citizen of the planet

In continuing with the whole communication thing I’ve had going over the past while, today I gave a small speech to a 5K clinic at my usual Running Room.  About a month or two ago, the guy currently running the clinic asked me if I was available to give a talk.  See, he was once part of my half marathon clinic back when I was coaching it.  I guess I left a good impression on him if he actually sought me out.  In the past, I’ve given talks on the topic of motivation before.  That topic felt easy, if only because the easiest way for me to cover that topic was just to give an outline of my running history, which I think is fairly inspirational.  It’s not like I’ve had to overcome tough obstacles like cancer or blindness, but the whole averageness of my journey makes me easy to relate to.  At least, that’s how I’d like to think about it.  So yeah, that’s what I’m used to talking about.  Instead though, I was asked to give the talk on goal setting.

Whaaaaa?

I’ve seen this talk given before by a few people.  It’s a fairly straightforward topic.  There are a lot of basic ideas to convey.  For my speech, since I was somewhat comfortable talking about my journey, I decided to talk about goal setting as seen through my experiences.  I brought in a few of my medals to help carry the ideas along.  I actually spent some time jotting down points that I should cover.  Each talking point had a story attached.  In my head, the talk was going to go over wonderfully.  Truthfully, I should have practiced, but there was just no time.  I figured that if I talked from the heart that I’d be able to wing it.

Well…

I’m sure if I asked people that I knew that saw the speech, they’d probably tell me that it was just fine.  I got that much from one of the staff that knows me.  Personally, I kind of feel like I was rambling and scatter-brained.  I’m not sure anyone came out with a better idea of how to set goals.  Perhaps I’m being far too hard on myself (as usual).  I’m sure there have been worse speakers out there.  I’m sure there have been better ones.  I wonder how many of the better ones are actual speakers though.

I think this is just another example of just how I need to lighten up and not apply so much pressure to myself to perform perfectly every single time.  I didn’t kill anyone, and I didn’t make a horrible fool of myself.  I did what I could do.  Time to move on.

Today was a bit of a community event at my Running Room location.  Actually, all RR locations had their 20 Minute Challenge today.  This year’s event gave us a red hat, which is going to get good usage from me.  I have several red technical shirts and that hat will coordinate well when there’s a need.  It’s a lot more useful than the bright green one I got two years ago.  Anyway, the thing about the RR that I go to is that after the 20 Minute Challenge we always have a barbecue at the nearby park.  It’s nice to just gather together and socialize with people in our running community.  It also tends to being together a lot of people who may not have seen each other in a long time.  It seems like today I got a hell of a lot of people complimenting me over the amount of weight I’ve lost.  I’ve made a lot of big changes over the past ten months, so yeah, the compliments were certainly welcome.  Seeing as how that’s an obvious visible change, I kind of expected it to get mentioned.  Something else caught me off guard today though.  I ended up walking the challenge with a good group of people.  Among them was someone whom I hadn’t seen in ages.  She was my coach for the 2008-2009 winter half marathon clinic.  As we went along, she told me that it seemed like I was a lot more outgoing than she remembered.  That made me pause for thought.

I always say that no matter what happens I will always be me.  Yes, it sounds dumb and obvious, but I figure that there are some personality traits that ground me and define who “Jason” is.  Thing is…is that really true?  I’m supposed to be shy.  I’m supposed to be afraid of being bombastic.  I’m supposed to be sullen.  I didn’t display any of those traits today, and yet it all still felt entirely natural.  Yeah, like I always say, I’m like an onion.  Still, even if you peel away several layers of an onion, there’s still something definitive about it such that you can still say “that’s an onion.”  I thought I had a good handle on who I am and what makes me who I am at a fundamental level, but if I really sit down to think about it, I don’t think I do.  I’m not saying it’s necessarily a terrible thing, but it’s sort of bad when it feels like others have a better handle on me than I do myself.  What the hell is going on?

A running friend of mine pointed this out, and I never really reflected on it until now.  She said that ever since I started coaching various running clinics, it’s as if I never really stopped.  See, whenever I’m out there running with people from RR, I’m still out there doling out advice and keeping an eye on the people around me.  It’s not uncommon for me to remind people to watch their breathing, or to slow down or speed up as necessary.  It seems like I’m not really able to turn that coaching switch off.  Really, I should.  This marathon clinic is the first time in a long time that I’m not coaching or group-leading.  I should be a little more selfish, right?  Well, I suppose besides my own success I can’t help but feel like I want to help other people achieve their own success as well.  Definitely not a bad thing.  I need to just be mindful though not to get too occupied with other people such that I lose sight of my own goals.  I have to do it right.

Tonight marked the first night of my marathon training.  On some level I was expecting to be intimidated, but as soon as I got there I saw a lot of familiar faces.  Sure, there were a lot of regulars who have a lot of experience with marathon training, but there were also a lot of people that I’ve trained with that are also going through the process for the first time.  I knew that it would be a good diverse group.  I almost thought that I’d be running alone for so much of the next 18 weeks, but it looks like we’ll have a solid pod going.  As much as the front-pack people seem to be used to it all, they all seem friendly, approachable, and open to answering questions.

