Don't Waste Good Time

Don't waste good time.

Probably the best training advice I've ever heard.

I'm also partial to the following exchange, from the same piece: 

Q: What if I get tired?
A: You will get tired, I can guarantee it. IT WILL PASS. Trust me.
Q: How many miles should I run?
A: I don't know, but more than you've been doing.

But I digress.

It's 100 degrees but fast guys are willing to gut out a six mile top-end aerobic effort, sucking wind, pouring sweat, accumulating lactate. Probably no one would do it alone; but no one is willing to be the guy that doesn't show.

Peer pressure and half-stepping but the conversation doesn't drop nor does the pace. A military guy leading the new-to-town ROTC kids on a jog yells Shit! as we surprise-pass him. Someone waves a hamburger at us. Air conditioning and water.

Finished, exhilarated. It's not a "long run" day and in fact, that right there was just a tempo run (if anyone can agree what the hell that is). I'm pretty sure Daniels' Running Formula has those runs on separate days... But there's more in the tank, so...

Don't waste good time.

Two hours later and I've lost more water than I could have ever imagined holding. Dream of winter until it comes then dream of this. Either works, though. Anytime is good time when your legs say so.

(From the same site at the top of the post, here are some Bill Rodgers training logs. Just unfathomable. Not that these have anything to do with the rest of the post, they're just too cool not to share.)

Crunch

Ankle was crunchy today, energy a bit off.

Funny how 24 hours does that.

But, whatever.

Lethargy hits and holds on; you take a nap and eat some fruit and get out the door anyway. Run until you feel good. Run until the crunch is gone and the lethargy dissipates. Find the high and taste it just a little; don't gorge. Stop when you don't want to, when you could keep going.

Throw a few max effort squats on top of tired legs, shake them out, fuck around with kiddie weights a bit.

I like days like this. Days when you're working exhausted fibers and tendons, torched from the previous day's scalding effort, moving on to that next layer, and then the next. Hard days get all the credit; easy days are thought of exclusively in terms of recovery, which I think is a mistake. The idea isn't merely to recover; it's to provide additional stimulus while recovering.

Maybe there's nothing glamorous about what invariably feels like slow, labored shuffling, endlessly piled before and after intermittent bouts of exhilaration and intensity; but it's an endlessly satisfying routine nonetheless, a crucible of perpetual forward motion, because really, what the hell else is there?

Things

Black jeans have specific circumstances to which they are best suited and I don't think it's controversial to say that Kansas summers are not those circumstances and someone did tell me that I could could probably wear looser jeans and maybe that would help but I don't know I just feel basically lost in pants that aren't certifiably emo and so if I have to be miserable a little when I walk downtown to get (hot) coffee then that's what has to happen.

Everything on the way is the work of a left handed god drawing with a grease pencil.

I drank the coffee though and ate some grapes later and I ran for two hours because VOLUME and I'm enjoying it so much I sort of don't want to taper, or peak, or whatever, don't want to stop piling on fitness and actually examine what they hell I've got.

The possibilities are endless but the reality is just that, singular, the one thing that does happen and thus the thing that will forever be the thing that did happen. Unless, wormholes and shit.

And it's all good. Really.

I know I sort of went on this whole thing about totally breaking the course record and ARGH COMPETITION. I thought I needed a goal to drag my ass out the door everyday, a carrot to chase because seriously, I fucking love vegetables.

So I don't know how this groove happened or how long it will last but I do know that the last few weeks I haven't been training to race but rather - if I may steal the perpetual answer of a fast guy I run with sometimes when asked what he's training for - training for life. Not, like, training because I want legs that fit in girl's jeans, or a resting HR in the low 40s, or even because there is some arbitrary distance I want to cover in some arbitrary time.

No, I'm running basically 2+ hours a day because that, that right there, right then, those steps, those moments, those car horns and NICE SHORTS! WOOOOOO, those brick sidewalks with the grass patches and the dog that barks and everything, everything...

But seriously though, I'm still going to crush that race.

Just, maybe, I'll be a little more chill about it.

Clicking and Cruising

When it all clicks and you're just cruising. I was going to use words but this is adequate to the task, I think.

Advocacy

I am a very poor advocate for running.

I have not, to my knowledge, attempted to talk anyone into trying it. Certainly, I have never suggested that anyone run more than they enjoy, that they, in other words, consciously train. Nor have I suggested that they seek out race goals. Doing a 5K does not make you more fit than the person who trains similarly, and yet does not race. And although I love stupid-long distances myself, a marathoner or ultrarunner is no "better" a runner, athlete, or person, for having done earned the title.

I trot along idly every day because it is gratifying to me. It imbues my days with meaning. I train beyond that because I am a competitive person and the answer to my "why?" must invariably be to do more, faster, better. But mostly I do it to visit that headspace which I have found no other path to. I do not pretend that there is cosmic significance to this space; and yet I acknowledge that there can hardly be anything more significant than sustained bliss, available on demand.

But I must acknowledge that there are people for whom this bliss is missing, for whom running is an exercise in self-flagellation. I must acknowledge the truth of their sentiment, and the viability of it. When they tell me that they hate running, that it does nothing for them, that they'd rather lift weights, do yoga, garden, whatever, I simply say that it's cool, because it is.

