Post Marathon Blahs

There are a lot of things about running a marathon that you don't know until you've run a marathon. In fact, even four months after my virgin fling, I'm still learning things, not all of them pleasant. In fact, almost none of them pleasant.

I'm one of those people who thinks they know everything before they know anything. I know, we're incredibly annoying. But the point is, I thought I knew pretty much everything there was to know about running a 26.2 mile long run before I'd ever run ten miles. I was so wrong.

I won't go into all the ways I was ignorant, because this is a blog and not a set of encyclopedias, but I will say that I've been absolutely shocked at how hard it has been to get back into the swing of things after the race. And it's been four months. You'd think that would be enough time, and maybe it is, but just barely, for me anyways.

I won't go into all the aches and pains, though they were very real. I think I'm over the hump in that regard.

No, the big challenge for me has been motivation. It's not that I'm not excited about running. I clearly am. It's that I have a hard time mustering the energy and enthusiasm to get on the trail.

My therapy for this problem, like it is for so many others, is to go running. Works wonders.

How my $7.99 pair of Brooks Cascadias cost me big time.

I don't think that I'm the only one on the trails in this town or any other for whom one of the chief appeals of running early on was that it was cheap. Some shorts, a $40 pair of shoes and I'm outa here. And I even kind of resented the shoes part.

That was the idea. Though it didn't quite work out that way.

My downfall was finding a pair of bright yellow, used Brooks Cascadias at our local Goodwill. They were in awesome shape and they fit beautifully. They cost me $7.99 plus tax and I took them out running the very next morning. They were so much nicer than the cheap big name running shoes I'd been wearing, and I was so happy.

Only bad thing was, after a couple of months, I started to feel the trail a lot more intimately than I had when I got the yellow Brooks. They were wearing out.

Running shoes, I discovered, do that. Even though they still look fine, they just aren't any more. If you run, you know that. You've simply got to replace them. Experts say that you should replace your shoes every 300 miles or so. When I'm running a lot, that happens fast, so I need to bite the bullet every couple of months? Being cheap and a procrastinator, I usually stretch that out to every three months or so.

And new shoes, I discovered, aren't cheap. When I priced new Brooks Cascadias, I found out they weren't selling them for $8 a pair. Not even close. I was looking at around $100 a pair.

But I bought a pair anyway. And you know what, the new ones felt even better than the ones I found at the thrift store. As I kept on training for my first marathon, I graduated to even more expensive shoes, the Brooks Trance 7, which I found online for around $120. I felt bad about not buying them locally. From then on, I've gotten them at local running shops, even though it costs a bit more.

At this point I've resigned myself to spending a little money on my habit. And when you think about it, $300 or $400 a year for shoes isn't such a bad deal after all. It's better than crack and prostitutes, I tell my wife. She smirks.

And I'm still keeping my eyes open for another pair of lightly worn Cascadias in my size. You never know when that same guy is going to get rid of another pair before they're even worn in. This time I'd pay up to $8.99 for them, too. I've come to realize that I'm worth it. Just hope they're in yellow again.

Feet were never meant to be naked . . . or were they?

Naked Running is a great concept but problematic in ways I won't get into here. Use your imagination.

But one thing that all but the craziest runners agree on is this: running barefoot is a bad idea.

I know that 50 years ago there were African runners who ran marathons barefoot, but I'm still trying to get my mind around that idea.

My feet seem so fragile, and my shoes are there to keep my ankles from rolling over and my soles from getting bruised and battered. Not only are shoes necessary for me to run, but I'd say that good shoes are an absolute requirement.

Even when I look back and see what people were running in back in the late 60s, it makes me a bit woozy. And the times they were turning in were simply phenomenal. So are great shoes necessary for great running? Clearly not, but why would anybody want to deny themselves the added safety and comfort of good shoes? It just doesn't make sense.

There is one exception. Running on the beach. That's one place where running nakey-toed is pure pleasure.

Heat Stroke

One of the hardest things in running is stopping when you know you should even though you really don't want to.

But that's the precisely the position I found myself in this morning on our 5 mile run.

