A Tough Week but a PR

There are a lot of things that I have accomplished by acknowledging that my body or my mind were at their limit, but telling myself to just do the best I could anyway. This week was a good example of that phenomenon. 

I put in some really good, consistent training in the last month, with some sessions well better than I have performed in years. I was definitely tired but still making gains and hitting my targets in each session. Given how well the Kook went, I was really looking forward to putting the progress to the test at our local race, The Carlsbad 5000. But two weeks ago, on my last long run before the race, I got an awful flare-up pain in the outside of my left knee. It was a very odd pain that felt like it was right under the skin about an inch and a half above the joint and did not seem to be connected to any muscle tightness. I had to stop and walk a couple of times that day because I would be running fine, then all of a sudden it would feel like someone was stabbing me in the side of the knee. 

I did some soft tissue work on my calf and hamstring that night and it completely went away by the next day. Then again, last Sunday it roared back with a vengeance and I had to limp home. With a week to go and having worked through it before I was not worried, but this time it lingered. One day I wouldn't feel a thing, then the next I would suddenly get the stabbing out of no where. I did not know what to think, but I was very dejected because I knew I was fit and could put in a good 5k given the chance. I stuck to my race week routine as best I could and worked every leg muscle I could find that felt even slightly abnormal with every trick I knew. 

By race eve, it was still tight and I really was not sure if I was going to be able to run. But I decided I would stick to the routine and if pre-race warmups indicated I should wave-off I would just go to swim practice instead. 

Flame woke me up early, about 4:00 a.m. the next morning so I got my headphones on and turned up Jazz 88 for some good feels. Flame and I rolled around on the living room floor for about an hour with the foam rollers and through a progression of mobility yoga to make sure everything was as warm and loose as possible. My leg felt a bit tight, but ok so I loaded up the car and headed out to the race. I stuck to my normal warm-up routine but broke it up, only running a mile at a time and did lots of stretching and openers. It hurt a bit but I just walked when I needed and let it calm down. Sprints felt ok, so I knew I would at least tow the line and hope the Sermon rocket fuel would carry me through. 

The start line was jammed and everyone was amped to the teeth which was really electric. The Carlsbad 5000 is such a cool event and all the participants and crowd really make it exhilarating. My race plan was to hit the gas and shoot for 5:20 pace the first mile (assuming no excess of 178 BPM) then just try to hold on. When the gun went off there were a lot of people surging the line and I blasted the first 100m to get free and with the lead men. At a quarter mile I was in about 5th and I knew at least a couple of the guys in the field that should be ahead of me. I could not see Chuck McKeown, the rockstar Masters runner from PRT, so I knew I was a bit over-paced so I let the legs run out a bit to see how things were shaking out. 

A few guys went by before Mile 1, including Chuck, and some of them were familiar from other events. I was happy to be feeling pretty good and be close to this group around Mile 1, which I went through at 5:04. I saw the time and checked my watch, but I was still right in my zone so I started focusing on who to hang with. One or two guys passed me that had slowly pulled away at the Kook and I decided to go with them. One was on a really good pace and I stuck to his ocean-side shoulder like glue all the way to the turn around which gave me a good draft and a sustainable pace. We hit the turn-around and Chuck and the others were still within 100m or so which was great motivation. I have never been able to hang with these guys and my numbers were holding steady. 

We knocked through Mile 2 in 10:25, so 5:13 for the second mile which is very fast for me. The new course adds a slight rise for about a quarter mile or so right after you pass Mile 2. It is a very familiar road and once you are in the last mile of a 5k, you are close enough that you can just hang on to finish usually. Usually I base riser pace off HR to avoid blowing up, but I was in good position so I put my head down and focused on Chuck just up the road, trying to match pace. It was brutal but after the hill rolled off, my legs started to turn over again and visually it looked like some of the others were starting to come back to me. I pushed and kept moving up. I caught Chuck with about half a mile to go and put the gas pedal down because I know how strong he and the other guys around me were. 

I was able to slowly accelerate all the way to the line and came through at 16:24. A 5k PR!

I was destroyed...but very happy with the result. Once I could get up off the ground, I got moving, grabbed some water and got back to my car to get warm cloths on to keep my muscles from tensing up. Warming down was a bit painful, and my knee felt like it might seize a couple of times, but I walked and stretched as much as needed and it was ok. 

