Not With a Bang, But a Whimper

This is the way the [season] ends,

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Part of the reason I love the marathon is the way the season builds towards it; the biggest and most important race; the peak waiting for you to summit after a mountain of long runs, tempo workouts, and track intervals. Race day is a celebration, a culmination of months and years of hard work, a big bang to end the season.

But this season won’t end with a bang. No, instead all you’ll hear from me is a whimper, because I’m officially out of the race. I can’t run two steps, let alone 26 miles.

Here’s the story of the most drastic taper ever, from gunning for a PR to settling for a DNS*:

A week and a half ago, I did my last hard workout of the season. I didn’t hit the pace I wanted, but with help from the ever amazing GRC guys, I stuck it out. I didn’t feel anything (except maybe anger at DC’s relentless humidity). No unusual pain.

And with that workout in the books, the taper began. But so did all the trouble.

That night I was more sore than usual, but it was a hard workout, so perhaps that wasn’t so surprising. If anything, the soreness reminded me that a workout at a slower pace than expected in searing humidity is still a tough workout. The next day (Sunday) I went for my normal post-long-run recovery jog. I was tight, but didn’t think twice about it. In fact, by the end, I had put the previous day’s disappointing pace behind me and was back to dreaming of PRs at Grandma’s. But by that evening, I was as sore as I am after a marathon. What was worrisome was that it seemed worse in one leg, my right quad. This might not just be lingering soreness.

I took the next day off. The taper was starting, so the schedule had an easy run anyway. No big deal to skip.

Tuesday I tried to go for a run. I felt okay at first, and made it a few miles. But it gradually got worse, until I gave up and walked home. The Oh-Crap-I-Might-Be-Injured-So-I-Better-Walk Walk is a miserable experience. First of all, it takes forever to walk the few miles you just jogged in seemingly no time. Second, your thoughts are a scattered mess of freaking out, denial, guilt, and berating yourself. Maybe I’m being a baby giving up on this. Maybe I should run again, this walking is taking forever. Maybe I can’t run again. Maybe the marathon is out of the picture. What’s wrong with me? What did I do wrong, when did I cross the line? I remember thinking that I would take it easy again that day so I could recover before a hard track session the next day. But by the time I finally got home, I had come to accept the track session probably wouldn’t happen.

But even over that long walk, I hadn’t yet accepted—or considered beyond that fleeting thought—that the marathon wouldn’t. I emailed my physical therapist and he immediately responded that he could see me if I came in right away. So I headed straight off to see him, without preparing myself for what might be coming. Surely he'll just massage this away.

He listened to my symptoms (incredible soreness in my right quad, just above the knee, pain when running and going up and down stairs) and suspected it was a stress reaction in my femur. (Trouble in the bone might be causing the surrounding muscles to spasm.) But he tried to remain positive; it might not be an issue with the femur, and if it was anything muscular we could rehab it and run the marathon on schedule. I was to take the next two days off from running and get back to him if the soreness didn’t subside.

It didn’t. On Friday I saw another doctor to get a referral for an MRI the following Tuesday. As my constantly fidgety self was strapped into the MRI scanner, hating every claustrophobic minute, my worries started to snowball: what if this was something worse than expected, a full-blown fracture or some other unknown problem? Over the previous week, I had come to accept the serious possibility of missing this marathon. That wouldn’t be the worst thing, so long as I can run the next one. Now I worried about that.

On Wednesday, the MRI results came back: I have a stress reaction in my femur. No marathon, no more PRs this season, no running at all for 4-6 weeks.

It’s bad news, yes, but it's not the worst news. There are always silver linings, so let’s focus on those:

1. It’s a stress reaction, not a fracture. A reaction is the precursor to a fracture (which would mean being on crutches and out for much longer). We caught it in time, and I was smart to walk home those depressing few miles, so let this be a reminder to all you runners: LISTEN TO YOUR BODY. When you’re hurt, you’re hurt. Don’t do any more damage.

