plate" rather than shoveling it into my mouth at breakneck speed.

But hey, the good thing about food poisoning is that once it's out of your system, you bounce right back, right?


Week 3, or when I don't bounce right back.

In case you haven't guessed what's coming, it turns out it wasn't food poisoning. I started to suspect this on Sunday night when I had a couple of veggie enchiladas (the most "real" food I'd tried to eat since Friday) and got really sick again. On Monday when I still felt like I'd been hit by a bus, and then Tuesday morning when I learned that I'd passed my "food poisoning" on to someone else (I'm really really sorry, Paul!), it became clear that I had a nasty old virus. And that I would not be bouncing right back.

Week 3 was not very exciting. It alternated between having unsuccessful, ridiculously hard "easy" runs and not even bothering to put my running shoes on. It consisted of not being able to eat much of anything except soup. It consisted of a general sense of malaise and ill will towards humanity. It consisted of a lot of lying on the couch and going to bed at 8:30 pm.

By Thursday evening, though, I began to feel remarkably like a human being again.

Along the way I discovered the absolute best soup in downtown Portland (Savor!!), and by Friday I was celebrating my newfound ability to digest food by consuming everything that wasn't nailed down. I also started running again, stringing together 4 whole days in a row by the end of the week, two of which were double digit runs.

The clouds had lifted. I'm not exaggerating about that part, either. If you have never experienced a stomach virus, you might not know how shitty it feels to try to go through regular life while not being able to eat. And it's perfectly ok if you never know that. In fact, I recommend not ever finding out for yourself. You can just trust me that it sucks.

So what's this Plan B already? (you're probably dying to know)

Despite my disgruntlement with the state of my own little private world, the minute it occurred to me that I might not be able to run CIM, I started working on an alternate plan. Anyone who's a longtime runner knows the power of having something on the horizon.

That's where the Holiday Half comes in.

It’s only one week later than CIM, but it’s a half, so I only need one week of taper (instead of two for a full marathon), which effectively gives me two extra weeks to get my shit together between now and then.

I spent a fair amount of time comparing my illness-adjusted training schedule spreadsheets (one for still running CIM, and one for the Holiday Half), and seeing it on paper made it painfully clear: CIM was out. Just didn't make sense anymore.

My brain adjusted to that reality pretty quickly. I started to see all the positives about running the half in lieu of the full:

• I've never run a half when I've been good and fit. (Until this past summer, my half marathon PR was whatever I ran during the second half of my marathon PR.) So I'll (hopefully) be primed for a new personal best.
• The half is in Portland, aka "easy and cheap".
• Running a half in December probably puts me in a better position for Boston than running a full in December. I'll be recovered faster and less likely to be injured. Also less likely to be burned out on training.
• Switching to the half lets me get in 5 more weeks of real training, but also gives me a little more freedom to change up my workout plan a bit, adjust the focus slightly, hit the track a little more.

Week 4, or the new Week 1.

The hotel and plane reservations have been canceled. The Plan B race registration has been completed. Yesterday I did an actual track workout. And while I'd be lying if I said it felt great, I did run times at the same level as before the sickness, and I did feel less like a robot as the workout went on.

And you know what? I'm excited about the half.

Sometimes change is for the best, even when it's not entirely by choice.