Things you should know

Yes, I've been in hiding again. No, nothing's wrong. I just haven't had much to talk about. I've thought of writing some posts, but none of them ever fully took shape in my mind, so I decided to save the effort. Plus, I've been really productive at work and in other aspects of my life (read: tearing through Law & Order reruns on netflix), so I haven't had much time to sit down and write. Here is a quick list of things that I thought about posting about, but didn't:

1. I finally found a use for my heartrate monitor: to hold my pants up. It may not be appropriate for work's "business casual" dress code, but it'll work in a pinch when I forget my belt at home.

2. I was on my trainer for over 12 hours last weekend, averaging over 235 trainer miles (which are always faster than road miles). I got through the whole Lord of the Rings series (non-director's cut) and half of Beowulf in that time. My legs were fine, but I got some NASTY chafing on my ass that perfectly matched the shape of my chamois. Note to self: invest in some good bike shorts. It hurt to sit down to pee for days.

3. I've decided to run the marathon tomorrow. I wasn't going to. I really, really wasn't going to. I didn't want to. You couldn't make me. Then three things happened:
ONE: Big Red was going, and I thought it'd be fun to hang out with her. Even if it DID mean running. No one could make me run the full distance, though. It's a 2-loop course, I can just quit half way through if I want to. Secretly, that was my plan. I told people I'd keep going if I was feeling good at 13 miles, but that was a lie. I had no intention of running more than 13.1 miles.
TWO: I listened to a sort of "race report" on a podcast. I was only half-listening to a race wrap-up when something cut through my inner monologue and struck me. One of the guys started saying, "I realized that I was already making excuses to have a bad race [before it had even started]. So I just asked myself, What can I do right now to make sure I have the best race I'm capable of today?" He then went on to run a marathon over 15 minutes quicker than he anticipated. The moral of the story (or at least the take-home lesson that I got out of it) was that it's never over until it's over. And you can either decide to rock up and do your best, or make excuses for not doing your best before the race is even over. It wasn't that profound really, but I realized that I was doing the same thing. I was making excuses, telling people that I was burnt out, untrained, didn't really care... I was setting myself up to quit. I had no intention of running a good race. So why even show up if I wasn't going to try? All I had to do was pull it together for one morning and see what I was still capable of. I wouldn't be at my peak, but I haven't exactly been a couch potato either. My VDOT numbers say that I'm within a stone's throw of a qualifying time, if I had the race of a lifetime. I decided to see what I could do if I didn't make any excuses.
THREE: A conversation with Calvin (that's not his real name, but that's what I always want to call him) at the gym. We were talking about burnout, and the possibility of me running my race, or not. At that point, I still wanted a good excuse to get out of it. Then I caught myself saying, "I'm at the point now where I can pull a marathon out of my ass on any given day and know I'm going to finish. It doesn't really matter if I burn myself out hardcore, because I don't plan on running much anyway for the next 6 months. Going for bust might be good for me." I'm trying to learn how to listen to myself.

So I'm running tomorrow. My aim is to run so hard that I'm burnt to a smoky crisp at the finish line. If I manage to pull out a 3:40, I'll be elated. But I'm not going to let myself see a 3:45 or a 3:50 as a failure. Even if I run a 3:55 or slower, at least I will have ended my running block with a bang (the BANG of a tolerance for running blowing sky high).

So keep your eyes peeled. Race report coming soon.

Also, Judi sent me the following interview questions. Some of them weren't really any of anyone's business (or at least nothing concerned with this blog), so I changed them. So here you go:

1. why are you so devilishly handsome?
Breck shampoo and Brill Cream, baby. The ladies love to run their fingers through my hair.

2. when did you finally come out as a Britney Spears fan? how did people react?
I started coming out to selected friends in college, but I haven't gone public with the fact that I very much enjoy Britney Spears until you outted me just now, Judi. Thanks a lot! Alright, it's true. I like Britney Spears! Now you all know. People have reacted with shock, disbelief, and ultimately acceptance. There are more Britney Spears fans out there than you would think.

3. if you - god forbid - broke a body part and couldn't train, what would stop you from drinking again?

The fact that I would eventually heal and I don't want to still be drunk when that happens. If I couldn't heal, then it would be that "put together feeling."  The prospect of losing everything else I have (job, friends, etc.) would work for as long as I felt that way, but I doubt that would last. If I didn't have a job/friends, etc. that I really cared about that much, you'd probably find me crutching myself into the nearest liquor store.  I'd have to go to meetings, I guess.

4. your first triathlon - what kind of affect (sic.) did it have on you?
I wouldn't really say it had an effect on me. I fucked it up, the whole experience sucked, and I spent the whole summer training to get better. I got over it. I hardly ever even think about that race anymore. I would say the longest lasting effect is that I don't want to be the one caught riding a hybrid bike in my running shoes ever again.

5. do you think you suffer from OCD?
No. Type A, maybe.  I get maybe a bit anxious sometimes.  But not OCD. I don't have weird habits with turning out lights or making sure that dials and knobs are just so. I'm not even neat. So no, I am many things, but I am not OCD.

The Claire Went Over the Mountain, Part II

Okay, I've used this title before, but that was over a year ago, and it was on the old blog anyway. I think I'm so damned clever that I'll use it again. I reserve the right to use this title whenever I damned well please, so there.

Several weeks ago when Anne and I climbed Mt. Wachusett, I shot my mouth off about climbing the tallest mountain in Massachusetts. Then, some anonymous little birdie whispered in my ear that Mt. Greylock, with a vertical drop of nearly three times that of Mt. Wachusett was the tallest mountain in Massachusetts. As I normally do when someone points out an error of mine, I beat myself up more than was necessary (picture Chris Farley banging his forehead yelling "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!!!"), and bitterly promised myself that I would climb Mt. Greylock, sooner rather than later if possible.

Admittedly, deciding to climb a mountain in New England in mid-November wasn't one of my most shining displays of good sense. We have had a mild fall, but the day's high was projected to be only in the mid-40's, and what this fall has lacked in low temperatures, it's made up for in wind. But this was likely my last chance for an outdoor ride for the next four months. Never one to listen to the voice of reason, I planned one last century ride up Mt. Greylock and through the Berkshires and Catskills of Massachusetts and New York.

I packed everything the night before and woke up early to make sure I had plenty of daylight. I don't know why I thought that a drive that normally takes two and a half hours would only take an hour and a half, but that's how I budgeted my time for the morning. So even though I left ahead of schedule, I was still running nearly an hour late when I arrived in Pittsfield two (not one) and a half hours later. I was a bit apprehensive about the weather at first, but the first little hill warmed me up quickly and it was a beautiful day. It wasn't even all that windy, for once. All the pavement was smooth, and there was very little debris on the wide shoulders. Still, there was the occasional shattered beer bottle, and I spent the whole first 20 miles of the ride convinced that thousands of tiny shards of glass were working their way through my tires to give me a flat. I rubbed my glove against my tires, just like you're supposed to, but wouldn't it be just my luck to get a flat...? Does that ever happen to you guys? Where you spend an entire ride convinced your tire's about to blow at any second and you'll be stranded 3 hours from your nearest lifeline?


I found the road that goes up the mountain without much fanfare and started climbing... right away. You know those roads that look more like vertical walls? The ones you look at and you think, please, oh PLEASE don't be the road I have to turn on, please don't be this one!? Well Notch road was that road. It didn't waste any time in showing me what it had in mind for me, opening with a roughly 12% grade before settling into about 7 or 8% sprinkled with double digits at the curves to keep things interesting.

Before long the houses had bigger and bigger yards, and eventually they disappeared completely. I passed a trailhead, turned a corner, passed a parking lot, and saw a big chain across the road with a big, old orange barrel smack in the middle of it. A big, reflective sign said, "ROAD CLOSED."

Clearly, they didn't mean me.

Note: The AVERAGE grade is 6%, but there are several spots that linger well above that, and even reach grades of over 20% in places.

I ducked under the chain and hopped right back on my bike. The road surface was PERFECT, newly paved and glassy smooth. It was a little bit wet and slick from yesterday's rain, with some debris and branches in the road from recent storms, but all in all it was the cleanest road I've seen in a long time.

Fucking steep though.

The average grade for the 8.8 miles to the summit is 6%, but that means STEEP segments interspersed with milder spots for recovery and a relatively flat mile across a the crest to the summit. I can push some pretty big gears for a peanut my size, and there were times that I was in my easiest gear, climbing out of the saddle, and wondering if I was going to have the strength to keep turning the pedals. For the first time I wondered if I should get a triple chainring before I go to Europe. At one point I my breathing and heartrate got so out of control that I did have to stop and stand still for a minute before I could go on. But I rode every inch of those 2,776' up the mountain.

