I started running today in the sun and mild temperature (only -2) and quickly noticed how expansive and excited I was feeling. I wondered why it felt so darn good, why I felt unusually ecstatic. And then I realized that I haven’t run outside since last Wednesday – a full week ago! In fact, I’ve barely spent any time outside at all in the past week. I’ve practically been a shut in this whole reading week.
I rely on running to get me out the door and into big spaces, both physically and mentally. Being inside all the time has made things feel narrow – but there’s nothing like running under a clear blue sky beside a blinding white frozen lake to create some breathing room. As the Tibetan Buddhists like to say, “mind is like the sky” – everything is like the sky – open and endless – perfect for running.
So things were feeling good today. I had a bit of a kink in my left calf as I started, but it seemed to work itself loose as the run went on. My plan was around 11k easy (building up from yesterday’s 8k), and I stuck to it even though I wanted to keep running and running when I hit the turnaround point. No need to rush, though – the mileage will come back. I wore my Garmin, but I decided not to look at it during the run. I wanted to focus more on how I was feeling, especially on how I was breathing. Any struggle would require pace adjustment, so I didn’t want to get tied up in the Garmin’s constant data feed.
As it turned out, my legs felt great and my breathing wasn’t too bad. I know there’s junk in my lungs, but it wasn’t causing too much trouble. My breathing wasn’t as relaxed as I would’ve liked, but after the run I realized the main reason – I was running a bit quick. My final 5k was all 4:15/k and faster. That’s a good thing, especially because it felt so easy on my legs and heart, but I can tell that my lungs still have a ways to go before they’ll be able to handle some hard efforts.
Another thing that made the run particularly enjoyable was that every other runner seemed to be as blissed out as I was. I tend to be an annoyingly friendly runner. I’m one of those crazies who likes to smile and wave at every runner I pass (in either direction). I feel a kinship with everyone out there gettin’er done. Most runners ignore me – I don’t care, I do it anyway – but today runners and even some walkers were smiling and saying hello and waving, often before I did. I think everyone can feel spring coming – couple more weeks and I bet I’ll be back in the woods on the Shubie trail. Man, do I miss the trail.
What I won’t miss when the snow clears is all the pavement, the exhaust, and the cloud of salt dust that hangs in the air on dry days like this. I’m sure none of that can be good for my lungs, especially while I’ve got such a hoarse cough on the go.
No matter. It was great to be outside, great to be running, great to feel as open as the sky.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Running and Body Obsession
Running friendships are strangely intimate. With friends who don’t run, I don’t as a rule know what is going on with their bodies – and I generally don’t ask. But it’s the first thing running friends talk about when they see each other, and we go on and on in great detail. There’s no idle chit chat about the weather or politics or such, it’s all “how’s the calf” or “how’s that Achilles feeling” or “how’s your energy level” – it’s all about tendons and muscles and fascia and joints and fatigue. Even though runners tend to be somewhat cerebral people, with each other, it’s very much about the material. Hell, we even talk about gastrointestinal stuff – I know lots of runners who’ve crapped themselves on a run or in a race and don’t mind telling the tale. From the outside, it must appear strange, but for body-obsessed runners, sharing what’s going on with their bodies is the most interesting thing in the world.
I was thinking about all this while I was on the treadmill today. I decided I felt well enough to start back at it – but slowly. I limited myself to 8k and kept the speed very low – nothing more than a 4:40/k and most of it slower. I spent the entire time monitoring my body closely, scrutinizing how my lungs were feeling, how my throat was feeling, how my overall energy level was doing. Even just getting up to 4:40 pace, I could tell my body was not at 100%, so I pulled back on the effort – I wanted the run to feel effortless. This was not the time to push, even a little.
After some years running, you get to know your body pretty well. It becomes easier and easier to distinguish effort levels and to feel when something is out of line. For example, I find I’m much quicker to notice tensions from stress than I used to be – and this is a very good thing.
But while I was thinking about this funny kind of body obsession I've noted in myself, I couldn't help thinking about something one of my running friends who ran varsity cross country told me, something that isn't funny at all. Apparently, anorexia is fairly common among high school and university track and cross country runners. I must admit, this surprised me. I know how much I have to eat to run 60 miles per week, but some university athletes are training that hard or harder with eating disorders (NY Times article and Cross Country article). From what I’m told, girls passing out during major races is not uncommon – and it’s not just from over-exertion.
