As of Hallow’s Eve, I have submitted my thesis document to my committee. Which means I only have about 984878293 corrections to make and roughly that quantity in metric butt-tons of additional work to do.
I want to say that I’ve been handling things as well as I can. I’ve been running regularly–though not streaking, as it seems to be more than I can handle with a thesis still going on–and for the most part, the runs have felt pretty solid.
But then there was Buffalo Creek.
It was a little half marathon The Lady and I registered for a month or two back. Unfortunately, she was having IT band issues and, while she felt decent the day of the race, didn’t want to risk anything and bowed out.
The race was almost exclusively along a trail that very much resembled the GAP trail (see the tunnel above). Suffice to say, it was gorgeous. There were maybe 600-700 people there, tops. The course was a net (and long) downhill.
While I (wisely) knew better than to expect a PR, I still wanted to make a respectable showing–I figured a 1:45 wasn’t outside the realm of practical.
Wow. Just wow.
I started off innocuously enough. It was an overcast and breezy day with rain threatening, and a side dish of borderline-cold. So basically, perfect weather for a race. I took an idea of Kim’s, one of The Lady’s many running buddies, to start at an 8:00-flat pace for a few miles and go from there. And for the first 7 miles, that’s precisely what I did.
Then it was like I couldn’t breathe. As in, actually could not bring in oxygen. My legs felt strong but it really felt like I couldn’t expand my lungs, and consequently my legs were burning with that lack-of-air feeling. I slowed way down; this didn’t even feel mental. It felt like a complete physical breakdown.
Mile 13 was 10:03. Oy.
I’m not a stranger to breakdowns in races. It happened in my first half marathon, back in 2010. It happened at the Pittsburgh half in 2012. It happened in both marathons I’ve run. But this was an order of magnitude worse than any breakdown I’ve experienced. It really felt like my “running” switch had just been flipped off and there was nothing I could do about it.
I crossed the finish line and struggled for a good 20 minutes to normalize my breathing. It really felt like I was hyperventilating.
The rest of the day, I felt very physically “off.” Which I felt bad about, as our dear friend Kelly invited a bunch of us over to her family’s house for a delicious and relaxing brunch. I tried to mingle but for the most part only had enough energy to sit on the couch.
Of course I knew why I’d broken down so spectacularly. No less frustrating; or, at least, I couldn’t convince myself that a thesis due to my committee in a little over a week from then constituted enough of a reason.
But I keep trying to convince myself of that. Something else I try to keep in mind: I had an awful, awful day–possibly my worst ever–and ran a half marathon in 1:52:21. There are a lot of people who would kill for that time; hell, I remember when I’d have killed for that time!
I’ve already PR’d in the half this year–twice!–but the sub-1:40 I’ve been dreaming of for two years remains elusive. I’ve shattered every mileage record I set in the last 4 years (11 straight months of 100+ miles per month; 1 month of 200 miles; 1,425 miles on the year with another two months yet to go; just to name a few) while writing my dissertation. I have to keep reminding myself that just because I have “time” (in the purest mathematical sense) to simultaneously run and work and train and streak and write, doesn’t mean I can also do each of those things well simultaneously.
It makes perfect sense logically. It’s something I’d tell a friend in my exact position with fervor, meaning every word of it and insisting they can’t rationally expect such ridiculous expectations to play out. But I personally cannot internalize it for myself.
But this I can internalize, and have: while my running hasn’t been ideal (for some absurd definition of “ideal”), I am thrilled beyond words that I can run. There are so many dreadful things that could have happened this year–as a student of statistics, I’m a fan of pointing out that, no matter how remote the possibility of something happening, if you do it umpteen times it’s bound to go wrong at least once with pretty much 100% probability–and with my absurdly high mileage there was more opportunity than ever for me to sustain an injury. Throw in the stress levels and that injury could have been bad.
Running has become more a part of who I am than I think I even realize. I may have been stressed lately from work, but my sneaking suspicion is that things would have felt a billion times worse if not for running with such regularity.
That said: my defense is Nov. 24. I’m sure I’ll have more revisions to take care of, but at that point my graduate work will be finished. Hard to comprehend, but I am thoroughly looking forward to it!
Where are the pancakes? 