Recovery

Recovery form a marathon seems to take longer each time I run one.  It has been a month now; I began running again a week after the race, and have been steadily increasing mileage each day.  I feel just great as each run begins, but then I hit the wall again at mile three, or four.  That little niggling pain in my right knee crops up, and my legs begin to fill slowly with lead.  Will I ever recover?

But each time I push a little farther and it becomes a little easier.  Today I ran eight miles!  It seems impossible that only a month ago I ran three times that distance! 

The body and its ability to recover is truly miraculous.

The Witch of Blackberry Bottom

I rarely complete a marathon without encountering some very unusual, inspiring, or just weird people!  One year in Huntsville I came up behind a man with a Bible verse on the back of his shirt - perhaps it was, " I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me," I cannot remember for certain.  What I do remember was that he had only one leg - the other was a prosthetic leg.  So no matter how difficult the miles became that lay ahead, I remembered, "There is a man back there with one leg!"

This year I thought I was dreaming when, at about mile 24, a woman and a little girls (I think from scanning the results later that she was a 14-year-old) passed me.  (Yes, I am frequently passed by 14-year-old girls in races these days!)  The woman was running alongside the girl - was it her daughter, or just a young friend? - with an open book in her hand, reading it aloud to her in a clear voice.  This was an interesting alternative to an i-pod.  "And then Michael said, 'I will build myself a house in the Spring, and I will go to live in it,' . . ." or something like that.  Was this "The Wind in the Willows?"  I summoned up enough strength to catch up and I said, "Excuse me, but that is just amazing!   What are you reading?"

"Oh," she laughed, "It's a great book!  The Witch of Blackberry Bottom." Alas, I could not keep up with this interesting pair.  They were long gone, on their way to Brown's Island (or Blackberry Bottom) and the finish line.

I wonder what book I would have chosen, could I have ordered up a personal reader to pace me for 26.2 miles?  Hamlet is about four hours long, and by the last scene the stage is littered with bodies.

Perhaps that would have been appropriate!

"You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
That are but mutes or audience to this act,
Had I but time--as this fell sergeant, death,
Is strict in his arrest--O, I could tell you-- . . ."

"The rest is silence . . ."

Impossible to Fail

I have to admit that there were times during the marathon when I faltered in my belief that it was impossible to fail.  The hills, which I did not remember being so steep in 2004, took their toll.  And the heat, especially in the last two hours of the marathon, also took their toll, climbing into the 60s.  But the weather was absolutely gorgeous and the crowds were enthusiastic.  I dug deep and discovered - especially in the last two miles - that once again it was possible to cross a distant and difficult finish line, praising God and giving thanks for my health and fitness.

Martha started the Half Marathon injured, and she decided not to push herself beyond what felt comfortable.  And as a result, she ran one of her best times ever - 2:09:15.  That tells us all something about starting too fast!  I did the same thing, starting at 9:30 miles, then 10:00 miles, but toward the end I was logging some 12- and 13-minute miles.  And, for me, the downhill finish was excruciating, shredding what was left of my quads.  My time was 4:52:59, and I was thankful that Martha faithfully waited almost three hours and found me at the finish line because I don't think I could have found her.

We look great here, don't we?  But the observant runner might note that there is only a scant sip or two of water gone from the bottle, and a single nauseating bite taken from the bagel.  It did indeed take some time to recover my appetite, as I made my way back to the hotel and staggered off the elevator, eating one or two pretzels at a time and slowly feeling my body return to normal.  Still, I could not eat anything beyond a few pretzels, when Martha had a wonderful idea!  What was my all-time favorite post-race food?  Vegetable soup, featured each year at the Rocket City Marathon in Huntsville.  She went downstairs to Trevi's, the Italian restaurant in the lobby of the Omni, and brought me back a bowl of the most delicious minestrone soup I have ever had in my life:

Will this be my last marathon?  We aging marathoners cannot help asking this question in the final miles of a brutal marathon.  The old saying is that you should wait until you forget how painful the last one was before you sign up for another.  And already I am beginning to think, "Hmmm.  What if it had been just a little cooler, and I had been just a little better prepared?"

Folly.  Sheer folly!

Countdown

Friday I ran the final "hard" run for this marathon, the same as I have done for many past marathons:  six miles at my marathon goal pace.  I have adjusted that pace over the years, and this year I expect to run at a 9:15/mile or a 9:30/mile pace; but for training purposes I always try to run just a little fast, so my goal was a 9:00/mile pace.  I ran five miles for an average of exactly that pace, and then a one-mile cool-down.

That is encouraging, but of course the thought occurs to me, "Can I run another twenty miles at that pace?  The answer should be, "Yes, of course you can; you've trained perfectly, and you will be strong and rested at the end of your taper."  Any other answer would be the voice of doubt, which we do not permit to intrude on the mind at this point and certainly at no point during the race!  But the real answer will only come on marathon day itself, which is what makes this foolish adventure worth the many weeks of training.  As the Nike ad poses it:  "Do I have it in me?"  The only way to know is to go to the starting line.

This weekend we visited Katy and David, and they took us to a great little restaurant in Kannapolis called Forty Six.  Named for the number of chromosomes in the human body, it featured many quotations on the walls by Charles Kettering, including this one: 

“Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.” 