I’m sure it will all work out.  Heck, it’s not like freaking out about the distances that I’ll have to cover.  At least, I’m not freaking out just yet.  I’ll be able to judge more properly in a little while.  I just need to remember to take it easy and pay attention to my body.  If any part of me starts acting up, I need to address the issue quickly.  With the amount of training needed, I can’t afford to take a relaxed approach to making sure everything is in working order.  If I ignore a small pain, I know that it can degenerate into something much worse.  I need to set a good example, right?

I’m in the middle of the taper period for this training cycle, which is kind of an odd feeling for me because truthfully I’ve been taking it easy for the past month or two.  It’s sort if like I’ve been in taper all along.  Anyway, I had a 6K run on schedule.  At the first stop light I ran into a friend who started out in the Learn to Run clinic with me back in 2007.  The first thing he said to me was “Happy third anniversary!”  It took me a few moments before it occurred to me just what he was talking about.  This month marks the third anniversary of when I started running.  Damn, in this span of time so much has happened.  I’m not going to spend this post reflecting on it too much because I’ve already done that in the past.  Instead, I just want to think about the future.

What lies in store for me?  Well, I have to say that one of my bigger struggles in terms of running is just the struggle of mustering up the confidence to tackle things.  Sure, it may seems like my transitions have been smooth.  I progressed through the clinics and really made a home for myself with the half marathon.  I’ve been training for those for the past two years.  And we all know that that eventually led to me coaching the clinic successfully.  Still, each progressive steps was tough.  I often doubted myself and asked “what am I doing even considering taking this next step?”  It was a good question.  If I wanted to I could list out a bunch of reasons why I shouldn’t be running farther or harder.  In the end though each time I shoved it all aside and just went for it just to hush the naysayers in my head.  I’ve stayed at the half marathon level for a long while because I told myself that I have no business training for a full marathon.  If I feel so ragged after a half, what makes me think that a full would be any more tolerable?  It seems though that other people believe I can do it more than I believe it.  So, today, close to three years from when I started running and could barely hold a run for 1 minute, I signed up to do full marathon training.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

I signed up for eighteen weeks of heavy duty training, leading up to the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon.  These are going to be some long nights, with a decent drive to and from Markham.  What have I gotten myself into?  Well…whatever it is…I know I can tackle it one way or another.  Bring it on!

I actually wanted to write about this yesterday, but I decided to hold off on it because I wanted to put some space between what happened and the act of putting words on the page.

So.

Last night, after seventeen long weeks we finally reached the final week of our half marathon clinic.  Sure, race day is actually two weeks away but for whatever reason the store’s home office decided to start this training cycle early.  I’ve adjusted the schedule so that we have extra runs and that we have the taper week timed properly with the race.  In terms of the clinic nights and the scheduled talks I kept those the same.  For this last week I decided to focus on the accomplishments of each group member.  I went to each one and I asked what sort of progress and improvements they felt they had made since the start of the training cycle in October.  As I listened to each story, I got the sense that each person was entirely proud of their personal journeys.  I was able to comment on each one and provided encouragement where it was appropriate.  All in all, for me it was a feel good session.

After the talk we went out for our run.  I scheduled this to be a six kilometre tempo run.  That meant that I wanted people to push harder than their average runs, but not quite as fast as race pace.  The route I chose is a gentle uphill climb for about two kilometres.  From there it’s mostly downhill.  For the first kilometre or so of the run, I was taking it a little bit easy because I didn’t want to burn out right in the first kilometre.  The front of the pack was already well ahead because they were able to evade the stop lights along the way.  After the first kilometre I started to pick up the pace a little bit.  One other runner that tends to run at my pace stayed with me as we pulled away from the rest of the others.  From there, I started pushing myself little by little.  I knew that once I reached the top I’d be able to let go and let gravity do a lot of the work.  As such, I wanted to put a good amount of effort to get to the top.  Soon I was running in the lower 6:00/km range.

As I went, I kept assessing myself.  Could I keep up the pace?  How was my breathing?  Can I work through the lactic acid in the legs?  Even though I was getting fatigued, I knew that I could push through for at least the next little while.  There were a few moments though where I just declared out loud that I had intentions of slowing down a little bit because the pace was just a bit too insane for me.  The person I was running with agreed.  Every time she started to slow down though I seemed to just push even harder.  Funny how that works.  We kind of laughed at it.  I mean, mentally I’m sure I wanted to take it down a notch.  After all, I didn’t want to risk injuring myself, but my body was telling me that I could keep it up, so I did.  As we ran down the hill, I was really getting some speed.  My stride was shortened and my turnover rate picked up.  I know that my Garmin was reading 5:45/km for some of it.  For someone like me, that’s just a bit crazy.  I didn’t want to burn out, so I kept pushing it.

