Sound of Body, Weak of Mind

I have only ever run one marathon. The 2009 Rock'n'Roll Phoenix Marathon. I failed spectacularly. My goal time was 3:10 and a Boston Marathon qualification. After mostly walking the last 10k, I limped across the finish line in 3:35. Shortly thereafter I ditched the road scene and started running trails, competing in a few ultra marathons before quitting running altogether and getting fat. 

In moments of self-flattery I describe my transition to trail ultras as a more primal switch to running for the hell of it and to see how far I could go. Oprah ran a road marathon, for God's sake. At the start in Phoenix I lined up with people who intended to walk the entire thing. I was clearly above that. 

In reality, though, I had it handed to me by a road marathon. I left, licking my wounds, gratifying myself with the enhanced social clout that came with the ultra. Everyone knows the marathon distance and can probably guess at a good marathon time. No one knows how in the hell long it is supposed to take to run 50 miles. They are just impressed that you did it at all (even though I was slow and weak and would still have come short of my goals at the road marathon). 

But what has haunted me persistently since that bad race in January of 2009 is the question of what went wrong that day. My training was incredible: I regularly cranked out sub-1:35 half marathons in Saturday morning training runs, broke 19:00 minutes in a 5k, 40 minutes in a 10k, and my 20 mile training runs came in around 2:20. In other words, I was primed for success. Yet I crumbled.

There were physical issues. I have a finicky gastrointestinal system and when taxed in long runs it is a crapshoot (get it?) as to how it will turn out for me. However, what haunts me isn't the fact that physically I broke down, but the question of whether or not the breakdown was purely physical. What haunts me is that I toed the line that morning strong of body and weak of mind. That I simply wasn't ready to shrug off the pain of those last, grueling miles. That, despite being fast in training, my training itself was plagued by runs where I ran well as long as I felt well and ran poorly as soon as I came under duress. In other words, I was never forced to grit it out a training run, and therefore was unprepared for the day that grit was required.

Fitzgerald talks about the ways in which we conflate actual real physical fatigue with simply our perceived effort. We mistake feeling bad for actually doing bad. He writes: "perception of effort. . . is the primary source of the discomfort that causes athletes to slow down or quit when they hit the wall in races." We are not actually physically at our limits, as is amply displayed by the fact that we feel immediately better once we stop expending the effort, i.e. once our perception of effort returns to a low level. Fitzgerald's conclusion resonates: "Physical fitness determines where the wall that represents your physical limit is placed. Mental fitness determines how close you are able to get to that limit in competition."

My physical fitness should have allowed me to run a great race: I was lean, fast, and confident. However, without having stretched my mental fitness during training, I was unable to get my body to respond when I found myself in the unfamiliar territory of mental duress. I buckled, and none of the fast, easy training runs in the world would prepare me for what I needed: the mental power to tell my body it was just fine. And that is something to keep in mind, so to speak, as I try to recover what I lost when I gave up my best habit.

Mind With Matter: A Brief Lesson in Prepositions and a Word on Athletic Training

As an English teacher I am by nature concerned with the way we frame words. The way in which we speak matters. For example, during our chapel lesson at my school a few weeks ago, the young man who was speaking made a disconcerting verbal lapse repeatedly: asked to speak on the subject of worshiping (God) with our bodies he made the linguistic error of dropping both the implied direct object (God) and the quite necessary preposition (with). His subject, therefore, became "worshiping our bodies" (caveat lector: in case you have already tuned out, know that the actual content of this post is wildly divergent from a grammar lesson). 

While this was a humorous (for those whose level of attention caught the error) and quite, I am assuming, unintentional misspeak the broader lesson holds: the way we frame things matter, the way we say things has consequences. My post title is a play on the oft-heard mantra "mind over matter," which has been used to will countless thousands through seemingly endless windsprints, laps around a track or in a pool, and hideous sets of lifting plates of metal off your chest. The idea, of course, is that our mind (our wills, our grit, our mental toughness) is somehow separate from our matter (our bodies, our capabilities, our physical strength). This idea is prima facie ludicrous. No amount of mind will allow me to run an Olympic-qualifying marathon time or lift a ridiculous piece of metal weighing 300 pounds off my chest. But we repeat it. Grit it out, boys. Rest is for sissies. Pain is weakness leaving the body. Grrrr.

