Calcallous

"You have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves and everything will fall into place."     - Paul "Mustang" Chelimo's Instagram account


Without a wristwatch, there are two ways of knowing intuitively how fast you’re going.  One way, combining a running pace’s affect on your body with past training experience, triangulates your speed feel-ologically.  Or you can gauge pace based on how fast things around you seem to be scrolling backwards into your periphery before they disappear in your wake.  

The latter is much less accurate, especially at night, when running always seems faster (and therefore more fun), or in the middle of a desert or something, when there isn’t much optical (or digestible, for that matter) fodder for your visual speedometer.  By the way, four minute mile pace (15 m.p.h.) looks disappointingly slow viewed from the cockpit of any semi sportsy car.  Forgo the eyes.  (Most) Well-trained athletes can easily and accurately run within five seconds per mile of a target pace, completely on feel.

Finishing the Gate River Run / US 15k Championship

I didn’t need my body to tell me I was running slowly up “Green Monster”, the sisyphusian bridge spanning the Saint James River in the final two miles of the Gate River 15k Run in Jacksonville, Florida.  The structure’s weathered green I-beams oozed viscously from Dali’s paintbrush into and out of my tunnel vision as we raced upward, hundreds of feet above the river.  The brackish waters below were replete with dolphins I would have given anything, (please, anything!) to be playing with instead of this.  The long curve of the bridge deck rolled over painfully, deliciously slowly, its false summit a tangential mirage that kept dancing away from the couple of others I was running with as we surged and yo-yo-ed to the top.

You needn’t be a mathematician to understand the calculus of that bridge’s curve.  In your legs you felt its concave belly inflect mercifully into its convex shoulder, a curvaceous spine transmitting hurt to its foolish pilgrims of pain.  Your best bet, a trick of the mind, was to celebrate inwardly when you reached the point of maximum incline, grateful for its rolling over, though there remained eons until you actually summited.  When you did, you had exactly one mile to go, all down hill.  

By the way, I was not running in the lead pack by the time Green Monster reared its head in the eighth mile of the race.  That maglev train of frictionless speed rolled through this elevated station minutes ago, roadside trash rollicking and concrete span joints groaning in the shockwave left by their hasty departure.  Race winner Leonard Korir ended up running the final, all-downhill mile in ‘only’ 4:08, finishing when I had about 900 meters (nine football fields + on your own 16 yard line) left to go.  

I extracted revenge on Korir when Gate’s athlete coordinator / benefactor in selfless deeds of U.S. distance running Richard Clark Fannin Jr. came up to me, ray banned, at the after-race pool-pizza-beer party (what other race has a scheduled, mandatory post-run pool party, not to mention after party w/ fried gator + after-after party?) and said “Joe, you’re a big guy, [thanks.] help me throw Lenny in the pool!”  After which, terrified, I chucked one of America’s greatest runners / Olympian, who can’t swim, into a four and a half foot deep pool, praying his legs cleared the ledge.

<——All that is to say, I survived (I type therefore I am) the first race back in a while, survived it and enjoyed it, even if it was a donkey-whipping.  On to the next one.

… In which, on North Carolina State’s track in Raleigh last weekend, I tithed Gate River’s 15,000 meter pain payment, stepping down to a mercifully bridgeless 1,500 meter race.  I was again beaten soundly, running 3:46 and experiencing what the industry calls booty lock: when your hamstrings and butt turn into rigor mortified slabs of round steak. 

Start of 1500m at Raleigh Relays

One of Pete’s Peteisms is that progress in distance running isn’t linear.  He’s right.  If you’re lucky, progress progresses sinusoidally, rising and falling across pretty snow capped peaks and lush river valleys in the off seasons.  More likely though, progress approximates some crazy thirteenth degree polynomial with random, remorseless asymptotic plunges to what seems like negative infinity, at the time.  Runners (like gamblers) live for those somewhat rare, glorious ascents to new maximums despite the powerful and totally obvious odds stacked against them.  And we love it. 

Given the comeback from injury in the fall, I have to be satisfied with getting to these start lines healthily and move on from losses quickly.  After a certain number of beatings, the legs figure out how to race again.  Neither of these first couple races were anything special by themselves, but they were good enough to serve as platforms for a great season.  Runners and humans should know that success can follow any sequential jumble of highs, lows, and failure.  You never  truly know when the next home run is: it could even come after your cat just died, you're sick, and your basement just flooded.  Or something.  

Just keep going and eventually it'll stick.  That's it.  Finding Nemo said it better than I did.

Upcoming Races:

Date	Race Name	Location	Venue / Distance
April 15	B.A.A. 5k	Boston, MA	Road 5k
April 21	Larry Ellis Invite	Princeton, NJ	Track 1500
May 4	Payton Jordan Invitational	Palo Alto, CA	Track 5000
June 22-25	USATF Championships	Sacramento, CA	TBA

Lions and Tigers and Squares

Staggering around like a drunken sailor in a bad storm, it took me a good ten minutes to finally admit defeat and limp into the Gate River 15k finish line medical tent.  Through chapped lips I kept telling my team mates and friends I would be alright, as a voice in my head kept saying "you know you're not ok."

