Over the last couple months, I've worked on a playlist to assault my ears with before important runs and races. The idea is that by playing it before my hardest workouts, the psychological effect of those songs will compound so that by race day, I could go from comatose to race-ready by the time the list is up. I think it's working. The title of the playlist is the title of this entry: Preparing to find God.
I thoroughly touched on why I run two entries ago, so this is really just another way of saying it. It's not always the case that I catch a glimpse of something divine during a run - or a ride, for that matter - but it happens. Most prominent in my mind is a memory of a three-hour ride I did in the fall - October 26, to be specific. I headed to the coast, turned north towards Newport Beach, and cut back inland on Newport Coast Drive. It's a decent climb, gaining 675' over 2.5 miles. I had tentatively planned my route and the elevation chart I'd seen suggested that this was the only big climb of the ride. So I crushed it.
I got to the top and started looking for the road I was supposed to turn on. After a 450' decent, I found the turn. Then I realized that the elevation chart had lied. In front of me was a mile-long, 7.5% climb. Full disclosure: I love climbing until the road gets steeper than 6%. Then I have no interest whatsoever.
My legs were still aching from the last hill. They wanted little to do with this hill. I gave them a break, got out of the saddle, and just started walking the pedals over one another. One step at a time. I looked around at the cypress trees, the 180 degrees of green rolling hillsides, the newly-paved winding black road.
"There is nowhere in the world I'd rather be, nothing in the world I'd rather be doing, than climbing this hill, right here, right now." It wasn't a conscious thought, but it was clear enough to have been spoken. In the midst of my suffering, the heaviness of my legs was lifted. I felt light, nimble, fresh. My face, drawn with pain, turned to a smile. I started laughing.
I'm 9 days out. That playlist is on repeat in my head already.
(I apologize in advance to everyone who has to deal with my taper madness. I know, I'm a needy middle-school girlfriend right now.)
Notable workouts:
4/13 - 12 w/ last 4 faster than MP
4/17 - 16 @ 7:44 pace; my last run over 2 hours
4/19 - 8 @ MP+15sec
4/21 - 7 w/ mid 4 @ ~10k pace (6:19)
Friday, April 22, 2011
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Un giorno da leone
The title of this post has a few raisons d'etre...
First and foremost, it's what my marathon bib will say. My first was "ShutUpLegs!"
The second is the phrase it comes from: Meglio un giorno da leone che cento da pecora. Literally translated, this means "It's better to have one day as a lion than one hundred as a sheep." More figuratively and specific to my race, "Leave it all on the course." Fight pain, fight doubt, fight the desire to quit.
This is how I felt about Sunday's run. It was the peak run of this cycle, 20 miles with the last 10 @ marathon pace (MP), but to add a little fun, I scheduled 10 miles @ MP+30seconds pace the day before.
I went out on Sunday wanting to hit somewhere around 8:00/mile (at the fastest) and 8:20/mile (at the slowest) for my first 10. Normally, I'd start a 20 miler with 5 around 8:35-8:50/mile average, then the next 5 would be settled in around 8:30/mile. So this was already pushing it. Then adding the MP miles...
It hurt. The rollers through the neighborhood on the north rim of Newport Back Bay shred my legs and left me hurting quite a bit. Humidity was surprisingly low, so by mile 17, I was caked in sweat and completely dehydrated. The last 3 were a struggle holding pace, and my effort level and heart rate showed it. But as I came around the last corner from Jamboree onto Eastbluff and threw one of the most pathetic sprints I've ever thrown, I knew the run was in the bag and I was ready.
I officially entered my 3-week taper yesterday, though the miles don't start falling off significantly until next week. Perhaps not coincidentally, I had a dream about absolutely crushing my goal time last night. That was nice.
Recap highlights since last time:
4/4 - 8 mile tempo run: 2.5mile warm-up, 4x 5min at increasing effort from moderate to threshold, then 5min at 10k pace, followed by a brisk cooldown
4/6 - 15 miles with 10 at(below) MP: 2mile warm-up, 5 at MP-5seconds, 1mile easy, 5 at MP-10seconds, 2mile cooldown
4/9+4/10 - 10 + 20, as described above
4/12 - 8 mile tempo run: same as above, but the tempo portion was run about 4-5 seconds faster, on average, and the cooldown was 1.5miles at MP-10 followed by .5 at MP+10
Tomorrow, I'll hit 1000 miles training for this marathon. I broke 137 hours today. Exciting.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Into the Wild
This was going to be a race report from the trail run I did two weeks ago. Instead, it's going to be about the movie from which the race's name was taken.
Sort of.
A semi-well-planned night last night turned into another marathon - no pun intended - night-into-morning epic. This time, it was dinner, a Deaf event, midnight pancakes, and a movie that started past 1 in the morning and went for another two and a half hours. Most of which I spent relatively alone, as the other two were asleep.
