running my first half marathon

Posted on:December 3, 2023
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I ran my first half marathon after 3 months of training.

preface

Before running, I’d been a casual cyclist for around a year. I’ve always hated running because of past memories of foot pain from being flat footed, but my bike got stolen so I figured that I gotta do something. To be honest, the only reason why I started running was because a runner friend of mine mentioned that

yeah if u can run sub 7 ur fitter than 90% of people

Pretty shallow reason, right? I know.

Somehow, from there I thought it would be a good idea to run a marathon (huge dunning-kruger moment) but thanks to the same friend I ended signing myself up for a half marathon instead.

3 months of training

I had basically no running experience (or rather any good running experience) so I was a total noob.

I found a random training plan from online (halfmarathons.net) and just winged it.

animated heat map of all my runs while I was in College Park, MD

a look at the data

Every run I did is uploaded on to Strava.

For any cardio sport, I highly recommend getting an Apple Watch. It records good metrics, has gps, and it’s easy to upload.

3 months of training from September 2023 - December 2023 (inspired from reddit)

I was told that generally, for a half, you want to average 20-25 miles per week (MPW) for half a marthon. I got injured twice over the course of the 3 months and I’m thankful that I was able to recover relatively quickly. Though on paper it didn’t seem that bad, it was tough mentally dealing with setbacks. Looking back and keeping in mind for the future, it’s better to be safe than sorry — if you’re hurting, take a break.

Also, DON’T do what I did and just fucking blow 25 MPW your first week. Apparently it’s not good to increase your mileage by more than 10% every week (runners world).

For the most part I didn’t really focus much on pace. The goal was more of just getting the mileage in. Toggling the checkbox for the pace graph shows that while overall, pace didn’t really improve — there’s a significant improvement in my mile pace for my 5k time. I made it a mission to do my best whenever a 5k came up in the training calendar.

The majority of my runs landed me in zone 3 heart rate. Research suggests that most runs should be in zone 2 (wikipedia).

the pillars of running

With the data in, I wanted to reflect on the different aspects of running that I’ve noticed.

diet

Diet was an interesting topic for me. This is definitely a hard thing to nail down.

In my first month of running, I was in a pretty big caloric defecit because I wanted to lose some weight. I think it’s obvious why this wasn’t a good idea. Difficulty recovering, feeling super low energy during runs. It really fucking sucked. There were days where I was just in the library studying and I was so low energy it impacted me to the point where I couldn’t even operate. I felt like complete shit.

On the other hand, days where I ate like a monster — with no regard for any calorie counting, I found that my recovery was amazing.

Now the hard part is finding the midpoint. I knew if I kept eating with no regard I would just gain weight.

Also, in this period I focused on protein a lot more than carbs — though I don’t have enough information to make any conclusions from this.

mental

I want to say running is 80% mental and 20% fitness. Training is such a long process that you really need to learn how to make amends with yourself.

I second guessed myself all the time.

I gave up early on long runs sometimes.

It will suck and I will say being able to gaslight yourself into feeling fine is an important skill.

routine

This is important. You need to make it clear to yourself that running is now a part of your life. If you skip this next run, then that makes you susceptible to skipping the one after that. Just suck it up this time.

Missing runs is fine but don’t make it a habit.

Sleep is important. Get enough sleep. It doesn’t take much to mess up a run.

the half marathon

the day(s) before

I didn’t change my caloric intake other than the proportion of protein to carbs. I started eating less protein and more carbs as I got closer to race day.

The night before, I couldn’t sleep. I had maybe 2 hours of sleep and was paranoid. Apparently, it’s pretty normal and has little impact on physical performance (don’t have source atm). But DO make sure you get enough sleep on the days leading up to the event.

the day of

I’m still trying to figure out what factors lead to a great run. One factor I’ve noticed is being up for a few hours before a run is better than running right out of bed.

I had coffee and a donut (ritual) in the morning, and right before the run I had a banana.

I didn’t feel nervous, but I was definitely jittery before the run.

It rained on the course pretty heavily and there were a bunch of mud puddles that, at first we avoided, but eventually stopped giving a shit and ran through.

race start

I brought two bags of gu gummies, airpods, and my phone

I left with 2:10 group (around 10 min pace). My goal at least was to stay around 9:45 pace, I didn’t want to cook myself too fast but I was feeling really good and stayed around 9 min pace for the first 9ish miles.

I made sure to drink at every water station and start eating 30 minutes into the run. Because the route was an out and back, I did feel a little anxious nearing the midpoint.

At the halfway point gels were given out and it was my first time having gels. Honestly they taste like shit and were a little hard to keep down. I think they saved me somewhat.

bonking

At mile 10 I got a really bad side stitch, it impaired my breathing ability and it slowed my pace a lot.

I could feel other parts of my legs starting to really cramp up. My toes curled up to a point where I had to flatten them with my hands to keep going. I was literally dragging my feet to continue running.

Even though the second half was much worse than the first half, it felt much faster. All I focused on then was just taking the next step.

post race

results. all i can say is i finish fast.

My legs were absolutely cooked for the next 3-4 days. Wow. In cycling you recover in about maybe half the time. The soreness/pain was so deep-rooted that some of the muscle pain felt like it was next to my bone.

what’s next

At the time or writing (dec 8), I’m registered for the Copenhagen (May 2024) marathon. The friend that got me into running and I made a pact to run this one together. This gives me around 20 weeks to train for a full marathon. The Copenhagen marathon website has training plans that I plan to follow.

Wish me luck!

lessons learned

There was a lot to learn from this experience so I split this section into two.

what did i do wrong?

Even though I achieved my goal, there were a few things I just straight up did wrong.

Learning how to midfoot strike probably kept the training plan alive. I was able to resolve inner-arch pain from being flat-footed as well as major achilles pain from heel striking.

If you read what I had to say about diet earlier this one is a big deal

I think this one might be a “if I didn’t know about it then I didn’t miss out type of thing”. While I never actually had any problems running in my old, heavy Ultraboosts, I definitely felt a lot better after getting dedicated running shoes.

I really could’ve injured myself starting out running 20-25 MPW. I’m just lucky I didn’t.

actual lessons learned

Advice I’ve gotten from runners:

While running a half-marathon is something that I know everyone is capable of doing, I recognize that I am lucky enough to have had the time to train for this to begin with.

七十而从心所欲，不逾矩

~ max

it was pretty foggy that morning