July 2023

July 2023 - Random Musings

I’ve been here before. The days that you are deep in it and it smothers you from every angle. It’s impossible to believe that you will ever surface. And then slowly you see the sliver of light and there is hope that you will escape the darkness. Eventually, you’ll float along the surface, waiting for it to come grab you again and pull you under. Part of you will miss the struggle, wondering how to go about life with this thing forever etched in your memory. 

It’ll feel too forced at first. But you hope that one day, you’ll be able to tuck it away and feel so far removed from it that you don’t feel tempted to be pulled again with the same intensity. As the months trickle by, it does feel a bit easier. The memories slowly losing details and intensity over time. 

_________

They were deep in the pain cave, their eyes sunken from the effort, blinking through the driving rain. There is a connection of endurance, our spirits intertwined by this innate thing that drives us to see what our bodies can handle. As much as I enjoy a warmed, flaky croissant and thousand thread count sheets, I also am drawn to scraping my soul by moving my body when everything is screaming to stop. 

And I wonder just how much darkness you can handle. I wonder how much darkness I can handle. 

Maybe there are the good ones out there who have fewer demons to battle. Maybe they are able to separate their imperfections from sport and are driven by goals rather than punishment. When things are good, I think it's easier for me to walk away from the pain. 

_________

It’s our discomfort that connects us. The pain of sore feet, blistered skin, legs cramping running downhill, and lungs exploding climbing uphill. For all but a few at the top of the sport, there is no material benefit. Everyone exclaims never again and then they find themselves on a starting line, a Groundhog Day of Saturdays with no one but themselves to blame. 

For those that don’t run, they cannot fathom the distance covered on feet. It seems unreal that people not only want to do this, but they pay for it, repeatedly.

I sometimes stare at a map and wonder how I ran that far. I know my body did it, but it seems unreal that it can.  

_______

I waited for the tears to meet the raindrops. As the sky opened up, I felt vulnerable with my emotions. They surfaced briefly, the grief and anger and sadness all taking their turns, trying to push their way out. I was tired and dehydrated to start and drug myself through the warm, thick humidity. Nothing about this felt easy except the familiarity of being uncomfortable. 

Uncomfortable with my thoughts. Uncomfortable with my movement. Running from the discomfort. Running through the discomfort. Running home to the discomfort.

_______

I write about the same things over and over. Worrying about the future that I cannot predict. Feeling helpless to make things any better now and feeling even less helpless to make them better as we transgress through these stages. I am often at a standstill. The toilet is leaking, albeit extremely slowly. And my immediate reaction is to just simply walk away from it. To acknowledge it would require me to take action. 

I don’t want to take action. I’m tired of taking action. 

All the things that I must keep track of swirl about in my brain. I try to see that I’m on the fortunate side of things. But is it so wrong to wish that the dishwasher is loaded the wrong way or the lawn mowed a few days later than I wanted?

I am standing in the garage, sweat dripping off my nose and splattering onto the concrete floor. The evening is still oppressively warm. I cut a piece of trimmer string and it is way too long. I work it carefully around the cylinder, hoping that I don’t lose my grip and forcing me to restart. Part of me wishes that this is the last time that I ever have to follow through with this mundane chore. But a part of me feels a certain sense of sadness that if I stop doing even the things I loathe, will it be because I am no longer able to do them myself? 

I forget the destruction of my legs each summer. They were first covered in patches of poison ivy, the wounds fading to pink splotches over a few weeks. As they were almost cleared, I tumbled over nothing along the cruisiest stretch between Lance Creek and Jarrard Gap. My knee was freshly scraped and faint bruises covered the length of my quadricep. I somehow managed to avoid sunburn in the high elevations of the desert, but back at home, the unkempt Duncan Ridge Trail obliterated any exposed skin. A yellow jacket managed to pierce my left calf and 24 hours later, my entire lower leg swelled.

So when I finally restrung the trimmer and stood behind it bare-legged, I didn’t think twice about it slicing my ankles and shins. They were already beyond repair.

