5 years' running

July 2021 will mark 5 years since I started running.  I was 46, a 'master's' runner, when I began my couch-to-5k program with Runnymede Runners at Windsor Great Park. It was a pretty big group that met at the Savill Garden car park 3 times a week to alternate run/walk in a big long line. If you got to the front during the run phase, you'd curl back around in the opposite direction and go to the back of the line until it was time to walk again. This was repeated as many times, on as many days, as needed, to get to the point where you were running the whole 5k.  I was pleased in those days to do an easy 5k in 37 minutes, noting to myself that it wasn't hard if you just paced yourself.

Now I'm 51 and I feel like I've come through a big string of personal bests and fitness improvements that were massive, but also due to my age that I'm angling back down to where I was at the start of the c25k journey, noting often to myself these days that 'I'm just glad that I can run'.

In 5 years I've overcome IT band pain, runner's knee, Morton's neuroma, and shin splints, all of which felt fairly major, and took me out for at least one three week period at a time.  Each time I got back to running I told myself 'I'm just glad that I can run, no matter what the pace, it's the fact that I'm running that matters, because it feels so good.'

So, in a way, not much has changed.  For example, during today's recovery run, in which I honestly felt that I could not have run much faster, I did about a 12 minute/mile pace, about the same pace as my first 5k.  The difference now is that I labeled today's run a 'recovery run' because yesterday I did a 'lactate threshold interval' run, in which you maintain your 10 mile race pace for 12-14 minutes during a 10k run.  It was tough but very do-able, and my pace alternated between 7 minute/mile and 10 minutes/mile.  

Earlier in the week I had done some intervals at the track.  A couple of days before that I did some long very slow running around Swinley Forest in preparation for my upcoming Race to the Stones. Now I'm doing ultras and have both marathons and half marathon races to run by the end of the summer.  And I'm supposed to be racing 5ks every so often on some Wednesdays with my now exclusive club Bracknell Forest Runners (though I'm still bolstered by lots of kudos from by old running buddies in Runnymede).

Strava tells me I've done 1220 runs to accumulate 7500 miles in my 5 five years.  

But it still really just boils down to that one truth: 'I'm just glad I can run'

Still Running: Why do I run?

 I'm reading Goddard's book Still Running, and it is making me think about why I run (and about why I am still running).

The book is written by a lifelong practitioner and scholar of Zen Buddhism, and it includes reference lists for each chapter, mostly on Buddhism, but also citing Noakes (Lore of Running) and other rigorous scholarly works.  This is (for me, an academic) both reassuring and useful because if I want to I can chase up another book later if I want more on a topic.

Goddard covers a lot of ground, and she includes a practical exercise at the end of each chapter.  I was surprised to find almost all of these useful.  For example, she recommends a 2:3 breathing rhythm (I use 2:2, meaning 2 steps on the inhale and 2 steps on the exhale), and has a set of running instructions for both experimenting with, and choosing, an effective pattern.  I have come to my own 2:2 pattern after reading Daniel's Running Formula. 

Goddard also covers cadence, and the golden 180 number that so many others cite as ideal.  She is quick to note that 180 is bandied about as an 'elite' figure, and that we should work up to it, building consistency through our practice.  You don't need to be a Buddhist to appreciate this book, and you don't need to be a runner.  This an introductory text for becoming a (better) runner; it also introduces some fundamental concepts (such as breathing and mindfulness) in Buddhist practice and philosophy (as noted above, with references).

Sometimes (especially after an injury) I'm almost surprised that I'm still running. I've met middle-aged men who seem to be former runners who will often cite injury or laziness as a reason for not continuing with the sport.  For me, one of the biggest ongoing challenges to continuing to run is that the social aspect of it has been pulled away for over a year now.  One of my last 'social' runs was the Wokingham Half Marathon in February 2020. I ran a few times with a small group in August as well, but since then I've run roughly 1000 miles on my own.

