Act One – Fevered dreams
The ultra taper madness.
It’s the last week of taper before the race.
I feel like shit. Really. I’ve had a mildly upset stomach all week. My head has been muddy. I’m totally unmotivated. Like a waking 6-beer hangover. I woke up screaming last night from some unsettling dream.
My wife will confirm this because she smacked me and said “You’re screaming.” rather matter of factly, I might add, like this is the sort of madness she expects from me. Makes me wonder what I would have to do to surprise her.
I’ve got 100 miles to run this weekend.
As much as I pride myself on my mental and physical stoicism I have to admit I’m a mess. I’m told it helps to talk about it.
I’m going to invent a new business called ‘taper camp’. This will be a place where you can go one or two weeks prior to you’re A race.
At Taper Camp you will be put into comfy pajamas and stuck in a padded room, painted in soft tones, with a bean bag chair and a plush bed. Soft music and nice essential oil smells will waft from the walls. You will be served warm porridge and fresh vegetables at comfortable intervals, laced with natural vitamins and minerals.
The daily agenda at taper camp begins with two hours of guided meditation, yoga and stretching. After a light breakfast you enter into a session of interactive therapy with caring, certified professionals.
Near mid-day you leave with the group for some extended light stretching and a short run on mountain trails where deer gambol, birds chirp friendly songs and fish jump about in merry, crystal streams.
Late afternoon you spend on the massage table getting smoothed over for a couple hours. An early evening communal movie, let’s say ‘Saint Ralph’ or ‘Chariots of Fire’ and then you are nipped off to bed where they read you a story and tuck you in.
That’s what I want. Failing that you could drop me into a suspended animation pod for a couple weeks.
I’ve always been this way. When there is a test on the horizon I want to get to it. I want to get started. I hate waiting.
When I’m in this sort of subconscious flight or fight nervous breakdown I reach for the comfort food. I’ve eaten more ice cream this week than in the last 5 years. What is this weird self-abuse?
…
Last week wasn’t so bad. I was on a 5-day road trip across the country for work and I still ran 3 days. I didn’t have the time or energy to think about the race.
Tuesday morning, on day two of my trip, I woke up in the Cincinnati airport Holiday Inn. Which, as seasoned travelers know, is actually in Hebron KY. (The Cincinnati Airport is in Kentucky. It just is. Get over it.)
Looking at the map and having a free morning I saw that I was quite close to the Ohio River. I got my stuff on and headed out to explore a bit.
It turns out the Ohio River is at the bottom of a valley guarded on both sides by large bluffs.
I was soon on a very steep, quite windy, surprisingly busy, back road that weaved down 500 feet or so to the river road. It’s never a great way to start a run, heading straight downhill, because you know at the end you’re going to have to climb back up.
This back road reminded me of West Virginia or somewhere else in the not-far-off Appalachians, where there is no shoulder and a 40-50 ft drop into God knows what.
It was full sun and mid 80’s and humid. Even jet lagged I had plenty of juice in my legs to manage the heat and the climbing, and I wasn’t worried. When I got to the river road, aptly named “River Road” the broad expanse of the Ohio River opened in front of me.
Just west of the city of Cincinnati, the Ohio is the border between the two states. Here it runs wide and placid with the tall bluffs climbing unencumbered by much civilization on both side. Barges and ferries ply their trade. I wondered why there weren’t more nice houses on this waterfront. Probably because it’s a flood zone.
Even with the mighty river rolling laconically by the area impressed me as a bit hard-pressed economically. The house that were there weren’t well kept. The roadsides were dense with the trash of rural poverty – Bud Light cans, lottery tickets and cigarette trash.
Not long into River Road I came upon construction barriers baring the way. Assuming they meant cars, not me, I continued trotting along in the morning heat. Soon enough I found the construction crews assessing a washout. I nodded my good mornings and squeezed by.
I took off my shirt and hung it in a tree, so I could recover it on the return trip. I figured I’d get some sun on my body and there were no cars to offend anyhow. I continued to my turn-around point, throwing in some surges to keep it honest, and started back.
