Slouching into training shape, 2

If there's one thing I've been lucky to not experience, it's athletic injuries, even while accumulating years and mileage. The left ankle that was sprained in fall of 2001 while playing ultimate is still larger than the right one. And I kicked a rock hidden under the leaves somewhere around mile 37 at the 2012 Ozark Trail Endurance Run, tweaking something deep in my calf muscle, eventually dropping out around mile 50 for my first and only DNF. Otherwise: nothing debilitating. Some IT band syndrome early in 2012 (not recommended—the worst, most-painful non-injury injury, just deeply weird to relieve knee pain by massaging your hip) that took a while to get rid of. But nothing else that I can recall. Resilience isn't sexy, but so what? I'll take it.

What is the difference between resilience and luck? I don't know. Injuries can be bad luck (hidden under the leaves). Injuries can be earned through stupidity. But what's the path that leads to not-injury? Of course that's a nonsense question. It's like asking how I roll so many 4s while playing craps.

What happens is this: something hurts. OK, no big deal when you're Muy Hombre. Just a pain in the right calf, somewhere down low, somewhere you'd expect an occasional pain because you run with the zero-drop thin-rubber shoes. And you think: I've had worse. It doesn't necessarily affect the run itself, it just hurts in the morning. Then it hurts after the run. Then it hurts during the run. Then a two-mile run involves some walking. And there you are.

This is a hard lesson. I tried taking two days off, to no avail. I got tired of limping around the house, around the office, etc. This time I'm taking a week off.

The horror! The horror!

It's hard to take time off something that has, for good or for ill, become entwined with your own self-definition. But it's a long game, right? This is something we're trained to understand as systems engineers: sub-optimize the component to optimize the system that it's a part of. Take a week off, lose a little bit of (planned) training, in order to do better over the long term.

Those words are all very sensible to send out to the rest of the world, but internally it's just... chomping on the bit to get moving... want to push it, but...

It's like that out in the Real World, too, eh? When you're going the same way you've been going, dragging something (like your leg) behind you, losing ground, pushing anyway... sidelined... chomping on the bit to get moving...

I've taken a week off running now, but this week I discovered ("discovered") an exercise bike in the gym. It's a different set of muscles, and different kind of energy to make it ago, and—most importantly—it doesn't piss off the muscle or whatever that was causing the trouble. So that whole time there were options within the constraint, I had just always mentally filtered out the exercise equipment in the gym because it didn't match my vision of myself.

These past two weeks I've been studying web stuff I kind of knew, but didn't really know all that well—JavaScript, HTML, CSS, PHP, etc.mdash;for a project. I had written it off in the past as being something I couldn't understand beyond what I already knew. But I knew more than I thought, it turns out, and with what I've learned about software engineering in Python, R, etc., in the last two or three years, I can make all that stuff dance now. Eight years ago, when I got laid off, I had time time time to learn and do these things, but I didn't have focus or any vision for how it could be used or learned or whatever, and I just didn't understand how to bridge the gap between reading about something and making it exist in the real world. The information was all out there, but I didn't see it—at least not in the right way. But the situation had turned a little bit in these last two weeks, and I got to see it from a different angle, and it made sense. So that whole time there were options within the constraint.

I was going to start running again tomorrow, but I might not—I might mine that cycling vein for a while and see how it turns out. I was going to give up this web programming kick tomorrow, but I might not—I might mine all these ideas for implementing other ideas for a while and see how it turns out. I've got no plan for either thing, it's just fun to push it, get good enough to compete, lace 'em up, go, and let the race sort itself out.

Slouching into training shape, 1 | Slouching into training shape, 3

One of my conditions for signing up for the Rockin' Rockwoods 53km—or any race for that matter, even just the 10km race at the J—is to be able to steadily walk up the mileage week-to-week. Mostly this isn't a physical thing (although obviously it is that), it's a mental thing, a confidence thing. When I was training for Western States in 2012, my routine was: from a starting position (50 miles/week), run two weeks at that level, then bump it up 10 miles/week, two weeks at that level, etc., until I got up to 102 miles in a week. Just like that, I went from fairly lousy shape (discovered what an IT band is while recovering from Ozark Trail 2011) to getting a silver buckle.

I didn't really log that mileage at the time in a permanent place, just kept track of it and then wrote the series of weekly mileage levels on my wristband so that I'd remember the work I'd done to get there. It's not like I would have forgotten, but it strengthened the message-to-self when the going got tough. After that I stopped logging altogether—it was stifling. I just ran and let the distance flow by like a river, not bothering to catch it or name it.

