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Bandera 100K Training: Week 29

That wasn't the way I wanted to end seven months of training for a goal race, but sometimes we don't get what we ordered. It's been a pretty flawless training cycle up until the last few weeks, when lower back fatigue finally set in and hampered my ability to finish some of my longest runs.

And that's what happened last week. The Tuesday-Thursday runs were routine and at a high level, but Friday's 18-miler was tough. I ran it over a rolling hills cross-country/trails course of high-moderate difficulty, and by mile 11 my back was signalling no mas. I worked through it and finished, but I had doubts about Saturday's scheduled 18.

Sure enough, I struggled from the beginning on Saturday, and at mile 9 I had to ask myself if I really wanted to hang for another nine miles. I took it one more mile just to put the day in double digits and went home, vaguely disappointed in what I had hoped would be a more positive ending to all of these weeks of training and racing.

Still, I have to say, things went very well for the past seven months, probably my best training cycle ever. I managed a new 50K trail PR on a moderately challenging course (5:55), a new single-day mileage PR (52.8 miles), and a single-day time PR (12 hours). I feel my aerobic fitness is at its highest level in years. Technically, it will be a four-week taper, but I'm not concerned. As long as my back heals -- it's feeling better today after a two-day layoff -- and if I decrease mileage intelligently while maintaining intensity, I am feeling very confident about Bandera.

Taper time, and the second of two blessed weeks away from the office. Have a good week.

12/18: Rest
12/19: Neighborhood hills route, p.m. 6 miles.
12/20: Neighborhood hills route, p.m. 6 miles.
12/21: LHHS track, p.m. 3-mile tempo run @ 7:30/mile. 5 miles.
12/22: Norbuck Park, p.m. 18 miles.
12/23: White Rock Lake loop, a.m. 10.3 miles.
12/24: Rest.

Total: 45.3 miles
YTD: 1,849.6

Internet Break

This feels like a good time for an Internet break. I'll go online a few minutes a day to check e-mail, but that's about it.

See you next Tuesday.

Bandera 100K Training: Week 28

In terms of aerobic fitness, there is no question I am peaking at about the right time for this race. I reeled off three six mile-runs Tuesday through Thursday last week that started smooth and effortless and stayed that way, no matter how much I increased my pace. If I can stay healthy through the taper, I am feeling very confident about my chances of being successful at Bandera.

Staying healthy could be a trick. My lower back problem came back Saturday morning at the very beginning of my 18-mile run. The come-and-go nature of this discomfort is puzzling. It complained throughout my Saturday run, and at times it complained quite loudly, but I managed to finish in pretty good time. The back did bother me for the rest of Saturday however.

I was having serious doubts about Sunday’s run, which was supposed to be a sort of mini-Bandera: 4-5 hours cross-country and on trails on a rolling hills course of moderate difficulty, at a park near our house. I started out very gingerly and tried adjusting my running posture several times, but nothing really seemed to help much. The pain was tolerable until the 2.5 hour point – and there the worst of the it simply seemed to disappear, as if someone had waved a magic wand over my back. Weird. After a little over 4.5 hours I ended up with around 24 miles for the morning, and I felt like that was enough. My back remained fatigued for the rest of the day and feels somewhat stressed this morning.

Sleep posture? Running posture? Accumulative fatigue from six months of training and a lot of longer runs? I can’t pinpoint it. But I have a feeling that the taper will take care of this issue. Unfortunately I’ve also developed a cold sore, which is healing but has me wondering if a flu bug or severe cold is going to follow.

Just sitting here with a sore lower back and a cold sore, hoping the other shoe doesn’t drop and very happy the taper is only six days away.

Have a good week.

12/11: Rest
12/12: Norbuck Park, p.m., cross-country. 6 miles.
12/13: Neighborhood hills route, p.m. 6 miles.
12/14: LHHS track, p.m. 4-mile tempo run. 6 miles.
12/15: Rest
12/16: White Rock Lake loop x 2, a.m. 18.6 miles.
12/17: Norbuck Park, “Mini-Bandera” shakedown cruise, a.m. 24 miles.

Total: 60.6 miles
YTD: 1,804.3

Friday training break #58

Perhaps the genius of ultra-running is its supreme lack of utility. It makes no sense in a world of space ships and supercomputers to run long distances on foot … But ultra runners understand, perhaps better than anyone, that the doors to the spirit will swing open with physical effort.

