Priorities, limits and costs. And an incrementalism update

Since Thanksgiving, work has been brutal; late nights every night, weekend work every weekend and a 24 hour trip to New York thrown into the mix. With those work hours, sticking to a daily training schedule has been close to impossible. So I've had to draw on my own lessons from this blog and make up some new ones. Or rather write down some lessons that I have used but not previously articulated.  

Do what you can do 

The old lesson of "just don't do nothing" has been in my mind except I've had to adapt it to a weekly outlook instead of a daily outlook. I've committed to get up at 4:55 on Tuesdays and Thursdays to meet Josh for the SwimMAC masters swim class. Even that modest goal ran into obstacles when I had to pull some really late nights at the office and an all-nighter of 32 hours straight..  Some Tuesday night conference calls aside, I've been able to get to the track for some (but not all) of Fillnow Coaching's weekly run classes. Otherwise, no other training has gotten done on weekdays.  On weekends, I've kept up my long runs and other weekend workouts until this past weekend, when my wife took my daughter to Atlanta to see a comedy show and I was working from home the whole weekend while watching my 9-year old son.  

Simon gradually realizes that he's over-qualified to diagnose this problem. 

I planned a trainer ride on Saturday but my new electric shifting wasn't working, requiring a house call from Simon at The Bike Depot in Waxhaw, who was super nice to come try diagnose the problem. After some head scratching, he concluded it must be a dead battery, which was weird since the system was practically brand new. So I recharged the derailleur batteries Saturday night and discovered that I had a dead or faulty coin cell battery in the right shifter. After fixing that low tech problem Sunday morning, I got in 45 minutes of riding Watopia on Zwift. One lucky discovery was that in setting up Zwift on AppleTV Saturday night, I never ended the ride because I never started the ride.  So on Sunday afternoon, there I was, all alone in Watopia on a London day. So I had the whole island to myself. 

Solo ride in an abandoned, post-apocalyptic Watopia.  

So far so good for my weekend trainer ride  but I couldn't go on a 1:45:00 long run until my wife got home and she didn't get back until 7:30 pm.  I had to work from home quite a bit on Sunday and the last thing I felt like doing was going for a run in the dark between 7:40 and 9:25 pm. 

So that brought up two unpleasant options: get up at 6 am Monday and run in the cold and dark before work, or skip my long run. This was a problem since I really didn't want to do a 6:30-8:15 am long run to start the busiest work week of the year and I also felt very nervous about the prospect of skipping what I regard as by far my most important workout of every week. Option 2 was really tempting.  It is so nice to stay in bed and so unpleasant to get up in the cold and dark to go for an almost two hour run starting in the cold and dark. But I didn't skip it. I laid out my run clothes on Sunday night, packed my work clothes and went to bed at 9:30 pm so I would feel decent getting up at 6 am Monday. What convinced me to forego my comfort and get that run done?  

Use goals to impose a cost to missing workouts  

This is where my Winter Race Ladder really came in handy. The weekend after New Year's I have a 10k, then a month after that I have a 15k, then the month after that I have a half marathon. That's a lot of running races between now and March and Kelly is building up my distance gradually and incrementally to get me ready for each of these races, as well as a half ironman exactly six months from this Christmas Eve blog post. 

I have had to accept that I cannot fulfill all of my scheduled workouts during December due to extreme work demands, but I have a bull's eye on the calendar for every week's long run. I got really nervous over the thought of letting two whole weeks go by between long runs. In the end, my unwillingness to do an early Monday morning long run lost out to my own plan to run a race a month from December through March. I knew that the winter race ladder would be motivating but I did not foresee that one day it would be the difference between staying in bed and getting it done. I felt the cost of missing that run would be too high.

Establish clear priorities from your goals  

Having set my race goals for the winter, the priority became pretty clear.  I'm an endurance athlete, and a really slow one at that. My most important workout of the week right now is my long run so that I can build the endurance necessary for the half marathon in March and then another half marathon at the end of a half ironman in June.  Knowing that priority and its importance created a lot of clarity and focus.

Respect your limits and your priorities  

The sun came up quickly and the early morning light made for a great run.

the flip side of honoring your priorities is to also respect your limits.  With the hours I've been working this month, I did not feel it would be healthy or even possible to fit in all my workouts.  So rather than pick at random, I committed to do my Tuesday /Thursday masters swim classes, Tuesday night run class, my Saturday workout and my Sunday long run. I wasn't even able to hit all of these every week. But when push came to shove, I drew a line in the sand at my long runs.  

