One of the running mags had an article* a while back about ‘squeakers’ – folks who qualify for Boston – but only barely.  Having made my first qualifying time by 1:03 – just a minute and 3 seconds below the requirement – I put myself firmly in that category, and have spent a few idle moments considering what that means.

First, is the randomness of any finishing time.  I once finished an event in 4 hours, 0 minutes and four seconds – after having dropped my water bottle along the way and run back two steps to pick it up and replace it in my belt – easily worth five seconds.  A couple of years later, another runner I know started that same event well-conditioned and focused for an under-four-hour finish, and received an official time of 4:00:00 – I after having had to stop to re-tie a shoe.

Second, it helps to find the right event to qualify on: fairly straight route (turns slow you down, right angle intersections are the worst), trending downhill (but only enough to reduce fatigue, not so much as to pound the knees and create pain that slows you down). Also helps if it is closer to sea level than wherever you live and train – even a little extra oxygen makes a difference when you are pushing your limits.  Personally, I’d pick a small- to modest-sized field as well – it’s easier to set and keep a goal pace with at least a few feet of open space around you, than in a massive pack like the photos I see of some big-city runs.

(Not every marathon will get you into Boston either; only those that meet certain requirements of measurement and course are accepted.   Marathons that have met the standard generally make a big point of it on their websites and ads. For a list of the top contenders check out:  http://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon/participant-information/qualifying/top-qualifying-races.aspx )

Third, is to know your training cycle – living in snow country, my fitness and speed are best toward the end of the summer – my successful qualifications have been in August and October.  If you live in a hot humid climate though, you may be fastest in the spring, when weather is more forgiving.

Fourth; know the rules.  While it varies a bit each year (and could always change in future) the recent Boston regimen has been registration in early September, based on times recorded in the previous twelve months. That means you can hit a qualifying time in October of one year, register and be accepted in September of the next, then run in April of the following; up to 17 months after your qualifying event!

(There’s no carry–over, so if you qualify in one twelve-month period but can’t make the trip the following April, you’ll need to re-qualify during the next twelve month period.  Clearly, it helps to plan ahead.)

Finally, be aware that, since the tragedy of 2013 and resulting upswing of interest and support, qualifying has become more competitive than ever.  If you beat your time by more than 20 minutes, you’re in the first group accepted. The next group is those who beat their time by 10 minutes or more, then 5, and at least up through 2015, if you were in any of those tiers you were assured of getting in.  A few days after those applications are all sorted out, registration opens up to those who made it by less than five minutes – but even then it is not first-come-first served; the faster times still take the places until they are all filled. So, if you’ve made it by, say 1:03, you won’t get in until all the 1:04 qualifiers are seated.  For 2014 the organizers increased the size of the field as much as they could accommodate, and still there were qualified runners (margin of 1:37 or less) who could not be accepted, despite having qualified and gotten their registration in on time.

For a summary of the 2015 qualifying process (a margin of 1:02 made it, 1:01 did not) check out http://www.baa.org/news-and-press/news-listing/2014/september/2015-boston-marathon-qualifier-acceptances.aspx

It’s a tough way to do things, but fair, and having seen what it takes to put on this event, there’s no question in my mind that they’ve got to limit it.

So, dream, imagine. Pick a qualifying event that suits your training rhythm and your running strengths, put a reminder on your calendar for September 1, and you too may find yourself stepping over the line in Hopkinton one year.  I can’t imagine you will ever regret – or forget – it!

(* Life of a Squeaker, by Tish Hamilton in Runner’s World, May 2013)

• It is a runner’s truth that the very same piece of terrain that was clearly a gentle uphill grade when you ran it heading one way, can also be an uphill climb when you run it back in the other direction, even just a few minutes later.

  Now if you were on a bike, you could always figure out the truth – just stop pedaling and see if you slow down, coast along, or accelerate.

