Return of Daddy Legs

Return of Daddy Legs

On my dresser sits the picture of runner 15227 nearing the finish line of the Seattle Rock-N-Roll Marathon. His eyes suspiciously cast aside as if he can’t see the photographer a few feet in front of him. Off the left shoulder of 15227 is runner 12127. In each runner's eyes is the glean of 26.2 miles . Yet, 12127 has his thumb cranked up, a small gesture acknowledging a huge accomplishment. 15227's experience of this same accomplishment is merely intellectual. For him, there is no elation, no cashing in on four months of sacrifice, discipline and hard work. There is only exhaustion.

This is what was going through my head when Lisa caught me staring at my Finishers Photo one day.

I thought my first marathon would be transformative, but afterward I felt the same, except tired and sore. So, maybe I just needed to wait. Something in me was bound to change. Some understanding would surely come, some pathway showing me the
direction toward patience and mindfulness. But the months passed with nary a lesson learned. Nothing! You don't want to help me Marathon? You don’t want to whisper the secrets of life in my ear? HUH!?! Well…BUGGER you Marathon!

Now, hold on. There was that moment when I ran past my family coming out of mile 25. Andrew was screaming, “You’re going to do it brother”. My girls were there with home made signs yelling out their love and support, and the high-fives of total strangers was pretty cool. And then there was the look on Lisa's face as she made her to me through the crowd. All the elation and pride I found absent in me, could be seen in her eyes. Clearer than any mirror, the best of myself could be seen in the smile she was giving me. She buried me in a hug, and as my head lay on her shoulder, all the emotion and purpose I was seeking tried to make its way up from my gut in what would have might've been a refreshing release of emotion, but I stopped it in my throat and squashed into an un-embarrassing lack of emotion. So I haven’t blogged since that day in Seattle, because, as Lisa would say, “I wasn’t being mindful”, and she would be right. 'Mindful' is the hip vernacular for 'being in the moment'. I was stuck somewhere between the training leading up to the race, and how I wanted to feel at the finish line. P

Over the months following the Seattle Marathon I kept asking myself why wasn’t it more fun? And I kept coming back to the same answer, because I was too serious. Which is odd since I’m not a very serious person. So to ready myself for my second and final race of the year I decided to take a decidedly different approach to training, a Laissez-faire sort of thing. To put this new training philosophy to the test I chose the Staten Island half-marathon. Mainly because it's numerical alliteration 10/10/10 was too irresistible. But also because I never believed that Staten Island really existed.

I started by not making a calendar with prescribed workouts. I would just increase my mileage from one week to the next, except for when I couldn’t. It was all very Forrest Gump. Actually just a touch Gump, as I did have a schedule. Mondays would be hill work. Most important would be track work on Wednesdays with the Hellgaters. If you have followed my blog, you know I have likened speed work to weekly root canals, and why would anybody want that. Fridays were for long runs, again, nothing prescribed here. Never more than three work outs a week. However, every work out was targeted to running faster over long miles. The short-term goal was to do 8-minute miles in an attempt to break 1:50. This would be 4 minutes faster than my Half Marathon PR of 1:54. Secretly however, I wanted to do a sub 1:45. So, how’d it go? Larry would say it went “Pretty, pretty, pretty good”.