Facebook and instagram stream endless, magical, blissed out, affirmational running iconography. There are posts of podiums, positions, pace times and garmin recorded splits, friends hitting huge PR's, or conquering new distances. So much inspiration, so much aspiration, so much perspiration. No one blogs about the crappy runs, the niggling injuries or how damn hard it is to run when you are looking at the wrong side of 50, or if you are 30 but have to needy toddlers to take care of, or your 40 and have a job with lots of travel. I finally realized that after 15 years of running, I am no longer going to PR, not unless I pick a totally new distance like 100 miles - and that could be why so many of us transform into crusty Ultra Runners in our dotage. As you age it gets harder and harder to run anywhere near the kind of workouts you could even a few years ago. I ran a 2 X 2 mile speed workout the other day that was about my marathon pace a few years ago. So at times you think, why bother? The point is still the same. You still want to feel accomplished, you still want to enjoy the scenery and the friendships and that feeling of having done something challenging but healthy. Like a cross country team approaching the end of a long season, its about how deteriorates the least, rather than who improves the most. Its deciding how much you will concede to Old Father Time and how much you will cave to the inevitable process. You know your VO2 Max is slowly fading, your fancy watch records it for you every day. Your percentage of muscle mass is reducing every year, and you have to work harder just to be able to stand still. Yet still you do. That would be the compulsion part. Now the creative element is to triage your goals and find some joy in the result as well as the process.
Switching to heart rate training over pace has been helpful. Frankly I am still delusional about pace and consider my workout goal paces from 5 years ago my current pace, and was ending every workout disappointed. Now, as long as I am doing the work I can focus more on the exertion than the result. The handy dandy Garmin 325 does a lovely job of setting training zones and I saw immediately that it was getting harder for me to hit the 90% red zone and that I am also running a lot of my recovery and bulk miles too fast - left to my own devices my runs are a blend of orange and green - 150 bpm is my go to. My runs have been sliding into the homeostasis of being not so hard they would stress me out physically or mentally, neither were they so easy I didn't feel accomplished. So checking on zones has been helpful, I now know I have to go easy occasionally to be able to get into the red zone at all. My aerobic capacity is much higher than my leg strength and turnover these days, so anything that helps the legs is now critica thing. Daily gentle yoga and range of motion seem to be a great solution too and instead of dreading the slow pace of yoga and being frustrated at my lack of flexibility I now look forward to a class like I would a nourishing meal, it feels so good to do something healing and aware for my body.
The ego is also something that can't be neglected just because your older and wiser. It is still a tender and fragile creature and so very necessary to be a successful runner. I had an experience this weekend that reminded me how important that sense of self esteem is to runners. I typically do my long run solo as its hard to find runners at the same pace and volume as one self. This week I joined a fun group run with a breakfast afterwards hosted by a couple who do so much to support all the runners and triathletes in their area. After two days down at Mt SAC with the cross country team I was somewhat sleep deprived and two days of no running and being squished on a bus, sleeping on a lumpy sofa bed hadn't left me in great shape but I figured company is always a boost to effort. It turned out the crowd running were a pretty talented crew and certainly a lot faster than me. Fortunately they were in full marathon training, and I am working up to a half marathon, so they needed 20 miles and I only 13 which evened things out a bit. I decided to draw on them for inspiration and adjusted my expectations to trotting behind them. The first mile of warm up with the pack was a lot of fun, the day was shiny and new and I enjoyed being surrounded by the friendly banter of such a large group. We wondered out loud if the neighbors would think our hosts were throwing an all night rager as there were dozens of cars parked all over the neighborhood for this early morning run. The next three miles unwound and the group slowly yet steadily moved ahead. Although I was so quickly solo, it was kind of fun, I enjoyed the fact that at every major road the group would need to wait for the lights and I played a catch up game of being able to join up during their delay and reconnect and run across the roads with no interruption to my pace.
Then around mile 4 one of the runners from that group began to slow down and jogged back to run with me. His opening gambit was 'Are you injured or is that your natural running gait?' and followed up by reminding me that 'you know you really must not run through injury, it is a very bad thing to do as a runner'....for a few moments I was speechless. I might have some bugs in my running form, I would be the first to agree, but I was currently injury free and was taken aback that one runner would even say that to another. Without covering up my reaction, I spat out ' that saying that was like asking a woman if she liked wearing lots of make up, or was she just ugly?'. Well the conversation inevitably improved, and we both laughed about his remarks, as his intentions were only good. Then we chatted about his own injuries, heel striking issues etc before I politely mentioned that I was going to be sticking in ear buds so I could focus on a slightly faster second half of my run and we parted company on good terms.
It then took me around three more miles to undo the damage I had allowed those harmless words to wreak, and it reminded me how delicate our ego is and how important it is to take care of it. The inner war in my mind was replaying it as 'are you kidding, call yourself a runner, you clearly look as though you are barely stumbling or hobbling along', then I tried to overlay it with a voice that would sooth a child to remind myself that 'you have been running for 15 years and have made great progress, up until two years ago you could still PR you repeatedly qualify for the most selective marathon in the US, you are doing just fine, and you are probably a lot faster than many other 50 year old women'....
More often that inner critic comes from ourselves. Hearing it externally reminded me how important positive self talk is. If you recorded your own inner dialogue in races and workouts you might would likely hear helpful comments such as: 'well that was a slow start, you had better pick it up now or you are going to be really off pace' 'shoot, you feel nauseous already, you have gone out too fast your never going to make it', 'is that all you have for a final kick, you clearly have zero fast twitch muscle and should have done much more work on ending your races well' or 'your going to let that man juggling 3 balls wearing a jester suit pass you, you really are slow...'. Rarely do we give ourselves positive messages, it seems to be so much easier and more natural to fall down the rabbit tunnel of negativity. The fact that one off hand comment from another runner could affect me for three miles was demonstration alone that ego is so very delicate and it must be fed and tended to on a regular basis.
That encounter turned out to be very helpful in terms of this realization. Creating a positive dialogue in your head and changing the message is paramount. As sentient beings we get to choose whatever we listen to and that which we ignore. So for the second half of my run, I turned off the negative stream and changed the song. Turns out Chance the Rapper is a fabulous running bud. Suddenly Blessings were falling in my lap, and I was reminded that I above all ' I should not forget the happy thoughts, as all you need is happy thoughts'. Thank you Chance, I love you too!
