(Pandemic Diary - day 157)

From my journal: 2 August 2020 (Sunday)

I managed over 25 miles yesterday, with over 5,000 feet of climbing and an average pace of 14:36.  That’s not as great as it sounds, because I included a lot of roads in the route, but it was also in the 80s (at least when I started) and the trail parts included some PA-level technical stuff.  It’s hard to quantify all of that, so I’ll just say it was a hard effort that I managed well.

I did a better job of throttling myself so that I didn’t get into trouble, I did a better job of staying hydrated, I did a good job of incorporating some food into the effort, and all in all I was much more like a veteran ultrarunner than the over-enthusiastic beginner I’ve been in some of my earlier efforts this summer.

I did get close to overdoing it, though.  I probably pushed harder on the climb up Bear Gap Road than I should have, and that was probably what caused the cramps that started to worm their way into my legs after that.

But I recognized what was happening this time.  I slowed the pace and pushed the water, and I beat it, I was able to keep going.

I rebounded well.  I’d given myself the option of cutting the run short, making it a 20-miler, and I hadn’t really decided which way I’d turn at the beer tap on Tussey Ridge until I got to the beer tap.  I guess I was feeling good enough when I got there for my competitive nature to override my native laziness.  I turned left and pushed on for the longer option.

As I went along that ridge, I started feeling even better than I had, like I’d settled into the run, and even though I was tired, I was also feeling steady and enduring.

So I started doing some trail math, started thinking about other options.  I’d been hoping I might get across the 4,000-foot threshold on this run, but to my surprise, I was already past that at the start of Tussey Ridge.  So I decided to take Kettle from Tussey Ridge, and then to stay on Kettle up to Little Flat instead of turning right onto Lonberger (yes, I was feeling that good).

It was a good, steady climb, and when I got to the top, I was just over 4,800 feet.

For someone like me, being so close to a threshold like that is maddening.  I thought and thought about how I might get the extra climbing in an organic way, but I couldn’t come up with a solution that got me the climbing without adding a lot of distance.

So I ended up doing my own version of running loops in the parking lot at the end of a run — when I got to the bottom of Spruce Gap I turned around and started back up, watching my watch to see when I hit the threshold (and going a little bit beyond, just to cover differences in data interpretation, because if it’s not on Strava, it didn’t really happen, right?).

Anyway, I got the miles, and I got the ascent, and I got the average pace under 15:00, and I finished feeling reasonably strong and steady, and it was a good run.  And it came on top of the solid 8-mile effort I made on Friday, so I went over my 30-mile back-to-back informal standard for this point in my training cycle (which is another reason I feel fine about a very relaxed effort today).

Best of all, my knees held up for the entire thing, including the time on the Mid State Trail, and including that Kettle climb and that Spruce Gap descent late in the run.  I think it might have been my graduation run, the end of my knee rehab, and I am happy about that.

On the other hand, that nagging hamstring thing is still there in my hip, and nothing I do seems to effect it much.  It didn’t get worse yesterday, and it’s not worse today, but I’m still constantly feeling it, and I guess I also fear all the time that something I do will irritate it and send it in the other direction.

But I’ve also decided that I can’t (or at least I won’t) keep waiting around for it to get better.  I might have to accept it as something permanent, and treat it that way.  If it’s not going away, then I must manage it and learn to perform as well as I can with it.  I don’t like that idea, but there are a lot of things I don’t like but have learned to live with and function effectively with.

This is just another one of them.