Birthday Week!

            This has been a pretty fun week for me so far. My family planned a trip out from California to visit family friends down in Phoenix, and then joined my Fiancé and me in our new home up in Flagstaff. This is the first time, outside of races, that my family has come to visit, and the first time that I had a place for them to stay, so it is quite a new experience for me. Being in charge of what is going on around the house, telling them to wipe their feet, and wash certain dishes in the sink. I am finally feeling grown up.

            Today is my Birthday, which is one of the main reasons my family made the trip out here, and so far it has been nice. I got a new cookie jar as a ‘house-warming’/birthday gift from them, filled with about 100 assorted homemade cookies. SWEET!

  

            Yesterday we took a trip out to the Grand Canyon, and spent quite a bit of time walking around, climbing various rocks, and taking tons of pictures of various views and landmarks. This has been one of the more eventful birthdays/weeks that I have had in a while. The past few years I have usually just chilled out at home or gone out to a small dinner with friends. A nice change from the normal.

Here are some pictures from yesterdays trip to the Canyon:

Carolyn, Sam, and Me viewing from the South Rim.

Trying to throw Carolyn over. Lucky for her I’m weak and do not know the correct form.

Mom, Carolyn, and Me Posing

Sam, squatting on a Phantom Granite Rock from 1.2 Billion years ago.

Dad trying to do a push-up and kiss his soon-to-be age in Millions of years. (54)

Victory as Carolyn and I climb up a steep rock standing 200+ feet above another 1000+ ft. drop.

So there were some fun times. After our Grand Canyon trip we headed back to town to get dinner and play some UNO, which I almost won. Then, I got a good nights rest before this morning’s workout. Hopefully the next few days will be just as fun. It’s nice having a lot of family visiting. It is much better than my usual day of lying in bed.

Questions Answered:

In my last blog Meggie asked, “That sounds ungodly hot -- will you all like slow down or run slower? Is that factored into your race planning?” and Samblackbones asked, “Hey nick - how do you replace carbs during long runs/the marathon? Do you use a customized drink? Gels?”

I figured I would address these together, since they are on a similar topic. It will more than likely be ‘ungodly hot,’ like Meggie said. As I train throughout this summer I am going to do a lot of warm weather runs, with my extra layers to try to simulate the conditions in Daegu. I will do long runs, tempos, intervals, and easy runs to try to get my body used to running in conditions like Daegu. If the pace is quick during the race, then hopefully my acclimatization will have prepared me enough to go with the leaders. However, I do not plan on setting the pace, I will be racing to finish as high as possible, and the race is likely to start off at a much slower pace than my previous marathons. I plan to be prepared for either situation.

During the race, as with all marathons, I will be taking multiple gels and lots of fluid to replace the amount that I am running off and sweating out. I generally have taken gels at 25k and 35k to give my body extra calories, carbs, sodium, potassium, and caffeine I need to finish the last half of the marathon strong. With the temperature in Daegu, I plan on taking more than just the two gel packets I have normally used.

I will also be consuming a lot of fluids to help replenish the amount of salt and water I will be sweating out. There will be 8 fluid stations throughout the marathon course where we can provide our own concoctions, mine will be a mixture of Gatorade Endurance Powder and Water, pretty simple, but its been proven to work for me. I will drink 8-10 ounces of fluids at each station and will be grabbing other cups of water to sip periodically throughout the course and to pour on my head to cool off.

Everything that I plan to do during the race (gels, fluids, pacework), I will be practicing throughout the summer so that my body, especially my stomach, will be able to handle the rough conditions in Daegu. Thank you guys for the questions, let me know if there is anything I missed or could elaborate on.

Nick