A Change of Pace

At this moment, most people in this country are sitting in front of a screen of some kind, stressed out regardless of their horse in the race. Hopefully this short read can be a little reprieve before hitting the refresh button again on the doomsday red and blue map.

This past Sunday I ran the New York City Marathon. Chances are good that if you are reading this, this isn’t news to you. What may be, is that I did not train for the marathon. A team of analysts, therapists, and maybe even some sort of hybrid clinician would be required to unpack why that is, but I have done a little tugging on that thread myself. Instead of writing about when and how to warm up or whether to use both hands in the gym, I’d like to talk through how I found myself doing something objectively silly and what I learned from the experience.

I registered for the marathon in June having just spent the majority of a day running 50 miles through the Shawangunk Mountains the previous month. Running 26 miles had become routine at this point, so committing to that distance five months away seemed laughable. All I needed to do was maintain my fitness. Who knows—maybe I’d even run fast!

Those of you who are loyal readers (are there such people?) will know that I am prone to referencing Brendan Leonard. One of his ideas that has resonated with me most over the years is the idea of “fear based training”. True to my typical modus operandi, I put something on my calendar that is big and scary enough to force me to train for it, because the alternative would mean something terrible and/or embarrassing happening. The key to this being an effective plan is fear. The problem now was that I had just run double that distance and survived to eat a cheeseburger in the grass after. The marathon no longer held the power of fear over me.

While that sounds cool, it’s pretty bad for business when you should be preparing to run through all five boroughs. My summer “training” looked like this:

June 24th I go for my first run and clock 3.65 miles. This is going to be easy. I only go for two more runs in before the month ends for a grand total of 9 miles.

Lots of excuses like heat and travel and “not really feeling it today” in July. Three runs recorded for a monthly total of 12 miles.

I am out of town for the first two weeks of August and this inspires me to cram much more running in while I am here. Six runs and a big jump in monthly total - 24.5 miles.

September starts hot and it’s starting to look like I actually run semi-regularly. Eight runs recorded, totaling 46.5 miles - 10 of which are spent running around the Gunks again, eating chili and thinking “If I can do this, the marathon should be fiiiine”

October is the last month for training. The most important in every runner’s schedule. 8 miles in Atlanta on the 5th and 5 miles on the 24th with my friends at PntBee in Williamsburg. Total: 13 miles.

In the five months I’ve had to prepare, I’ve run 105 miles. Sounds like a lot right? One hundred miles?? Standard marathon training plans (wildly varied) range between 400 and 800 total miles. I’d missed the mark.

This brings us to the week of the marathon where I was seriously considering deferring my spot until next year. Good old fear finally showed up, but now I was pretending it wasn’t there and asking people around me what they thought I should do. The general consensus seemed to be, “It’s really crazy, but I think you’ll be fine.” Now I could add an imagined fear of letting people down to the mix. Very cool!

Thursday morning I made my way to the expo knowing deep down that I would be swept up in the energy there. Fresh off a photo op with Grover from Sesame Street I fire off a text to my family that would seal my fate - I’m gonna do it.

A play-by-play of the race itself isn’t necessary, but one interaction in particular stands out as an appropriate microcosm of the experience. I decided that as a protective measure for my health (and my ego) I would approach the day like an ultramarathon. This meant not being afraid to run slow and eating as much as possible throughout the race. The result was a legendary pizza handoff in Fort Greene and an overall feeling of not taking any of it too seriously. Twice during the run I called my friend Paul to chat. The second call happened around the 22 mile mark at which point I was seriously reaping the lack of what I had sown over the summer. In my punch-drunk delirium I said something to the effect of, “As terrible as I feel right now, I know I’ve felt worse before. Knowing myself, I’ll probably feel worse sometime in the future too, so I may as well keep going.”

Ultimately the NYC Marathon became a test for me mentally more than physically. That's not to say it wasn't physically very, very hard - because it was - but my frame of reference for what “hard” really means and where my limits lie has shifted, thanks to the difficult things I've been through in the past. Seeing people around me plodding along the course on crutches or being led by a able-bodied guide further reinforced that discomfort was never a reason to quit. These sorts of experiences where I push myself have become so important to me. It happened to be running on Sunday, but it doesn’t need to be. I recently watched a video about the all-female Salomon team that ran The Speed Project this year, and a quote from one of the runners, Ocean Lewis, expressed this idea beautifully:

“I think you kind of lose a bit of confidence if you don't do things that impress yourself every once in a while. Dreams kind of just get naturally smaller and smaller and I need to prove to myself that, oh Ocean you can do some crazy stuff. Don't forget that.”

If this makes you want to run a marathon, great. If it inspires you to go for a long walk today or go to the gym for the first time in three months - that makes me just as happy. Go outside. Push yourself. Test your limits. You are capable of so much more than you know.

If you’re interested in watching the full video, you can do that here.

Thank you all for reading. If you’re feeling inspired and have cooked up some kind of challenge for yourself, I would love to hear about it. Next week we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled health and performance stuff.

As always, if you are somebody you know would benefit from working with me, I am always happy to chat and see if you are a good fit. Hit the button below to set up a call today.

Talk to you soon,

Dean Hottum, DC, MS, CSCS, CCSP, ICSC

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