Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Last of the Summer Whine: An Experiment in Summer Running goes Bad

There is nothing more damaging to a runner's psyche than fear of injury - it can keep you up at night wondering if that last long run was too long, if you have signed up for too many races, or if you need to traipse down to Sports Basement for another new pair of shoes yet….The biggest fear of all is the grandaddy of all injuries…the dreaded 'stress fracture'.  This is the one where no amount of stretching, icing or ART (Active Muscle Relief) can do you any good; this is the one where only rest will work;  this is the one when you can't jog through the pain or your risk fully fracturing the bone meaning an even longer lay off.  It hangs over you as a disastrous, career ending situation, with visions of anorexic teenage girls on crutches due to cracks in their pelvis from heavy training and restricted calorie diets.  It wasn't something I ever anticipated….

After a few years of racing I had finally developed a carefully thought out training regimen which seemed to work for me: speed day Tuesday, Tempo Thursday and long run at the weekend with fillers in between, some yoga and strength work added in here and there.  Much as I loved running, I did notice I was getting a little bored with the self imposed tyranny of 'the schedule'.  Sure I could break it up with fun company, new races, new goals, and by still demanding PR's of myself at 47, but truth be told it was getting old and the PR's were getting harder to eke out.  I wondered if I should just give it up and run for fun?

As a mental health break I decided to go 'off schedule' for once. I had always done this at the end of a major race, but only for 4 weeks at most, and did other things, went to the gym, rode a bike and mostly indulged in  'when you feel like it running'.  But now I decided I was going to take a whole summer off and that meant June - September.  Summer vacation was going to be a ton of fun, I had friends to run with at weekends, and a cross country team I was working with who met at 7 pm every night on Castle Rock Road during the week.  Then to make it even more fun I had the bright idea of offering 7 am training runs in gorgeous Castle Rock Park to any ambitious varsity types who wanted to add in 'two a days', or for kids who couldn't make the evening runs due to jobs etc.

Summer was suddenly wonderful again - very few kids came out in the morning, but those that did, and there were always one or two, taught me some great routes.   True they were a little quiet in the mmornings, where as anyone who knows me soon learns that I am bouncing around like Tigger from 4.30 am onwards, definitely a morning gal.  The runs intrigued me with their crazy names passed down from one runner to the next: Powerline because you get to the top of the hill and can virtually reach the power cables and feel you could zip line down them,  Forgotten, because it changes every time you run it, or Lord of the Rings, for its Tolkien like foliage, and its vertiginous hill that challenged you just to stay in running motion.

There was also a new 'fear factor' on the trails, getting lost or not keeping up was a real possibility as were tarantulas and rattle snakes.  Coming down Lord of the Rings I froze the first two times, side slipping my way down it was so steep; eventually, after watching kids happily trot down it I 'manned up' and learnt to gingerly jog down it.  The kids were much more nimble on the trails, but I knew my less flexible middle age body might find getting up again to be a serious problem.  I discovered you could run further and further, deep into the park on out and backs to Naked Laked and beyond that and  that there really wasn't a lake, just a dried up bed of reeds.  The park was cooler in the mornings and the sand and dust didn't fly in your face - just the promise of another beautiful day in California.

Returning to running in the evening was a challenge some days, I had never been an evening runner, and I really do like dinner!  Knowing that Laurence and 50 or so other kids would be showing up in the evening kept me coming back and  I could I could choose to run as fast or as slow as I felt.  There was always a group of runners to match how my legs felt and watching them afterwards enjoy their watermelon fest at the end of the run, was a shared celebration of a great day of runnning on the trails.

Of course my legs did get sore, switching from the even pace of roads to lots of hills, uneven trails and the rocky, sandy down hills worked tendons I didn't know I had, my post tib tendon and achilles needed babying at times, but I learned which routes were flatter than others and picked the group and the route I felt like.  It was liberating, fun and importantly it was spontaneous - for the first time I couldn't look at my calendar a  month out and know what I would be running that day.

I didn't race all summer, and I didn't miss it one bit.  I emerged at the end of it to try a 10K in downtown Walnut Creek, the race for Education.  I had no expectations, it was more a diagnostic run to see where I was at and I wondered how my little experiment would leave me.  I hadn't done any of the long tempo runs, I had done some distance at weekends, but mostly I had done runs of 3 - 8 miles on trails, some fast, some 13,14 or 15 minute mile paces run snail slow;  none of it had been at any kind of race pace and I had no road based training to show me what speed I might run.