Despite the cold temperatures (it must have been in the mid-30's by the time I was getting close to the top), I was sweating bullets. My sweat smelled unfamiliar, like my asshole brother whose stench can knock you down 3 rooms away: something like organic hippie moisturizer or something. I kept snorting my own sweat droplets and felt like I had the ocean in the back of my throat. I wondered if the sweat in my ponytail would freeze. Isn't the back of your neck one of those places that you have to keep warm because it affects your perceived temperature throughout the whole body? The whole second half of the climb I kept thinking, Fuck the true summit, I don't need those last 300 feet! When I get up there I just need to get down as quickly as possible so I don't freeze to death.

But then suddenly I came out of the woods, and I was in the middle of the sky and I could see EVERYTHING. The Berkshires were below me off to one side, the Catskills off to the other, and all these little towns nestled in through the valley. It was the kind of view that is impossible to describe without sounding cheezy. You know, when you can see for so far that you can see the shadows of all the different clouds that have the diameters of whole mountains? I am not one to be taken in by scenery, but I was taken in by this view. So when I reached a crossroads where I could go up to the summit, or just continue back down out of the park, I rode the rest of the way to the top. It turned out to be the mellowest slope on the mountain.

As I was climbing the last chunk to the top, I thought about how sad it was that I didn't know anyone else who would have been able to make this climb with me. They had no idea what they were missing. The ones who might be physically strong enough don't have the time to make such silly trips. I kept thinking about how great I was and went back and forth between feeling smug and feeling sad. It sure is lonely at the top.

Then there was nowhere to go but down, down, down. I rode slowly not because of the slick roads, or because of the sharp, hairpin turns, but because it was fucking COLD and I wanted to cut down on the wind as much as possible. Gone was the pompous satisfaction in knowing that I and I alone was badass enough to do this ride. All I could think about was whether my lips were blue or not. Ten miles and about 20 minutes later I reached the road block on the other side of the park. I had to walk my bike around the metal gate, and I was shivering so badly I had trouble walking at all. On the other side was a Visitors' Center, and there must be a God, because not only was it open, but there was a fireplace inside.

"How many of you guys are up on that road?" the ranger asked when I got in.
"I only saw one other nut case up there," I said, shivering violently.
"Road's closed. You're not supposed to be up there, but my boss hasn't seemed too upset about it so far," he said. This ranger gig was clearly how this man was spending his retirement. He was probably around 200 years old, and what coffee-colored teeth he had left were falling all over each other trying to fill the gaps that the missing ones had left. His official jacket had what looked like an ancient soup stain down the front, and he was wearing gators over his boots despite a clear lack of snow or calf-deep mud anywhere in the visitor's center. "You'd better get next to the fire," he told me.

So I rotisseried myself in front of the fire for about 20 minutes until the shivering subsided and from time to time he came over and talked to me. "You doing a loop 'round the park?" he asked.
"Sort of," I said. I pulled out my directions and read the major roads I'd be following.
"You going all the way over towards Troy?" (New York) he asked. "You know, there's an honest-to-goodness mountain range between here and there..."
"I know," I said. I'd seen the elevation profile, and had specifically planned to go off in that direction to get a little more climbing in. Now that I was out here, though, it wasn't the climbing I was afraid of, it was the descending. I wouldn't be climbing anything half as tall as what I'd just gone over, and I still had four and a half hours to do the next 60 miles before it got dark.
Despite running a hilly 17 miles yesterday, my bike and I felt great and I was mentally ready for an all-day ride. I was just so damned cold! As I walked out the door, not quite finished shivering he called after me, "You'd better cut your ride short!"

It was the last straw. I've mentioned before how the naysayers can shake my confidence and make me convinced that suddenly I can't do something that every experience in my life has told me I can. As I rode the last couple of miles down the hill to the highway I started shivering so violently that I was afraid I was going to start jerking around my handlebars. I knew I was only about 10 miles from the car, so rather than turning off towards New York, I just rode back. Of course within about 5 minutes of pedaling on flat ground I was more than warm enough and feeling like a million bucks.

As I drove back home, I was furious at myself, furious at the sunny sky, and furious that there were clearly hours and hours and hours of daylight left. I was even more furious when I looked at my thermometer and saw that it was nearly 60º outside. What a fucking loser! I know that I'm a strong cyclist, but for some reason I forget. Sometimes I convince myself that I'll never, ever be able to do things that I've done dozens of times, just like riding 100 miles today. I was really, really in need of a good ride to bolster my confidence. As you might have noticed, I've been a bit glum lately, and it's seeping into everything. I've kept up my bike volume this fall, but for some reason I don't believe I will ever be able to reach the level I was at this summer. I know it makes no sense, but I'm convinced I'm going to wake up a 15-mph rider next year and that my running and swimming are going to fall apart at a similar rate. I just really, really, really needed a good ride to feel strong again. I was feeling good today, but all the confidence I built going up the mountain had evaporated by the time I got back down.

You fucking loser, I kept telling myself on the ride home. You fucking slack off at EVERYTHING! This is one of the reasons that long drives can be a bad thing. I think too much. No wonder you suck so bad, I was convinced now that I had crossed the threshold now from being paranoid about sucking to ACTUALLY sucking, you always take the easy way out! Don't feel like doing a run? You just don't do it, you loser. Everyone ELSE is out there working their little tails off, and you're just sitting on your ass eating macaroni & cheese until doing a workout suits you. I knew that I'm in my offseason, and there was no reason to be beating myself up for going home after only 47 miles, but I was anyway. What are you even DOING going for a long ride today? It's not your biking that's the fucking problem. It's your running. Has it even occurred to you that you have a MARATHON in 2 months, and that you're supposed to be trying to qualify for Boston in 3? Don't you think you should be spending your energy actually RUNNING rather than climbing up fucking mountains in the dead of winter?! Didn't that idea fucking OCCUR to you?! My inner voice can really be a douchebag sometimes. But he's right (my inner voice is a man). If I'm so scared of sucking when the snow has melted and I'm finally set free again, maybe I should be taking this time to work on the things that I REALLY suck at, rather than wasting all my energy doing the fun stuff.

I know, I know. Lighten up.

How to Grow a Pair

I've been doing some thinking lately about training and what makes some people successful, while others seem to just be running in place (no pun intended). This will probably be a long, rambling post. Feel free to read all or part of it, or none at all. Just a short disclaimer: These are just some thoughts that have been kicking around in my head. I am not trying to portray myself as a coach, nor do I think anyone should actually take me up on some of the things I say unless they are on the same page to begin with. I am not a doctor, or a physiotherapist, or a sports psychologist, nor have I so much as taken a biology class since high school. I used to have a personal training certification, but I even let that expire when I realized that I wasn't a people person (can you tell?). Everything I say in this post is just an opinion based on my own experience and things that I have read/heard or figured out for myself. I am writing this post more to myself than offering advice to anyone else. I'm just posting it because someone out there might be dorky enough to find it interesting. Disagree with me all you want. I encourage you to challenge me. You don't have to care what I think, but since you're here, I'm going to assume that you do.

Introduction

In the past year, Brett Sutton has been getting a lot of attention for his success his athletes such as Chrissie Wellington, Bella Comerford, Erika Csomor (I LOVE her blog, she's such a space case!), Hillary Biscay, Rebecca Preston... the list goes on. Critics say that he wears his athletes into the ground and doesn't have the long-term in mind. But before Brett Sutton, Simon Lessing was unbeatable for the better part of the '90s because of his balls-out-every-day style of training. Lance Armstrong insists he was so dominant because he was just willing to train harder and more often than anyone else, even in the offseason. I've heard stories of TBB (Brett Sutton's team) athletes having to run marathons on treadmills in barren hallways with no music or air conditioning, run 20 miles worth of 800m repeats, do 10 ironmans in a season, etc. And meanwhile all the tri-geeks in the world will tell you that that kind of training is unnecessary. That you don't have to train like that to be successful. That you need to REST. Training like that will make your legs explode and your arms fall off and your soul get cavities. All I wonder is why so many people are so afraid to train?

I've talked a bit about this before. I think that the people who are successful in this sport, pros and age-groupers alike, are able to compress high-quality rest into very short amounts of time, and that their "off" weeks are still more than many casual ironman athletes train in even their highest training volumes. This post is already long enough. I don't need to repeat it . If you're interested, read about it here. The gist of it is: Harden the eff up and train more.

