DNF are the letters I am referring to of course (Did Not Finish). I had several races in the past that I’ve come close to not finishing, but struggled on to avoid seeing those letters by my name. This weekend was the first marathon that I voluntarily pulled myself out. One of the most difficult decisions I have ever made in the running arena.

The race was the Wyoming marathon just outside Laramie. The course is pretty unforgiving, but that isn’t the reason for my troubles. My legs felt fine and I felt strong. I’ve had problems in priors races with the GI track. Normally I get stomach pains in the latter stages of the race and I’m able to push through them to the finish line. Wyoming was different with all the pains starting at mile 5. I walked/ran the next 4-5 miles to the next aid station to officially withdraw myself from the race (the aid stations were minimal in this particular race). 

Those 4-5 miles were extremely difficult as I tried to justify staying with it, but the pain was too great. The hard part was waiting at the aid station for about 45 mins waiting for an available ride back to the finish line area. While waiting, I saw several people I was running with come back through after hitting the turn-around about 4 miles down the road. So as I sat there, I watched people come through thinking, “I would be right there if I just toughed it out!” 

I eventually got back to the finish area to turn in my number for accountability purposes. As I walked around the area, my stomach reassured me that I did the right think because the simple act of walking briskly, hurt pretty bad. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still not happy about what happened which is probably why I’m up late writing about it.

I am trying to figure out what went wrong, but really its not worth analyzing because I did several things out of the norm for this race which all likely attributed to it. Everything from the altitude, food, and mental state.

I have always preached that running all these races is about the experience more than a time or an overall placement or age group placement. I hope that I can use this experience to grow as a runner for other races. It is very difficult to come off a bad race and this isn’t my first bad race. The plus side is, I have no where to go but up from this one unless I DNF again which I came so close to doing at last year’s DMTM which is my next race here in a couple weeks.

If anyone has any words of wisdom, please share…..

I’ve been meaning to write this blog for a while and finally decided to stop procrastinating. I have seen many different fitness crazes come and go almost but not as frequently as diet crazes. Is there anything that makes one better than the other? My personal opinion is no.

Not to hit on these fitness programs because they do the job of getting people moving whom probably don’t have the self-motivation otherwise. Now I am starting to see workouts geared towards runners or more specifically endurance athletes. Running and endurance events take time, and in the fast pace society that we have created – time is precious. Many of the newer regimes advertise intense workouts for less time to achieve the same effect as training at a less intense rate for longer periods saving time. Seems simple enough, but there are some precautions there.

Take a look at CrossFit Endurance (www.crossfitendurance.com) meant to be combined with regular CrossFit workouts (www.crossfit.com). Both are pretty good workouts, but don’t appear to be anything special simply because they aren’t preaching anything new. Probably the most challenging part of any training regime is maintaining self-discipline to follow it. I have always contended that training and training regimes is not “one size fits all” which is why I experiment with numerous programs during the off-season and take away the little bits of each that seem to work for me.

The basics have always been there, speed, strength, and endurance whether you use some fancy training program or make something up for yourself. As runners, we seem to gravitate towards the endurance side of the sport more than the other two because it’s the easiest really – throw on some running shoes and go out. I’ve always used strength training for a bridge through the hard winter days. Speed has always been the aspect I avoided with some great success over the last few years, firmly believing that increasing my weekly mileage and long runs would do the trick. What I think happened with that philosophy is I trained myself to go slower than I was capable of.

My question for others is what do you do for training? Do you have specific goals? Do you follow a prescribed training program or do something on your own? Either way, how has it worked out for you?