June 2011
I didn’t run for two weeks.
After 127 days in a row, those fourteen days were a mixture of relief and horror.
I didn’t run. I couldn’t run.
At first I obsessed. I’ve read up a bunch, and talked to experts within the running community and my school’s Athletic Dept. I’ve done more miles on bikes and swum further than I have in my life in an attempt to maintain my cardio fitness without re-stressing my Achilles.
I’ve spent painful hours alternating my lower legs in tall buckets of heavily iced water.
But my legs need ‘running miles’ if I’m to be competitive on May 1, so a week ago I went out and ran the slowest two miles I’ve ever run.
It was more a Cliff Young shuffle than a run.
I was scared. More like petrified, actually, because based upon my friends’ experiences, if this thing flares up again I’m looking at six months to a year of recovery.
I followed those two with four, rested a day, tried seven and rested again.
Against every expectation, my legs feel almost miraculously better.
Not that I am going to push it now and ruin the good work, but rest, masses of ice, slower incremental running on return and a sweet pair of compression socks means that I got up this morning and could walk down my stairs after 12 miles with Clyde the day before and nary a wince to show for it.
No tightness, no aches, no pain.
Nothing apart from a little mild stiffness.
It is incredible.
Because I started off with a little fear-induced humility, I listened to my body and my running friends (some who have actual medical training to go with years of running experience) and I now have the luxury of wondering how fast to run in Cincinnati, rather than wondering whether I should even drive the eight hours to get there.
* * *
Deep into a race I can grind out time in some pretty ugly places in my head in order to achieve what I want, but this last while has reminded me just how mortal and essentially frail I am.
David put it this way in Psalms 8:3-4:
“When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them?”
There really is not much to us.
Herb Elliott was about twenty or so when, speaking of competition, he said that “the person you should really hate is yourself.
It’s you that you’ve got to hurt.
It’s you who’s got to take the punishment”.
In much the same was as I doubt whether The Who really believe it nowadays when they sing “I hope I die before I get old” (“My Generation”), I wonder whether Elliott would put it that way now that he is so far removed from the days of his competitive glory.
I’m starting to realise that sometimes pain doesn’t make you stronger.
That it’s not always weakness leaving the body. Often it’s a message.
I’ve been told that runners hit their peak after seven years of training. By that calculation, I’ve only a few left until my days of Personal Records are a thing of the past. At this point I’m not interested in just finishing a marathon. I’ve done that five times and I’ve run two 50 k ultras.
I want to go sub-4 hours in the marathon.
My gut says that I’m not going to go sub-4 this time. I’ve missed too much marathon-specific training. But I think I’m going to go for it anyway, and if things go south mid-race I pray I’ll have the courage to do what I have never before done and walk off the course, because if I can’t race it, I’d honestly rather not show up.
American track legend Steve Prefontaine's put it this way: “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”
No one’s gonna accuse me of possessing ‘the gift’, and I doubt I’ll ever pull out a victory in an age-group category in my local 5 k, let alone win an entire race. I’ve explained this to my girls, who think the world of their Daddy. “It’s not others I’m running against, girls.
It’s me, always me”. In that context,
I couldn’t live with myself if I finished in 4:05 with ‘gas in the tank’.
And so, Achilles willing, I’ll run on the edge of what I can and should. As John L. Parker Jr. wrote in his classic novel Once a Runner, “A runner is a miser, spending the pennies of his energy with great stinginess, constantly wanting to know how much he has spent and how much longer he will be expected to pay. He wants to be broke at precisely the moment he no longer needs his coin.”
Kookaburra