Among my friends in the blogosphere I've developed quite a reputation for myself for being some sort of crazy endurance nut, eschewing rest in favor of truckloads of masochistic "junk miles". First off, I would like to point out that I do rest. I take days off. I have easy weeks. I just don't write about them because they're boring. Also, I have no life. All the time that I don't spend working or training is dedicated to rest, so I am not spending extra energy chasing after kids, cooking meals, or going out with friends. I pay a lot of attention to nutrition and taking care of my body when I'm not training. I'm lucky to have this type of schedule. This is a choice I have made, your choices may have been different. We all work within the parameters of our own lives and our own limits. I'm also a dork and many people wouldn't WANT my lifestyle, but I think this lifestyle means that I am able to maintain higher training volumes than other working athletes. Maybe not more than you, dear reader, but more than many.

But also, I think that if you pussyfoot around your body, then your body is going to be a pussy. If you go out there and smack yourself every day, then you're going to get the returns you've worked for.

Supercompensation: Don't Be a Pussy

Even if you don't know it by that name, you know about supercompensation. It is the basic principle behind training. Every kind of training that you do breaks down your body in some way. You put tiny little tears into your muscles and ligaments, you burst red blood cells, you put tiny little cracks in your bones, you deplete your cells of all the stuff they need to survive, and kill lots and lots of cells all over your whole body in the process. It wears out your immune system. After an especially hard day you aren't even able to complete such daily tasks as walking across a parking lot without extreme pain. Essentially, exercising makes you sick. It fucks you up. It leaves you worse off than you were before.

But then you rest. Your body says, "I never, ever want to feel like that again. So next time he/she throws that shit at me, I'd better be ready." (Maybe your body doesn't have a pottymouth — mine does). So the body builds itself up to be stronger so that it can handle greater loads. Next time you do the same workout, your body is more prepared, and doesn't get as beat up as before. This is the "training response". We all know about it. This is why people won't shut up about the importance of rest, and "rest is when you grow stronger," and all that crap. You already knew that.

But if you're going to get better from it, and your body is going to overcompensate for everything that you do, why not fuck it up as much as possible before you send it in to the shop to get fixed? Why take it easy after every, single hard workout when you could cram in 3 or 4 hard sessions and absolutely thrash yourself before you lay off and let your body do its thing? If you're still ABLE to do quality training, there is no reason to lay off like a pansy after every single hard day. You can handle it. Really. And if you can't handle it this time around, keep at it and soon you WILL be able to handle it. If you never do long strings of hard workouts, then your body will never adapt to them, and you will be missing countless opportunities to put "money in the bank" as they say. You just won't be as fit as you could be.

I read Floyd Landis's book Positively False: The Real Story of How I Won the Tour de France a couple of months ago. Even if you don't want the guy bending your ear insisting on his innocence, the first half is a great cycling book. Even when he was a kid, Landis was the poster child for high volume. He talks about how, in his preparation for the 2006 Tour a doctor friend of his (I wish I could remember the name -- I think I do, but at the risk of being wrong I won't say it) suggested that you can absorb pretty much anything with enough rest. So what Landis started doing was going out and absolutely kicking the snot out of himself day after day until he physically could not ride any further. They waited until he was completely and totally broken down, then wherever he was, he would get off his bike, get in the follow car and go home. He would crawl into bed and just sleep and eat for a couple of days until he felt better, then he would start the whole process over again. No one had ever tried this method before, they just had an idea and ran with it. Landis insists that this was the real breakthrough in his fitness that put him in shape to win the Tour. Now whether you believe him or not about the doping, it's a pretty cool idea.

Another thing that I got from that book was again about rest. In the Tour de France there are two rest days. Since riders cover some 2,200 miles of hard riding in 3 weeks over the most punishing terrain France has to offer, one might expect that riders would take those two days to sit on the couch and eat Cheetos. But do you know what they REALLY do on those rest days? They ride their bikes some 50 miles. Why? Because if you take the day completely off, your body goes into "recovery mode" and starts shutting down certain high-performance systems in order to devote that energy to rebuilding. Which is great if what you want to do is take a few days to rebuild, not so great if you want to be back in tip-top shape tomorrow. That's why often after a day off you have such a crappy day. That's why it's often better to take a day completely off two days before a big event and do some short, intense intervals the day before a race.

This is also why many serious athletes do better with "active recovery". Once you reach a certain level of fitness, an easy ride or swim is no harder on your body than a 2-mile leisurely walk would be to a reasonably fit person. It doesn't mess your body up in any way, rupture any cells, break bones, and yet your body doesn't go into total rest mode. If you take a day completely off, you have that day (the "rest" day), that you can't get in any quality sessions, but also the next day is going to be crap as well because your body is still in "rest mode". When you take active recovery, at least you have the next day as an actual quality day, and another chance to put "money in the bank."

After a big, long event like a marathon your body wants to think, "Oh god, thank goodness that's over. We'll never have to do that again!" If you do something like a marathon, or a 100+-mile ride, or something that you couldn't realistically do on a weekly (or even monthly) basis, if you go right into rest mode afterwards then your body may absorb that training, but it will never get to use it. If you go directly into your offseason right after a marathon, by the time you get around to running another marathon or riding another century, your body will have forgotten how to do it. You will have: run the marathon, recovered, had about a month where your body was ready to use that fitness, and then gave it up because you never used it again. So if you have the fitness to do a marathon, or a century, or whatever, why not do them often enough that your body can actually absorb them and get stronger? I mean, you've worked so hard to get the fitness to run a marathon, why run just one before your offseason? Hey, if you run 2 (say, 6 weeks apart), then your body will have at least absorbed the first one and been able to use it towards your second marathon, and you don't have to do that annoying buildup again. Marathon training is a lot of work to do for just one race!

Here's this theory that I have. Think I'm full of shit if you want, but it seems to work for me. If you stop training right after one of those huge epic days -- let's say you do a half ironman and then take two weeks off -- then your body will think that a half ironman is the worst thing possible in the world. Why would it think any different? You've never put it through something like that before, and then once you do it, all activity seems to stop. As far as your body is concerned on an evolutionary level, you've finally dragged yourself out of the jungle/off the mountain/out of the bush, and now that you're safe. While your body was subject to intense physical hardships on a daily basis for months, then it suddenly stops. Time for rest and recovery. Your body gets stronger for a bit, but eventually it assumes that you're not going to be doing that shit anymore. Food and sleep are in excess again. Physical stress is low. So it lets its guard down. You get out of shape. Why prepare itself for more running away from woolly mammoths in the woods (or training)? Bye bye marathon/ironman/century training! Then when you go back to training, you're training at a lower level, so you continue to lose that marathon fitness (because now you're in your offseason). Eventually that ironman/marathon is gone and you're back several months in fitness.

It is fine to go backwards in fitness. We need to to get stronger, just like we need microcycles of rest. But if you keep training just a little bit PAST that half ironman or marathon... Let's say you take a week or two to recover, now you're at your best fitness of your life, and you're recovered. Why not use that fitness to do all kinds of cool stuff? Do long rides somewhere pretty where it's so remote that it's impossible to find a loop shorter than 80 miles. Do some long distance trail running. Do FUN stuff with your fitness, stuff with no pressure to win. Maybe you will even go even LONGER than ever before, because now you don't have to save your legs for your day to day training. Stop and smell the roses. ENJOY it f'r chrissakes, god knows you've worked hard enough for it. THEN go into your offseason.

Then your body will have moved beyond that fitness for your A race, and built it into an even larger base. Now once you are finally forced into an off season, you'll be working backwards from a far more advanced point, and you will start next season FITTER than you were at the beginning of this season. Scientists have shown that it takes very little training to maintain fitness. You don't have to train at the same level in your offseason, just don't stop altogether, and you'll keep most of your base. I believe (based on no scientific evidence whatsoever, correct me if you think I'm wrong) that you will better absorb that half ironman, or ironman, or whatever your A race might be much better because your body just thinks it's another step on the way to something bigger. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've been able to carry my marathon training from six months ago through to now on just 5 long runs in that time. Given, all those runs were marathon distance or longer, but that's the point. My body absorbed those marathons, rather than starting marathon training from scratch after a long offseason as I have in past years.

How Long is THIS Marathon?

Don't you hate it when people ask that? A marathon is a standardized distance, dumbass! Right? I was talking to Cranky (who has done upwards of 20 marathons in his life) last weekend in Hartford. "I watched the Olympic marathons this summer," I said. "And I know that they say that a marathon hurts just as much for those people as it does for me, but they didn't look like they were hurting as much as I hurt!"
"They don't," Cranky affirmed.
"I mean, when I finish a marathon all I want to do is crumble into a pile of dust right there on the finish line," I went on. "That Romanian chick who won, she didn't even slow down! She grabbed the flag and ran like a MILE of victory laps around that track. If that were me, I would have at least walked."
Cranky just nodded.
"How do they do that?!" I asked.
"I think it's because they just spend all day running," Cranky said.
In fact, it seems to be true. In the short documentary they did about the Chinese team, they mentioned that the Chinese women had trained by running an average of roughly a marathon a day, for months.

