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Frustrated Training Plans

If you haven’t voted in my poll yet, scroll down and vote soon. I’m going to take the final results as of Sunday, July 12.

My training for the Akron Marathon is going okay. I’ve been trying to up my mileage, but it has been a struggle this time. I’m not feeling injured or anything. Some of my workouts have just been a little flat. I think this is due to a lack of sleep. Our two kids haven’t been sleeping so well, and proper sleep is vital to training adaption and recovery. Check out this article on Runners’ World. I can do the miles with little sleep, but it is a lot harder to get the quality training runs to work. My body just doesn’t want to pick up the pace for my speedwork.

More than the lack of sleep, it seems like I lack time. This makes no sense. I’m only working a few days a week at Gazelle. I’m not taking a grad class. I should have plenty of time to train. Having two kids makes it a lot more difficult, though. I don’t want to neglect the boys. I definitely don’t want to abandone Anne, either. I don’t want her to feel like she’s a single mother going through motherhood on her own. So I work hard to be around and helping raise our boys. I know how nervous I would be if she told me she was going on a two-hour training run and leaving me alone with our two-month old and our two year old, so I try to be careful about how often I say that to her. I take Myles (our two year old) with me on parts of my runs. That helps, but it is still hard to get out there sometimes.

I’d love to be like Nate Jenkins, though. I saw him the Runners’ World On-line Daily and checked the link to his blog. I love to do high mileage. The training plan that I developed calls for fairly high miles (not as high as Jenkins’ though). I’d like to be around 60 miles per week right now. It’s difficult, though. I feel like I’m always trying to squeeze my runs into blocks of time that are a little too small. This week, I’ve cut two runs a little short just because I didn’t have quite enough time before we had a doctor’s appointment or a social obligation. I hate to cut a run short. It leaves me feeling like I need to make it up at some other time. Then my training becomes helter skelter, though, because I’m trying to squeeze in miles on other days without missing the workouts originally scheduled for those days.

I just need to remember that this is a season of life. Soon, Boston will be sleeping better. When we’re all sleeping better, it’ll be easier to wake up early to run. In a few years, Myles will be able to ride his bike with me while I do my runs. Several years later, he’ll be a teenager and I may be begging him to hang out with me. I guess I should just enjoy this season and fit me runs in whenever I can. I’m trying.

Beginnings and Endings

This is BigDaddy enjoying the moments before the Green Bay Marathon.

As a high school teacher, I get to experience graduation season every year. Every year, I see many seniors acting excited to reach the end of their high school journey. I also see many of these graduates hiding fear of this same ending. Many of my kids say, “I can’t believe this is the end. Can you believe this is our last (fill in the blank with any high school memory).” This year, I started listening to students talking about they are excited about. No more essays. No more stupid school rules. No more teacher’s prying questions. These are the most common responses. It made me wonder: why do we so often focus on what is ending and lose focus on what is to come? Even better, let’s enjoy where we are.

Runners would enjoy running infinitely more if they dwelt in the present instead of the past. In Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert gives numerous examples of how our minds are faulty at recording past events and horrible at predicting our future. Yet, we define ourselves by personal bests set in the past. Every race I run is instantly compared to my previous best efforts.Yesterday, I did the Panther Prowlat West Ottawa High School. It was a small 5k, no prizes, about 130 runners total. I was aware that John “MadDog” Donnelly would be running, so I knew I would be pushed in the race. Before the race began, I was thinking about the last time I ran this race. I set a PR, but Donnelly beat me by ten seconds. This time, I started hard and led through the first mile. Instead of the enjoying the race, though, I thought about another 5k that I raced with the MadDog. I passed him at the two mile mark only to be re-passed in the last quarter of a mile. Rather than enjoying the first race that I led, I was thinking about the past. I continued dwelling on history through the end of the race. During the last 100 meters, I realized that I was going to win. I have never outright won a race. I did it! I won! Oh, but my time was not as good as last time (on a different course). Immediately, my first outright win was compared to my previous PR. My wonderful wife helped me to realize that this is ridiculous. Even if I didn’t win. Even if my time was 20 minutes slower instead of 10 seconds slower. How could focusing on the past be worthwhile? I should have been celebrating where I was at the moment.

All too often, the moment is lost in plans for the future, too. Too often, I have finished a race only to be looking at Marathonguide.com or Michigan Runnerto find my next race. This robs the present. We need to savor the races we’re running. I run marathons. Training schedules dominate my days to race once or twice a year. I should enjoy the marathon when I’m running it. During those 16-, 18- or 20-week training schedules, we need to live in today’s Interval or Fartlek. If you’re always thinking about the next race, why are you running the current one?

So that’s my lesson for the weekend. Enjoy TODAY’S run. Savor TODAY’S race. Live in TODAY. And graduates, be nice to your parents and teachers.