(Pandemic Diary - day 199)

From my journal: 13 September 2020 (Sunday)

My run yesterday gave me some good re-reminders of at least a couple things, some re-education.

I did an all-road run in Rothrock (well, Detweiler Run Road and the top of Thickhead Mountain Road are “roads” only in the loose sense of that term, but I’m still calling it that). I didn’t feel like I was pushing things particularly hard, but it turned out that I was going faster in the beginning than I should have, and that I was also not drinking enough water. I was a mile into the final climb, partway up Bear Gap, and maybe 20 or 21 miles into the run, when the cramps hit. I felt them coming and I slowed down and I sucked on my little bottle of Elete, but they came anyway. They started in my calves and pretty quickly worked their way up, and when they got to the big muscles on the inside of my thighs, I had to stop completely, had to stand very carefully so that I could completely relax everything to get them to release their grip.

It was in the low-60s and overcast, so in comparison to most of my recent running it felt very cool, but 65F is really not that cool, and I was working hard, so I was still sweating a lot. But I was not drinking a lot of water — I allowed myself to be tricked by the perceived coolness. I was drinking consistently, following my every-20-minutes timer, but I was probably only getting half as much water as normal for at least the first 15 miles (taking only 5 or 6 sucks from the tube instead of the normal 10-12). I should know better than that, and of course I do, but one of the results of doing my recent long runs with Renee, at a very reduced level of effort, is that I’ve gotten by with less water. That didn’t work so well yesterday. I needed at least twice as much water for that effort, and I paid for the mistake.

Cramps are not run-ending — that’s lesson two. They are run-stopping for sure, but if you are patient and pay attention and keep moving forward at whatever pace they allow, and if you at the same time get the water you need and maybe some electrolytes (at least for the psychological benefits), they will pass. The “patient” part is the key, though (and the keep moving part) because getting through them takes time, and other than replenishing yourself, there’s not much you can do to speed that process along. They aren’t something you can gut your way through, and it’s not about how much pain you can stand of anything like that. They grab your body and force you to stop, and the harder you fight against them, the stronger they get. You will never beat them in a direct fight.

Other than the replenishment part, the only thing thing you can do to push the recovery is to become better at finding that edge between moving as fast as you can, and moving too fast, while you’re walking (and eventually jogging, and hopefully then running again) your way through them. The edge is a very fine line. If you go too slowly, you lose more time than you needed to. If you push even a tiny bit too hard, you re-cramp and set yourself back a phase, and lose way more time than you needed to. I guess I handled that part of it pretty well yesterday, and by maybe halfway down the North Meadows descent, I was running most of the time.

So, good lessons, and much better to have a reminder of them now, on a training run, when re-learning them is part of the training, rather than during a race. The real trick, though, is to remember the lesson in the first place and stop making the mistakes that got me into the situation in the first place.

Silly, fallible human.

On the good side of things, I just ran 25 road miles, most of it at an aggressive pace, and I have none of the usual tendonitis issues in my lower legs that I’d expect from such a run. If this holds, this might be the year that I finally beat the Hellgate course. That’s a long way off, and I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but it’s at least another good sign.