The thing is not a lot of people talk about this kind of stuff. The glossy magazines will tell you all about what shoes to buy and what recipes to try, and they’ll delight you with breezy or inspirational anecdotes of personal trial or triumph, but not much is said about the sometimes brutal world of competitive running. I don’t really know enough about it to speak with any authority, but it’s a dialogue that needs to open up. Runners and coaches at all levels need to be made aware of the complexities of eating disorders and just how common they are among runners of all abilities and aspirations. There’s some stuff out there, like a book called Running on Empty by a British runner, but I wonder if it’s enough. I still hear tales of coaches weighing their high school-aged female athletes every week. I hope it’s rare, but it shouldn’t happen at all.
Now, to be clear, my body and running obsessions are nothing like what goes on in an eating disorder. But I do wonder about runners like me who've run to the point of injury. If you injure yourself through an accident, well, that’s one thing – but if you injure yourself due to overtraining, you might argue that it’s a kind of self-harm. The trick for me is to find my obsession threshold: to be able to listen closely to my body so I can train the optimal amount instead of using my mind to lash my body into doing more than it can. I’ve been a slave to the training schedule, a slave to the mileage numbers in the past, but I’m getting much better at knowing how far I can push into discomfort before it becomes injury. I’m getting better at staying on the right side of my obsession threshold.
I’ll have to keep all this in mind as I try to ramp my mileage back up after being sick. This is the time when I could do the most damage – after the worst of the symptoms have disappeared but before the virus is 100% gone. Wish me luck!
I was thinking about all this while I was on the treadmill today. I decided I felt well enough to start back at it – but slowly. I limited myself to 8k and kept the speed very low – nothing more than a 4:40/k and most of it slower. I spent the entire time monitoring my body closely, scrutinizing how my lungs were feeling, how my throat was feeling, how my overall energy level was doing. Even just getting up to 4:40 pace, I could tell my body was not at 100%, so I pulled back on the effort – I wanted the run to feel effortless. This was not the time to push, even a little.
After some years running, you get to know your body pretty well. It becomes easier and easier to distinguish effort levels and to feel when something is out of line. For example, I find I’m much quicker to notice tensions from stress than I used to be – and this is a very good thing.
But while I was thinking about this funny kind of body obsession I've noted in myself, I couldn't help thinking about something one of my running friends who ran varsity cross country told me, something that isn't funny at all. Apparently, anorexia is fairly common among high school and university track and cross country runners. I must admit, this surprised me. I know how much I have to eat to run 60 miles per week, but some university athletes are training that hard or harder with eating disorders (NY Times article and Cross Country article). From what I’m told, girls passing out during major races is not uncommon – and it’s not just from over-exertion.
The thing is not a lot of people talk about this kind of stuff. The glossy magazines will tell you all about what shoes to buy and what recipes to try, and they’ll delight you with breezy or inspirational anecdotes of personal trial or triumph, but not much is said about the sometimes brutal world of competitive running. I don’t really know enough about it to speak with any authority, but it’s a dialogue that needs to open up. Runners and coaches at all levels need to be made aware of the complexities of eating disorders and just how common they are among runners of all abilities and aspirations. There’s some stuff out there, like a book called Running on Empty by a British runner, but I wonder if it’s enough. I still hear tales of coaches weighing their high school-aged female athletes every week. I hope it’s rare, but it shouldn’t happen at all.
Now, to be clear, my body and running obsessions are nothing like what goes on in an eating disorder. But I do wonder about runners like me who've run to the point of injury. If you injure yourself through an accident, well, that’s one thing – but if you injure yourself due to overtraining, you might argue that it’s a kind of self-harm. The trick for me is to find my obsession threshold: to be able to listen closely to my body so I can train the optimal amount instead of using my mind to lash my body into doing more than it can. I’ve been a slave to the training schedule, a slave to the mileage numbers in the past, but I’m getting much better at knowing how far I can push into discomfort before it becomes injury. I’m getting better at staying on the right side of my obsession threshold.
I’ll have to keep all this in mind as I try to ramp my mileage back up after being sick. This is the time when I could do the most damage – after the worst of the symptoms have disappeared but before the virus is 100% gone. Wish me luck!
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Going Viral
This is the fourth day in a row I haven’t run. I have to keep reminding myself that I’m doing the right thing, that I’m not just being a baby – that in the long run (and this is all about the long run), letting this virus or flu or whatever run its course is better than trying to run through it.