I've always envied Christopher McCandless' courage. He did what every young, suburban male wants to do: threw away his money, his possessions, his life as he knew it, and searched for truth. A friend who I consider a brother once recited to me the following quote: "All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why."
While one of my partners in crime drove home last night, I kept her awake with a story that was only thinly veiled so as to suggest that there was some minuscule possibility that it wasn't my own.
I wrote of a young man named Everett Reilly who found himself in a life that was, in a word, comfortable; however, six months of sleepless nights finally pulled Everett from complacency and made him realize that comfort was the last thing he wanted. Everett soon found himself halfway across the world, writing feverishly as if a linear progression of words would somehow untangle the situation in which he found himself. He realized he was writing his sins. When his pen ran dry, he placed the pages aside, threw away his name, and declared to himself that his life would begin anew.
The young man - no longer Everett, but nameless - found himself wanting nothing more than to love for the sake of loving, for the sake of learning to love without condition. He found a young woman who would never return his love, but would allow herself to be doted upon, held, and watched. He discovered the question that would drive his new life, the question that must always have an immediate and obvious answer: what are we doing here that has to do with love?
Then, as suddenly as everything happened in this new place and life, he met a woman for whom the last had been preparing him. He called her Evve.
Evve kissed him in a way he had never been kissed before. When they breathed together, they understood what it must have felt like to be the first person to ever gasp the word Hallelujah.
The young man learned, however, as every protagonist must, that sometimes dreams last days, weeks, or even years, but that does not mean they are not dreams. Reality eventually forces itself into the dreamscape and shows the young man a devastating truth: for some, there are things much more important than love.
When the young man finally returned from his sojourns, he found that the mountains near his home were draped in snow. A strange, silent call grew within him, and he began to run, as hard as he could, towards the top of the highest peak.
When I got to the snow, I fell to my knees and pressed my face against it, tried to breathe it in with hopes that the air would turn to ice in my lungs and tear my breath from me in a way I hadn't known in far too long. In a way that would remind me of that word, Hallelujah. Of being so overwhelmed with just being alive that tears would come uncontrollably with laughter and every goddamn second would carry with it the weight of an entire lifetime.
Of the only acceptable answer to that question that drives every moment of my life: what are we doing here that has to do with love?
The answer: everything.
From time to time, people as me why I run so much. Whether or not I like it. Whether or not I think it's affecting my life... for better or worse. This is the truth that I can never articulate.
Sort of.
A semi-well-planned night last night turned into another marathon - no pun intended - night-into-morning epic. This time, it was dinner, a Deaf event, midnight pancakes, and a movie that started past 1 in the morning and went for another two and a half hours. Most of which I spent relatively alone, as the other two were asleep.
I've always envied Christopher McCandless' courage. He did what every young, suburban male wants to do: threw away his money, his possessions, his life as he knew it, and searched for truth. A friend who I consider a brother once recited to me the following quote: "All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why."
While one of my partners in crime drove home last night, I kept her awake with a story that was only thinly veiled so as to suggest that there was some minuscule possibility that it wasn't my own.
I wrote of a young man named Everett Reilly who found himself in a life that was, in a word, comfortable; however, six months of sleepless nights finally pulled Everett from complacency and made him realize that comfort was the last thing he wanted. Everett soon found himself halfway across the world, writing feverishly as if a linear progression of words would somehow untangle the situation in which he found himself. He realized he was writing his sins. When his pen ran dry, he placed the pages aside, threw away his name, and declared to himself that his life would begin anew.
The young man - no longer Everett, but nameless - found himself wanting nothing more than to love for the sake of loving, for the sake of learning to love without condition. He found a young woman who would never return his love, but would allow herself to be doted upon, held, and watched. He discovered the question that would drive his new life, the question that must always have an immediate and obvious answer: what are we doing here that has to do with love?
Then, as suddenly as everything happened in this new place and life, he met a woman for whom the last had been preparing him. He called her Evve.
Evve kissed him in a way he had never been kissed before. When they breathed together, they understood what it must have felt like to be the first person to ever gasp the word Hallelujah.
The young man learned, however, as every protagonist must, that sometimes dreams last days, weeks, or even years, but that does not mean they are not dreams. Reality eventually forces itself into the dreamscape and shows the young man a devastating truth: for some, there are things much more important than love.
When the young man finally returned from his sojourns, he found that the mountains near his home were draped in snow. A strange, silent call grew within him, and he began to run, as hard as he could, towards the top of the highest peak.
When I got to the snow, I fell to my knees and pressed my face against it, tried to breathe it in with hopes that the air would turn to ice in my lungs and tear my breath from me in a way I hadn't known in far too long. In a way that would remind me of that word, Hallelujah. Of being so overwhelmed with just being alive that tears would come uncontrollably with laughter and every goddamn second would carry with it the weight of an entire lifetime.
