Washed out

Searching for perspective amid disappointment

There are no guarantees in life. Certainly not in running when magical days seem to pop out of nowhere, while tough ones hit you right when you least expect them. This piece was supposed to be a prelude to running the Vermont 100K Saturday, a culmination of a 6-month training odyssey that covered well over a thousand miles.

On Monday, the state of Vermont was inundated with a massive amount of rain that produced the worst flooding the state has seen since Hurricane Irene. On Tuesday night, we got word that the Vermont 100 had been canceled. 

While this is obviously a major bummer for everyone who trained for the race, I feel confident saying our collective heart is with all the people whose lives have been affected by the storm. My family happened to be staying near the course this week, and we got a firsthand look at some of the carnage the storm caused. There’s no way this race could, or even should, take place. 

A section of the course, Monday night.

As a practical matter, the cancellation leaves me in a nebulous place as a writer of a weekly newsletter about running. My whole season was focused on preparing for this event, and now there’s a massive hole that I’m not entirely sure how to fill. 

To that end, I’ll leave you with the pre-race piece I was planning to publish this week. The training experiences were still valid, even without the competitive payoff. Thank you for all your support.  

***

The other night, I joined a group of trail runners for their regular weekly night run. It’s a fun crowd with every experience level represented from old-school vets to curious road runners. (You can always tell the roadies because they very carefully avoid puddles. The rest of us waste no time getting dirty.) 

Given the range of runners, we split into two pace groups. Because I’m in the midst of tapering, I chose to join the slower group, aka, the ‘Party Pace.’ No need to push anything right now. 

My plan was to stay with the group for the first 2-3 miles and then break off and do my own thing. No offense to anyone else, but after training this much, I only really feel comfortable running Paul Pace. 

Paul Pace has changed a lot over the years. Back in the day, I would have cringed at the mile splits I’ve recorded lately. Now, I really don’t care because it changes all the time depending on what I’m doing. Plus, I’m usually not in a hurry. That helps. 

As I ventured off on my own with the evening sun slipping beneath a set of tall pines guarding the reservoir, my brain turned off and my legs took over. The miles flowed effortlessly, an excellent sign that I’m tapering correctly. With night falling and the forest growing still, it felt like I could run forever. 

What would have been.

Confidence is everything for a runner. When you have complete trust in your training, you tend to arrive at the starting line with the knowledge that good things await your return to the finish. You can’t buy that feeling. It must be earned. 

Funny thing about confidence, though. Get caught up in your own hype and all that hard work can blow up the moment adversity messes with your carefully constructed plans. When things start falling apart, will you stay true to yourself, or will you waste energy chasing a preconceived notion?   

As race day draws ever closer, I’ve been thinking a lot about ego. When you read past reports from the event, that word seems to pop up an awful lot, and never in a positive light. This is my favorite example: 

“This race stomped and kicked my ego into submission. My pride was squeezed into a tiny pellet. It is now lodged in some dark hole in my psyche – afraid to come out for fear of being reminded of how epically off the mark I was in setting expectations for racing the Vermont 100 – how epically arrogant I was about the challenges this race presents.”

One of the hallmarks of this race is that many runners get sucked into going out too fast. The course isn’t technical and the climbs aren’t so much steep as they are long and endless. All those 4-5 percent grade hills seem extremely runnable, especially the downhills when you’re feeling good and haven’t yet been beaten down by the heat and humidity. 

The crash can happen anywhere. Some say it’s the climb coming into the aid station known as Margaritaville. Others swear it’s the one coming out of Camp 10 Bear. In this race, betting on your ego will haunt the rest of your day. 

So, that’s my goal: To go into this event with as little ego as possible and run the race I trained to run all these many months. Everything else will take care of itself. 

Last big training run in happier times.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about having nothing to prove. The one thing I left out from that piece was that it’s possible to train this mentality. The vast majority of runs this cycle fell under the general category of “nothing to prove.” Of the 260 miles I ran in June, 85 percent of them were labeled easy, and none of the remaining 15 percent reached the hard threshold. 

Of course, very few of those miles were all that easy. Many, if not most of them, were challenging due to the heat, the cumulative training stress, or any number of factors. You can learn a lot about yourself in difficult environments, but the main thing I learned from this experience was humility. 

The challenge this training block presented came from not going fast; from holding myself back and remaining patient. To accept and embrace whatever distractions came my way, be it mental fatigue, physical strain, or the constant swarm of insects circling my head. 

When things get uncomfortable, there’s an obvious human tendency to try and get it all over with as quickly as possible. We speed up, we rush, we get ahead of ourselves. That’s when we make mistakes. In effect, I was training my ego to pipe down and enjoy the views. 

The flipside of discomfort is when it makes us want to quit. We slow down, not because we choose to, but because we must. When things get really hard and it feels like everything is riding on our willingness to persevere, that’s when endurance races truly begin. That’s where I am now.

A bit of sun following the rains.

Whenever people ask me why I do these things, I often struggle to come up with an answer that will make sense with their experiences. If you know, you know, and if you don’t, well, there’s really only one way to find out. 

I’m not much of a poet, but these words stuck in my head during a particularly marvelous run earlier this spring. I’m sharing them with all of you because I think they get to the heart of the matter: 

This morning I ran through mud 

and splashed in puddles

Serenaded by bird songs

bathed in golden light

Plunging into the forest 

on churning legs and pure intentions  

How do I do this? How could I not.  

There will be other races. The best thing I can do right now is let go of the disappointment and move forward. The second best thing I can do is get out and run, which I’m planning to do this morning. I’m thinking a nice, long, patient run on these steep Vermont gravel roads ought to do the trick.