  Digression – There are times I envy the cyclists passing me up as I run – how nice it must be to take a break now and then; set your tired legs in one spot and let yourself glide along, or keep on pedaling just enough to maintain your speed, breathing gently or chatting with a friend as the meters vanish almost by themselves.  But then I think of how hard it can be to get the body-machine back up to full power after a pause like that… As runners we have the burden of constant effort – there’s no coasting on feet – but that teaches us to seek out the ‘steady state,’ that level of exertion where inputs of nutrition and hydration are most nearly equal to the output of energy, so we can keep up that level of effort for quite a long time.   (Long is relative of course, at one stage in a runner’s development, ten or twenty minutes is a very long time; for others, it may be hours.  Whatever yardstick works for you, there is an immense satisfaction in looking back over a run and realizing, wow, I kept that up for that long? Hot Damn!).

  And if that conditioning benefit isn’t enough to shoot down my cycle-envy, the hammer falls for sure as soon as I see a rider squatting on the shoulder repairing a flat, or when I hear a mountain-biker friend explaining over coffee that both of his (very expensive) bikes are out of service with mechanical problems, and he is looking to rent one for tomorrow’s ride.

  But back to the issue – perception.  I’ve run plenty of events and training routes that start and finish at the same point and have established one firm conviction which flies in the face of Newton and Aristotle and everything we’re taught in science classes:  on any run that finishes at the same place it started – whether it’s an out-and-back, or a closed loop – there is always more uphill than downhill.

  Maybe it has to do with the mechanics of converting the expansion and contraction of muscle fibers into a back and forth movement of the legs and arms, and then converting that into a solely-forward movement of the entire body – come to think of it, put that way, it’s no surprise that flat feels like uphill, heck it’s a bit of a miracle it works at all!

  Then again, maybe some little gremlins have cranked up the jacks beneath the road, or moved the earth’s center of mass, just at the moment I switched directions…

  Personally, I’ve given up trying to understand how this can be – and endeavor instead to take it as part of the challenge, the wonder, the endless variation and complexity of the world around us; up-hill feet and down-hill feet are not created equal.

‘The Boston Marathon.’  Magical words to many runners.  Famed for attracting the world’s top performers to its historic route and spectator-jammed finish alley, it might seem strange for an avowed mid-pack-runner to talk about going to Boston, but then, the very competitiveness (and size) of the event ensures that even people who might stand out on other days will experience the BAA’s yearly celebration from somewhere in the middle of the pack.

It also helps that the qualifying times for Boston are graduated; though dauntingly-short for younger runners of each gender, they get considerably longer for us older folks, which is pretty much the only reason this MPR got to run there a couple of years ago.  That was one of the greatest thrills of my running life, and now that I’ve learned I will be going back in 2015, I’d like to share some observations about it all, from the mid-pack perspective.  Hopefully I can do justice to the experience, and maybe motivate some other MPRs to see themselves reaching for this particular brass ring.

Truth is, running Boston hardly entered my mind during the first seven years, and ten finishes, of marathoning.  I’d entered the St. George Marathon hoping for a new PR and thanks to a great fast course managed that plus a little more.  I don’t recall whether they listed ‘BQ’ on the results posted during the race, or if I found out later, but it was really only after learning I had qualified that I imagined going, and once I did, it was only more good luck that made it possible.

Boston registration happens in early September, opening first to the fastest over-qualifiers, then working down in several tiers to those who (like me) just barely made their required time.  These days, the field fills up as soon as that last tier opens, but in 2012, for whatever reason, there was still space even in the first week of October.  Thanks to the Internet, I was able to submit my registration as soon as I returned from Utah, and received a tentative notice the next day, with the formal printed Certificate of Acceptance (yes, the BAS does things up right: from the moment they verify your qualifying time, every runner – regardless of standing – is treated like a valued competitor) arriving by mail a week or two later.

Thus my number one observation: even before stepping on the plane, ‘Boston’ reminded this generally-pretty-pragmatic MPR of the value in looking beyond the expected, in having eyes and ears open for opportunity, and in being ready (and quick) to seize it when it appears.  To – in the archetypally-simple lyric of Mr. Lennon – “Imagine.”

Coming up, more about being allowed into this big-ring of the running circus.

If, like me, you read books and magazines about running, it seems just about the most universally-accepted truism of training is “THE WEEKLY LONG RUN!” to gradually stretch your time and distance.

