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.

Quick update

Hi.

I'm working on a post that's turning out to be a bit of a project. In fact, I'm not sure I ever want anyone to read it. I'm pretty sure it's going to turn out being bombastic and boring in addition to being several thousand words long and about things I'm not qualified to talk about. When it does come out, I'll be sure to bury it under a post that's nothing but a pretty picture that everyone can leave courtesy comments on without having to read anything.

In the meantime, there's not much to report from over here on the couch. My foot's been feeling fine all week, but I fucked up my eye. Don't ever get shampoo in your goggles. It hurts. Now my eye is all red and jizzy.

Photos are out from the marathon, but they've found a very clever way to keep you from stealing the photos: you can only see sections of the photos in high resolution at one time. So what was the first thing I looked at? I didn't check my facial expression, or the background. I checked all the pictures to see if my legs looked fat, of course! Tell the truth, do you really look at anything else in your race photos?

As usual, my feet didn't leave the ground for 26.2 miles. But for once I was pleased with my photos. I don't look like I have cottage cheese thighs. In fact, whether it's a trick of the light, the shirt I had tied around my waist, or some other miracle my thighs do not look like they get fatter above the knee!!! I haven't had a picture like that since I weighed 85 lb. in high school!


Look!!! Muscles!!!


But then, there's always the one fat photo. Guess which one I'm fixating on??? (Cue wha, wha, wha trumpet sound). The lesson? Never, ever bend your knees while running. Because when your knees are bent they look fat, just like on the bike.


Angry would also like you to marvel at HIS sexy legs, while we're looking at marathon photos under a microscope. Look at all those muscles! He's single, ladies! Angryrunner@gmail.com.

It has been suggested (by Angry, based on my photos from other races) that I overstride when I run. In other words, my front foot is landing in front of me and not directly underneath me, braking my momentum, slowing me down, and increasing the risk of injury. What do you guys think (photos from somewhere between miles 14 and 19)? Suggestions welcome.

The last thing that I noticed is that my visor did a FABULOUS job of hiding my face, which is definitely NOT my best feature in the late stages of a marathon. I will have to remember this when I either become rich and famous and need to flee the papa razzi, or when I'm wanted by the law and on the lamb. (PS Thanks to Angry for the badass shirt!!!)

(You can poke around the photos if you want by clicking here, selecting the ING Greater Hartford Marathon, and searching bib number 1061).

In other news, I think that the following cartoons are hilarious! Click them to enlarge. For more, click here.





Alright, that's all folks. Hopefully I'll have more interesting stuff to talk about soon.

Hartford Marathon

I signed up for the ING Hartford Marathon exactly 15 days before the event. Three days later, less than 12 days before the event, my foot started to hurt. The next day, 11 days before the event, I stopped running altogether. So when I found myself all dressed and ready to go in my brand new shoes, waiting with Cranky, Angry, and Bobb-O at the start it was the first time that I thought, What the hell am I doing?! I hadn't run more than 13 miles in one go since August 25 when I ran 31 miles. Before that, I hadn't run over 10 miles since August 2 when I did the ironman. Before that: 31 miles on May 25, and before that a marathon on April 21. So basically, I hadn't trained for a marathon in 6 months. I hadn't realized this until now. Suddenly this seemed like an even stupider idea than usual.

Also, since I'd pretty much written off this marathon because of my foot, I hadn't put any thought into how I was going to run it. "Start out slow, and then taper off." Who said that? I don't remember. But what was "slow"? What pace could I shoot for? How much fitness had my body lost in nearly 2 weeks off the road? Oh, whatever. It's not likely that I'm going to finish this thing. I'll just run on feel, I thought. I elbowed my way to the back of the crowd until I found the 4-hour pacer, with the 4:05 pacer standing right next to him. That doesn't seem right, I thought.



They made us stand around in the cool air for a ridiculously long time while a bishop that sounded like the bishop in the Princess Bride blessed the crowd, then the race director said a few words and gave a shoutout to half the runners in the audience, then the ING representative said a few words (none about how we're all going to hell and there may very well not BE an ING to sponsor the race next year), then the race director had a bit more to say, and finally it was time for the national anthem. I was freezing. They found someone that could actually sing, which was very nice, but she drew out eeeeeevery siiiiiiiiiingle note in the whoooooooooole national anthem. Did I mention I was getting cold? Then the race director spoke some more and told us they were waiting for the road to clear. Then there was silence. A couple of minutes later, the crowd started moving. I hadn't heard a gun? Oh well.

It didn't really matter that I had seeded myself right behind the 4:00 and 4:05 guys, because all the walkers, wide loads, and slow pokes must have lined up with the 3:00 pacer. For the first two miles all my attention was focused on getting around the walkers and waddlers just so that I could start running. I wound up accumulating an extra .2 miles dodging around like that. Two tenths of a mile that I would really, really regret later.