I am very glad I towed the line and it is really fun to see the results of all the consistent work. The anticipatory dejection I was shouldering all week was not fun, but things turned out well in the end. A lot of things have gone that way and every time they do I am glad that I did my best despite my mind howling "WHATS EVEN THE POINT!" 

I am going to take it very easy for at least a week and make sure the leg thing is fully rested and recovered because I have nothing in the queue just yet. But I am definitely encouraged by the result and more excited than ever to be setting goals. 

A Good One

     I did the Cardiff Kook Run on February 11th and actually had a good run and was happy with it! I was unsure what to expect and what to plan for because of the ankle sprain. However, it did not seem to hold me back during the event and I definitely got some improvement out of the work I did in December before the sprain, as well as the 10 days of regular-ish training I got in after the sprain in late January and early February. I actually had some of the best workouts I have done since I started working out again in that period and I was feeling hopeful going into the Kook. 

    I followed my regular pre-event routine the week leading up to the Kook and 90% of the tenderness that was left in my ankle had subsided by day of. There seems to be a bit of tightness in the tendons or muscles in the front/side of my lower leg still. These will fire sometimes, usually when I am going downhill, and only until my legs get warmed up. I felt a few twinges during my warm-up for the Kook as well but they subsided after I did some uphill strides. The air also warmed up a bit just before the event which I was thankful for because the overnight low was in the forties and that can cause things like this to tighten up quickly. I kept moving and did short strides right up to the start to make sure everything stayed loose. 

    There was a pretty good showing for the Kook, but somehow most of the good masters and club runners managed to get into the pro wave so the starting line was devoid of familiar faces. There were plenty of young fast guys though. When the gun went off, about four guys got a gap in the first half mile or so and really just went away after that. But there were a string of runners spaced out behind them that I was able to tuck in with for the first two and a half miles or so that really helped keep things rolling. The air had also dried out quite a bit and I took sips of water at both mile 2 and mile 4 because my mouth had dried out. 

    The Kook had a course change this year, which I actually liked. The course was straight out and back with no laps. It was nice not to have to do all the 180s and mix in with a bunch of other runners on the second lap. However, this also meant that it went all the way down to the beach from Encinitas, so mile 4 climbed from Cardiff back up to Swamis. It is not a huge hill, but the fifth mile in a 10k is tough enough already. 

    Thankfully I had just been passed so I had someone just ahead to focus on chasing which helped. I think I have also gotten a really good hold on perceived effort so I can usually hit hills from a flat and not blow my stack because I can mentally titrate my threshold. I rolled over the hill at Swamis and the splits indicate that I picked back up to a great speed for the last mile to finish strong. 

    My time was 35:07 which is a post law school PR for me, and twenty seconds faster than the Turkey Trot from last November (on a hillier course). This is a great result, and it is one of the few times that I have been pleased with the result after the fact. Its no world record, but it reflects improvement from the hard work I have put in. It is also within striking distance of some of my times from my previous life which is very exciting!

    I was second overall in the 40-45 division, which scores 90 points in the USATF SD road series and puts me in second so far. I was already planning on doing the Carlsbad 5000 in April which is also part of the series, but now I am definitely more excited to see if the progress at 10k will translate to a good 5k there. The focus will be on rest this week, then a bit of volume and a funnel down to target speed work before Carlsbad. 

    Afterward, I smashed a breakfast burrito like it was the olden days and we took the train to see Bluey's Big Play at the Balboa theatre. What a day! 

Purpose & Process

    One mental knee-jerk I know lots of athletes hear in their heads from time to time is: "Whats the point?!" When a race goes poorly after tons of preparation, or nothing is clicking in training for months on end, or if it just has not seemed "fun" for longer than you can remember. I certainly heard that familiar exasperation two weeks ago when I wrenched my ankle. I had been putting in good work and thought in the moment it was all down the drain. 

    Setting aside the obvious catastrophizing of setbacks and non-perfects that this lash out often represents—its a valid question. What is the point? For great elite athletes, a class I never achieved, the point is partly that it is your profession. Like any other job or career the work either earns or invests in payoffs that are your livelihood. Most athletes though really enjoy their sport. Some people don't enjoy physical exertion but most at least enjoy being outdoors, a good workout, or the satisfaction of accomplishing something. Many of us, elite or amateur, also have some kind of goal that we are working towards and that provides motivation and excitement about the process. 

