Some Epiphanies I've Had

Like I said in my last post, I have ideas & thoughts & hopes & plans running absolutely wild in my head, & when I try to think about how I might wrangle them all into a post that is both coherent and not 27 pages long, I feel totally overwhelmed & like I need to just go look at internet cat videos for a while. Which tends to result in posting nothing.

So, I'm trying the bite-sized approach. One piece at a time, and probably a lot of circling back over time, because this shit is all connected.

After I DNF'd in Santa Rosa, I had a nice, long, silent two-hour drive home in which to mull a lot of things over. That night I spent probably another two hours pouring my thoughts out unedited into a blog post that I knew I would not be ready to post for a while. But, having let it sit for nearly a month now & gotten through the crazy-making-breath-holding-limbotastic nightmare of waiting for the MRI & waiting for the results & waiting for the follow-up & being cleared of anything catastrophic, I think I have enough perspective now to put it out there.

Friends, I present to you some really honest epiphanies that came to me during & after the race, the type of honest you can only really be with yourself once all the stakes & pressure are off.

1) I am scared of long runs. I used to just say I hated them, but the more I think about it, the more I think it's at least partly fear--of the discomfort involved, of the monotony, of the logistics, of the huge chunks of sacrificed time in which I can't really do anything else. In terms of process-oriented vs. goal-oriented personality types, I am 100% unabashedly goal-oriented. I don't want to do things; I want them DONE, as soon as possible. This makes me really good at finishing what I start, hitting deadlines reliably, not procrastinating, and getting things done quickly; the downside is that in many cases I have a lot of trouble "enjoying the ride," as they say, and I sometimes find enormous, long-term tasks or projects so overwhelming that I become too demoralized to start.

Bullshit, are we there yet? How about now?

In the past, with marathon training, this has meant that I've usually done the bare minimum that I think I can get away with in terms of long runs. (This time around, I only missed two, both due to injuries, but since they didn't really get all that "long" until halfway through my training cycle, two is kind of a lot, percentage-wise.)

I realized before the race that I was really, truly going into it actively afraid of the distance, and I suspect the same is true of every other marathon I've ever run as well. Mentally, I think I've just never gotten all that comfortable with runs over about 15 miles, and if I'm going to continue running marathons, I've got to get over that. Which, I think, means establishing enough of a base *before* the real training starts so that 18-20 mile long runs are just part of the weekend routine, instead of something I build up to doing two or three times a few weeks before the race & spend my training cycle dreading and stressing about. I don't want to run another marathon until I'm able to stare down the barrel of these runs and not bat an eye because it no longer seems like such a big freaking deal.

2) Related to #1, if I can get to a place where I'm comfortably doing an 18-20 mile long run most weekends, I think it actually might help me mentally to run one or two full marathons at an easy, comfortable pace in the course of training for a goal marathon (say, four months & two months before a goal race). I think one of the reasons I've never totally gotten over my fear of the distance is that I run the full 26.2 rarely enough that I don't have the feel of it in my body the way I do with shorter distances I run more often. It would also give me more chances to practice logistics/fueling/etc. as well as the mental aspect of never stopping (whereas on long runs I typically make brief stops for water, traffic lights, etc.).

3) Related to #1 AND #2, the last couple of years have been cycle after cycle of shortchanging base-building because there was always some race I really wanted to run and I "just didn't have time" to spend weeks upon weeks running slow, easy miles because "I need to get fast NOW!" I was constantly telling myself I'd get back to it right after x race, which would turn into right after y race, and so on, and so on. As a result, I know my "aerobic engines" have suffered a bit in a way that doesn't really show up until you're doing marathon-type long runs. Basically I think my options at this point are 1) stop running marathons so I can get away with doing less of that type of training, or 2) admit I want to run more marathons, accept that that's part of it, & invest long-term in some serious base-building efforts before I even *think* about another goal marathon. Basically if I'm going to be a semi-decent marathoner (at least temporarily), I have to start acting like one.

It's like Nanna always said....

4) Somewhere in the last year or two, I've lost my hill mojo. Although SRM was generally flat, there were a good number of rather steep rollers in there, and I felt myself kind of mentally fall apart every time I saw one coming because I was just not prepared for it. I mean I doubt I will ever totally {heart} running hills, but I think I've maybe gotten too caught up in trying to make sure I hit my prescribed training paces every time out, which has meant that I've avoided the hilly routes I used to run regularly in favor of friendlier, more gently rolling ones. I know it will make me stronger if I suck it up & do at least a couple of easy runs a week on not-nasty-but-legit hills. (The trouble with this is the downhills. Going uphill hurts in the good way; downhill a lot of times hurts in the not-so-good way.) Tying this back into #1 above, it would probably be good if I did a long, hilly run at *least* once a month.

I mean, I live HERE...

5) I need to do more medium-long runs at goal marathon pace, even if only for the mental benefit. This is the one thing I've questioned about my training plans the last couple of times. There have been some GMP miles, but usually only a few at a time, or chunks stuck into the middle of monster track workouts. I'm a firm believer in keeping true long runs nice & easy and I know it's very easy to overdo the amount of running you do at GMP, but I think this is something I might bring up with Coach Tom the next time I train for a marathon & see if there's a smart way to integrate some mid-week GMP runs (say, 8-10 miles) occasionally. I felt like I had a hard time "dialing in" to that pace/effort level & getting into a groove at SRM, even when my hip was feeling fine, and I think personally I might do better at that if I have more practice running at that pace & getting what it feels like solidly into my body. (Also, I think it's probably time to finally admit out loud that I want that pace to be 8:00/mile. Sorry not sorry.)

Every one of these deserves its own post, but again, I'm trying to keep things bite-sized for now in the interest of, like, posting something consistently. I have more to say about each of them, so hopefully that will happen bit by bit over the next few weeks or months.

Post-Santa Rosa I decided to give myself a month of much-needed (relative) sloth, but as of Monday I think it's probably time to get back on some sort of schedule & start holding myself accountable for putting this stuff into practice. I have a hard time doing that when I'm not training for something imminent, so hopefully forcing myself to blog regularly again will help.