Other than that, I felt great. I running felt absolutely effortless. At one point I looked down and I was running a pace in the low 6's on a downhill while sprinting around someone who was already slowing down, and it felt totally easy. Finally around the fourth mile I settled in to a pace that felt comfortable and was excited to see that it was in the mid-8's. Two weeks ago I'd run this pace and I couldn't hold it for more than a few miles, but now it felt effortless. Whose legs were these, and when would they want them back?! I fell in with a guy named John, and we started chatting and passing people. Our pace was steady and it felt great, so I didn't really mind that we were running in the low-to-mid-8's. I noticed we were picking people off, but I didn't feel like I was in a hurry.

By now we were out of the city of Hartford and running a several-mile out-and-back along one loooooooong street. It did occur to me how easy it would be to just hop over to the other side of the street. I think it would be fun to cheat in a marathon someday, just as long as I didn't lie about it later. But I didn't cheat, I was feeling good. Less than a mile from the turn-around I spotted Bobby trotting next to a race official on a bike and chatting away. I didn't even have time to say, "I must have missed my other friend," when I spotted Cranky plugging along behind him. Bobby in front of Cranky? How did that happen? Homeboy's going to be hurting by the second half of this! As it turns out, Bobby had started out chasing after the 3:10 pacer (his Boston qualifying time), then thought better of it. But Bobby doesn't feel pain like normal people feel pain, so I was sure he was alright. And who was I to talk? I was only a few short minutes behind Boston pace myself.

I crossed the 10-mile timing mat in 1:26:46, or 8:41 pace, and by the 13-mile mat I'd brought that down to 8:39 (official times, Garmin says I was going even faster because it knew I'd run the extra .2 miles!). I hit the half marathon mark in 1:53, roughly 5 minutes faster than my half marathon attempt 2 weeks ago, faster than I'd ever run a half marathon before. Oh shit. You're not supposed to do that, I thought. I told John good luck, but that I should let him go on ahead. Then I laid off a bit. I still felt fine, but I knew that would change very soon. I could feel the foot, but lots of things hurt in a marathon. My foot hurt just as bad now as it had at mile 4, which is to say, not much at all. To be honest, the biggest complaint in my feet was the growing blister on my right instep, but even that wasn't the worst blister I'd ever had. This was shaping up to be a pretty good day.

And then around mile 14.5 my quads seized up. I kind of quit stretching months ago, and I've been getting tighter and tighter all summer and fall. My quads have been especially tight since I quit running, and I'd tried to make a rare appearance at yoga on Thursday to fix it, but I got there to find class was canceled. I'd meant to stretch on my own, I really had. But I didn't. Now my quads were two giant, seizing rocks. I could still run just fine, but I knew if I stopped and stood there like a flamingo to stretch out my quads for a few minutes, I would feel much better. But I was running on pace to do a 3:50 marathon if I could just keep going... So I didn't stop.

There was lots of shade along the course, but it was getting sunny and warm. I skipped the aid station at mile 15, and planned to fill up my handheld bottle at mile 16. But the mile 16 aid station never came. The aid station didn't appear until mile 16.5, and by the time I got there, I was parched. I had to walk the Mile 17 aid station as well to get some extra water in me. With my quads doing what they were doing, I think I was low on electrolytes, but I'd forgotten my nuun, and I was running with the poor man's nutrition: gumdrops instead of gels or blocks. By mile 17 I was starting to play mental games to break up the next 3 miles until Angry was going to pick me up and run with me from the 20-mile mark.

At mile 19 a woman tried to talk to me and all I could do was grunt. I was still holding roughly 9:00 pace, but it felt like I was running through Jell-o rather than air. Then, SPLAT! I hit the wall. Every other muscle in my body jumped onboard with my quads and quit working on me. This was too early!!! I can usually get to about mile 23 before feeling this bad! I still hadn't hit the 20-mile mark. Oh well, Angry would be picking me up soon, and he could distract me from imminent death.


Angry was supposed to meet me after I came over a bridge. I crossed what seemed like a bridge over some railroad tracks around mile 19.5. No Angry. We went under an underpass (which is kind of like a bridge), no Angry. We went over something that I could have sworn was a bridge, and then ran down a hill to pick up footpath along the riverfront. Still no Angry. We ran up over a big-ass bridge which seemed like an insurmountable hill. One guy yelled, "YOU'RE ALMOST THERE!" I wanted to kill him. "YOU'RE HOME! BACK IN THE CITY! NOW BRING IT IN STRONG!" the guy next to him yelled. We still had 5 miles to go. I really, really wanted to kill them, even if the effort of doing so was my final act in this life. I came down off the bridge thinking, Better Angry never showed up, because I think I might have killed him. I think I'd rather die in peace. People all around me were not only walking, but some were stopping altogether to stretch or just sit down on the road for a little while. I wanted to sit down.