    For me, "what's the point" usually visits when something happens that feels like it has snatched away the goal I have in my head or made it feel unattainable. So when I wrenched my ankle, "whats the point" was both asking about the work I had put in but also the goals I had set for myself. For example, "whats the point" of shooting for a good result at events this year if it can just be snatched away in an instant? When I was younger, I think this reaction jerked more often when I had bigger athletic goals and even smaller disappointments like a bad workout might have me frustrated and questioning my choices. But I have also always had another thread raising the issue of purpose separate from achievement. 

    I have been consuming a lot of war poetry lately (which likely holds a tie for my favorite genre with natural observation of spirits like Mary Oliver). Classics spinning hyperbolic frenzy around the thirst for battle and glory, contemporaries zooming in to inject the visceral reality into your veins or hold the space to recognize the valor but acknowledge the folly. I have a line of warriors in my family, but it was never my calling. I do, however, feel some constant tug towards contributions to a greater good. So my mind also questions often whether I am serving a higher purpose . . . making the world a better place than I found it. I rarely felt I was with athletics. However, later on in my racing career I did feel like I was helping other achieve goals from time to time which was gratifying. But it was hard to justify the pursuit internally because I knew it was not going to change much in the world for the better. 

    So training still has this stigma, as it were, in my head. It is self-indulgent to some extent. When I was younger I had a lot more trouble giving myself permission to do things I enjoyed. But that has changed a lot over the years. I feel less now that I have to justify the things I like doing and allow myself to enjoy them more. With how busy life has been over the past eight or so years, this has been key. It is good to have a hobby with daily, weekly, and monthly goals and processes. It gives me things to look forward to and something to focus on if I need respite from other things. Additionally, in the long term, I really want to remain as healthy as possible for as long as possible because I so look forward to the future my family is building. 

    My foot is healing up much better than I expected. But in the past two weeks I found that the habits I have developed over the past couple of years of exercising regularly really helped get me over the dejection. Usually something like the sprain would have had me out moping and not doing anything for weeks. But this time I stuck to the icing and elevation, and set up my stationary bike so I could at least keep up my normal schedule of activity. I told myself that I would let the February and April events go if I was not healed up, and I still will. But I kept up the work with what I could do on the stationary and at the end of this week got a couple of runs in that showed promise that my aerobic numbers have not dropped off too much. 

    So maybe I can shoot for my original December goals in the next couple of months or maybe not. But I enjoyed the challenge of finding different ways to maintain what I had built up, and I really enjoyed being able to get some hard aerobic work in on the bike. The affirmation though is that I have established a life and a routine that I enjoy. The process being something that means as much to me as any accomplishment at this stage in my life. I may not be doing something monumental or legendary but it is good to me so maybe that is enough. 

Plans & Goals

    I started up writing again in part because the progress I had made brought me to a place where my brain was thinking of glory again. What kind of glory? Who knows. From a young age my athletic drive was pushed along by some deep seeded drive to be the best. The best at what? All sorts of things. Racing professionally for an number of years really put that in check. I was a very good athlete, which got me in the race. But when you race with the best it becomes very clear how far they sit above the rest. Even at my peak, I was still getting crushed by the top women and the lead men were half an hour ahead at the big events. In some ways this was really good for me because I was able to let go of the fantasy of being the best. I got to see how good I could be and learned that I was not world class. 

    Despite perspective, the drive never really died. With some of the good runs I had in the fall of 2023, something in me was again seeking. Seeking to break through, break free, break away from the rest. I don't really know what I want to accomplish, who I want to beat, or where I am trying to get to. But the drive is there. 

    This year has gotten off to a rough start. There has been a lot change going on at work and a continuing frenzy of busy life activity. I put in a lot of good training in during December to build on the racing fitness from cross-country season. That work put me in a great spot to attack some spring events. I had already registered for the The Kook Run and the Carlsbad 5000. I was really looking forward to these events and in my mind's idle time I was thinking about ways to improve on my performances from last year. Thinking about what I might be able to pull off. Daydreaming about times and clicking off miles at powerful paces. I even started thinking about the USATF SD Road Series, which these events are part of, and looking up past results to see how I might rank. And maybe those mental musings are tied to the subconscious drive that seeks glory in some way. But analysis aside, I was excited. 