What emerged was interesting - my least favourite distance had clearly become my favourite distance and round about the 4 mile mark I really regretted having signed up for the 10k.  A mile into the race I was feeling really good and noticed my pace as a good 15/20 seconds faster than usual, so I slowed it down, and by mile 2 started to see a good friend who was running the 5k and who runs about my pace draw up along side.  She was puffing and panting and generally having what appeared to be a really hard time, I was worried, thought maybe she was having a bad day and gave her a big shout out of encouragement as she finally stepped ahead and passed me half a mile before the end of the race.  I carried on cruising through the 5k mark still feeling very relaxed and at ease, and started the second loop.  About the 4/5  mile mark I started to feel winded, and a combination of bored and uncomfortable that I hadn't felt for a long time, and suddenly didn't know what to do about.  There was no one much on the course now, as the 10k is always small, so I trudged on disappointedly knowing my time was slowing.  I finished and was not generally impressed with my effort.  A nice surprise however was seeing my friend beaming on the podium with a new PR; she wasn't having a bad day at all, she had run really well and wasn't dying, she was just racing.

Turned out my 10k time was a modest PR despite my really slow second half; but my biggest surprise was to see that my 5k split was close to my 5k PR, and that had been with me deliberately taking it really easy.  If I hadn't seen my time and slowed down at miles 2 and 3 I was on course for a really fast 5k time. Of course there is always an element of shouda woulda coulda.  But  my take home was that the summer on the trails had finally turned me from a marathoner to a 5k runner - if hills were speed work in disguise I had been inadvertently been doing 2/3 speed sessions a week that would have intimidated me on the flat but became a mental challenge to just stay upright on the trails.  Conversely that long tempo work that I normally enjoyed had been eradicated and I had given out in the second half, running it much slower.

 It was funny, I had spent a whole summer once on a hard training plan trying to run a 20 minute 5k and failed, only managed it finally the next spring after dropping out of the Boston Marathon at mile 18 and needing a redemption run 3 days later.  But here was something beyond the scope of my goals, I never really thought I could get faster in a short race in my old age and here it was, the totally elusive 19 minutes, and it had just been dangled in my face, and then swiftly whipped away from me.  I had definitely picked the wrong race that day - but it made me wonder about next summer…..

The weather began to cool, school returned and my thoughts then turned to the Fall; it was time to get back to traditional training and I was ready mentally.  Now to turn this base of speed and strength into endurance again.  I signed up for a schedule of three or four 10ks and half marathons, culminating in the Goofiest of all, training for a back to back half and full marathon to celebrate my lovely friend Karen's 50th Birthday in Florida.

I previewed the training plan by a few weeks to make sure my base was strong enough, and did some pace long runs at around 12 miles.  My second or third week of these found me running happily down the old Iron Horse trail, a flat and lengthy path through Danville.  We had run 5 easy, and the 5 pace had been much faster and easier than was needed - I was feelin fine!  Then almost as soon as I started the easy cool down I noticed a pain on the top of one foot, like the tongue of the shoe needed adjusting.  I left it, not wanting to break my friend's momentum and knew I could fix it soon as it was a short cool down.  At home my foot was puffy and bruised feeling but I was not too alarmed.  I rested it a day or so, and it felt a fair bit better, so I risked a short 3 miler and it was good.  The next day was an opportunity to revisit the scenic 'Waterfall' a gorgeous 8 miler across the trails, and it was 4 miles into that run that every step felt like a large hot rock was simultaneously under and on top of my foot.

Medical opinion was not certain if it was bruising or perhaps the dreaded monster in the room, the 'stress fracture' but several weeks of hobbling in a boot a visit to the orthopod, finally confirmed it was so.  My summer holiday running experiment had been interesting, surprising and had ended in tears. Most running advice suggest trails minimize pounding and are softer and gentler than road; they are NOT.  Its true, you run slower on trail, sometimes because they are difficult but the torque on your feet and ankles is much greater, and some of the ground can feel as hard as asphalt if you run them in the summer.  Also, 47 year olds take longer to recover from a run than 17 year olds….none of the students did 'two a days' every day; like them I should have eased into it more gradually.  I was just having too much fun and have always been immoderate!

The big question of course is would I do it again.  The answer is you bet, and there is always next summer, but I will ease into it a bit and pay more attention to recovery.  Now its here, it turns out a stress fracture, isn't the end of the world, just a season.  Its true spinning gives me brain blisters and deep water running is only fun with a friend, and whilst I like to think I would be more cautious next time I some how doubt it.  Sadly I won't get to run Goofy but I hear there are some other things to do in Disney than run?