I came down off the bridge and then up another steep grade, and then there was a tall man running towards me. Angry! I looked at my watch. Mile 21.5. "Where the fuck have you been?!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. Good thing Angry's one of those people who's hard to offend, because I was GROUCHY.
"I said I'd pick you up when you came over the bridge," he said.
"You said at mile fucking 20. I've been over a LOT of bridges between mile 20 and here!"
"Well it's nice to see you too."

Angry told me about how his 5K had gone this morning, and I tried to listen, but I kept losing the thread of the conversation. We were starting to run down something that looked like the auto mile. "And this is where I park my car during the week..." Angry told me.
"I don't care," I said.
"I know you don't."
Angry started to spew some Angry-style mumbo jumbo. "Shut up," I said. Again, good thing he's not easily offended.

We came back to the river, and the path kept climbing up 30 feet to road level, and then dropping back down to the river unnecessarily. It felt like I was climbing a mountain. I had to walk a couple of the hills. "Talk to me," I said. "Tell me a story about something funny you did when you were a kid."
"You'd have to ask my mother about that..." Angry said.
"Your mother is dead, so you're going to have to tell me about it," I said. I was grouchy, but even I knew that I had gone too far with that one. I regretted it. Angry let it go. He told me a story that involved blood and stitches. "Oh my god! I don't want to hear that! Didn't you ever do anything CUTE?!"
Then, suddenly a crowd whooshed by. "Oh shit! There's the 4-hour guy!" I yelled, probably louder than I meant to. One or two people chuckled. I tried to keep up, but he was pulling away on the undulations. I looked down at my watch: he was definitely going too fast.

At roughly mile 24 I was having trouble keeping 10:00 mile pace. We ran away from the river and started running through an industrial district and over some train tracks and access roads. This looked like the part of Hartford where the Hartford mafia would dump bodies. We hit mile 25 and Angry started describing the lay of the land for the rest of the way. It involved hills. I was not happy. I started to pick it up as we came back into the part of the city where you would not dump a body. People were standing there with signs, cheering. I saw a sign that said, Looking great, Bart! I said, "I am Bart. I'm looking great." Then I saw a sign that said, You can do it, Susan! "I am Susan," I said. "I can do it." Then I saw a sign that said, I love you, Daddy! "I'm somebody's Daddy. Somebody loves me," I said.
"You're really cranking," Angry said. I was running about 9:00 pace again.
"I want to sit down so bad!" I said. I just wanted this to be over with. I looked down at my watch. According to my Garmin I'd already finished a marathon, but I still had another .3 miles to run. It felt like it would never end.

Angry peeled off leaving me to run the final stretch by myself. I put my head down and ran as hard as I could. Apparently I passed the 4-hour guy doing something stupid at the end. I didn't notice. I vaguely remember 2 people being directly in front of me. I couldn't tell you if I passed them or not. All I know is that I did NOT make a pretty finishing photo, and the announcer pronounced my last name wrong.

Watch time: 3:58:56
Official time: 3:59:00
Watch distance: 26.48 miles
Official Distance: 26.2 miles
Watch pace: 9:01 min/mi
Official pace: 9:07 min/mi
Placing: 805/1900 overall (42%), 45/128 AG (35%) I finally cracked the top 50%!!!
10 mi split: 1:26:46 (8:41) / 10 mi watch: 1:25:36 (8:34)
13 mi split: 1:53:12 (8:39) / 13 mi watch: 1:50:59 (8:32)
20 mi split: 2:56:25 (8:50) / 20 mi watch: 2:54:22 (8:43)



All I wanted to do was sit down, but there were no chairs in the finishing area. They gave me my medal, a big, heavy thing with pointy edges that could do some real damage if used correctly, and hobbled off to the end of the finishing area where Angry was poking his head above everyone and waving his arms like a cartoon character.

"I want to sit down!" I said, then I sat on a low wall. "You know you're sitting in a thorn bush," Angry said.
"I don't care!" I said. I stood up and tried walking, but my traps seized up. Bad. "Oh my god, Angry! It hurts! It hurts! Can I lie down?!"
"Do whatever you need to do," he said.
So I found a patch of grass and lay down yelling, "Owwwwww! Oooooooooowwwww!" for all the world to hear until the pain passed. Then I tried to change my shirt, and when I got stuck with the damned thing wrapped around my head and my arms knotted in the damned shirt above my head, Angry had to swoop in and extricate me. My entire chest was torn up and chafed where my sports bra and the seam to the collar of my shirt were. I had red spots the size of credit cards under my arms where my sleeves had been rubbing. I gingerly put on my other shirt, and we hobbled away to find Bobby and Cranky.

We found them by the gear trucks where they had apparently picked up their bags and moved about 10 feet before collapsing into a pile of mylar and sweat on the grass. Cranky had run a 3:25 to qualify for Boston again, and Bobby had pulled off a 3:27 for a 23-minute PR and a full 18 minutes faster than his seed time. Despite nearly dropping dead at the 20-mile mark, I had also had a pretty breakthrough race: breaking 4 hours, setting a 14-minute PR, and having a way stronger first half of the race than I was expecting. This was a "training marathon", so I didn't really mind taking a gamble on the first half if it meant blowing up on the second, because I was never quite sure I'd finish. "Hey, that's pretty good!" Bobby conceded.
"Pretty good?!" I said. "Bobby, that was fucking awesome!" I said. "But I'm never running one of those again."
"Didn't we say there was a fine on saying that?" Cranky piped up.
"Whatever," I said. "This time I mean it!"

