A Small Taste of Death

What can be known? The unknown.
My true self runs toward a Hill.
More! O More! visible.
-Theodore Roethke, "One More, The Round"

In my opinion, bluntly put, we run because we crave a small taste of death. Pressed up against a lack (oxygen) & desire (to be something more than we currently are), we are confronted with the edge of what we are capable of & more often than not we are found wanting. Because of that desire we want to hurt more, to press the outside edge of our limited, conventional world. This is not a socially acceptable place. Your boss doesn't want you to expand your concept of what you are capable of; your husband isn't keen on you realizing your body is made to move beyond his circumscribed expectations; your government wants you to vote red or blue (& what's the difference if you pay your taxes.)

Of course the indignities we suffer are not unique; what IS is our response.

Running asks you to go to the edge of your limited, acceptable, reasonable daily existence & to ask for a little more...& unlike your boss, your husband, your checkbook, your daily grind, it always comes through. Not always with the answer you want, but always with the answer you deserve. These questions ask you to risk...to die a little to gain a semblance of an answer. Frequently the answers are hard to digest or decipher or, in fact, are not even actual answers...but they do require risk.

"What can be known?...My true self runs toward a Hill."

Why Do I Run?

I was having my Team Rogue office hours on Tuesday with an athlete I have been coaching, on & off, for around 5 years. We’d been communicating through email about some coaching comments I’d made to her concerning why I wanted her to back off of a certain type of interval workout. My concern was that, given what I knew about her motivations, her past training & racing, combined with her personality, she would begin peaking too early. We are around 12 weeks away from our goal race…I was concerned that we needed to adjust the training the group was doing to fit her tendencies. Of course, this conversation occurred at around 6AM after a few hard reps & she wasn’t sure she’d understood the reason for my concern. We spent a week emailing each other about this issue but quickly things got a bit more theoretical. I asked her what she thought her strengths & weaknesses were; which is a tact I take when I feel an athlete needs to examine their goals & running from a different perspective.

She decided to bring the answers to my office hours & we imparted on a long conversation that went beyond strengths & weaknesses & shot straight to the heart of why we run.

The question is ubiquitous, if generally unasked. Why does one step out on the roads or trails, placing one foot in front of the other in pointless, humdrum repetition? Even the elite among us recognize that the pay-off is ephemeral. A great friend of mine put it to me best over 15 years ago, there is no reason to running…it is an essentially meaningless activity. I think his direct quote was something like, "I run because it doesn't make sense; because everything else in my life makes sense and I need something that doesn't." Sure it provides some health benefits but considering the the way the majority of people I know run there are also serious health concerns associated with high mileage &/or high intensity. Undoubtedly we had an evolutionary purpose for running beyond the flight or fight response that might have a key to why so many people who have no real need to run continue to don their running apparel & slog though the miles. But ultimately there must be more to it...

It brings me to think more about why I run…or more accurately right now, why I don’t run.

Why do YOU run?

Team Rogue - Phase II

Alright mileage mongers...here we go.

You should all be in a position to be fit enough train & the next 4 weeks will test that current fitness. Not necessarily in a way that will help you determine your time/"geek 'o meter" fitness but more to fine tune your effort levels on hills while continuing touch on the anaerobic conditioning (threshold/tempo) development that will be essential to your success in for the 26.2 mile distance.

I hope you'll forgive the repetition of the next 4 weeks & see that the opportunity to train on the same routes will allow you to more easily assess your current fitness. It will also allow you to be more conservative through the first round of workouts knowing you'll have the chance to get more aggressive later, once your soft tissues begin to adapt to the new stresses.

The work really begins now, guys. Your ability to listen to your own internal signals & to understand rhythm within the context of a variety of paces is now critical. You'll need to back your current mileage off some...initially I recommend you set a loose mileage level of 20% less than base mileage to allow a considerable amount of leeway for excessive tiredness, soreness & general shock to the system.

This is also a phase where you need to be able to communicate effectively with your coach. we'll discuss this more in the coming days, but you need to recognize that you need perspective in the coming weeks. I am here to help. Let's determine what is going to be most effective as we work on your weaknesses...this is a critical phase in your race preparation. Let's leave nothing to chance.