Run Lazy

Dark Night of the Running Soul

Photo by Mike Tan

When my alarm goes off, the streetlights are still on outside my window. When I charge out of the office at 5:00, the sun has already set. Chilly winds blow, my nose runs, and the warm light of my cozy living room calls to me more loudly.

It's winter.

Okay, not quite yet. But it's around the corner, whispering with its cold breath that it's going to kick my running ass.

Around this time every year I have to make some decisions on what running is going to be like this winter. Will I go into stasis mode and just try to maintain some level of fitness, running as often as I can make myself do so? Will I get ambitious, sign up for some aggressive races and actually improve on where I am now, at the tail end of the warm weather? Or will I surrender and plan to take it back up next spring?

I've done all three, with stasis mode the most common. I think a little ambition is a good thing, though, and for the 2009/2010 winter season I'm hoping to do some achieving. Tina and I are looking to sign up for a 10K in December or January, and my friend Juliana has thrown down the gauntlet about wanting to get back into shape for the Cherry Blossom Ten Miler in April.

After being sidelined by illness (both mine and my running buddies') for a couple weeks, we got back into business this past week. We'll see who wins--winter or me.

MCM Nostalgia

Been there, done that. But it's been a while.

Back in 2001 and 2002, a nice young Marine like those above handed me one of those surprisingly hefty medals after 26.2 miles of forward motion, intermingled with the occasional verse of "I Will Survive" with my fellow back-of-the-pack runners. Those marathons were truly some of the best experiences of my life--and when I say that, I'm not really talking about the marathon itself.

Anyone who's done a marathon can tell you that a marathon doesn't just happen the day of the race. It begins with the relentless training required to make it happen (unless you're like Barney on How I Met Your Mother and you decide to do one on the spur of the moment, and hilarity ensues). In my case I put in six months of solid training with my running group, gradually building up my mileage and my mental toughness so I could face down such a daunting task.

For many of us, that's what's really life changing--making the commitment and seeing it through for six months, foregoing Friday nights on the town in favor of early Saturday morning long runs, fitting in your weekday runs to make those Saturday long runs possible, mending any injuries that arise, and if you're lucky being awed and touched by the support and love of friends and family.

The Marine Corps Marathon runs this Sunday, and as chance would have it at one point they run up the street in front of where I live. I'll be heading out to cheer them on, reminiscing about what it was like to be a marathoner.

 

Categorizing My Life

As I tried to set up a budget in Quicken this weekend, one of the critical steps was assigning a category to every expense I input into the program. This can be a somewhat horrifying exercise, as I had to confront how much I spend at my local cupcake shop (they should send me Christmas cards, seriously).

Parsing my life in this way made me contemplate how I think about each of the elements I spend money on, most notably running. The easy solution would be to create a category for running itself or for hobbies, but in the interest of keeping the number of categories I had within reason, I wanted to fit it into the existing structure, which included  categories for personal care, clothing, and entertainment; arguments could be made for each of these.

"Personal care" sounds right--running is part of taking care of myself and preserving my overall fitness and health. But in practice, that category covers haircuts, makeup, toothpaste and the like, and it seems incongruous to add a watch with an interval timer in with all that.

"Clothing" would seem like an obvious choice for Coolmax shirts and socks and Brooks running shoes. But what about sweatbands, water bottles, sports sunglasses, an arm band for my iPod, or a running log? It could work, but didn't totally satisfy me.

It seems silly to include running shorts with movie tickets in the "Entertainment" category, but what about music or audiobooks I download for my iPod specifically to run to? What about books I buy with training tips and funny running stories about black toenails and barfing?

I could divvy all the running gear up into the most appropriate categories, but as I'm mulling this while I type I think there would there be some value to knowing how much money I spend on this hobby/fitness/social activity as a whole.

In the end I think I do need to give running it's own little niche in my Quicken register, the same way it has it's own niche in my life as a whole.

What Willpower Has in Common with the Tooth Fairy

We've all been there--the plan is to run after work, but by the time you drag yourself home you barely have enough energy to collapse on the sofa and pick up the remote...