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

The Unicorn Still Survives

5.30 am dawned and as usual I rolled over to check my cell phone to find 25 texts from the Team of Less on the East Coast.  The texts had started with a cheery picture of our first Boston, all four of us looking fresh and  snappy in the obnoxiously loud turquoise marathon jackets.  The Happy Patriots Day message soon switched to the usual banter, with the two tennis players daring each other to do running drills on court and keep headbands and wrist bands with the jacket to scare the other team off.  It was great to talk to them again; I had missed the inane chatter and abusive humour.

A little later I started streaming the Boston Marathon live on my computer, looked wistfully as the runners as they lined up, with a bit of a pang.  Of course this year the temperatures were the perfect 47f at the start that I had been hoping for, not the 89f broilerthon it was last year - I kept thinking 'I so should have deferred last year when the race organizers offered' instead of limping through 18 miles of heat haze and then ducking out of the race with an injury.  We kept in touch by cell phone during the race, rooting for Shalane and Kara, and enjoying the tactics of the worlds' best figuring out that tricky course.  The fact that Shalane could still throw a wave to the crowd just before the crossed the finish line, despite her desperate attempt to move from 4th place to a podium finish, was awe inspiring.  Shalane Flanagan had grown up in nearby Marblehead, and been inspired from an early age by that race and the crowd was behind her. The Boston crowd support is the best of any kind at a race and watching the hoards of locals and those who had travelled for miles brought back some really happy memories.  Boston locals will bring you fresh bottles of cold water, bring you inside to treat your blisters, and throw jelly beans at you at every corner if you need it - they love that race, and despite being invaded by 26,000 runners every year are always welcoming.

Coming out of the gym at lunch time I noticed another 25 texts from the girls.  This time I was shocked to see them talking about two explosions, blood and injuries....the grim reality of the bombings started to unfold through their horrified exchanges.  I got home and started watching news reports and the videos showed that the chaos wrought on that iconic race was enormous.  The disaster resonated strongly with me, as it would any runner.  These were people being attacked who had worked for months to try and do something truly worthwhile, many raising millions of dollars for charity in the process, and they were under siege for no apparent reason.   I was imagining what it would feel like to be that close to the finish line, to be feeling exhausted, slightly delirious and focused on the end, and how bewildering and confusing it must have been to see explosions, or bunches of runners holding up the road. The bomb location was very close to the church that we had all posed and met up that first year, 13 children with us marshalled by 3 slightly stressed Daddy's.  We had stayed at a hotel in Copley square for convenience, and shepherding 13 young kids at a major sporting event was already chaos;  all I could think was, imagine if they had been there amidst the carnage that was now the finish line.  Last year would also have seen baby Berkeley directly in harm's way.  The gut wrenching injustice of learning that an 8 year old was amongst the deaths, made me start to feel more strongly - he had come to support his father in the race and now his mother was having surgery for grievous injuries and his little sister had needed an amputation.  That family had been ripped apart on what should have been one of their proudest and happiest of days.

Whether the perpetrator turns out to be a lone individual or politically or religiously motivated, the purpose of the attack was clearly to spread terror.  With so many concentrated in one spot at such a landmark event the bombs were there to propagate unease and fear.  The reports that there were more undetonanted explosives must have made for mass panic, and a sense of not knowing where to go or how to get there.

The realization that we are no longer safe at such major events is the purpose of such terrorism.  I agreed with the first of my friends who said it perversely made her want to go back and race Boston again - as to stay away was to be intimidated and would serve the purpose of those who had destroyed so much.  In two weeks time I am heading for the Big Sur marathon, and I thought briefly about whether I would be flinching every time I heard a loud noise.  I had signed up both myself and Laurence for the other big San Francisco race, Bay to Breakers in May - previously I had only worried whether he would survive the drunken revellers, now I had other things to think about.  But I know as a runner you have to continue to support the events, you have to keep running and deny the terrorists.

To me Boston has always symbolized everything I like about running and the running community.  The unicorn is a symbol of the perfection of racing, a perfection that is rarely if ever attained, as a faultless race is something we all seek but rarely achieve.  The marathon was what started the modern day Olympic games, it unified countries in the search for athletic excellence and sportsmanship, and this was the most famous, prestigious and oldest of them all.  The race is loved by many, is still a challenge to attain, with runners spending their entire careers sometimes seeking that special BQ or Boston qualifying time.  It is a great celebration of life and intertwines many levels of runners from the international elites to the 80 year olds who have been running it for decades.  Those who had planted the bombs knew all of this about the race, and yet wanted to smash all of those qualities in front of the worlds' media.

Terrorists may have the attention of the media, but I believe that the running community will never stay away from Boston.  Next Sunday, when the gun goes off at the London Marathon, those who run it will be doing so with even more dedication and conviction after this horrific attack.