Posture & pacing

Today's run took me to Windsor Castle and back.  A funny thing about how I'm running now -- reaching out towards marathon distance -- is that my pace is gradually approaching that at which I used to run during C-2-5k days.  I'm slowing down drastically -- today it was around 12:30 min/mile -- in order to keep my form, with lots of steps (literally picking up the pace even as I slow down), straight back, chest out, and head up.  It's also the only way to ward off the pain of running so far, for so long.  Concentrating on pace & posture keeps the pain at bay.

Now, today was lovely, the fields and river were bright again on the way back, and I started to really get into it once I'd reached Windsor itself (i.e. past old Windsor) and turned the corner to the castle.  Here it became properly social with all ages participating in the spectacle: little kids on bikes just ecstatic to be alive, alongside sporty/sprightly seniors with hiking sticks and smiles on their faces.  This is the spectacle of the long walk, it's that stretch across space that links a vast stretch of landscape, and pulls together so many bodies in a visual performance.

I reached the gate again and stopped, checked my watch.  I'd hit 11km, by a bit of route engineering, at just under 1.5 hours.  I was on track.  My goal in all this training is simply to finish a marathon at the future specified date (22 April 2018) -- but you also need to come in under around 6 hours I think or there will be no-one there when you finish (I'm sure I'm exaggerating here).

I got some great advice from a fellow runner who said, "you just need to get to the start line."  I honestly hadn't been thinking about it that way.  We're basically ready, the rest is just mental, and avoidance of injury.

Today's run was about psyching myself up.  Since running my first 18.6 km I've had this niggle of doubt about being able to do it -- any long 15+ mile run really.

But my wife keeps coming through for me too.  She's showed me some stretches to work on my tendon (the hip-knee connection that hurts quite variably, but much more in the knee right after I stop), and last night she talked me through getting back out there to train through the pain -- by helping me formulate the strategy of pacing to minimise the pain.  Go as slow as you need to, to keep it comfortable, and then just push through at pace.

So, the thing is, I pushed along up to almost 14 miles and I can now visualise myself doing Windsor and back twice at that slow (sub-6 hour marathon) pace.  But will my body agree?  I seized up after waiting for a train, but was ok after some stretching.  Now, at home resting, there's no pain and not a hint of swelling (there never has been).  All is well, right?

Differentiating time

Windsor Castle, Moat Garden, March 2018, photo by Gwilym Eades

Here is the notebook entry alluded to in the last post:

From my notebook, the day my father died, written just after a run, but before I got the news:

"When we de-prioritise time, it unfolds differently.  Differently from when it is prioritised, but also differently in the sense of in-difference, and productive of difference.  

Does it just mean running slower? (To some extent, but not necessarily, yes)."

Then, on March 20th, 2018, ten days after I received the news of my father's death:

"Dialectics are concerned with time, which is of the body; and with space, or extension outside the body.  Body and mind are one, both are extended through time and space, and in relation to other bodies.  

Now think about a route.  We tend to see it as a fixed thing, but it is always changing.  There are miniscule, incremental changes in a material sense: a new curb or re-surfaced road section, some trees removed.  Others are more catastrophic: that roundabout gets taken out by construction or flooding for a few months or weeks causing a full-scale shift in the route.  And conditions change daily: the weather especially can alter our sense of the shape and length of a route, especially on very hot or cold days.  These are the external movements of space we deal with daily, and in the longer term as well.

Time is of the body: it has a rhythm, it dilates, extends, and shrinks.  Most of all we tend to think of it as a line, an object outside, on our wrist, on Strava, Garmin, or Suunto.

'While you are sleeping your body heals.'  My wife just told me this and she's right.  I'm training for my first marathon, tweaking my runs, my diet, my recoveries.  But after one particular (10k trail) run, and the whole next day, I felt sore and tired.  It focused in my right leg from the knee up.  Two days later I got a good night's sleep and it started to clear up and that is when I made the connection: I wasn't getting enough sleep.  It is now time to do so, consistently, so the body has time to heal.  I've decided to gift my body this time.  It/myself.

This is the other side of the dialectic: the ideal one, the thinking side, the one that psyches you up (or out).

The observation about differences in time was made 10 days ago after a long (30k) run where I'd adjusted my pace to endure its length by slowing down to 11 min/mile.  This was my psyching up procedure to outsmart time by slowing it down.  The result: farther in space, and more ground covered in relative comfort.  The difference this made was that it gave me space to think, to breathe differently, to let others overtake as I moderated my pace and really took in the scenery.  At Windsor Castle gate I took a few seconds' break (11km in) to take my first sip of home-made Gatorade: 3/4 water & 1/4 o.j. with a good dash of salt.  That moment to throw my gaze down the Long Walk, to where the moving mist washed across the Copper Horse: that would be my half-way point.

The Long Walk from Windsor Castle, 2013, photo by Gwilym Eades

So in the indifference to time, in the determination to let it take what it takes, you give yourself over to your body -- you listen to it -- and it comes to embody the differences in space produced by that giving.  You are no longer indifferent in this new sense: there is a thrill in seeing things go by, phenomenally.  Blue-panelled escarpments rise and slide by in jagged layers, echoing and fading across the valley.  You turn your head and a field seems bright despite the greyness of the day -- even the mud shines -- you are lucky there is no pain, because one day you may be running through it.

That same day, ten days ago, I received news that my father had died.  As I always do on run days I took a short nap, but I rarely dream.  Today, exceptionally, I was in my bedroom (usually I'm on the couch), and I dreamed, of the birds flapping in the field next to the Long Walk near the Copper Horse.  The dream was vivid and short, the birds all sorts: geese, crows, and kites, some flapping on the ground, some taking flight."

I've since begun to recuperate my leg and have identified a second problem.  After running hard for two years I have 'no more ass', i.e. less cushion than I used to, and sitting on an office chair is painful.  It causes pain from my hip to my knee.  I now work standing or stretched out across two soft chairs.  My stretching and rolling regime has also been extended.  I'm on the mend!

A runner's conundrum

I've started this blog as a way to work through my thoughts and get feedback on running as I'm midway into training for my first marathon (Southampton, 22 April 2018).

There are 'running authors' out there (Murakami; Rowlands is another) who seem to 'get their best thinking done' when running, but for me it's all around the run itself: on the 'outside' as it were.

At home I have a several books by such running authors as well as several well-thumbed copies of Runner's World; and three of the latter's publications.  These are the Complete Guide to Running; Run Your Belly Off; and a Runner's Diary.  All three are essential tools in my running toolkit and have worked wonders for me.

My best support comes from my club.  I run with Runnymede Runners at least a couple of times a week and the social aspect of it has been indispensable, not to mention fun.  Here's another picture of me, this time at Cabbage Patch in Twickenham last year.  With the club we do hills, speed-work, but mostly routes of moderate distance and varying levels of chattiness, clustered around whatever pace you're currently comfortable with.

After the running, I can make notes in the Runner's Diary, and these are very focused, condensed and very specific information about what I need to do.  Recently, for example, after examining everything I think I'm doing right, including strength training to ward off injuries, I decided I'm not getting enough sleep, and made an adjustment.

But I also think I'm not writing enough.  There's not enough room in the diary to get all my thoughts down.  And so, I begin the blog.  There is a scratch pad where I write down early versions of blog posts and one is waiting there, ready to be typed up.  

In it, I describe what I mean by 'dialectics' of running (essentially, working through paradoxes or conundrums related to running practice); at the same time it is a very personal post related to my upcoming marathon and the recent death of my father in British Columbia, Canada.  Stay posted.