Having posted about disappointment recently as per my DNF at Terwillegar and my wonky calf muscle, it is only fitting that I post about today’s success as well. Again, I am posting my experiences for the benefit of beginners who are uncertain of what to expect.

So in today’s recovery run with a calf tensor on, I started out slow and cautious, but ended up feeling not too bad and running 11 kilometers with an average pace of 6:03 per kilometer, which was a negative split by a few seconds. Most of the run was flat country roads, with about 2.5 kilometers of bush trail, but it too was fairly flat and not at all technical.

Am I happier than I was last Saturday? You bet. Is my calf muscle healed? Not a chance that I’m trusting it to be healed. I can tell it is far from 100% and I need to continue to protect it for the foreseeable future.

The bottom line is that I made the correct call on Saturday to quit the race before I made a bad calf muscle worse. If I had continued to push on Saturday, I may very well have crippled myself with a calf tear or worse. So let that be a lesson to everyone that when you are faced with a tough decision to continue a competitive race, or to quit, making the right choice so you can run another day is better than the alternative.

Hey. Did I tell you all to run like you mean it?

As you may already know, I failed to finish my race last weekend. It was supposed to be a 16 kilometer trail race consisting of two 8 kilometer identical loops. I had trained for it as always, and I was aiming to finish with an average pace of somewhere between 6 and 7 minutes per kilometer. I had just met my previous goal of running a 10 kilometer relatively flat road training run in 58 minutes and change, so I knew I could do it.

I had run a much tougher course in under 2 hours easily. Last year I ran this exact same course in 2 hours and 4 or so minutes and this year I knew I could do it in 1 hour and 45 minutes or less, which would put me at an average pace of 6:33 – I was convinced.

Near the end of my first loop, at about the 6.5 kilometer mark, my time was at 40 minutes which put me roughly in the 6:09 per kilometer bracket and I was not even tired nor out of breath and had perfect confidence I could meet at least a 7 minute per kilometer goal. But half way up that long hill edging towards the 7 kilometer mark, I felt my left calf muscle saying to me that if I continued this race it would just pack it in.

In spite of my great disappointment, I decided to quit then and there. I was not about to actually suffer a tear in that muscle and face too much downtime in the future. Clearly, something went horribly wrong, and only then did I recall a similar twinge that made me abandon a training run only half a month before.

So, I rapidly went from a feeling of elation and looking forward to a sure PR and the best race I have ever run to a horrible realization that I had just been blindsided by an impenetrable brick wall.

I can’t tell you how bitterly resentful, disappointed, and depressed that made me feel. But what I can tell you is that I have been there many times in the past. And I can tell you that I have always and will now, come back as if it had never happened.

So this is a message to those of you just starting out that you will fail many times. At times it will seem as if all your hopes are dashed and you will never be a runner and that you should just quit. But no. Never give up. Always come back. Few injuries or setbacks are so serious that you cannot recover and go again. I have had more than a few persistent injuries which made it seem that I would never run again including injuries to my knee and an arthritic big toe. I overcame these with not only targeted exercise to address muscle imbalances and weaknesses but with an intense exercise regime that is now a part of my lifestyle. I am nowhere near where I want to be in terms of fitness, flexibility, and strength yet, and I am nowhere near my running peak in terms of either distance or speed. I still see my peak as being in the uphill direction and I am definitely not losing ground in terms of either speed or fitness in spite of my 59 years of age. I am continuing to improve my speed over distance and I see no end in sight.

As an aside I have to mention that in my local trail races, (www.5peaks.com), in my age group of 50-59, don’t even think about placing third or better in any race unless you can run a sub 5 minute per kilometer half marathon trail race. That’s how tough these guys and gals are. One of my friends in this age group ran the 16 kilometer trail race with an average pace of 5:56 and he came in 7th out of the 18 people in our age group, which happens to be 99th overall in a field of over 217 people young and old. The person who came in 5th overall is also in my age group and he ran an average pace of 4:14 so you know I am not lying when I say it is a tough age group. So for me, it is not about winning or even placing in a race since that is completely impossible. It is just about being the best I can be.

I still feel pretty upset about my DNF (Did Not Finish) but I realize now from looking at my performance over the years and my performance during this failed race, that my performance was actually spectacular (relative to me and my running history).

If you do not challenge yourself, you will never fail, but you will never succeed either. If you do not fail then you are not challenging yourself enough.

Which brings me to my next point: Always keep at least minimal records of your training runs and races. You can use your stats to plan races, to know how well you are going to do in a race, and if you can actually finish a race before everyone goes home, and for so many other reasons. There are so many ways to keep records now that you have no excuse. You can use many different on line race logs, or use your own computer or cell phone app, or just a piece of paper if you are still living in the dark ages. I know where I am now because I know where I have been before.

My next race is end of June which gives me plenty of time to fix that calf muscle. In the meantime, remember:

Run like you mean it!

So since the first trail race of the season is May 12th in Terwillegar Park in Edmonton, today’s run is the last long and hard training run until the race. I need to heal up. To be more specific I mean that I need to let my legs heal up totally before this race so I will cut back on the leg training until after the race. This means I will be going to only one more karate class and I will be skipping the next three classes. The leg work is just too intense and I just cannot hold back if I show up to karate class so I must stay away. But I will still be doing upper body work and certain leg exercises anyway including kata, but I will not be doing them in class because most classes these days are more like boot camp. I will also continue to use my foam roller a lot, do core exercises, push-ups, and stretching, but the legs get a well deserved rest. Time for a rest before the big race day in Edmonton.

I am still using my VFFs and they and me have become one. I cannot part with them unless it means going totally barefoot which I cannot safely do. I have begun running about 800 meters on a sandy road totally barefoot but I have my doubts if I could ever safely run such an intense trail race as I did today safely in that way. To give you a very common incident which logically precludes actually running barefoot any time soon: Today I stepped on a twig with my left foot and rammed the end of the pinned-down twig right into the top of my VFF covered foot, breaking the twig. If I had been barefoot, that twig would have penetrated the top of my foot and I would probably be bleeding all the way down the trail if I could run at all. So it is not just cuts and injuries to the bottom of the foot you have to worry about when running trails. You also have to worry about shredding the tops of your feet and your unprotected toes. And it is never pleasant when sticks get rammed in between your toes either. I am not saying that it is impossible to run barefoot. I am just saying that if I try to do that I have to be prepared for a lot of injuries and failures which the VFFs protect me from.

I think I will reserve the totally barefoot running for nice days on a well-known predictable surface free of cutting hazards. OK. That’s all for today. Remember, run like you mean it!