In 2016 I started logging mileage on my mobile phone (manual entries in Runner's Log—no tech on the run, wear running shoes and throw wooden shoes). In 2016 I still had some residual monster shape left. In 2017 I had some second-order residual shape (30 miles/week wasn't too tough, but no 40s). 2018... vapors. Some 20s, no 30s.

Logging is mostly for purpose of shame now: look at the horrible thing you're doing, self.

That's where I had to pick it up in the last week of June: 20 miles. Then 25. Then 30. Then this week 30 again. Even better, this morning was a 15-mile run, which I've not done since January. (The pace is still very much no bueno.) So the legs are still there, for the most part, but the habit is not. That's the next frontier.

Runners learn — the hard way, naturally — that there is an invisible barrier at the 20-mile mark known as The Wall, the point where you’ve burned off the body’s ready-to-use chemical energy.

You remember the feeling. Your thoughts, once as free and fluid as your running, turn to viscous sludge, like wet concrete. Your legs abruptly submit their resignation. All vital signs, as measured by your sodden brain, point toward system collapse.

The Wall. Bonk.

After you’ve hit the wall once, you wait for it to rear its head on the next 20-miler. If you’re training for a marathon, the whole 26.2-mile marathon, you should run a few 20-milers as part of your training. The Wall… you know it’s out there, lurking — a real, physical, insidious thing out there, stalking you from behind a bush at the 20-mile mark.

If it wasn’t already there waiting for you, chances are you’ve conjured it by worrying about it. Running is more than a physical battle, it is also a psychological battle; running is many psychological battles, and some of them are fought before you even lace your shoes. When you see a 20-mile run coming on your calendar, you grind your teeth and remember what a savage experience that last one was.

But hey, we survived that, and we came back for more.

What I’m enjoying — yes, enjoying — about training for the upcoming Chicago Marathon this year is that I’ve finally whipped The Wall at 20 miles. My last three training runs at that distance have been successes. Compare this to my previous two 20-mile training runs, back in May, were not successes — they were very much a rude reminder that will is only part of the equation in running.

What changed?

Aside from familiarity with the distance — just getting into the ring with the brute — I’d say that the biggest change is adding some nutrition to my body while running. I’ve never eaten much while running — partly from stubbornness (the tough don’t need fuel), partly from curiosity (let’s see what happens when I run the tank completely dry). So even during the Pineland Farms 50 km race in May I ate nothing more than a handful of gummy bears at each aid station. I crashed later in the race, but it was interesting to see what it was like. Then I cranked out the Escarpment Trail Run in July, an evil 30 km race in the Catskill Mountains, with nothing more than a handful of M&Ms at one aid station in the middle, followed by a crash at the end. In training I never ate, never drank -- and never prospered at long runs.

So much for the zero nutrition control for the experiment.

Now when I go out for a 20-mile run, I pack three PowerBars — Cookies and Cream flavor, which seem to be (a) slightly moister, i.e., easier to chew and swallow, and (b) the best tasting Power Bar, which is a tallest midget contest if there ever was one — and 24 ounces of water in my Delaney fit Camelbak. (Indulge me this foray into "gear." I despise talking about "gear." )

("Gear.")

This has worked well for me. On a 20-mile run, I stop and walk at five, ten, and fifteen miles, eat a PowerBar, drink some water, then run again. I feel like this is cheating a little, this walking while running, but what the hell? This routine contributed to a successful 20-mile run, which fed my confidence, which contributed to another successful 20-mile run, fed confidence, contributed to a successful 21-mile run.

Scheduling the calorie breaks at specific distances makes the system work. If I ever stopped on previous long runs, it was due to the feeling that I needed to stop — that my body was pulling the emergency cord on the train, lurching the system to jerking halt. That kind of stop jangles your nerves, and twenty miles offers the runner too much time to consider the causes of the stop over and over and over. Stopping right at five, ten, and fifteen lets the conscious brain think it is in charge. Placate that damned thing and you could probably run forever.

A note to the curious, i.e., if you're at this edge of this post, I'm likely looking at you and saying: I've cross-posted this to rungorarun.kirkkittell.com/post/21. My, my, that looks like an evil plan there. I won't cross-post everything, due to that being an overly self-indulgent thing to do, so I also invite you to subscribe to the feed: feeds.feedburner.com/rungorarun.