100 Miles Per Week, the Hard Way

Okay, first some stuff you don't really care about:

1 January: 15 miles (105 minutes), Patterson Park and wherever

2 January: 12 miles (85 minutes), out to the Fed Hill Monday Night Run and back

3 January: 10 miles (70 minutes), lunch run with Luke at APG

4 January: 10 miles (70 minutes), another APG lunch run, then another 4 miles (30 minutes) out and back to yoga

5 January: 8 miles (55 minutes), abbreviated APG lunch run, yoga later

6 January: 1 mile (10 minutes), in the Detroit International Airport, in cowboy boots, in a vain attempt to catch my flight to San Antonio, which had already left

7 January: 62 miles (617 minutes), Bandera 100K, 11th place overall

Total Time: 1,012 minutes
Total Distance: 128 miles

8 January: 1 mile (10 minutes), real lazy

9 January: 15 miles (105 minutes), out to the Fed Hill run and back, chasing the pack because I was about two minutes late (caught up in a couple miles)

10 January: 10 miles (70 minutes), APG lunch run, yoga later

11 January: 15 bitter miles (105 minutes), in dark, cold, windy rain (yes, that is a type of rain), in part with the Wednesday Night Canton Run crew

12 January: 1 mile (10 minutes), because life was too busy to allow for more . . . on the best-weather day of the week, no less . . .

13 January: 21 miles (127 minutes), Druid-Hill-ward, in moderate cold (35-ish degrees), but ridiculous wind (35-ish mph, probably) . . . almost intolerable

14 January: 27 miles (183 minutes), all over the industrial east side of the city (and a little bit of Fells Point in there, in a nod to civilization), less cold and windy than yesterday, but still no picnic

15 January (early, still within the 7-day window): 12 misguided miles (85 minutes), 25-degree weather, 15-mph winds, in a flimsy pair of boxers because I didn't have access to running shorts - that hurt in the wrong way, but felt great otherwise . . .

Total Time: 695 minutes
Total Distance: 102 miles

Two weeks into 2012, and I'm 2-for-2 on 100+ mile weeks. Yes, I know that the mileage mark is sort of arbitrary, and maybe in some cases counter-productive (and maybe, by some accounts, 30 or 40 miles too low as goals go), but for the most part, I think that being able to get out there and make 100 miles happen in the span of 7 days, even with a couple of days that were pretty close to a total loss (like Sunday and Thursday of last week) says something about the type of shape you're in, and the type of results you can expect to see when you jump into a race without any particular planning or strategy . . .

Which brings me to Bandera, and my next adventure, the Winter Beast of Burden 100-Mile Run, next weekend in Lockport, New York. While my result at Bandera was good, and I was more or less happy with it at the time, I can't help looking back at it and feeling more and more disappointed. Sure, I finished in a time that, many years, would have won that race, and, by all accounts, is some of the fastest running I've ever done on such nasty trails, but I finished the race feeling basically okay. I wasn't hobbling away from the finish line, I didn't need help up and down stairs, I didn't pass out in my car. I drove to San Antonio and back that night, took pictures at Riverwalk and fielded jeers from drunk, boisterous Texans (maybe because of my black puffy coat and dark blue skinny jeans?) . . . I came back to camp at 4 a.m., and was out of it for the rest of the day for lack of sleep, but not for effort in the race. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that that's the best I've felt and the quickest I've recovered from an ultra.

And, in a way, that's a good thing. I want to be able to run like this for a long time, and I want to feel fit and ready to compete in a lot of different races and have a lot of fun experiences and all that jazz.

But in another way, it's a disappointment. To see some of the top-5 finishers hobbling away from the finish line, barely able to walk . . . sure, that sucks for them, temporarily, but, at the same time, I can't help feeling that if I had been truly willing to submit to that level of pain, I could have been hobbling back to the car from the finish line, just ahead of those guys . . .

Which brings me to Beast of Burden, a race where I won the summer edition in 2010, and where I set my 100-mile PR (16:19 and change). I was in good shape then, yes, but probably not better shape then than I am now. I'm not convinced that back then, I could have woken up in a place that's not my home, put on a pair of worn boxers (backwards, so the fly didn't come open, at least not in the more-indecent front), and braved 25-degree temperatures and relentless winds to drop mile after mile sub-7-minutes as if it were no big deal.

So it seems that I am in great shape physically, but perhaps mentally, I'm not ready to make that leap. I'm not ready to submit to the kind of pain that, in the past, allowed me to do more with less. So this week will be focused on mental preparation (although running will happen, undoubtedly . . . I'll be throwing down another, hopefully Ravens-victory, 10 miles or so after the game, to officially kick off the week). I'll spend some time thinking about how it feels to RACE 100 miles, to run out there fearlessly and not look back, and, perhaps most importantly, realize that now that I have even more, I need to do even more with it.

Because experiences are all well and good, and for as much as I run, in the colorful places where I run, I have no shortage of them. But the thrill of going all-out and duking it out with top-notch competition doesn't come along every day, and not being able to sieze that moment when it comes . . . well, that's REALLY 100 miles the hard way.