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On Saturday, June 18, I set out to run the Mayor’s Marathon in Anchorage. For some reason that still escapes me, I crossed the finish line 4 hours and 21 seconds later. Not only did I beat my best time by more than 8 minutes, I am now a “four-hour marathoner.” I decided to write about it, but then I got so long-winded that I’m subjecting all 0.5 of you readers to two posts about it. Without further ado, here’s the lead-up to the actual marathon. (Normal running bloggers would call this their training plan recap. I didn’t have a training plan…)

I’d planned the vacation months ago, before having a stellar spring of running and before my Achilles went out in early April. I had to take several weeks off, and every day my tendons hurt. I almost ran the half-marathon instead, but on May 21, hours before the race fees increased, I signed up for the full marathon. “I’m going to Alaska, so I’m going to run a marathon there, dammit,” I told myself.

To say I was undertrained is putting it mildly. I’d run a very solid 20-miler on April 2, and on April 12 I ran an extremely fast hilly 7-miler — which was apparently what did in my Achilles. I was able to run very little over the next four weeks, though I stretched diligently and tried to do a little cross-training (I’m bad about that). On May 7, I ran a 10K on trails at a 9:02 pace, including stopping a couple times to stretch and take stock of my tendons. Then I got a blister that suddenly got worse, and resulted in raw skin that couldn’t touch a shoe for nearly a week.

The blister healed, and on May 15 I ran the 100th anniversary of Bay To Breakers and had a blast. An added bonus: my tendons didn’t hurt! I now had five weeks to resume training for a marathon. Fortunately I’ve been on the “Layla’s Unconventional Marathon Training Plan” for a while, so I wasn’t stressed.

The key to marathon training is getting some long runs in, so you build up endurance. You can’t do too much, though, or you risk injury. I’m very injury-prone, so that was the main dilemma. I ran 14 miles with the Punk Rock Racing crew on May 22; I was worn out by mile 11 but managed to finish with a decent overall pace. On May 28 I tried to run 16 miles with Katie, Alyssa and Aron, but the hills wiped me out and I suddenly couldn’t breathe at mile 8. I barely eked out 14 miles.

Due to the time I’d taken off for my Achilles to stop screaming, I had only one shot at running a 20-miler, which I knew would be the “make it or break it” point. But that weekend I had family commitments that included a 4.5-hour flight and two 3.5-hour drives. Oh, and I decided to sign my sister and myself up for a 10K race the morning after all that travel. As if that wasn’t enough, I found myself in the midst of an intense midwest heat wave that included humidity of 85 percent. I started the 10K way too fast and was even reduced to walk breaks in the second half, which I figured would be good mental training for the slowest-ever marathon. Then, once I did some more driving and family errands, and the heat had really set in, a few hours later I was finally able to hit the roads again. That run was also broken up, because I dropped my sister off after another 6 miles, and I dawdled a little in the process. But the day did add up to 20 miles.

The next weekend, one week before the marathon, I ran 14 miles. I’ve previously only run about 8 miles the weekend before a marathon, but I’d wanted to run this particular route for more than two years, and that certainly trumped any conventional marathon training plain nonsense. Then I did some more traveling and got to Alaska.

The week leading up to the marathon was great in every way. Gorgeous scenery, fantastic friends, so much fun, and legs that had absolutely no pains. Oh, but then I took a tumble off a mountain bike — three days before the race. Maybe that’s the key to achieving a 4-hour marathon?

Or perhaps it’s the pizza and beer I had the night before the marathon?

(The next post, which will appear here tomorrow and includes photos, is about the race and my future running plans.)