But it's not our fault! Scientists say so. The theory appears to be that we each only have so much willpower, and when we use that willpower to deal with a pain-in-the-neck coworker or a challenging work project we have no reserves left to tap to get ourselves out and running.

I find this theory fascinating, and somewhat plausible. Self-control can be exhausting; facing down a challenge can wear us out in a way that feels physical.

What I find even more intriguing is the scientists' assertion that we can increase our willpower reserves by using our willpower more often, like a muscle we're strengthening by bench pressing progressively more weight.

I'm not sure if I buy this theory, but it is appealing and I'd like to believe it's true. My own experience with willpower is that it comes in waves, and even though I'm very successful at the peak of that willpower wave that doesn't stop me from losing it all when the wave passes.

I think the mistake here, in my own personal, non-scientific opinion, is defining "willpower" as a concrete entity. Willpower is a combination of things: motivation, excitement, pragmatism, even fear, depending on what we're applying our willpower to. For instance, I exert willpower to make myself go to work every weekday morning, at least partially because I know I have bills to pay that require me to hold down a job. Willpower comes into play when I train for a race, fearing that if I don't I'll fail to finish.

I think relying on "willpower" alone to make a change is rarely successful for most of us. For me, a more successful approach has been a combination of really studying myself to figure out what motivates me and crafting my goals to fit my personal quirks (e.g., running with friends because I'm motivated to be social), and trying to make the changes I want to achieve habits by establishing a routine.

Do you believe in willpower?

Running Sick

You may have noticed a dearth of blog entries last week. I had a good dose of whatever's going around, so I was mostly at home feeling sorry for myself all week trying to figure out how to put out the fire in the back of my throat.

But being sick did bring to mind the issue of running when you're sick.

Last Saturday I ran a 5K, and truth be told the sore throat had already made its presence felt at that point, but I felt fine otherwise. I didn't hesitate to run anyway because my symptoms fell within the acceptable parameters I'd been taught for running while sick:

• If your symptoms are from the neck up, you can run

• If your symptoms are below the neck, you should rest

These are very general guidelines, so I'll clarify a bit. If you have a head cold, congestion, sore throat, ear infection, headache, etc., none of those things necessitate that you stop running.*

If you have a cough, nausea, body aches and fever as with the flu, digestive upset, or other issues below the neck, you should rest until those symptoms pass.

* The obvious exception to running with above-the-neck symptoms is if you don't feel up to it. If you're exhausted, feel bad, and want to crawl into bed and stay there, do so. That is, in fact, what I did last week after my 5K, once my symptoms got worse and I felt really sick.

And it should go without saying (but it never does with us runner types who always push a bit more than we should) that when you feel better and get back to running, you start slow and easy and don't try to pick back up right where you left off.

I'll be following that advice as I get back to it this week.

Rule #1: Cardio

 
Before I get to today's blog point, I'd like to state that I am not actually a fan of zombie movies. I have seen fairly few; the only ones I can recall seeing in their entirety are I Am Legend, Shaun of the Dead, and now Zombieland.

My main interest in these movies is not the zombies. I watched I Am Legend because I'd heard good things and I'm fond of Will Smith, and I watched the others because one of my favorite movie genres is the horror comedy. I love being scared one minute and laughing hysterically the next. Shaun of the Dead succeeds in that area, as does a non-zombie example, Tremors.

And now Zombieland, another quality entry in the horror comedy genre.

What does this have to do with running, you ask? Everything, I respond. Because the hero of Zombieland is a tense young man who has come up with a list of rules he follows to survive in the world after the zombie infection has decimated the population and left few non-zombie survivors.

This movie, like other recent zombie movies I discussed in a previous entry, has endowed its zombies with some speed. These zombies chase you, and their ravenous appetites make them fast. Thus the lead character's first rule: cardio.

He points out that the overweight and out of shape were the first victims of the zombies, and those who wanted to survive needed to be able to sprint a bit.

So remember your cardio, and if it's your cup of tea see Zombieland. It'll make you laugh, and that's good for you, too.