Virtual Cross-Canada Run

Okay. I’m back. I haven’t been blogging – but I have been running. And it’s getting close to the end of the year, so I figured I’d take a look at where my yearly mileage has me in my virtual cross-Canada run. Last time, I was really close to the Manitoba border after an endless time in Ontario. So have I finally made it out of the big O and into the first prairie province?

Well, my total after today’s recovery run along the Dartmouth waterfront was 4110.5km. Yes, I’ve broken 4000km! I’m over 2500 miles. That’s a fair bit of distance – but is it enough?

Yes! Not only am I in Manitoba – I’ve almost run clear across it already!

My total has brought me to Griswold, Manitoba. Here’s how the village’s website describes the place: “The village of Griswold is located in Southwestern Manitoba, approximately 25 miles west of Brandon at the junction of highways #1 and #21.  Griswold has approximately 30 people. The village has a post office, garage, curling rink and the school is now used as a community center.”

With a population of only 30 – my condo building has more! – it’s easy to forgive the fact that nothing much is going on there. Apparently, there were five grain elevators back in the early 1900s, but they’re all gone. There is, however, a mini one to show the tourists – as they zoom through on their way to Brandon or Regina.

I did find this pic of a Sioux encampment in the area back in the day. The Sioux sought refuge here following the Minnesota Massacres of 1861 and the Indian War of 1876. Griswold was a temporary sanctuary.

I must admit, though, grain elevators and tepees weren’t my first thoughts when I saw the name Griswold. All I could think was, how appropriate to end up in a place named Griswold just before Christmas. I’m sure Clark and family won’t mind another guest!

 Happy running – and happy holidays!!

The Mind Isn't that Big a Deal

I saw two bald eagles on my run today!

I’m still on a Murakami kick. I’ll get over it at some point – move on to something else. But for now I have to be where I am: on a Murakami kick.

Murakami’s running book is also important to my training buddy Alex. He read it long before I did, although I’ve been the one nattering on and on about it during our runs lately. I think he feels a special kinship with Murakami because he also balances a writing and running life and lives with the resonances between the two.

For Alex, the big lesson from Murakami is persisting through the period where doing is accompanied by (and obscured by) all sorts of thinking and feeling – until the thinking fades into the background and just the doing fills the frame of awareness. For example, last Wednesday, when we had that storm that dumped 35cm of snow (which made doing a workout outside impractical), we cranked out 2x3 miles @ 6min/mile on the treadmill. Alex found this rough – not because of the pace (his engine is much stronger than that) but because his mind wouldn’t stay level. The monotony of dreadmill running wormed its way in and played havoc with his thoughts and emotions. As a result, he bailed after 2 miles on the second interval. After that, he went home and had to shovel the driveway. The snow was that really heavy wet stuff and he was already bagged from the workout. He told me that for the first bit, he was just cursing and thrashing around in his mind, pissed off that he had to shovel, feeling beaten and drained. But he said he eventually just fell into it – gave up feeling sorry and just shovelled the driveway in all his weariness. As he put it – there was only “do”.

Perhaps this is a little taste of what Murakami experienced in his 60-mile run in Japan:

I’m me, and at the same time not me. That’s what it felt like. A very still, quiet feeling. The mind wasn’t so important. Of course, as a novelist I know that my mind is critical to doing my job. Take away the mind, and I’ll never write an original story again. Still, at this point it didn’t feel like my mind was important. The mind just wasn’t that big a deal.

This is one of the gifts of endurance and rhythmic repetition – you get to feel that awareness is not the sole property of that interior monologue  voice – that awareness is this much more spacious thing – and that you can step away from the incessant thinking a bit and just do without a whole lot of mental struggle. The mind isn’t that big a deal.

So when Alex and I ran 25k out the Waverly Road on Sunday, he was able to put some of this kind of (non?)thinking into practice. He’d never run 25k before (and why would a former 1500m guy bother?), so there was an element of the unknown setting out, but after about 9k he turned to me and told me that he’d stopped struggling. We’d locked in a 4:20/k pace and were just flowing along like snowmelt. And it was great – a really joyful run.