And so this will be my mantra as I count down the days to Marathon Day.

The Decline

In my last post I talked about the top of the mountain, and how I am on the downhill side now with only two weeks to go.  When I was running with Glenda today, she asked me, "You only have two weeks to go!  Aren't you on that - what do they call it - decline?"  It's actually called a "taper," I laughed.  It is that time in marathon training which Glenda knows only too well (having run three marathons herself, including Boston) when mileage and speed decrease, and the runner begins to put something back in the bank, instead of withdrawing it.  It is a time of careful balance between feeling as if you are getting stale and doing too much.  Because the age-old wisdom is that you can't do anything to improve your condition at this point, but you can do a LOT to worsen it by overtraining in the last three weeks.

But I thought that "decline" was more appropriate!  We older runners have to become accustomed to slower times as we decline.  We have to settle for dropping back (as I did today during my 15-mile run when I knew that others were running much faster than I should).  For taking a nap.  Or taking an extra day of rest.  The important thing is to keep on running, even if we are slowing down.  "The older I get, the faster I was!"  Decline.

And yet, even though I am in decline, some days it still feels absolutely exhilarating, especially now when I have these reserves of strength to draw upon.  After 14 miles I decided to try to hit my "new" marathon goal pace of somewhere between 9:15 and 9:30 per mile (my Declining Pace), and I got up to speed instantly, feeling strong and graceful and ending up running a 9:20 mile. 

I recently stumbled on a website called Endorphin Warrior (http://www.endorphinwarrior.com/), and read the following anonymous comment under "Warrior Wisdom."

 "Every once in awhile, during a workout, I seem to cross over a threshold and get a glimpse of just how good I can be. These moments tell me, 'There is more'."

Even we declining runners can be warriors, and can continue to discover more.

The Top of the Mountain

My 22-mile run Saturday is the pinnacle of this training plan.  It went well, and I had the good fortune of having friends helping me most of the way, especially Martha in the latter miles.  "Many feet make for easier running!"  From this prospect, I feel as if I am standing on the very top of the mountain, and it is an exhilarating view - looking behind (long runs, Yassos, mile repeats) and ahead (the starting line, the finish line).  Only three weeks to go. 

What a glorious fall day - golden sun rising and making golden trees blaze into color.  I felt like I was a king, surrounded by so much gold!

Good Days and Bad Days

Writing in Running Journal several years ago, Marshall Ellis said, “I learned that there is no easy way, and I learned that no matter how hard you train, on race day you’re either going to have a good day or a bad day, and there’s not much you can do about it.”   

I have decided - after 145 races, including 17 marathons - that this is true.  And I hate to admit it, because by nature most of us believe that training is essential to success.  True enough - one cannot hope to run a marathon without training with dedication - but there is also this concept of Good Days and Bad Days.  On bad days, it feels like we are wearing ankle weights and there is absolutely no cushioning left in our shoes.  On good days, we can run like the wind.  It took me a long time to come to understand this!  And not only is it true for races, it is also true for training runs.  How else can I explain that I had so much difficulty finishing a planned eight-mile run on Friday morning that I cut it short a mile, while my 15-mile run Saturday morning went just fine?  The only explanation (rest, nutrition, sleep all being equivalent) is that Saturday was a Good Day!

According to the Richmond Marathon website, starting time on November 10 is 26 days, 19 hours, 28 minutes from this moment.  I will accept any day that comes along, but I will hope for a Good Day.

20 Miles Again

Saturday, my plan called for my second 20-mile run, only seven days after the last one.  That may seem a little unusual, but this plan has worked well for me in the past.  I have used other plans and felt in retrospect that they lacked the number and frequency of long runs and the overall mileage needed to run my best marathon.  So what was the effect?  It did not feel a bit easier during the run than last week (and, to be honest, perhaps a little more difficult), but I definitely recovered much better after the run.  Perhaps it was the potato soup that Martha made for lunch, but it may also have been that my body has learned to rebound from these long runs.  I found myself outside all afternoon, painting and raking leaves, rather than struggling to keep awake.

Which makes me wonder:  What would happen if I ran 20 miles every week!

The little voice of wisdom whispers sarcastically to me, "You'd get injured, you idiot!" 

Best to just be glad for the benefits of training finally starting to appear.  It is like that glimpse of view, that broad prospect, that you can see up ahead when you are climbing a mountain.  Only two more weeks and I will be standing at the very summit of my training, looking behind and ahead, when I might actually be able to believe that it is all downhill to the starting line at Richmond.

Tempo Runs

Wednesday, I ran my hardest workout to date.  It was "only" ten miles, but it was at a faster-than-usual pace (average 8:58/mile).  Tempo miles like this are meant to prepare a runner mentally for the effort of unrelenting miles, pushing at the same pace - in this case, a little faster than my goal marathon pace of 9:00 to 9:10/mile.  After three or four miles, you begin to wonder how you can ever maintain this for 10 miles.  But that is the great discovery about training - you just keep persevering, keep pushing, keep praying, mile by mile and finally you are doing the last mile.  Just like in a marathon.  Just like in life.

What more can a man do in this life but run strong and true, all the way to the finish line?

20 Miles

There's just something magical about the first 20-mile run in any marathon training plan, some special cachet that has something to do with that first digit:  only six more miles to go! 

