I was stuck in a bit of a trance when I was approaching mile 19 today, but was immediately zapped out of it while passing a guy about to get in his car who asked me "Is this your second run today, or are you still going from earlier?". He was speaking directly to the plan I had approached the day with, because I was on a freshly mapped 4 mile loop system, so at any given interval within the past nearly 3 hours he could have seen me pass his house up to 5 times, this being the 5th.
Anyway, this was my first interaction with a would-be spectator, and when I responded to his question with "I'm still going, just about to finish off 20 miles", the guy's face registered a look of such incredulous shock at my nonchalant utterance of that statement that one might assume his internal thought process was interpreting what I really said as "I am a cyborg from the year 3022. I am skipping through time collecting pivotal information that will eventually be used to finally overthrow the fascist hybrid canine rule of the planetary alliance of galactic star chasers. Do you sir, own a dog?"
I've seen that look time and time again, as non-runners, hearing someone confess their goal of getting to 26.2 in one long run, immediately look disgusted by the mere thought of it. But I've come to question something myself out of this look: is the disgust really with the runner, or is it with their own realization they're not doing anything active & healthy in their lives? I don't mean to sound conceited here, just throwing that idea out there, because along with that look of disgust inevitably comes a more guilty introspective downward glance at the ground, wondering, even if ever so briefly, how far they themselves could move along that same ground. Or maybe the thought of, "I no longer want to be in a conversation with crazy here anymore" is what's really going on. Either way, I certainly encourage all to run, but of course, at this point in my life I may be biased.
It wasn't all that long ago that I gave Vincent that same look on a day when I picked him up at Trenton train station, and his first question to me when hoping in the car was, "Do you want to go for a run?". The hem & haw routine started almost immediately. I didn't want to run, but I was also extremely curious about what would happen if I started to—I was on the cross country team for exactly 2 weeks in high school. It took me exactly 1 week to realize I didn't want to be running long distances out in the winter weathered air, and exactly another week to decide I was right about my initial instinct on that first week. I quit— and though there's a lot more to that story, we'll gloss over it for another time, because, as you might might guess, the outcome of that fateful day is that I'm here typing this running blog 3 weeks away from my first marathon...
Let's get down to the nitty gritty shall we?
What's it like to run 20 miles? Well, I know this sounds counterintuitive, but running 20 miles was not really as difficult as running 18 miles 2 weeks ago. Yea, my legs are sore today, but not really that much. I mean, after I ran 18 miles my legs were trashed. I could barely bend them for 2 days after, but here I am, only mildly discomforted the morning after the longest run of my life, so far. I guess this phenomenon speaks to the merit of the training program I am following. I feel a bit more confident now that I have a good shot at completing this beastly 26.2 distance race.
So, aside from training, what conditions were different? I ran the 20 miles in a 4 mile loop, as opposed to the 6 mile loop when I did 18. I think the constant breaks at my makeshift water station gave me a chance to stretch & refuel along the way. It also made things mentally easier, when considering, "oh, I only have three 4 mile loops to go" rather than "OH...I have to do 12 more miles." There's a subtle, yet palpable difference in breaking these down into bit sized morsels: they taste much more of sweetness.
I also came a bit more prepared for this endurance LSD: I had energy gel, and bananas & dates at my water station. I didn't start in on any of these until after the 12 mile point, but I believe they really helped fight of the fatigue that plagued much of the later half of my 18 mile run. This was my first taste of gel, and while I'm not entirely sold on it's benefits, I'll continue to experiment with consuming it, just because it's rather convenient.
Now the weather was another key element in the run. As opposed to the frigid conditioned faced 2 weeks ago, yesterday, was quite simply beautiful out. As I mentioned in my previous post, the majority of these past two weeks have been spent running on a treadmill in a basement. And while I'm glad for the continued opportunity to train, there are vast differences between the two types of workouts. The street, a hard, uneven, beast that tips sideways, has hills, snow, ice, water, pedestrians, potentially fascist dogs, cars, and is made of asphalt, shocks your legs far more than a treadmill does with every footfall along the way. In comparison, the treadmill has a nice smooth spring to it, which helps absorb some of that nasty impact, comfortable indoor conditions, water always within reach, and keeps track of every pertinent piece of information during any given run, seems like, on paper, or screen, it trumps the outdoors. I'm sure that would be the case if I never ran more than 5K, but for longer distances, it's certainly worth all the peril just to be out in the sun. Yesterday was sunny & 42°F, I was loving the weather, especially after being stuck inside from the rain the day before. So while outside is physically more challenging, I find it far more mentally invigorating. That adds up in your favor when you're spending a significant amount of time exercising to begin with.
Now, here's the downside to sunny & 42°...you know all that snow I've been logging post after post griping about? Don't ask me how, but for some reason that science hasn't gotten around to explaining yet, snow turns into water when the temperature gets warmer. Where does that water go when melting? It turns into vast rapidly moving rivers along the sides of the road. This isn't that much of a big deal when you first start out your run, but somewhere around mile 16 you begin to lose that spring in your step that you had been relying on to get around those vicious snow rivers. At first it felt like The Oregon Trail, when the pioneers came to the river you only had so many choices, all with varying degrees of risk, how to get across. The life of a pioneer is such that you either get swept away in the cold rushing current from the sandy banks of the Missouri river along the way, or live long enough to witness all of your children die of dysentery. Just like back then, I always went with fording baby! Applied to running, this results in a juggernaut-like stampede through the puddles before you.
Because of the way running shoes are designed to create maximum ventilation in the forefoot, when introduced to the outside elements of water, your socks get wet far quicker. I know what thought comes next, "doesn't that mean they dry quicker too?", and the answer is, "sure, they do, in all that wonderfully cold air". But as I said, it being somewhere after mile 16, I really didn't have that far to go under these circumstances, and wet socks weren't the most pressing of concerns. It actually made me run faster, because I just wanted to be done, which pretty much caught up with me after mile 18, when I just thought about this not being THE race, and I should trim back the speed a bit, as not to risk injury this close to go time! Or maybe that was just the right amount of reasoning from a the back of a lazy mind to get me to slow down. Either way, there's no real winning in that double headed coin toss argument. One side, if you run slower you'll be out here so much longer; the other side, if you run faster, you'll just be in more pain later. It's the trick of being self coached in this situation, finding the true balance between training and overtraining. It doesn't help that I know nothing about what to expect from that final 6.2 miles, but I do expect the day to be like no other day that I've ever lived before. Here's hoping for the best. Keep your chin up kids!
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