johnsjar

My running really sucks, but at least I suck way faster than I used to. Today’s pace was 7:26 per km over 12 km. I can’t say that the warmer temperatures (-10 for today’s run) are making me enjoy running outside in the winter any better.

I remember my first race ever when I ran a 10 km in about 1:20. Today, I can run a 10 km in 1:05. That’s a fifteen minute difference without me having lost any of my excess cargo. Actually, I have lost about 10 pounds since then, however I need to lose another 20 at least.

Which sort of brings me to my main point which is this: losing 5 minutes over 10 km to run it in under an hour may seem like a trivial amount of time to a non runner, but it actually takes an inordinate amount of effort to break that barrier. Even elite athlete runners work insanely hard to shave mere seconds off their time. Five minutes is a lifetime.

When one first begins running, it seems like hell on earth (said from the perspective of a non-athlete who hasn’t exercised in decades). After a while if you stick to it, you find that you make rapid gains in speed and distance initially until you hit your personal barrier when it seems impossible to get any better than you are. You reach a plateau and you can cruise there for years before you gain the experience to break that barrier. You identify that barrier and find ways to break it down, though it may take many months to do it. Barriers include trading weight for speed (which I am struggling with), dealing with persistent injuries, educating yourself on how to do it right, and I’m sure there are as many personal barriers as there are persons.

I’m wondering what personal barriers you all had to deal with or are struggling with right now?

I thought of various other titles for this post. Titles like “It was brutal! It was really really brutal!” But Brain Monkeys won out. And today’s run was brutal. I hurt a lot. I’m just this crazy frozen lump of crazy frozen ting. I barely made it back alive. The wind was brutal. It felt like -20. Most of my run was through ankle deep drifting snow. I am exhausted. Trying to run on a thick unstable surface just kills me. Anyway, I did manage to finish. You may well ask: “But what’s this I hear about Brain Monkeys? How much are they and where can I get one?” Trust me, they come uninvited and you don’t really want one because they multiply and will try to browbeat you into submission.

Yes friends, I suffer from the heartbreak of BRAIN MONKEYS. Last Friday I was scheduled for a 12 km training run but I decided against it because I was still so sore from Tuesday’s karate class and Wednesday’s 11 km speed run indoors. My calves were still not healed up yet and Saturday’s karate class promised to be an intense one with an entire migratory herd of fanatical Black Belts showing up from the city.

So Friday, I was sitting, drinking my morning (mourning?) coffee, and pondering whether to risk injury and go for that run or to take the safe road and wait – especially since Sunday’s run which is today – was a major 19 km marathon training run – the day after an intense 2 hour karate class. And Friday’s run was to put me at 161 km, which is just over 100 miles since the beginning of January, as the brain monkeys were fond of pointing out. I was at 149 km.

I really hated the idea of skipping Friday’s run, especially when I had an almost irresistible troupe of brain monkeys shouting at me saying “…get out there and run, you lazy bastard…”

The brain monkeys were spitting, hooting and howling, shouting out insults, screeching, and pounding the ground with their fists. They were chucking handfuls of dirt, twigs and grass at me. They were kicking sand in my face and tearing up clumps of shrubbery to throw at me.

They wanted me to run. Resisting the brain monkeys took a huge effort but in the end they gave up and stopped disrespecting me.

I did not run Friday. I rested. I healed. I rocked in Saturdays karate class. I rocked in today’s 19 km long run given the brutal conditions I had to work with. All because I took the time to rest. I avoided injury. So as of today, January 31 – I am at 168 km since the beginning of the year.

The message I have for you is clear: Don’t listen to the BRAIN MONKEYS. Take the time to rest and you may not only avoid injuries, but you may also do a lot better than if you listened to your own personal brain monkeys.

During my 12 km run yesterday, I was thinking how often I have had to “start all over again”.

Long story short, the Greek myth of Sisyphus: Sisyphus was condemned to roll a large stone up to the top of a pointy hill, only to have the stone roll down again – for all eternity. Perhaps we runners won’t have to contend with our own problems for all eternity, but sometimes it seems like it.

All too often we are on a roll (no pun intended), then suffer a setback. It seems like we are always taking one step forward and two back – always starting from scratch. We get injured, sidetracked, busy, or whatever. The point is, sometimes life seems like a Greek myth.

So many runners suffer injuries and have to rest and recuperate, then start all over again from a lower level of fitness. The worst problems are those injuries whose cause can’t be pinpointed for whatever reason. Doctors don’t seem to be able to take the time to help because the cause is not obvious and the expense too high. The most common injuries are, not surprisingly, of the knee and foot variety.

