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.