One of the checkout girls at Bryson's Food Store asked me Friday if I had big plans for tomorrow, and I thought a split second and said, "Yeah, I'm going to run 20 miles," and she blanched.  I should not have said that!  People take it for lunacy, or (worse) self-aggrandizement  Martha helped me through the middle miles but I was all alone on the final six, and of course I could not avoid asking myself (many times) what I thought I was doing.  This is hard!  But, of course, it's the hard part that will make 26.2 miles a little easier, because the hard miles, the tough runs, hone our edge a little, don't they?  Discipline is the whetstone. Already, I am recovering, and everything feels good today.  My weight is below normal, my legs are recovering their spring, and I feel that I am getting ready!  Why else would a 63-year-old man do such a thing?  So that I can stand on the starting line feeling as fit as I will ever be.

The Indiana Ultra

It would be a rare occasion if a marathon training program went perfectly.  In an ideal world, one without rain or injury or the obligations of family and friends and work, running the workouts in a carefully-designed plan - easy runs following hard runs, rest days coming up on schedule - would not be a problem.  But that never happens in the real world.

In the real world this week, my Mom celebrated her 90th birthday, and that was an occasion that we simply could not miss.  So I compressed the workouts in the first part of the week into two days, Sunday and Monday.  As a result, the workout on Monday just did not happen - I could not muster up six "Yassos" (800-meter repeats) the very next day after an 18-mile run, so I simply did the best I could, which was two of them.  Then on Tuesday, we headed out early in the morning for a 600-mile drive to Indiana to celebrate this landmark occasion in my Mom's life and in mine.  It was a good visit, and we enjoyed visiting with her and with my sister and her son.

Thursday we returned (and by the way, we decided that we would never, ever attempt to drive 600 miles a day again) and I felt as sore as I imagine I would feel after an Ultramarathon:  the "Indiana Ultra!"  Today I was scheduled to run 10 miles at Marathon Goal Pace (MGP), and I again fell short, mustering up only four of them.  But they were good miles, and a little faster than I had planned.  What a mistake it would have been to struggle through the complete workout with the Big One looming first thing in the morning:  my first 20-miler.

In the real world, we simply do all that we can do to prepare for hard struggles like marathons, and we hope that Prince Hamlet's observation is accurate:

"If it be now, ’t is not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all."

Rain and More Rain

My 14-mile run went well on Sunday morning.  The day was cool and crisp, with a brief morning shower disappearing completely, replaced by blue sky and cool temperatures.  Leaves have started to fall in Highlands in some places, especially maple leaves, and the fragrance is lovely - that muskiness of fallen leaves, and a tang of smoke in the air as some folks are lighting fires in their fireplaces already.

But today my plan calls for a hard run - a total of eight miles, including three mile-repeats - and the weather is not as cooperative.  It has been raining heavily since midnight, letting up only briefly - the kind of rain that would drench a runner completely in a minute, and would transform running shoes into heavy, sodden, squishing objects with which to slosh through the deep puddles:

Eventually today this rain is scheduled to taper off, and only when it does will I venture outdoors.  I have run in heavy rain before - often enough that I am convinced that I am not a wimp when it comes to training - but I have discovered that, unlike a refreshing light drizzle, these conditions are counterproductive to a hard workout.  Today it should all be about hitting 8:30 miles, three of them, at a consistent pace and on (relatively) dry pavement.

And so I wait.

Big Bearpen X 3

This was my last day for hill repeats - eight miles, and I ended up going up to the summit of Big Bearpen three times, a gain in elevation from 3850 to about 4250.  My legs were like jelly when I finally finished (9.41 miles later), but the view, as always, was spectacular, especially looking off to the North at Whiteside Mountain:

And what a glorious day!  The cold front brought bright, bright blue skies and cool temperatures.  And this view is always worth the climb, even three times.

How Many Miles to Richmond?

Yesterday I ran my longest run so far during this marathon-training plan - 16 miles.  The weekly long run is the foundation of the training plan, and it will increase to 18 and 20 and eventually 22 miles, as will weekly mileage, which will top off at a 50-mile week.

For those who do not run at all, or who have never run this far, that must seem like a daunting distance, but we have logged these long runs so many times in the past that there reaches a point, as I said in an earlier posting, where a 10-mile run is considered a "short" run.  I don't say this out of egotism - it is merely a matter of perspective.  I ran the second to last mile yesterday with my friend Anthony, who ended up with more than 20 miles (his marathon is coming up sooner than mine, and he is a truly gifted athlete).  I guess he thought I was going short!

 Anthony Lampros

But the last three miles were difficult because my last long run until now was 13 miles.  I have found that every long run seems to push the envelope a little more, and when I run 18 miles in a couple of weeks, I will feel pretty good . . . until I go past the 16-mile-mark.  To borrow a phrase from Prince Hamlet, those last miles seem to be an "undiscovered country, from whose bourne no traveler returns," but one which we learn to visit a little bit at a time so that on Race Day it will not seem so foreign a place.

A couple walking their dog saw me as I was going into the final mile and said, "Are you still out here?  How far are you going, anyway?"  I have learned that it is best not to say, exactly - they already know I'm a lunatic; let's not give  them a statistic to prove it.

