Stupid Math

So, I spent today's entire run thinking I was crawling along at a snail's pace. "Dear God," I thought (I often have conversations with the big bearded one while running.), "I really thought I'd recovered better than this. I slept well. Work's backed off a lot. What's up? It must have been that trip to the gym. Why, oh why, did I try the Men's Health abs workout the day after a long run?" When I got home and put the time into my log, God replied, guffawing through his beard. "It was hard because you can't do math, idiot! Eight miles for one hour's 7:30/mile, not 8:00 per mile. Jesus, come over and laugh at this dummy with me!"

Possibly because I thought I was struggling to run 8:10s when I was actually running 7:40s, possibly because of a conversation I had with Urs during last weekend's LTR, I spent a lot of time during today's run ruminating on the wall. During my first marathon training I didn't properly understand . . . didn't properly respect . . . the wall. And the wall punished me. So, for this time around . . . the wall frightens me. As Urs put it, "Once you hit the wall, your destiny is out of your hands."

For those who've never hit it, the danger of the wall is, once you hit it, you don't lose seconds per mile. You don't slow down and hit your "B" goal. It's not like in a 5K when you slow up, catch your breath and can still push the last 3/4 mile for a P.R. OH NO. You hit the wall and you lose minutes per mile. The goals become "make it to the next lightpost" and "Don't stop. Just keep moving your legs." You think things like, "If I only lose 2 minutes/mile, I can still finish sub-3:30." That is, assuming that a thought like that's not too complex. Life shrinks to "Don't stop. Don't stop. Don't walk. Don't stop." And then it hits you that 4 months of training is going down the drain and you can't do anything to stop it. It's one of the worst feelings in running. And you hope that you'll be able to recover, that you'll at least be able to run the last half mile through the crowds because if you're going to horribly miss your goals, you should at least not look like walking death through the end of the race.

There's a saying from back in Kentucky, "It's better to aim for the stars and hit the barn than to aim for the barn and hit the ground." There's wisdom in that saying, good Southern/Midwestern, dirt in your fingernails and farmer's tanline wisdom. Problem is, at least for the marathon, it's not really true. Aim for a star during a marathon, and you're likely to hit the barn and it'll put you on the ground.

The challenge, for everyone with a hard time goal, whether 2:15 or 3:00 or 5:00, is to learn the contours of the wall before the race. And then play chicken, you running toward the wall full speed in the blue '69 Ford Mustang Mach 1, with the mean chrome and white racing stripes and the wall speeding forward in a red '69 Z28 Camaro, mulleted head leaning out the window to scream obscenities that you can't understand because of the of the ridiculously thick Tennessean accent and the huge wad of tobacco in its lower lip. Then you (hopefully, ideally . . . maybe?) turn off like those bikes in Tron to cruise to the finish. Hopefully, it works that way . . .

Grete's Gallop Half Marathon is in less than 2 weeks. That's my recon on the wall. Stage one of the assault begins. I hate the wall.

Today: 8.1 miles, 1:02:18 (7:41/mile)