"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.