I don’t want to make too much out of this. All I’m really saying is that any kind of endurance practice can teach you something about the topography of the mind. There’s that condensed stream of words (and accompanying emotions) that we need to get by, but it’s not the whole show – and because that stream of consciousness is only marginally useful in running, you can detach from it a bit and have a look around at what else is in there – and catch some of the external scenery as well.

Here’s Murakami again:

... as I run, I don’t think much of anything worth mentioning. I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.

Not everyone looks for this kind of big-sky mind in running, but I’m like Murakami. I’m working with thoughts and words most of the time, so running is a chance for me to step away from that – to step away from having to produce and shape and mine that vein of mental activity for some kind of living. Running is just running (well, on the good runs – they don’t always go so well!) – I don’t use it; I just do it (apologies to Nike). And when I’m not hurt or overly fatigued, it’s just great.

Many thanks to Murakami for his wonderful little book on running.

As the Tibetans say, “Mind is like the sky.”

Pain Is Inevitable. Suffering Is Optional.

I’ve been reading Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. It’s a gem of a book – a memoir about the running life from one of the world’s great novelists. I’ve been devouring it with intense interest.

In the Preface, Murakami (who has been running for almost three decades and has completed over 20 marathons) tells the story of hanging out in a hotel room in Paris (he doesn’t say why) and happening upon a newspaper article about marathoning. A reporter had interviewed a number of famous marathoners (Murakami doesn’t say which ones) and asked them what went through their heads as they ran – what kind of mantra did they repeat to themselves to keep going. Murakami talks about one runner who talked about a mantra he’d received from his older brother, one he’d pondered ever since: Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

Murakami (sort of) elaborates:

Say you’re running and you start to think, Man this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The hurt part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand any more is up to the runner himself. This pretty much sums up the most important aspect of marathon running.

To me, it’s a staggering insight – it’s the heart of Buddhism rolled up tight as a fortune cookie – wisdom short enough to send in a single text message. The hard work is figuring out what it really means in an experiential way. Running is one way of working on it – what is unavoidably real; how do I live with it?

Runners who strive to do their best get first-hand practice with learning to distinguish between pain/discomfort and the mind’s reaction to it. I feel like I can sort of taste the difference, can taste the mix of flavours that come with running pain – whether it’s the sharp gut pain of a fast 400 interval or the grinding heavy fatigue beyond 32k, there is the pain and there is the reaction to it. Sometimes there’s real injury – but that’s not what we’re talking about here. It’s not usually the hurt that makes me slow or stop – it’s the suffering I heap on top of it. The trick is to learn to recognize the mental mechanism that adds suffering, learn how to shut it off. That takes practice – runners can practice it with every hard effort.

Slogans don’t always work well in communicating wisdom – the oversimplification is dangerous. But this line – Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional – is meant as a mantra (well, it’s more of a contemplation, but let’s not worry about the difference) to be turned over with each stride, tested and prodded with intelligent as well as physical reflection. It would be easy to get bogged down in questions of language and definition, but the point here (maybe) is more to understand and accept what is inevitable (the real conditions) and to work with what is not – and it is surprising what is not.

One of the amazing things about Murakami’s writing in this memoir is his restraint. He crystallizes a little gem of insight, wraps it in conversational language, and then just leaves it there in a short paragraph for the reader to pick up (or miss) and turn this way and that in the light. It would be so tempting to elaborate, to take his insights about running and elaborate them as life lessons. But he doesn’t do it. He just leaves the idea there, an idea about running, and walks away – it’s not his fault is we bloat it with extra meaning.

I’m not even halfway through the book, but already I’d recommend it to any runner. Even if contemplating ideas and such is not your bag, the personal stories are engaging and the writing is damn funny at times. I’ll leave you with a line that made me laugh out loud (which I almost never do when reading): “The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.”

