Green - with envy

This weekend is a marathon weekend for me. Well, a marathon weekend for me to be a spectator rather than a participant. It's now been 3 weeks (actually 22 days) since the Doc gave me the bad news, and all in all, it hasn't been that bad.


About 3 days a week I'm doing something on the bike, and I'll usually throw a half hour or so in the pool so I'm not slacking on my workouts. Today was a good appointment with the doctor, she now says I can stand up in the saddle, I have definitely listened to what she had said, and two more weeks and I'll be back there for some more xrays to make sure that all is healing good.


Back to this weekend. This was supposed to be me hitting the road with Jen A and hopefully being with her and able to see her hit 3:40 and also help me set a PR and bringing me closer to getting closer and closer to hitting my goal of 3:30 by the end of this year......and then the injury came.


This weekend is instead me on the sidelines as a supporter - something I haven't done in almost 2 years. It's gonna be hard not to be out on the course, especially given that two of my close friends, who got me into the marathon thing in the first place, will both be running for their own PR performances. Ben (middle) and Jason (left) will both be looking to go sub-3 (Ben ran chicago in 3:07, jason did Chicago Lakeshore - the correct distance - in 3:03), and I get hopefully to see it happen. I'd be ecstatic to be able to witness the two of them achieving this, and I hope both of them can do it. The hardest part is that training with the two of them is so hard for me, since they have been running together since Cross Country and Track in High School, and are at a pretty high level as runners.





I am so envious of Ben and Jason - a tempo run for me with Jason usually results in an easy run for him and a killer (but great) one for me. His 7:30 pace definitely helped push me this winter/spring. I always think I can catch up to them, but I think I lost sight of how the progression as a runner should be a lot slower than I tried to take it this year. I was trying to get to 3:30 by the end of this year and am not so sure I can make that - but the training season has yet to begin and there will be almost 5 months til my fall marathon (NYC!) of which I will try and make an assault to shave at least 15-20 minutes off my 2007 time. If I can do better, great, but I have to stick to the goal of having running as a PART of my life, not my life being running.





Seems like that was the problem, and the thought that if PR after PR with no time to let my body recover would help somehow, was pretty dumb. The worst part is that I see more than a few people on our team with the same mentality that I have. One member especially, it gets under my skin how proud he is that he's got metal on his legs, I can't fathom why you would keep pushing your body THAT far through that much pain just so you have to spend some more time in a cast or have more surgeries, it just sounds dumb to me.....but it isn't my body and if thats what he wants to do, thats what he can do.

So I'll be on the sidelines with Kelly and Jessica (Ben and Jason's wives) on this sunday to see some personal history hopefully being set for the two people who got me to become a committed runner, along with seeing Jen A hopefully get her goal too.


Jason has said many a time that I have a BQ in me, it just takes time to build up to it. It took him 8 years of running to hit it, so I should have a little more patience. Maybe I will, but I'm green with envy that the three of them get to hit the course this weekend and show the NJ marathon what they've got.

Finding Inspiration just may be 2 hrs 51 minutes 12 seconds away

While I know that I should be going to bed at this moment, I am still thinking through what transpired today.

I sat in my office this morning and awaited the first splits from Boston. Avi, Tom, Patty, and Peter K were all running the Boston Marathon. Of all of these 4 people - I had spent the most time with Avi, and had the chance to ride alongside him for his 21 mile run last month, but more of that to come later. Shirking a little of my professional responsibility, and feeling like a 5th grader, I had the window with the tracking set up for the 4 of them in the race, and found myself refreshing a lot more than I should have probably been, but there's something about big race days that make me do that (flashback to 2005 when my close friends Adam, Ben, and Jason all ran Boston together).

So back to my time with Avi. Before LA, I had done my 21 miler with Dave in the lovely hills of River Road, but Avi and Bob had also chosen to use this lovely training ground for their 14 miler in preparation for Boston. We met them on the course, and we had stopped to talk to the 2 of them to see how their workout was going. Avi and I started to talk, and I know he wasn't the first to mention it to me, he mentioned that I was working way too hard, and not letting my body rest. A few other teammates had mentioned it, and when he said it, I blew it off, but said I'd keep it in mind. He had known of my desire of achieving 5 marathons in 2008, among a bunch of other half marathons and shorter races, and definitely showed his dissatisfaction at that desire, and mentioned to concentrate on few races and do well at them, rather than many and do OK.

Looking back on it, it was great advice, and it took an injury for me to figure it out. I'm sure that I am not the first person to make this mistake, and I won't be the last. I call it an immature runner - I was, and still am a newbie to this sport, and have lessons to learn, but its a good thing I have people looking out to help me avoid the pitfalls, or at least tell me that they may be ahead.

Avi and I spent the whole 21 mile ride just talking as if we were both just going for a walk in a park, it was as if he was conversing first, running second. He was able to transcend the whole thing and almost naturally just have that flow to keep rolling. I have the thought he had the same feeling on those hills that I had the weeks before, the miles of 9-11 looked as if he kept floating up that road like it was lunch, and he ate it up. ATE IT UP. Like I had never seen before. After that, we continued our talk, about tons of things, running, life in general, and my lack of drive for the triathlons coming up. I love the thought of the three sports, but the desire to leave myself out on a course for 12-18 hours is something I don't think I have the desire to. OK, let me get back on track before I get derailed by ADD. Those days were the ones I came back to once I found out I'd be off from running. I thought back to those tuesdays and thursdays where KC said she'd beat me if I didn't back off. I laughed at it, but in hindsight, maybe I should have just taken time off and let my body get a rest. 100% of my body took a beating for almost 9 months of road work, and something had to happen, and I didn't realize it until it was too late.

