I won’t be running any more races this year, so it seems
like a good time to do a recap. Yeah, I know, I’m rushing through the rest of
the year like someone who puts up Christmas lights before the Halloween
pumpkins even have faces, but since I’m doing this before probably every other
recap-of-the-year you’ll see from now until mid-January, at least I’m ahead of
the pack in something.
I ran 14 races or race-type events this year. Of these, 6
were ultras (2 of which were DNFs in which I still managed to do ultra
distance), 3 were marathons (2 road, 1 trail), with the rest ranging from 1
mile to 25k. This would seem like a pretty good year in a lot of ways, but
actually I consider this a pretty lousy year. Of those 14 races, there were
only 2 that I would consider great (interestingly, the longest and the shortest—40
miles and 1 mile). Another 2 races I consider OK in that I didn’t PR but I wasn’t
really that much off my goal. The rest I would prefer not to consider at all.
They sucked, and none worse than this last one.
Fun fact: over the five years I have been running marathons
and ultras, I have never gotten the same running injury twice. First it was
shin splints, inner left. Then a strained iliopsoas on the right. Plantar
fasciitis, left. Bruised knee, right. Achilles tendonitis that turned into
major deep-vein thrombosis, left. Hematoma, right (arm, that is—gave me that
badass scar I’m so proud of). Near as I can figure out, this time it seems to
be tendonosis of the peroneal brevis. (Say it out loud—it’s fun!) That just
means there’s a roughly postage-stamp-size spot above the knobby outside part
of my ankle that is swollen and tender and hurts when I roll or twist the foot,
though not when I put weight on it. This last part is good; since I won’t be
running for a couple weeks, I’ll probably be putting ever-increasing amounts of
weight on it with the ever-increasing consumption of holiday goodies.
Unlike before the marathon two weeks ago, I felt very
confident and ready to take on my 50 miler. Because of this, it’s tempting to
say that if I had not gotten injured, I know I could have finished the 50, and
finished strong. Thing is, that’s a bit like saying if the Titanic had not hit
the iceberg, it would have had a splendid maiden voyage. Sure, that’s possible,
but it’s kind of a stupid and pointless thing to say. There was an iceberg. I did get injured. Hmm, maybe I can get Kate Winslet to play me in
the movie.
Every runner I know—every
runner—has had a bad race. Not just a race where they were short of their goal,
but a bad race. A race where they
didn’t finish, where they got injured, where they were last or damn near last,
a race they were looking forward to for months only to be crushed by a
disappointing performance. It happens—a lot. The worst thing about this,
though, isn’t just that I had a bad race but that it will probably be another
year before I take on another 50. For spring, I’m focusing on trying to BQ. For
summer there are a couple of just-for-fun races I’d like to do (an ultra relay
in Wisconsin, the 8-hour moving picnic known as Howl). It won’t be until next fall
that I can focus on a long trail ultra again, and that’s so far in the future
who the hell knows what shape I’ll be in or whether one of the many types of
apocalypse will have happened by then. Small children often think that a year
is an insanely long amount of time; if you want to see pouting, just tell a kid
next year they can do something really
fun. Well, there are some things we never grow out of, and while a year is a
small fraction of my life compared to the life of a child, it can still be a
long, long time to get through. Don’t believe me? Think about the last bad job
you had, the last bad relationship you were in, the last place you lived that
really sucked. Now imagine on the day you were going to get out, someone told
you that you needed to wait a year. Yeah. That’s the feeling.
I will admit something right now that makes me look a bit
petty (but there’s plenty more pettiness where that came from): part of the
reason I wanted this 50 so bad was because I wanted to get it right right off
the bat. I wanted to be someone who seemed like she was born to do long
distances. I wanted my first marathon to be great, my first ultra to be great,
my first 50 to be great. Well, none of the above happened. My first marathon
was a hobbling, shin-splinted disaster. My first ultra wrecked my Achilles and
took me out of running for a month. And my first 50 has already resulted in not
one but two DNFs, plus an injured thingamabob.
Of course I still love running regardless of how fast, slow,
long, or short I run. I still enjoy it even when I’m the last person in my
group to finish a particular run—which is good, because this happens quite a
lot. And in spite of everything that’s happened this year, I still can’t wait
to get back to it. At the same time, as with a lot of people who become physically
fit later in life—and become obsessive about keeping that way—I’ve often felt
like I have to make up for lost time by going extreme. I don’t just want to be
in shape; I want to be in phenomenal
shape. I don’t just want to be a healthy weight; I want to exercise so much I
can eat any damn thing I want—in fact, I almost have to eat any damn thing I want because I just burned off 2000
calories on an ordinary weekday training run. And so it was with ultra running.
I wanted this to be my thing that I was good at. Kind and encouraging people
will no doubt tell me that I am good
at it, yet just because you do something a lot doesn’t necessarily mean you
excel at it. I do a lot of running. I
have not, at least this year, done it particularly well.
Funny thing about that,
though: the runners I admire the most are never the most talented, skilled, or
naturally able. They are, in fact, the most persistent. I don’t mean that they
keep running even when they’re injured or that they go around bragging about
how they run in sub-zero or triple-digit temperatures, through tornadoes, up
active volcanoes, dodging lightning strikes, snipers, and ninjas the whole way.
When I say “persistent,” I mean that they keep doing what they do because they’ve
found something worth doing. These are people worth emulating. I hope, once the
new year rolls around, I’ll still find running to be something worth doing. And
if you’re a regular reader of this blog, thank you; I hope to find writing
about running worth doing as well.
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