2. My doctors have been amazingly helpful and completely understanding of my commitment to running. They didn’t have the knee-jerk reaction of other doctors I’ve had who have said, “Well, you run too much. Stop doing that.” No, they worked with me to get a diagnosis as quickly as possible and are doing whatever they can to get me healthy for the big race next February.

3. It’s going to be hard to let go of the goals I had for this season and the time I wanted to hit before the Trials, but this race was always sort of a freebie; I have my qualifier and that’s all I need. (Thank you, God, for letting me get that out of the way last December!) Now that I’ve done nearly all the work (just that last 26.2 remaining…) it doesn’t feel so free, but I’m reminding myself that I’ll be stronger next season from the months of hard work I put in this season; that won’t just disappear.

4. Obviously getting injured less than three weeks from your marathon is not ideal. Injury is never ideal. But Big Picture, the timing is actually kinda, sorta… good. I was going to take my end of season break anyway, and that would be followed with a few weeks of easy running. That post-season recovery time will now be co-opted as femur recovery time, but it will look pretty similar. I’ll be running in the pool instead of on the ground, but if there was a time to have to take it easy, this is a pretty good one.

5. This is not a silver lining, but a lesson in perspective: the week I realized I might be injured got many orders of magnitude worse when we got the news that our dear teammate, Nina, had died. I can whine about injuries, humidity, or poor races, but in the end I am incredibly lucky to run and luckier still to know the people I’ve met along the way. As I said in my post about Nina, running has given me some of my best friends—for example, friends that understand how terrible injuries are, yet simultaneously make them seem less terrible. This injury isn’t so bad in the grand scheme of things; now the focus is getting healthy for the Trials, so I can bring my two dear running friends, Lauren and Nina, to LA with me.

6. And finally, whether the race ends with a bang or a whimper, there will always be ice cream.

Dream big,

Teal

*DNS = Did Not Start. I’ve been fortunate to have not used that phrase here… until now.

Whether it’s the Weather...? Doubts and Dubious Excuses

Oh, the humidity. It’s back. And it brought with it a whole mess of doubts.

Some of my training (track workouts, ten milers, tempo runs) has gone well, better than ever. But the workouts most specific to the marathon—from which I get 99% of my confidence—have been abysmal.

I blame the weather.

The first marathon pace workout was a disaster, but I told myself it was the first one, and I just needed to re-callus myself to the hurt of those workouts. But then the second was the Exact. Same. Pace. What?! No. I’m in better shape than that. It was a little warm (emphasis on a little) and a little humid (again, emphasis on little), but I was melting. I had to reroute to find a water fountain so I could dunk my head in it. I vowed to go earlier next time.

And next time came. It was going to be a hot day, so I got up before the crack of dawn to get out the door as early as possible. And I ran the Exact. Same. (Way too slow) pace. Again. What the hell? This time it was a lot humid, but early wake up calls don’t help there. (In fact, it’s often more humid earlier, but hotter later: what to do??) I tried to tell myself it wasn’t that humid, because I know that you can go faster if you trick your brain into believing the temperature is more ideal than it really is. (Although I’m not sure this has been tested for humidity.)

But it didn’t work, and the workout was abysmal.

If you passed by me during this run, I was the girl in only a sports bra and shorts, who looked like she just jumped in the Potomac. Within a few miles, I could wring out my shorts. (Too much sweaty detail?) For comparison, some other people running in the same weather were wearing long-sleeve shirts* (!!!) or pants. (Mostly Capri pants, but still pants.)

Try as I might, I can never fully capture just how sweaty I am.
These pictures don't do it justice.

Obviously, people’s bodies vary a lot when it comes to dealing with different elements: heat, humidity, cold, wind. If there were one thing I’d change about my body, it’d be how it deals with heat and humidity. Or doesn’t deal, rather. If you asked me that question years ago, I’d have a different—and more superficial—answer. Running has changed my mindset about my body substantially: there’s nothing like running marathons to make you proud of what your body is capable of. (I may have itty bitty arms and a disproportionately big butt, but that combo can get me to the Olympic Trials starting line, so I don’t give a damn.) But running has also made me not appreciate whatever it is about my body that makes it melt in moderately high (or really just moderate) temps and humidity. Whatever the people wearing long sleeves have, I want it. Whatever the people who ran 2014’s Boston and called the weather ideal have, I want it. Whatever the people who do well in Chicago’s hot years have, I want it. (I did run pretty well there in 2011—after melting in 2010—where did that Teal go?)

