For the first time in over a month, I have finally completed all the runs in the week's training plan! And it was a busy week, with five days in person at the office for a training and all-department meeting.
Pain vs Suffering
Running reminds me of the Buddhist distinction between pain and suffering. Pain is the physical stimulus. It's inevitable and unchangeable. Suffering is the emotional layer on top of pain. It's the all reactions we have to pain: the emotions like fear or anger, the story we tell about whether we deserve the pain or not, and how much we fight against it instead of accepting it. The emotional reaction is usually worse than the pain itself and amplifies it.
With running, "pain" is the physical discomfort of covering the miles. It usually doesn't rise to the level of pain in the common sense, but it's still uncomfortable and the body's natural tendency is to want to stop. What varies from one day to the next is how you react mentally. How worried are you about the physical sensations like aching legs? How much do you fixate on how far you've come and how much farther you have to go?
The emotional layer is what separates a good run from a bad one, and it can very much be learned and practiced, just like the physical.
It's All in your Head
What struck me this week is how quickly time seemed to pass during my 12-mile long run, especially in comparison to the six mile run I did at the track on Wednesday.
Since I arrived in the morning for the 12 mile run, there was no time pressure to finish quickly. Plus, before I even started, I expected to spend at least two hours on the track. On my six mile run, I'd arrived at 6:30pm, just an hour and a half before close. I felt rushed.
My expectations of myself were different too. On a 12 mile run, the goal is to do the miles. Pace is not supposed to matter; in fact, the slower the better. I used my phone to count the laps just like on the six mile run, but because there were so many to get through (43 laps!) I didn't feel compelled to fixate on it. It was as though one lap blended into the next. Not so with the six mile run; during that one, each of the 22 laps was a slow, hard fought battle. I resorted to finding different ways to measure progress: 11 laps done, which is 50%, which is somewhere around 3 miles (because the track isn't exactly .25 miles), which should be about 30 more minutes... or simply repeating in my head, "11 laps to go... 11 laps to go..."
This experience and last week's long run snafu on the treadmill (where the treadmill shut off after an hour and "erased" my miles) are similar. Focusing on the present moment and the present step are key to running the whole distance. Just like I am not worrying about what comes later in my training plan, during a long run I do best if I don't worry about how far I've come or how much farther I have to go.
Sure seems like there's a bigger lesson there.
Week 7 Plan
Total: 24 miles
Sunday: 3 miles
Monday: Rest
Tuesday: HIIT
Wednesday: 6 miles
Thursday: 3 miles
Friday: Rest
Saturday: 12 miles
Week 7 Results
Total: 24.14 miles
Sunday: 3.0 miles
Monday: Rest
Tuesday: HIIT
Wednesday: 5.9 miles
Thursday: Rest
Friday: 3.2 miles
Saturday: 12.04 miles
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