Reflection on my run today

I hope you enjoy...

I stayed up too late last night.  My wife had gone with her friend to run a marathon in Maryland.  I had been reading Once a Runner by John L. Parker, Jr. before bed for the last couple of weeks and I decided to go ahead and finish it.  It is a very inspirational book that Runner's World magazine called "the best novel ever written about running".  My favorite part of the book is when the mentor, Bruce Denton, of the main character, Quenton Cassidy, has Quenton run an unimaginable sixty quarter mile intervals in a single work out.  Quenton is only told about them twenty at a time and when he finds out about the last twenty and questions whether  or not he can do it the following dialog takes place.

“Quenton.” He smiled for the first time all day. “You can do very nearly anything. Haven’t you figured that out?” “Yeah.” “Look, runners deal in discomfort. After you get past a certain point, that’s all there really is. There is no finesse here. I know you can do this thing because I once did it myself and when it was over I knew some very important things.”

I woke up this morning dreading my weekly long, moderate pace run.  I had a slight headache and felt somewhat nauseous after eating some breakfast.  I had not slept very well for the past two nights.  And now not sleeping well for me is not just some subjective idea.  Not sleeping well for me looks like this... a sleep score of only 66 on my Zeo.  My best sleep score is an 85.  I really wished that I had slept an "85" last night.  My legs were tired and sore from the increased intensity of the past three weeks.  I wanted to do anything but complete this run.  But three things kept entering my mind:  my wife who was hurting from a sore knee would be setting off to complete a full 26.2 mile marathon this very morning,   the words of the fictional Olympic gold medalist, Bruce Denton when Quenton Cassidy was facing twenty more quarter mile repeats after having just finished forty, and my goal.  These were enough to make me put on my gear, fill up my hydration belt, and head out the door.  I thought about what went through Quenton's mind when he was being asked at a dinner party about the secret of his success,

What was the secret, they wanted to know; in a thousand different ways they wanted to know The Secret. And not one of them was prepared, truly prepared, to believe that it had not so much to do with chemicals and zippy mental tricks as with that most unprofound and sometimes heartrending process of removing, molecule by molecule, the very tough rubber that comprised the bottoms of his training shoes. The Trial of Miles; Miles of Trials.

My last two long, moderate pace runs were each 14 miles long.  I ran them at a target heart rate of 165 and I finished them at a 6:55 per mile pace.  This week the distance had been increased to 16 miles.  I accepted the fact that I would likely finish in a 7:00-7:15 pace range... if I was able to keep the wheels from coming off the bus.  I resolved to try and just get my heart rate up to 165 and keep it there no matter how bad my legs were hurting. I would' t focus on pace or try and match the 6:55 from the previous runs.  We all are going to have bad days now and then and there is nothing that can be done.

Although it was a sunny day with a comfortable temperature of around 33 degrees I headed south into an 8-10 mph wind.  Since it was an out and back run, I felt lucky that I would have a tailwind for the final 8 miles.  My legs felt heavy and I only managed to average about 162 heart rate for the first half... I just couldn't will my legs to turn over faster to push my heart rate up.  My effort felt like it was a similar level of difficulty to the previous runs but I was sure my pace was suffering.  I began a typical mental game usually reserved for boring runs on the treadmill where I focus on running just half the distance to the end and then half of the remaining and so on until I have only a mile or less left.  I couldn't wait to get home.  I kept my heart rate slightly higher on the second half and ended up averaging 163 bpm for the entire run.  With four miles to go I knew I could finish, I hadn't been sure of this up to that point.

I finished the run and went into the house.  I put my Garmin by the computer to upload my data.  I went into the kitchen and made a hot chocolate powder, milk, protein, and ice smoothie.  Taking the smoothie into my office, I sat down to see the damage and upload my data for my coach's eventual scrutiny.  I opened the file.  This can't be right.  There must be some glitch.  Perhaps a loss of GPS signal.  I opened up the details to see the mile splits and see where the problem occurred.  But they were quite even, the last eight being slightly faster than the first eight but all relatively consistent.  I had run the same course many times over the last few years so I knew my total distance was accurate.  The Garmin was right.  I had just run the sixteen miles at a 6:38 pace.

I had my son Alex take this picture of me because I wanted to remember this day.  When difficult days come up in the coming weeks and months, and they will, I want to look at it.  I want to look at it when the chips are down and be reminded that the wildcard I might be forgetting is the fact that I have improved since before and that the training is working.  On days like this I can relate to Quenton Cassidy's thoughts on running,

Running to him was real; the way he did it the realest thing he knew. It was all joy and woe, hard as diamond; it made him weary beyond comprehension. But it also made him free.