We lay there for awhile, me with my legs sticking up straight in the air, picking at our food before we finally staggered off to clean up and get some lunch. Waiting in a Starbucks for Bobby and Cranky to turn up for lunch, I found a perfect pea-sized blister on my instep, ripe for the popping. "Oh my god! Don't pop it here!" Angry squealed, but I couldn't help myself. He curled his long, beautifully toned legs up to try to get out of the way, but somehow I accidentally got him with the spray. Good thing Angry isn't easily angered.

Final Thoughts

Overall, despite a rather horrendous finish, I consider this marathon a success. I think that once the foot heals for good, I've figured out a lot about how to train to run marathons faster. My foot is as fucked up now as it was the first day I hurt it, but no more. I am REALLY going to let it heal this time, and then brace yourselves. I was really happy to see how the speed work I've been doing over short distances translated into faster speeds, even when I started to feel like shit (up until roughly mile 20 I was still under 9:00 pace -- except the mile I spent about a minute at the aid station).

Things that I have learned:
~Rest really does make you faster, but it has a trade-off with muscles stiffening up.
~I have gained the confidence that under the correct circumstances and with more focused training, I could probably hit the 8:20 pace that I would need to hold to qualify for Boston.
~Yoga is worth getting up at 4:45 am for.
~There is no way in hell that I'm pulling off a 3:40 in Disney World in January with the fitness platform that I'm building off of, so I might as well sit back and enjoy it when I'm there.
~My feet belong in Asics.
~Don't forget your Bodyglide on marathon day.
~Speed work is the shit. Michelle is also the shit, and I would say that at least 7 minutes of my 14-minute PR are thanks to chasing after her and the other 7 minutes are thanks to advice from Mary, Damon, and Mindy.

Things that I would do differently:
~I would do more 18-22 mile training runs to stave off the inevitable crash.
~Don't forget the Nuun, or at least have something salty in my bag of tricks because pure Gatorade is not enough for electrolyte replacement on a hot day.
~Eat lunch the day before. Drink enough water the day before.
~Rather than running 3 times per week, I would ideally like to run 4-5.

Thoughts about Boston:
I think that I could qualify for Boston, but I don't think I can, nor do I want to do it at Disney. I'm not too attached to the idea of actually RUNNING Boston again, but I do feel like I owe it to the running gods to at least qualify after running it as a bandit last year. My half-assed goal to qualify for Boston this winter is more related to a desire to "become a fast runner" than a desire to actually run the race again. I believe that once you can qualify for Boston you can consider yourself a "real runner", so I want to qualify. Running it would just be a formality. So I'm going to play it by ear, but perhaps I'll give a BQ another crack at the Hyannis marathon in February. Maybe.

Previous marathon race reports:
Boston Marathon, April 2008
Cape Cod Marathon, October 2007
Barcelona Marathon, March 2007
Big Sur Marathon, April 2004

How's the foot?

Sorry my blog's been a bit of a snore-fest lately.  Feel free to navigate away and come back in a few weeks.  I won't mind.  

Anyway, people have been asking me how my foot is holding up.  It doesn't (and never did) hurt to ride on it, so I've been back on the bike recently.  However, my training time has basically be

en cut in half, which I'm sure some of you trolls are happy about.  (And of course by trolls I mean people who care about my wellbeing more than I sometimes seem to).  I have been avoiding walking and standing on it at all costs, and the pain seems mostly gone.  

Mostly.

I can still feel the ache sometimes, but at least I can walk to the train in the morning without pain.  It feels like it is going away.  The big question is:

¿Am I going to run the Hartford Marathon on Saturday?

Good question.  I haven't actually tried to run on it yet, so I guess we won't know until this weekend.  Unless it hurts to run a block or two on Friday, we're going to give it a shot.  Here is the plan:

Step 1: Buy new shoes

It has been pointed out to me that suddenly I have flat feet.  For someone who always had high arches, this is perplexing.  I will go to my local running geek store and have them do their thing to pick the correct shoes for me on penalty of death.

Step 1.5: Bite any smartass who tells me not to run a marathon in new shoes

I know that, Mr. Smartypants!  But wh

en it is between getting blisters in new shoes, or running a marathon on the shoes that hurt me and have kept me from running for a week or more, I'd rather get the blisters thank you very much.  And anyway, I'm tough.  I can handle it.  I think popping blisters is pretty much the most fun that any one person can have.  So why don't you have a big glass of shut the hell up juice!  (Again, thank you for caring, my dear trolls).  

