Friday Five

Messed up week, lots of work, Nancy was sick all week and had tons of meetings, I had a ton of meetings. Didn't get as many runs in as I'd have liked, but that's life. I did get in a nice fiver Friday afternoon and felt really good. I'm reading Born to Run" and it's great. I was reading about a woman who was a dominant ultra-runner in the mid-90s, and her description of the sensuality and romance of running really made an impact. It's all about listening to your body every second and dialing it back when necessary, and turning it up when able. It's how you find your rhythm and I have to say that the run started great, it got a bit choppy, and then I found my flow and felt great for the last half. It was fun, and I'm looking to take this attitude into tomorrow's 20. Listen to my body, dial it back, ramp it up, find my flow. I've been espousing the semi-spiritual side of running for a while, and I know inherently to dial it back, but some sort of competitive beast gets going and I want to push it -- I didn't listen so well last week, and got burned. I dialed it up from 4-8 and when things got funky around 9 I didn't listen and blew up because I kept pushing it and didn't listen and ruined my flow. It's not that I dislike competition -- I'm competitive -- but I compete in some other areas of my life and don't necessarily feel the need right now to compete in running. Running is an outlet, a mode of expression, a way of life. I was projecting into the future on my run and thinking how cool it would be to some day run with my kids -- 5Ks, halfs, whatever. I hope I'm setting a good example, I hope I can run well and strong for a long time and imbue my kids with a love of running. I'm looking forward to tomorrow, and, as is mentioned often in "Born To Run," I'm going to approach it with an open heart, and run for the love of it, and see where it all goes. I think my goals tomorrow are to 1) have fun and run with an open heart, 2) run healthy, 3) finish strong.

Finding the Flow

As we all know sometimes ballplayers get in a slump. They lose their stroke. The only thing to do is to keep on swinging, keep on taking your cuts. Well, today I came out of my slump.

I found my stroke again. I also achieved a really nice level of flow that I've not reached in months -- surprisingly so. I headed out today in a poor mood -- angry, mainly. Sometimes anger is good for a run, sometimes it blows it up. You go out too hard to burn off the aggression and whatever hormones, and amino acids and residue of your fit are coursing through your veins amps you up early and leaves you flat later and it ends up being a lousy run. Today, I went out just to burn off the substances and see what would happen.I settled into a comfortable rhythm early and just ran -- it was a lope, really. Everything came together, and nothing bothered me. Stop for a light, or to wait for traffic while crossing a street? No worries. Run along some icy stuff -- why not slide it, it's fun. Shoe untied -- tie it. I'd pick right up where I left off. Right into my lope, right into my zone. It was fluid. I found my stroke and reached that state of comfort and exertion that is very rare. It felt great. I came back in a good mood, with my anger dissipated. With sadness (which I think is the flip-side of anger) abated. I fed off the energy of my emotion and burned it steadily along the course. Ah yes, running as therapy. I found my stroke. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Bye-Bye Zen

So, I've been running Zen for about the past year or so. By Zen I mean I just go out and do it. I don't time it, record the distance, monitor HR, pay attention to the weather (too much), ignore pace etc. I just try to let the run come to me, seek a flow and go. Well, it's time to say bye-bye to my Zen running experiment. I've got a bunch of double-digit-distance races coming up and a 10K in two weeks (less actually), and I need to train and I need to pay attention to distance and pace and HR and track my progress. I'm going to get my watch up and running again, I'm going to pay more attention to the weather (my legs froze this AM without a sufficient base-layer on and it was miserable), and while I'm going to look for the flow and let the runs come to me I'm going to buckle down a bit harder, work harder at running and being fit and bending my schedule to the run. There is a relentless logic to training -- the more you do the better you get the easier it becomes to train the more you can train the better you get and on, and on, and on. I dragged my sorry butt out of bed at 6:20, and was on the road by 6:30. It was cold and dark, but it felt good to be moving and good to know that whatever today brings, it won't make me miss my run. It's time get type-A about this thing. I'll be on the road tomorrow at 6:30 AM again. See you then.