There is a dichotomy here. The new focus to run real long for the pure joy of it while training towards a marathon PR is like working with two opposing forces, working against each other toward the same goal. As I try to defend myself, since I will be logging more weekly miles than ever and aim to achieve the best fitness of my adult life, using this opportunity for one more chance at a marathon PR only makes since. However, it is certainly going to take a huge mental effort on my part to reconcile these two contradictory motivations.

To quickly summarize the week, it started out feeling great before ending with a lot of fatigue and a terrible cold. With a twenty miler only a week away, I am trying to get better and as recovered as possible to make next week a very successful week of training.

1/14
6 miles
@8:07 pace

While my body continues to feel good, I'm going to continue running on my off days. There is a vague sense of liberation when running on a day with no plan and no pace. It's like a blank canvas ready to be painted freehand. I will say, I'm getting a little tired of running up Greenspot; while it is the route near my house with the least elevation gain, it still averages at 5% grade and peaks at 8% for a continuous 1.2 mile stretch of road. I'm going to make more of an effort to run near work so I can get on the Santa Ana River trail.

1/15
8.4 miles
5 miles @ 7:51 Pace
3.4 miles @ 9:00 pace

I ran 5 miles early this morning up Greenspot and I decided to do an experiment: I wanted to run at a constant effort level while not looking at my watch at all until the run is over where I would check the mile splits to gauge how much the elevation change really does effect pace according to a leveled effort. Well, on a 2.5 mile stretch that a ran out and back, the front half is uphill before coming down it on the way back. so, my splits went 8:44, 8:41, 7:57, 6:41, 6:47... interesting.

The second run of the day was my favorite since last Wednesday; it was a nice 3.4 mile loop with Doug where we ran at a comfortable conversation pace and just enjoyed the workout while enjoying the company.

1/16
14 miles
@9:05 pace

It is all my fault. I tempted fate and it bit me right in the rear. While deciding to run everyday as long as my body continued to feel good, of course it would be the day of my longest run yet of this training that I'd wake up feeling exhausted, taxed and sore.

The coolest part of this run was heading down the Santa Ana River trail past Van Buren. Running down that trail, through different zip codes, always feels like an adventure. However, the temperature is heating up and the direct sun was a little hard. Plus, the headwind coming back made my tired legs a little more so.

There is a silver lining, though. the biggest plus of this mid-week long run was negative splitting the out and back.

1/17
10.36 miles
7 miles with 3 @ speedwork : 7:05, 6:55, 7:12 pace
3 miles @ 9:37 pace

I can't complain much about this speed work day because I cheated. I was supposed to run 4 miles at around 6:30. But while I'm still trying to get my legs back, I decided to make it a little easier on my body body alternating easy and hard miles up to seven, instead of the normal half-mile easy between hard miles. With that said, I am slow and out of shape. It took all of my effort to get those weak splits.

1/18
6 miles
9:21 pace

Legs are tired. I am really looking forward to the next off day. As I start runs like this one with a lot of tightness and fatigue, it really is nice to experience them loosen up and feel stronger at about mile four, but there certainly is still not a lot of pace there. I think about Bill Murray in What About Bob; "baby steps".

1/19
10.1 miles
10:00 pace

Josh and Carrie were so supportive to watch the kids to Mae and I an opportunity to run a ten miler together up Greenspot to the Seven Oaks Bridge. It was fun to watch her actively stand up to a challenge and really charge it. We negative split this run, which of course includes long, continuous elevation changes.

I started feeling achy and feverish on the run and as the night went on, my throat closed up and a full blown sickness has broken out. I'm already over the weekly mileage and I am taking tomorrow off. What I'm hoping for now is quick recovery and strong training next week, which will culminate with a fitness testing twenty miler.

After one week of training, it is clear that this plan and these preparations will be the toughest yet, but perhaps not necessarily because of the physical demands of the miles logged and pace goals achieved. Training for the May 5th, OC Marathon, in pursuit of a PR and hopes of a Boston qualification, is sure to be full of mental challenges. To explain, while I have made a cognitive shift in perspective on what I want out of running, in the way I approach each training session as well as how this ideological change has shaped the formation of new goals, the innate competitive spirit within me that has been cultivated and strengthened throughout all thirty-two years of my life naturally kicks in the moment that I place one foot in front of the other.

I just want to run. I want to run for many miles and for long periods of time. Pace and time goals are no longer the number one priority. I want to just run for the joy of it. Then, hopefully once this new habit is forged, all of the rest will follow.

But my head is stupid. So far, my head is unable to not compare the current training run with the last. My mind cannot help but align expectation for this training period with the same period  before I set my marathon PR. As long as seconds on the clock exists, my brain will always demand my body to go faster and harder than before.