It was a hot Central Texas morning, temperature about 90 and humidity at least that high. It felt more like Southeast Asia than Texas.

I was running well, enjoying talking with the folks in my new group with Austin Fit. We were ticking off the miles pretty good, slightly sub-8 for the first couple miles, and I was happy.

But about halfway through the run, I started heating up, and I knew I was in trouble. Now, what I'm talking about is different than being hot. Being hot I can handle. The onset of heat stroke feels very different, and I think I'm getting good at spotting the difference.

It's happened to me a few times over the past few years. I feel my head start getting hot, like a furnace, and if I don't back off, or even walk, I know what's going to happen. My entire core will get heat soaked, and I'll go into heat stroke. That happened to me last year. I decided I was going to run through it, which was a big mistake. The gains you think you'll make by pushing yourself are completely outweighed by the damage you do by letting yourself get too hot, not to mention the risks you run. People drop dead from heat stroke. It's no laughing matter.

So today I was smart. When I felt it coming on, I walked. And I walked until I cooled off. And then I ran again. I did it twice, and it worked.

And it sucked, too, because I was running great. I had plenty of muscle power and plenty of wind. Had it been ten degrees cooler, it probably would have been an awesome run.

But it wasn't, though I'm proud of making the hard choice of backing off when I knew I should. Right now I'm feeling fine, and that makes me happy, especially when I consider the alternatives, like suffering from the effects of full blown heat stroke (which can last for days) or worse, much worse.

Back at the group's meeting place, I was talking to my running buddies about the episode, and they seemed completely unaware of what I was saying. There clearly needs to be some more education on this issue.

And one of the most frightening things about it is, those who are starting to get heat stroke often deny to themselves and others that its' happening. Here's a great piece from the New York Times that discusses the medical issue.

My Dog Chasing the African Runners

One morning last year I was about two-thirds done with my run with my dog Django, an Aussie Shepherd, who was just over a year old at the time. After a few miles I'd interrupted the run and I'd taken him down to the water at Town Lake to continue his impromptu swimming lessons. He didn't take naturally to the water, and I was trying to desensitize him to it.

I'd taken his leash off, and he was getting excited about being off of it, and being in the water (up to his knees anyway). I mean, he was getting really worked up, so I decided to put his leash back on, not knowing what he might do if left to his own devices. I was just about to grab his collar when up on the trail about ten feet away I saw a flash. It was a runner, a really, really fast runner, a Burundian guy who's a former Olympian. This guy can run 5 minute miles for an entire marathon. Before I had a chance to act, Django was gone, off chasing this guy.

It took me about two mili-seconds to realize that unless I got it in high gear like right now, that dog was going to be miles away in no time and I would have no earthly way of finding him or him me. I scrambled up the bank and took off after the dog/Olympian duo. By the time I was on the trail, they were at least 50 yards ahead of me.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to make up 50 yards on an Olympic 10,000 meter runner? And he was really moving--this was, unfortunately, not one of his long, slow runs. But I was hauling ass, and I was gaining on them. Would I have enough wind to keep it up long enough to catch them? Would my heart burst right there on the trail?

These were the questions running through my madly addled brain when the guy turned, saw the dog and figured it out. He stopped, glanced at his watch in a totally pissed off way, like this stupid dog was wrecking his workout, which it probably was, and saw me heading his way.

I was just about to lay hands on my dog and put the leash back on when, whoosh!, there goes the guy's friend past us, and off goes the dog again! I took off after Django, but the other runner wasn't any more than 20 yards off when he too stopped. I grabbed Django by the scruff of the neck, clicked on the leash and thanked the guys for stopping. They gave me a look and then hit the trail.

I then informed Django that he was a very bad dog.

That wasn't the only reason I stopped running with my spastic dog, but its was the final straw. We have a new deal. Town Lake trail is my turf. The dog park is his. We're both way happier that way.

Well, at least I am.

Garmin 405 Early Review

I have checked out the Garmin 405, the GPS company's newest and coolest model, extensively. Well, except that it was a non-working model. But it really does look cool, and I plan to get one as soon as I can convince my wife that it's a good idea. Or until she isn't looking carefully, whichever comes first.

