It’s a Wednesday afternoon at 1:45 pm. I am staring out the window of my 5th floor office in Atlanta into a mountain range of skyscrapers. What I’d rather be doing at this very moment is running along a real mountain range.
Like most, I don’t love or hate my job. It is what it is. It provides income so my family and I can live in a house, drive cars, eat, and buy running shoes. It is a means to an end. But on this particular day, I can’t help but wonder what is would be like if running were my job. What if I could turn back the hands of time 15 years? What if I was genetically blessed with flexibility, extraordinary lung capacity, and the right combination of fast and slow twitch muscle fibers? Could I handle two-a-days and 80-mile weeks? Could I learn to deal with the discomfort of oxygen debt and extreme fatigue? Would I crack under the intense pressure of competition? Maybe I could be an elite runner.
Then my thoughts drift back to my last marathon where I struggled to break four hours and nearly vomited from consuming too many energy gels. On second thought, maybe I wasn’t designed to be an elite runner. Regardless, a passion for running is in my soul. Tonight I’ll lace-up my shoes for a scheduled five mile run with a sense of adventure and excitement that is unmatched by any elite athlete. The beauty of running is that this sense of adventure and excitement flows all the way from the front to the back of the pack.
Showing posts with label essay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label essay. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
A Visit From Your Spirit Runner
As runners, we tend to mark great running moments through the prism of time and distance. We may note our fastest 10k or marathon when we reflect back on our running careers. As we age, however, our prospects for setting PR’s fade. This shouldn’t mean, however, that great running moments are only in our past. We simply need to open our minds and define great running moments through a different prism. We need to seek out our spirit runner. While I’d love to set a PR in my next 10k, I’d much rather get in touch with my spirit runner.
If you haven’t experienced your spirit runner, it’s hard to define in words. You know it if you’ve experienced it. Some call it a “runner’s high”, a surge of chemicals naturally released into your system. But it’s more than that. When your spirit runner enters your body and soul, you are elevated to a four-way intersection of performance, physical ease, emotional well-being, and oneness with the world around you.
The beautiful thing about your spirit runner is that it is not restricted to a USATF-certified course on a Saturday morning or a scenic trail. With an open mind, your spirit runner can appear at any time, place, or age.
Imagine walking out your front door for a five-miler in your neighborhood one night after work. Your plan is a three mile tempo run with easy miles as bookends. This workout is a regular part of your routine. After a one mile warm-up you lengthen your stride and increase your leg turnover. You are fit and confident in your training, however, tonight you feel particularly good. In fact, you feel so good that you pick-up the pace. The faster you run, the better you feel. When will it stop? When will you tire? It feels as if you will never fatigue. As you forge ahead, your breathing is controlled, your form is perfect, and your muscles gently glide like properly lubricated pistons. The afore-mentioned chemicals have now entered your system and you feel no pain or discomfort despite running at breakneck pace. No longer a tempo run, you are having an out-of-body experience. As the pain-numbing chemicals flow through your body, positive thoughts flow through your mind. You are happy with your life and you realize that running is a major part of this happiness. For the moment, you are an athlete perfectly designed for running. You feel an earthly connection to other perfectly created living things around you that move with ease and grace. Eagles fly effortlessly, dolphins swim effortlessly, and you run effortlessly. This elevated plane of consciousness continues until you hit mile four. Then you shorten your stride, decrease your leg turnover, and begin your cool down.
This wasn’t just a successful tempo run. No, this was something much greater. You were touched by your spirit runner. You haven’t felt this way for months. You may not experience this feeling again for years. Regardless, this was a great running moment. No race course, no cheering crowds, and no stop watch to measure exactly how fast you ran. Yet, this was clearly one of your greatest running moments. As the years pass and mileage is recorded in your running log, moments like this will mark when you were at your best. This tempo run could have occurred at six, eight, or ten minutes per mile pace. The pace is irrelevant. What matters is the feeling that you achieved. As you enter your second, third, or fourth decade of running, your PRs may be in the rearview mirror. But remember that your spirit runner may join you on your next run if you open your mind to it.
If you haven’t experienced your spirit runner, it’s hard to define in words. You know it if you’ve experienced it. Some call it a “runner’s high”, a surge of chemicals naturally released into your system. But it’s more than that. When your spirit runner enters your body and soul, you are elevated to a four-way intersection of performance, physical ease, emotional well-being, and oneness with the world around you.
The beautiful thing about your spirit runner is that it is not restricted to a USATF-certified course on a Saturday morning or a scenic trail. With an open mind, your spirit runner can appear at any time, place, or age.
