Posts from — January 2008

For today’s Manhattan Half Marathon, I decided to get to Central Park by way of running from Brooklyn. The race started at 8:30am so I needed to get an early start if I was going to make it on time. As usual, it took me forever to get ready and I made it out the door with not much time to spare. I wound up walking in and out of my house a few times before I actually got going, because I couldn’t decide how much clothes to wear. It was pretty cold and I wanted to make sure I had enough clothes since in essence I was doing a journey run; that is I was running away from my house and I would only have the things I was willing to carry with me.

As usual I headed down Flatbush Avenue. This led me past Junior’s Restaurant a veritable Brooklyn Institution. I recently sent a cheesecake from there to a friend in California who returned the favor by sending me a couple of bottles of wine that he makes himself. It promises to be a fair and equitable exchange. I had no time to fuel up on cheesecake though and I kept heading for the Manhattan Bridge.

It was an overcast day, cold and crisp and the air had the smell of snow; a perfect winter running day. I know I didn’t have time for it, but I decided to snap a picture while crossing the Manhattan Bridge. I told a friend I would send photos via my phone as I made my progress into the city. Once over the Manhattan Bridge, I made my way up the Bowery, past where the famous Punk Rock club CBGB’s used to be. I felt like stopping and taking more pictures as my journey progressed, but I realized I was not going to have enough time to make it to the race start. When I ran up 23rd Street, about 6.5 miles into my run, I decided I better take a cab if I was going to make it on time.

I cabbed it up to the NYRR’s club on 89th, got my race number and then ran back down to the race start. This gave me 7 miles of running before the race. I had a minute to snap a picture in the crowd before the race began and then put my camera phone away as the race was about to begin.

I wish I could say that I felt all warmed up and great and ran with the grace and ease of a gazelle. In actuality, my legs felt sluggish and slightly painful. I keep waiting for my legs to feel good again and for me to run with ease. It just feels like it has been so long since the last time I ran freely and easily. At one point I just felt like dropping out. I couldn’t do that though as I thought of those waiting and expecting me to cross the finish line. I wasn’t injured and I wasn’t sick, so I carried on. I relied on the many mental tricks I have to get through the race.

Pushing through the pain is such a mental game. Getting yourself to go on when you don’t feel as though you can, takes mental toughness and fortitude. Yes there can be such exquisite pleasure in pain, knowing that you got yourself to that point, but able to keep moving on. What do you do though when you think you can’t go on? How do you push yourself to keep going at that point? What happens when the mental tricks used up and you are down to your bare soul?

I never want to get to the point where I have nothing left in my bag of tricks and I give up. It would leave a bad taste it my mouth. Getting to that point would mean that I will quit. I need to load my mind with the ammunition it needs to push me through the darkest and toughest times. I am always looking at the example of others to learn how they are able to push through difficult circumstances. By reading about the experiences of others, I can draw on their examples to help me carry on. My mind is open to learning from the experiences of many a varied source; from the descriptions of racing from Steve Prefontaine, to the family that deals with tragedy or impossible circumstances to the sexual deviant who completely devotes themselves to a master or mistress. There is a never ending supply of people pushing through pain and difficulty to draw upon, that would make pushing through a simple running race look like a piece of cake. It’s like, if they can do that, I can certainly run these next few miles.

So in any event I persevered through the race. I even started to feel better as I reached miles 11 and 12 of the race (about 18/19 miles total running) and was able to increase my pace towards the end. I ran 20 miles total for the day and I was happy to finish even though I set a PW (Personal Worst – 1:57:26) for the half marathon distance. That’s ok. I am not going for speed these days, I am going for distance. Slow and steady will get me to my destination.

This hasn’t been the best week of training for me and I am feeling out of sorts. Honestly, I feel like I am hardly doing anything ever since I started to train for the VT100. I am following my coaches training plan, but the schedule is light compared to what I was doing when I was training for Ironman. I think I am going to have to tell him to give me some more workouts just so I can keep my body in even balance. I am craving the workload and don’t feel right without it. To top it off, I haven’t been able to get to the gym at lunch to do strength training. I can feel my muscles atrophying and withering away. I keep bringing my workout clothes to work in the hopes that I will be able to go.