Always the eager student, I hopped right on board that strategy – shorter workouts during the week which each focus on speed or tempo or intervals or something, then a long relatively slow run (usually on the weekend because those of us who have lives outside our running shoes only have the time then…) – and agree it works, but with an important caveat that I suspect may apply to lots of other MPRs:

A couple of years ago I decided to try for a particular time in an October marathon.  Being an MPR, I was looking at a high level of effort for quite a few hours, and so set out to follow the plans I’d read; gradually lengthening my long runs about ten percent each week, and it did work – up to a point.

But once that long run got around three hours, I found myself hitting the wall every week.  Instead of feeling my endurance build, I just found the runs getting harder and harder, and my pace in the latter part of each one dropping farther and farther.  It was painful and disheartening, as I imagined that goal time slipping out of reach.

That discouragement may be why, when family commitments made it difficult to fit a long run in one weekend, I let my commitment slide and skipped it, despite the conviction that I’d lose even more of whatever little edge I’d managed to build.  To my surprise (though maybe not yours…) when I did my next biggie at a two week interval, I found not only had I not lost the conditioning I’d worked so hard to build, but that long run felt better than any of the other recent ones.

In hindsight it’s clear what was going on: for this particular MPR, at that age and level of effort, one week was simply not sufficient time for biological recovery from an extended effort.  I had been going into each weekly run still tired and depleted from the last one, and paying the price.

From then on I began alternating weekly long runs with more moderate ones, though since I was doing a two week cycle but still living in a 52 wk. year, I further departed from what I’d read.  Instead of 10% pushes, the difference between one long run and the progressively longer one two weeks later was more like half an hour (or three miles).

So am I recommending that two week cycle for anyone else? Not really, just offering it as an example of how to use all running advice.

Read, talk, hear what the experts have to say. Then try it out – carefully and gradually, and if it doesn’t seem to work for you, try something different. (As a matter of fact, I’ve recently moved even farther from the big weekly, but more about that another time).

Make your running your own; no one is else is just like you, so your running life may not be just like anyone else’s, and that itself is actually one more of the many things I love about this sport – it can help each of us become even more our own particular (or maybe peculiar?) self.

And that is a goal worth training for!

OK then; you’ve got your body position slightly forward (so gravity pulls you to the finish), are landing feet beneath yourself (to avoid putting on the brakes), and you’ve even got your cadence nice and high. If it works for you like it does for me, your pace will increase, or your endurance get longer, or your perceived effort go down (or any combination of all that, depending on your own intensities and priorities).  But what if you’d like to improve even more?  If you can’t take mores strides in a given time (180 steps a minute is pretty much the limit, at least for this MPR), the only other way to cover more distance is to make the strides longer, right? But doesn’t that mean your feet need to extend out in front of you again?

Maybe not. The trick is to lengthen the duration of each stride behind you, not in front, and the way to do that is to picture your heels coming up a little bit closer to your butt.

I got wind of this when reading a description of some elite marathoner in a treadmill demonstration. The author – who was far more of an authority than I; which is not saying much – made all the expected noises about relaxed upper body, forward C.O.G., forefoot landing (you can’t land on your forefoot if it’s very far in front, unless you’re a prima ballerina – and willing to look like one), very high cadence, then remarked about how high his heels came up, like that was a really big deal.

What the heck, I thought. If your heels come up higher, they are travelling farther, but not in the direction you want to go, so how can that help?

The answer that make sense to my little brain goes back to that description of running as catching yourself when gravity wants to make you fall forward. With that in mind, if makes sense that a foot that comes up higher behind you is off the ground a little longer, and that means gravity has more time to pull you forward a little farther. And since gravity is an acceleration, its effect is the square of its duration, so a little time goes a long way.

They ain’t no free lunch though, so we must admit that pulling heels up higher takes some energy, and doing that while keeping cadence up requires your feet move faster (just as they would have to if your stride lengthened out front), but done right, it’s a high-efficiency technique – maximum performance increase for minimum added exertion. Way better than stretching strides out in front.

Once you’ve got the other stuff working the way it works best for you, try kicking up your heels a bit.  You may just find your pace goes up as well!

Falling Toward the Finish talked about using gravity to help pull a runner forward.  A similar visualization helps to clarify why landing feet way out in front of you makes for inefficient running.