Of course, part of me wonders whether it’s the weather. Maybe there’s something about my training (physiologically or psychologically) that is off. Maybe I’m just making excuses. Maybe I’m a wuss who can no longer handle the hardest workouts. Maybe the long-sleeve wearers are just tougher than me. It’s easier to blame the weather than to barrel down this doubt spiral, but even cursing the weather incessantly (for an entire blog post!) doesn’t push these doubts away.

I’m telling myself running in warmer weather will make me a better runner, whether race day is warm or cool. (Please, God, let it be cool!) But the damage to my confidence seems irreparable. How can I tell myself I’ll hit paces on race day that I can’t hit in practice?

Yes, the other workouts are going well; that should tell me something. But the most marathon-specific workouts have flopped, so my marathon-specific confidence has flopped as well. (For the record, this is the time in training I often start doubting everything, but without the big workouts to back me up, it’s worse than usual.)

This weekend I’m running the Wildwood Half, my last race before the marathon. Part of me thinks my early season goal for this half is completely crazy, as proven by my marathon pace disasters. But another part of me hopes I can live up to those expectations, silence the doubts, and get back to believing my marathon goal is possible.

Here’s hoping the weather’s nice.

(It’s actually not going to be that nice, so I’ve decided to stop checking on it in an attempt to not discourage myself. No Negative Self Talk is becoming No Negative Weather Reports.)

Dream big,

Teal

*Some people wear long-sleeve shirts to block the sun, which is completely reasonable. In super sunny conditions (like Badwater), long sleeves are the best bet. But it was cloudy on the day in question, so that wasn’t their reasoning. It just really wasn’t hot to anyone but me.

Inertia

I don’t write Science Fridays anymore (but you can check out some running-related pieces I’ve written here), but it is Friday, so here’s some physics for you:

Inertia (n.): The resistance of any physical object to any change in its state of motion, including changes to its speed and direction. (Wikipedia)

Since I have been in a state of Perpetual Sitting on the Couch Eating Cookies, I’m finding it very hard to change my speed (faster than sitting pace) and direction (towards anywhere other than the couch). I blame physics.

When you’re in the middle of training, your constant moving towards your goal keeps you going. You’re up early, getting in your daily miles, eating your chia-topped oatmeal. Sure, you may dream of post-marathon luxuries of sleeping in and various indulgences, but no time for that now, you’ve got ten miles to do before work. Maybe you’ll switch it up with some flax-topped oatmeal today, but mostly things stay the same—you keep rolling. No excuses. Run, rinse, repeat. I love that routine. (And obviously I love oatmeal, too.)

But I also love the amazing wonderfulness of my warm, cozy bed on cold, dark mornings. I swear, every morning it somehow feels better than ever before. I better cherish this moment, this best ever comfy-ness. I’m never leaving. And obviously oatmeal cookies beat all other varieties of oatmeal. (But, if we're taking cookies, try these, which I just made this week and are not even remotely, possibly good for you, but completely delicious.*) Despite loving training, I can’t quite get out of my off-season state.

So yeah, inertia. It’s real.

RunnerTeal's First Law Of Motion:
An object in motion will stay in motion (left).
An object not in motion will bake cookies (right).

I’m trying to nudge myself in the right direction. Get a little momentum. Inertia can be changed by the application of external force. (Like this video designed to get bodies off couches and excited for Grandma’s Marathon.) It’s early yet; official marathon training won’t start for a few more weeks, but the first race on my schedule will be here before I know it.

But it’s hard. I said last week that I like marathon training because it rises in a slow crescendo to the peak race. You climb the mountain of training, then—when you finally make it to the top—you jump for joy, plant your little flag, scream “I did it! I did it!” But then you quickly slide down the other side.

You get to the bottom—full of cookies and beer and ensconced in warm, cozy sheets—and look up ahead. Another mountain to climb. Didn’t I just climb that mountain? Why am I back at the bottom?