My biggest question isn't whether I should get one or not . . . it's which color should I get.

There are two colors, black and pale green.

The black is very manly.

The pale green is very cool looking, even if some people might think it's a girl color.

It's just not. It's just a hipster color.

And besides, if I'm fast enough, I won't be able to hear the taunts.

I hope that wasn't too technical a post.

Getting Started

My book is called, "How to Get Running and Stay Running." It will be available from waly press some day. I just have to figure out when I've reached the point where I can say, I stayed running. I don't think I'm there yet. We'll see.

Not to spoil the suspense, but one of the biggest traps for me with running is setting goals. It's not that goals don't motivate me . . . they totally do. But it's when I fail to reach a goal that's the dangerous thing. I see it as a failure and my instinct is to say, "Well then just screw it. If I can't do what I set out to do, then I just give up." I know I'm not alone in this feeling. And it's perfectly natural, especially if you try hard at something and still don't make it. It makes you feel helpless and hopeless.

As a way to overcome this tendency, when I started running again a couple of years ago, I set incredibly realistic goals and I gave myself permission to quit. At first, it was in a year. "If I don't get to where I can run 10 miles--I really don't even remember what it was--in a year, then I give myself permission to quit." But I didn't. Within a year I was running ten miles and I had no intention or inclination to quit.

It's also frustrating not to get super skinny. All I want to do is look like a 20-year-old Abercrombie model. Is that too much to ask! So when I somehow don't wind up looking like that, I have to make a deal with myself. "If I'm not looking like a six-pack stick boy in a year, then I give myself permission to quit running."

By then I'll probably be at least a little skinnier, which will encourage me to give it at least another year.

Stepping on Tiny Objects and Running Supercomputers

When I'm tooling along, I sometimes get lost in the incredible, mind-bending realization that my mind is making these incredible calculations about where my foot is going to land next. There's a tree root eight feet yonder. No worries. My I'm landing five inches shy of it. And I do. Wow. How did I know that? Supercomputer at work, I'm telling you.

But sometimes my lil' noggin goes to work turning calculations purely for entertainment purposes. Sometimes when I'm walking along the sidewalk, I try to time my steps so the toe of my shoes hit exactly on the edge of the crack (thereby protecting my mother's back while generating a little suspense at the same time). I really do it just to see if I can, and it's not easy to get it exactly right, but I can get within four or five inches every time.

Another odd little thing I do is step on tiny objects I see on the trail. Sometimes I do it to see if I can, but other times it's just to see what will happen. I was really curious about what kind of noise a bottle cap I saw on the trail this morning would make if I clipped the edge of it. I did, and it made the exact sound I predicted in my head. It was kind of eerie. How did I know all that. Supercomputer.

One thing my Deep Blue of a brain can't do, however, is make myself go much faster when I start to crash. There seems to be some kind of automatic slow mode it makes my body go into when I start to go into distress, which happens all the time, as going into distress is the very purpose and nature of running! Physiologists say we can milk a lot more performance out of our bodies than our brain lets us milk. Then again, it can hit get my foot to clip the exact edge of a 3/4-inch bottle cap at 11 miles per hour on a gravel trail. Maybe it knows something about max performance we haven't figured out yet.

Better Running Through Destroying Others

My run this morning was a classic example of something that doesn't happen very often, a bad run gone good.

I showed up for my group run down under the pecan trees at the TexDot parking lot at 7:00 sharp. Only problem was, they had moved the run up to 6:00 am this week and the only thing in the lot was a lonely gatorade jug. Arghhh.

So I drove back around to the Barton Springs trailhead (so I'd be able to jump in the water at the end of my run). I parked my Corolla and headed out onto the brown gravel trails on my own.

I was wearing my new silver-and-gold kicks, Saucony ProGrid Guides--I know, sounds very fancy--so I was curious to see how'd they feel.

My goal was a fast-to-moderate paced seven and a half miles, which is around Lake Lady Bird taking the I-35 Loop. I've done it a lot.

