Believe it or not, this get-up was not ideal for running a marathon.

(Sunday Paper, Year VIII, Issue 39)

Last week I told you that part of the problem with delaying my 20-mile run a day was I didn’t want to lose the momentum of a great week of running.

I have good news, though - the 20-miler went just as good.

And this week wasn’t bad either.

I think the biggest common denominator is one that I have zero control over but that has one of the biggest impacts on my running:

It’s the weather.

I know there are runners who take pride in running in any weather and love the fact that sometimes it rains on their run and that’s just part of the gig…but no thanks.

I am pretty particular about the weather I run best in.

I mean, if it’s race day and it’s rainy, I’ll slog through it because I have to.

But chances are I won’t perform well and I won’t enjoy it.

50-ish degrees? Clear skies? Sign me up every time.

And that’s about what it’s been for the past couple of weeks.

I guess the days have gotten up to 70-ish, but in the morning when I run it’s been cooler - and I definitely started the 20-miler at around 50 degrees (it felt great!) and 3 hours, 45-ish minutes later (a time I am very happy with) it wasn’t too too much warmer.

I think the biggest mistake I made in the North Carolina Marathon in February was dressing too much against the weather. I shouldn’t have used the windbreaker (which I dropped halfway through) and I probably could have gotten away with shorts. It was a warm-ish day and I felt uncomfortable before too long.

So for Chicago, unless for some reason it’s going to be 20 degrees all day, I’m going shorts and a t-shirt for sure. Even if there’s rain.

But obviously the hope is we get a Blind Melon day. (“No Rain.”)

I’ve been giving some thought to why the weather was a factor in North Carolina all throughout the training and not the two Boston Marathons I ran and here’s a few thoughts:

I think the two Boston Marathons I trained for were remarkable in that the weather wasn’t that extreme. For the 2021 one, which took place in October, it was definitely not as hot of a summer as this Chicago one I’m training for. The 2022 one (which was in April) wasn’t the worst winter to train in either.
I think, if I’m dealing with very cold days and very hot days, my body does a better job of running in cold following training in heat, rather than running in warmer conditions after training in cold. I’m not sure if that makes a ton of sense, but I think the warm weather serves a purpose and loosens things up nicely for me, as far as muscles and achy joints. But it has to be gradual over a period of time, I think.

So here we are, just a couple of weeks out from Chicago. It’s been a hot, humid summer where I felt like a puddle after most runs. There was so much sweat. It was disgusting. But, you may remember, I’ve been doing a much better job of hydrating this past year, and I think that’s been working.

And as the weather transitions into fall, I feel really good. I feel way less achy than I did going into North Carolina, which I now realize I probably should have recognized at the time as a bit of a warning sign that things wouldn’t go well.

So I think from what I can control I’m in great shape for Chicago.

Unfortunately, I think there’s only so much good that can do because I also need the right conditions, which I can’t control.

But I can obsessively watch the weather from about 10 days out, so there’s that to look forward to starting this week.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

Keane is going on tour in the next year, so there’s been a lot of action around the band on social media and such. It’s always nice to see like-minded folks who like the music I like. I’ve been re-visiting some of the music of theirs that I don’t listen to as much and that’s been fun. I even listened to Night Train, which I hadn’t done in years. I always gave that album a bad rap. It’s not bad. Unfortunately Kathy is going to be traveling in a year when Keane is in Boston, so I’m not sure a live show is in the cards. We’ll see how things unfold.

Notes

*Just to be clear: I do not blame North Carolina totally on the weather. As I mentioned there were aches towards the end of training that I’m just not getting this time around. Why is that? Maybe because I trained all in heat instead of cold? Maybe it’s because I just did a better job of stretching and training this time around? I wish I had a better idea. But I won’t know anything until the run happens…all I know is once the run happened in North Carolina everything went poorly.

*Sunday long runs lasted all of one week. The weather was a little iffy the rest of this weekend after Saturday morning, so I figured I’d better get this week’s run in when I could…so Saturday it was. 12 miles, went well, just a handful more runs until marathon time!

*The 20-miler went really great, in case you’ve been waiting for an update there. It might have been my best 20-mile run ever. I had similar times, it looks like, from previous training periods, but it was definitely a more consistent running version of that time. I felt stronger and more ready after the 20-miler this time than I have before.

*A reminder that Matt will be at Club Passim in Cambridge today - 5pm and 8pm shows.

*Wordle got me again on Saturday. I had built up a 45-day streak. Back to 0.

*Lots of updates on the Instagram page - you can keep tabs on all of the social media at the links below.