But how far am I going?  Being a meticulous planner, I have entered all of my training runs in my Outlook calendar.  Since I began this plan on Week One, way back on July 23rd, I have run 223 miles.  If I don't succumb to injury, or have a cupola fall on my head, I hope to run 323 more miles until I stand on the starting line - a total of 551 miles to Richmond.  Mapquest tells me the actual distance, by road, from Highlands to Richmond is only 455 miles. 

Problem Solved

Building a garden shed - a "folly" - is in many ways like marathon training.  I began with a good foundation of hills and long miles, and am following a carefully-constructed plan - another 13-miler completed yesterday.  But that little cupola on top of the roof has been a problem from the beginning, like gradually realizing that the upcoming marathon includes an unexpected obstacle.  It looked good on paper, but I have never built a cupola before, and the sketchy framing diagrams I found on the internet were little help.  How was I going to frame this thing in, way up there on a roof coated temporarily with slick 4-mile plastic sheeting?

The answer occurred to me, as it often does, in the middle of a run.  I was halfway up Big Bearpen Mountain when it suddenly dawned on me that I could constructed the frame and the little roof in two parts, down on the ground, and then assemble them in place.  I even "saw" suddenly how I could join together eight intersecting rafters in a little hip-roof peak.

I even realized how I could leverage it up onto the roof and place it where it belonged.

Many runners have told me before that they have solved all kinds of problems while out on a run.  It is truly a miraculous process, and I have solved problems as different as how to express capital reserves in the Town budget to framing a cupola.  The solution literally does dawn on you; it is like some some material object you suddenly approach along the road, like a tree or a mailbox:  suddenly, it is simply there, right in front of you, unavoidable and plain as day!

The magic of running!

 

Bonking

The word "bonk" means something very special to marathon runners:

"In endurance sports, particularly cycling and running, bonk or hitting the wall describes the condition when an athlete suddenly loses energy and becomes fatigued, the result of glycogen stores in the liver and muscles becoming depleted."  [Wikipedia]

I have bonked many times in marathons, and often in training.  In fact, bonking in ordinary training makes us better prepared for what usually happens at about Mile 20 in the marathon. I expected to brush up against the dreaded "wall" at least two or three times during my marathon training, but not during Week Five during an easy four-mile run.  Looking back, I can see that I did not manage things well.  This was the fourth day of running without no rest day, and we had been showing real estate all day - lunch was a veggie patty at Subway, and not many carbs during the day other than that.  And I was dehydrated.  So, suddenly, there I was halfway through a four-mile run, desperately trying to keep up with everybody else and make it back to my car in the parking lot. 

Well, I did make it, mostly by asking myself, "Are you going to bag a four-mile easy run?  What are you going to do when it really gets tough!?"  I remember Martha running her first marathon and hitting the wall and saying to herself, "I haven't come this far to quit now!"  So I cursed myself and angrily charged up the Sixth Street hill, as a puzzled Billy Brooks caught up beside me and wondered what had brought on this sudden acceleration, angry frown, and gritted teeth.

Saturday, I ran 13.1 miles, with no problems.  I ate energy blocks, I drank Gatorade, and I circled back for water frequently.  And then I went home, mowed the lawn, and worked on my folly - my "other" folly - until it began to rain.  A good day! - and no bonking.

Building a Folly

My ten-mile run yesterday ended up better than I thought it would.  I ran the last mile in 8:55, and felt strong; it was one of those runs where you seem to feel better the farther you run.

But it began very slowly as I struggled through a few miles of deep initial fatigue, and I think the reason is the cumulative effect of the (for me) hard physical work I have been doing all week constructing this garden shed/potting shed/adult playhouse, which I think we have decided to call a Folly:  "A building in the form of a castle, temple, etc., built to satisfy a fancy or conceit, often of an eccentric kind."  Pounding nails all day gives me a greater appreciation of one of our former runners who was a carpenter and would show up for hard runs late in the afternoon after a day of nailing down roof decking.  This is not as difficult, but it does wear down a person of ordinary ability.

It occurs to me that I am building two types of structures - one of them the carefully constructed edifice of fitness that I hope to achieve by November 10, and the other a "real" building constructed with studs and nails and topped with a cupola - both of them a "folly" in its own way!  But if it is a folly - and many would argue that running a marathon is surely the height of the foolishness of running - it is one that I am committed to constructing before the year is out, one way or another.

An Imponderable Enterprise

The Men's Olympic Marathon took place this morning, and once again the American men did not do as well as expected.  Ryan Hall dropped out early on, and in an interview afterward seemed shocked and baffled; he said that his hamstring began to tighten, and it got worse, not better.  It was the first race in which he had ever been listed "DNF."  Abdi Abdirahman also dropped out, but Meb Keflezighi surprised everyone by advancing from 19th or 20th to a fourth place finish. The winner, Stephen Kiprotich from Uganda, "came out of left field," according to one NBC commentator.

If the performances of even these elite runners can be so unpredictable, how can we ever know what will happen to mere mortals like myself on the day of reckoning?  It is a grueling race and anything can happen.  As the legendary Alberto Salazar has said, "Running a marathon is in many ways an imponderable enterprise.  No matter how thoroughly you prepare, there is always an element of discovery and surprise, sometimes gratifying; more often, unfortunately, otherwise."

My 12-mile training run yesterday went well.  No surprises.  There is plenty of time for that later on, and especially on November 10 between the Start and the Finish.  