Now let's go back to that annoying question, "How long is THIS marathon?" Well, how long is a 10K: is it long or short? You or I could probably run a 10K at any given moment. In fact, most of us run more than a 10K most of the times we lace up our running shoes. But probably 95% of the population can't run 6 miles. Probably 95% of the members at your gym can't run 6 miles without stopping. Is a 10K really as long for you or me as it is for that overweight woman who just walked into the gym with her brand new membership who's being shown how to use the ab machine?

Let's go back to the training response. Put yourself into the shoes of that woman struggling through 3 sets of 10 on the ab machine. She gets up, walks over to the treadmills, and sets her mind to run. At first she can barely get through a minute at a 12-minute mile pace, but let's say she sticks to it. In 2 or 3 months she is able to run 3 miles in half an hour and she feels like a rockstar. This becomes her Monday, Wednesday, Friday workout until one day she gets a crazy hair, and decides to try and run 5 miles... and is stiff for a week. Still, her sense of accomplishment is probably similar to someone who's just run their first marathon. Now let's flash forward to two years later when she finishes her first marathon. Again, she's stiff for a week, and she's proud of herself because she's run a distance that she never thought herself capable when she was on that ab machine 2.5 years ago.

Her 5-mile run created exactly the same physiological reaction as a marathon created 2 years later. In the meantime, her body has been able to adapt. But the BODY doesn't know what a 5-mile run is. Hell, a EUROPEAN doesn't even know what a 5-mile run is. As far as her body knew at the time, the trauma of running 5 miles and running 26.2 was exactly the same, because in each case, probably, the run was about 60% longer than anything she'd ever done. An ultrarunner might have to run 50 or more miles to feel as fucked up as she does after her first marathon, or 5 mile run. It's just a matter of what your body is used to. The only reason "the wall" is at 20 miles is because that's where most long training runs stop. The only reason that 26.2 miles is "the limit of human endurance" is because we never subject ourselves to running longer. It's kind of an arbitrary number, don't you think? It doesn't make sense in English or metric, why would it make any more sense to our bodies that don't know round numbers? If we can train our bodies to run 6 miles without any particular trauma, why can't we train our bodies to run a marathon without being fucked up for two weeks afterwards? Hell, ultrarunners already have. What if people woke up tomorrow and decided that a marathon was to be 24 miles, or 28.1 miles from here on out? What would that do to the limits of most runners' endurance?

I don't think a marathon does feel the same to everyone that runs it. For some people a marathon may feel like less, for others a marathon might feel like more. I was surprised at how SHORT my marathon felt last week, since the last 3 times I'd run the distance, it had been part of a longer event. I bet it feels even shorter to a 50- or 100-mile runner. As much as I bitch, I bet it feels waaaaaay longer to a first marathoner. A marathon is only as long as you decide it is. If you woke up tomorrow and decided that a marathon/ironman/century wasn't all that long, and then trained it as such, I bet you'd be surprised at how easy it could become. Kind of like a 10K...

Suffering: Suck It Up!

Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. That is not true in many aspects of life, but in training, it is. You are not going to die. Unless you have a preexisting heart condition, or there's a speeding invisible bus hidden somewhere along your rout, your body will not let you die. Let me repeat that: You're not going to die!

Really.

I promise.

You will not die.

Whether you're riding farther than you've ever ridden, or running faster than you've ever run, you cannot kill yourself. Your body will shut down and MAKE you stop before you get anywhere near dying. Faint at the side of the road: maybe. Puke: possible. Be in extreme discomfort: probable. Slow down: likely. Die: highly unlikely.  You have to be in really, really, really good shape to push yourself hard enough to die.

So now that we've established that you're not going to die, you have no excuse to not go as hard as you can in the workouts that call for it. On the days that you're supposed to go long, go really long. On the day that you're supposed to go hard, go so hard you puke. No matter what you try, I can almost guarantee that someone has done it before you, and (you guessed it) DIDN'T DIE. In the very worst case you have to sit on a curb while a good Samaritan picks you up a coke from the local 7-11. More likely the discomfort will become so intense before you reach any sort of limit that you will automatically back off. And then we will go back to the training response. Your body will assimilate it, and next time you push yourself that hard, either you can do the same speeds/distance with less discomfort, or you can go faster/farther with the same discomfort. And this is how we get better. Money in the bank.

So it would follow that the more discomfort you're willing to put yourself through, the more your body will absorb ("money in the bank"), the better you're going to get both physically and mentally. I say mentally, because the more physical discomfort that you can survive, you know in the future that you pushed yourself there and you survived just fine, so you can go back there again. I guess that's what my lightbulb moment with suffering was a few months ago. There's all that talk about training 3/4 of your season in Zone 1 so that you can nudge up the speed that you can hold and a certain heartrate, blah, blah, blah. And then all those books out there (particularly Jeff Galloway) tell you that a marathon doesn't "have to" hurt, and that you can "get away with" doing very little training. I thought that that's what EVERYONE was doing. Turns out, the fast people are actually TRYING to make themselves hurt. Turns out that to run fast, you have to run fast. Who knew?!

Love It

Why did you start this stuff? Maybe it was a bet. Maybe it was a personal challenge. Maybe it was a breakup, or an addiction, or a really rough time in your life that you couldn't find another way out of. But after the initial enthusiasm wore off, and you reached your first goal – whether it was a marathon, a sprint triathlon, or something else – something kept you going. You may have sworn you never would again, and you may have meant it, but sooner or later you came crawling back even though nothing was pushing you anymore. Why is that?

Because you loved it.

Maybe you don't have a name for it. Maybe not even you understand it, but deep down, you do love it. We all get asked the why and the how questions. "Why do you do it?" "How do you find the strength to go so long/far/fast?" It's because, no matter how much you fucking hate it at times, you really do love it. No one is forcing you to do this. You can walk away at any time. And yet you don't.

But sometimes it SUCKS. Sometimes you really, truly do hate it. Sometimes you're tired, burnt out, or just unmotivated. I have this rule with myself: if I ever really, really hate a workout, then I HAVE TO stop. I'm not saying when the alarm is ringing at 4:30 and I don't feel like getting up, then I don't have to. I mean if I'm already there sitting there in the pool, and we're three quarters of the way though the workout and I find myself counting down the lengths until the end (not because I'm tired, but because I'm bored), then I HAVE TO get out. If I'm on a regular 1-hour ride or run and all I can think about is how I wish it were over, then my time would be better spent NOT swimming/biking/running. Save those thoughts for the long days when just keeping going when you want to stop IS the workout. Running? Well I'm still working on that one. I ALWAYS want a run to be over.

I have a zero tolerance policy with burnout, and I think that's the only thing that's gotten me through this past year. When I moved to Boston, I realized that being successful at quitting drinking was contingent on me NEVER burning out. If I burn out, then I quit exercising. And if I'm not on speaking terms with exercise, then I have no reason not to drink. If I start drinking again, GAME OVER. So I treat burnout like an old recurring injury. At the first hint of burnout, I immediately lay off and run to the couch to watch Law & Order reruns for the rest of the week. Pretty soon I get so bored with it that I start looking for my next challenge, and by the time the weekend rolls around, I'm pretty fired up to do whatever my next adventure is going to be. If it's not a race, I map out a fun bike ride or drive to some far-flung trail, or do SOMETHING new and exciting.

This is part of the reason why I think I would never get along with a coach, because so much of my training, while well-thought-through, is made up on the day based on how I feel. Sometimes I feel like trail running. Sometimes I want to ride my bike. Sometimes I feel like punishing myself with some kind of road race. The only thing that's important is that I'm excited for it.

Because triathlon, or running, or whatever it is you do takes a LOT of time. It takes time away from your family. It takes money that you're not spending on a new house, or a car, or Christmas presents for your family. You had better have a damned good reason for spending all that time and money. And since most of us are not in it for the money, then it had better be because you just fucking love it and can't live without it. Because if not, then why the hell are you here?

Take Responsibility

So now that we've established why you're doing this sport, what I can't stand are people who don't know what their goals are. The way I see it, there are two types of people at any kind of race: the competitors and the participants. Either you're there to enjoy yourself, or you're there to win. Once you've made your decision, fucking stick to it!