First off, imagine running down a steep hill, gravity pulling you forward so much you’re in danger of losing control; a natural response – aside from just stopping (or in fact especially if you decide to stop) – is to stretch your strides so the foot hits well in front of your center of gravity.  A portion of your body’s forward momentum is then transmitted right down through that outstretched leg, pressing the foot harder against the surface (one reason your foot is more likely to skid along the ground running downhill than on level ground).  To the extent you don’t skid, it means friction between sole and earth is eating up momentum, transferring forward motion into grinding and heat. By landing the foot out front, you’re ‘hitting the brakes’ a little bit with every stride.

Second, even on level ground, since the length of your extended leg is fixed, the farther in front your foot hits, the lower your body is to the ground. (Not so obvious? You can prove it with trigonometry if you’re into that, but for the rest of us, stand with feet together, then lift one foot and place it out in front of you – feel your entire torso dropping toward the floor?). In order for your body to move forward over that planted foot, it needs to move upward, like an upside down pendulum. You see this in runners whose feet strike well-ahead of them, a bobbing motion as their bodies rise up and drop down, up and down. (When I first started running, my kids called me ‘the Energizer Bunny’ because of that bobbing, almost hopping, motion; kids can be pretty astute sometimes…) At a cadence of 180 steps per minute, that means lifting your torso, arms and head – the majority of your body weight – some distance, 180 times per minute; a considerable expenditure of energy on something that is not direct forward motion.

And third, the farther you swing your leg out forward, the longer it takes for your body to move past it, which means you can take fewer strides per minute. That might be OK – theoretically, a smaller number of longer strides could gain more distance than a greater number of shorter strides – but since those long strides require extra energy to lift the body and to overcome braking, that leaves less energy to accomplish forward motion – it’s just plain less efficient.  Studies of elite runners prove this out, showing a near-universal correlation between high cadence and speed.  Long bounding strides are relaxing and can be useful to ‘mix it up,’ relieving strains while covering long distance, but they are not as efficient as quick turnunder (that’s like turnover, only since the feet are under us… OK, so, like, forget I said that…).

Avoid the braking effect, reduce energy-wasting up-and-down motion, and allow more strides per minute – multiple reasons why landing the feet beneath the body can help MPRs achieve their full potential.

It’s a platitude that ‘what a thing is’ depends on how you look at it. Usain Bolt speeding toward a victory in the 100 meter sprint, for instance, has been described as a man toppling forward while moving his feet just fast enough to catch himself from falling on his face.

Which is to say that – looked at as a matter of balance – running has a lot in common with falling.

To understand that thought, imagine yourself standing still, and lifting one foot. Thanks to the one-way-folding geometry of knees and hips, that foot comes up well in front of your body, causing your center of gravity to shift out beyond your torso, causing it (and therefore all the rest of you) to start to fall forward. Thanks to eons of collective evolution – and several months of individual toddling at an early age – we nominal grown-ups generally know enough to let that happen for only a brief time before stretching the leg out to hit the ground and keep us upright.

Do that again with the other foot, and you get forward motion. Do it over and over and over, and quickly enough, and you get running: falling forward, and using the feet to catch ourselves and convert that fall into forward motion.

Of course that’s only one way to look at it, and what’s to say it’s any better than a more common image of running – the act of pushing yourself forward with your feet and legs – they both end up meaning the same thing don’t they? Well, no. Not if efficiency is your goal; because ‘pushing’ is all work, while ‘falling’ benefits from free energy – in the form of gravity.

Physics-wise, the main ‘work’ we do in running is to push our body thru the atmosphere (if that sounds insignificant, try running into a headwind). But if you fall on your face, no personal effort need be involved, (something I happen to know from experience, which I will not share here).  It’s gravity that pushes you thru the atmosphere, and not only without effort, but sometimes even against your best efforts!

Yes, there’s still the biological energy required to swing the feet, and then the arms to counter-balance them, and the diaphragm to contract and the heart to beat; but if we can reduce the effort required to move the body thru external space, those internal efforts will all be reduced in proportion, so we’re still way ahead.

