As I ran the same road today, I wondered where I would be today if I had let the pain get the best of me and if I had quit running. Where would I be if I had given up at the first sign of difficulty, sacrifice, pain, and effort? I know where I would be, and it is not a good place. Instead, I am where I am and I worked damn hard to get here. I am not a fast runner by any means, and I probably won’t get much faster, but I am a runner nonetheless. If I had given up all those years ago…

But I did not give up. I knew that at some point in the future, I would wake up, and realize just how far I have come and where I am now in terms of being a fit person. I am grateful that I did not give up.

Which brings me to a point I like to state and restate as often as possible. Where will you be in terms of health and fitness five years from now if you do not do anything about it? Therefore do not focus so much on ultimate goals – instead, focus on just doing a day at a time. Focus on being consistent. That is the key. Then look back at yourself as you were five years ago and make judgments…

So today I ran two kilometer intervals, and walked for a minute in between. I would say that at least for today, the run/walk method worked very well for me. Remember: It is better for you to do less consistently than to do much inconsistently. When you race, race hard, but in the end you realize that races are short and transient. What is permanent is what you do every day in a consistent manner to maintain that healthy lifestyle and to improve upon it. I know I am being preachy and pedantic, and I’ve said some pretty obvious things, but if it helps even one struggling person out there, then I’m willing to live with that embarrassment.

Train hard, run hard, and live gently…

So I started out slow, planning on running 2 kilometers and walking just long enough to blow my nose and have a drink which runs at around a minute to a minute and a half I guess. It’s the first time this season that I am incorporating walk breaks on my long runs (thanks Jen). I don’t think this was a fair test though. Yesterday’s karate class was a real leg workout and I was very “lactic acid” sore I could hardly hobble around. I knew it would be better after a warm up and I was doing pretty good up until kilometer 11 when I began to really feel that it just wasn’t working out. I was averaging about 7:25 per km at the 11 kilometer half way point of my training run. Around kilometer 16 I really began to suffer and I was really struggling to maintain that average pace. My pace slipped a little and I finished with an average pace of 7:35 per kilometer.

I gave up the walk run thing after kilometer 18 because it just wasn’t helping. I had to keep running or else I would stop and seize up. I really did not want to walk the rest of the way and end up with a 10 minute or more pace per kilometer so I had to use strong kime, or focus.

I sort of fell into a trance and I had to grit my teeth and run through the pain. I used every psychological trick in the book. After kilometer 18 I said to myself, it’s just 4 more kilometers, don’t stop. Ever. Just run another kilometer and it will be only 3 more teensy weensy kilometers!

The pain is just because my body was already saturated with lactic acid (I assume) and I had extreme muscle burn before I started the run. Although I have never run an ultra marathon, I knew from reading about them that one way to train is to run back to back long runs. Run long one day and again the next. So I told myself that it must feel exactly like this and pretended to be training for an ultra.

It helped with my kime. Kime is a Japanese term from karate where you have intense concentration and focus and yet you are completely relaxed until the very last moment when everything tenses up for the strike. So mentally I was focusing just on that next short kilometer while at the same time trying to relax every muscle in my body that wasn’t needed for running.

I was so grateful when I crossed that 22 kilometer finish line for this training run and I really enjoyed walking that last kilometer home. Now for two days of healing ending with my next karate class Tuesday night. It’s good to push yourself past seemingly impossible barriers only to find that the other side is indeed reachable. But it is also good to reward yourself with some constructive rest and healing time too.

Anyway, I still felt very very sore and fragile after last Sunday’s 21 km run outdoors, not to mention yesterday’s karate class. I’m not at all surprised that it took me 14 slow laps just to shake loose, get warm, and lose the pain. The MT joint behind my big toe on my right foot was really swollen and painful, plus I felt like my entire skeleton was made of glass shards sending electric shocks through my whole body with each step. I am surprised that I lost most of the pain and managed a much better pace for the remaining 30 laps, still I was grateful for the 3 lap cool down at the end.

So I would say that today was a bad day. A really bad day would be one in which I either failed to run a scheduled run at all, or else I bailed at some point during the run and did not finish. A good day is one where I run well, with an above average pace for me. So an average day would be where I run my normal pace without losing too much time – and not being in a huge amount of pain that wouldn’t quite heal before the next workout.

It may seem obvious that I would have an equal amount of good days vs bad days, thus giving me an average (hence an “average day”) but that is not the case. I’m very sure I don’t have a whole lot of bad days, and even fewer really really bad days. And I am also pretty sure that I have a lot of good days. Nevertheless, most days are average days, neither good nor bad.

Perhaps you think it is pointless to write about the obvious. Everyone has good, bad, and average days, after all, right? You may be right, but I think it is therapeutic and even beneficial to verbalize and document one’s running history. In this way, you can gain an objective perspective on your running that can help you get through the bad days and even to help you accept and dismiss the really really bad days. So the next time you are in a really despondent mood because you’ve just bailed out during a run, or you have a really bad run, remember to focus on the average and good runs, which are – or should be – in the vast majority of your runs. If average and good runs do not greatly outweigh the bad ones – then you are surely doing something very wrong and you need to get help.