That slide back down is important: your body—and mind—needs rest. Without a proper break you risk burnout and injury.

Still, it’s hard to look up at that mountain and see how far you’ve got to go. 

A couple weeks ago, I went for a “long” run with the GRC girls. I hadn’t been with them in a while, but everyone insisted we’d go slow. I didn’t wear a watch, so I have no idea our actual pace, but their “slow” felt like sprinting and I fell way back. (Full disclosure: I may have had too many indulgences at our team party the night before. But also—let’s be honest—I’m out of shape.) The next week I decided it might be nice to get some semblance of speed, so I did a 5 minutes on, 5 minutes off fartlek. Woof. Five minutes is an insufferably long time when you’re out of shape.

And this week? This week I skipped my run on Monday, because Hey, it’s Monday. I don’t have to go running every day this week. Then I skipped my run Tuesday, because… because nothing. Because inertia. I had no good mildly acceptable reason to skip my run. (I finished off the amazing cookies instead.)

The force required to push an immobile object up a mountain is immense. The good news is it's easier to climb the mountain when you've been there before and know your way. The bad news is you can’t climb the mountain from the couch or your warm, cozy bed.

Dream big,
Teal

*Or try these super easy mini-brownies for the Super Bowl!

Moving On

Alright folks. I've blabbed enough about my last marathon. Time to move on... to blabbing about the next one.

There’s no real reason to do another marathon before the Trials. With the qualifier in my pocket, I could take this season “off” and focus on speed (or “speed” to a marathoner, meaning 10Ks, 10 milers, and half-marathons).

So I don’t need to run a marathon in 2015. But I want to.

Of course, there may be benefits to not running one. (Like actually having some speed/not having to use quotes when I type that word.) But I tried that once. Maybe it made me a better runner in the end, but it wasn’t as much fun.

During my first season with GRC I stepped down in distance and ran races from the half marathon to 6K cross country. I struggled, maybe with the newness of the team (doubtful, I loved them), maybe with iron deficiency (likely), maybe because I just couldn’t get in the groove of that kind of training (possibly). I like having one peak race at the end of the season, and other races and efforts rising in a slow crescendo, building on each other to the ultimate culmination, the hardest and longest effort: the marathon.

Besides, I’m not doing this out of obligation or to make millions (unless you'd like to give me millions?), I’m doing it for fun. And fun for me is 26.2 miles of glorious pain.

In a recent post on Zelle, Dane Rauschenberg lists 52 reasons to run a marathon. His first reason: “While you can get an amazing high from tackling any race distance, conquering the mother of all races gives you a high which is hard to duplicate.” The amazing effort and triumph of the last one, the drug-like euphoria that came with it, the celebrations, the ice cream sundaes—it just makes me want to earn that again. 26.2 miles, one of the most addictive drugs out there.

One of my teammates put together a post on what I had done last season (compared to previous seasons) to get the qualifying standard. (His conclusion? Not much.) In his analysis, he surmised—correctly—that I sacrifice time and performance at other distances for success in the marathon. It’s true, my PRs for ten miles and the half marathon don’t stack up to my marathon time. (And don’t get me started on 5Ks.) And that doesn't really bother me. I’ve said it before on this blog: all I really care about is the marathon.

I’ll be cautious this year; the most important thing will be to not get hurt before next February. But barring major disasters, the second goal will be—as always—to get faster. I’ve got a bit of extra confidence in my training after last season’s successes, so I’ll take it much the same way: roughly a race once a month, building to the marathon.

So *drumroll please*… this season’s schedule:

Rock-n-Roll USA Half Marathon (March)

Cherry Blossom Ten Miler (April)

Broad Street Ten Miler (May… in Philadelphia…)

Grandma’s Marathon (June)

Will I be able to catch the same fire I did last season? Will I be able to beat Brother in the City of Brotherly Love Family Duels RunnerTeal Fails? Will I earn a post-marathon ice cream sundae that's as hugely delicious? I don’t know. But I’m going to try.

Stay tuned.

Dream big(ger),

Teal