If you show up to races just to see the pretty trees and hills in a new place and hang out with old friends and new faces, that's great. I think that that's a worthy goal, and since this is my page, what I say is absolute truth. Don't let anyone tell you that participating's not good enough. That's enough for you, and no one should let you feel inferior for it. Train to finish comfortably and have fun. You can always change your mind and decide to train to be more competitive later, but only if you want to. But if that's the way you've trained, then don't sit there and gripe and grumble at the end of the race about how slow you are and how it's not fair. You're not allowed to train like a penguin and expect yourself to be a cheetah. Then again, if this is your style, you probably stopped reading this long ago.

If, however, you are a competitor, then it is YOUR responsibility to do everything in your power to be the best athlete you can be. Whether you have a coach or not, it is your responsibility to know why you're doing certain workouts and how they work. I don't mean just that you can set up a season based on Periodization 101. I mean KNOW YOUR SHIT! It's YOUR responsibility to not flake on workouts whenever possible (and to NOT do the ones that you know will be bad for you). It's your responsibility to eat well and at the right times to fuel yourself. If there's one thing that gets on my last nerve more than someone who trains like a penguin and wants to be a cheetah, it's someone who considers themselves a "serious athlete," and yet they don't understand basic training principles, nutritional principles, and they slack off in half their workouts. I think that people who only train their strengths deserve what they get. If you want to be competitive, training has to be a priority. Because I'm sure training's a big priority for your competition, and you want to beat them, don't you?

If you want to be competitive, you have to assume that every single one of your competitors is out there training as hard as you or harder. On the day that you run so hard you almost puke, you have to assume your competitor wouldn't be afraid to hurl. You have to trust that your competitor isn't out there missing workouts. Your competitor isn't eating cookies and ice cream just because he/she had a bad day. Your competitor doesn't treat his/her bike like crap. Your competitor isn't staying up late at night and burning the candle at both ends. Your competitor is spending all his/her free time when they're not training reading, listening, and looking for ways to be better. You have to assume that your competitor is going to be just as diligent as the ideal you. If you've done everything within your power to be your best on race day, you'll know you're ready. Whether the Ideal You is good enough on race day to beat the competition is out of your control. But if you've done your homework, and studied AND practiced the sport (i.e. if you really know what you're doing) you'll know in your heart of hearts if you did everything you could do to be prepared for that day, or if the Ideal You got away from you. (Because in the end, we can only compete against ourselves). And only if you've absolutely, positively done everything that the Ideal You could have done, only THEN can you gripe about how life just isn't fair. For some reason, I doubt when that day comes that you'll be disappointed with the result, whatever it may be.

Conclusion

As you may have guessed, this is more of a pep talk to myself than anything else. Feel free to ignore me or call me wrong. But if you sat here and spent all that time reading what I just wrote, please don't comment that I'm boring. You could have navigated away at any time. If you read it, it's not because I made you. Go off and write one of these for yourself if you want. Anyway, I hope this gives SOMEONE some food for thought at least. Certainly writing it has helped me work out some thoughts.

Suffering – It ain't pretty

Suffering has been something I've spent a lot of time thinking about this summer. It all started with a desperate email to Mindy and Mary, two of the fastest runners I know under the height of 5'3", where I begged for running advice. I was told that to become a more competitive runner, I needed to learn to suffer. I was familiar with this concept, but I'd thought that I was already suffering. When the student is ready, the teacher will present him/herself, and suddenly I started seeing evidence everywhere that faster runners were just willing to suffer more than I was.

Slowly it began to dawn on me that maybe, just maybe, I just wasn't working hard enough on the run. What solidified this was Anne's 15% pace increase overnight, just because Michelle told her to "run like she stole something". I'll be damned if I'd let Anne beat me just because she was willing to suffer more! So starting sometime late in the summer, I made the decision that if that's what it took, I was going to SUFFER on the run. I was going to suffer like the best of them.

Suddenly the meaning of speed work made sense. Suddenly I understood the value of different training paces for different distances. Suddenly it made sense why someone would bother to run a 5 or 10K. I attacked running with a new abandon (and maybe even a bit of enjoyment). And slowly I realized that a willingness to suffer isn't necessarily enough.

See, for me, lacing up my running shoes is already low-grade suffering. Okay, that's not true. I talk a lot about how much I hate running, but it's not like I'm skipping my running workouts. Clearly I get something out of it. What exactly that something is still eludes me, but I'll admit that I don't HATE to run. Still, I don't enjoy running. From the second I start, I can't wait for it to be over. Just the act of running is so much effort that I can suffer to a pretty high degree with very, very little extra effort without actually going much faster. Which is not to say I'm not trying. I've been diligently putting in the hard work (maybe too much of it). See my training log in the sidebar if you don't believe me!

And then there's my bike. I love riding my bike, but we all knew that. Recently I've been riding my bike across the city at rush hour to get to work rather than taking the train. It means dodging car doors, out-sprinting buses, darting between cars, playing chicken with pedestrians, shooting through red lights, and fish-tailing my bike when someone decides to pull over without signaling. Stressful? Maybe for some, but for me it's like a video game trying to get through tight spots and beat lights. (Hmmmm, someone should invent that game, perhaps with a frog trying to cross a busy road...) There are 65 traffic lights in my 11.5-mile commute, 63 of which lie in the 8 miles that go through Cambridge and Boston. This means a lot of clipping in and out, a lot of hairy bike handling, and most of all, a lot of accelerating. The other evening I was waiting at a light when this guy pulls up next to me with an all-carbon bike, matching kit, and a Tour de France ass. I sized him up, and decided he had to stay behind me. I clipped in, stood up, passed him, and then HAMMERED. I pedaled as hard as I could on my shitty commuter bike with my big, fat backpack on my back. I pedaled so hard that my bike was squeaking. I upshifted, but it was one of the gears that wasn't working, so I upshifted some more and pounded even harder on the pedals. My legs burned. I didn't look, but my guess is that I was riding roughly 24 mph. When I finally hit another red light about a mile later I was heaving for air, my heart was going like a jackhammer, sweat was pouring out of my helmet into my eyes and mouth. I hadn't even noticed how hard I was working while I was riding. Mr. Tour de France Ass was gone, which was a shame because I really wanted to race some more.

Hmmm... burning legs, pouring sweat, gasping for air, heart racing... All those things sound like suffering, don't they? But not on my bike. On my bike it's fun.

See? That's the difference. I love suffering on my bike, and love putting the hurt on someone else. I love dropping the hammer and saying, Catch me if you can! I always get to work sweaty and gross, because I can't help but ride my bike as hard as I can. In all the times I've ridden to work, only one person has ever passed me. One. Running? Not so much. When running I'm always looking for a way to make it easier, always hoping that everyone else will slow down so I can slow down too. When I get home on my bike, I'm sad to see my house. When hit the mailbox on the corner at the end of my run, it's like walking out of the office at the end of the day: relief!

BUT, in the race this weekend, I may have been disappointed with my result relative to other runners, but no one, but no one suffered as much as I did. Let's compare my finishing photos to Anne's:

Running like she stole something... and got away with it.

Grimace of pain and suffering

On the verge of tears perhaps?

Running like I stole something... and got shot in the back.

The kind of suffering that stays with you... (Please ignore the cold runner syndrome)

In other news, look at the fucking helmet I had to wear!

Feel free to sing the Super Mario Brothers theme song to yourself as you look at this picture.

I should correct one thing I said in my last post. It turns out I was 7th woman on the bike. I had only counted the women ahead of me because I found it inconceivable that someone could be a stronger cyclist (if only marginally -- less than a minute and a half separated me from the fastest female bike split of the day), and an even WEAKER runner than I am. But it must be so, because there were 3 women who rode better than I did and came in behind me. Maybe they're shitty swimmers. Then again, look at the mushroom sitting on top of my head! That thing must have been worth at least a minuet over 40K!

Foolhardy = Fool + Hardy, or just Fool + Hard

Now that I think about it, I might have guessed that when I had to push my planned ride in the White Mountains back a day because Tropical Storm Hannah (downgraded from a hurricane somewhere between South Carolina and here), I should have known that weather might be an issue. I had been checking the hourly forecast like it was my job for days, watching as the rain moved later, and earlier, later, and earlier like tides. Finally it looked like the forecast had settled on a cloudy morning for Sunday, getting progressively sunnier throughout the day, so I got in my car with my bike and I went up to New Hampshire.

The first flaw in my planning was not thinking that maybe, possibly, with a tropical storm, there's a chance for winds. There is no worse place to be on a windy day than between skyscrapers or between mountains. The second flaw in my little plan was realizing that when one planned to ride 120 miles, that there might be a variety of climates in different places along the rout, especially when one planned to be riding through big, weather-blocking things like mountains.