As I said, my head is stupid.

Week 1 total: 43 miles

1/7
6.15 miles
@ 8:30 pace

The first training run was a good one. I felt like trotting up and down some hills and through the trees and I was happy that I did. What a feeling of exhilaration and fulfillment it is to experience when you begin a new journey of commitment and discipline.

1/8
6 miles
8:27 pace

It is quite clear how much I let myself get out of shape when my legs feel fatigued on the second run of a new training plan. The run still felt good, but I don't have any strength at the moment.

1/9
3.4 miles
9:42 pace

It was really great to run with Doug today. I'm hoping for a quick and strong return to form for my friend, as he battling back from an injury. The 3.4 miles was perfect for today. I definitely feel some soreness and the fatigue has increased. Running and talking with my friends is one of the coolest things on earth to enjoy.

1/10
11.14 miles
8:46 pace

Today's mid-week long run was great. The out and back up Greenspot to the Seven Oaks Dam felt good. The views were incredible and the rain was cold, along with the wind. The best thing about it was that I felt stronger and stronger as the miles stacked up and my paces showed my progress. As I've been actively trying to not let myself get discouraged by my weakness and lack of pace early on, today's run was really encouraging.

1/11
6 miles
7:56 pace

The streak continues; my body feels pretty good and as long as that remains to be the case, I plan on running everyday. What was really fun about today is that I forced myself to not look at my watch until the turn around and again at the end of the run. This allowed me to run purely according to feel. I got my heart pumping on the uphill and just enjoyed the rest.

1/12
4 miles
8:30 pace

I'm trying to constantly remind myself that this will be a long journey and I need to slow things down often; especially now, as I'm trying to regain fitness. So, this was a nice and short recovery.

1/13
6.3 miles
7:41

This was a humbling day. I tried to push the pace a little and test my body a bit for the last run of the first week. What is disappointing is that this was the result. I'm definitely not letting it bother me, but its not fun to be reminded that you're only a sliver of your former self.

Well, that was week 1. I wander what week 2 will bring...

Victory - A Simple Matter of Philosophy

Now that I have been a "runner" for at least a couple of years, I can confidently declare that there is no achievement that comes easy.  As the iconic Tom Hanks once said, "Of course it's hard. It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it... It's the hard that makes it great!". These powerful words resonate, beyond sporting categories, into all domains of life that dare to offer the opportunity for greatness.

So, in the wake of a mentally and physically exhaustive weekend that marked certain running achievements for Mae, Doug, Casey and myself among countless others, I have been considering the value and distinctions between success and failure, victory and defeat. However, rather than risking failure in these musings all by my lonesome, I have elected to borrow from others whom I have found to provide unique perspective on these topics of audacity, struggle, experience and understanding; please let me know what you think:

"Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory" Douglas MacArthur

"Every action we take, everything we do, is either a victory or defeat in the struggle to become what we want to be" Ninon de L'Enclos (17th Century French author) 

"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat" Theodore Roosevelt

"Failure is only postponed success as long as courage 'coaches' ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory" Herbert Kaufman

"Great is the victory, but the friendship of all is greater" Emil Zatopek

"I learned patience, perseverance, and dedication. Now I really know myself, and I know my voice. It's a voice of pain and victory" Anthony Hamilton

"In every adversity there lies the seed of an equivalent advantage. In every defeat is a lesson showing you how to win the victory next time" Robert Collier

"I've failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed"Michael Jordan

i smell Victory....

On an uphill road ahead
gawking at me,
A few twists and turns
lay inaudibly.
From a combat that just be,
A speck of massive dust
floats by in the air,
My eyes tuned up far
in the distance,
my head's camouflaged
in the cloud of ashes,
i struggle to breathe,
Yet in the midst of it all,
i smell victory...

Million miles ahead
Are steady strides taken
without sweat,
Voices in my head
From crowds on either side
Chanting and cheering,
Fuzzy dreams and vague
Visions in my mind
Refuse to die,
Living and breathing every
ounce of strength in me...

Life's twists and turns
Are as sharp as a blade
cutting through me like a knife.
Endlessly i bleed from this anguish,
i am weary and exhausted
yet in the midst of it all,
Smell victory that shouts
From within my brawn.
Weak yet still trodding,
Visualising the end that's near,
Sniffing and detecting it
Like a fog of smoke floating
in the air,
Victory is near! , victory is here! ,
i smell victory....
Langelihle Maphumulo

Then, there is this little nugget of wisdom...