Of the only acceptable answer to that question that drives every moment of my life: what are we doing here that has to do with love?
The answer: everything.
From time to time, people as me why I run so much. Whether or not I like it. Whether or not I think it's affecting my life... for better or worse. This is the truth that I can never articulate.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Slacking, Already
Fortunately not in my running, just in recounting it. In my defense, I was pretty beat up after my longest-run-of-the-cycle on Saturday, and completely forgot on Sunday.
So, training for the week of of March 28-April 3. I was coming off a 21k (~half marathon) that turned into something closer to a 23k (14.3 miles) trail race on Saturday, but wanted to push things a bit since this was week 1 of a 3-week peak period in which I'll basically bury myself and become a sleep-craving zombie until taper, when the process will reverse itself.
Mon - 8 miles @ 7:36 pace.
Tue - 8 miles @ 7:47 pace.
Wed - 15 miles @ 7:48 pace.*
Thu - 5.3 miles @ 9:02 pace + four 10-second hill sprints in the morning, 2 very easy miles + 1 mile around MP in the afternoon.
Fri - always an off day. Dug up ~150ft^2 of the lawn to make room for a new vegetable garden addition.
Sat - 22.6 miles @ 8:21 pace.**
Sun - 7 @ 8:47 + five "strides"/hill sprints.***
Total - 69 for the week (longest Mon-Sun week to date).
*Wednesday's run started in just under 70 degree weather and ended in the low 80's. The last four miles were definitely a gut-check.
**Something about this run really, really hurt. It didn't help that my back was pretty sore from Friday's yardwork. Aerobically, it was a cakewalk. But it really tore up my knees and miles 17-20 were really tough. Not to mention that I had to pee for the entire first hour and there were no public bathrooms on the route... This is the Newport Back Bay loop, by the way. By mile 20, I was dehydrated, having trouble keeping cool, in a lot of pain, but the body just went on autopilot and brought me home.
***Strides are an exercise in which you gradually (over the course of 100m or so) accelerate to a near-maximal effort, hold that for 5 seconds, then gradually slow down again. It teaches you to increase your turnover and gives your legs some zip without tiring you out. Hill sprints are an 8-10 second maximal effort up as steep of a hill as you can find. The purpose of these is to strengthen joints/stabilizing muscles while greatly decreasing the amount of impact on your legs in a sprint, since you're going uphill.
Aside from the beating I took on Saturday, the entire week was a huge confidence booster, especially after the race on Saturday. More about that in the next post, though; I'm waiting to see if more photos get posted online from it.
So, training for the week of of March 28-April 3. I was coming off a 21k (~half marathon) that turned into something closer to a 23k (14.3 miles) trail race on Saturday, but wanted to push things a bit since this was week 1 of a 3-week peak period in which I'll basically bury myself and become a sleep-craving zombie until taper, when the process will reverse itself.
Mon - 8 miles @ 7:36 pace.
Tue - 8 miles @ 7:47 pace.
Wed - 15 miles @ 7:48 pace.*
Thu - 5.3 miles @ 9:02 pace + four 10-second hill sprints in the morning, 2 very easy miles + 1 mile around MP in the afternoon.
Fri - always an off day. Dug up ~150ft^2 of the lawn to make room for a new vegetable garden addition.
Sat - 22.6 miles @ 8:21 pace.**
Sun - 7 @ 8:47 + five "strides"/hill sprints.***
Total - 69 for the week (longest Mon-Sun week to date).
*Wednesday's run started in just under 70 degree weather and ended in the low 80's. The last four miles were definitely a gut-check.
**Something about this run really, really hurt. It didn't help that my back was pretty sore from Friday's yardwork. Aerobically, it was a cakewalk. But it really tore up my knees and miles 17-20 were really tough. Not to mention that I had to pee for the entire first hour and there were no public bathrooms on the route... This is the Newport Back Bay loop, by the way. By mile 20, I was dehydrated, having trouble keeping cool, in a lot of pain, but the body just went on autopilot and brought me home.
***Strides are an exercise in which you gradually (over the course of 100m or so) accelerate to a near-maximal effort, hold that for 5 seconds, then gradually slow down again. It teaches you to increase your turnover and gives your legs some zip without tiring you out. Hill sprints are an 8-10 second maximal effort up as steep of a hill as you can find. The purpose of these is to strengthen joints/stabilizing muscles while greatly decreasing the amount of impact on your legs in a sprint, since you're going uphill.
Aside from the beating I took on Saturday, the entire week was a huge confidence booster, especially after the race on Saturday. More about that in the next post, though; I'm waiting to see if more photos get posted online from it.
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