Cross-Country Tour Part 6

It’s been so long since I’ve been on here. Now that my race season is over, I’ve been letting things settle – actually, I found my race season kind of disappointing, so I’ve been letting those negative emotions slip away like fallen leaves in fall runoff. Instead, I’m trying to focus on the good stuff: my training was blissful at times, I set a 5k PB in a fun race in Digby, and I took home first place in the Nova Scotia Half Marathon. There were some disappointments, but there was more good than bad. The fact that I’m healthy and still running is gift enough!

So I thought I’d move on by checking up on my Virtual Cross-Canada Run to see where my accumulated mileage for the year would put me in Canada. In my last tour post, I was just outside of Thunder Bay, Ontario. Since then, I’ve been putting in some pretty good mileage. In fact, the last two weeks were both over 100k. After today’s 24k long run with Alex, my total accumulated mileage is 3,600.8km.

Not bad. You’d think that would at least get me out of Ontario. I mean, Ontario can’t go on forever, can it?

Wrong. It totally can. Today’s total has me just outside Kenora, Ontario. I could practically spit on Manitoba (I would never!!), but I’m still trapped in the Big O. I’m beginning to regret my decision to have my route go through Toronto. If I’d skipped southern Ontario and gone through Ottawa (like my bro was saying), I’d probably be past Winnipeg by now!

That’s okay, though. There are plenty o’ big things to see in the Big O. In the run from T-Bay to Kenora, I would’ve passed all sorts of fascinating and incomprehensible large sculpture-like objects to keep me amused despite the demoralizingly long road out of the province.

Like in Upsala, where you’ll find this amazing piece of art affectionately known as “Mosquito Carrying Man”:

Check out the knife and fork the mosquito is holding – exquisite touch! Don’t tell me that this piece doesn’t express a little bit of the truth.

And then in Dryden there’s Max the Moose:

Okay, not as original or exciting – but who can’t feel the excitement of their inner child while standing next to a giant animal sculpture (actually, no joke – these things are awesome!).

The mystery of the Ontario wilderness tugs at unconscious emotions and fears none of us likes to talk about. But in Vermillion Bay, we’re forced to deal with that fear face-to-face when we confront the Bigfoot statue:

I bet he’d move even faster if he shaved his legs – like a triathlete.

And then we get to Kenora, where the locals still pray to the great, wise, but slippery deity Husky the Musky, whose received wisdom includes the imperishable proverb “Guests are like fish; after three days, they start to stink.”

What  many people don’t know is that the sublime and remote northern Ontario wilderness has attracted eccentric geniuses of all kinds throughout history. For example, in the 60s, Klaus von Farfegnugen, one of Volkswagon’s top design engineers fled the pressures of fame and fortune in Germany for the quiet boreal expanses of the Kenora area. Legend has it that his creative flow was all bunged up, and he needed some peace and quiet to get the juices flowing again. One day, out of sheer frustration and angst, he threw a very sharp pencil at a map hung on a cork board. When it stuck, he made an impulsive decision: he would go and live wherever it had landed – and it had landed directly on Kenora.

I have trouble believing this story – it seems a little farfetched. Regardless, the fact is that Klaus ended up in Kenora where he designed and built the prototype of what he thought would be the next evolution in the automobile after the resounding success of the Volkswagon Beetle. He called it the Volkswagon Spider:

Incredibly, this was the only one ever made. A jealous rival back in Germany scuttled the project. But it didn’t matter. Klaus fell in love with a beautiful Kenora girl who couldn’t get enough of his accent, and they lived happily ever after.

Or so they say.

If you want to see more amazing big objects from places all across Canada, check out this awesome website. It’s where all these images come from.

Until next time... happy running!

"You can’t trust everything you read on the Internet.”

                                                            Mark Twain

PEI Half Marathon Result

Me finishing and hiding my misery -- Photo courtesy of Stacy Juckett Chestnut (who won the women's half!)