Or maybe, somewhere in the back of my mind the idea DID occur to me. But I did what I always do and dismissed it. I can handle it, I always assume. "Foolhardy" that's the word you're looking for. But the funny thing is, I always DO handle it; begrudgingly maybe, but I always manage somehow (more on this to come). Hey, I'm not dead yet, am I?

Speaking of which, my mom thinking I'm going to die every time I step out the door is really getting old. She's not scared of the very real dangers of getting hit by a car, or losing control of your bike on a high-speed descent. She thinks that I'm simply going to become so "tired" that I'm going to just keel over on my bike and drop dead. I think she thinks that the "tired" you feel at the end of an endurance event is just like the "tired" you feel when you need a nap, and that my demise will be something akin to falling asleep at the wheel, or handlebars. She knows nothing of bonking (I tried to explain it once and she got alarmed like it was something that one would have to be hospitalized for a week over), or even "soreness" of the variety that is immediate and purposely inflicted.

So last night when I said I was excited for my trip, she asked, "How far will you be riding?"
"A century," I lied. I thought that maybe she wouldn't put the word together with its real distance.
"You're going to ride 100 miles?!" My mom only drives 100 miles once or twice a year.
"Really, mom, it's no big deal. 100 miles really isn't that taxing for me anymore." It's true.
She rolled her eyes like a mother does when her child says something exasperating like, 'It's not my fault that my room's a mess because an elephant just ran through,' or 'If you make me clean my room I'm going to run away to the circus!' "But what if it IS harder? You'll be in the mountains, maybe you'll get more tired than usual..."
"Well, you know, that's kind of the POINT."
Dad snickered signaling that he was on my side and it was the end of the conversation.

But still, I hate it when people (especially Mom) do that! They think it's a crazy idea, and they doubt you, and pretty soon you begin to doubt yourself. Where 2 minutes ago I was totally sure I could do this ride, now I had a little voice in the back of my head saying, 'and what if you can't, stupid?' I knew it would be a tough day, but now I began to wonder how I would get back to my car if I wasn't able to go on?

Great! Now my ride was ruined.

Not a picture I took. If anyone wants to donate a nice digital camera, please e-mail me for mailing address.

I woke up early and was on my bike riding past Loon Mountain and up the Kangamangus Highway ("The Kank" for short, a nickname that evokes all kinds of fun imagery for me) by 8:45. I got the biggest climb out of the way first, climbing over 2,000 feet in the first hour, and when I got to the top the clouds cleared and the sun came out as I blasted down the back side of it.

Left: Riding uphill on the Kank.

There are days for speed records, and then there are days when you have to just knuckle down and get to the finish any way you know how. I'm a confident descender, but the roads were slick and my brakes slippery, and I decided to just enjoy the ride down. Then, around mile 30, I turned north off The Kank and found myself in the face of a stiff, stiff headwind. I had no way of knowing how hard it was blowing, but it definitely felt like over 20 mph, and wouldn't have been surprised if it were over 30. Either way, I was riding through the wake of a tropical storm, so use your imagination.

Right: Near the top of the Kank; Below, Left: Sign at the summit. One of these days I'm going to go back on a sunny day and ride like a bat out of hell down that road.

And the wind stayed that way for fifty miles. It was stronger in parts, gentler in others. It would let off going up the steep uphills, and then pick up again on the flats and downhills. Have you ever been riding slightly downhill, pedaling hard, and only going 14 mph? That was me yesterday. Every time the road turned, I would hope for some relief, but the road would twist, and the wind would still be there. When I turned a 90º corner into Gorham at around 70 miles I thought for sure that the wind would be over, but somehow it was dead on here too! It felt like I was riding with a 500-pound gorilla on my back. It was like I was dragging a manhole cover behind me. It was like I was pushing a brick wall with my front wheel. "GET OFF ME!" I said out loud. Because when you're alone on the bike no one can hear you. "LAY THE FUCK OFF!" I liked the sound of that last part. "FUCK OFF!"

But the wind did not listen, and I found myself having to dig deep mentally just to keep going. Physically I was feeling fine, but there's something that's just so draining about working that hard and still moving that slowly, especially when you're on hilly terrain full of false flats, and a road that, just when you think it's over, just seems to go up and up and up around every turn. It took me about an hour to get from miles 50 to 60, and I must have looked at my watch 10 times per mile.

If you start feeling sorry for yourself in a situation like that, you're cooked. I knew that. So I just kept yelling at the wind and pushing on, and repeating inane mantras like "Just keep spinning", or singing a single line from My Fair Lady over and over to myself, not because it meant anything, but just because it popped up there. People would be so disappointed if they knew what I REALLY think about when I'm alone on the bike. I passed some really pretty views in this part of the ride, but I was too tired and demoralized to stop and take pictures, so I'll share some of the great photos Google has to offer instead.

I wished I had someone else there to take turns blocking the wind. Originally I hadn't planned to do this ride alone. I'd planned to do a shorter 80-mile version with less climbing so that others could come along. But in the end people bailed because of family commitments, or because they just weren't sure they could hack the distance over the terrain. Because of the conditions, I was kind of glad that people who weren't used to long rides didn't come, not because I didn't want them there (I REALLY could have used the company!), but because I was having such a hard time holding it together myself, I don't know how I would have managed to remain upbeat enough to coax someone else through the experience. It got me thinking...

I had promised Mindy that if she came along, I would make sure she got through the ride. I am a firm believer that, especially biking, people can go way further than they give their bodies credit for. In the end, I think Mindy made the right decision staying home and not push her luck with her injury, but if she had come along there is no doubt in my mind that she would have made it. Same goes for everyone else I invited. But I can't guarantee that they would have had a good time of it. Hell, I certainly wasn't having a good time of it.

Which brings me back to what I was saying before about doubt. Until my mom gave me that look, I had never doubted for a second that I could do this ride. I've ridden farther, and I've ridden similar terrain. But as I sat there pushing into the headwind for the third or fourth hour, I began to doubt myself. What were you thinking, you stupid lunatic! This is horrible. You're going to poop out. You're going to have to quit somewhere north of Mt. Washington and then you're going to have to sit there alone on the side of the road for 3 hours while you wait for someone to come pick your sorry ass up. And then you'll NEVER be able to live it down. This is a fine mess you've gotten us into. Sure, I didn't FEEL pooped, but I was convinced I would... eventually.

It sounds a bit cheezy, but when I started to get a bit nervous, I just reminded myself that this may be one of the hardest rides I’ve ever been on, but I’ve been on hard rides before, and I’d gotten through those alright. And for the moment, I still wasn’t feeling the worst that I’d ever felt on my bike. I decided to try to catalog my five hardest workouts and compare how I was feeling now to how I'd felt then, and also remember the doubts I'd had going into them. In typical latenight fashion, here they are:
5. My solo ride from Barcelona to Girona and back (the first 100 mile ride I ever did).
4. My solo ride in the Adirondacks where I was feeling so sick and tired (the longest ride I’d ever done at the time, and some of the hilliest terrain I'd ever done as well).
3. The marathon I did on almost no training whatsoever.
2. Tres Nacions, when the weather sucked, we climbed the highest peak in the Pyranees and I wasn’t particularly conditioned (still the most climbing I’ve ever done in one day).
1. The 51-mile overnight hike I did in Barcelona (which was the only time I’ve ever actually FOUND my limit). I should have gotten medical attention at the end.

I think about those days all the time as points of reference. I figure that if I could get through those days, I could get through anything. I guess that’s the thought that’s in the back of my mind when I set out from my car on days like today all by myself. I plan out the rout purposely so that when I want to quit I’ll be far from my car. That way I’ll have no choice but to finish. Because if I’ve done it before, I can do it again.

Left: I purposely set out the rout so that I would pass the only shortcut before I got tired.

And because I still had a long way to ride, I began to think about a concept that I heard about on this podcast (Edit: No!  Stop, wait.  I mean it was THIS episode!) They were saying that for everything you do, you relate it to experiences that you’ve already had. For example, if you’ve tried to run a 24-minute 5K in the past and you never quite made it, then every time you go to try to achieve that goal, then something in you tells you that you'll never be able to do it. You fail, because you believe that you're going to fail. On the other hand, if you try something and are successful – let’s say that you run a seven- or eight- or nine- or ten-minute mile for the first time – then you can build upon that experience. You can begin a whole chain of success based on past experiences. Sure it hurt to run that first fast mile, sure it was tough, but you did it and you survived. Now you are more likely to run that pace in the future, and continue to build on it because you know that you can. Alright, I'm paraphrasing it all wrong. Just listen to the podcast, alright?