What the opposition of mind to matter obscures is the fact that without substantial matter mere mind is grievously incompetent for some tasks. What it also obscures, and from quite another angle, is that our minds and our bodies are simply not separated from each other in the least. The West, by and large and in innumerable areas of life, still is besieged by a Platonic dualism that separates mind/body, soul/spirit, physical/material. But mind over matter is actually closer to the truth than simple biological determinism. Some people are better competitors than others; some are simply able to will themselves through pain in a way that similarly trained athletes cannot. This much is undeniable. As an athlete who best fits in the Clydesdale category of racers, I have whooped people much fitter than me (from the outside). Likewise, I have had it handed to me by people I could no doubt take to task in a wrestling match. What gives? Why are some people able to double down in effort while redlining and others start walking? Why do we separate mind and body, giving primacy to either one or the other?

It is this basic misunderstanding that Matt Fitzgerald counters in his new work How Bad Do You Want It? Fitzgerald's work could actually smack at first glance as further strengthening of mind over matter drill instructor aphorisms, but Fitzgerald is instead promoting a newer psychobiological school of endurance athleticism. Mind, body joined. Our brain guiding our bodies. Our bodies responding to our conscious mental activity. I started reading the book this evening. It is going to be hard to put down. I want to be better. I want to run faster when I want to run slower. I want to want it more than I want comfort and easy-breathing. 

An Update on that Crappy Running Log Idea, and a Comment on the False Dichotomy Between Fitness and Other Things

hu·bris: a great or foolish amount of pride or confidence

A few months ago I thought I was getting good at running again. I had been logging nearly daily miles for almost six weeks and was progressing nicely. I had signed up for a 20 mile trail race in February and was planning a marathon in April. I had just had a very good long run, with a funny side story involving copious amounts of crotchal (sic) chafing. Carried on by my own inflated view of my athletic prowess (JV basketball, yo!), I thought I would make a weekly training log a feature of this blog. Thus I wrote my first post.

Six days later on a short long run before church I was smitten by the running gods. There is only really one thing pain emanating from your Achilles can mean and it sucks. In the 2-1/2 months since the injury I have ran less than 100 miles. I basically took the entire month of December off after trying to limp through November. I am back at it now, slowly, but chastened and you shan't see me bragging about my epiphanic long runs anymore.

However, I do want to address an assumption about physical fitness that has stuck in my craw for some time and is, for most people, complete B.S. It is, broadly speaking, the false dichotomy between being in shape and excelling in the other parts of your life. People are great at coming up with excuses for not exercising. 

A common one that I hear, given my season of life, is that there is some sort of tension between being a parent and being someone who exercises. I remember running with a friend once and after the run he was red-faced and panting and I was feeling fantastic. He said something about how he knew he was being a good father because I was in better shape than him. I didn't have kids at the time so there was no insinuation that I was being a bad father by running everyday, but there was a clear insinuation that if this guy didn't care about being a superstar dad he would totes smoke me in a 10k. However, at the time I was working probably about 15 hours more per week than my friend. I got up at 5 o'clock every morning to run before getting to work at 6:45. I asked him what he was doing with his kids when I was running at 5 a.m. Both of us, no doubt, were struggling with our pride in this exchange: his pride wounded over not being able to keep up and mine smarting from the assertion that if I was busier I too would stop running.