Step 2: Drive down to Hartford and pick up race packet

No matter what I'm going down to Hartford.  Marathon or no marathon, I would not miss the chance to hang out with hetero life partner, Angry, marathon buddy, Cranky, and fellow tri-geek, Iron Bob, nor would I miss the chance to pick up freebies at the expo!

Step 3: Show up at starting line of marathon, begin running

If all goes well, I plan on running this damned marathon.  If my foot hurts, I plan on continuing to run this stupid marathon.  If my foot hurts like I'm going to have to take a week or two off of running to let it heal, I will continue to run this stupid marathon. Because taking 1-2 weeks off after a stupid marathon is a good idea anyway.  If it starts to hurt like "oh fuck, I'm going to have to see a doctor" or it is slowing me down considerably leading to a 5-hour marathon (aka waste of time), I will sit down at the side of the road and demand to be taken home.

Satisfied, trolls?  No, really, you're the lovable kind of troll, I swear.  You know, the kind with crazy hair that walks around naked.  

But don't you hate admitting you're injured?  Don't you hate it when people are like, "Resting is when you get stronger", or "injury is just your body's way of telling you to rest", or "you shouldn't run a marathon on an injured foot", or "running is bad for you", or "I told you so", or "being a vegetarian is bad for you", or "be patient", or "you should put money in a savings account each month", or "can you PLEASE put away your laundry so that the kitten doesn't pee on it again", or "can you please edit Grade K theme three", or "no"...  Yeah, I hate it when people tell me that stuff too.  

Attempted Murder

If you remember 2 weeks ago, Curly (which is not his real name, of course) was the newest member of the Straight Men Over 40 Who Adore Claire club. It's a pretty big club. By the end of the ride he was certain that I would be on the podium at the end of the 2009 Longsjo Classic, a local stage race in Fitchburg, MA in July.

As we've discussed before, I know better than to believe the Straight Men Over 40 and their flattery. I am a better-than-average cyclist, but there are some FAST women out there. I don't kid myself into thinking that I'm the best thing on two wheels, but I am curious about how I stack up. Especially after Fellow Chick Biker's (totally fair) comment, I really wanted to have a point of reference in a REAL bike race, so I started poking around the web site, and decided to ride parts of the course this weekend; the most important being the Time Trial course. It's hard to know how fast one could go in a pack in the road race or crit stages, but a time trial is just you, the road, and a clock. It seemed like a pretty good gauge.

The road race course goes up Mt. Wachusett, the highest peak in Central Massachusetts (thanks to the little fairy who let me know it isn't ACTUALLY the tallest – point is, our mountains aren't very big in these here parts), at a towering 2006 feet above sea level (1000' vertical feet from top to bottom). So I mapped out a rout that took me up the time trial course, did one loop around the road course, and back to the car. The only recruit I could find to tag along with me was "Bring It On Anne", training partner and shit-talking nemesis. Anne called my bet and raised me 50. "How about we leave from a little farther east, like my house, and we ride to my friends' house in Jaffrey, NH for a round 100 miles?"

I really, really wanted to do this ride.

I knew that riding 100 miles all uphill, finishing at 1000' higher than where we started, and with a mountain in the middle was going to be a really challenging ride, but I really, really wanted to do it. Anne had ridden over 100 miles before... once... 3 months ago, and hadn't ridden more than 60 miles since. "Do you really think I can do it?" she asked.
"Of course," I said. I didn't want to kill Anne, but I really, really, really wanted to do this ride.

"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence and then success is sure."
-Mark Twain

If there was anyone that I would drag on a 100-mile ride over a mountain when they weren't necessarily 100% sure what they were getting into, it was Anne. Anne does not show weakness. She will put herself in the hospital before she quits fighting. And when the going gets tough, I've never seen anyone that can just dig in and find the strength to finish strong like Anne. It's like she doesn't even KNOW this stuff is supposed to tire her out, so she doesn't get tired (or she just hides it really well). Part of it, I think, is that she's relatively new to the sport and hasn't quite figured out where her limits should be or how truly extraordinary some of her feats of superhuman strength are, but part of it is that Anne is just tough as nails.

Plus, anything that would prove to her once again that I'm one badass mofo on two wheels would be pretty satisfying after she committed the mortal sin of not falling to her knees before my superior cycling abilities.

We set out from her house in Watertown, MA at 36 feet above sea level at about 8 am. After a few false starts and a trip to the dry cleaners for some safety pins, we were on our way. "I don't want to read on your blog about how slow I am, and how much you had to wait for me!" she said as she caught up to me at the top of each hill. Me?! I would never do that! And anyway, Blog? What blog? I don't have a blog! It wasn't in my best interest to showboat for Anne dropping her every chance I got. First off, I didn't want to have to scrape her up off the shoulder of the road somewhere in western MA and somehow figure out how to get her to New Hampshire if she bonked. And secondly, she had the directions. Anne's job was to save herself for after the mountain, and my job was to not set a pace so stiff that I would have to carry her the last 20 miles on my handlebars. There was no shit talking, no taunting or sparring, we were just two friends riding through apple country in the middle of the fall, the best time to be riding through this part of the country.