 

 

 

Oh my. PEI.

Before I get into my race description, I want to say big congratulations to J-A for not only completing her first-ever 10k race but also completing it feeling great and running way faster than she expected. I am so proud of her – you have no idea.

I also want to congratulate all my friends who ran – Delthia (who scored a huge 10k PB in tough conditions), Steve (who also scored a huge PB... but was mocked by 9 seconds), Patricia (who wanted to run the 5k but ended up stuck in the 10k and did great), Thomas (who had a rough day but still showed amazing talent), Karen (who ran a great half and provided a fantastic and generous pre-race meal), and Cynthia and Shauna (who ran awesome, coming so close to their 10k goal times).

As for me... well...

Race conditions were okay – not great but okay. The temperature was around 15, which was excellent. There was no rain. Also a plus. But there was some wind: 35km/h gusting to 50. That’s pretty significant. It was coming out of the south west, so it was a factor in the first few k and in the last 8-9k.

But the wind didn’t trouble me as I lined up at the start. I felt fit and ready to go – conditions be damned! The previous day, when I did my 1 fast k in preparation, I’d run a 3:10 according to my Garmin. That’s the fastest I’ve ever recorded for a Garmin k – so I felt pretty good about my race readiness.

When the gun went, two guys took off. The rest of us were more conservative. There was one guy wearing running flats, so I decided to stick with him. It’s funny how much that changes my impression of a runner – you can wear all the fancy clothes you like, and I won’t be impressed or intimidated. But if you show up to a half marathon wearing flats, then I’m going to worry.

As the first k stretched on, the race settled into its early pattern: there were the two guys in front and then three of us in the chase group. We (the chase group) passed the first k in 3:40 – perfect. I normally go out way too fast, but having a couple of guys around me and running into the wind helped me keep the pace right.

For about 4k, the three of us ran together, watching the guys in front. By 5k, one of the two guys began to fade, and we eventually passed him. The other guy, though, showed no signs of fading – but nor was he getting further away.

Around the 5k mark – which we passed in 18:20 or so – the guy wearing the racing flats picked up the tempo. I couldn’t match it – neither could the other guy in the chase pack. Me and the other guy settled into a battle for third. And it was great – normally I run alone at races, but this guy was matching me stride for stride. We were keeping each other honest and on pace.

We passed 10k at 36:30. I was feeling good, although I could feel a stitch developing in my right side. I tried to relax and keep my breathing regular. I kept it off until the 12k mark, but around this point, the little stitch became a full-blown cramp or spasm. I’m not sure if it was my diaphragm or some kind of ab muscle, but whatever the case, it felt like someone jabbed a knife into my right side all the way to my belly button. I couldn’t breathe.

And that was it. My race was done.

I thought about walking off the course, but I decided against it. Instead, I slowed until I could breathe again and kept moving. The last 9k were miserable. There were significant hills and significant wind – and I could barely run 4min/k because of my diaphragm. My legs were screaming at me to go – my heart was asking why I wasn’t working harder – but I just couldn’t shake the cramp.

Even though I was slowing, I could see how the race in front was progressing – the last third or so is a couple of long, straight stretches. The guy in the flats eventually caught the guy who went out quickly. The guy I was battling, though, didn’t catch the early guy and so finished 3^rd. Everyone slowed a bit over the last third.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t caught over the last few k. I ambled over the line in 1:20:57 for 4^th place.

Guh.

The funny thing is that I’m not as upset about it as I would’ve expected. I gave it my best – and it didn’t work out. No biggie. My training has been good. I’ve been loving the running. The race is just one day. I’m getting to a point where the races are just another maximal effort like all my workouts. Sure, there’s something special about a goal race, but it’s the daily process that captivates me these days. I’m no longer back loading the meaning... no longer seeing training runs as a means to an end. It’s a day-by-day thing now, which makes the sting of a bad race less... well... stingy.

Now I’m just gonna set my sights on next season and take it one run at a time.