Right: Does anyone know why my photos keep getting cut off like that?

I’m not sure that I was any better trained for that ride than anyone else that I invited along. I simply don’t do these superlong rides often enough to make major physiological adaptations to that kind of riding (pro riders ride several rides of that length a week). Probably the only difference was that I do this stupid shit to myself all the time, and I have that confidence that I can fall back on knowing that I’ve survived my own stupidity before, so I can survive again. This mentality has gotten me through some pretty tough weekends this summer, and whatever hasn’t killed me has made me stronger. Well, mentally anyway.

Still, you wouldn't want to be sitting next to me on those days. I'm crabby and snappish. Grunt and groan and scream and blame others for my discomfort. I want to go through my day doing exactly what will make life easier for ME, and god help you if you get in my way. Maybe it's better to find those mental barriers alone...

Once I finally popped out of the wind somewhere around mile 90, I was feeling pretty happy again. I was loving riding my bike again and was pretty sad that my day was drawing to a close. Okay, not that sad. The last stretch was a 10-mile bike trail through the woods in Fraconia Notch. It was twisty and filled with little tunnels and bridges. The woods looked like something out of a fairy tale or a ghost story. After a short, steep climb the trail shot me down, down, down around thrilling corners, through tunnels, and over wooden bridges. It was great! I just coasted and hung onto my brakes in case there were clueless hikers around the corner. Finally the trail spit me out next to the lake at the bottom of Cannon mountain where the Old Man in the Mountain used to be before one day he just slipped away… literally.

By the time I got back to my car after 118 miles, 7 hours and 11 minutes (I think), and between 6 and 8,000 feet of climbing (depending on whether you trust the Garmin or Zone 5/SportTracks software), I was even thinking about continuing to ride. Maybe I’d just ride back to the top of The Kank before going home... Well, I didn’t think about it too seriously. The point is, I was pretty sure I could have gone further.

Anyway, I want to go back. Viable biking days through the mountains are limited this time of year, so it's gotta be soon. There's talk of trying to arrange a ride up Mt. Washington (only about 7 miles – straight up – and then catch a ride or a funicular or something back down), maybe in 2 weeks? Just google images of the Mt. Washington Auto Road and TRY and tell me it doesn't look thrilling! And anyone who wants to ride 50-100 miles or more with me through those mountains any time in the next couple of months, e-mail me. Seriously. I'm going with or without you.

Because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me!

After last week's terrible disappointment/failure, I've done some major soul-searching. I dug around deep in there and I couldn't find a single reason to press on with my goal of running a 50 miler in November, other than that it had been on the schedule for almost a year. How did it get on the damned schedule in the first place? I was looking on Cool Running one day, the day after my untrained marathon run on nothing but piss and vinegar, and I thought I was capable of anything. That day I saw the listing for a trail marathon the next week, gave about 2 seconds' thought to signing up at that very moment, and then decided not to press my luck. I decided that rather than running the marathon in 2007, I'd run the 50 miler in 2008. Not very dramatic. It was a whim, and I'm stubborn, and this is how I get myself into trouble. Now, for the second year in a row, I've made the adult decision to leave the 50 milers to the REAL runners.

Running is stupid. Ultrarunning is stupider.

This year I feel like I've proven a lot of things to myself and to other people. I'm pretty sure that if you're reading this, no matter what your opinion of me, you probably don't think I'm a softie. Even admitting that other people might not think I'm a loser is a big step for me personally this year. Tick off another reason that I don't have to run 50 miles.

BUT me taking the mature, adult approach to things ended there.

If I was going to give up on a goal that I had broadcast to the world, then the very least I could do to not look like a total loser would be not to have my first and only step towards said goal be a DNF. So what did I do? I got right on the internet and found the web page for my next scheduled race: a 50K near Syracuse, NY.

But registration had closed.

I breathed a sigh of relief, and then I got mad at myself for giving up so easily. I clicked on the "Contact Us" button and wrote to the race director begging him to let me in. Of course I thought he would say no and that I would be off the hook. I forgot that trail runners are the nicest people in the world.

"Claire, call me immediately. I think we can work something out." Oh fuck.

Here are all the reasons why this was a bad idea:
~Syracuse is over 5 hours away.
~I didn't have a place to stay.
~I did an ironman 3 weeks ago, and I was pretty sure that a 50K was on the list of things you're NOT supposed to do while you're recovering.
~I really didn't want to run this race.

But a 5-minute phone call later, Todd, the world's nicest race director had opened registration back up for me, and I was signed up for the Green Lakes 50K in Fayetteville, NY.

I took a Tylenol PM at midday Saturday and went back to bed at about 3:00. At 10:45 I woke up, packed up my stuff, and hit the road at midnight. God, this was a stupid idea. Every car I passed I thought, "Are you going to be the drunkard that kills me?" It seems that in a stupid decision like this, Fate should intervene to let you know that you're on the wrong track. But I made it to Fayetteville with no problems at about 5:30 in the morning.

This was the only trail event that I had ever done that was chip timed. A group of trail runners always looks a lot like a bunch of hobos fresh out of the Salvation Army, so I couldn't really tell if it was a very competitive field, but the chip on my ankle didn't bode well. I wondered if I would finish in last place (which would be okay) and have to be alone for the next 31 miles (which would not be okay). Luckily a woman named Rosemary, who was a nervous chatterer struck up a conversation. She said that this was her first ultra (and first marathon for that matter), and that she'd read all the blogs and race reports about this race, and she was just so excited to be running. I made 2 mental notes: 1. Only say nice things about other runners, because they are all nice people, and they all use the same internet that I do (right, Damon?), and 2. I was probably the only person in this crowd that really, truly didn't want to be here, so out of respect I should fake like I was happy to be out here half way to fucking Cleveland running 31 miles in the woods.

The course was 4 7.7-mile loops, each of which was broken into 2 sub-loops: the Green Lakes loop (which was flat) comprising the first and last 2 miles, and the Serengeti loop (which was hilly) making up the middle 4 miles. The course was absolutely stunning. Really. I'm not one to be taken by scenery, but by the end of the first loop, I was glad I had made the phone call and the drive. The Green Lakes are actually green, not because of pond scum, but because of some sort of chemistry or fairies. Or chemistry fairies. The water was crystal clear. (It really looks like the picture below). On the Serengeti loop you ran up a hill and then through grassy fields. One was filled with purple flowers, another with yellow flowers (not actually the pictures above, but my stupid camera phone couldn't handle the colors). At one point about half way through the loop you run around a corner and can see the whole countryside laid out below you.


I was surprised that most of the people around me had a slight Midwestern twang in their accents. I'd only driven 5 hours due west, was the Midwest really this close to home? I talked to a couple from Michigan after the finish whose drive had only been about an hour longer than mine, and they'd come through Canada to get here. "Michigan, I've never been to Michigan," I said. "That sounds so exotic!" And then, "Canada, that REALLY sounds exotic." I was serious about Canada, I lied about Michigan. It's hard to say something nice about Michigan without lying.

By the end of the first loop, it was pretty obvious that it was going to be a hot one. The humidity in the air was brutal even before it got hot. It was a sunny day, and nearly the entire Serengeti loop was exposed. The high temperatures of the day were pushing 90*, and that was the main complaint of everyone I talked to. Goddamn, it was hot! It was the kind of heat where your sweat just can't evaporate. Blech. But I've been getting used to the heat, I guess. Not so much that my body's been acclimating, but that I've finally realized that there's nothing that my complaining is going to do about the situation, so it's best not to dwell on it.

I spoke with a few women on the run: Rosemary (from the start), whose longest run up until this point was a 25K; Brooke, who was only 18, running with her mom, and starting college tomorrow (she made me feel old because I talked to her like someone more grown up than she was, and she let me); the woman in the grey sports bra with the Midwestern accent whose name I never caught; and Susan, who I was only with briefly at the end. But mostly I talked to my usual demographic: straight men over 40. My first 2 laps I was in an endless leap-frog game with a man in red shorts (Mark, I later found out). My second loop I picked up Ray, and ran 3/4 of the second half of the race with him.

Having Ray around really helped the time go by. What sucked about the 4-loop course was the fact that by the fourth loop, you know the whole entire course (except that they kept moving the aid stations farther and farther apart). And the real kicker is that when you start the fourth loop you're already at about mile 23 and ready to call it a day. Ray was a chatty, upbeat guy, and the perfect person to keep around on the last loop. He stayed with me to make sure that he went slow enough (I'm good for that!). This was his first 50K, so he didn't want to go too hard, but when I wanted to pick up the pace, he was right there with me. Talking to him made the miles go faster.

