Learning Curves

If Life is our Greatest Teacher... then Running in the Summer is the nasty teacher that no one EVER likes even though there is a lot of learning going on...

We ran our first 20 of the training cycle this weekend.  There were some lessons learned.

Be Impulsive & Listen to your Gut.  If you check the weather the night before and see it's going to be hotter than it's been for a few weeks, call everyone and move the run 30 minutes earlier.  I didn't do that, even though it crossed my mind the night before the run.  What a huge game changer 30 minutes would have been.  It was 74 degrees with 93% humidity at the start, and 86 degrees with 61% humidity when we finished... that's "Feels Like 90" when we finished.  No wonder I felt so craptastic.

Respect the Distance.  20 miles is a long way, even if you break it into 2 x 10 mile loops.  Even if you break them down into 2 x 5.  While breaking down the run into smaller bites is a good idea, it's important to remember that 20 miles is still 20 miles.

Stage Right.  If you're running "unsupported" staging Gatorade/Powerade/Perform/NUUN will seem like a GENIUS idea.  My take home from this run was don't forget that GU (that's G.U.) will taste better and sit better with water, and water in the middle of the country-side can be a bit hard to find.  By the end of the run my stomach was rolling.  Next 20 there will be at least 8 oz of water at every stop.

Routing is crucial.  I wasn't terribly displeased with my routes, but I would have run the two loops in reverse order if I had thought about the position of the sun when we hit mile 15.  Hot and Shady is not the same experience as Hot and NO SHADE TO BE FOUND FOR MILES.  See above note about a 30 minute earlier start time.

Routing is crucial part deux.  I routed us past a Fire Station.  That was not an accident.  I will always do that in the future.  Thankful for Henrico's finest who kindly gave us some ice water when we were nothing but hot sweaty dehydrated messes at mile 17.

Bring your Exit Buddy.  The biggest thing I can say about running 20 miles is to rally as many runners as you possibly can to form a posse.  Even if some of the runners can only join for part of the joy and some of the misery.  We started as 5 this morning, and that shared energy carried us through the run even when it was hot and we wanted to quit.  If one is having an off day, in our group there will always be someone who hangs back and nurses the person along, or loops back to pick her up, or who runs the last mile + much faster than she thought she could because she was encouraged by her peers.

Every run is a lesson, and this week I brought home a lot of 'Needs Improvement'.  That's OK.  There's always next time.

~savor the run~

Balloons

Imagine for a minute that you are a very dedicated recreational runner.  You wake up at Oh-dark thirty to run.  You run in all weather.  When other people bow out because of rain, you put on the running shoes that are dedicated to rainy days.  You fit your running into your schedule, or maybe, you schedule your life around your run.  

Whichever it is, running is something that you use as part as your identity, and, when out at parties or social events, if people ask what you do, you struggle between your occupation and the statement, “I’m a runner”.

That is me. 

I love my run.  I have blogged about it, written about in magazines, studied it in the wealth of information available in Pubmed, and written an 18 page paper about it in my recent endeavor to obtain a Bachelors degree.  I volunteer.  I lead.  I coach.  I sit on the sidelines during injury and recover, and then I build back to my run when I can.

My run is part of my being.  I am because I run.

Last spring my being was struck down with pneumonia and other strange illnesses.  It was an entire year ago.  I did rounds of antibiotics, steroids, ER visits, breathing treatments, and inhalers.  I was assured by my primary care physician that in a few months I would be back to the health of a normal human, and after a few more months I would be back on the run like the “old days”.

A year after I was told that, I was not “back”.

When I run, I do not have enough air to be comfortable.

So, I sat down and talked with a friend who is a medical Doctor, and what she said really startled me.  I had one of those “Oh shit.  Is this really my life?” moments.  All my ideas of how my run and I would continue into our old age were completely false.  My dreams of happily ever after were dashed, and I felt my identity slowly deflating like a leaking balloon.  After our conversation I went to my Doctor for a second opinion.

That was a bit like choosing to pay a $25 co-pay to get kicked in the face on a Tuesday morning.

My physician started out using big medical terms that I was only a little familiar with, like alveoli and atelectasis.  By the end of the conversation we had moved into very familiar words like scar tissue and disappointment.  

I was a little angry. 

That bitch.  How dare she!  Doesn’t she know that I am a runner?

“No one is going to tell me I will never get my full lung function back.  I will prove her wrong.”  So I pushed myself into some speed work and hill training.  I obsessed over the splits in my watch, willing them to get faster each week.  They didn’t.

From there, I moved into denial.  “If I keep training, I can get it back.  If I try a new medication, the inflammation will go away.  If I race a 5K.  If I....” 

So, I kept training, and the people I run with ran with me.  They listened to the sounds of my airway narrowing as we ran.  They heard me struggle.  They looped back to pick me up like the good running partners they are, but they could not help me run faster.  

My lactic threshold is low when I run.  I can't clear the acid from my body via my respiratory system, so I become acidic fast.  I can't get enough oxygen into my cells to fuel them, so I become acidic fast.  

Together this is bad.

The struggling, the heaviness of my breath, the pain in my accessory muscles all remained.  I even gave up foods that cause inflammation, to run faster.  There are those who would call that bargaining.

Currently I’m hovering between acceptance and depression.  My identity as a runner has always been tied to my ability to get better.  I knew that all I had to do was improve by XYZ amount of time over XYZ number of years, and I would be a Boston Qualifier.  I have won a few races, but that wasn’t where the glory is for me.  I wanted to shave about 23 seconds off my 5K, 38 seconds off my 8K, and 65 seconds off my 10K.  I always believed that if I trained well, ate smart, and was focused on realistic goals, I could do it.

Only, I am being told that I need to accept that not only might that never happen, I may never even match those personal bests again.  I have likely peaked.

So why do all this if I can’t ever achieve my goals?

Why get up at four-something in the morning to meet my running group?  Why have three pairs of shoes floating around the house at all times incase of rain or trail running?  What am I ever going to get out of this, if I can’t get faster?

Still, this morning, I got up at four-something.  I fumbled around in the dark for a pair of pink Brooks and a running skirt.  It was so humid that my freakishly amazing t-shirt stuck to my damp skin as soon as I pulled it on.  I left my watch sitting on my dresser.  I don’t need it.  There will be no examining splits or data, because if I’m never going to get faster, I don’t need to worry about that right now.  I need to be present in the body that I have, and be thankful for all it does for me.

So, today could not be about speed.  Todays run was about putting in the miles for my fall marathon.  I don’t know how to train without a “Break 4 hours” goal, but for the moment, I am just going to lay down the miles the best way I can, and savor the run.

And get a third opinion.  Just in case.