Enough Already
New York Marathon – six weeks away. It’s been far too long coming. Tomorrow will see me go past the 800 kilometre training mark. I’ve plodded—and I mean plodded—through a 5km training plan, then 10km plan, then half-marathon plan, and I’m now on the full marathon plan. If you had told me a year ago I would have run this distance, I would have said you’re crazy. You are; you know you are.
My body is worn out at this point, and I’m down the wormhole of anxiety. If I’m absolutely shattered at 24 kilometres on a training run, how the hell is my body going to find the extra 18 kilometres. Impossible, right? Then I ask my coach and she says something about ‘taper’ and then ‘super compensation.’ It’s all a complex mind game to keep me shuffling, you don’t fool me.
Actually my coaches are excellent. Here I am on the Faster Beyond 50 podcast complaining to them about how they don’t understand me.
The average run results in my right knee hurting. Then my left knee. Then the right foot. Left foot. My left hip, followed by my lower back. Pushing runs past the 23 kilometre mark has introduced the novel experience of my arse hurting. Stabbing pain in my gluteus maximus. That’s before I get to my toes hurting permanently.
Enough already.
Haruki Murakami
I listen to podcasts and audiobooks to take my mind off the boredom and full body discomfort of running. I’m currently listening to ‘What I Talk About When I Talk About Running’ by one of my favourite authors, Murakami. In fact, this is my third loop of the book, as I’m convinced we are one and the same man. Except he can write. He understands the conjoined misery and joy of running. He sums it up perfectly in this passage:
“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you think, ‘Man, this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The ‘hurt’ part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself.”
I get to a distance of around 20 kilometres and this passage swirls around my head. If I’m honest it’s not exactly hurt. It’s simply my body wants to stop. Have you ever seen a dog owner trying to encourage a recalcitrant old Labrador who has simply given up on the walk and led on the road? I’m the running version of that said dog.
As a side note, it’s only just occurred to me the title of the book is a tribute to Raymond Carver’s ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.’ This gives you a clue how much time I spend in my ASICS running shoes, and how many wormholes I can go down.
New York marathon – six weeks and I’ll break the start line with Murakami’s ‘suffering is optional’ in my head, on a loop tape. It’s my misogi after all, I should suffer.
Kit Anxiety
I’m deep in the heart of kit anxiety at present. And moving towards race day anxiety. My kit anxiety is fully justified however, it’s not what your average runner experiences. Mine is real.
I’ve started to scrutinise lacing patterns for running shoes. That’s how deep I am. I’m on my fourth different sock style. For proper reasons, I hasten to add. My toes hurt permanently and somewhere out there in the world is a nirvana of shoe, sock, and lace combination. Genuinely, it’s worse for me. I’m not your average runner at 6’5” and 99 kilograms. I’m even less average, given my shoe size is UK 15. Yes, 15. It was 14 at the start of the year, but the road has tenderised my feet like a ribeye steak, and I’ve gained a size.
And that narrows down my running shoe choice to about one shoe. ASICS Gel Kayano is an excellent shoe, thankfully. But they are out of stock. So now I worry that my shoes will be worn out by race day. I’m training in a shoe that should be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, given its rarity.
Nipple Guards
You think it ends at running shoes? No. No, sir. I now know that there are running accessories called nipple guards. I’ve even studied the size of my nipples. The standard size of NipEaze nipple guards struggles to cover my nipples and I’m in some angst. Are my nipples really larger than average? Like my running shoe size, do I need an unobtainable size of nipple cover? This is where running gets you in the end. I want to spend another paragraph telling you how much of a blockage to success bleeding nipples can be, and Haruki wants to step in next to me muttering about pain and suffering.
Shoe size, lacing patterns, sock choice, nipple covers, undershorts, inner thigh chafing, dehydration, under-fuelling, recovery drinks, foam rollers, compression devices. That’s an abridged version of items I’ve given deep thought to. I could go on. And on.
That’s before I get to training programmes, Training Stress Score, Heart Rate Variability, deload week, VO2 max, sleep quality score, strength training, cross training, mobility exercises, stretching, massage guns, compression boots.
Supplements? Collagen, creatine, vitamins B12, D, K, and omega oil. Nutrition is dead simple, trust me. 1:08 fructose/glucose gels and chews. Hydration powders, carb and protein recovery powders, protein powders.
I’m worn out with the complexity of the task.
Whoever said ‘running is low tech, all you need is a pair of shoes’ was misleading you. They’ve never run a step. I used to think cycling was an expensive and complex sport, and running would set me free. Not so. My shoes cost me 60p a mile in wear terms. £180 for my ultra-rare size 15 running shoes, and I have three pairs. (The last three pairs ever to be made, it appears.) NipEaze aren’t cheap either.
New York Marathon – six weeks – will I run out of money? Did Ineos spend more on Kipchoge’s two hour marathon attempt? Not sure.
What’s It All About?
Why am I doing this to myself physically and mentally? It has crossed my mind more than once. Usually when I pass around the two-hour mark on my longer shuffles. As readers of my blog know, this has been a two-year task. I decided to enter as a new goal following a setback, and then I proceeded to have another setback. I need hard challenges to get over setbacks, it seems.
But that’s not true. I need hard challenges, full stop. For most of my life I’ve felt that unless I’m reaching, then I’ll fade away, a diminishing speck, gradually disappearing. I guessed this was the case for a lot of my earlier years in life, but I some stage realised it was an unchallengeable truth. So whether it was education, training, work, and doing daft things like the New York Marathon, it had to be full on.
As an aside. ‘Daft things’ – “Avoid using daft as it is potentially harmful. Consider using an alternative, such as uninformed, ignorant, foolish, inconsiderate, irrational, reckless.” Okay WordPress, all of those terms apply to my marathon, as well as daft.
That’s why I’m doing this. If there’s not a challenge of some sort, I would most certainly win the All-World Sitting On My Arse Watching Netflix Championship. I’ve always been an average man who felt that if he didn’t try harder, then he would end up, well, average. Or less than average. Which doesn’t seem a lofty aspiration. So I push on.
Can I Do It?
I don’t know. Genuinely. People who know me tell me I can. I love the fact that they believe in me. But they aren’t inside my body at 23 kilometres. I’ve put some hard mileage on my chassis, and added more than two dozen hard bangs and dings. That’s before I even consider the natural physical limitations that Father Time so generously bestows. It’s not normal to run a marathon. It’s even less normal for a battered 68-year old to run a marathon for the first time.
Injury leading up to or during the event is a possibility. I’ve been—touch wood—lucky so far. But I’ve had the first twinges of plantar fasciitis in the last two weeks, and my right knee wanted to go in an anatomically unwise direction yesterday. There’s always a chance. But mindfulness and keeping up my strength training and mobility work probably keeps me out of trouble. Ice packs overflow from the freezer at home.
What do I think will happen? The most likely scenario is that I set off looking to finish in 5 hours and 45 minutes, which is the average finish time for my age group in major marathons. Average would be a huge win. I suspect my body will give me the Roberto Duran ‘no mas’ at some point, and I’ll slow to a walk. I reckon I will finish, but it will be ugly and will require a lot of walking, and it may well be dark when I get back.
I’ll take that. An ugly 26.2 miles walking or crawling is a lot better than never having lined up at the start-line. It will be an achievement for me, one I have wanted to nail for decades and never got around to. (Or subconsciously side-stepped.)
As an important aside, I’m raising money for Sir Chris Hoy’s tremendous Tour de 4 charity, which has raised more than £2.6 million for five cancer charities. My fundraising page is here. Please consider donating.
New York Marathon – six weeks. Bring it on.