As a cumulative fact I'd say this has been harder than being injured. Running solo has its upside but done too often it comes to feel like an overuse injury: non-acute but gradually noticed as pain over time until it almost comes to feel debilitating.  

Opportunities are starting to emerge to run in groups but the sad fact is that my last group run in August ended in acute injury: a shin splint pain that made me hobble home and that even three weeks rest failed to fully rehabilitate.  It took me until December to finally be able to begin to build up to 20 miles a week, and then very gradually up to 40/week and into an ultra-marathon training plan (from the book Relentless Forward Progress, the easiest plan in the book, in preparation for July 2021's Race to the Stones). 

But even now I manage the shin pain which has flared up again at times, in part by adjusting my pace on the fly and in the moment, something you can't really do when you're pegged to a metronomic group-paced run.  

So I keep running on my own, managing 20-45 miles a week depending on how I'm feeling.  Often it is slow going, but other times I surprise myself by doing fast-paced runs that feel easy.  It is those pacier/easier efforts with a small group that I really miss, and that I fear might never return.  

Even if they don't (and they will), I'll still keep running, and with Askwith and others, I'll practice slow running, running like a deer (visualisation), or maybe even blind running; in other words, I'll keep experimenting and having fun, which is another aspect of Still Running: it makes running fun again. 

Exercised

 This is about as good as books get.  Every observation and comment is backed up by evidence from scientific literature, ranging from the anthropological to the physiological. You get a book about running that also takes in a spectrum of other forms of exercise that allude to, contains, or border on that fundamental activity. Actually, I suspect, after reading this, that brisk walking is more fundamental, in the sense that it has a stronger basis in the evolution of human beings as hunter-gatherers.  This is made abundantly clear in Exercised.  Hunter-gatherers would have looked upon (indeed do look upon) unnecessary jogging as a ridiculous waste of calories.

If you are a Born-to-Runner, one who has read and internalised Chris McDougall's book about the Tarahumara, then there is a lot for you in this book, but don't expect your biases to be confirmed. As a rigorous scientist, everything Lieberman examines he does so with a sceptical and critical eye.  He expects you to do so when reading this book, but I could not find fault with it. Lieberman is himself known as 'The Barefoot Professor' in running circles, indicating the extent to which he internalised the dogma around all things McDougallish.  Though, of course, his own time in the field working with San, Hadza, Tarahumara, and other hunter-gatherer cultures are a more fundamental reason. He is critical of the Born to Run cult, and gives careful consideration and weight to running with shoes.

We don't get to running until around page 200, before which we are led systematically through myth-busting chapters on sleep (5-7 hours is ideal, and if you sleep more than 8 hours you are more likely to die young); rest (we were born to REST not RUN); laziness, for which we are also evolved, noting the amount of time our ape ancestors and our hunting-gathering fellow humans do actually spend resting (it is a LOT); sitting (slouching is just fine, and chairs are irrelevant); beds (we don't really need them); speed (humans are slow and ungainly runners, even Usain Bolt); strength (brawniness had its place in the past, but better is to be strong); aggression (humans are better at proactive than reactive violence); walking (you can lose weight by doing it BRISKLY; and 10,000 steps is a real figure in terms of health); running (it is basically a form of dancing, which is basically hopping from one leg to another over and over again), and many more myths busted.

After all the evidence, supported by clear and convincing graphs, has mounted throughout the book, we are given a tour of what happens when we age and don't exercise; versus a life lived actively. We note that many lazy people live long happy fulfilling lives; and that many exercists (his word for proselytising exercisers constantly urging us to exercise) don't. Lieberman takes these cases apart using both logic and evidence. The lazy longevity phenomenon is countered by pointing out that such people could have lived even longer better lives had they exercised; those marathoners who died young from heart attacks might have died earlier had they not been so active (I hadn't realised Jim Fixx and some of the others responsible for the running boom had led such nutritionally debauched lives before they became runners until I read this book).