The Olympics - Continued

This morning I ran six miles with Tanya and Vicki, and we talked a great deal about the Olympics, especially the track and field events.  Everyone had seen Shalane Flanagan and Kara Goucher finish the marathon, 10th and 11th place respectively, and this timeless photograph said it all:

Flanagan, on the right, fell to her hands and knees and could not stand up for several agonizing minutes.

No matter how short the race, we runners have probably been there, or almost there.  This is especially true at the end of a marathon, which because of its distance taxes the endurance of anybody.  Why 26.2 miles?  At the1908 Olympics in London, the marathon course was designed to start at Queen Victoria's statue at Windsor Castle and end in front of the Royal Box in Olympic Stadium.  This distance was later determined to be 26 miles 385 yard, and that became the regulation distance of the marathon in 1921.  It is a cruel distance, because the body's glycogen supplies are depleted somewhere around the 20th mile (the dreaded Wall!).  Marathon runners say that the race can be divided in half:  the first 20 and the last six miles.

Yes, I have been there.  Have you?  This is a picture of two women who had absolutely nothing left in the tank at the end of a supreme effort. Even though I run half their speed - literally - I have experienced a little bit of that same exhaustion, and so all of us who run these distances share in the glory of pushing themselves to this extreme of exhaustion.

Oscar Pistorius

While my training is going on, the 2012 Olympics are also going on, with Track and Field beginning this past weekend.  What an inspiration these athletes are!  Especially this man, Oscar Pistorius, whose legs were amputated when he was a child because of a birth defect. 

Here he is making the semi-final in t he 400-meter.  He said in an interview with NBC's Mary Carillo that, when he received his first prostheses, his mother would tell his brother to put on his shoes in the morning and tell him to put on his legs, and that was the last she wanted to hear about any "disability."  He did not in fact consider himself disabled, just different.  At the conclusion of the interview, Carillo asked Professor Hugh Herr of MIT (himself an amputee),  “Oscar’s not broken?”  And he replied, “He’s not broken.  He’s perfect.”

So as I completed my six-mile hill run, up Bearpen and Sunset (for the third straight Monday in a row), I was thinking a great deal of the time about this perfect runner.

Saturday Long Run and Staying with the Plan

Saturday's long run went well - 10.60 miles, a little over the 10 miles called for in my training plan.  I was 3 or 4 miles short on my mileage this week because of not completing Thursday's run, and I was feeling pretty good.  It was cool, there was a light rain, and it was one of those days when the more I run the better I feel.  But I did not succumb to the temptation to run 12 or 13 miles.  The advice was given to me by my friend Morris Williams a long time ago, and it is good advice.  If you are running 400-meter intervals and your goal is 1:45 per item, then running 1:40 is just as much a failure as running 1:50.  In the same way, running 12 miles today would have been as much a failure as running eight miles, or six.  "Plan the run; run the plan."  And stay within your limits.  This early in the program it probably would not have been as critical a mistake, but as the mileage and the workouts increase in intensity it is even more important to stay with the Plan.

Listening to my Body

Today, only two weeks into the Plan, I failed to complete a scheduled six-mile run.  The reason?  I mixed these 18 bags of concrete mix by hand in my old wheelbarrow, the slab for our new garden shed - or "folly," if you will! - and by the time 4:00 p.m. rolled around I was just exhausted.  Martha turned at the two-mile mark and ran four, and urged me to go on in at that point and call it a day.  And I succumbed.

"Listen to your body."  That's the advice often given by coaches, but it is not always easy to distinguish between the discomfort that comes from pushing boundaries and the serious outcry - the red zone of fatigue.  Sometimes, it is good to go there, but not today.  Much of the time, our bodies are saying, "Hey, slow down!  Come on, let's call it a day!  It's too hot out here!"  But that's just the usual complaining that we learn to suppress.  If we wait for a mile or so, we usually leave those little voices behind and begin to fall into the rhythm of the run.  It's that deep fatigue, or that little niggling tightness that might very well turn into an injury, that we are really listening for, and today it spoke loud and clear. 

"You idiot," my legs said.  "You spent three hours this afternoon mixing up concrete by hand!  You can barely lift your arms (and by the way, fat lot of good it has done to go to the gym twice a week!).  Give it a rest."

So I did.  2.36 miles and proud of it. 

Is It Enjoyable?

As training enters its second week, I thought today about how enjoyable it is to run.  The distances are easily attainable for me at this point because I ran some 12- and 13-mile runs before beginning my training plan, and those long, hard mile repeats are still weeks away.  But before very long I will have to ask tough questions as I begin to demand more from myself:  Do I still have it in me?  Do I have those three D's - Desire, Dedication, Discipline? - that will carry me to the starting line?  Can I walk that fine line between getting stronger and avoiding injury?

Most of us remember what Tom Hanks said in the 1992 movie, "A League of Their Own" when Dottie complained to him that the training got hard.  "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great."

That's a pretty pretentious thought for such a nice, relaxed, easy 6-mile run today, which I completed most of with Vicki and Tanya.  We were talking about the joy of running, especially in the cool of the morning in Highlands when the temperature is in the 60s; friends make the journey easy, and there is no place better than Highlands to run.  It won't always be this easy - soon it will be hard (especially somewhere after the 20-mile mark on November 10) on that little journey to greatness - but I hope I will always remember that it is enjoyable.

