And You Thought Running Was Thoughtless? Part1/3
No Comments yet, so why not make one?Either things will get better, or you will black out on the pavement
- Dean Karnazes
And You Thought Running Was Thoughtless? Part 1/3
There are two schools of thought when it comes to distance running and how it is best to accomplish a set distance.
In one school there is the idea that the sport is running and that one should run through a race with no walking breaks outside of the necessary bathroom breaks and the time it takes to go through a checkpoint or refill a water bottle or backpack with supplies. You run the race as far as you can, then walk when you can no longer run, and if you have to, crawl, but you give it your all and leave everything out there, exposing yourself to your own limitations and pushing them to the edge.
The other school of thought surrounds the notion that you can be faster if you use a run/walk strategy. This would involve either breaking down the running with walking breaks every set number of minutes- such as 25 minutes of running and then 5 minutes of walking- or using the land to determine when to walk, such as going up or down steep inclines. The idea is that the walking helps to give your muscles a break from running and in doing so keeps them fresher for longer so you can run the sections that you do run, relatively faster.
Well, this is a tried and true strategy and the best runners in the field will use this strategy to win race after race. I don’t, but then again, I like to run.
I don’t worry about my time anymore, I just like to run, so I run as far as I can, then walk if I have to, but I would rather finish slower and run more, than finish faster and walk some. Not that walking is bad, I just get into a zone and go, and when I hit a wall, breaking through is so much sweeter when it’s not with the knowledge that it was done while walking or knowing that I will get to walk in a few minutes, its done knowing that I hit one wall, and it hurt like hell; I broke through and let the tears flow, knowing full well that I wont get any breaks till the next one- except for the time it takes me to refill a water bottle or grab some food out of my bag if I should need to do this.
I think I finally have my answer from a debate I was having with myself about using a run/walk strategy or running all the way. I LIKE running all the time, granted I will have very different paces through a run- moderate at the beginning until I feel warmed up, then I go very, very slowly for the next 10 miles; the next 10 are at my normal long run training pace, and I finish strong with my 5k pace- this is for a marathon length run, its different when I go longer.
The last two times I ran this distance, I would stop at halfway to refill my water bottles and grab a sandwich from my pack, although I was eating a package of shot blocks every hour too, but I had those in easy reach and just ate and ran. I had to get the sandwich out of my pack so I had to walk to do that to avoid running off the trail while looking through my pack, although it takes no more than 30 seconds to get the sandwich and put the pack back on so the walking is relatively nil.
Sure enough, both times, I hit the wall at around mile 20. I wanted to quit so badly. I felt worse mentally than anything my body was going through, although my feet were hurting and wet and blistered, my legs ached, my back ached, my shoulders ached, my hands hurt, my fingertips hurt and everything on my body was ultrasensitive to pain. I could barely keep my eyes open. I wanted to quit more than anything. My emotions were in the toilet; I wanted to lie down and curl up and start crying, not because of the pain, but because my body and brain chemistry were committing haru kiri.
Plus, it’s mentally taxing more than you might think to keep it together and run for 20 miles. I felt as though someone could stab me in the chest and I would thank him for doing me a favor- I didn’t care what happened to me, I just wanted to quit.
Then the depression gave way to anger. I didn’t want to quit but my body was going to make me, my mind and emotions were going to make me, and so I got angry. I started running harder, the more pain my legs felt the better. It was their fault I was so in pain, so now they were going to be punished for this treachery. I used my upper body more too, involving every muscle that was aching, just to let it know I wasn’t going to let its whining stop me. I found that all this was so extreme, the physical pain and fatigue, the mental anguish and fatigue and depression, especially the severity of the emotions, that I let out this long, guttural, primal yell. Immediately after this I felt better.
Not just a little better, but instantaneously a lot better. My body didn’t hurt as badly- it was tired but not in pain- and best of all, my mood had cleared. I was only a few miles until I was going to finish and be able to stop running, but I felt like I could go another 15 or 20 miles. It was so much different now and yet my emotions were still so high it was confusing. It was as though I had lost a very close loved one to a slow and painful death only to realize that as I was at my most depressed and angry, that it was a mistake, and they weren’t dead after all, but standing beside their casket shaking my hand . I ran back up to the house after running more than a marathon with tears because I knew that from now on, all the fatigue and pain, and tiredness and depression, and wanting to quit, NEEDING to quit, HAVING to quit, is all mental.
Sure my body would get tired, but properly fueled and injury free, it was all in my head as far as everything else was concerned. My body would give out well after my mind if I held it together. I was higher than a kite, or any drug I had taken in the past, that evening. That was the first time I had pushed that hard without giving up or walking and it paid off in spades. The next week I went through the same thing. Even though I had had the revelation that everything was mental, when you are that tired and feel that bad, you think it was just a trick of your mind that it happened before. Rationalizing the irrational, or the “unrationalizable” is not possible.
Part 2 of this 3 part article will appear next week, so dont forget to check back next Tuesday, or you can become a member and get email notifications letting you know of each new post!
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