Eve Means Life

I am drafting this pre-race jitters post sitting on the airplane hurtling toward my doom in Boston.  At this point I guess there is no turning back.  I have had a lot of thoughts the past couple of weeks that I’ve wanted to get written down, but life has just been normal-busy with a two year old and a bunch of busy boys.  However, I did waste over an hour of my life the other night working on my picks for the race finish order of a bunch of on-line buddies.  Whoever’s picks are closest wins a running jersey.  I was surprised that my beautiful wife was actually supportive of this activity and not annoyed.  “It’s better than fantasy football, it seems to me.  At least it’s real and related to something you are doing.”  

This woman of mine has breathed life into me at every stage leading up to the race this year.  Although my absence will work a hardship on her this weekend, her support of me has been unqualified and total.  She told me just last night that she hopes and prays for me that I enjoy the whole experience, the whole weekend, and drink it in completely.  She also told me again how proud she was of my fundraising for World Vision and her pleased surprise that I actually reached my goal.  She also knows how I have struggled to train up the level I would have liked this year because of intermittent problems with my surgery knee; she knows how important my race performance is to me even if it’s silly, and she prays for me to succeed and run fast.  Sometimes she jokes with me that she knows me better than I know myself.  Many times she is right.  Years ago when I started running marathons she always went with me.  Okoboji, Wichita, Boston, Minneapolis.  We were always together.  I will miss her very much the next three days, but I am thankful that she sent me off with full blessing.  She is life to me.

I’ve been trying to come up with the right metaphor for the sense of dread I have been feeling for this race.  If I am blessed to make it to the starting line on Monday (in all things at all times I am learning to say, “God willing”) I will arrive there with enough fitness to possibly race my best marathon ever, but there have been enough training setbacks that there is also a significant level of probability that I could crash and burn in a spectacular way.  These facts lead to mixed feelings for me.  I want to be confident and run without fear, but I still remember really well walking up Heartbreak Hill a few years ago.  I’ve concluded that I think I must feel like those bull riding rodeo cowboys right when they are about to sit on the back of that enormous animal.  They’ve got to be a little cocky just to make the attempt, but they’ve also got to know that there is a real good chance that things will not go so well.  I guess you just have to take a deep breath and go.

This also reminds me of my third-born son, who, when he was really little, five or six years old in fact, climbed up to the top of the high dive at the city pool and proceeded to walk right to the end of the board and jump in.  After doing this a couple of times with little notice from the lifeguard he climbed up there again and stood on the board when she saw him and got a little upset.  “He can’t do that!”  She said.  Plop.  “It appears that he can,” I replied.  He’s a little older now, but no less fearless, and he inspires me.

 
There is a whole spiritual side to this year’s quest, too.  I need to write a separate post chronicling this most central aspect of my 2011 Boston journey, but fundamentally the point is that I want Jesus to show up, big time.  Maranatha.

The Word

That has hit me today and recently.

From my personal Bible study this week:
"Do not be wise in your own eyes;
Fear the LORD and turn away from evil.
It will be healing to your body
And refreshment to your bones."

From church this morning:
"And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed."

"And He has said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.'  Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me."

From previous meditations that have stuck with me for a long time:
"I lift my eyes unto the hills, where does my help come from?
My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth."

Austin Marathon & Early March Update

Several good folks have asked me lately about how my knee is doing since I have been whining about it a lot the last month or so.  It is always good to be loved even when one doesn’t deserve it!

I went to my orthopedic surgeon’s office the week before running the Austin Marathon and saw his PA, Jenny.  She and the good doc are the only people on earth who have actually seen my left knee from the inside, so I figured she might be able to help.  She moved my knee around, pushed and pulled on stuff, and asked me a bunch of questions.  In the end she diagnosed me with iliotibial band (ITB) syndrome, which sounds a lot worse than it is.  The wonderful news was that she didn’t think there was any sign of damage to any ligaments or meniscus, and she told me I could go ahead and run the marathon and not worry about damaging anything.  After seeing Jenny I started doing a bunch of exercises and stretches for my ITB and got almost immediate relief!  At the same time I also changed up my shoes and was coming off a few days of lower mileage, so it is hard to say exactly what changes resulted in the dramatic improvement, but whatever fixed the problem I was able to run down in Texas with my good friend, Todd. 

It was a really really good race for me.  There was no personal record, not even close, but that’s OK because that wasn’t the objective.  The first objective was to be there to support my training partner in his quest for another Boston qualifier and the second to just get a good 26 mile 385 yard training run and have fun.  Quite unfortunately Todd had a pretty rough day and did not meet his goals, but after about nine miles he “sent me on” so he could suffer through the rest of the race on his own.  With all the pressure completely off in terms of personal performance I possibly had the most fun I have ever had running a marathon.  I just clicked off the miles at about a 3-hour pace, never hit the wall, scraped the wall, or otherwise encountered the wall.  I finished in a time of about 3:04 tired but feeling better than I ever have at the end.  I spent $20 for a 20-minute massage on my left ITB while I waited for Todd to come in and I have basically had no more issues with my left ITB.

These last couple of weeks since the Austin race I have started training harder and now, unbelievably, I started having knee/ITB issues on the other side.    But I’m not going to whine about it.  It is what it is.  It comes at a very inconvenient time in the Boston Marathon training cycle, because I really should be training very hard the next three to four weeks, but at least I recognize the symptoms, have a plan to address it, and mercifully I have been able for the most part to run key workouts pretty well.  If you read this and are so motivated, pray for me, body and soul.  If I am honest I have to admit that I am having a little trouble maintaining an even emotional keel with the ups and downs; one day I have a great run, the next I struggle with pain.