One and a half kilometres later we were at the bottom of the hill and had to contend with a small incline before the stretch back to store.  At that point I was really really feeling muscle fatigue.  My breathing was also getting laboured.  Even through speed training, we have brief periods of recovery between our 1.6 km bursts.  Not this time though.  I really wanted to take it down, but I figured that I’d probably regret it, so I pushed through.  I knew that panic has a tendency to really sneak in when it’s unwanted, so as I pushed I made an effort to slow my breathing down and centre myself.  My running buddy was also pushing hard.  She exclaimed to me: “You can’t pin this one on me this time!”  She was right.  This one was my doing.  In an effort to get up that hill I was really pumping my arms to the point where is was almost becoming inefficient.  I felt like I needed the momentum just to drive me forward.

When we rounded the corner we just pushed hard for the last part back to the store.  I knew that there was no point in slowing down even if I knew it was the sensible thing.  I was afraid to look at my watches, for fear that it would encourage me to either speed up or slow down.  When I got back, I stopped my watches and saw that we had completed the run at an average of around 6:15/km.  We came in under 38 minutes.  Now, I’m sure that’s achievable for a lot of people, but for me that’s completely insane.  Never in a million years would I have imagined making a 6K run in under 40 minutes, let alone 38.

Even though it was only a training run, as we stretched at the side of the store I felt a flood of pride just wash over me.  It’s not like this was even a goal of mine, and yet, the fact that I’d achieved something like that made me so very proud.  As I stretched, close by was someone from the Learn to Run clinic that I had taught last year.  She’s been progressing slowly through the clinics and has done well in the 5K class.  I was keen to tell her that given a bit of time she can achieve some unbelievable goals.  I know she knew that, but I wanted to use the run that I had just finished as a perfect on-the-fly lesson.  I really do hope I was able to inspire her.  I mean, I’ve been there.  I know what it’s like to work my way up.  Speed never did come naturally for me.  I’ve tried my best to stay dedicated and consistent.  That combination’s paid off in so many ways in the past few years, but last night really struck me hard.  Amazing stuff.

I had just gotten off the streetcar and was on my way down to track level to get to the subway.  I had hill training planned and needed to get home early enough to make it up north to join my group.  I had full intentions of getting in a short nap on the subway to get some rest in before my planned vigorous activities.  As I walked down the stairs though, I must have misstepped or something because all of a sudden my right knee was attacked with this stabbing pain right below my right knee cap. My walk turned into a limp. The seats on the subway aren’t known for being roomy, so when I sat down my legs were put in some weird position that I could extricate myself easily from without kicking some old woman in the ribs. So I sat like that, and eventually the pain kind of faded. However, when my stop came and I got up it all came rushing back. Walking home from the station was difficult. When I got home, I just had to sit down and think. What now?

I’ve had this type of knee pain before in the past. Usually it clears pretty quickly. Sometimes I’m actually able to run on it on the same day. So, I decided to give myself half an hour to decide what to do. I started getting ready and even tried dashing around my condo just to see if I could handle the load. In the end, knowing how tough a workout hill training is, I decided to not go. I emailed my group leaders and emailed the store manager to inform them all of my situation. I wanted to ensure that my group was covered. In the end, I got wind that they were all fine.

It really gets me down whenever things like this happen. I mean, I really want to be there for my people. The manager made sure to remind me though that if I’m injured, I’m injured. It’s not like I’m shirking my responsibilities, right? Once again, the best thing I can do now is to rest well so that by the time Sunday comes around I’ll be ready to make the week’s long run.

I’ve been craving chicken wings for a few days.  I don’t know, that’s pretty random isn’t it?  Then, out of the blue I got an invite to meet up with running friends for beer and wings on Friday.  Apparently I willed it and the universe obliged.  Isn’t that how The Secret works?  Hahahah.

Knowing what’s in store for tomorrow, I’ve been doing my homework.  I’ve been checking out the caloric content for wings and potentially beer.  I know what I can get away with and what my limits should be.  I know how much variance I can get away with.  That’s right:I’m going in with a game plan!  Yes, it sounds all very fastidious, and even a bit overboard; however, I acknowledge that I need to at least make the effort.

I’ve been working hard for the past few months!  It’s not that I’m forcing myself to be good.  I actually kind of believe this is now part of a good habit thing that I developed.  I’ve been doing this long enough that I don’t think I could just go ahead and throw caution to the wind.  Of course, once I get there, it might all just go out the window and I might end up eating wings like they were going out of style.  Even if that happens, if I do some prep work before hand then it at least minimizes the damage.  See, I’ve thought it all out.  This evening, I made a pasta sauce that was loaded with veggies.  I normally toss in a few meatballs for some protein, but I met my protein reqs earlier in the day.  As such, I knew that I could skip the meat.  The result was a lower calorie meal.  I know what I’m doing.  I’m not going to deprive myself of chicken, socialization, or beer.  It’ll all work out!