Week Two

The 75-year-old friend that I was running with Saturday came with me on Monday, when I began Week Two of the Plan.  This week is identical to last week - six miles of hills on Monday, six miles easy on Wednesday and Thursday, and then 10 miles on Saturday.  The only different was that it felt so much easier this week!  It's the magic of training - we condition ourselves to run long and to run fast, and it is an absolute miracle to discover that we get stronger with smart training (i.e., training that pushes us, rest that strengthens us).  Surely this is the miracle that keeps all athletes training, over and over, re-learning the secret of training, that the body responds to hard work (and rest) by getting stronger, not weaker.  As the Plan continues, I will eventually be doing mile repeats and 800-meter repeats, and comparing them week to week.  And it is always so encouraging to find that what seems daunting today will seem relatively easy by the time I stand on the starting line.  I will always remember what Martha told me when we were training together for her first marathon, and we were increasing our long runs each Saturday to18 and 20 miles on alternate weeks.  One week we were supposed to run "only" 10 miles and she said, 'I never thought I would get to the point where I would think that 10 miles is an easy run!"

My 75-year old friend is Jim Askew, and he is a real inspiration.  Last year he led the way for 10 or 11 miles of a half marathon race that we ran together, and I think I only passed him because his longest run was 10 or 11 miles.  This year he is already posting 5-K times that I ran years ago and could not imagine running today.  And Monday, although he took some strategic walking breaks, he ran all the way up both mountains with me.  I will give thanks every day if I am merely walking at the age of 75, let along running like that.  And then there is Charlie Dotson, my 89-year old friend from Lake Junaluska, who is still running strong!  It's no surprise that these old-timers get the loudest applause from the rest of us at the Awards Ceremony.  We are applauding the kind of men and women we would all like to be at that age.

But what a disappointment this week!  My bear was not anywhere to be seen.  Jim and I were prepared to tell him where to go . . .

The Long Run

The Plan for Saturday called for 10 miles, and I ended up going a little more than that - 10.27 by my GPS watch.  I have run farther than that in recent weeks, but I decided to roll the distance back because there is plenty of time remaining in this plan for double-digit runs.  If the plan calls for 10, or 14, or 18 miles, I would count it as much a failure to run more than that as less.

Still, I depart from the Plan in one way, and this has helped me (I think) in many marathons so far.  I run the last mile faster than all the other miles, faster than my marathon goal pace (MGP = 9:00-minute miles) if I can.  The theory is that this will teach me to run fast at the very end of a long run, when I need to dig deep.  Saturday I ended up doing the final mile in 8:20, which was very satisfying.  Even though the 75-year old friend I was running with finished in 8:13. 

We all do the best we can.

Amazing Weight Loss Secret! Lose Three Pounds a Day!

As I post this entry early in the afternoon, it is 87 degrees outside and there is still a lot of time for that number to rise.  I know that is "cool" by Atlanta standards, but it is hot and humid for Highlands, and so we ran this morning when it was only in the upper 70s and there was a nice breeze.  Still - despite drinking often before, during, and after running - the combined heat and humidity caused me to lose three pounds (and mowing the lawn after lunch did not help any).  Three pounds!  At this rate I will lose 21 pounds in a week!

Losing excess weight is a good thing for a runner.  The age-old, tested formula that comes to mind is this:  two seconds per mile per pound.  That is the amount of time over distance one can expect to gain by losing weight, down to the optimum weight, below which diminishing returns can be expected.  Translated into time, the loss of ten excess pounds means a gain of 20 seconds per mile, or 8.73 minutes over the course of a marathon.  But I know what my optimum weight is - 180 pounds - because I have always achieved it by the time I stand on the starting line of a marathon.  One of our runners told me three years ago, when I was training to qualify for Boston, that I looked "gaunt," which pleased me no end.  That may be a little extreme, but it is true that by the end of this training program I will no longer have that little pooched-out bit of flab right under my navel - my auxiliary fuel tank for the final six miles.  I will not have any excess fat on me at all.  I will be lean and focused and in the best condition I have ever been in, which in itself is a good reason to train for a marathon.


But today was different.  Today it was all about fluid loss in this heat and humidity, and I am under no illusion that I have lost weight as I eventually will when my mileage increases (the rule for that is 100 calories per mile).  So I will drink as much as I can all day today, and tomorrow too, and eventually I will be back up to normal.  Three pounds is a lot of water!

Chief Nourisher in Life's Feast

Today marked my third day of training, but only my second day of running.  I ran six miles Monday and six miles today (Wednesday).  But yesterday?  Yesterday I took that very special supplement that all wise runners take on a regular basis:  a Rest Day.

It is not always easy to remember when embarking on an ambitious training plan that one or two days of complete rest each week is an essential part of the training.  And that means a day and a night of nourishing sleep and nourishing food, of avoiding the temptation to "get in a few extra miles."  When we rest, our bodies recover from the stress of the previous day and become strong.  This early in the program, it seems especially counter-intuitive to take a day off ("Already?  Really?"), but it is as important now as it will be in October in the midst of 20-mile runs when a day of rest appears on the horizon like an oasis. We climb the summit of marathon training just like we do a real mountain, gradually, looping back and forth in ever-ascending switchbacks.  Only the elite or the foolish can dare to ascend Satulah Mountain by climbing straight up its rocky race.