But god, it sure was windy! There was a 17 mph wind (I finally figured out how to check!) coming out of the west northwest, and guess what direction we were heading? Every time we passed a flag pole, the flags were flapping away in the direction that we were coming from. "Who's a badass, Anne?" I asked.
"You?"
"Yep, but you know who's second-most badass?"
"Me?"
"No. Me on a bad day, but you're a close third."
I tried to ride in front and block the wind as much as a little smurf like me can, and congratulated myself on doing a pretty good job when Anne came up next to me and said, "I'm really, really trying to stay out of your draft zone. I want to be able to say I did this of my own power, but god, it's windy!" I stared at her stupefied. Here she had carte blanche to sit behind me and let me pull her all the way up to New Hampshire and she was purposely hanging back so that she could fight the wind too. I'm telling you, Anne is one tough motherfucker.

Of all people, Curly was driving by at one point and pulled over to ask about our ride. "Who's the guy with the crazy hair?" Anne asked. Anne didn't know about the Straight Men Over 40. If she's nice, maybe I'll let her hang around me more and she can meet some of them. God knows I'm not interested.

After getting a bit lost Anne and I finally found our way to the bottom of Mt. Wachusett. Before you hit the bottom of the mountain you have to climb about 500 feet over a mile up a roughly 8% grade (reaching about 10 in parts) to get to the base of the ski resort. Anne, who had a triple, fell away behind me and I kept trucking to the top of the hill. This was steeper than I remembered. Despite the cold and the wind I was pouring sweat. I was in my seldom-used smallest gear, my legs were burning, and I was breathing pretty hard. This was steeper than I remembered... Gosh, I hoped Anne was okay! When the hill finally let up at the top I stopped and caught my breath. I waited until I saw her coming up over the edge of the hill with her head down.
"Why'd you stop?! No stopping till we get to the top!!!" she yelled.
"How are you doing?" I yelled down to her.
"SUCKING WIND!!!"
"Well you're still talking, so you can't be hurting too bad!" I yelled back and mounted again.

I stopped around the corner into the ski resort to make sure she hadn't missed the turn and hopped on my bike again as soon as I saw her so she wouldn't catch me waiting and we started climbing the mountain. The first climb was pretty shallow, and I thought maybe I hadn't gotten us into too much of a mess after all. When the road forked half way up I stopped again to make sure that she didn't take the steep way up. The "shallow" way still reached grades around 12+% and hovered around 7 or 8% for long stretches. Again, when she came up over the ridge she yelled at me for stopping. "Well old people like you are known for keeling over dead from heart attacks," I told her. "I just want to make sure that I'm nearby so that I can ride to the hospital with you."
"I have Blue Cross/Blue Shield, by the way," she'd told me earlier in the ride. Later on she admitted that I'd made her feel old and slow going up that hill, and I regretted calling her old or insinuating that she wouldn't make it. Truth be told, I expected my phone to ring at any minute and for her to tell me that she was turning around, but when I stopped again at a vista point just shy of the top, there she came again, head down, chipping away at the mountain. "Are we at the top yet?!" she yelled.
"Nope, but we're almost there."
"Then why'd you stop?!"
So I mounted again before she could smack me and rode away at my blazing 7mph the last 200 or so vertical feet to the top. Before long Anne turned up, pushing her bike. She'd ridden all the way up that mountain only to push her bike the final 25 yards to the top. "How much will you give me to not tell anyone you walked?" I joked. But we'd both made it, and we could see most of the state from up here. It was almost worth it. We wandered around, accepting the congratulations from all the people who had driven to the top and then took a couple of photos and got back on our bikes.

At the top Anne didn't even try to push me over the edge.

Down we went, over frost heaves the size of speed bumps and reached the bottom of the hill it had taken us about half an hour to climb in less than 5 minutes. Next, it was off to Fitchburg to the time trial course. The time trial course is 10 kilometers and climbs about 800 feet in the first 5 miles before dropping about 100 feet in the last mile to the finish. Last year the women's Cat 1/2 winner finished with an average speed of about 20.75 mph, and the women's Cat 3/4 winner finished with an average speed of 19.6 mph. The hill looked pretty steady, and I figured it'd be a big-ring climb that looked and felt like a false flat, then a fast push to the downhill finish. Piece of cake.


