Week in Review: 15-21 May, and MMT: The Aftermath

Alright, miles . . .

15 May 2011: 31.7 miles, as part of the MMT 100, 11 hours, 47 minutes (sounds even worse typing it now)
16 May 2011: 1 mile, slow, at APG, to Burger King (10 minutes)
17 May 2011: 2 miles, at APG - twice as much mileage as yesterday! (15 minutes)
18 May 2011: 5 miles, at APG again. Continuing with the double-mileage trend (plus a little extra) (35 minutes)
19 May 2011: 9 miles, at APG, half on the treadmill, doing hills (70 minutes)
20 May 2011: 13 miles, at APG, with another half-hour of treadmill hills (95 minutes)
21 May 2011: 13 miles, around Patterson Park, the Inner Harbor, and all that business. (90 minutes)

Total time: 1,022 minutes
Total miles: 74.7 (75, more or less)

Probably another deceptive week, since counting MMT on 14-15 May, I posted 130 miles in 7 days (although the fitness benefits of covering that distance in that much time are probably debatable). That said, the mileage that I put in over the past few days is more in line with the density required for a 100-mile week, so hopefully next week, the numbers will look a little better.

And now, speaking of MMT, if you haven't already accidentally discovered it:

http://www.ultrarunning.com/ultra/features/news/meltzer-pastalkova-win-at.shtml

. . . which marks the third time that I've had a picture of me racing show up in UltraRunning online/magazine (Mohican 2009 and Cascade Crest 2009 were the other two). Also, my picture showed up in the 2009 Boston Marathon race record book (the first time that I broke 3 hours at Boston).

That said, I didn't have the performance that I was hoping for at MMT, and I type this with mixed feelings.

On the one hand, it appears as though my running is inspirational in some way. Not only do I have a track record of getting my pictures printed everywhere, even when I have a crappy race, but also, I have a way of being inspirational in spite of (or, at times, because of) my sub-par performances. After MMT, a woman came up to me and told me that she had seen me at one of the aid stations when I wasn't doing so well, and then, many hours later, when she was driving down the road at the end of the race and saw me running again, she started crying.

A few minutes later, as I trudged through camp, barefoot, shirtless, and carrying my water bottles, shoes, and shirt, the kids who were camping there for the weekend saw me and asked me if I ran 100 miles. I told them yes, and then they proceeded to ask me tons of questions - How long did it take you? (31 hours and 47 minutes.) Did you sleep at all? (No, and now I'm very tired, I said with a smile.) Did you see a bear? (No, and I was a little bit disappointed that I didn't!) You could tell that they were in awe that a "regular person" who didn't look much older than them had run so far.

In all fairness, I think that the above is a valuable byproduct of my running. A lot of runners compete and win, but competing and winning with style and grace seems rare, particularly in ultrarunning. This is a topic that I had hoped to discuss in a different blog entry, in greater depth, but to me, an important part of running is motivating others to run, and being motivated by them in return. Being out on the roads and in the streets, around other runners, and people in general, affords a greater opportunity for my running to inspire others. To me, spending a lot of time on trails, alone, or with only a select few people, is very self-serving, and part of the reason why I put in most of my training miles on the roads. Unless this is going to be something bigger than just me, I can't justify the time, effort, and pain involved in training and racing at this level (or, at least, the level to which I aspire).

But, on the other hand, at some point, inspirational though my efforts may be, the bottom line on my MMT performance was that the outcome was mediocre at best. Can I run much better than I did? There's no doubt in my mind that I could, on a different day, under different circumstances. But to really take things to the next level, I need to perform my best when it counts, and at MMT, I didn't.

Fortunately, to that end, there were a couple of positive consequences from my MMT experience. The first is that the fire in my training has returned, after flagging somewhat as a result of 4+ months of slow, steady mileage-building. Sometimes it takes a roadblock like this to re-ignite, because a long string of gradually-improving performances does more to make one complacent than anything else. I recovered quickly from my "bad" race, and put up some decent mileage later in the week.

The second is that the DNF demons of Grindstone and Oil Creek have been at least temporarily suppressed, which is no mean feat. This should give me at least a little bit more confidence in my next race, the Old Dominion 100.

The bottom line is that, for me, running is still joyful - it's hard not to sit in my office all day and not have the itch to go outside and run (especially the way things are in the office lately). If I can keep holding on to that, everything else should fall into place.