This was my first glimpse of parenting as cover for being lazy, a dodge I have subsequently used. What I have found is that not many people will call you out on this excuse if you utilize it. I have joked with people since becoming a parent about sympathy weight and being OMG so busy!!! no time to workout!!!! and no one has yet said, "Stop making excuses, you lazy doughy blankety-blank." But Owen isn't exactly pining for me while he is comfortably asleep in the predawn period. Also, dude goes to bed at 8 o'clock in the evening. He is awake for 13 hours per day and sleeps for two of those in the afternoon. And that's why I can't work out? We don't make the same excuses for entertainment. You've never heard anyone say, "I can't be a good parent and watch Downton Abbey." Or, "In order to properly parent my child I just don't have time to read Buzzfeed articles." We all make time for what is important to us. And what should be important to us in our deskbound, computer-clicking, crappy-food-eating culture is getting into a weight room or onto a treadmill or into one of those Zumba things or even being a Cross-fit bro, bro. Don't blame your laziness on your kids. You are out of shape and breathe hard after eating because of choices you make, choices independent of spending time with your kids.

I am saying this as much for me as anyone. After my Achilles injury I was in the Slough of Despond for a bit. By nature I hate lifting weights. I also hate stationary bikes and those elliptical things that mimic no motion any human should ever make. So I was lazy. Eating poorly, watching too much television. AND IT WAS ALL BECAUSE I'M SUCH A GOOD DAD!!! How weird does that sound? But people let you off the hook if you say that. Don't say that. If fitness is a priority you will find a way. I know moms who teach Zumba, run marathons, or do P90X in their basement since dad works early, and they still love their kids. You don't have to qualify for the Boston Marathon or look like someone on the cover of Runner's World, but my guess is you want to teach your kids to treat their bodies well. Treat yours well. 

Anything apart from that is an excuse and usually one cheaply made to make other parents who do get up early and work hard feel bad about it because they are not as great of a parent as you are. If you don't want to work out and don't care much about your health, at least admit it. Don't throw someone else under the bus to cover for your apathy.

Drop the mic. Walk away.

20 in 20

For those of you who have seen me recently, it should come as no surprise that I have put on quite a significant amount of weight in the past year. Something like 20 pounds, at least 15. The final year of graduate school was not kind to my waistline. The combination of apathy toward running, energy drinks, and whiskey added up to a spare tire. I had expected the open schedule of graduate school to usher in an era of 60+ miles per week running and a few mornings of weightlifting on top of that. Alas, for reasons discussed in my last post, this did not happen.

So here I am now. And what to do, but contrive some silly goal for losing weight. Long-time readers will recall my total sweet fast in 2008. This time I have decided to lose 20 pounds in 20 weeks and take a 20 mile run on the last day of this program. Depending on how running goes I will come up with a time goal for the run (ideally sub 2:30). 

I started last week. I am not sure I have lost my pound yet, but I imagine I am close. There is something about having a goal, though. Clara and Owen flew to Denver last Thursday morning for a 10 day trip leaving me bereft and alone in an unfamiliar place. I am quite jealous. They are all camping in the Tetons for the next several days. Anyway, on my first night alone I got home from work a bit exhausted and sullen. I started watching Season One of Deadwood on my laptop and was eating some mint chocolate chip ice cream. It occurred to me as I lay there that this was no way to lose 20 pounds in 20 weeks. So I got off the couch, laced up the running shoes and drove to Turkey Mountain, a paradise in the middle of Tulsa with over 40 miles of dirt trails for running, biking, and hiking. And I ran. I ran till I puked (the two cigarettes and bag of gummy bears that I consumed during the working day combined with the ice cream created a foul mixture), and then I ran some more. It was 100 degrees out and I could wring sweat out of my clothes when I finished, but I loved it. There were times when I was in tune with the trail, using the rocks on the trail as springboards, deftly skipping over tree roots. I also fell twice. But, again, I loved it. I smiled most of the time (especially after puking). I felt that I had accomplished something, when really all that I did was run through the woods for an hour. And what had been a sad day was transformed.

This is all to say that the goal in this next 20 weeks has very little to do with weight. Fit is a feeling. A great feeling. One worth chasing. Preferably through the woods.