The heat is troublesome enough to run in the summer, but I forget all the other things I hate about this time of year. The extra chores that must be done to maintain the yard. The mental health walks that leave me sweating just 5 minutes in. Even with the air conditioning cranked low, it still feels hard to sleep. 

__________

Alive.

Awoken.

I was a volcano. 

Too many years had passed.

Instead of slowly seeping out.

I erupted.

You didn’t know how it would chase you.

How it would snake around your ankles.

The ash in your every breath.

I’m smoldering now, fire waiting to be stoked.

Will you idle with my soot coating your insides?

I could hurt you.

Are you afraid I will fool you twice?

__________

I imagine that your summers are idyllic. Dripping ice cream cones, shrieking laughter on a worn out dock, and golden hours splashed with lazy sunshine. It's hard to get there; packing up the car and closing up loose ends at work and at home. The kids are fighting ruthlessly in the backseat and it feels as though you're headed to hell rather than paradise.

But as soon as the brackish air reaches your nostrils, there is a sigh of relief. The days are to be spent without an agenda, save for the meals. And even those are relaxed affairs. Hot dogs, sandwiches, and bags and bags of chips. The sun and water makes everyone exhausted and the littlest ones often fall asleep before they make it to the table. Everyone sleeps well with the creaky fans cooling their warmed skin, night after night. 

Even on the days it rains, it manages to be a wholesome afternoon with board games, puzzles, and naps. It's a time to read unremarkable paperbacks while curled up on a cozy chair on the screened porch. No one seems to miss their phones, tablets, or TVs. The adults scold the children for this at home, but it's often them that need the break.

There is sand in everything and the laundry is piling up, but no one seems to mind the mess. You crack open crabs on newspapers with a towel wrapped around your waist. Glasses sweat and leave puddles wherever they are placed. By the end of the week, your feet are a little more tough and your soul a little more tender. 

 

Merrill's Mile 6 Hour: A Visit to the Pain Cave

Funny how 8 years ago my experience at the 6 hour Merrill’s Mile was the penultimate in mileage and time. It was my first ultra and each mile after 26.2 was a journey into the unknown. At the time, I chose the daytime 6 hour distance and somehow lucked out on an overcast day. But I’ve learned that flat paved loops in July with zero shade are better at night and have only run the nighttime option since 2016. 

At Merrill’s, I’ve dabbled in the 12 hour distance, volunteering, etc., but found myself doing the exact same thing as I did in 2015 - using the 6 hour race as a training run for a late summer race. 

This time, I went in with zero taper and with my legs and body still in recovery mode from the R2R2R effort 2 weeks prior. Flat paved loops are pretty far from ideal for UTMB training, but the mileage and running fitness would serve me well in the big picture. And though I didn’t know it when I signed up, a trip to the pain cave would help me build some mental fitness. 

I completed a 90 minute steady state workout on the Tuesday leading up to the race and hill repeats that Thursday. Again, zero taper meant that I was going to be feeling far from fresh, but I was hoping that long and slow would feel reasonably okay.

Casey wanted to come run a few laps and volunteer so she offered to drive us up that evening. We got there at 8pm and true to every Merrill’s it had just stormed, blowing over 10x10 tents and pummeling runners with hail. Fortunately, it had subsided to a drizzle by the time we got there.

People were asking me what my goal was all week and I said somewhere in the 30s. Which was true, I wasn’t sandbagging! I’d had an incredible winter/spring of racing and have been feeling great lately, but I also knew the weather was going to be trash and I was going into it on fumes from recent efforts. 

Last time I ran Merrill’s, I started in the 12 hour and bailed after 50k. So I just wanted to make it to 50k and whatever else I could squeeze out in 6 hours. 