    I went out for my long Sunday run which is my favorite activity of the week by far on January 6th and was feeling good. Then, in a moment I came crashing down. I stepped off the curb at a bit of an angle to start crossing the street and must have stepped on a wet uneven patch or something. Immediately I felt my left ankle wrench violently, yanked back under my leg as my weight shifted over the top of it and to the ground. I fell and the searing pain of the ankle being heavily torqued and I grabbed my leg to prevent anything from hitting it. I crawled out of the street and sat on the curb for some time. It has been quite a while since I had a bad sprain, and this one was almost as bad as any I had felt. I could feel my body going into shock, and despite it hurting like crazy I knew I had to get home to get it up. I limped home a couple of miles and have been in resting and icing mode all this week. 

    But on the walk home, and for the first couple of days, the upending of my planned training and the goals my mind has been concocting was brutal. Having that all yanked away in an instant just flipped my mind upside down from what it had been doing for the past couple of months. I had been building and making progress. And now everything was up in the air and uncertain. At first I was not sure if it was bad enough that I should go to the hospital and I thought the year of work on getting fit again was just all out the window. This week has been good though. Lots of elevating my foot and icing seems to have done wonders. Riding the stationary bike was also painless so I was able to get some cardio workouts in which hopefully will prevent too much loss of capacity. 

    I think in the past I would have been much more devastated, as if the injury were the end of the world. But life is much different now. I got to put my foot up and my kid brought me blankets and stuffed animals to feel better. And not being able to do some of the training I want is less of a letdown because I still get to spend time with my family and that brings so much joy as well. I also don't think the hobby is as important as it was before. Sure I may not get to run hard for a couple of weeks, but none of us have to look that far for lives that have been upended far worse, and people that have lost much more in an instant in recent times. 

    So I am healing up well, which is a pleasant surprise. But I am also not that dejected and am still happy despite having hit a pretty bad pothole in the process. This is the better surprise, and it is definitely because the other things I have in my life provide the center for my happiness. It is not tied so strongly to accomplishment in narrowly defined arenas drawn by the partially irrational sense of glory, despite that still being a part of me. I hope to be back on my feet soon as my foot seems to be healing well, and still plan on doing the Kook and C-Bad 5000. But I am glad to have found I don't need to be on track to some great achievement to be settled.

Energy & Drive

     Since deciding to dedicate more effort to squeezing some performance out this quadragenerian vessel, I have set a slightly more demanding load in place. I increased the volume by about 10-15% on what I was doing before and on my more challenging workouts I am pushing small margins over the effort I was putting out before. So this really only means a couple of extra total miles a week and maybe a 5 second per mile increase in speed over numbers I have been holding consistently for the last year or so. I also have been setting my alarm 25 minutes earlier and doing a yoga regimen focused on core mobility and strength. 

    I am just shy of three weeks in on this increased regimen and I think I am already feeling a bit strained. It is hard to tell if it is the additional workload, however, because this lat month has also been very busy. With holiday parties, events, decorating, gifting, and general merriment . . . we have been pretty busy. That and a new role in my job has meant everything non-exercise related is extra busy as well. Needless to say, I am tired. This morning I got up early for my long run which I have been pretty excited about the past couple of months because of good progress I have been seeing on those. Despite a fine double espresso, I had that old familiar feeling/though that "I don't want to do this." Mostly just because I was tired and I kind of felt like I was dragging myself out the door. 

    Nonetheless, the run went well and I am glad I went and did it. But it was definitely noteworthy that this is the first time I have felt that way pre-workout in a long time. I have also been generally tired and although it is not making me non-functional, it is more tired than I want to be in my actual day to day life. I know it is early in the game with the increased workload and this month is much busier than others. So I am hopeful that the increase in tiredness and dip in motivation is not a sign that the additional training is too much for me to handle. 

    I think this level of drain is probably a bit beyond what I would prefer. So, if my energy levels don't normalize after the holiday craziness dies down and I have a couple of blocks on the new regimen, I may reconsider whether it is worth it. Since I want to make sure I have enough energy to engage in and enjoy my real life, it is not worth it to me to be overcooked form training all the time. I guess this is an element of the process I will just have to pay attention to.