Imagine walking out your front door for a five-miler in your neighborhood one night after work. Your plan is a three mile tempo run with easy miles as bookends. This workout is a regular part of your routine. After a one mile warm-up you lengthen your stride and increase your leg turnover. You are fit and confident in your training, however, tonight you feel particularly good. In fact, you feel so good that you pick-up the pace. The faster you run, the better you feel. When will it stop? When will you tire? It feels as if you will never fatigue. As you forge ahead, your breathing is controlled, your form is perfect, and your muscles gently glide like properly lubricated pistons. The afore-mentioned chemicals have now entered your system and you feel no pain or discomfort despite running at breakneck pace. No longer a tempo run, you are having an out-of-body experience. As the pain-numbing chemicals flow through your body, positive thoughts flow through your mind. You are happy with your life and you realize that running is a major part of this happiness. For the moment, you are an athlete perfectly designed for running. You feel an earthly connection to other perfectly created living things around you that move with ease and grace. Eagles fly effortlessly, dolphins swim effortlessly, and you run effortlessly. This elevated plane of consciousness continues until you hit mile four. Then you shorten your stride, decrease your leg turnover, and begin your cool down.
This wasn’t just a successful tempo run. No, this was something much greater. You were touched by your spirit runner. You haven’t felt this way for months. You may not experience this feeling again for years. Regardless, this was a great running moment. No race course, no cheering crowds, and no stop watch to measure exactly how fast you ran. Yet, this was clearly one of your greatest running moments. As the years pass and mileage is recorded in your running log, moments like this will mark when you were at your best. This tempo run could have occurred at six, eight, or ten minutes per mile pace. The pace is irrelevant. What matters is the feeling that you achieved. As you enter your second, third, or fourth decade of running, your PRs may be in the rearview mirror. But remember that your spirit runner may join you on your next run if you open your mind to it.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
The Power Of Subtle Advice
Most of my training runs are solo. During the week, I usually run at night after the kids go to bed. For Saturday long runs, I try to leave the house by 6-7 a.m. in order to be back by 9-10 a.m. and not miss the entire day. Once and a while, I run with friends, family, or neighbors. While I am not a particularly fast or accomplished runner, I am a fairly well-read runner. I enjoy reading running books that dispense advice from those who know. I enjoy reading about topics such as proper running form, injury prevention, diet, stretching, and speed work. For these reasons, I consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable about these areas. As a result, it is often hard for me to bite my tongue when confronted with a fellow runner who is, for lack of a better phrase, hurting themselves.
For example, one running partner’s idea of a training pyramid is to build-up weekly mileage from zero to 30 miles in three weeks, get injured, recover, and start the process again. Another running partner has bad knees yet he always runs on concrete and asphalt surfaces rather than dirt trails nearby.
When I witness these running mistakes, I immediately want to dispense advice. I want to tell my running friends what they are doing is hurting them. Here’s the problem: I’m not Alberto Salazar or Jeff Galloway. In the past, I have tried to give advice based largely based on the teachings and writings of these legends. To my zero-to-30 friend, I preached about the 10 percent rule on mileage increases. To my cartilage-deprived concrete-loving friend, I’ve preached the benefits of soft surfaces. Yet despite my pleadings, some of my closest running companions failed to listen to my advice. Regardless, that is precisely where the problem lies – it was MY advice. The messenger is me; the idiot down the street that can barely break four hours in the marathon.
After some consideration, I started using my running library more wisely. I thought it would be more appropriate to let my amateur friends hear it directly from the source. My recent gift to my zero-to-30 friend was the temporary use of Galloway’s Book of Running. My preaching of Galloway’s teachings did not get through because I apparently lacked the credibility to deliver those teachings. As it turns out, Galloway dispenses his own advice quite well. After reading Galloway’s Book of Running, my friend has stayed injury-free through the use of sensible base-building techniques discussed in the book.
In the future, unless asked, I will shy away from giving unsolicited advice. Instead, I’ll turn to my library of legends and let them do it for me.
For example, one running partner’s idea of a training pyramid is to build-up weekly mileage from zero to 30 miles in three weeks, get injured, recover, and start the process again. Another running partner has bad knees yet he always runs on concrete and asphalt surfaces rather than dirt trails nearby.
When I witness these running mistakes, I immediately want to dispense advice. I want to tell my running friends what they are doing is hurting them. Here’s the problem: I’m not Alberto Salazar or Jeff Galloway. In the past, I have tried to give advice based largely based on the teachings and writings of these legends. To my zero-to-30 friend, I preached about the 10 percent rule on mileage increases. To my cartilage-deprived concrete-loving friend, I’ve preached the benefits of soft surfaces. Yet despite my pleadings, some of my closest running companions failed to listen to my advice. Regardless, that is precisely where the problem lies – it was MY advice. The messenger is me; the idiot down the street that can barely break four hours in the marathon.
After some consideration, I started using my running library more wisely. I thought it would be more appropriate to let my amateur friends hear it directly from the source. My recent gift to my zero-to-30 friend was the temporary use of Galloway’s Book of Running. My preaching of Galloway’s teachings did not get through because I apparently lacked the credibility to deliver those teachings. As it turns out, Galloway dispenses his own advice quite well. After reading Galloway’s Book of Running, my friend has stayed injury-free through the use of sensible base-building techniques discussed in the book.
In the future, unless asked, I will shy away from giving unsolicited advice. Instead, I’ll turn to my library of legends and let them do it for me.
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