Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Conscious Coupling in Pink Maribou

A sighting of the Ugly Pink Birthday occurred this week in the nearby town, as one of my West Coast running gals hit a ridiculously young birthday.  After braving the East Bay morning commute and changing route several times employing the use of every internet aid known to man six of us figured out how to drive the eight miles to Lafayette, even if it was probably somewhat slower than we could have run it.  With the aplomb that comes with a certain age, Jill sported the hat stylishly.  Daringly she emerged from her car with bendy candles askew in a froth of slightly stained pink maribou that had seen better days.  Rabid barking by an impressive Great Dane in the neighboring car at the sight of the pink monstrosity assured us of the general absurdity of the situation and added to our air of hilarity.  The happy birthday crew enjoyed a couple of laps around the Lafayette Reservoir bonding over shared jokes and relished the ridiculous sight we had reduced our friend to.

The bond of runners is not entirely silly it is also a strong one and has a purpose - The Team of Less back in Blue Bell were still celebrating their birthdays with this quirky tradition and they had been my safe haven for debating all of the traumas of bringing up children, the heartless teachers, their first grade crushes and the rows they had with their best friends.  The West Coast group was no different.  Whilst we all ran for different reasons, some for competition, others to keep in shape, some to keep awake after working night shifts in the medical profession, we shared the same need for venting, discussing and confessing.  Nothing much had changed about this story, except now the talk was of crazy college scrapes, of kids home but always asleep, or the strife created now by the words 'summer job' or 'internship'. Over a luscious melt in the mouth smoked salmon hash at Chow's our conversation eventually ranged away from more domestic affairs and onto other topics and some one casually asked how my recent race in Oakland had gone.

The short answer was probably what they were looking for and of course ' fine' 'nice weather, good course and great garlic fries at the end' would have been quite reasonable.  But they were nice enough to listen to the very long answer.   The long answer was more convoluted, and it involved a healthy dose of self awareness.  My answer began with the background that I had run that same Oakland Half Marathon a year earlier.  I had trained pretty hard, and after a 1:36 PR a few months earlier in Walnut Creek on a tougher course was all ready for another fast run.  Sadly, that hadn't happened.  For whatever reason, maybe the slightly warm weather, maybe I was stale from doing a similar training plan two times around, but I found myself consistently off pace throughout the race.  In desperation I had decided to kick it a bit at mile 11 instead of my usual mile 12 and in the process gave myself a huge stitch and limped in even slower, very depressed with an uncomfortable 1:37:45 and was not too happy with myself.

So this year the same race rolled around, but having had a stress fracture all fall I couldn't really start full training until February and had hurriedly compressed the usual 12 weeks into 7 by cutting out some of the longer runs and just focused on the hard tempo runs and some filler mileage.  Well, and here was the kicker - I had then run slightly faster this year, on less fitness, and minimal training, and conversely had felt really happy and satisfied at the end of the race.  This year I had entered the race grateful to be running, with low expectations of success, and set very conservative pace goals. As I hit the 5k mark a minute ahead of pace, I congratulated myself and gave myself a mental pat on the back for starting well.  Every mile I ran I felt successful after that - simply because I told myself I was.  Instead of the shrill nagging dialogue of 'its not good enough, your off pace" I had a glorious cheerleader screaming 'you go girl, your ahead of where you need to be'.  The difference in effect was remarkable.  I paced well, my body felt relaxed, I was tired in a good way, but not uncomfortable and I ended with my fastest mile in the entire race feeling I had let myself run well.  I had given myself permission to do well.

The take home was simple, next time let yourself be successful.  Don't burden yourself with expecting a  PR in every race, be happy and celebrate every small achievement and you truly will be successful.  Despite less fitness, training and confidence, my body felt better and raced better than it had a year earlier as it was no longer flinching under the pressure of an internal diatribe of under achievement.

The applications to this philosophy were many and varied - where else in my life had I handicapped myself by being too relentless in pursuit of perfection, it gave me much pause for thought.  The self discovery that came with that simple question, brought us on to other more light hearted topics.  Gwyneth Paltrow's Conscious Uncoupling from Chris Martin, as reported on her website Goop was yet another example of crazy Hollywood lives.  Now that terminology, which for everyone else had been divorce or separation, had us in guffaws of laughter - she made it sound more like some existential train spotter convention than a rift in your personal life.  Would there be a cook book on how to consciously uncouple with macrobiotic adzuki beans or knit your own greek yogurt so that Apple and Moses could be physically as well as emotionally nourished on this journey.  Well, when in California, If Gwyn could divorce with breathing exercises and kindness, maybe I could do the same with my race attitude.  Kindness and breath were probably two very important aids to my running experience that day. As the group continued to consciously couple over breakfast, I sat licking Risa's perfect lemon cupcake and thought - there is something to this west coast craziness after all….