So yesterday I rested, and last night I got a good night's sleep - isn't that a wonderful expression?  I am reminded of MacBeth's famous quote about sleep:

"Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care 
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath 
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast." [Act II, Scene ii}

Chief nourisher in any sensible marathon training plan, too.

The Long Road Upwinding Ahead

Today is a new day.  It is Day One - the first day of a sixteen-week marathon-training plan.  It is always a little intimidating embarking on a journey like this, especially as I discover with amazement that I keep sliding into older and older age groups.  But it was a beautiful day and my plan on Day One called for six miles of "hills," so I chose Big Bearpen Mountain and Sunset Rocks.  Running up mountains is an appropriate way to begin, because training for a marathon is a gradual process, moving forward and upward step by step, climbing to the summit of fitness, the acme of preparation, until I can stand on the starting line and say, "I have done all that I could do, and it is enough."  So I climbed slowly and easily, feeling the strength in my legs, the cool morning breeze, watching the long road upwinding ahead through the green rhododendron, until finally I stood at the very summit and stopped and gave thanks (and stretched my tight hamstring), gazing out at Satulah Mountain and Whiteside.

It was an auspicious day.  Before I even got onto the lower slopes of Bearpen, I ran through Highlands Manor and talked to the owner of that big white Irish wolfhound, Czar (shouldn't it be an Irish name, though?).  His little helmeted son rode his training-wheeled bike beside me, legs furiously turning, asking me if this was my "first loop."  And then he asked, "Are you running, or jogging?"  Admittedly, it might have been hard to tell the difference at that point.  But this is a new day, the beginning of a plan, and I am a firm believer in planning your run and running your plan.  So I am no longer just running, and certainly not merely jogging - I am in training!  And that is a very satisfying feeling:  to focus once again on that distant goal, to become a little leaner, a little more disciplined, a little less likely to eat that brownie at the Roadrunners Club picnic.

I always feel as if I am on the edge of the miraculous when I embark on this adventure, because, truly, for an ordinary person like myself to run his 18th marathon at the age of 63 is the height of incautious behavior.  Only a miracle will get me to the finish line.  But perhaps that is why we try it again and again:  because we want to be part of the miracle, to dig deep and dip into those deep wells of the miraculous.

And another miracle happened today.  I had stopped to talk to Vicki Heller at the beginning of my run, and she asked me if there had been any bear sightings recently.  Vicki achieved notoriety in the pages of our newsletter recently for famously encountering a bear on Big Bearpen Mountain and shouting to it to "Go Home!"  I told her that no bears had been seen in the past couple of weeks except on Fred Motz's deck, but that if I saw one I would command it to go home.  As I circled the loop at the top and started down, I was thinking to myself, “I am going to be running Big Bearpen a lot this summer and it is only a matter of time before I do encounter another bear,” and - I swear this is true! - at that very moment I came around a curve and there was a large black bear standing in the road less than 50 feet in front of me.  He turned and looked at me, and began unhurriedly to walk away down the middle of the road.  He did not look like any of the three bears photographed recently onFred's deck, or a cartoonish Yogi carrying a swiped picnic basket.  Instead, he was decidedly lean and lanky, sauntering away from the trash can he had just opened for breakfast.  I stopped in the road and watched from a safe distance,  and then I clapped my hands, hollered “Hey,” and then laughed and shouted, “Go home, Bear!”  He looked over his shoulder at me with a kind of  insolent smirk, then slouched down a driveway and out of sight.  What a miraculous sight!

The journey begins . . .

Can I Run Fast Again?

What a relief to know that I can still run fast!  One of my friends, Sam Edgens, e-mailed me today and said that he was coming back slowly from his own debut marathon several months earlier.  "Good lord, I am out of shape," he wrote.  "I felt good enough to even try 800s on Tuesday but could only muster one at 3:34, then jogged home."  I told him not to beat himself up.  "Marathons take a real toll on the body and it takes awhile to get over it all, both physically and psychologically.  After my last marathon I thought I would NEVER run fast again!  I have looked back, too, and wondered how I ever managed to run mile repeats, 800s, and marathon-pace workouts like I did only a few short months ago.  I can be really discouraging."  I told him about my 5-K and said, "It will all come back again and you will be a stronger and wiser runner for your next big race."

Easy to say to a young runner like him.  For me, at this point, I am still struggling with that old line, "The older I get, the faster I was."

First Race Since Pirates Fly

We have not run a race since the Flying Pirate Half Marathon, and discovered when we opened our little race diaries that we did not even write that one up.  I can understand why I would want to forget it, but Martha should not forget dusting me!

The Firecracker 5-K in Bryson City is notoriously fast, and also short.  But this year they corrected the latter problem, extending the start line way down the road and using chip timing.  Still, the registration was congested and slow, and the lines to the rest rooms were long; and as a result, Martha did not get to warm up longer than 30 seconds.  In addition, they ran the course backwards this year (due to "safety concerns"), a decision apparently made at the last minute, because some volunteer apparently simply remarked the one- and two-mile splits; I noted on my GPS watch that the first marked mile was actually 1.1, and  the second was 2.1.  This was a bit discouraging for Martha, who thought she was running a 9-minute mile when it was actually closer to an 8-minute mile.  These factors prevented what I expected to happen at any moment from actually occuring:  Martha coming up beside me, passing me, and beating me to the finish, which I sincerely would have love to see.  I kept thinking I heard her, breathing behind me, but it was only a white-haired guy - in my age group? - coming up beside me at the two-mile mark and promptly mumbling, "Got to walk," then disappearing.  (He turned out to be 71, and managed to take 1st place in his age group.)