On the fundraising side we’re over Heartbreak Hill!  Generous folks have donated over two thousand dollars now to help kids and communities in Africa through World Vision.  We only have $520 dollars (symbolically 5.2 miles) to go to reach the finish line, and in the grand scheme of things the fundraising finish line is much more important than the real finish line.  It is good to have come so far.

Nine Weeks To Go

So today I am blogging instead of running the 20 miles or so I had originally planned.  I’m a little sad about that, and I’ll explain more about that farther down, but first I need to point out some really cool stuff.

Thanks to the generosity of many families and individuals I have reached “Mile 18.3” of my Boston Marathon fundraising goal for World Vision.  As it stands today, with 9 weeks and 1 day left until the race we have already reached, symbolically, the town of Newton, Massachusetts.  We are now in the toughest part of the race, the Newton Hills, and Heartbreak Hill is only a couple more miles ahead.  When we clear the top of that bad boy at about mile 20.5 ($2,050) we should be able to look down into Boston and sense that the finish line is near.  To the folks who have already donated, I could not be more grateful.  From here until the finish line, though, I think I’m going to have to step up my communication efforts and attempt to widen my audience.  It should be exciting to see what happens.  I’ll try real hard not to “hit the wall” and start walking before we reach the finish line on Boylston Street.

My knee hurts.  I should have run 20 miles today to round out a 60 mile week, or better still, if my knee had not been hurting off and on for the last 4 weeks I should have finished off a 65 or 70 mile week this week.  When I went out for an easy 8-mile run yesterday it went like many of my runs have gone recently.  I felt great for the first few miles, but by the last few miles my knee was uncomfortable enough that it was altering my stride.  Usually, when pain increases during a run it is a bad sign.

On January 7 I ran a good, hard workout of 400m intervals and felt a little pain in the knee, and then I ran 20 with a good friend of mine two days later and recall that my knee was a little sore at times during and after that effort, too.  The following week I ran a surprisingly good half marathon in part on slippery roads, but the next day I could barely run on my knee at all.  That really got my attention.  From then until now I’ve run only two workouts that could really be considered hard:  a 5k race and fast-finish long run on the treadmill.  The knee seemed to improve really quickly from the 15^th until the end of January, but now it has stalled out and some runs are really much worse than others, and I don’t sense that it is improving anymore.

With a marathon coming up in Texas next weekend (as a training run and to support a running buddy) I struggled in my mind all day yesterday about what to do next.  My fears are as follows.

1. Somehow I’ve injured something significant that is not going to heal on its own.  Meniscus comes to mind.  Probably this is irrational, but if true it is devastatingly consequential.  It would mean, possibly, more surgery, more recovery, missing Boston again for the fourth year in a row, maybe the end of my will to keep trying.  It could mean that I’ve crossed the divide and all my best is really now in my past forever.  That sounds really dramatic, but the fear is there even if it is half crazy.
2. I’ve tweaked something to the point that it will require a significant amount of rest and a massive setback at a time when I am running very very well and seem to be getting better with every race I run.  It breaks my heart to think of losing all that positive momentum.  It breaks my heart to think of going to Boston not positioned to do my best, or worse, to miss it again.
3. If I give my knee some rest this week and it starts feeling better I am fearful that the Austin Marathon this weekend will cause me another big setback and, again, it may cost me where I really want to do well which is in Boston.  I am already upset that my training schedule is going to get all screwed up this year because of this.  I am really really hungry for a good Boston run this year.  It’s been so long and I have dreamed about my comeback there since the night my knee went backwards during that fateful basketball game, but I might have to come to terms with the possibility that it just might not be in the cards to do well this year.  The beauty and the tragedy of running a marathon is that hundreds of things big and small have to go right to really run one’s best.

The course of action I have decided to take is to back off running significantly this week and plan to run the marathon “easy” and smart next Sunday.  If all goes well I will plan to ramp up training the last week of February to jump into a hard March.  I skipped my long run today and I’ll just run a few miles every other day this week.  In Austin I’ll try to help Todd run a good race, but if I feel the knee pain coming on I’ll be prepared to DNF or else just walk it in.  I don’t like to “plan to fail” in a race, but I am hoping that being prepared to retreat now might result in a strong advance later. 

Perspective

One thing I got to thinking today was that even if the worst of my fears comes true I have to have faith that the Lord knows what He is doing, remember that He loves me and remember that He has blessed me with some seriously fun running the last few months.  I have been blessed with the health over the last six months to run 5 personal record races in succession:  Twin Cities Marathon (big PR), 5k (big PR), 5k (slight improvement), Topeka-Auburn Half Marathon (big PR) and finally another huge 5k PR.  If I never ran another race, this has been one dandy of a streak that any runner would be happy about, and I am very grateful for it.  I hope it is not the end of what I can do, but if it is, it is a lot to be grateful for. 

I feel like I have been given a glance into what I could have become as a runner had I stayed with it when I went up to Kansas University in the fall of 1984.  That cannot now be changed, ever, of course.  But now I have seen enough of my potential to make some reasonable guesses about what could have been.  I was a pansy – I quit the team barely two weeks into it mostly because I was scared of the work I could see it would demand.  I’m not a pansy anymore and I am not afraid of the work, but unfortunately I’m now 44 and not 18.  Nevertheless, true or not, I suspect now that I really could have amounted to something as a “real runner” had I stayed with it.  It is sad that our opportunities do not always intersect with our motivation.  I am content, however, to enjoy the present and hope for the near future for a just a little more improvement before I really do get too old to try to run each race faster than the last.