Friday Ramble 04/29/22
This week: Stretching limits and exploring new horizons, discovering new routes, and too much information about black toenails.
I ran over 200 miles this April, which is more than I’ve ever run in any month. I’m tremendously proud of this accomplishment because recording a 200-mile month had been a goal of mine for years. For a long time, it looked like it would never happen.
During the peak of marathon, and later 50K training, I’d average between 150-175 miles a month. That’s still an awful lot of running as evidenced by the fact that my body would break down if I tried to run any more.
As I got older, 200 miles in a month began to feel more like an abstract concept than a nice round number. Was this an attainable goal or an impenetrable barrier? History told me it was probably the latter. Father Time, as they say, is undefeated.
Last September, I finally crossed the threshold during my first 50-mile race. Given everything else, the 200-mile thing was almost an afterthought. In a weird way, it didn’t feel like it really counted.
When I mentioned this to Coach Avery, he chuckled and told me not to worry because we’d be hammering 200-mile months like clockwork in 2022. That sounded nice, so I didn’t bother arguing even though my brain was still hardwired to think that was beyond my capabilities.
Lo and behold, here we are in 2022, churning out the first of what will hopefully be many 200-mile months.
Throughout April, I’ve thought a lot about limits. There’s a school of thought, especially in distance running, that limits are perceptions we place on ourselves. Once we overcome whatever mental hurdle is standing in our way, the sky’s the limit for what we can achieve.
There’s a lot of truth to that sentiment, but I think it undersells the importance of having a good plan. No matter how hard I tried to break 200 miles previously, it wasn’t a number that became achievable until I embraced a revamped training approach. The limit may have been in my head, but my body still needed to do the work.