This weekend marks the first back to back marathon days of 2016. There have been multi-day events already to be sure — from the Dopey Challenge to the Star Wars Half Marathon weekend to last week’s Marathon/Half Marathon. But this is the first 26.2 miler Saturday followed by a 26.2 miler Sunday for the new year.
My Mom has swapped shifts with folks via her newly minted Facebook account and electronic access to fellow cast members’ availability. She’s now headed up to GA with me on Friday and then going to come over to Celebration, FL, on Sunday. Nice to have my own mobile cheer squad.
Both days involved two loop courses. Loops have their pros and cons for me as a runner. On the one hand, when I do have a cheer squad rooting me to the finish, they’re guaranteed to see me multiple times without having to move as I round the loops. And there’s something to be said for breaking up the course mentally into “I’ve done this before… no, really, not only have I run this distance before but I have literally run this exact route before.” That’s also a potential con as I have arrogantly thought I knew a course as I set off on a loop only to discover I missed some turn and gotten lost. Auto-pilot is a dangerous thing.
The other real con is that because the loop is a spatial repeat, you’re going past things you’ve already seen. Many times I try and go someplace to see 26.2 miles of an area. It’s somehow less fun to see 13.1 miles and then see the same 13.1 miles again (or smaller loop segments depending on the number of loops required).
It can be mind-numbing and emotionally tough, not to mention odd on the legs if you’re always looping in one direction. The shortest loop I ever did for a race was a 1 miler route… meaning I looped 26 times to hit my marathon distance. Adding to this is the strain the same loop places on the legs as you round the turns in the same way. Fortunately, there have been times in those short loops where the race director let us go in opposite directions to try and balance out the strides and stress on opposing legs. The cant of the road is slightly inclined presumably at least in part to aid in water runoff and it’s particularly true for curves. Constantly turning one direction impacts the stride so the option to go in the opposite direction makes a huge difference… especially when the loop is shorter.
That’s all academic and moot as the long 13.1 mile loops I’m facing this weekend have plenty of stretches of turns and straightaways.
Still, I’ll be a bit loopy when all is said and done.
On tap for this weekend:
Saturday, January 30, 2016: Calloway Gardens Marathon
Sunday, January 31, 2016: Celebration Marathon
LATE POST SCRIPT: It dawned on me as I finished my last training run before this weekend that the shortest loop I’ve done on a regular basis was on a cruise ship. Their running track on Deck 4 was approximately 1/3 a mile. The longest run I recall doing onboard in one go was just over a half marathon or 40 loops.
That’s a lot of loops to be sure but nothing compared to the infamous Antarctica Marathon story of a few years back. Apparently the weather was so bad that trip that they couldn’t actually get the runners safely onto land via the zodiac runabouts. As a result, the main ship anchored off the coast and runners ran the deck. They ran the deck 400+ times to get their Antarctica Marathon distance in. FOUR HUNDRED LAPS. Fingers crossed the wheel of fate spins right past that challenge obstacle when I head to the end of the Earth in a few weeks to run my marathon.