I know what you did last summer…, I mean I know what you did this summer…, I mean I know what I did this summer…, well… I’m not sure what I did this summer…
The truth is there is a lot of truth in the above statement. If you’re reading this, there stands a strong chance one of the things you did last summer was run. And you probably ran some this summer as well.
And I know I ran last summer, and to be truthful I ran a handful this summer too. But as I get older and older my body argues that I should run less. It creaks and groans most of my waking life and often in my sleeping life as well. I have a wonky hamstring I damaged 15 years ago that is almost a daily visitor these days. The hamstring is joined by a perpetually swollen ankle, that some days simply aches instead of hurting. And now my achilles that bothered me sixteen years ago training for Mount Washington seems to want to get in on the action. When I get out of bed and stand up in the morning, I have to take a second to get my balance and loosen my ankles before I head out. And thank God for the hand railing going down the stairs.
But the biggest problem now is that my mind has been wanting to join the body in the argument of running less miles. It used to be that only really cold and really hot weather would have the capacity to potentially dissuade me from getting in my planned run. And the run usually won out. These days I find it harder to get inspired to “stick to the plan”, either opting out all together, or more likely scaling back the workload or effort. While I want to get in those training runs it’s harder and harder to just bust it out.
That’s not to say I no longer run, I do. However now it’s simply about getting the run in. I still manage a
“couple-three” long runs a month. Everyone once in a while I will “get after it” on a run, when I’m feeling good, but that happens less often. Mostly I go out for a run, often with someone else, with the mouth running faster than the legs. And I have no specific mileage I need to hit on the day or the week.
For a while not training really wore on me. I mean I’ve sent the better part of 56 years training, if not myself, the kids on my teams. I’d often come up with a training idea and take the opportunity to try it out on myself. I remember as a late thirty year old testing out our 3 x 10 x 200 workout on the school track in Tualatin, OR. 30 track laps, plus two ten minute recoveries, sandwiched by warmup and cooldown, gaining more than 12 miles on the day and almost 4 miles at goal pace or faster. Pretty sure I can’t handle that anymore at any goal pace.
Over the last couple years the concept of running for me has warped in a good way. Instead of the important measure being how far in how much time, it’s now how much fun can I have in how much time and distance. Because I no longer really care about how many miles I can run in a certain amount of time I’m free to run more miles without a concern for how long it takes me. I can pick somewhere to run and simply clear my plate and go do it. I call it adventure running.
Earlier this summer, inspired by the Wapack and Back race, I decided to run a portion of the Wapack, about 4.5 miles of some of the gnarliest trail on the Wapack, with a 5.5 mile foad run back to the car. Not exactly a fun time but certainly an adventure. And a couple weeks ago I coerced my wife into a 10 mile trail run on the Attitash trail. Some internet sleuthing indicated it was 75% runnable so we figured with the varied terrain we were looking at just over two hours of running. However either the poster hadn’t been on the trail recently (as it appeared moose were the only recent trail users) or more likely the poster had never been on the trail. It turned out our slowest mile of the entire “run” was just under 30 minutes… downhill. Between the trail overgrowth, the severity of the terrain and the wetness the weather had left things, our intended two hour run stretched to 3:21…
The other thing I’m finding is I gravitate now towards races, or maybe better described as events, that trend toward more of an experience. Hence the 24 miles in 24 hours this past March. While I was never really in any stress while running, the weight of having to do it all over again, again and again, made it a challenge, and not the 24 (really 27) miles of running.
This summer we hosted a backyard ultra, with a 1.7 mile loop that was repeated every half hour until like the “Highlander” movie, there can be only one. While I stuck in for six laps, we had a bunch of people go eight, a handful go 14, with two beginning lap twenty, with Concord’s Josiah being the only finisher of lap 20. My laps were run in right around 18 minutes, never too hard, with about ten minutes to get ready for the next lap.
Just this morning I ran 6 miles in Boston Lot, a mixed use trail system in Lebanon overseen by the Upper
Valley Mountain Bike Association. I had a late meeting in Concord on Thursday, and a meeting in the morning in Canaan on Friday so I simply packed up my trusty Honda Element (that my daughter calls the “toaster”) camped out in the Upper Valley, and hit the trail early in the morning. Not knowing where I was or where I was going, I explored the diversity of the trail system for over an hour, ready to go back with an actual sense of where I might be headed once I get there.
And the next week I’ll will be at Thacher Park in Voorheesville, NY for a trail running festival (see below for a recap!). I’m only running the half marathon, one lap of the entire course with a hang gliding cliff and a fair amount of single track, roots and rocks. I have no time goal, just simply to be present in the two or so hours I’m out running.
I think most people could stand a bit more “just running” in their lives, and to be truthful, in their training. I know in the past I would have avoided the kind of running I do now, either because I might get injured, or because it wasn’t real training. But I beg to differ. While it might not directly contribute to a faster 5K, it does prepare you for what eventually comes to all runners, the inevitable transition, from former fast athlete to the potential explorer you could become. Being ready for the new challenges, and accepting the fact that running will be different, but fulfilling, is priceless and goes a long way towards sanity in this sport. I’m not suggesting everyone turn to adventure running, forgoing their faster youth, but I do think we often miss the real benefits of going out on a whim and seeing what you can find. It might be a lot more than you ever expected.
We’ll see you out there.
Thacher Park Trail Festival Recap
Just this last weekend we attended the Thacher Park Trail Festival. We had an awesome weekend of camping and hanging out. With all this year’s rain, the course was extremely muddy. While we got a late in the week email warning us of it, the warning could not impress on how muddy it would be. With the base rock of the region being limestone, the remaining material left as limestone erodes is clay-like, making the puddles greasy and coating, and the wet soil slick as ice. I went down twice, (however neither was in a muddy section) and I can easily say it was the toughest 13 miles I’ve ever run. Not to mention my time would indicate that as well.
Of the five people we had running the 50K race (31 miles), only one made the final cutoff. Elizabeth McGurk, Mascenic alumni, finished 3rd overall, first female and took down the course record by an amazing 11 minutes under the worst conditions the race directors have ever seen in their ten years hosting. With stiff cutoffs, Suzanne Callahan missed the half marathon cutoff of 2:45 (I ran 2:43). Jake Farrell and Gretchen Smith snuck under the marathon cutoff of 5:30 by seconds, with Jim Mormando missing it by 5 seconds! (Race organizers were willing to let him go out but in the sprint to beat the cutoff he gassed himself and elected not to go back out. Farrell and Smith would finish in 6:42, 12 minutes beyond the final cutoff and were only listed in the marathon category (while completing 31 muddy miles!)
In the end we had 21 of us in attendance, five of my HS athletes plus one from the neighboring district, four alumni, seven parents, and four friends.
This event (with the exception of McGurk) wasn’t about training or running fast, it was about the experience. When you could look past all the mud (which was hard when it was in your eyes!) the course was beautiful and the experience, though excruciating (mor for some than others), help make you be grateful for what the human body, your human body, can do. I didn’t learn anything new about running, but I did learn more about what makes me, me.