I wish this picture had come out. You should have seen the course first thing in the morning.

At the beginning of the second loop a clump of us were running together and a younger guy ran through us repeating, "Look out, 100K winner coming through!". Then an old guy came through right on his heels. The 100K runners had only started 30 minutes before us, so this guy couldn't have been on more than his third loop (of eight). Wasn't it a bit early to be calling the winner? And having a pacer in a low-key race like this? That's obnoxious. He never lapped me again. I was unimpressed.

But the cool thing about this race was that we DID get to see the winners running on their last lap. When you're as slow as I am, you don't get to see much of the action. The first guy lapped us early in our third (his final) loop, and actually APOLOGIZED for lapping us. Clearly, he was way more gracious than Mr. 100K Champion, and had an endearing, high-pitched laugh. We passed him back a few miles later. He was walking and blowing up pretty hard. But still, I get to say that I passed the race leader (okay, a lap behind him, but the fact remains that for a few moments in time I was moving faster than he was). When he started running again and passed us back I called after him, "Now don't let me see you on this trail again!" I hoped he won.
A couple more guys lapped us, and coming out of the far aid station the volunteers yelled after one of them, "He's bonking pretty bad. You can catch him, no problem!"
Oh no! We passed him again about a mile later. He was walking and shaking his muscles out as best he could. It was pretty clear he was going to walk it in the rest of the way. "Are you alright?" I asked. Had this been a road race I would have been met with a snarl if the likes of me passed the likes of him and acted concerned. Instead, he let out that easygoing high-pitched laugh again. "Do you want some gumdrops or something?" I asked. It was the best I could offer. I'd gone for the cheap nutrition option in this race.
"Nah, I'll get there," he said. "Just not as fast as I thought."

When I got to the finish line a few hours later he was there, talking to the other fast guys. "Hey! You made it! Congratulations!" I said.
He gave me a gigantic smile. "You were great out there!" he said, for all the cool kids to hear. "What did you offer me? Gum drops?!" And then he let out that great laugh again. I'm telling you, I could not have received a bigger compliment than to be talked to as an equal by the cool kids. But that was later, at this point he was still falling apart at mile 27, and I was still feeling sorry for myself a full loop behind him at mile 20.

On the second loop my socks had started to slip into my shoes and by now I'd worn holes in the backs of my ankles. At the end of each loop I sat down to re-adjust the socks, but they were really stinging badly. Of course there was the fatigue too, and that stabbing pain in my ass that everyone seems to think is sciatica. With Ray there, though, I seemed to be doing okay. We talked about old war stories, and I told him about Chrissy, and Anne (who I'll tell you guys about soon), Cunt on a pink bike, and Grandpa. "You tell these stories about wanting to trip people and then kick dirt in their face," Ray said to me, "but you seem like such a sweet, angelic little thing."
"Angelic?!" I said. "I don't think anyone who knows me would describe me as SWEET, but thanks."


We came up the hill and there was a group of people there to cheer us on. "I'm finishing this lap, and then I'm never running another step in my life!" I said.
"Aw, you'll be out here again next week!" one of the guys said. They always think they know fucking everything, don't they? What are they? Psychics? What if I never DO run again, huh? Why do they think that NOW is the time to remind me that I will ever have to run again?
"Never again!" I said.
"You'll be back!" a woman said.
"Screw you!" I called over my shoulder. I said it with a big smile and they all laughed.
"See? You can get away with saying things like that," Ray said. "It's that angelic little face of yours."
"Believe me, angelic or not, I don't always get away with it," I said.

The truth was that I knew that I was never, ever going to have to do this again for as long as I lived if I didn't want to, and that made it bearable. If I had known that this was all a step towards another, longer race then I would have hated every second of it. But as it was, I was... surprisingly... in my happy place. Okay, maybe not my happy place, but I didn't wish I was dead. That was huge.

Ray and I passed the marathon mark in just over 5 hours on the clock, which was about 4:45 of real running time. I was aware that this was only a couple of minutes off my old marathon PR. God, I really HAD come a long way since Cape Cod 10 months ago. Right around then Ray started flagging, right when I got my second wind that would take me to the finish. We had picked up Susan at that point, so I didn't feel so bad pulling ahead on a slight uphill when they decided to walk.

Okay, now here's the crazy part: every single person that I'd talked to along the course had ultimately wound up behind me: Rosemary, Mark, Brooke, Susan, Ray, the woman with the Midwestern accent... Even the fast guy with the easy laugh had wound up falling back in a sense. That NEVER happens, I am always the one that is left behind. I've come to expect it. When I passed Brooke's mom in the final 5K (she had been ahead of me the whole race), I couldn't believe it. I was finishing strong! I knew I had a slight chance of breaking 6 hours. It wouldn't be a PR by much, only 3 and a half minutes faster than the last time, but it was something to shoot for.

At Pineland Farms 50K I'd been paced every step of the way by Jay. Now it felt pretty significant that I was doing this on my own. I was going to have to average sub-10-minute miles for the last 5K to break 6 hours, so I dug deep. My body wasn't really cooperating, but I thought about how running a 9:50 mile now was a hell of a lot better than running 7-minute miles behind Michelle as I peed my pants. So I sucked it up and ran hard.

In the last mile (which was flat), I tried to push the pace even more, and was surprised to find that it hurt to breathe. Was I... out of breath? Was I running hard enough to ACTUALLY be pushing my threshold?! I looked at my wrist, I was only running in the high 9's. My body and lungs were just SO tired, that keeping me at below a 10-minute pace right now was as hard as running 2 minutes faster under normal circumstances. Then again, it kind of hurt all over, so it was hard to tell. I wanted to let up so badly, but I also just wanted to be DONE.

The expression "gone-burger" popped into my head. That's how I felt. I don't even know where I heard it, but there it was bouncing around in my mind as I waddled up the final rise to the finish as fast as I could in 6:01:03 (sprinting at 9:05 pace). One minute and three seconds. Oh well.

I tended to some immediate needs: water, pretzels, taking my shoes off, and then I limped down to the beach to sit in the water for a few minutes before I showered. When I got back, fully dressed but not moving any faster, I got a gigantic plate of pasta and set about eating whatever the hell I wanted. When I went up for my second plate, Mark (the man in the red shorts from my first two laps), who was done by now, called me a pig. Whatever, dude. Today I could eat whatever the fuck I wanted.

As I got up to go and thank all the volunteers a man walked up to me. "Are you one of the women that didn't get her prize?" he asked.
"What? I got my finisher's patch," I said. This is a running race. Claires don't win prizes at running races. Claires don't even bother to check the results.
"What's your name?"
"Claire Badas..."
"Claire?! From Boston?!" This was Todd, the race director who had been so patient with me!
I gave him a hug. He looked so happy to see me, that it seemed like the appropriate reaction. "Thank you so much for bending the rules for me..."
He cut me off and put his finger to his lips. "Ssssshhhhhh!"
"Okay, well thank you for all you've done. This really has been such an enjoyable... no, that's not the word... This has been such a positive experience!"
He looked down at his clipboard. "You got second in your category!" he said.
"WHAT?!?!?! Where were the other women?! Did they die?!?!?!" Like I said, Claires don't win running races.
"Don't say that," another volunteer said. "We already found one guy on the ground today." I wonder what the story was with that.
"Is this one of those things where there were only 2 people in my division?" I asked.
Nope. I was the second of 5 women under 35, and 4th of 14 women overall. True, it wasn't a very deep field, but I repeat, Claires don't win running races. Okay, I didn't win, but I placed. Claires don't place in running races.

I won a backpack!

Todd, the world's kindest race director congratulated me, and even printed up google directions for me to get back to the highway. You might think that this story is leading to the conclusion that I'm going to keep going with this ultrarunning business. Nope. I had a really great day, everything seemed to go right, and I felt like it was enough to make up for my DNF. I'd pushed hard, I'd gone long, I'd even done well in the overall standings. And this was exactly the high note I wanted to leave off on. I won't say I'm never running longer than 26.2 miles again. I'm just saying that there'll be plenty of time for that when I'm old and slow and suck at EVERYTHING as much as I suck at running. For now, I'm going to pursue the stuff that I like.

The traffic sucked on the way home, which sucked my whole good mood. What was a 5-hour drive on the way out turned out to be a 7-hour drive on the way back and my legs totally cramped up. Today I am one hurt unit. I'll have more to say about accomplishment soon, I think. But for today, I'm TRYING to keep it short.