The final chapter is a mini-book for the use of exercise as both tool and dosage for attacking a range of diseases from cardiovascular, to cancer, to mental health. Nowhere is exercise given as panacea, everywhere its role is precisely weighed up against other courses of action, and varying dosages and types, from cardio to weights (both of which are highly recommended, with the weight falling more to the former). 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise per week is the basic prescription for all, in a nutshell, with two days of weights.  He even gives a few pages discussion to running injury, and the running aspect will be quite satisfying to my readers who pursue this great endeavour.  Reading this book will deepen both your love and sense of purpose around the importance of keeping on with the exercise, however much you can do, in whatever form, for a happier and healthier life. 

Cadence, breath, rest

For the last four years, the rhythm of my life has been defined by running. I have come to think in terms of breath and cadence. I have completed two ultramarathons, three marathons, and more. I have found my distance (the half), and come through injury multiple times to run even better than before.

I am moving on from being a beginner as I enter my fifth year of serious running. It's time to quit making rookie mistakes (I tell myself), it's time to take rest & recovery seriously. This also has to do with my age. But Sheehan has put to rest the idea that age need be any significant barrier to achievement. 

My age requires to find that achievement, and rests, like silences in music, come to structure it. We become better in recovery when we incorporate it into our training regime. This occurs over multiple temporal scales and rhythms. At the levels of days (we stop running or we double run); weeks (we have rest days); and seasons (we, like Jurek, take a couple of months to do something else).

My right, and then my left, shin became sore to the point of prohibiting further running for at least a week. I went into self-rehab, and it worked, as it has before. I took it easy and made a comeback. If I've done it before, I can do it again. I've proven that. Now I need to prove that my running can withstand a significant rest.

Rest need not obviate the act of writing and reflection. One will still generate diary entries from the act of letting one's body lie fallow for a time, or at least of letting the muscles that have come to so dominate re-balance and settle into a different kind of harmony with the rest. I'll do chin ups, pushups, situps, leg-lifts and toe-crunches and then I'll fold the gains back into the field of myself.

Schoenberg and Bartok have ruled an atonal summer, a chaotic collage of plague and epic fail. The collage of myself has been similarly crimped, crying, and bombastic. What I need is a new kind of music more conducive to the rest and the recovery. Perhaps more Dvorak, more Bach, more Takamitsu. I'll listen to classical guitar, to Tarrega, whose lines run clean like those in fields formerly fallow.

The plan is, come November, to begin to work from whatever base I still have towards the Brighton marathon, with the Wokingham Half as a test run. This is what I did last year. If it worked once it can work again, but I need clean base, a clear slate, from which to spring into that endeavour. 

3100: Run and Become

This is the second documentary movie about running that I've 'made' my wife watch with me. The first was The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young (a review of which I'll save for another post).  This one is a lot gentler in its own way, though I suspect the average paces maintained by competitors in both races is probably somewhat comparable, given the terrain on the one hand (Barkley Marathons) and the distance on the other (3100).

The movie is structured around a race that takes place within a half city block in New York City (this was also described in Finn's book The Rise of the Ultra Runners, about which I've posted).  The main sections of footage involve various participants in the 3100 mile (5000 km) race that was started by religious leader Sri Chinmoy. Various (if not all) participants are followers of the pacifist movement inspired by Chinmoy, himself an inspirational runner and competitor.

Interspersed with footage from the 3100 race itself, which is a very subdued affair, stretching over days that last from 6am to midnight, kicked off each day with a silent prayer among the twenty or so participants this event attracts. On the surface, these people do not appear competitive, partly because the pace is so slow, but then again, they have to cover a LOT of miles.  The whole idea of pacing yourself goes to a whole new level.

Beneath the surface, there are at least several of the participants who really want to win. This plays out over days, with one racer gaining a few miles over another each day until, several days later, they are in the lead.  Other competitors simply want to finish, and we are given glimpses of at least two of these peoples' lives, through interviews that include key family members giving support throughout the race.