Avi spent almost 18 months of building base to make his 2:51:12 performance today. He also made a big fan out of me with his great desire to concentrate his energy on the few races he does a year to make them his BEST performances. The injury has me concentrating my efforts on the three things that I am involved in - my job, RWP, and my position as the President of the NY chapter of my undergrad alumni association. I have let the last one slip over the past 8 months or so with the whole marathon thing, but its time that I can get a framework in place to where I can devote a chunk of time, but get better returns, by getting others involved. Its like RWP is for some people - an outlet where they can meet people with a similar background, and a desire for the success of a common goal - our alma mater.

I've diverged from the subject of the blog a little, but today had me thinking a lot. Inspiration is something that I try to find in the most complex things in life sometimes, when its sometimes thrown at you in the simplest things. Something simple like putting a foot down on the ground and repeating this for 26.2 miles. Building a 1 mile run at a calm pace to that 26.2 may take years, but the trip has only begun for me, and I hope I can help someone like I think Avi has helped me, and others on the team to figure out how to perform at our best.

And I had to include this picture - the classic Avi picture from the Poland Spring run this past fall:

On a funny note, Avi, if you read this, don't drink coffee ever again before a run (he was trying something new before the run, which didn't work out so well ;-) )

Wondering - could it have been too much?

Just a little over six weeks ago I ran the LA marathon, which, has clearly been the worst race that I ran in the two and change years I have been running. To run a 1:47 front on the marathon, only to barely be able to cross the line in four hours (4:02 actually) was very disappointing to me. I felt so well on the first 16 or 17 miles, but by the time Deana came onto the course at 19 (in front of the Staples Center) I was so gone and pissed off that my body was giving out at that point. The wheels had fallen off, but Deana wouldn't take that as an excuse - she pushed me to keep going - all I had wanted to do when I saw her was walk off the course and call it a day.



March 2, 2008 put my running addiction into perspective - I had been way too hard on my body since last July when I started training for NY, but it woudn't be til just about a month later where I would find out just how much damage I really did. I spent the next 4 weeks waiting to get an appointment with Dr. Callahan, a doctor at Hospital for Special Surgery that KC, my RWP teammate had recommended to me. I toned back on my runs, although I did take the week off after the race while I was still on vacation. Tuesday and Thursday runs have kept my sanity all through the year, and to those people who have joined along, I am sure they enjoyed the regularity and especially my presence :-). The Tues/Thurs runs after LA showed me very toned back, I had spent most of the winter pushing my body harder and harder on these runs. I felt like I needed to give my body a little break, but not lose much fitness before I ran the NJ marathon on May 4. The rest of the month was great running-wise, I had set a PR in my 10K time by over 45 seconds a mile....I didn't think I'd ever be able to run a 10K at a 7:45 pace!!!!!



April 1 was the first visit with Dr. Callahan. Got X-rays, but it showed nothing too out of the norm, but she wanted to get an MRI just to rule out a stress fracture. I still wanted to run, even with knowing that there might be something wrong as I knew it would be a while if i was injured to return to the road. Call it the stupid moment in me, KC wanted to kill me during our run the next day when I told her that. That sunday was the Cherry Blossom 10 miler, and I reallly wanted to go to it, and be able to run it, especially that Josh and Christine were going. I spent the better part of the past 3 or so months complaining how my leg was sore to Josh, and he's had problems of his own, so having both of us on the course in one piece was a good thing. Friday, I had made my appointment for the MRI on that coming Monday at 7, and left for DC hoping that monday would be a breeze.



Had an amazing weekend down in DC with some great RWP people. Definitely not taking the Chinatown bus again though :-).



Went in for the MRI monday morning, and I knew a return call from Dr. Callahan's office at 10am to my office to come back that afternoon to visit again was not a good sign. When you walk into an exam room where there is an aircast and an Ultrasound "bone healing system" (See it at left) it isn't a good sign, but the nurse tried to play it off as if it was left in the room.

It was in the next 5 minutes that I found out that I'd be taking a 2 month vacation from running. I was in a little bit of a shock, but at the same time, I knew exactly what I had done to get this. I had beaten the living shit out of my legs for almost 9 months - so something had to give. It's a tibial stress fracture, about an inch above the tibial malleolus (ankle bone on the inside of the right leg). She had said i was on borrowed time if i kept running, that it might have actually compounded and fully broken in another 2 weeks to a month. Lehigh Valley Half - gone. Jersey Marathon - gone. NYRR races - gone.

My body is definitely thanking me for the time off, in the past 9 days since i've stopped running, I've biked twice (have to stay in the saddle) and the leg has felt good. Plus this ultrasound system supposedly speeds up the healing by something like 30% in clinical trials - it helps when she says she uses this on the professional athletes she sees. Although I hate the fact that I'm off the road for another 1.5 months or so, I've become content with giving my body a rest. Biking and swimming will become my best friends over the next 2 months, and get me back just in time for my first triathlon - Tupper Lake sprint on June 29th. It might be high hopes, but I'd like to be in the top of my age group, and I think if I could pick up on the swim and bike, I'd have a good chance at it.....time will tell.

Enough for now, I have other things to finish tonight, although I like this whole blog thing......

And for those 2 of you, you know who you are, thanks for making me put my running into perspective - the two of you know I want to run for the rest of my adult life, and at the rate I was going, I wasn't going to hit my 30th bday. At least one of you can coach me in my swimming now!!