Training for FURTHER (not weekly at all dispatch #6)
Catching up on weeks 8, 9 and part of 10!!
I went back and read what I wrote two and a half weeks ago to see how I anticipated the upcoming challenge of running Houston marathon and Coldwater Rumble 100 mile in a 6 day span. I was curious if I lived up to my own expectations or intentions. I did. But not without struggle. The factors that I mentioned, and have mentioned many times, of how last year went and the struggles that I experienced getting to races definitely created some anxiety as this challenging racing week approached. Like most runners, I have always had some taper crazies or taper tantrums or whatever you like to call them. Having chronic illness conditions and PMDD have escalated things over the years as these conditions worsened because I have to often consider if I legitimately am healthy enough to race. It is not an easy process. When I get it wrong, it can make for a very painful race experience or failure. Day to day, I often do not feel 100% healthy. I actually feel legitimately good so rarely that when I wake up feeling refreshed in the morning I am actually confused. During training this does not bother me, I am use to it. I just get up and do what I am supposed to. But what I realized this past week is that as I near a race, I suddenly want to feel good and not feeling good stresses me out especially since now the evidence of how not feeling good effects a race has amassed to make the picture of what might happen murky. Ten years ago, people close to me could wave their hand and say, “you’ll be fine” on race day and they were generally right. Now, I do not know that. Because last year I was generally not.
Thus, as I embarked on this journey, I began feeling pretty high anxiety around the races. I see myself as an incredibly consistence racer. For 18 years now, I have rarely finished off the podium and think I’ve been outside the top 10 in a race maybe 3 or 4 times. It really bothers me that people think I am inconsistence. When the reality is, the only inconsistence is getting to start lines that I intend to. And that is due to health, I simply do not have the luxury that healthy people do of easily having my plans to race go to plan. I navigate a minefield to get to a start line, while healthy people get to walk a smooth straight path. It frustrates me because I am out of control of which path I am walking. There is nothing I can do to clear that minefield. Yet people assign it to my character. Because of how last year went, I unknowingly started to as well.
The anxiety for Houston was easily diffused because that race I could not have any expectations of myself. I simply had not done the workouts to warrant specific time goals and I was able to focus on simply being calm and deliberate. I knew that I would be able to run a solid time because I have done it so many times, I do not have doubts about my ability to run a sub 3 hr marathon in most conditions on many different types of fitness and in many different stages of training. And that is precisely what I did. I completed my 40th sub 3 hour marathon in 2:53. I felt satisfied with this because the limiters, such as having the flu and missing all my key workouts, were easy to discern. I checked the box off and headed onwards to my next destination to prepare to race 100 miles.
I flew directly from Houston to Tucson where I would spend the week training. I was supposed to train with my friend, Heather Jackson, but she ended up stuck in Bend in a crazy winter storm. This point only matters because, in hindsight, I can see that being completely alone for a week leading up to a race mattered in both good and bad ways. I trained through the week and tried to get myself feeling as good as possible all while trying to ensure that I would head into Coldwater not rested. I didn’t want to race fresh (although the flat concrete of Houston ensure my legs were not remotely fresh) but I didn’t want to be exhausted either. As the weekend approached, my anxiety began to escalate. Not only was I about to race again, but I was racing tired. Not only was I running 100 miles, but I was going to be running without the benefit of crew or pacers. And that was not by design, I had asked people for help and they said no. Thankfully, I did end up with some crew support when a racer in the 100k, Lauren (who rocked it and came in 3rd), offered to let me keep my stuff in her crew tent and her crew ended up helping me when they could. But leading up to the race, the idea that I was doing this alone, when historically that has not worked out for me, frightened me. The day before the race, I was feeling more anxiety than I ever have before a race. I felt the strongest urge to runaway, resist, avoid. I felt uncomfortable and unsettled. I did my best to bolster myself by texting with friends, but I felt utterly alone in that moment, facing such discomfort. I still went about my routine, got everything set up for success for the next day, but I was haunted by the uncertainty of not being able to know the future.
But then, with swift clarity, I found a thought that shattered the anxiety into a million pieces.
“This is the work. This is what I came for.”
Yes, I was there to race but really I was there in that moment to face this uncertainty, doubt, pain. Instead of turning away or letting it break me, I turned to face it. I knew this was a call to have courage and to do the thing that I did not think could be done. I could not run away from the anxiety, I had to run towards it. All of the daunting, scary, uncertain things that were making me squirm simply became questions that I would have to answer when it was time to answer them. Can I run 100 miles this tired? Can I finish 100 without support? Will I be strong enough to make it through this?
On the plane ride home, I would start to re-read Ryan Holiday’s book “Courage is Calling” and this quote stuck out to me as exactly what I found in that moment of calm. He writes, “He said they could choose between two attitudes, one that said ‘what is going to happen to me?’ And the other that said, ‘What action am I going to take?’”. The action I was going to take was to show up and run. The action that I was going to take was to have self-trust that who I think I am is true and that what other people have made me think I am is irrelevant. The action that I was going to take was to look at all of those years of consistency in racing and know that I had the tools and skills available to make it through. The action that I was going to take was to, as I have instructed so many athletes to do, “have a day”. I ate my dinner, went to bed, slept well.
I showed up to the start line the next morning and got my stuff settled with Lauren’s crew. I simply felt calm and ready. Not necessarily confident, but resolved to face whatever the day had in store for me. 100 miles is a distance that warrants the proper respect for. It is daunting and so much can happen that is beyond the individual’s control. It is exceptionally hard, even on the best of days. I respect the challenge and thus I laid my confidence, not in my ability to go the distance, but my ability to handle problems and plot twists.
I had a day out there. A solidly good enough day. Nothing that I had premeditated on happening occurred. I was tired and had tired legs, but I ran comfortably and consistently throughout the day. I had no major highs or lows, no plot twists or cliffhangers. I simply ran and ran until the race was done. I achieved my own definition of success: completing this race and this training challenge and enjoying it as much as I could. I ended up winning the women’s race and coming in 2nd overall to Jeff Browning. I had been pretty close to Jeff throughout the day but when it came down on the question of pursuing him hard in the end, I decided not to. That was not the point. The point of doing these two races was to see if I could run a controlled 100 miler and wake up the next day and keep training. It wasn’t about winning a 100 miler, it was about putting myself into an informed position for FURTHER. I achieved what I set out to and was proud of myself for not getting caught up in someone else’s race. This will matter at FURTHER. Although, I did enjoy hearing that Jeff was highly motivated by me being right there behind him.
I ran 16:19 on the new Coldwater course which I enjoyed immensely. It maintains its monicker of being “Javelina’s evil stepsister”, although I do think the new course is faster than the previous from what I have heard. I really enjoyed the complexity of this course being fast enough to run every step (which I did) but not without effort. There’s over 9,000 feet of climbing, lots and lots of rocks, sand, sandy washes and felt to me like there was not a single downhill I could count on. I loved it and I hope to see the event gain more popularity. With so many distance options, it is a great early season race.
I fly home on Monday and am settling back into training. This has been an interesting week thus far having taken no days off since the 100 miler. But I will discuss that all next time. For now, if you want to more details on the race and how it went, I did a long form YouTube in which one of my athletes interviewed me about the race. Find it here. Six weeks from today FURTHER begins!
Well done Devon. It’s great to hear we are all a little unhinged before a race, even the most experienced and successful racers. And yay to overcoming gaslighting trolls!
I loved the quote that you used to eventually calm down. Not "what will happen to me" but "what actions am I going to take". Absolutely great. I'm thrilled you had a day (or two).