Interleaved with the main 3100 racer sections are three others: 1. Kalahari hunter/gatherers 2. Navajo runners in Arizona and 3. Marathon monks.  Footage from different parts of the world highlight how human beings have linked running to belief, religion, livelihood, and healing. These interlinked issues are given some historical positioning, but we also realise that running goes much deeper than that recorded in written history, back to when knowledge was transmitted orally, and stories about running intersected with stories of the hunt, of connecting with the gods, and of basic freedom.

These other sections break up the main story of 3100 miles in NYC nicely, but we are eager to get back to these stories as well. We see the main character, an incredibly humble man from Finland, going about his daily life back home, and then we see him, in a very similar way, doing very everyday things during the course of the race: eating, sleeping, setting a timer, chatting with people, and come to realise that there really is no distinction between running and not running: it's just a matter of degree.  Slow motion footage of his feet moving alongside the chain-link fence that runs beside much of the course make this point visually: it looks very much like fast walking, and indeed, as in all ultra-running, a lot of it is walked.

To summarise: my wife ended up loving this movie (just as she had with the Barkleys one), and we had a good discussion about it. I would have like to have heard more about the other three threads of information, but the movie is already two hours long, so I'll have to resort to my books about running to pick up that other information at some time.

Wokingham Half 2020

There I am, running as strong as I've ever run in my life, just having turned 50 years old three months previously, and in the middle of a long training block for Brighton Marathon 2020.  Wokingham Half Marathon was one of those races that lets you see what your new pace is, towards the 'big race' for which you are actually training.  As it turns out, and as we know from personal injury, one can never assume that things will happen in the way that we plan for them to. 

That was months ago, pre-lockdown, and once the Coronavirus finally hit in full force, forcing us all indoors with the exception of our 'daily dose' of exercise, my training plans all went out the window.  I went kind of crazy with the running, upping my miles for no good reason other than that my Race to the Stones had not been cancelled.  That took only a couple more weeks, so I put the big pile of ultra-training miles to one side (never minding the ill-advised 15 mile run I did in my Salomon cross-country trainers), bought a pair of Nikes, and started doing hill and speed work to gear up for the Windsor Half.

And then that was cancelled, but because I was running so well (I thought), I told myself to just keep going, and installed a regime of two runs a day, three to four days a week.  Right after a brilliantly-paced fast one around Martins Heron I knew for sure I had the dreaded shin splints some of my mentors have talked about on occasion.  And that, as they say, was that.  My fitness plummeted even as I continued to try to do (truncated) speed sessions, and finally I knew that I needed a rest to recover from whatever it was that I'd done to my body.  That or I'd probably end up with a stress fracture.

As the fitness tanked and I rested, I made sure to do ALL my rehab exercises every day, taking up to an hour or more to get through everything.  I found out through Hobrough's new book that I'd been doing my single leg squats wrong for years now, and I corrected that.  This turned my stretching sessions into mini-strength workouts, and I've been doing these since the 10th of June or so, the day after my last really good run around Martins Heron.  

I keep thinking back to Wokingham Half 2020 to remind myself I'm still a good runner, that that wasn't so long ago (though it feels long ago, being pre-lockdown), that my form holds, and I know how to breathe (3 steps per in-breath, 3 steps out).  I can still go the distance, having put in several 13+ mile long runs in the past few weeks.  Thinking back to Wokingham Half, though (and having never given it a proper write-up), what made it go so well?  Looking back at my previous relatively high fitness level from a point that is relatively low, I can say a bit more objectively, I think, that:

-Learning to run, and running at a higher level, is a fundamentally a social activity, like all learning.  I ran well because I ran with a club. The people I ran with kept it real for me, held me within my own limits, even as they pushed them further.  With the limits expanded, they became real.  Running totally alone as I have the last few months has made for a false sense of the reality of my limits, and this has been a direct result of having the social aspect (the running club) stripped away.

-Socially-learned running infused my body right down to the individual bones in my feet, and the pores of my skin. I had learned by watching others run, and had participated in the 'fast groups' and the speed sessions several times a week. I also did weekly long runs that included trail running in the forest, also in groups, but composed of differently aged individuals (usually older) on the Sunday runs.

