Angela's marathon

Where & when did the marathon take place?
This was P.F.Chang's Rock'n'Roll Marathon in Phoenix on January 17, 2010.

What was your time?
4:49:11

How long were you preparing for the race?
I trained consistently about 4 days a week for about 15 months, and in the last 5 months I included interval and speed training and longer runs up to 18 miles, which brought my weekly mileage up to 38 miles in the peak week (3 weeks before the marathon).

What was the training experience/process like -- mentally & physically?
As a martial artist with 25 years of practice, I thought it would be interesting to compare the mental and physical challenges of endurance training vs. martial arts training.

Once I started seriously increasing my mileage, I realized how much commitment it takes to train for a marathon, and I was awed by anyone who had ever run 26.2 miles. I trained on my own rather than with a group, which made it all a bit more intense and challenging, but I did this because I wanted to run when it would suit me.

There is a lot of mental stuff that goes on when you run, especially on the long runs, because your body keeps telling you that you are crazy and that you should stop and just walk home and put your feet up. On the long runs, you always get to a point where something starts to hurt, but you realize that if you just keep running, it will go away (inevitably, something else will start hurting). I had an ankle injury in October and for a while, I thought I would not be able to run even a half marathon, but with 3-day periods of rest and some adjustments, my injury completely healed. I was really thrilled.

Even though endurance training requires a completely different skill set, pushing past the comfort zone was something I needed to do on almost every run, and I was used to doing that from my martial arts practice. And being out there by myself, competing against myself all the time, pushing for a faster pace and longer distances -- that was interesting and a really wonderful challenge. And yes, I am already training for Phoenix 2011!

How did you train for the race while continuing your TSD training?
I stepped back my Tang Soo Do practice a bit in the last few months, and I made sure I would not overtrain, because I had to run a certain mileage every week and still let my body recover, so sometimes I would just teach or sit and watch, especially during the last few weeks of training.

I had wonderful support from Master Meyer and the whole gang. Everyone signed the shirt he and Ms. Barker gave me, which was great virtual support during the race, and I even had personal support from Ms. Barker who came out to Phoenix just to cheer me on. That was very cool.

What did you learn?
How to rest and eat lots of carbs!