What I learned Training for a Marathon

 Just after Christmas this year, looking down at my expanded waste, I made an impetuous decision – at sixty-five years old, I would train for the Eugene marathon in April. Until that decision I thought my long-distant running days were over.

I pulled out my old training plan I used three years ago for the 2015 Tacoma City Marathon. It worked well for me then. I would soon learn this three year span would feel like ten.

Sport Physiologists claim that to perform at the same level year over year, you have to train at least 10% harder with each passing year. I wasn’t prepared to train 30 % harder than I did in 2015, but I would try to match the effort.

They also claim that there is an age “sweet spot,” at which the combination of physical, technical and strategic abilities comes together. For endurance events such as a marathon, the upper cap for competing at the sport’s highest levels appears to be around the age of 40. At sixty-five, I just want to finish, and hope I can keep up in my age division.

The saying goes that if you keep running long enough, you will place first, for there are no other runners your age living or dumb enough to keep running.

Training in the Northwest from January through April would not be my first pick of seasons to pound the pavement hours on end. I have run in 30-degree sleet storms and eighteen miles per hour winds. I have run many, many days in 45-degree rain. I have been turned around by iced-over trails. So, my first lesson–no skipping training sessions, regardless of weather.

The backbone of marathon training is the gradual increase in mileage each week, the center of which is the long weekend runs. Beginning at eight miles, I added ten to fifteen percent each week until I max out to 21.5 miles.

But it is not just the long weekend runs. It is the mid-range runs each day that gradually increase in distance until the training becomes relentless. Before I pull my shoes off from one run, I am thinking of my next.

This increasing intensity causes a variety of objections to arise from various places in my body. Beginning with my first step out the front door into those first few miles, I hear coming from somewhere inside  the taunting question “why are you doing this to yourself?”

At mile four the body quiets down when it realizes I am listening but not responding. From mile five to eight I am feeling loose, rhythmic, and free and enjoying the run–unless of course I ate too much too soon, and then I am fighting indigestion. By mile ten, indigestion has eased, and other discomforts come to take its place—sore toes, sore ankles, knee twitches, sweat in my eyes, dry mouth. Depending on the session, by mile twelve or beyond, my legs begin to scream from my ankles to my glutes.

Only by continuing my run through these very real discomforts have I learned that these pains are  minor and temporary, no matter what my brain is telling me. Most all running pains or related discomforts dissipate while running– just like the feeling I am out of oxygen when I ascend one of the hills, only to have my breath return—no need to slow down or stop—the breath always returns.

If I  stay focused on this particular session, at this moment, putting one foot in front of the other, the pain and discomfort leaves—though it is often replaced by another unrelated discomfort. And so it goes, periods of discomfort followed by periods of complete enjoyment, then repeat.

After seventeen weeks I am at the end of my training. When you spend eight to ten hours a week running, week after week, you have a lot of time to think – and to feel. With one long run left before I ramp down my miles, it occurs to me that these lessons learned in my training transfer well to the more critical aspects of my life– such as what is required to be a husband, father, friend, neighbor, citizen, and employee.

While long distance running has been good for me, what is much more important to me is that I would be good for others.

This season while running these long blocks of time, I have asked myself many questions, such as;

• How often have I been tempted to quit an unpleasant task, a project, a conversation, even a relationship, because I was experiencing pain and discomfort?
• How often have these emotional, psychic, and spiritual pain points eventually dissipated just like the discomfort I feel during training?
• How often have these little daily training sessions in living served as the foundation for my growth as a human?

By staying with the particular situation I am feeling discomfort in—the disagreement with a friend or spouse, or the dissatisfactions when things do not go as I planned–and not quitting, not leaving— I find myself on the other side, my breath returned, my peace restored, and my hope enlivened. I may have to slow down, exhale deeply, even walk a little, but I do not turn around and go back home. With each life experience, as with each training session, I grow stronger and more resilient.

That is not to say true injuries don’t sometimes happen, both to my body in running, and to my soul in living. Blunt force trauma happens— an injustice at work, an estrangement in a relationship, the loss of a loved one, the struggle with depression or addiction. When these happen, it is not only appropriate but necessary that I withdraw for a while to rest and to heal.

Just as each one of my training sessions had its own objective and its own rewards, so does each day present to me its own training session and purpose for my growth.

What I have learned about myself through this long training season is that I am easily fooled to believe I am injured and harmed when in fact I am simply experiencing some discomfort that comes from being alive and involved— from showing up to life. I so easily confuse not getting things when I want them or the way I want them with a pulled hamstring or shin splint, when it is simply a sore toe or side ache that will go away as I keep moving.  If I  will make some small adjustments, and then stay with this particular training session, I will come out the other end stronger, healthier, and most of all at peace with myself.

So, as I ramp down my training for the race in two weeks, I look forward to the rest my body will get afterwards, and especially to that huge hamburger, plate of fries, and a chocolate milkshake I’ve been thinking about for seventeen weeks, while my wife looks forward to me mowing and weeding the lawn.

And I feel better prepared for a life that is constantly oscillating between pain points and exhilarating joys—growing through the training sessions each day presents.

I will let you know how the race goes.

Kind Regards,

Bob