I told Anne I'd meet her at the top, and took off up the hill. The first thing that I discovered was that this was NOT a big ring climb. I hardly touched my big ring the whole way up, and was heaving in no time. Fuck! This sucked. Another thing I didn't expect was for this to be the worst road surface I have ever ridden on. There were potholes and crumbling patches of uneven pavement across the whole road the whole way up. It was the kind of uneven road where you can feel it pulling the speed out from under your wheels as it throws your bike all over the road. Normally on shitty pavement the best thing to do is to go into a hard gear so that you can hover over your saddle so the jarring doesn't fuck with your cadence quite so much, but the hill was so steep and I was riding hard enough that I couldn't hold a higher gear, so I just rode and groaned as the road shook my fillings loose. I rode as hard as I could with jaw hanging open and teeth borne trying to time my spastic breathing to my cadence, and my spastic cadence to my breathing. I still had a dead-on headwind, and every time I crested a ridge the wind would smack me at its full 17 mph. I screamed or moaned out loud more than once (when I ride hard it really does sound like I have tourettes). There were several moments where I thought of quitting right then and there and just getting off my bike and sitting in the leaves at the side of the road until Anne turned up. I thought of quitting cycling altogether. I finally arrived at the end with an average speed of 16.1 mph, good enough for third-to-last in the Cat 1/2 race, and mid-pack in the Cat 3/4 race.

The course was not as flat as I thought. It even got up to a 10% grade in spots. False flat my ass!

Rationally I knew that it wasn't fair to compare myself to the results. I knew that when those women had ridden back in July that they didn't already have 80 miles in their legs. I knew that probably none of them had just ridden up a mountain (the TT is the first stage in the race), and that it was very unlikely that they'd had a 17 mph headwind. I knew that most of them had been riding a time trial setup (I took my aero bars off weeks ago), and probably didn't have enough water and food on their bikes for a full weekend. I knew that I hadn't really done much time trial-specific training this year, and by next July I'd be in better sprinting shape if everything went to plan. But still, I was disappointed. Fellow Chick Biker was right. I suck. I went back and found Anne and we rode out together. "Oh my god!" I said. "That sucked more than anything has ever sucked in my life." She agreed, but I couldn't get over it. I was crushed. This was going to be harder than I thought.

We only had about 20 miles left to Jaffrey, and if Anne was hurting, she didn't show it. We stuffed her full of gumdrops to make sure she had enough fuel to make it, but she was solid as a rock. She expressed concern once about her knee, but that was it. To look at her, she seemed fine. Later she would admit that she was cranky and tired, but the meltdown that I was expecting around mile 85 never came. In fact, she looked just fine. I, on the other hand, was a bit worse for the wear. Normally on rides of this length I'm by myself (or not committed to any one riding partner's pace anyway) and free to pick the pace. Normally I would have spent way more time out of the saddle (especially on the long climbs), and my crotch was KILLING me from being sat on all day. Also, I was finding that riding at a more relaxed pace was actually HARDER. Going at a slower average speed, I was covering less distance with each pedalstroke, and I was having to ride much more to cover each mile. Although I was spending a lot of time coasting, I was losing a lot of momentum too, and although we weren't riding very hard it was still taxing to pick up the momentum once I'd given it up. I was really surprised to find that riding 100 miles at a slower pace was actually HARDER than riding fast. It gave me a lot more respect for some of the slower riders who have to work that hard all the time. And there was Anne, who I'd dragged nearly 100 miles already, over a really challenging rout, and she hadn't so much as complained this whole time. She really was unbreakable!

Couldn't resist sharing this. I found it on Youtube the other day and thought it was just great! See the longer version here.

We finally turned up at her friends' house in Jaffrey, NH around 4:00 after 97.66 miles, 8 hours on the road, 6:36 of which were in the saddle. We had climbed over 4,500 cumulative feet, and were now roughly 1,110' higher than where we had started this morning. On the last steep hill up to the house, Anne let out her biggest concession to fatigue: she groaned. Once.

Safely off our bikes and in the house we shoveled our faces full of chips and pretzels and took the world's most satisfying hot showers. I was glad to be out of the saddle, but not as glad as Anne. I hadn't realized she was so tired. She spent about half an hour stretching out, then needed a back rub. As the night wore on she had to keep getting up and stretching, and although she wasn't visibly stiff standing up and sitting down, it was pretty clear that she was hurting. I know that I'm stronger over distance than others, but I hadn't really appreciated the world of hurt that I'd been putting her in. If there had been any doubt left in my mind, there was none now. Anne is one tough motherfucker.

Don't get me wrong. I'm still way more badass than Anne for being able to ride a rout like that without getting very tired. Even on a bad day I'm way more badass than Anne. But compared to the general population, Anne is one badass motherfucker.
(Thanks to Kevin for the photos!)

RICE makes you fat

Things are not going well in Claire country. They are not going well at all. I'm stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare where my driver's license has been revoked. It's a long, long, frustrating story and basically boils down to a policy that the DMV has that they don't properly notify you of payments due. Let's just leave it at that. If I tell you the story I might cry again and that won't help matters any. The point is, it's been upsetting me.