Talk the talk. Then walk the walk  

I have found it to be really important to maintain positive thinking and to take concrete steps to ensure that I stay positive and fight against the constant tide of negative thoughts that confront us, especially when we are tired and busy. Maintaining this blog helps me a lot as it makes me think about my workouts and my bigger plan. Having a coach also helps to keep me accountable. And making an effort to be a positive and supportive force for my friends when they are struggling to get active keeps me exercising to keep me honest: it was a Monday night motivational email to a friend who was struggling with getting started with a fitness plan that got me out of bed at 4:45 Tuesday morning for my first masters swim class!  After sending that long and encouraging email to my friend on Monday night, I couldn't face the hypocrisy of sleeping in on Tuesday morning!!

Update on incrementalism 

As painful as it was to start out that long run last Monday morning, it ended up feeling really good and being a critical building block on the road to all of my running plans for 2018.   

Kelly is sticking with the run /walk plan. This long run was structured as a 8 min run/2 min walk, 9 min run/1 min walk, 10 min run/1 min walk, repeat to 1:45:00. I got in 8.19 miles at about a 12 minute average pace during the run intervals. My next long run is another 1:45:00 run, all at 9 min run /1 min walk intervals, preferably on trails (i.e. with hills).

The week after that is the Joe Davis Memorial 10k in Fort Mill, South Carolina and after that the distances keep ramping up. So missing my weekly long run is the one line in the sand I won't cross!

Pick your priorities and follow your path. 

Suffering is the Currency of Growth

I think at this point that it should seem really obvious to me but I am constantly amazed at how closely connected my experiences in  endurance training and racing are to my experiences in the rest of my life.  More specifically, I am amazed at how the lessons I learn in training and racing triathlon translate so directly to the lessons I need to learn in confronting the challenges of my day to day life. 

Suffering has a cost, but also has rewards 

I talk a lot about how triathlon saved my life by yanking it out of the clutches of diabetes. But almost more importantly, triathlon saved my life by teaching me that suffering is not inherently bad; it is simply the currency of growth. I say this not to minimize anyone's particular experiences with suffering: there is a lot of suffering in the world and there is also a lot of pointless suffering.  I believe the only appropriate response to someone else's suffering is compassion.  But in many cases, if we can learn to pay attention to ourselves without judgment, our suffering can teach us exactly what we need to learn and can become our most effective incentive for growth.  And this is a lesson I learned exclusively from endurance sports. 

Lessons from deep in the pain cave 

I will always remember my first experience with real triathlon-related suffering.  I was on the really, really hilly 10k run course at my first Olympic/international distance triathlon in Pinehurst, North Carolina. I still remember the run course description on the SetUp Events website: "the run course is tough." Given the universal propensity for race organizers to downplay course difficulty in the course descriptions, I should have been much more scared going in to that race. But ignorance is bliss and this was my first real race of any kind of longer distance so after 1500m swimming, and a moderately hilly 30 mile bike, I was still pretty surprised at how much climbing I was doing in the first mile or so of the run. 

Olympic distance tri at that point was a super long distance for me.  I had been training with Kelly for less than 5 months.  As the hills kept accumulating on the run course, I started to hurt very badly; well before the halfway point on the 6.2-mile run. With only five months of training, the hills simply felt like too much for me, I had to walk up almost all the hills.  I forget what my pace was, but it was slow.  Every mile marker took forever to hit. I honestly did not know if I would be able to make it to the finish; by mile 3, I was all alone and the last one on the course but I kept saying to myself that “all you have to do is not stop.  If you don’t stop, eventually you will get to the finish line." So whether I was running or walking up a hill, I just kept putting one foot in front of the other over the remaining miles to the finish.  I was pretty deep inside the pain cave of my mind. The physical and mental suffering was intense. 

But eventually, I turned a corner onto the street that led back to the park and I could hear the crowds at the finish line but I couldn’t see the finishing arch behind the trees.  I checked my watch and saw that I was only 2/10ths of a mile from the finish, but I still couldn’t see the finish arch or any of the crowds.  For a split second I had this terror that maybe there was no finish line and maybe I would just have to keep running forever because I couldn’t stop until the finish and there was so finish so......  It was such a silly thought but after 1500m swimming and 30 miles biking and 6 miles running it seemed to make sense at the time.  But I said to myself often and repeatedly, "all you have to do is not stop and you will get to the finish".  And of course I did.  It was right behind the trees just a few steps away at that point.  And God bless the triathlon community who waited around to give me huge cheers for a very proud DFL (dead ____ last) finish in 4 hours and change. 