I don't care about running except as a means to multiple ends that I value. I care about goals, and the pursuit thereof. I care about fitness, and health. I care about bliss, happiness, peace and sanity. I care about those things and running is the tool that provides me with them.

But don't use a tool that doesn't work for you. If it sucks, it sucks. If you hate it, you hate it. I'm not going to tell you you're wrong, or that you should persist anyway. Because you shouldn't. Really.

Is that poor advocacy? I said so at the beginning of this, but I really think it's simply honest advocacy. I'm not selling anything, and I have no reason to bullshit.

Volume

I had initially planned to peak my marathon volume at 70 or so miles, which would be wholly reasonable and probably more than sufficient for my goals and ability. But I rather enjoy shuffling along - though not at the total expense of quality work - so I've allowed my totals these last two weeks to tip just over 100 miles. Why? Because it feels good. Mostly.

Morning begins with ginger steps out of bed, my ankles and lateral metatarsal heads complaining. I shuffle about and stumble my way through the morning, pre coffee. Once I am able to imbibe that magic elixir things improve. Sometimes I will have an apple but usually I'm just not hungry yet, so I drift ahead in a slightly less than fully fueled state, letting the current carry me.

There are slight hills and two flights of stairs and I walk up them far too slowly because my calves are tight. Someone at the office comments on my lax staircase shuffle and my frequent race t-shirts; Shouldn't I be springing up the stairs, two at a time, like some sort of bipedal gazelle?  I answer that I can scarcely hurdle the curb outside before nearly tripping over a lump in the carpet.

I lower myself into my chair, bracing, exhaling, making and sipping more coffee, listening to every record I never had time for previously. My musical education is expanding rapidly and so are my affections. I think that my tastes are better suited to a person of 35 rather than 25, that I have been well suited to middle age since I was 15, and that, when I am there, I will find comfort in being expected to be how I've always been anyway. I plot my future dominance of the local master's racing scene. (I'm really not joking about that. I'm the only 25-year-old I know who is already planning his 40+ racing.)

I do some work and intermittently read running blogs. A lot of people train more and are faster and that's cool. You always achieve more when you're chasing ghosts. I do some more work and check Let's Run and everyone is either slow and should give up or on PEDs and should commit seppuku. Malmo deletes everything.

There are more articles and more coffee and then home. I fall asleep but don't mean to and it's time to go. I put on my shorts and shirt which are both still vaguely damp from yesterday but it's whatever and I'm in the middle of laundry which I would have finished but I fell asleep.

My ankles protest and so does the tissue under the fronts of my knees and this does not dissuade me in any way from my present course nor does it create doubt for my 40+ ambitions. It is encouraging, rather, since tired tissue will soon become stronger tissue; and anyway, it feels good 3 miles later, at which point I meet with several other guys to run a hard 6. It is low 90s and 50% humidity and so "hard" is not so fast as it might be otherwise but the sweat and the effort is real and so too is the SUV that nearly hits me. She seems more traumatized by it than me though and really it wasn't that close; I'd have been fine.

I run 4 more on the way home and the soreness and tightness and anything at all like negativity is flushed from me. It will be back at approximately 5:30 AM tomorrow morning and I will welcome it, not because it matters, but because it does anyway.

Rest

I don't like wearing hats in either the literal or figurative sense.

My hair looks stupid in the former scenario and I find that the rest of me looks stupid in the latter.

Still, labels are things, like them or not, and I am, I suppose, the guy who runs, if not outright, by my own admission, "a runner". I prefer to think of myself as someone with more than a passing interest in commas; and also, an abnormal degree of affection for semicolons. But there is not so large a social presence for those sorts, so runner is what I am, I guess, since the barista hat is collecting dust in the corner of my room.

But being that I run a lot and talk about running and write about it here and even, sometimes, wear t-shirts that promote races I have completed, people cannot be blamed for assuming that I am indeed a runner. This is not so bad, since "runner" is a thing we have decided to value, more than other things one could be; and given my appearance, there are precious few others that come to mind: anorexic; drug addict; or perhaps even a cyclist - although my leg hair to tights ratio is way off for that designation.

Really, though, I think of myself as an endorphin chaser, an exercise dork with an overactive dopamine system that feasts on the metabolites of sustained effort. It is running because running is relatively inexpensive and the ideal of "natural movement", fantasy though it largely is, appeals to me on a very basic level. In short, fancy bikes are expensive and the seats hurt my ass and I prefer to stand. And I basically hate swimming, even if my physical dimensions probably are better suited to it than running.

So it's running, except when it's not, because I stepped on a fucking rock after 5 miles, and I kind of have to try to run fast tomorrow, so I stopped after that, then whisked myself to the gym, and spun two hours away on an elliptical, smiling for all of the boredom a normal and sane person would experience.

But normal and sane are not labels that have ever been bestowed upon me.

This was a "rest day" (7 planned miles) but rest is not so much a priority when you're only creating the person you want to be tomorrow and more importantly the person you are in that moment because really, have you ever lived a moment in tomorrow?