Planning all of my runs on certain days of the week far in advance is a double edged sword. On one hand, I have a very “set it & forget it” autopilot training-plan for myself. On the other, it’s hard to be flexible…
17 Miles on the road was the number today come hell or high water, and in this case it was the latter.
It was a purposefully slow run; testing my body fresh off a few high mileage weeks upon returning to injury. The goal was to hang around the comfortable pace of the mid 8-minute/mile, while seeing how my body would respond.
My heartrate could be a bit more controlled (read: lower), but I’ll chalk it up to the post injury blues as I felt fine. Plus some cardiac drift got to me at the end but that’s water under the bridge come these longer miles and me being slightly undertrained.
The first 3-miles I took it slow as I could possibly bare while it was dumping rain on me. I figured it was still marginally better than running on the treadmill.
The next 10 miles had the thought “let’s keep the engine below 150BPMs” while making sure my left (problem) leg wasn’t going to be an issue. Happy to report all systems were a go.
I found some solid flow here and basically zoned out for this portion of the run. Always weird when that happens, it feels like my body is running and I am somewhere else thinking about my life.
Zone 1.5-3 might be my favorite hallucinogenic.
In that time, I got to thinking about how running in the rain is like returning to your childhood again. Something about hop-scotching over puddles and getting disgustingly damp without a care in the world is freeing. Most people see rain in the forecast and shut their entire day down.
Not me, nope. I live for the rain. Anything that makes conditions or a factor that makes something marginally more difficult entices me. It’s like I have a gravitational pull towards it.
It’s part of the reason I fell in love with running in the first place, how can I make this life slightly more uncomfortable? I think a deeper question would be why, we as humans, chase that uncomfortable feeling. Is it some kind of endorphin that is pre-wired into a certain percentage of the population? Is it evolutionary, to keep us adapting and progressing forward via stress?
I’m not sure what the answers to these questions are, and I suppose it will always be a part of the allure in this chase/fight that is life.
Until then I’ll keep running and highlighting that the point of life just might be to do these hard things. Even if it’s just 17 slow miles in the rain. The end product is just as much progress mentally as it is physically.
The final 3 miles I snapped out of this flow, much like I snapped out of deep thought while writing the above section, and decided to see check in with my aerobic system.
Post injury is always weird for me, I took time off but I am totally unaware of my fitness so I like running some tests. One of them is called the “deep run aerobic threshold pace test”, which I completely made up.
Allow me to explain. I simply run really far, then towards the end of that run I see how my cardiovascular system responds as I push the pace slightly, eyeing my heart rate. The goal was to run slightly faster than the pace I had held all run (low 8 minute miles) and see how efficient my heart is (try to keep it as low as possible). There a few factors in play, chiefly one being cardiac drift where your heart rate naturally rises over the course of a run.
I’m happy with the results of this run for now and feel that I’m in *not great* shape, but have the ability to get back quickly.
I’ve also arrived at a place in my training where road mile pace does not mean much to me anymore, as I am focusing on trail races for the 2024 season.
The road simply acts as a way for me to obtain higher mileage when a trailhead is not available to me.
More thoughts and trails to come!
Happy Sunday!
-BTR