I crossed over the Barton Creek footbridge, then headed along the bluffs to the west, turned over the Mopac pedestrian bridge, enjoying the breeze blowing in over the the river, then made my way back east along the lake past countless joggers, dog walkers and the occasional bum, eventually winding my way up to the freeway bridge.

It was hard running and I wasn't happy. I realized that I wasn't in marathon shape any more and felt sad about that. I stopped a few times to walk, and once to get my head wet. Even though it was only like 8:00, it was already 90 degrees and about 90 percent humidity. Not good running weather. And I was working hard. Too hard.

I had to stop and walk some more on my way over the freeway bridge, as the stream of cars whizzed by my shoulder, then made the uphill turn on the sidewalk onto Riverside, up the incline then down the long hill to the water station at First Street.

I grabbed a quick drink--thanks, RunTex--and then stuck my head under the shower spray to cool off.

I needed it. I was still not happy about my run. I was slow, I had to walk too much and I missed out on running with my friends. This wasn't how I hoped things would go.

But then, as I wandered back onto the trail feeling a bit glum and started into my run, something happened. A young woman came up from behind and passed me, throwing a look over her shoulder at me like people sometimes do when they think they're hotter than you (which she most assuredly was) and, more to the point, when they think they're a better runner than you (which I had my doubts about).

She was, in fact, one of those people I hate, young and naturally thin and in great shape. And she was running well. Those people suck in every way.

So I made it my goal to demoralize her. I don't know exactly what came over me; it just seemed like what Jesus would do.

Now, I had about a mile and change to go on my run with only about six miles under my belt, and I was doing okay, so I had some energy to work with.

I started by keeping up just behind her, her annoying brown pony tail swishing back and forth, taunting me. I pushed it just enough to make her do the same, keeping it so she could just barely see me out of the corner of her eye.

Then she played right into my hands. She sped up.

Well, this was perfect, all I had to do was speed up so that I would be in the exact same place relative to her, which if you've ever run you know, makes it seem as though you haven't sped up at all. Which makes it seem as though all that extra energy you're expending is for nothing.

Then I made my slow move, creeping just past her. Once ahead, instead of putting the hammer down, I kept her right there, just behind me. And I kept my pace steady for a while so she got to thinking she could keep up.

But as soon as she did, I increased the pace subtly, making it seem to her as though she was slowing down, which she wasn't. Which much to my delight, didn't stop her from trying to keep up all the more. And then I'd speed up just a little it more, and a little more after that.

It could have backfired on me, but it didn't. I was running great, clipping off the miles at a race pace, and she was doing her damnest to keep up. But she couldn't.

As she began to fade, I looked back over my shoulder and smiled just a little, before picking up the pace even more. In another minute, she was a way behind me, still skinny, young and naturally fit, but way the fuck behind me. Ha!

Five minutes later I was cooling my jets down at the spillway, the cool water flowing by me as I took in the beautiful summer morning. I felt good. My bad run turned into a great finish. And to think I owe it all to my inner soul crusher.

Ain't running sweet!

Virgin Marathon

I generally hate group anythings, and I only attended my first session at Austin Fit because I was hounded into it by my running buddy, Lisa. And it was only with the understanding that even though it was costing me ninety bucks, my tenure with the group would likely be a one-meeting affair. I liked running, but truth be told, I wasn't really sold on the idea of slapping my soles for 26.2 miles of pain. So why I needed to belong to a group with the express purpose of preparing me for that grueling goal was beyond me.

But the first run went okay, so I gave it another meeting. Then another. Pretty soon, much to my dismay, I was in. I even started to think in terms of preparing for a marathon, for the marathon. I have no idea how that happened.

It might have been because my first few runs with Amy's Hombres (yellow, 8:30) convinced me that I had a lot of room to grow. On one particular jaunt, a five or six miler, if I remember, we held a sub-8:20 pace up the hill toward St. Ed's--at least I tried to hold that pace--and I saw very clearly that any idea I had that I might be ready to run a marathon, at least at the pace I was aiming at, was still very much a concept. I bonked three miles from home and walked much of the rest of the way.

