Change of Pace

I've been a delinquent blogger of late, but it's been a tough week all around. It just seemed wrong to complain about a sore leg on the day a thousand religious pilgrims tumbled off a bridge to their deaths in Iraq. And the sorrowful story of human suffering in Louisiana and Mississippi not only left me feeling emotionally stunned, it also overwhelmed my time as I worked to help cover the story. It is humbling to experience how the filter of other people's misery makes you reconsider your own phenomenal good fortune.

I've still been running every day of late, and even twice on Wednesday. If I manage to get through 10 miles with my friend Gavin tomorrow morning (and I will), this will be my fifth 40+ mile week in a row. Sometimes going for a run is the most efficient way to process the anxieties of the world, even if it comes with a modicum of pain. I've really needed the escape, since my days have been so consumed with helping to tell sad stories and confronting shocking video footage.

"Currently in last place, "CBS Evening News" needs to be reinvented, and the problem is stark: how do you combine news with entertainment? News stories are often dark, and [Les] Moonves would like to find a way to make them light.

We have a very interesting six months ahead of us," Moonves said as he got up to leave. ‘‘Hopefully, by then, we’ll be an independent CBS.’’ He paused, smiled and added, ‘‘And with any luck, we’ll have a naked news show."

- New York Times Magazine, September 4, 2005

Are we, as runners, tougher than the average bear? Are we more wiry and wily and better poised to flee danger? Are our bodies more accustomed to pain and inured to hardship? Can we endure that which others can not? Do we function more efficiently when subjected to physical stresses and strains? As Darwin might posit, are runners more fit to survive?

I know for a fact how one other running blogger feels on the subject...just read Yvonne's eerily appropriate post from July.

I ponder these things occasionally when I run, but I certainly have entertained these thoughts more frequently over the last week. My work days have been filled with images of the downtrodden and defeated, miserable and hungry and pushed beyond their limits.

But lately, there's been a second wave of characters in this human drama...the stalwart and cantankerous locals who just plain refuse to leave their beloved N'awlins. They stocked up long ago on propane and bottled water, canned peas and rice, and as one holdout told the NY Times, "I haven't even run out of weed yet." These people look nothing like the bedraggled shelter residents. They look remarkably healthy and strong and their faces show the kind of resolve that looks familiar to anyone who has stood and cheered at the 25-mile mark of a marathon.

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

p.s. I may have to rethink that shotgun...look at this quote from the same article in today's Times:

"To reduce the risk of violent confrontation, the police began confiscating firearms on Thursday, even those legally owned."

For the moment, my long runs are closer to what used to be my medium runs. But I did two of them this weekend, so that's got to count for something. Saturday, I trained it up to Westchester with my man to show off my beloved Ridge Run. Good company and distracting conversation made the eleven hilly miles fly by and I could have easily added on a few more.

Instead we decided to save our energies for a Sunday morning run down to Ground Zero as a sort of personal 9/11 memorial run. That was the plan anyway. A late night at my friend Patrick's fabulous uptown music salon postponed the endeavor until well into the afternoon, which meant that our peaceful and meditative early morning run turned into an exhausting and sun scorched, ten-mile ordeal. The first five miles were actually not too bad, but the last three miles or so were much harder than they should have been, even though we were only running at about an 8 1/2 minute pace. I know I'm in decent shape these days, but it's a reminder...never underestimate the power of a hangover.

Asics' latest ad campaign features runners musing about what they would do instead, if they could not run. It's probably better not to think too much about all the great things you could be accomplishing with your life if you weren't spending upwards of 10 hours a week running in circles. The ads suggest crossword puzzles, bartending school and home redecorating, but I think I'd have to put language classes and learning to play guitar higher on my list. I'm also prone to that existential guilt that dictates that I should really be using all that time doing something truly meaningful like curing cancer and saving the whales. It's a sad fact that my favorite sport and pasttime that has nourished me so well over the years is, for the most part, a patently selfish use of time.

So as I continue to evaluate the mysterious and persistant pain that is my right calf, this "what if I couldn't run" question is at the forefront of my mind. The truth is, that sad eventuality would be unlikely to set me on the course to negotiating world peace or mastering Farsi since neither of those options would maintain my current considerable level of fitness. Instead, I would probably follow in the steps of so many injured runners before me and take to the bike and the pool.

Permit me to introduce you to the newest torture device in my life...the CycleOps Magneto. It sounds like a comic book villain to me, but I'm counting on it to keep me fit if it really comes to taking a break from the running. This was a birthday gift to me from the man in my life and a truly romantic gesture since he has one too and we'll be able to do tandem workouts on our bikes this winter.