But I’m getting a bit squirrely.
Some positive news: for the first time since Friday, every swallow doesn’t feel like I’m dragging shards of glass down the inside of my throat. I hate to be whiney about this, but four days of wincing with every swallow was wearing me out. Do you know how many times a day we swallow? Me neither – but let me tell ya, it’s a lot. Wait a second. I’ll Google it... Ta da! Answers.com says it’s around 2000 times. For me, that was 2000 shots of sharp pain a day. Now my throat just feels like sandpaper. I can deal with that. But I’m still taking the day off running.
One thing I’ve noticed, though, is that the whinier I am, the worse I feel. I mean, the raw physical discomfort of 2000 knives in my throat was bad enough on its own, but when I got frustrated – o woe is me, this is killing my fitness, my race (13 weeks away) is ruined, I’m sick of the pain, why me, blah blah blah – things felt worse. In other words, when I became out of joint with the way things were, when I started wishing the pain would just stop or wished it had never started, the discomfort became more difficult – as if being out of joint with reality was causing unnecessary friction. So I had to settle myself and accept the illness and just do what I could to make sure it would run its course as quickly as possible. Being sick is what it is – embrace it, roll with it, and get back onto the roads when it’s gone. Anything else will just make things worse.
That said, I’m sick of soup. I want real food again.
Actually, one of the soups J-A bought me was good old Campbells chicken noodle – the original stuff, not any of this post-health conscious sodium-reduced vegetables-added stuff. Just the straight up grisly bits of chicken and soggy noodles stuff. I was so excited. As a kid, I used to love slurping off the broth first and finishing with just the noodles. Anyway, I opened the can and there was this white-ish mass floating on top. Hmm. That can’t be good, I thought. Regardless, I dumped everything in the pot and stirred the lump away. When I served the stuff, I happened to let my bowl sit for awhile. When I finally grabbed my spoon out of the bowl, this yellowy scum – almost like saran wrap – lifted off the surface and clung to my spoon. What the hell? How did I like this so much as a kid?
I'm no health nut, but instinct tells me that soup scum can't be good.
Oh well. One more bit of fuel for the engine to burn. I can't wait to get back on the road...
But I’m getting a bit squirrely.
Some positive news: for the first time since Friday, every swallow doesn’t feel like I’m dragging shards of glass down the inside of my throat. I hate to be whiney about this, but four days of wincing with every swallow was wearing me out. Do you know how many times a day we swallow? Me neither – but let me tell ya, it’s a lot. Wait a second. I’ll Google it... Ta da! Answers.com says it’s around 2000 times. For me, that was 2000 shots of sharp pain a day. Now my throat just feels like sandpaper. I can deal with that. But I’m still taking the day off running.
One thing I’ve noticed, though, is that the whinier I am, the worse I feel. I mean, the raw physical discomfort of 2000 knives in my throat was bad enough on its own, but when I got frustrated – o woe is me, this is killing my fitness, my race (13 weeks away) is ruined, I’m sick of the pain, why me, blah blah blah – things felt worse. In other words, when I became out of joint with the way things were, when I started wishing the pain would just stop or wished it had never started, the discomfort became more difficult – as if being out of joint with reality was causing unnecessary friction. So I had to settle myself and accept the illness and just do what I could to make sure it would run its course as quickly as possible. Being sick is what it is – embrace it, roll with it, and get back onto the roads when it’s gone. Anything else will just make things worse.
That said, I’m sick of soup. I want real food again.
Actually, one of the soups J-A bought me was good old Campbells chicken noodle – the original stuff, not any of this post-health conscious sodium-reduced vegetables-added stuff. Just the straight up grisly bits of chicken and soggy noodles stuff. I was so excited. As a kid, I used to love slurping off the broth first and finishing with just the noodles. Anyway, I opened the can and there was this white-ish mass floating on top. Hmm. That can’t be good, I thought. Regardless, I dumped everything in the pot and stirred the lump away. When I served the stuff, I happened to let my bowl sit for awhile. When I finally grabbed my spoon out of the bowl, this yellowy scum – almost like saran wrap – lifted off the surface and clung to my spoon. What the hell? How did I like this so much as a kid?
I'm no health nut, but instinct tells me that soup scum can't be good.
Oh well. One more bit of fuel for the engine to burn. I can't wait to get back on the road...
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