But as the weeks went by and the runs grew longer, I was making progress, hard progress. At home I complained, half joking, about James, whose given name my wife really believed was "That Bastard James." He was a machine, a veritable one-foot-in-front-of-the-other

-regardless-of-the-steepness-of-the-terrain-or-the-length-of-the-run machine. How he did it, I had no idea. But he did, so my job was to hang on to the group like they were my lifeline, working as hard as I could to keep up for fear of losing them and my will to keep the pace. And James seemed to know exactly where that line was, and he pushed it to its limits on every run.

And mostly I succeeded.

But it was tough.

The worst was our 18 miler. We started on the marathon course, up South Congress, right on Lightsey up towards South 1st. By the time we crested the hill and made the right turn down, I knew I was in trouble. I held on, though, and made it to Cesar Chavez, out Lake Austin and to Enfield. By the time we topped out at Exposition, however, I was seriously hurting. As we attacked the three big hills on Exposition, I fell a little, then further, then hopelessly behind. I walked the last half of that last hill, watching my mates grow small in the distance as they made the turn up ahead. Light-headed and demoralized, I stumbled up the grade. As I finally made the turn onto 35th, trying to remember what the route was, where I was going and what I was going to do on my own now, I saw a figure running back toward me over the narrow pedestrian bridge over MoPac. It was, of course, James. For the next five miles he ran with me, walking when I needed to, encouraging me to run when I could. And by the time we were approaching the hill on San Jacinto, that last hill on the marathon course, when I couldn't run any more, I made him go on. He made me promise to walk as much as I needed to, and to take the shortest route back to TexDot.

But I didn't. Though it wasn't fast, I ran most of the way, and I took no shortcuts. I made the big turn out to I35 and back onto Riverside. It was brutal, and I got in a good 35 minutes after the rest of the group. I was convinced that I would never, ever be able to run 26.2. No way, never. I whined, I ranted, I moaned. It was hopeless. My coaches and teammates offered encouragement, but they had no idea. It just wasn't going to work. It just didn't add up. I couldn't do it.

For reasons that still defy me, our next two, shorter runs were amazing. On the second, our last leg was down Congress, and we flew down it, moving over the stone sidewalks past the storefront windows, inches off the ground. As we crossed over the South Congress Bridge and back to the trail, we felt our sneakers hit the gravel. Four of us went for it, running for the end like it was the easiest thing in the world, faster than we thought we could and for longer too. And when we got to the lot, past that iron gate that means the run is over, we hunched over, grasping our shorts to catch our breath, smiles and nods of understanding, of knowing a kind of joy that only people who run ever get to know.

A couple of weeks later, our 21 miler--well, for our group, it was a 22.5 miler; we never did anything merely to code--was the best run of my life. And when we got back in, James teased me mercilessly about my former pessimism, then stopped and pronounced me ready to run the long run, the real long one, that one that ends in the midst of a big cheering crowd.

And finally, I believed him.

A couple of days ago, despite a lingering virus, I was there. I bobbed out among a sea of brightly colored bodies and went at it like a guy who knew he was going to be able to do it. And when I got to 18 and I was hurting, I thought about the lessons I'd learned, the endless tips, the strategies, the tricks, and I started thinking like a runner. I slowed down when I had to, but not too much, I watched my breathing, and I recovered on the run, and I watched my pace and I made small goals. And I thought about the goal.

And it was working. I wasn't going fast, but I was making progress. The miles fell behind me, 22, 23, 24. I finally saw my family on 15th and San Jac, just before that last hill. I got quick kisses and smiles--it was the best 20 second investment I've made in my life--and I jumped back on the course, ran the hill strong and turned right and down, and it just kept it flowing, a great last half mile, pumping and believing all the way in, a cruise to the finish, crossing as though I was the first across the line and not the 1,053rd. It was absolutely as awesome as everyone had told me, though I never believed it, until then.

