Happy Spring!

Yipee! It's spring!

 First day of spring – and what a beauty. It’s sunny. The temperature is headed into the teens. The trails are clear. The birds are returning. I even heard a few Canada geese honking their way back north to their breeding grounds in the Arctic. Winter does suck at times, but it all seems worth it when the world starts waking up again. Running is my way to stay in touch with the incremental changes. The trails tell the tale of renewal each day.

My training could use a little renewal. Or at least my motivation could. My efforts for the past few weeks have been lacklustre. I’ve been dropping runs and workouts here and there. Nothing too serious, but I don’t feel focused. I’m dragging. I should feel grateful to be healthy and injury free (knock on digital wood), but I’m just not feeling it.

I’ve read a couple of things recently that suggest not over thinking training – just do and watch the fluctuations instead of getting all worked up and analyzing everything to death. It sounds wise, but what fun is there in it? I love to analyze – even when all I end up with is useless analysis instead of useful insight.

These days my hand wringing has been over my emotional low. I was feeling so great, so full of life for awhile, but now the running feels flat. I know this is a potential sign of fatigue and over training – but I’m not sure it’s that. I don’t feel physically lethargic, and I’m hitting my paces okay when I want to. Part of me wonders if it’s just some natural cycle. Or maybe it’s a reaction to changes in my routine. First, I lost my running buddy to injury – he’s on the mend, but won’t be doing the marathon with me. And then my wife and I were dog/house sitting for a week for friends. It was nice to get a change of scenery, but it was a break in routine.

I’m wondering, now, how important routine is to body and mind in training. And I wonder if breaking routine has emotional consequences. I know so many folks (including myself) who have mostly crappy runs on vacation – and for a week after vacation. In that case, there are changes in food routines – but that’s kind of what I’m getting at: any dramatic changes in routine may have an effect.

Or they might not. I’m just uselessly pondering the possibility.

My cure for the blahs has simply been to slow the runs down and enjoy them. I’ll still hit my workouts on pace, but I think I’m going to dial back my easy running until I feel peppy again. I’ve been pushing at that easy pace, regularly hitting ks under 4:10. Perhaps that kind of load is taking its toll incrementally.

Anyway... 7 weeks until Toronto. I’m starting to get a bit nervous – but it’s a good nervous. And if I manage it right, it’ll turn into excitement instead of anxiety.

Peace. Happy spring!

In Like a Lion

Me. Post-Workout.

I almost didn’t get my workout in yesterday. I had a couple of deadlines that were pressing, and I had to keep pushing off my run. It was after 8:00 before I could shut down the damn computer and wander down the hall to the treadmill. Even though I’d been cooped up all day and had eaten poorly, I decided to give my planned workout a try: 3 x 3 miles at 6:00/mile.

I’m glad I did.

I did a mile warm up and then cranked right into the first long interval. It felt like crap right from the beginning. The first interval of any workout is always like this for me. It’s like my body is full of rust and junk and needs that first effort to clean out the pipes. I held the course for three miles and then took a 2min break.

After cracking the windows open – the darn room gets hot in no time – I cranked the mill back up to 10mph (the highest it will go). It felt easy. I took a second glance at the instrument panel to make sure the speed said 10. It did. Huh. The 2-minute rest was awesome – I was feeling great.

In the past few treadmill tempo sessions, I struggled a bit in the last mile of the 2^nd 3 miler, but this time I didn’t. I wonder if that was mental: I tend to struggle when I know the workout is almost over – or the race. Some people find new energy when they are close to the line. I don’t. So it goes.

After another 2-minute rest, I was back in the saddle, unsure of how it was going to go. This third interval was new territory. The most I'd done was 2 3milers. But everything went great. My legs felt strong, my lungs had no problems, and even my guts behaved. Aside from a little heartburn, I was feeling grand. The last mile was a bit tough, but not physically.

It was awesome.

Seems to me that, this year, March has come in like a lion.

Ups and Downs

Sometimes you’re up; sometimes you’re down. I know I should enjoy the fact that I’m up right now, but it comes with a little bit of guilt because my training buddy is down.

We were doing our long run yesterday up the Waverly road, and while I was feeling fantastic, Alex was suffering with every single step. It was one of those things. He’d been having trouble with his Achilles’ tendon – swollen and sore – but he felt like he needed to get this one in because he’d missed the last two.

Turns out, it was a bad idea. 13k in, we hit a bad patch of road, something tweaked in his tendon (which was already painful) – and that was it.  I ran ahead to the nearest payphone and called a pickup for him, and he hobbled 2.5k to a gas station to keep warm.

It’s such a shitty feeling to watch someone else in pain and frustration and not be able to help. I didn’t want to just leave him and keep going, but that’s exactly what he wanted me to do – and exactly what I would’ve wanted him to do if our positions had been reversed. Beyond calling my wife to come pick him up, there wasn’t much I could do. So I kept going. I abandoned the poor guy.

And the thing is that I had an amazing 35k run. The overall average was a 4:12/k – and I did most of the second half of the run under 4:10, including a bunch of ks under 4:00. I hadn’t planned that kind of pace, but my body naturally fell into a faster rhythm. And today I feel fine. I’m going to run slowly today, but I don’t feel banged up. It’s great.

But I can’t help feeling a bit sad for my buddy. I know it’s not the end of the world for him, but I know how frustrating it is to have that kind of pain dogging you all day for weeks. And I’m going to miss him on my runs. It’s going to be hard readjusting to running most runs solo – I’ve come to rely on him to get me out the door some days. In time, he’ll be back – but it’ll suck without him.

Such is life.

I need to stay positive about my own running and be grateful for as long as the good miles continue. And I wish him a speedy recovery.