I did another Olympic distance tri after that and a half ironman, but I think I learned more in that first Olympic distance race on that single run course than in anything else I have done (including the half-iron).  

All you have to do is not stop  

I instantly learned two incredibly important lessons on that run course:  the first lesson I learned is that all you have to do is not stop.  It is so simple, even though it is not always so easy. And I use that lesson in every single race and on every single long ride and long run in training.  And I have also started using it in my day to day life. I apply that lesson when I have had too busy a week of work to make it to the gym, or have a whole week of bad workouts, or am really hurting at the end of a long ride or long run, or have been injured.  It is okay to go slow. It is okay to slow down.  It is okay to walk the hills.  All you have to do is not stop.

The best "why" is because you matter  

The second lesson I learned is even more important and has helped me in every problem that I confront in my life: that I matter.   After a lifetime on the couch, and ignoring my own needs and getting diabetes and then reversing diabetes, it was on the run course at Pinehurst that I learned the secret to motivation -- the secret to how to keep going when your muscles and your mind are begging you to stop.  I learned that I was worth it.  I was worth putting up with the pain to get to the finish line. I was worthy of finishing the race. I was worthy of saving my own life by conquering the diabetes. The feeling “worth it” part started somewhere on that run course at Pinehurst in May 2016 and then took a long time to keep developing all the way throughout that year.  I had a lot of times during the year when I wanted to quit.  But there is something funny about being alone and in pain on a run course at a race and needing to run another 3 or 4 miles in that pain so that you can finish dead last.  You really have to decide whether or not you think you’re worth it.

My first trainer Jim Guimond always says you need a really big "why" to keep a life of fitness going throughout the years. My "why" changed a lot over the first 2-plus years after my diagnosis. But I wish now that I had used "because I am worth it" as my “why” years ago, before I got sick. I now believe that the best “why” is “because I am worth it.” And I had to suffer a lot to learn that. And I used both of those lessons many times since, especially on the run course at IRONMAN 70.3 North Carolina that October. 

Kelly's note to me before IRONMAN 70.3 North Carolina  

I am profoundly grateful for every hill on that Pinehurst run course and every ache and pain I had in that hour and twenty 10k. And I still never cease to be amazed at all the ways that realization of being "worth it" changed other things in my life. 

Now, more than a year and a half out from that experience at Pinehurst, I have started to realize that whenever I'm suffering in some other area of my life, there is a lesson hidden not too far below the surface. And when I can remove myself a little and observe it with some objectivity and with less judgment, the lesson appears, and I am more often able to intuit what I should do. The necessary beneficial change then quickly follows. It's not pretty and it's not fun, but suffering is the currency we pay for change and growth. Think about it. Suffering is so inevitable in life. We may as well get the rewards since we are already paying the price. 

Plodders, slow athletes and the beauty of DFL

 

It seems every year, there is some article somewhere about whether plodders — really slow runners — ought to be running marathons.  Interestingly, this debate, which seems prevalent in endurance running circles, is entirely absent in triathlon circles.  If you can finish a half iron distance race in eight and a half hours or a full iron distance race in 17 hours, no one questions whether you ought to be there.  In fact, the most raucous and exciting time to be at an IRONMAN finish line is not in mid-afternoon when the pros cross, but rather at midnight when the final 17 hour finishers cross the line.  Never will you find more love and support in the athletic community than for the last finishers at a triathlon.  Triathletes, no matter what their speed, seem to have respect for the distance and how everyone who finishes, no matter what their time, puts in their own hard effort to just to get through the course and make it to the finish line.  It is a pity that so many in the endurance running community do not have that outlook. Recently, however, I have noticed some articles in running publications that seem to recognize the intensity of efforts put in by slow athletes, just to finish the race.  This is a welcome change from the complaints that seem to circulate around the Fall marathon season.

Slow Athletes Put In Hard Efforts

All of my races have represented the best effort that I was capable of on that day.  At my first two international/Olympic distance triathlons, I finished DFL (“Dead F*#%ing Last“) and they were two of the proudest race moments I have had. Both of those races took place around the one-year mark after I was diagnosed with diabetes and got up off the couch and both were Herculean, four-plus hour efforts for me.  While I respect and admire the athletes that can complete that distance in under two and a half hours, I also felt respected by the fast athletes, who seemed to recognize that my 4:15 finish was just as hard for me, as their 2:15 finish was for them — if not harder because I did not have a lifetime of training and racing experience to carry me through when times got tough out there on the second loop of the bike course when the sweeper tailed me for the last eight miles, or on the run course when everything hurt and my only adversary was the voice in my head telling me to stop.  My proudest moment as a triathlete was my 8:14:37 finish at IRONMAN 70.3 North Carolina.  Rather than being ashamed of being so slow, I felt a special kind of pride that I was able to manage the race and stick it out on the course for so long in challenging conditions without ever considering stopping.  