I suppose it doesn’t help that I took a day off from training this week. I decided on Wednesday that I was going to blow off my swim workout. I kind of felt like I needed a mental break. Usually when I feel like this, I call my coach who almost always tells me to go ahead and try to do something, even though I don’t feel like it. This time though he told me not to worry about it, since it was just a swim workout which is being used strictly for recovery. At that moment I was relieved and glad to be able to just go home. As it turned out however, I got a phone call at exactly 5:30pm which caused me to stay late. I would have missed my swim workout anyway. Call it providence that this workout wasn’t meant to be.

Since I took a day off I Wednesday, I was hoping for a good run Thursday morning. This was not to be. My shins were very achy and my body just didn’t feel like running. I absolutely hate when that happens. As usual I was the further distance into my run away from home when I knew I was going to have to slow down and walk. I know that sometimes this just happens. I try not to get upset over it as there is nothing I can really do. Sometimes my body just doesn’t want to run. I consoled myself with the fact that later that morning I was going to see a doctor that would give me cortisone shots in my painful shins. I looked forward to getting some relief to this nasty chronic condition and trying for another run in the evening.

The cortisone shots are painless. I took a couple of pictures of the needle being inserted into my leg for your viewing pleasure. As I left the office, I could feel the warmth of the cortisone spreading along the tissues. I looked forward to running later that evening.

I got home from work early for a change, relaxed a bit and then got dressed in my running clothes. I was eager to try out my new cortisone filled legs. While the pain wasn’t completely gone, the discomfit was greatly diminished. I ran a decent 4 miles around Prospect Park, so that combined with the mileage from this morning gave me 8 miles on the day. I didn’t feel like I ran 8 miles and I was tempted to do 8 alone in the evening, but I tempered myself and listened to my coach who told me not to push it too hard. It wasn’t just the cortisone that made this runs better, it’s just that sometimes I don’t have it in the morning, but I do later in the day. I guess it’s my body warming up and waking up as the day moved on.

Today was another light workout day as far as I am concerned. Just a one hour spin on my bike which I did in my basement while watching TV. It was nothing special and really not even worth writing about; so I won’t.

This weekend will be a real test to see how my legs are doing. I am running 6 on Saturday, but on Sunday I am doing the Manhattan Half Marathon, which I will warm up for by running to Central Park from my house in Brooklyn. This should give me around 20 miles for the day. If I am going to have any shot at the VT100, I am going to need to start banging out 20 milers like they are a walk in the park.

Despite the fact that I work out as much as I can, I think of myself as a lazy person. I don’t do things I should do or maybe I just procrastinate a very long time. It has been my philosophy that if you wait long enough, the things you are supposed to do that don’t get done will eventually not matter anymore anyway. If that’s the case, why waste your time on things that don’t need a good getting done? Well, that’s not really true. Many things matter, the key is just deciding on what those things really are.

This morning I considered myself to be very lazy. I woke up around 2am with a headache, took a couple of Excedrin and then couldn’t fall back to sleep. I chatted online for a while and debated going out for a run right then and there. I even went so far as to getting dressed; two layers of tights, several winter running shirts and socks. I debated whether or not I should go out then or go back to bed. I eventually decided to be lazy and went back to sleep. I would have been much better off going out for the run.

When I went back to bed, I slept with all the slumber of a soldier catching some z’s on the battlefield. Basically, I didn’t sleep at all. I just lay in bed until 5am when I finally had enough and went outside. At least I was already dressed for the run. I went out with the intention of running 8 miles, but bumped into a friend just as I was coming onto my 7th mile. I decided to hang with him for a while, as I hadn’t seen him in quite some time and wound up doing 10 miles. That’s when I got lazy again – around my 10th mile…

As I exited the park I was coming onto 9.5 miles and I couldn’t leave it at that. I needed to round off the number at 10. However, I also needed to go to the store to pick up some soy milk and I didn’t want to finish the 10 and then have to walk back to the store. So rather than walking back there, I just bought a half gallon of milk and ran with it like a football for the last half mile, timing the ending to be right at my doorstep. It was better to carry it, than have to walk around the corner after I finished running.

So anyway after I walked in the door and refueled, the only thing in the world I wanted to do was to go back to sleep. Had I not been lazy and went at 2am, I would have been back in plenty of time to get a few more hours of sleep; sleep that would have been a lot more sound than the 3 hours I managed to get between 2-5am. I won’t make that mistake again. Next time I wake up and feel like running, I am going to go.