Internal monologue.

You need to go into that tent.

I don't want to.

Whats the square root of 169?

13.  Doesn't matter, I'd only ask myself questions I knew the answer to.

Chris told me he read you release DMT right before you die.  Am I about to die?

What, are there researchers giving surveys at peoples deathbeds?

I feel really lucid, which means I'm going to die

And so on.  You're reading this, which means I didn't die, unless artificial intelligence has finally gotten smart enough to fool you.  Of course a machine would deny its own existence. Or would it?

My temperature in the medical tent was 103.1 taken well, back there.  I hoped after they cooled me off for half an hour with ice and wet towels that an oral thermometer would suffice for the required re-measurement.  I also knew that using one would be bad science. Needless to say, they used good science.

The ice-filled Lowes painters hat I donned before the start made me look kind of like Joan Benoit or Dave Wottle and made me want to Never Stop Improving, but it did little to prevent me from achieving critical core temperature.  Either way, there's something badass about pushing yourself to the limit and getting heat exhaustion to prove it.  Finishing 19th, I was initially disappointed, but while enjoying the Jacksonville afternoon at a friend's party I drew positives.  

Tyler Pennel (c), Griff Graves (r) and I combined for a second place team score
at the Gate River Run / US Road 15k Championships

Never let anyone, including yourself, take an all-out effort away from you.  I've questioned my effort and toughness after a bad race before, and it's not a good place to go.  You don't suddenly just get less tough.  The killer instinct you've honed in countless training sessions and races doesn't go away.  Unless you're Prefontaine, you have one, maybe two critical moments in each race.  Whether to follow an early surging pace or to start kicking far away from the finish, for example.  You have to trust that instinct will surface at that moment, and if things don't go your way, realize that your body can only do what it can do.  

Mistrust in your grit is often false and destructive self-analysis.  That mistrust probably accounts for most of many people's post bad race anxiety, and it sucks worse when it's shaken not stirred with pain into a cocktail of depression.  I've found the quickest way to stoke the fire isn't by agonizing over results or splits or other people or past, more glorious races, but (this may sound cliche) actually looking for positives in the race you just stumbled through.  They won't be positives you'll hang on your wall, but you're not weak for settling for sub par achievements either.  As weird as it may seem, running myself into a medical tent was my positive in Jacksonville.


Gate River was our final fall and winter foray into cross country and overdistance.  Now it's time for a later than usual return to the track.  Imagine a full sized, half starved tiger released towards a huge slab of red meat on a cedar stump across a gently sloping downhill grassy field - that's me.  It's a calculated debut designed to extend the season well into August and even September.  Sans indoor racing and with a week-long break after the Gate River run, my legs should be well prepared for the hands-to-knees acidic workouts and races ahead.  I'll begin with a 1500 at Princeton next Friday against some velocitous tigers, lions, and other assorted beasts.  Can't wait.

Now for what we call running porn.  The last two weeks have seen some of the best training I've ever done with Zap Fitness.  I won't go into details.  But two weeks ago as the gray mountain skies sent flakes of snow laterally across the whitecap kissed aqueduct of lonely Bass Lake, five 1500 meter repeats on dirt working from 4:26 to 4:19 began a series of fitness-bumping sessions.  That Sunday in better weather we went 18 miles on the long run with a nice 5:13 final mile.  The first major track session of the year was with Tyler that next Wednesday, run entirely "ins and outs style" (faster straights, slightly slower curves).  Beginning with 2400m at 4:40 pace (7:00) we went on to run 8 x 800m working gradually from 2:13 to 2:07 for an anaerobic bank deposit.  More training with Tyler on Saturday saw a 4:15 fifteen hundred on Bass Lake and threshold climbs in the carriage trails of the park.  

Zap Fitness practice on Bass Lake in Blowing Rock.  L-R Griff Graves, Joe Stilin, John Simons, Brandon Hudgins, Tyler Pennel, Chris Moen, George Alex.

Hump day this week brought with it one of the hardest sessions I've done in some time, mainly because of its length at a fairly intense rhythm.  Everything was run back and forth on a slightly hilly paved one kilometer section of the brand new Middle Fork Greenway that will eventually connect Blowing Rock and Boone.  Bouts of 2 kilometers, 6 x 1 kilometer, and 2 kilometers formed the meat of the session, the five of us averaging 5:55 for the 2k's and 2:53 for the 1k's.  Tyler and I threw in some economy (speed) with 3 x 600m "snowballs" (getting faster every 200m) and 3 x 200m touching under mile race pace to finish.  We're beginning to stir not shake together strength and speed within these sessions, and feeling fit has been feeling good.

After Princeton it's the trip to Palo Alto, CA for the Payton Jordan Invite and a 5000 opener.  I've run there the past two years and it's been one of the best distance meets in the US every year.  From there we'll head to the Oxy High Performance meet in LA two weeks later and then begin gearing up for US Outdoors later in June.  Those months are sure to bring more good tales and hopefully less thermometers.  Thanks for reading!