Slow Running Can Be Hard Running

Similarly, some of the races I am most proud of, are running races where I hit personal landmarks that represented huge improvement for me, even if my times were relatively slow.  One of my proudest moments of the last two years was a sub-30 minute 5k.  Another one of my proudest moments was a 1:05:31 time at a 10k, for a 10:45 min/mile pace.  I was registered for the half-marathon that day but I felt running 13.1 miles would take too long to recover from in time to train and race my first international distance tri a few weeks later so at the last minute, I changed my registration to the 10k.  It was almost a magical race: I remember feeling great the whole race and holding paces that were far lower than the 12:30 (and slower!) paces at which I had been training.  I remember approaching the last water stop and pointing to the volunteer from whom I planned to grab the cup and then talking it from him in full stride like I was in the last few miles at the Olympics!  I have no idea what possessed me,  but when I finished within shouting distance of the magical one-hour mark for a 10k (one of my secret goals that I have yet to hit), I was thrilled.

The Longer You’re Out There, the Harder Your Race

In some ways, the presumption of effort — that the faster you are, the harder your effort — is just the opposite at the back of the pack.  After my half-Ironman finish, my coach Kelly Fillnow put me on the cover of her website.  I was a little embarrassed about that.  I was quite sure that my time at that race was the slowest half-iron time posted by any of her clients at any half-iron race that year.  Not only that, she had clients who had finished 5k races is in under 19 minutes and had run marathons fast enough to qualify for Boston.  But my trainer from that first year off the couch, Jim Guimond, explained it to me.  He said that landmarks like a 19-minute 5k or a Boston Marathon qualifying time were great achievements that should be celebrated, but they are a progressive milestone in the life of an athlete.  He said that those athletes recognize how hard it is for someone to start out and make the changes necessary to be able to finish an endurance event like an IRONMAN 70.3. 

The Beauty of DFL

To be sure, there is something about being out there on the course for so long that brings with it its own challenges.  It is kind of a lonely experience to know that you are last, when you are biking and running alone, with only the sound of the sweeper behind you to chaperone your last miles of the course.  But being able to stick it out to finish last is kind of a beautiful thing.  The person out there at the end is someone who has nothing to fight for and nothing to race for except for the glory of finishing and defeating his one true competitor: the voice in our head that tells us to stop.  While all athletes have that negative voice in the back of their minds that tells them “you can‘t“, the slow, recently-minted athlete had given that voice power for a really long time.  That voice kept me on the couch, slowly developing the train wreck of diabetes for decades before I finally found the right people to help me overcome it.  Fighting with that voice on the hills at my early races was a real existential exercise.  Six triathlons later, by the time I got to the half Ironman, that voice was silent for that day.   There was a lot of pain and difficulty to overcome through the eight and a half hour ordeal of my first 70.3 mile race, but I was proud to realize later that there was no point at which I thought I wasn‘t going to make it in under the course cutoff or that I wasn‘t going to finish.  My DFL finishes built that confidence.  And the number of people remaining in the stands at the finish line at Pinehust International to cheer me on loudly as I finally got to that finish line, was something I will never forget.

All This Applies Equally to Running

The people who complain about the “plodders“ at marathons could learn a lot from the attitude of triathletes, and my trainer and my coach.  Respect for the distance means respect for all of the people that do their best to finish it. While the “best“ for a lifelong runner might be a 3:40 marathon, the “best“ for a new athlete, recently up off the couch, might be a 5:40.  Or a 6:30.  Or even a seven or more hour finish for 26.2 miles.  You gain nothing by judging others.  Their slow finish on the same course as your fast finish does nothing to diminish your achievements.  Kelly putting me on the cover of her website after my half IRONMAN, does nothing to diminish the amazing achievements of my friends who have finished that same distance fast enough to get into the world championships, or my friends who have finished full distance IRONMANs or the achievements of my coach, Kelly, who can finish a full IRONMAN in just a little bit longer than I can finish a half IRONMAN.

Appreciate the slow runners and the slow athletes.  You could never know how hard it is to get up off the couch and finish an endurance race unless you once got up off the couch yourself. 

If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to browse the rest of my website, my earlier writings, my podcast and my upcoming races and my race reports.