So that's what that big bear hug was all about. For a terrific coach who understood how crazy hard a marathon is, and that I could do it too. Who knew what I was going through and what I needed to get me to where I was headed. And it was there for my new friends, too, for Dan and Chris, and Scott and my buddy Amy, and to Lisa, who talked me into the whole crazy idea in the first place.

And it was really all about the sound of 12 pairs of fancy sneakers crunching down the brown gravel trail in the low light of early Saturday mornings, some of us knowing a lot about what it meant and how it would go from there, and some of us, like me, just figuring it out.

Totally Garmin-Less

If you read my previous blog about running naked, you know that it wasn't literally about running naked but about running without so much technology.

In particular, I was referring to running without my Garmin 205 GPS watch, which I was forced to do after I accidentally left it uncharged. It was a bit of an epiphany. I found that by running without GPS I was able to get in touch with a lot of parts of my running that I'd been overlooking.

In no particular order, I found that I'd reconnected with my sense of my breathing and my level of effort and my sense of pace, things that I'd lost touch with when I was wearing the satellite-watching watch. With the Garmin, I'd simply keep track of the numbers on the display showing my my pace in miles per minute. If it was too fast, I'd slow down, too slow, I'd speed up.

Runners often talk about how to tell how fast you're going based on whether or not you'd be able to hold a conversation while running. If you'd be able to talk fairly easily, that's an easy run. If you can talk but not without some effort, that's a regular run. And if you can't really talk at all, well that's a fast run, or, as they say, a tempo run. When I'm running by myself, it's almost always a tempo run. That's not necessarily a good idea, the experts say, because you need to "build a base" of miles at slower paces in order to make real progress. I've never tested the theory.

Until now, that is.

I returned my borrowed Garmin a few weeks back, and I've been trying to learn to run without it. (I have to admit that I've still been listening to music on my little mp3 player--Moldy Peaches, mostly, if you must know.)

And it hasn't been easy going without guidance from above. I find myself having no idea whatsover how fast I'm going. Is it 8:00 miles (really fast for me) or 9:30 miles (a crawl)? Am I keeping a fairly steady pace or am I speeding up a lot and then slowing down to compensate (not an efficient way to pace oneself).

But, as before, I've found that I'm hearing new things all the time, now that I'm listening for them. For instance, I've lately been acutely aware of how my running shoes feel, which led me to ditch my current pair, the pair I wore for the marathon in February, becasuse they seem to be hurting my right leg. A hurting leg is no fun for three miles. For 26.2 miles, it can be a nightmare. And who knows if my difficult time recovering from the race was due to the shoes. Could be.

In any case, I've got a new pair from a completely different shoe maker coming on Tuesday, We'll see how they work out. I'm hopeful.

And I'm trying to run more slowly, to build that base, though when I'm by myself, I guess I'll have to figure out how fast I'm running by using that talking trick. The only thing is, since I'll be to myself. I wonder what I'll have to say?

And I wonder if I'll be embarrassed about both us running at least partially naked.

Garmin-less

I went for a run this morning naked, not in the literal sense of the word, but without any technology. I was totally unwired. Usually I run with a fancy GPS watch that tells my overall time, my current pace per mile and my overall pace per mile, among many other things. And I normally listen to music, too, on my little Sansa clip mp3 player.

But this morning for some reason I just threw on a pair of shorts, my old yellow running shoes and my Red Sox lid and hit the trail. It was a great day, cool and damp and grey, the kind of weather that lends itself to introspection.

As I ran, I focused on me. How was I breathing, how was I moving, how was I taking hills? I felt strangely energized and very much in touch with my running. I tried to concentrate on my pace, trying to figure out as early as possible when I was pushing it too hard and then backing off just enough to recover. And I think I learned a little.

It was just a five mile jaunt, and in the end I didn’t know how many minutes and seconds it had taken me. It did feel fast, though I don’t know exactly how fast that was.

And while I was on the trail, blossoms in bloom everywhere, I got to thinking about how strange it is, that this running thing I like to do is so focused on how long it takes you to do it, less time being better. I’m not sure that’s really true.

Though I’ll probably take my Garmin tomorrow anyway.