Despite these mishaps, Martha took 2nd place, and I was startled to find that I had taken 1st place.  Is it possible that I can still run fast?  I had been surprised two days before to find that I would run a 1:42 400-meter in the middle of my traditional 3-mile easy pre-race jog as I tried to stay with little Jackie Cuervas-Reyes in our running group. Perhaps I can still do it!  Well, half-fast, anyway . . .

The Challenges That Lie Ahead

When we come out here to the Outer Banks, it tends to give us a perspective on the Mainland of our lives, the part of our lives back home, across Currituck Sound and up the mountain to Highlands.  We reflect on what we are doing with this precious time we have, and we give thanks for life, health, strength, and fitness, and especially this wonderful gift of running which we enjoy so much.

I have been running four times since last Sunday's race, the longest distance 4.03 miles on Thursday.  This morning I struggled through 2.61 miles.  Everything hurts!  Some mornings I wonder if I ever will be able to run again, and this morning was one of them.  How did I ever race 13.1 miles only 6 days ago?  But a couple of days off and my body has never failed to respond to the magic medicine of rest, and then it will be ready for more - more miles, more races, more challenges.

So what did I do today, while my legs are still sore?  I signed up for the Richmond Marathon on November 10 - 195 days from now.  Martha signed cup for the Half Marathon.  I ran this marathon several years ago, in 2004, and remember that it was a great race - nice course, nice downhill finish, and I ran one of my fastest times.  But no matter what the result, we can only do our best.

So it's on to Rest, Recovery . . . and  Richmond.

Arggghh!!!

April 22 – Flying Pirate Half Marathon

The weather forecast called for a 100% chance of precipitation at this year’s Flying Pirate, and they did not miss it at all; it rained the entire way.  One Facebook visitor amused your humble blogger by posting on the day before the race, “I am so hoping the rain holds off till later in the day! My costume will be such a mess! :(“  That wasn’t the only thing that was a mess by the end of the morning, as ankle-deep puddles took their toll, especially in the final three miles of sand roads  in Nags Head Woods composed of rain-filled potholes.  My quads took quite a beating, and my rained-out glasses kept me merely trying not to stumble and fall in the final half-mile mulch-path across the sand dunes in the woods.   I soon gave up any idea of bettering my time two years ago of 1:55:36 (and placing third, no less) – it was a simple matter of survival, and I was thankful to cross the finish line in 2:07:28.  No sooner had I staggered over and grabbed some water and a banana than I heard the announcer call out, “Martha Betz,” and sure enough, my better half had been hot on my heels the entire way.  Not only that, we discovered when they scanned our bib numbers that her unofficial time was 2:07:09.  How can this be?  The answer, we realized, was that I started in Corral A and she started in Corral B, which was released a full minute after me at the start.  While I had been busting my quads, she had been gaining on me the last three miles. 

Dusted by my wife – an eventuality I have been expecting for a long time!  I am so proud of her for running such a good race!!!  She also apparently bettered her time from two years ago, and in conditions that were the worst we have experience in any race at the Outer Banks, including the rainy inaugural OBX Marathon in 2006.  On dry, paved roads, this would have been a huge PR for her.  Next year Martha starts in Corral A for sure!

Am I upset about being beaten in a race by my wife?  Not at all - I'm proud of her.  Isn't that what it's all about, really?  To want to see those you love excel, to see them do the best they can. What more reward can a man, or a runner, have in life than that?

Flying Pirate - Arrrrgh!

We are scheduled to run the Flying Pirate in the morning, and there is a 100% change of rain. It is rare for meteorologists to be so precise!  I recall that the last race I ran, posted on this blog, was also a rain event.  I blamed that on the Methodists who ran with me, but now it is beginning to look like I am the culprit and am standing in the need of full-immersion baptism.

That lovely band of green is headed inexorably in our direction, and barring some sudden shift in the upper level atmosphere it will arrive in the form of 1" to 2"of rain during the race, with the full 100% likelihood happening when we should be at the finish line.  It does not sound like we will be sitting out in a big field in the morning sunshine listening to the rock-n-roll band at the end of the race as we did two years ago!

Martha's daily calendar for today had this lovely sentiment:

"The changes in the weather and the seasons do affect us, whether we want to admit it or not.  Notice what  the weather is saying to you today."

I know what it will be saying to us tomorrow:

"Stay home!"

"You don't have enough sense to get out of the rain!"

Or maybe just:   "Arrrrgh!!!!!!!!!!"

The Older I Get

It's only been a few days since my last race, but I still seem to be sapped of any speed whatsoever.  I have been remembering that old adage:  "The older I get, the faster I was."

Steve Prefontaine famously said:  "A lot of people run a race to see who's the fastest. I run to see who has the most guts."


These days, I run to see how old I am getting . . .