I was blocked by the work crew doing something with a big bucket loader and steel beams for a few minutes but was able to retrieve my shirt and push on to the hill where I had started. I figured this was pretty good training for the ultra, with the heat and the steep hill. I wanted to run the whole thing but quickly changed my mind to a run/walk cadence to keep from blowing up.
I was glad I brought more than one set of running stuff. I was well irrigated, as were my clothes.
The next morning, I misread my workout and didn’t have enough time to get it in before my appointment. I did something I hate to do, which is push it out to the afternoon. You know how it is, especially when you’re traveling, the probability of completing a workout goes way down when you push it to later in the day.
…
I beat the odds.
I was able to get a lovely late afternoon / early evening run in at my destination, Iowa City, Iowa. For the second time in two days I found myself navigating the side of a river. This one the Iowa River where it runs broad and shallow through the university town.
There was a nice park with bike paths that I could navigate North from my hotel skirting the college town and heading out to the suburbs. It was a lovely night. It was cooler and very hospitable.
In the parks immigrant families gathered around picnics giving me friendly encouragement on my trundling way. At one point I ran through a family frisbee game and called for a pass. They threw it to me. I’m out of practice and dropped it but retrieved it and threw it back with an underhand flourish that my prep school mates would recognize and appreciate from those long afternoon games on the quad.
I couldn’t help but wonder why these broad empty places don’t want more migrants. There seemed to be plenty of room to me.
The heartland is a different place with a different pace. I can remember when we were all part of the same country before the internet came along and allowed us to shout spite across the rivers and mountains and divides.
Even with the temperate weather my clothes were soaked again and wouldn’t have time to dry for the morning. Never one to be discouraged by circumstance I hunted down the laundry room in the hotel in the morning and paid 1.50 in quarters to dry my running stuff. Not wash, mind you, just dry.
Let us all pause for a moment to say a prayer for that poor soul who used that dryer next. May they have the sanguinity to be thankful for the gift of musk, like an free preview of an expensive, ambergris-scented eua de endurance.
…
Finally, on Friday morning I woke up on Camino Real on the town line of Redwood City CA. I ran north on the sidewalk with the commuter rail trains rushing by between San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
Local strip malls crouched along the road. Auto parts and hardware stores giving ground fitfully to the inevitable encroach of Feng Shui parlors, yoga studios and coffee shops.
It was a pleasure in that cool California morning sun to take an easy 7 miles out in the dawn. In my freshly dried running gear it was a breeze.
The week whizzed by with meetings and workouts and I hardly thought about the impending 100 miler. I got home about 3AM with the flight back from Cali and slept in a bit on my Saturday rest day. I figured even the jet lag and the odd hours were good training for the 24+ hours I’d be spending on the trail.
Sunday’s 7 miles in the rain on the rail trail with some running club buddies was a joy. I felt full of energy and relaxed.
But then Monday rolled around, and I started feeling not-so-good.
…
The weather was weird all week. Humid with random, dark thunderstorms wandering the region like angry Ronin. I was deprived the meditational solace of riding my old motorcycle to work for more than two weeks.
The weather made sleeping hard. Most of the time the air hung heavy like the inside of some dank animal womb. It’s not hot enough for full on AC, and you end up cycling between sweating and shivering in the night.
The last week of taper was filled with restlessness, lethargy and upset tummy. So be it. I guess my subconscious knows that there is undiscovered country here to be traversed.
…
But now the day draws nigh, and I am melting into the certainty of action. The friendly, if testing, embrace of the event itself.
The adventure! The trial!
This is what our sport, our adventure, whatever it is, should teach us. We should be able to lean into the fear and unknown of the race and learn something about ourselves.
That’s the good stuff.
We don’t train to win. We don’t even train to finish. We train for the right to begin and then we take the gift of learning. We peel back of the veil in the thin places we create by stepping into the adventure.
God Speed my friends. There will come a day when I cannot run. Today is not that day. Once more into the breach!