Most of the attention in the medical care field is given to those who are older and so unfit and unhealthy that they are at great risk. Here in Canada, if you can still walk, nobody seems to care about your petty little knee twinge. The time and resources of physiotherapists, surgeons, and doctors are devoted to fixing the broken hips of elders or to the really serious injuries of the younger such as broken bones, or whatever.

This is understandable. Clearly our annoyance at having to run slower because of some relatively minor problem is not as important as helping our grandparents to stay ambulatory. What this means is that since our health care resources are not, and will probably never be, able to deal with minor issues that we runners suffer from, we have to take responsibility for our own health care.

That is not an easy task, given that I, for one, don’t have a lot of knowledge about the mechanics of it. I see a lot of runners posting about mysterious unresolved injuries which seriously limit their ability to perform the sport of their choice.

Given the understandable lack of support, what’s a runner to do? I suppose the first thing one has to do is reflect on a change of goals and attitudes. One has to accept the chronic injury while at the same time not giving up. Find ways to stay active, adapt, change, but never give up. Keep looking for a solution all the while.

So having said all this, what are some of your favorite ways to stay active during an injury? Clearly the activity has to be something you can still do with your injury without aggravating the situation. Swimming, weight training, biking, elliptical are all activities which we use for cross training and incidentally, for filling the gaps when we are unable to run. Maybe some of us have to give up running but take up race walking, for example.

I would like to know your thoughts on this.

All the world’s a track,
And all the men and women merely runners:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one runner in his time plays many parts…

And so today I ran at the indoor track. I ran 6 laps for a warm up, then began my 44 lap 10 km time trial. My pace was 6:40 per kilometer so I ran it in 1:06:36. In all I did 11.36 (50 laps) km today. Then I walked a few extra laps for a cool down. Did my stretches and some push ups after. Then I went to the pool where something new happened. After only a few minutes of just bobbing around a small area in my left calf muscle began contracting uncontrollably over an area about the size of a dollar coin, causing me a considerable amount of incapacitating pain. No sooner did that settle down a bit when my right calf muscle just below the knee did the same thing over a much larger area (an area about the size of my hand) and the pain was ten times worse. I had to get out of the water for that one. It feels like the muscles were contracting uncontrollably and unrelentingly. It’s like the muscles said “Oh hey, were contracting permanently now and yes we know that we are being ripped and torn apart but we don’t care because we’re not relaxing, so piss off.”

Well, this has never happened to me before ever; it is something completely new to me. I have no idea why this happened. I had to get out as I’ve said, and get into the hot tub to try to relax it out. It’s still pretty sore right now but the worst seems to be over. Perhaps it was due to my hot muscles being submerged in cold water, I don’t know for sure. The hot tub helped a lot.

The only thing I did differently today was that instead of drinking water, I drank orange Powerade. As you know, this has sodium and potassium salts in it as well as sugars. I usually drink only water for such a short indoor run. I only drink Powerade during my outside runs. I drank a total of 500 mL.

The part I played today in the world is that of the runner who was initially highly perturbed by a spasm incident, but quickly decided to totally ignore it and just carry on.

I am reminded of a conversation I had a long time ago with some people who were interested in running and exercise as a means to an end. I told them creating mini goals is good. But forget about losing 60 pounds. Just focus on losing one pound this week only. Then never gain it back. But they seemed to be only focused on the end result. They wanted to lose x pounds by such and such a date. I told them to forget about that and to focus on making lifestyle changes. Just do it for the rest of your life and not for some arbitrary period of time. Some of them said they were too old. I asked them, “OK, so how old will you be next year if you do nothing?” The reply was of course a year older. Then I asked “OK, so how old will you be if you do something?” The point is that no matter what your choices are, you will be a year older. It is better to make the right choice now so that when you are a year older you can look back and say I am better than I was last year, even if I haven’t reached my ultimate goal. It’s better than wishing you had done something and better than feeling awful about missing out on a whole year’s progress. Some say they feel it is too late for them and they don’t have much time left. I just ask, “how much time do you think you have left?” No matter what they reply I just say that they have the entire rest of their lives.

I suffer set backs all the time and probably so does everyone else. I have not reached my ultimate goal and I probably never will reach it. But that is not the point. The point is to make it a forever thing. Everything else will follow.

Just as you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink, you can lead people to the well of critical thought, but you can’t make them think…and while we are at it, you can show people the best path to take to improve their lives, but you can’t make them run it. People will find excuses for damn near everything I have found. And it’s never their fault.

All the world is indeed a stage and all the men and women on it merely players. The question is: How will you perform your role? (Thanks to Shakespeare for the poetry).