Remember when you were a kid and you'd be riding along in the back seat of the car, happily playing with your Etch A Sketch/Barbie/Transformers/ MadLibs/GameBoy (trying to be inclusive here), when your mom or dad would suddenly say, "Hey! Child of mine, look at this!" And you'd lean over his or her shoulder (did anyone ever wear seat belts in the back seat in the old days?) feeling almost overcome with anticipation as the odometer sloowwly clicked over to something excruciatingly exciting like 50000 or 12345. This is all to lead up to my thrilling news that yesterday morning, my mileage hit 1234 for the year.

Just thought I'd make sure everyone had seen that our Deena Kastor went and broke Joanie B's 21-year-old American record for the half at yesterday's Philadelphia Distance Run. It's a little surreal for us mere mortals to look at her time. Just seeing the number yesterday, 1:07:53, inspired in me a sense of awed wonder. And a little jealousy too, I have to admit. Could I train as hard as she does? Would my body hold up and get stronger and ever faster like her or would I quickly succumb to injury and fatigue?

Anyone who has a job with standard hours, a family, friendships, trash to take out, meals to cook, laundry to wash and even the vaguest interest in current events knows that there are hardly enough hours in the day to fit in all these things and still have time for a six mile run every day. Once you start adding in track workouts and long runs, sit-ups and stretching...you realize very quickly that something has to give. Anyone who has seen the state of my apartment will see where I make my compromises! But I can't help but be curious about the Deena question. Can I train that hard and still stay healthy? And even more fundamentally, can I even find the time to train anywhere near that intensity?

This week wasn't encouraging in that regard. I feel very busy lately, coping with an increased workload at my current job while, at the same time, trying to find a new one. I got in my miles, but it required getting in two runs on Friday and a longer-than-I'm-really-ready-for run yesterday. Still, I made it to 46 miles, which is one more mile than I ran last week, which was one more mile than I'd run the week before, so there is progress going on here.

I do not however have any delusions that I'm really running anything that could truly be called high mileage. While I was visiting my parents in Richmond, VA this past weekend and feeling pretty proud of myself for getting in 18 miles with an area running group, a local runner from there, Christopher Calfee made a bid for a Guinness Book world record by trying to run 350 miles without sleeping. He (only?) made it to 316, but he finished off the feat by racing a 5K in 19:15!

I suppose I'm awed by his feat as well, but given the choice, I'd rather aspire to be Deena.

Without a big race to train for, I'm feeling a little adrift. I do have a half marathon weekend after next and a 10K in December, but I've got another idea in the back of my mind to possibly set as my next goal. I did a little figuring on the calendar today and it looks like it's not unrealistic for me to aim for 2,000 miles for the year. This probably comes as the result of reading too much about those crazy ultrarunners lately, but I still kind of like the idea of setting that as a target. To make it happen, I'll have to average a little over 49 miles a week for the next 14 weeks. I've certainly run higher mileage in the past, but never for such a long stretch of time. All of this will of course be dependent upon my staying healthy, but if I am able to do it, I'll have a hell of a base from which to launch my spring marathon training.

Beyond the Advil and the ice and the stretching that we all make use of to some extent, lie the more extreme and painful reaches of the world of physical therapy. These are the frontiers that take us beyond our comfort level and often involve the exploration of the limits of where we thought our pain tolerance ended. Only another recuperated athlete can really understand what it feels like to have your ilio-tibial band forcibly separated from the quadricep muscle to which it had become fused. I've generally engaged the services of professionals in the past for needle insertions and deep-tissue muscle manipulations, since for some reason I just feel more comfortable deliberately allowing people to hurt me if they are, at the same time, gouging me financially.

So, when my boyfriend casually asked me if I could work on his ITB a little bit after his run, it did cross my mind that perhaps I'm not truly qualified to attempt this kind of therapy. But hey, it can't be that different from giving someone a back rub and I must have learned something from my own experiences suffering on the torture slab commonly known as a massage table...right? Still it's a little intimidating when your victim starts yelping in pain when you're not even pushing that hard.

When the tables were turned and it was his thumbs digging into my recalcitrant calf, it was my cue to gasp and moan and writhe around in agony...just like I do when the professionals work on me. So, is it okay to play at being amatuer massueses? People spend a lot of years learning how to do this stuff and here we are just making it up. My man swears that he feels so much better since I've been plying my skills on him though, so for the moment I guess I'll keep doing it. Who knows, maybe it's the answer to my career frustrations and I've got a future in sports massage. As for my muscles, I'm not sure what is and isn't good for my calf at this point. It really hurt during my 7 miles this morning after being kneaded a bit last night, but I'm hoping that it's a case of breaking it down to build it up. We shall see.

Our shipment of acupuncture needles comes in next week...I will of course be sure to let you know how we do at improvising with those.