Staying Zen, Calm and Present, but also Cramming!

Facebook's automatic memory sharing function can be wonderful or painful, or just cringeworthy.  This time it popped up previous running blogs, reminding me of my previous tapers for Boston, eagerly anticipated after months of tough training, holding on by my finger nails for that delicious drop in mileage.  This March was way different.  My body was fresh and untested, just slightly out of shape, but fortunately out of injury too.  I had jumped up from 16 miles to 20 successfully in one week with no repercussions for the foot. The cramathon was now on - everyone else on the East Coast was winding down for spring break and a well earned reduction in running; I was trying to suddenly ramp mine up.

Previous training cycles had been 20 weeks, this one was 4 -5! I figured seven to ten days was probably a decent taper.  In previous years I had done well on the traditional three weeks of cutting a third each week.  But with only one long run under my belt, and knowing that it takes ten - fourteen days to convert a work out into any fitness gain that meant I had another twenty to do straight away.  Today would be the day.

Last week's 20 mile run had been tackled with my lovely friend Kristin - and we had a fun time for the first ten miles chatting easily and whiling away the miles. Of course by mile 16 it was getting a little harder to make the effort and we fell silent for a while before the usual end of run delirium set in.  In our ramblings about gu, floating, canal paths and puppies, I made an interesting discovery about that term 'being present', you know the phrase that the yogis keep bandying around.  Just before mile 18 all Kristin could think of was a cold soda and being at home, she was two miles from being finished and desperately wanted to be there.  Struggling with where you want to be and where you actually are is hard, and it made the last two miles tougher as a consequence.  I suddenly realized if we had imagined we were running 22 miles, mile 18 would have been no different to the rest.  Distance running, like acting in front of a crowd of thousands, is often an exercise in learned relaxation.  If you can stay relatively relaxed while very uncomfortable you will do well; struggle at your peril.  I remembered Galen Rupp had run his 20 mile training efforts with his heart rate around 150 and never higher, he didn't stress or push the pace beyond reasonable effort. So much is made of being tough and pushing to your personal best.  However this is not always the case, I don't think you should be striving and straining all the time.  Geting ahead of yourself just makes life harder, marathon running is an exercise in patience and knowing when not to push.

It was better for me not to look back on months of injury when I should have been training, or to think too far ahead over the next couple of weeks, but to see where I was and where my body was on a daily basis. Of course the new spirit animal garmin is not helping in that respect as it seems to respond directly to runner ego, not sense.  Initially the garmin and I were not getting on at all.  We were mostly at odds as it kept telling me to lie down for 72 hours after every run.  I contemplated returning it to the store based on incompatible personalities. Turns out the default settings for heart rate were really wrong, giving me a max heart rate of 170 when its really 197 - no wonder it thought I was going to keel over at any minute.  It also gave me really depressing race predictions - 24 minutes for a 5k 3:55 for a marathon, but its negativity did incentivise me to prove it wrong.  I was actually eager to go and run a fast ten miles the other day to see if it would change its predictions.  True enough it placated me by changing its opinion and telling me 20mins for a 5k and 3:15 for a marathon.  I'm not sure I believe either versions, as the latter must be dependent on actually doing training for those races, but its an interesting conversation to be had nonetheless and it had got me out the door.

Maybe one day we will end up in a virtual world where our electronic running buddies take over from our real ones.  My friend Chris was using an app the other day with a sexy southern drawl called Candace.  Candace's soothing voice kept cooing at her she was doing 'just fine' and that 'she didn't need to run with anyone else, she was better than that...'; we had fun imagining the scenario where the voice continues to encourage you on in its stroking manner as your run right into the car 'without worrying about what anyone else is doing in that ol road'.

20 miles solo later this morning was sounding a little lonely, until I remembered it would be a long conversation with myself, and maybe my new Garmin if we are speaking to each other today.

Marathon Cramathon

I have long held a view that one's garmin is the equivalent of one's spirit animal, or a reflection of your runner psyche.  My garmin is the basic 210, a bit old and beat up and grudging in its praise - if everyone else's says it was a 7:40 pace, mine has to say 7:43.  If the race was 26.2 my watch will say 26.1...you get the picture.  So it has been no surprise that of late the battery is so burnt out that even fully charged it gets to 8 miles then with one small warning blip goes black -flat lines - stares at me blankly and then will not go a step further.

That has closely mirrored my own running style since December.  The slightly recovered burnt out posterior tibial tendon would give its own warning burn around 5 miles but the most I could limp on would be 8 miles max.  The sad announcement that I would merely be watching Boston was made in February, with heavy heart.  My 50th Birthday Party was going to be a DNS! Despite the disappointment, running has been fun with Poppy, but somewhat lacking in purpose, just rehab only and enjoying splashing in the streams at Castle Rock.

Until last week...suddenly I was able to limp from 8 miles to 10.  Then this week I managed 11.5 on Monday before the foot gave out - like a crazy intoxicated runner I of course tried something longer on Wednesday, 14 miles later I was still standing.  I looked bizarre of course as my burnt out garmin was on one wrist and a cheap shocking pink plastic monster stop watch was on the other arm.  Like some black marketeer or used watch salesman I had been stopping at lights and trying to pause them both simultaneously - but dang, I needed to know time and distance!

14 miles is still only about half of what I need to run, but maybe if I inch up a mile or two for the next 3 weeks and tuck away one 20 miler not too close to race day, I might just be tempted to jog my 3rd Boston for the fun of it.  First on my list - invest in a more generous Garmin, one that wants to keep step with me for more than an hour, doesn't prevaricate before every run by searching the skies for satellites for ten minutes at a time and tells me something more encouraging than the last one. I always tell folks you can't cram marathon training, but in this case let the cramming begin!