We also have to accelerate at the start, but that’s only a temporary load (remember Newton: “a body in motion tends to stay in motion”), or climb grades, which is functionally quite similar, since the ‘work’ involved is to counteract an omnipresent accelerative force toward the Earth’s center of mass (otherwise known as – you guessed it – gravity). And any way we can find to use less energy running at a steady speed on level ground just means that much more is available when we do need to accelerate or climb.

Bottom line though, if we get just the right amount of falling forward, balanced with enough putting the feet out at just the right moment, we can take advantage of gravity to pull us forward and use less of our leg strength to push.  Witness, Mr. Bolt.

You might want to give it a try sometime: running at a comfortable pace and a high cadence on level ground, lean your body just a little bit forward, so your chest is ahead of your hips, and see if you can feel the force of gravity pulling you forward just before your foot contacts the ground.  Done right, it’s almost like adding half a percent of downhill gradient to whatever surface you’re running on.

And that is something any runner can use!

(Closely-related topic for another time: where to land ‘em…)

In the beginning (where have I heard that phrase before…), just running for any length of time may be a challenge (see Slow and Steady if you’re still at that stage). Sooner or later though, if you’re lucky and persistent enough to keep with it, you’ll probably find yourself setting a distance goal.  It may be to run for a mile without stopping, it may be to run your first 5K (five thousand meters; just over 3 miles) – or your first marathon.  Whatever the distance, one way to stay motivated and on target is to divide the distance into fractions.  Not only does this give you attainable short term goals (“if I can only make it half way…”) it also provides psychic rewards (“Yes! I’m one quarter of the way there”).  On top of that, doing the math in your head can be a useful distraction (trying to figure out 66.6% of 21.6 in my head pushes the blister on my toe out of mind every time).

Example: a recent ‘long run’ was an out and back from home, and since I’d had a couple of disappointing runs recently, I was not feeling confident I could do the distance without bonking badly. Picturing the distance as a succession of milestones really helped it feel more do-able.  About a third of the way out, there’s a right angle turn from road onto a bike path; I made a point not to check my time until I got there, and could say I was a third of the way to the halfway mark, enough to feel like real progress.  Halfway from there to the turn-around is the high school, where I could congratulate myself again, for being more than halfway to the turn-around.  Thinking of it as ‘two thirds of the way out’  – instead of one third of the total distance – created the impression of nearing the completion of a hard piece of work, sufficient incentive to up my level of effort just a bit.  Then the turn-around of an out-and-back is always great, because you tell yourself you’ve come that far, and it’s no farther going back and every step means less mileage to go ahead than is already behind (plus in this case the outward leg runs up-river, so the return leg is literally ‘downhill all the way’).

Same thing works on the way back: “I’ve made it a third of the way back, which is two thirds of the total, heck I’m more than half way there.” Two thirds of the way back means you’ve already done the remaining distance five times over, heck you’re practically there already…”

These are just mind games of course, but so are a lot of the negative thoughts that may crop up unbidden, like “who am I kidding,” or “this isn’t supposed to be this hard,” or “look at how fast that gal passed me…” Creating your own positive mind games can have real benefits, freeing your body to show what it can do and making the workout rewarding instead of an obligation.

Whatever distance you choose to run, my recommendation is to visualize it divided into fractions, describe them in the most positive way possible and congratulate yourself for each fraction you finish – then any distance will seem easier to conquer.

Living at 6400 feet above salt water, I used to think of winter as ski season and hang up my running shoes until at least the end of March, when I’d start desperately seeking the fitness I’d lost since fall. A few years ago though, the commitment of an April event led me to train all winter long and I found…it wasn’t nearly the problem I’d anticipated!  Herewith; a few suggestions on how to make winter training in harsh climates more tolerable.

First off, is to cross-train. If two or three of your weekly workouts are on a treadmill, stationary bike, elliptical or stepper, that’s fewer days a week to run outside. Start there, and maybe sometimes shift those around to days with the most conducive weather, you greatly reduce the number of days you need to run in mother nature’s worst.

