Feeling shitty and loving it

I decided I’d wait until I didn’t feel completely like shit on runs before writing anything about my running on the blog. The time has come.

I now feel only moderately to significantly like shit on runs. As JRags once said, quoting a great wise man: “So Hutch was right, apparently this sport is pretty hard when you feel fat and out of shape” (Hutch 14:3).

In all seriousness, though, after a couple weeks back I’m finally starting to feel less like I have two cement pillars for legs and like the old stride is returning to me. After a healthy two week break (with a fun trail 10k with dad in the middle) where I spent 5 days in a car and then had a great week at home, starting back up did indeed feel quite bad. Why did I suddenly run like Charlie Finn? I asked myself. The pavement felt foreign, the trails made me clumsy, my footstrike was sloppy, and Harvard felt like a long, long way to run.

But that was exactly what I wanted. As I've joked with a few guys, it's easy to build up slowly when your body is telling you three miles is plenty far to run today, thank you. It certainly doesn't feel good to be a bit rusty, to have the legs feel like bricks. But summer is long, and with the eagerness I know we all feel for the upcoming season, it's all too easy to do too much too soon. I remember I wrote a little about this last summer on the blog, about that hard-to-find balance during summer training between not enough and too much. In short, you don't do enough and you're not prepared for our workouts. Alumni Run hits you like a brick wall. You spend September getting fit enough to workout, and before you're there it's NESCACs. Et cetera, et cetera. On the other end, you do too much (which for most of us is the biggest danger) and you're worse off than not running a step all summer. I don't think I've ever crossed the line to such an extent that my season was ruined, but the summer after my freshman year I definitely overdid my training. I pushed the tempos about as hard as we ever do, even in mid-July. After two weeks off after outdoor (which I had definitely needed) I built up mileage in control, but still too quickly, and I never felt like I caught up with it, the fitness was always a step ahead. Last year was perhaps a testament to exactly why this balance is good to find, as I spent most of June running off and on when I was in South America. My training was hardly training, and I came back in July a bit worried that I was behind where I wanted to be. But I still ended up being pretty fit come September after just six weeks of real base. (Which has also caused me to think: where could I be with 12 weeks of real base? Where could we all be? Exciting...)

I know that for the most part this is old hat to all of us, that everyone understands the principle of not doing too much, nor too little. In reality, that's the boiled down essence of running training in general and in all situations. In my mind, summer is the time for the following things (and please feel free to doubt, disagree with, or better yet discard everything I say here). First: get used to the mileage. If your goal is 70 a week, then even if you've been at that volume here and there in the past aim not to run 70 miles a week every week of summer, but instead to feel really good as you approach 70 so that when you add in workouts and races in the fall it won't be such a shock. To phrase it another way, a 70-mile week needs to stop being a "new stress" or "new stimulus" by the end of the summer so that we can add the new stress of tempos, workouts, races. I mention that you may have been at 70 in the past for a week here or there because a mid-season week at 70 amongst many weeks in the 50s doesn't really adapt your body to that volume. To make it personal, I'm aiming to be consistently around 90 miles a week for August. If I don't feel good as I get there, I'll cut it back. Ideally, I want 90/week to feel like 80 often did this past year: where reaching the mileage for the week was hardly a concern, it just happened, without added stress. In all honesty, though I have so often fallen into the trap of focusing way too much on the number at the end of the week--especially in summer, I really do believe in going so so so much more by feel than numbers. Provided you aren't giving your body a reason not to feel good (by treating it like shit or like "leading the witness," i.e. are you sure you don't want to skip this uptempo run, legs? I mean, you haven't been feeling so good lately...) then listen to it.

Ok, second: build good habits. Most of us have more free time in the summer than during the school year. It may not feel like it when you work (sorry Corey) eight hours a day when you normally only have class for two, but it is definitely a less stressful period of time. All things are easier once their are habitual, be it masturbation (Hi, I'm Nick, and I'm a masturbaholic) or core. We all run everyday because it is essentially a habit. It is understood as a daily routine, by our minds, by our bodies, by us as a team. I never used to stretch until stretching moved in my mind from the "something extra" category (where drills lived for a while, and where mental training continues to) to accompany running in the "daily habit" category. This is maybe a stupid metaphor, but you get the idea. The easiest time for me to add something to that habitual category is summer. The more you can add, the more will stick with you during the year when it probably counts more and is definitely harder to begin.

Third: train your brain. I wasn't sure how to put this since I kind of have two contradictory ideas going here. I think what they share in common is the idea of working on your mind, your mental attitude. Here are the two sides to that coin. If you're someone for whom running tends to occupy of lot mental energy during the season, which is likely a lot of us, summer can be a great time to...take a long deep breath. We get to step away from always being six days from a race, we live somewhere new, or go home, or travel, or get a dishwasher, but no matter the case it's a break from competition. I think it's important to enjoy this break, to relax and remember there is a lot more to life than racing (I'm saying this mostly for my own benefit if nothing else). For me, it's all to easy for me to cross the line of the last outdoor race and have my June schedule mapped out and filled with in my mind and filled with workouts before we get back to campus. I don't mean don't run, but I try to do with a more relaxed mental attitude. It's sort of one of those "distance makes the heart grow fonder" kind of things. Let time away from competition be just that--time away from the mental strain of competition--and you enter the next season with rejuvenated intensity.

The second side is kind of the opposite. I find summer to be where I draw a lot of my...passion, I guess, or inspiration, later in the year. Nothing can substitute the confidence and drive that comes from standing on the line in November and knowing you have worked for this since June. You're both reminded of the tons of miles and work that you've put in the bank for six months, and motivated by knowing that you've proven to yourself how bad you want this by what you've already done. As much as I just said run without mental strain (this is really going to be a complete contradiction) something I'm going to try to do this summer when running is always to be conscious of my goals for my senior year. And my priamry goal is simple--no regrets--and a lot of that hinges on the next 10 weeks. I know I'm able--or rather, will be able--to avoid regret when I can say to myself that I've done everything I could to run fast, win, and inspire others. So I think keeping those long term goals somewhere in the back of your mind, or picturing the starting line of Regionals, or reflecting on the DMRs of last indoor--all these things train your mind to be sharp and strong and to have the confidence that I think so much of success in running depends on.

Forgive the apparent contradiction. I think of it more as a spectrum, where most of us need both of these approaches to our summer training, just in varying degrees. If you need to work on being relaxed so you can bring all your fire to next fall, great. If you know you have room to improve your mental approach (who of us doesn't) even better. Think back over the past 12 months and take the most intense, passionate, successful, or maybe disappointing moment you experienced with TUXC or TUTF and let that be a sort of backdrop to all your runs.


I'm not too sure any of this has really made any sense. As is true with most things (and all things running) I'd love to talk about any of these ideas more. There is one thing, though, that I'm very sure of and think I can clearly express. I'm more excited than ever to be getting ready for this fall, and knowing the rest of you are too makes it exponentially stronger. This is a special time for TUXC. After each year that we've been here I've felt like we're on the verge of breaking through to a new plateau, not just in terms of performance but also with the spirit of the program as a whole. Nothing compares with how strongly I feel that way going into the 2009-10 year.