-- David Blaikie

The Tao of Maxwell Smart

Just five of us for Monday Night at the Zendo last night. Valerie mentioned how much she had been looking forward to Monday night all last week and I said, “It’s sort of like touching home base during a ferocious game of tag,” which made the others laugh. But sometimes, especially weeks where I haven’t been able to find as much time to sit on my own as I would like, Monday Night at the Zendo really does feel that way. It wasn’t until the third and final sit of the evening that I began to feel my thoughts rise and fall on their own, coming and going as easily as my breath. That’s always such a nice place to get to, if and when I finally make it there.

At first I wasn’t planning to go for dokusan, but I ended up changing my mind at the last minute and I’m glad I did. My presentation for stopping the temple fire in Japan didn’t hit the mark, but if Zen Buddhism has taught me anything it’s that failure can be more interesting than success. During my interview I related a story of a time during the past week when, while I was sitting, my nose began to itch and a dog began to bark outside, almost at the same time. I resisted the urge to scratch this hellacious itch and just mentally followed it as it migrated to various parts of my face. After awhile, it disappeared. Soon after the itch left, the dog stopped barking as well.

And it was then, I told Valerie, that I realized something: the itch is the dog, the dog is the itch … it was the same feeling I had at the sesshin back in the spring, when I saw the bird land in the tree and the bird became the tree, the tree became the bird … I realize it sounds pretty wacky, but all I know is that it made sense to me. And in Buddhist terms, I suppose what I was experiencing is somehow related to the idea that all phenomena are related – that it’s our minds that make the distinctions. But the distinctions aren’t really there. That whole non-dualism thing again.

No, I’m not off my meds, really. And the experience also certainly reminds me of the times, when running one of the longest ultra marathons I’ve completed – a 12-hour race, or a 50-miler – how the pain began and really bugged me at first, then, after awhile, when I was pretty much pain from head to toe, it didn’t bug me as much. When all you are is pain, pain sort of ceases to exist. Which, for some reason, reminds me of something Leonard Cohen wrote: "I got rid of the one thing that made me happy; now everything makes me happy."

Okay, enough weirdass free association. At any rate, for some reason Valerie felt this little story about the itchy nose and the dog was important, and she gave me another koan to help me stop the temple fire: “Who hears?” When the dog barks, who hears it? When the face itches, who feels it? It’s so easy to say “I do.” And it’s so wrong. Why is it so wrong? That’s the reason I’m sitting and staring at a blank wall … to find out. It's a good koan for practitioners who seem to be a little stuck, Valerie said, and it meshes with my recent experience.

“Who hears?” A simple two-word koan, potentially containing oceans of meaning I have barely dipped a toe in … but a koan to help me unlock another koan? C’mon already. Sometimes I feel like Don Adams playing Maxwell Smart during the opening titles of the old TV secret agent spoof Get Smart, going through door after door after door … always a door opening on another door.

Unfortunately, unlike Maxwell Smart, I can’t seem to find Agent 99.

Bandera 100K Training: Week 27

The two primary goals for last week’s training were (1) nursing my lower back to health and (2) running the Dallas White Rock Marathon as part of a double-dip long run weekend. For my back, I took a couple of extra days off, cancelled my two strength training sessions, cut mileage for the days I did run, and made time for a number of heat treatments. All of this seemed to be working well by late in the week, but the real test was going to be during the weekend.

Saturday morning’s 18 miler was chilly but uneventful, and my back felt good throughout. Sunday was the marathon – overcast, cool-to-cold and a bit dampish at the start, but a nice crowd (around 10-12,000 all told) and lots of enthusiastic support and music along the course. This marathon has finally grown up and is easily the equal of any other urban marathon in the country – and with a prettier course than many of them. First names were printed below numbers on the race bibs, which allowed total strangers to cheer for the participants (and many of them did). A fun time.

There’s really no need to do a full race report because this was strictly a training run, with planned walk breaks. I paced myself on a routine of 7/3 (seven minutes running, three minutes walking) for the first half and 8/2 for the second half, finishing in 4:24 with a nearly 4-minute negative split – within 50 seconds of my time from last year. Considering I didn’t run 18 miles on the day before the marathon last year, I’ll take it. And best of all, no lower back problems. I feel fine today with some very minor lingering soreness.

Back to work tomorrow on a full week’s training schedule, with less than two weeks until the taper for Bandera.

12/4: Rest
12/5: Norbuck Park, p.m., cross-country. 4 miles.
12/6: Rest
12/7: LHHS track, a.m. 3-mile tempo run. 5 miles.
12/8: Rest
12/9: White Rock Lake loop x 2, a.m. 18.6 miles.
12/10: White Rock Marathon. 4:24:38. 26.2 miles.

Total: 53.8 miles
YTD: 1,743.7