When the time does come to run outside, be prepared by having already checked out which routes are going to be most runnable.  Look for pavement that get lots of southern sunlight to burn it to slush or dampness, even if not scraped clean by Mr. Snowplow – a good candidate is park paths that are maintained by staff.  If totally-clear pavement is not available, look at least for some that’s packed down, or has a solid base underneath the light stuff.  Up to about four inches of fresh snow can be good running with Yak tracks or other traction devices – if it’s got hard pavement or packed snow underneath.  Much more than four inches of soft snow is pretty demoralizing to run in, and I’d try to re-schedule. If there are maintained cross-country trails in your area, their margins may be useable, but make sure you’re not messing up the grooved ski tracks, or creating potholes in a width designed for skate-skiers.

Regardless of the route, when the weather is cold ya’ gotta layer-up, to be comfortable at the stat, not too hot once warmed-up, and safe in case you need to stop. A common guide is to dress (the layers you’re not going to strip-off) as if the air is going to be 20 degrees warmer than the thermometer shows, to allow for the heat of exertion,.

Running feet generate their own heat, so I find a pair of light wool socks inside Gore-tex oversocks are enough even in very cold air and snow. Running legs tend to warm themselves too, and even evaporate what little snow falls on them, so one layer of tights works down to maybe twenty degrees.  If it’s colder, a second pair of tights might be in order, or nylon wind pants, saving anything heavy like warmups until the very coldest times.  At any weight, avoid cotton; heavy, saggy sweatpants impede movement and accumulate moisture, holding the cold against your skin.

Hands are the opposite of feet, blood flow goes elsewhere, so they are in real danger of getting uncomfortably (even dangerously) cold. Below 32 f, I wear insulated ski mittens, over light gloves.  Not that cold, maybe ski gloves rather than mittens, but always a over a lighter pair, that give some protection even when (not if) I need to pull off the outer layer to adjust something.  For the most extreme, use or carry those little packet handwarmers; toasty fingers can make the difference between a tortured slog and a cheerful adventure.

Above the waist, choose multiple light wicking layers that can be peeled off one at a time to avoid getting wet from the inside. The fine-temperature-adjustment possible with zip-neck layers is much preferable to turtle-necks, and pit-zips are a real plus for the same reason. I find a breathable rain jacket with open pit-zips is the best surface layer when it’s snowing but not terribly cold, and only when the air gets down around 10 degrees do I consider wearing an insulated jacket – synthetic, not down, and again with pit-zips – always making sure to have a plan to stash it when things get too warm.  (Most ski and boarding gear is actually designed for short bursts of activity interspersed with sedentary periods on chairlifts, in trams or waiting for your friends to pick themselves up off the snow, so it’s not well suited to the constant-heat generation and limber motions of running.  Apply sparingly.)

Knitted hats are good for keeping the ears warm, but can be too hot on the head, and a billed-cap is essential whenever precipitation is expected, to keep the flakes off eyes or glasses. On balance, a Buff or other lightweight scarf-type covering, paired with a visor may be a good choice – lightweight and flexible.  Sunglasses are a must to protect from glaring white snow, and if the white stuff is coming down hard enough to coa them with droplets, goggles are worth trying (by then you’re not likely to meet anyone you know out there, so who cares how dorky you look?).

Night falls early in winter, so if there’s the slightest chance you’ll be out after dark, headlamp, flashlight and reflective clothing are in order as well. In the unlikely event you have to bail from a run, waiting for a ride in good weather is mostly just a drag – but in winter it can become life-threatening, so I recommend bringing your cell as well, and maybe an extra warm hat or pair of gloves.  Between emergency items like those, plus water and goo and the need to stash what layers come off, a lightweight backpack is essential for long winter runs, especially solos.

Beyond comfort and safety comes the challenge of setting realistic goals. Uncertain surfaces and all that gear slow the stride, and periodic stops to add, remove or adjust gear are another reason cold weather running tends to be slow, so plan winter workouts by duration and effort, not distance or pace.  These runs are best suited to maintaining an endurance base – the ability to sustain a moderate level of exertion for periods over an hour (or several, depending on your level).  Look to treadmill workouts to maintain foot speed and max VO2.

If it’s truly too bad outside to run, give in and substitute an indoor workout. My go-to at the local rec. center is alternating half-hour segments on the treadmill and exercise bike for a long high-effort workout with a Special Bonus Feature – it only takes one of those sessions to make me really look forward to my next outdoor run, regardless of weather!