I can hardly wait for tomorrow, I’m so excited! Why am I excited? Because tomorrow is the one day of the week when I get to run indoors, where I can wear shorts and a T-shirt instead of layers of winter running gear and slogging it through the icy and unforgiving cold, which I do twice a week anyway.

In the winter I like to run indoors once a week but I don’t like treadmills. Our local indoor walking/running track requires 4.4 laps per kilometer, which means 10 km is 44 laps. I like to do 50 laps though which is approximately 11.36 km.

I’ve been doing this every winter for a while now and I’ve discovered that there is no way I can keep count of that many laps. Oh sure, it’s all fun and games for the first few laps, and easy to keep count, but after the oxygen deprivation sets in and your brain starts to wander, it’s too easy to lose track. You begin to wonder if that was lap 27 or 25. No really, you do! The easy solution I found is to carry one of those small stock counters looped around one of my fingers. Every time I run past that water cooler that marks one lap, I just click the button and voila, one lap recorded.

I use the outside track of the three tracks, while slower walkers use the inside ones. There are a lot of seniors, kids, and others who don’t really understand or care about not taking up the whole track as they plod along (in spite of the signs saying not to walk more than two abreast). But I don’t mind since it is easy enough to go around them anyway, and I love the fact that at least they are out there doing something!

And at this time of year, there seems to be a lot of resolution makers who appear, but that crowd gradually thins and disappears as time goes on. You have the regular seniors who come often just to walk, you have mothers with their baby strollers also using the track, and you have athletes (mostly students of high school age) who run very fast for a lap or two, then they run down stairs two flights of stairs and come back up again. There are many types of people using the track many ways. The only thing that sort of bugs me about the track is that they have me always running in an anticlockwise direction. They reverse directions on other days, but it’s Wednesday when I go and I just wish I could run the other direction for a change!

They also have overhead speakers where you can listen to radio music. The track itself is fairly cushy and I always run faster on it than on the road.

I use this indoor running day to do speed work; that is a really quick run at race pace in an effort to beat the 10 km hour mark. I’ve never been able to do it yet, but my best time is 1 hour and 3 minutes and change. Usually I run it around 1:09 or so.

Anyway, the weekly speed run is an integral part of my marathon training which I will run May 2nd. So Sunday is my long run (next one is 14 km), Wednesday is my indoor speed run, and Friday is a 12 km tempo run, not at race pace but just at a comfortable level for me.

Monday is a rest day, so is Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, except that I do cross training on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

The cross training is 2 hours with a short break at the hour mark and is karate which is quite intense if you are a runner because of the amount of leg work involved. Still, I like it for the total mind and body workout which trains you to recruit more muscle and to increase your balance and motor coordination.

I can do intense workouts on treadmills if it involves short distance of less than 5 km (much less, ha ha) and I have the track steeply inclined for a hill type workout. I could like it more if there was someone running with me on a treadmill beside mine, like they have in the fitness centers. That way, old slow me could still run with the faster folk and have a chat at the same time. I think I’d like that.

Finally, the indoor track is an intense and difficult speed workout for me so it is good that I can – in the same building – go for a swim after and a dip in the massaging jets of the hot tubs.

Tomorrow is a good day. I can hardly wait!

Well the first class of 2010 was relatively easy. I don’t think any of us did any karate during the holidays and the Christmas break of almost a month didn’t help. Classes usually end during this time as the schools where we have our dojo are usually booked solid with Christmas activities for the students.

Anyway, I enjoyed the class. We did kata and more basics, and we did a lot of kicks against the mats that were being held up by some of us. I like using mats because we can use full power without hurting anyone. But I like sparring too even though I’m not very good at it because sparring teaches control and awareness that you just can’t get from kata or from hitting a mat. Sparring gives you a real opponent who almost never reacts in a textbook manner. It’s the closest thing to real street fighting we get in the dojo. Of course, a real fight is over in less than 30 seconds anyway. None of this dancing around stuff, or fancy moves like you see in the movies.

Fortunately, I plan to never get into a real fighting situation.

I’ve decided to stay at my level this year and not grade until next year. Unless things change drastically. I really want to focus on my basics and learn them well before I even think about grading to brown. Blue suits me nicely for the foreseeable future.

Today’s run was a good one. The weather was partly overcast and a lot warmer at -16 or so, so I was quite warm. I began the run a bit on the slow side, but achieved a negative split, averaging a 7:30 pace over 13 kilometers. I quite happy about this run to mark the beginning of my marathon training program. I just hope this time I can avoid injury.

I’m also glad the holidays are over and that Karate is starting up again this Tuesday. I’m looking forward to that. Speaking of which, I should go now and go through a few kata.