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it" W. C. Fields

"Most dreams die a slow death. They're conceived in a moment of passion, with the prospect of endless possibility, but often languish and are not pursued with the same heartfelt intensity as when first born. Slowly, subtly, a dream becomes elusive and ephemeral. People who've lost their own dreams become pessimists and cynics. They feel like the time and devotion spent on chasing their dreams were wasted. The emotional scars last forever." — Dean Karnazes (Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner)

I have a 20-miler to run in the morning and I would not be open and honest if I didn't admit to being quite nervous or, perhaps, even scared. It has been two weeks since my ITB flared up and although I have put forth much effort to cut back mileage, slow down pace and utterly coddle the irritated ligament, it has only gotten worse. Honestly, it is truly amazing to me how this injury can make an easy 8-miler on a Wednesday morning feel like a once in a lifetime PR attempt. While the pain is authentically significant, what I find to be the most challenging and personally taxing element to running with this injury is the mental and emotional obstacles it presents.

Effing Dean Karnazes! His words have been whispering in my subconscious since before I ever read that excerpt from his book. More recently, however, they have been screaming at me and they continue to resonate more violently as the challenges increase with the pain.  To be clear, though, as I prepare to wake up at 5am tomorrow morning for my long run, it is not the pain that is making me nervous. What I am afraid of are dreams dying a slow death.

To explain, over the last two weeks, as the pain in my knee worsens with each mile I accumulate, I can feel myself leaning more toward the "cynic" while my thoughts grow more "pessimistic". Still, as the poet, T.S. Eliot said; "only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go". As I believe it is healthy to keep Mr. Karnazes' haunting message upfront and in full view of my running conscience, Eliot's are the words that I choose to rally behind. If I go too far and end up finding my dreams dead out there on the road, then I will at least know that it was in the intense pursuit that I failed and not an ephemeral decay. I will wear the scars on my body proudly, but it is the emotional scars that I can't tolerate.

The heart: providing the power to transcend physical boundries

How incredible is this video?


Did you see the man extend his hand or how about the look on her face when she was pulled across the finish line and firmly embraced by a proud supporter?


Why would anyone put themselves through this torture and how is an iron will of this ilk even  explained, let alone comprehended?

First of all, just to get this out of the way, the first of half of this video is hilarious! There is no mistaking that the person who posted this video did so with comic intentions. I don't know why, but there is just something inherently amusing and laughable in the display of full-blown human corpus malfunction; seeing physically elite adults deprived of decades worth of muscle memory and involuntarily reduced to apparent infancy is, all at once, odd, sobering, strange and absurdly affecting. At least for me, as I watch these individuals struggle, with all of their mind, body and soul, to reach their goals, there is a moment when the puerile amusement shifts into a more profound emotional reaction.

To offer a little more perspective on this topic, the event these runners were competing in is the Ironman World Championships in Kona. So, the two wobbly creatures in the video are, in fact, world class athletes who were required to finish at a top level in qualifiers just to be invited to this event. What I find to be most remarkable, through all of the 60 mile running weeks, 200 mile bike rides and 5000 yard swim workouts, is that the most important training component has to be the development of an extraordinary mental toughness. 

I admire these competitors for their courage. I applaud them for the their strength of character. Ultimately, I marvel at the human capability to conquer and endure, over mounting physical barriers, 'till the race has been run.

Pain: Apparently, It Is My Destiny

So, five weeks into my training for the Avenue of the Giants Marathon, in Humboldt County, CA and lets go through my list of resulting physical defects: dual shinsplints that feel like multiple fractures, near debilitating and stride altering lower back pain (caused by poor form while tree limb hauling), ITB syndrome in the right knee, runner's knee in the left, a multitude of dead toenails and one devastatingly fractured ego.  I believe that when you add all of these up and figure in that, somehow, I am still continuing to find ways to log 40-55 miles a week, there may be a lesson in perseverance. However, I am mostly searching for motivations to stop feeling so ticked off.

Honestly, the most frustrating element to these weaknesses is that they have arrived unfairly and undeserved. To explain, while I have eaten mostly unbalanced and not quite nutritiously for most of my active life, this time around, I have cut out most of the fat, astoundingly reduced sugar, significantly increased my lean proteins and have improved the quality of carbohydrates while drinking enough water to legibly write my first fand last name on the wall. Plus, after thorough consultation with both the Runner's World injury prevention issue and my friend Maria - the athletic trainer at the college I work at - I have iced, foam rolled, E - STEM ed, modified training and ibuprofen like a maniac with the wild hope of saving myself from these sufferings. Yet, carrying my four and two year old girls down the stairs induces enough pain to see stars.

But what am i going to do? I'll tell you exactly what I am going to do: I am going to get up tomorrow morning at 4:50am, after I have hit the snooze twice, put on the long sleeve, take my vitamins and pain killers, slide on my shin/calf compression sleeves, lace up the Asics, run the easy 6.25 that's on my training schedule and remarkably feel strong, energized and good about myself for the rest of the day.