On top of that, horror of horrors, I'm injured. It seems incredible, after all the shit I've put my body through over the past year that what put me over the edge was a 3-mile easy run. Monday I was running along at about 10-minute mile pace just thinking about life, flowers, butterflies, stars, puppies... when I started to get a bit of an ache in my left foot. It wasn't too bad, and things ache all the time only to feel fine the next day, so I finished my run (hey, I had to get home, didn't I?) not too worried about it. I ran some cold water in the tub and soaked my feet for a few minutes, and then forgot about it.

The next day it didn't hurt in the morning, and I forgot about it. I forgot about it on the walk to work. I forgot about it while at work. Then I remembered about it on the walk home from the train when it started to ache a little bit. But I'd just found out about my driver's license, and I really, really, really needed to run and I needed to run HARD. And anyway, if I were injured, I would get some warning before I really fucked it up, and I could back off. So I put on a different pair of shoes and started running. I was doing half-mile repeats up a slight hill, and while I was running fast the foot didn't hurt, but running slow back down it ached like hell. So it's not running FAST that fucked me up, it's running SLOW. What the fuck?! I hoped it would go away as I warmed up, but instead it got worse with time: it was fine on the way up, but killed on the recovery run back down. So after three repeats I turned around and hobbled home. I paid special attention to exactly where it hurt, and where the pain radiated through so that I could look it up when I got home.

Immediately I sat down at the computer and searched "anatomy of the foot" and found what seemed to be the culprit: the Peroneus Brevis tendon, a tendon that goes from the lateral head of your gastrocnemius (calf muscle), under the bump on the outside of your ankle, and tucks under your foot to insert at your fifth metatarsal (the bone mid-foot behind your pinky toe). The alternative is a stress fracture, but I do not have a stress fracture because there is no cure for that other than total rest for 6 weeks, which probably means crutches.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck! I'm supposed to be running the Hartford Marathon next weekend! I'm supposed to be running all this fall and finally becoming a fast runner! I'm not supposed to be injured.

If I get an overuse injury, shouldn't it be in one of the big muscles or joints? Not the tiny little peroneus brevis tendon that is responsible for "plantar flexion and eversion" (curling your foot and rolling it outwards). I do neither of these in road running. Sure, I turn my ankle all the time when I'm running on trails, but I haven't run on trails since last Wednesday. It certainly didn't hurt then. Come to think of it, if this were an overuse injury, why wouldn't it start to hurt when I WAS on a trail with my ankles rolling all over the place??? If I'm going to be taken down, I want it to be something dramatic, not the inflammation of some tendon no one's ever heard of. I feel I'm entitled to something really badass that includes exclamation points at the end, like Exploding Gluteus Syndrome!!! You know, something that involves sparks and maybe a bang, or at least a pop or a crack.

But no.

I have a pretty good idea of what caused it, the same thing that causes most sports injuries: overuse. I haven't bought new shoes in a long time. In fact, one of my pairs of shoes is over a year old (although they haven't been in the rotation for much of that time).

On top of that was my decision to run more in order to run faster. I figured I'd train like a runner, running every day with easy 3-mile runs on the "off days" instead of bike rides. So I ran Saturday and Sunday, Monday I ran easy and it started to hurt, and Tuesday it got worse. What's really frustrating, though, is that I broke none of the 3 commandments of running: I didn't go too far (it was a short run that killed me), too fast (it was slow running that did me in), or too soon! I have done similar running volume and similar intensity many times before with no ill effect. And too soon? Come on! Certainly I have enough of a running base in me to be able to handle an easy 3-mile run!

There's no use in seeing a doctor for now (although I finally have health insurance again!!! yippee!), since what he is almost certainly going to do is tell me to RICE it: Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation until it gets better. I don't need to pay a copay and lose several hours of work to hear that. And anyway, doctors hate distance runners. They're worse than fat people. They can't WAIT to tell you that running is "bad for you".

I'm doing everything I should, staying off my feet, icing them, taking Advil (right, Judi?). But I am grouchy. I'm back in that place where I can't drag myself out of bed in the morning to go to the gym. I'm bringing healthy lunches, but going out to buy pizza and cookies instead. I'm eating all kinds of high GI foods, processed foods, and crap I would never normally eat. I'm getting fat.

Which brings me to another point: Rest. I hate rest. It makes me grouchy, depressed, and frantic. I know you need rest, but I prefer to take the "active recovery" option, the one where I sit in the back of the lane and just swim easy, or where I ride my bike easy with slower cyclists and enjoy the ride. Complete and total rest has dire implications for me. What if I get fat? What if I lose my fitness? What if next year I don't have the drive to get in as good shape as I am this year??? I mean, if you're just going to sit around on the couch, you might as well do so with drink in hand.

I know that you need to take time off, and also work rest into macrocycles with the off-season and so on. Rationally, I know this. This is what I would tell anyone else: that they need to take time off to rest. But deep down in the core of my being, I think it's a bit blown out of proportion (read more about it here). You need to let your fitness dip, sure, but get out of shape? Sit on the couch until I'm back to running 10-minute miles? Get fat? Sometimes I think I'd rather get my legs chopped off and continue training than be subject to that.