The Dark Place at Middle Age
We hold this truth to be self evident; if you want to achieve a worthwhile goal you have to do the work.
In 1997 I ran my first marathon. I was 34. Three months later I ran my second marathon and qualified for Boston. What separated the first from the second was 3 months of hard work.
I can’t clearly tell you why I decided at that point in my life to switch on the training gene. I can tell you why I thought it was possible and necessary. I can tell you why today, 18 years later I am toiling away through a not dissimilar summer with the same beliefs.
You can do anything if you are willing to work. You can accomplish anything if you are willing to go to the dark place and let your passion consume you.
Going into that first hard training cycle I had one very important advantage; I thought I could do it. I knew I could run a 5 mile race or a 10k faster than qualifying pace. I just assumed I could run the qualifying standard if I did the work.
Many of you casual runners don’t have this advantage. You don’t think running the standard is possible. It’s outside of your scope of belief. That is probably your biggest obstacle.
The other obstacle you have is that you don’t know what real work is. You don’t know how deep you can go into the dark place. You don’t realize that it’s not one hard work out, it’s 3 months of running at the edge of your ability, running workouts to failure in a calculated plan to recreate your body in the image of a runner.
This is where today’s measured marathon training plans designed to efficiently avoid discomfort miss the mark. You cannot know what you are capable of unless you are willing to become friendly with discomfort at the edges of your ability.
Why set a goal to stay in your comfort zone? Why be so afraid of hurting yourself? Why cheat yourself of the exquisite joy and passion of diving in deep to the dark place and discovering what you can do? I look at these marathon plans that take 28 weeks and wonder what the heck is going on? And that’s just to finish the race at a walking pace. Are we that afraid of discomfort that we can only sip from the nipple of mediocrity?
In my experience most people have no idea what the human body can do or what it can endure. We see it every day among our circle of friends here where they step away from the couch and the cigarettes and start pounding out 100 mile ultras. The only thing stopping them was the belief and the ability to do the work.
The big reveal will happen when you push the discomfort aside and go beyond what you thought was possible. The big epiphany will hit you upside the head like a brightly colored fish swung by an 8-foot tall genie – “If I can do this…then maybe I can do anything…maybe the only thing standing between me and any of my goals is belief and work…”
Maybe that’s what you’re afraid of? Maybe you’re comfortable in that cushy womb of mediocrity? Maybe proving all your assumptions wrong and opening up an infinite future scares the hell out of you? That’s why you quail away at the first twinges of discomfort. You slow down. You do less. You take it easy.
Don’t be a coward.
Let’s look at how you’re going to break this trap. I’m going to give you a workout to complete that will show you where your weakness is.
Warm up for 2 miles at a slow, easy, comfortable jog. Drop the pace to your goal marathon qualifying pace for 3 miles, drop it by another 15 seconds per mile for another 3 miles, then finish with a mile jog to cool down.
That’s it. An 8 mile step up tempo run. Does that scare you? If it does you are not going deep enough into the dark place in your training. You are selling yourself short.
What this workout embodies is all the disciplines you will need to race a marathon. Those first two miles are about pace discipline. Your legs a fresh and you’ll feel like going faster. But, if you’ve done this workout you’ll realizes that you need to hold back, relax and use the warm up as a warm up.
As you transition into the 3 miles of marathon pace your body will start to show the signs of effort. Here you will learn more patience. Here you will learn how to pace, how to breathe, how to relax your form how to cruise at race pace without expending energy and effort.
How will you learn this? When you drop into race pace your heart rate will start to spike and your breathing will get shallow and ragged. Your form may start to break as you try to find a comfortable race pace. You don’t believe you can do it.
Your body/mind knows you’re weak. Your body mind has been conditioned to your giving up at the first sign of discomfort. It will start testing you. It will send you false signals of mysterious muscle aches or sudden waves of nausea. It will send you thoughts like “Maybe I’m not ready for this” and “I’m so tired tonight” and “I’ll just stop for a little walk break, then start again”.
Don’t try to fight the signals. Don’t tense up or over focus or try to physically beat the signals.
Recognize these signals for what they are. Then put them aside. The key to running at race pace is to relax. Focus on your breathing. Big, deep, rhythmic breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Mentally relax. Mentally relax your form so that your feet and ankles are just rolling along without any effort or push off. This is relaxed efficiency.
Once you have your body/mind calmed you can let your mind wander and let your body go on automatic. This is what marathon race pace should feel like – a relaxed dream state where you are efficiently rolling along without effort.
While you are in this state you may let your mind work on some problem. Maybe practice what you are going to say when you meet your customer in the morning, or decide what you’re going to say to your kids at breakfast to help them in school.
Because if you think about the workout and how you aren’t even ½ way through it you mind/body will start to give up hope and the signals will return. Don’t grip the workout too tightly or it will fight back. Hold it loosely and it will flow.
Before you know it you will be transitioning into the final 3 mile segment at race pace minus 15. It’s time to learn how to deal with the discomfort that comes at the end of any long race.
Once again your body/mind is going to cry foul as you transition in. Your heart rate will go up. You’ll start breathing heavily. Your form will be stretched. Your muscles will start to complain. All the same self-sabotage signals and thoughts will come again. Now you will learn how to run in the grasp of discomfort.
When you’re breathing hard and working hard and it feels like you can’t go on for another minute let alone another 3 miles – this is where you learn the real truth about discomfort. The truth is that it can only stop you if you let it. Sure, it hurts, but if you don’t stop, if you keep moving at pace, nothing worse happens. You don’t stumble and fall to the treadmill clutching your chest. Discomfort is just another signal.
This is where you realize that you are the master of discomfort, or more appropriately you are capable of cohabitating with discomfort. You recognize it and put it aside as you again relax into your pace and form.
This time will be different because you will have to relax while riding the electricity of discomfort. The discomfort won’t go away. For this final section of the workout the discomfort will be your companion and will come at you in waves. Each time like the defenders in a citadel you’ll have to take control of the body/mind and relax into the wave of discomfort.
As you do this successfully, again and again, you will start to build confidence and power. As you near the end of the step up you start to be filled with euphoria as you realize that you are going to beat the workout and hold that pace until the end. As the final minutes come into view you’ll find a new well of strength and start speeding up your pace to close the work out.
But what if you can’t?
If you can’t hold the pace and the work out breaks you, don’t give up. Finish the workout after you’re done walking or throwing up. Wait a couple days and do it again. And keep doing it, each time recognizing the signals and going deeper and longer into the dark place until you find the euphoria.
In this way you learn that your limits are not your limits. In this way you’ll learn that discomfort is not something to be feared or something to be fought. Discomfort is something to be danced with and celebrated.
The root of passion is pain. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe in pain for pain’s sake or the glory of suffering. But I do believe that the place you will find your true limits is on the other side of the discomfort veil.
Training for a race is a series of efforts and recoveries. The bigger the efforts the bigger the gains. Don’t be afraid of the big bounce. Push yourself into the dark place to find new heights. Invest yourself. Throw off the mantel of self doubt and mediocrity and discover what your machine can do.