At the start line, I saw my watch (brand-freaking-new-as-of-May-watch) was frozen in between screens. I started mashing every button trying to get it to move, but it wouldn’t budge. Casey offered me her watch, but I just shrugged and hit start when it was go time thinking it would correct itself. At the end of the first mile/loop, it was still wonky so I threw it to her and asked if she could try to reset it. She worked her magic and tossed it back to me when I came around again. Technology…

Given that it is a one mile loop and they have a timing clock out, it wasn’t like I actually needed the watch. But you know, gotta get those stats!

I followed another couple of runners around the first few laps, letting them set the pace. But then I realized it was a little slower than I preferred so I passed them and tried to settle into something relatively comfortable. 

I grabbed my handheld after a few miles and got right on track with eating something every 30 minutes. Unfortunately, I think the heat and heavy sipping of electrolytes all day leading up to the race caused something to go haywire. I was so freaking thirsty and after finishing a 0.5L bottle of Skratch, I pretty much just chugged water for the rest of the run. I was drinking almost 0.5L every 2-3 miles towards the end! 

After about 90 minutes, I started to feel the discomfort come over me. My stomach felt unsettled, I was unable to quench my thirst, and the soles of my feet started aching. I stopped to use the portapotty and loosened my shoes a bit and that seemed to give me a little bit of relief. But after a few more miles, I had to loosen them again.

I was trying to just zone out because cardio and leg-wise, everything was great. A few miles in the middle were okay and I was hopeful that I could turn things around mentally. The weather wasn’t really bothering me too much for a few hours, but as the evening wore on, I actually got pretty warm. I decided to start using ice to cool down my core and shoved a few handfuls in my sports bra and in the pocket of my shorts. Thankfully, this seemed to help so I continued to do this every 5ish miles or so for the remainder of the race. 

My feet were still bothering me even after loosening the laces a few times so I decided to switch from the NB Supercomp to just the NB 1080. This was very reminiscent of The Stinger in that apparently my feet just don’t like carbon plates for timed races. Though I felt immediate relief, the damage had been done and the soreness was just no longer increasing. 

When a race is going great, the minor annoyances seem unimportant. But when a race is a mental battle, minor annoyances are magnified. The loop is fairly wide and 4 runners could be comfortably next to each other without bumping elbows. As the night wore on, I found myself getting more and more frustrated with weaving around groups of runners. I had to check my own attitude a few times, realizing that I was getting worked up about things out of my control. Control the controllables.

Timed races are always a little bit of a mind game in that I often feel like I spend the first 75% of them trying to get to X miles and the last 25% trying to squeeze out what I can in the time remaining. This one was no different. I knew where I wanted to be at the marathon and 50k mark and found myself behind a bit compared to prior races. Meh.

Once I finally got to the last hour, I was calculating out what I thought I could do in the remaining time and that became my goal. I’m not sure if it’s because water/food intake finally settled out or if it was more just the idea that I only had one more hour to run, but I did finally feel much better towards the end!

As I was looping around the last few times, I told Casey 4 more laps, 3 more laps, etc. When I saw that there were still 19ish minutes left and I had 1 more lap, I fought with myself about pushing for another one. 

It’s a training run with a bib pinned on. 

It’s a race! 

You don’t have anything to prove. 

Why would you not try for one more lap?? 

35ish miles is great. 

Why don’t you go for 36ish miles?? 

Part of me likes to think I was being prudent when I stopped, but really, I was just ready to be done. I was ready to sit down. I was ready to put on dry clothes. I was ready to eat something that didn’t come out of plastic package. I was ready for a beer. I was ready to go to sleep. 

I was proud that I ran the whole time and managed to keep a relatively steady pace throughout. It was good training for night running and I didn’t find myself sleepy at all thankfully. I’m hoping that I can go through the first night of UTMB without feeling too terrible due to the sleep deprivation. The second night of no sleep will just be a “fun” new place to experience. 

Anyway, to come full circle to my first paragraph, it’s funny how running 35 miles in 6 hours now feels like just another humdrum weekend. And it certainly isn’t, but sometimes I think about how these achievements get buried when the bar continues to be raised. I almost didn’t write a race report because I didn’t feel as though it warranted a story!