Next few races:

Date	Race Name	Location	Venue / Distance
April 17	Larry Ellis Invite	Princeton, NJ	Track 1500
May 2	Payton Jordan Invite	Palo Alto, CA	Track 5000
May 14	Hoka One One Midle Distance Classic	Los Angeles, CA	Track 1500

Here we are on the second of six one kilometer repeats on Wednesday:

First ever ZAP workout on the new Middlefork GreeenwayTrail which will ultimately connect Boone to Blowing Rock. This is the Tweetsie Railroad section recently opened.
Posted by ZAP Fitness on Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Nap Fitness

Carpet Bagger.  It's an apt caricature of life in rapidly unfolding 2015.  I began in the North, waking before the early January sunrise to the first snow I'd seen in Milwaukee this winter for a flight back down South.  "Don't go just yet" the white blanket seemed to plead as it dissolved in blue deicing fluid over the plane's wings.  Brief solitude in the mountains and Zap before bouncing to Scotland, to Tallahassee, to Boulder, to Ireland, and to Greenville, South Carolina.  We're vagabonds at times, us runners.  Train hard.  Rinse off.  Recover.  Race.  Recover.  Repeat.  Compete with your similarly tasked friends across the country, catch up for 90 minutes at a post race party, and see them again at the next one.  I'm not complaining.  Sometimes it feels like we're on tour, with(out) (tens of) thousands of screaming fans, (coach) buses, the (illegal) drugs*, and the (big) money.  But it's an honest, fast, fun life, and one I'm really thankful I get to live.  Things are going to settle down next week when Zap Fitness makes its springtime return to Zap Fitness, but we're as eligible for a trip to California or Istanbul while cutting Zap's grass field or fixing fence posts as we ever are.

Though the pace of travel and racing feels quick, the in-between times reserved for training and doing laundry are relaxing.  The most important thing I've learned since leaving college is how to chill the fudge out (You take fudge and refrigerate it. [too dry?] {My humor or the fudge?}]).  That manifests itself across the board: the nap between runs, mentally handling a string of hard training weeks with few distractions to break the days up, and in the pace of easy runs.  Pete often begins his Top Secret Zap daily training emails with a quote or tidbit, and one from about a month ago sums the idea up well:

"Handle boredom well - so many athletes I run into struggle with running and doing all the ancillary things associated with their running and little else. Put simply that is what the best in the world do but many fight it in our 'need to be productive all the time' western society."

     - 2 x Olympian Peter Pfitzinger (from a NE Runner Column Aug '91 - What it Takes to be a Pro)

But reading about boredom must be boring.  You'd rather be boring a hole in a board during a boring boarding school advisory board meeting about room and board.  Physicist Niels Bohr once said "An expert is a man (or woman) who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field."  He's talking about being bored.  More specifically, about focus on one single thing for a long time.  Wouldn't you rather fully complete something that took a long time than leave a bunch of competing, partially finished projects to die?  There is always time, lots of time.  I'm slowly getting better at what Pfitzinger described, trusting what I am doing and not worrying about what I could be doing.

The Wanderlust continues, bringing Tyler, Griff, and I to Jacksonville, FL for this Saturday's Gate River Run / US 15k Road Championships.  The race marks my last foray into over-distance before track heats up.  15,000 meters (roughly 9.3 miles) is traditionally a good ways for me, but I'm excited to continue breaking out of my mold and testing myself against the race's best ever field.  It's a flat course until the large hill in the eighth mile and blazing downhill in the ninth to the finish.  There's a handsome prize purse, bonuses for the fastest final mile, and a team competition with payout.  All that makes for an exciting run which will be live here (for free!) at 8:30 EST on Saturday morning.

Preparation for Gate River has gone well.  My most recent race was a 13:58 5k win on the roads in Armagh, Northern Ireland.  Since then the past three weeks of training in Greenville have been bountiful.  Last Wednesday Andrew, Griff and I worked well together over three sets of track 1200m snowball (get faster and faster) + road 2k threshold followed by track 4 x 400m for economy.  On our third set we were 3:17 (69, 65, 61) for the twelve hundred and 6:01 (3:04, 2:56) for the 2k.  It was a manageable workload executed patiently which always bodes well.  Nothing killer, but a fitness booster.  And on Saturday we were 5:06, 4:43, 4:45, 5:02, 4:44, 4:54 for the miles on a 10k progression run with hills.  

European Championships Steeple Chase Silver Medalist Krystian Zalewski (r) and I battling
in Armagh, Northern Ireland.

A close second on my list of things to look forward to after the 15k is our return to Zap and the mountains.  Winter training camp is over, and I can't wait for the silence of the woods, the icy rush of the creek outside, and to work on all the projects I have in mind.  I'm going to finish building our garden fence, plant the garden, re-finish some old rocking chairs, build a desk, and then go fishing.  There's something special about that place in the woods - maybe it just seems like home to me now.  As long as I find time to be bored once in a while.  Either way, I hope all this carpet bagging brings a profit in Florida.