Developing confidence and self-sufficiency is one of the keys to success at distance running – and simultaneously one of its greatest payoffs – and there’s nothing better for the self-image than comfortably completing a long run in conditions that send most of the populace scurrying for the couch and remote.

There are also many truly beautiful experiences to be had on winter routes emptied of walkers, bikes, dogs and cars; where the loudest sound is your own breathing, or footfalls muffled by powder or crunching into yesterday’s crust. Winter light does wonderful things to familiar vistas, as do ice crystals, vaporous breath and swirling gusts of an atmosphere rendered visible by frozen moisture.

Be prepared, be flexible, and think of cold-weather running as an adventure – a chance to access experiences and sensations from which our modern lifestyle often insulates us. It’s rarely boring, and – if nothing else – may make you appreciate next summer’s heat in a whole new way!

Usually this blog is about general observations of the MPR universe, but yesterday I demonstrated something to myself so clearly, I’ve just gotta share it.

I’d been having a good running season, building up for the Salomon Golden Leaf trail hemithon in late September, a favorite event that I’d done seven times before, with gradually improving times. I managed a PR by a few seconds on the last scheduled event beforehand, then had planned six weeks to recover and taper for the GL.

Just about a perfect set up, except that somewhere in between there the local paper mentioned a nearby event I’d heard of but never run, just two weeks before the GL. Another trail run, 25k this time, with an even bigger climb in the early miles than the GL, and reputed to be the most beautiful autumn course around these decidedly beautiful parts  Telling myself it would be a perfect last long run before tapering to the GL, I signed up and headed off for the Lead King Loop.  Baaad ideaaa….

Mistake number one: I have learned over the years that for this MPR and this not-getting any-younger body, it takes three weeks recovery after a big effort to be ready for another biggie. If I make big efforts every two weeks, I end up hitting walls. But I’d been running longer than the LKL all summer so that shouldn’t be an issue; or so I told my nagging left brain.

Mistake number two: If you’re gonna shortchange recovery time, at least do it in a small way, maybe a quick short distance that exercises the muscles and reflexes but doesn’t tap out all your reserves. (Problem: the LKL is longer and has more climb than the GL – which is not the intended meaning of the term ‘reverse-taper.’)

Mistake number three: since I more or less knew those things already, I signed up for the LKL telling myself I was just there for the scenery, and that a slow time would actually be best so I could come back next year and beat it. Then in the first half mile I overheard a couple of folks in my division talking about who was gonna do what to whom, which tweaked my competitive radar, with the result I pushed all the way and ended the morning totally sapped.

Mistake number four: so here I am with a tired body and two weeks to the GL – every bit of advice I’ve ever heard says taper and recover, which for me at my age would mean nothing but short, moderate runs. Which I managed – for six days. Then, on the Saturday in between I decided I needed a little uphill to keep my edge on, so I ran a quick five miles, and because the summer had been going so well, I pushed that training loop faster than ever before.  And then the week before the GL was so busy I couldn’t get out for a mid-day stress-relief quickie, and by Thursday was wondering if I might have completely forgotten how to run, so I squeezed in a gentle evening three-miler only to be shocked me by how tired and slow it felt.  Well duh.

You can guess the rest. GL Saturday dawned sunny and perfect – neither cold nor hot, the trail dry and fast, but even as I ran a few yards to warm up before the start, I could tell what was coming – legs heavy and unresponsive, as if someone had inserted an extra mile of leaky-coax cable between brain and muscles. Still, I’d been having a good summer right, all those other events had gone well, so I must be fit enough to do this, right? Heck. I’d run a tougher 25K just two weeks ago…

Predictably, I hit the wall early, struggled to keep myself motivated enough to even finish, and did so with a time that would have been disappointing five years ago, and was much more so this summer.

Please don’t get me wrong here – Any day I can run is a blessing, for which I am truly grateful. And this year’s GL was pretty fantastic: a beautiful and challenging course, gorgeous weather and fall colors, wonderful people to run with and meet.

 But it could have been even better if I’d stayed with the plan and not gotten greedy.

Recovery is training too, and every bit as important as wind sprints or that ‘75% of the goal distance’ long run two three weeks before a big event.

I may have learned that now.