-I decided to run fast.  I told myself that the way my feet turned over in a speed session, driving each foot into the ground and keeping up a fast cadence (180 per minute), was the way to approach this race. I had a strategy, and it paid off, because I came within a minute of my goal (1:30 HM).

-I caught up with, and maintained pace with, the 1:30 pacer.  This was hard at first because the pacer was way ahead, meaning I had to do faster than desired start of race pace.  Usually I manage to start slow, but often too slow.  This time it was the other way around, and because I beat my PB by two minutes I can only surmise that it worked.  With that said, the second half of my race was slower as I hit a bit of a wall brought on by taking in no nutrition during the course.

-I ran consistently, and this was tied to having confidence in my ability to maintain sub-7 minute mile paces over the full half marathon.  This was due in turn to speed work, as well as to my previous PB at the Windsor Half Marathon in 2019.

What will I do now that so many training plans have been junked, and now that my fitness has dropped and my right leg has rebelled?  

I'm trying to be patient, and I'm continuing to run.  My pace these days is good if I manage sub-10 minutes per mile.  Which is good, because I'm being forced to take it slow.  My body is telling me not to do what I did when I first got those Nike Pegasus trainers, which was just RUN FAST!  

I'm on a training plan for ultra, meaning that speed is less important, and that distance and endurance are key.  I'm moving relentlessly forward to the end of that training plan, and will run the distance if I feel up to it at that time.  The key thing for now is just to have some structure. 

Running Fast and Free

As I make may way through two books on running I'm becoming aware of a tension that would seem to be approaching the properly dialectical.  I have a self-imposed rule that I can read up to three books at once, as long as there is no more than one memoir, one book of technique, and one work of fiction being read (by me) simultaneously.  This allows me to relax and enjoy thinking about running in a laid-back, worry-free, way with the memoir; and then to rapidly switch to something more practical when I want to push myself a little bit, and actually get outside to follow up on the training plans.  Fiction is always allowed, and it doesn't have to be a work of fiction about running per se.  But sometimes it is (see my last post about Shriver's book The Motion of the Body Through Space).



With that said, I'm doing a double-read right now, moving between Askwith's Running Free and Goater and Melvin's The Art of Running Faster.  (I'm also currently sidelined with shin splints, and am therefore switching, as I do when injured, to a reading 'mode' where I read more as I run less).  I've established a kind of back and forth rhythm of reading these two books, dipping into Askwith for a chapter on slow running, for example, and then reading about how to run faster with the Goater & Melvin.  There's clearly a tension here, but what's interesting is that Askwith's chapter on slow running ends with a meditation on running fast, and how we can tend to do so naturally when we aren't really thinking about it, and are focused on something else.



Of course, Askwith is 'running naked', because he runs without a watch, and therefore his sense of speed is very much relative.  But senses of speed always are. And this point comes out very strongly in the Goater/Melvin book.  They note how natural techniques for running faster need to be if they are to become successful drivers of more efficient, smart, and supple (fast) running. One cannot overthink one's stride, the footstrike, or the arms, lest one begins to overstride, or unnaturally alter one's gait; these things will result in injury.  Both books are at pains to demonstrate how their approaches and techniques will lead to less injury, properly applied.

As I make my way through these books, and as I continue with a very rigorous strengthening/rehab routine to re-balance my legs and ease dull throbbing in my shins, I will continue to think through how I want to gradually get back up to speed. I know that it will involve a variety of surfaces, paces, and workouts, including both speed intervals (i.e. fartlek) and hills, and that the majority of the miles will be easy/moderate.  The lesson I've learned is that it's a thrill to run fast (and that fast is relative), but not when one runs smack into a wall of injury.  That is the antithesis of the free runner. To run free is to run free of injury, and it is, with Askwith, to run the most number of miles possible with a sense of joy and well-being, summer or winter, and whatever the weather.