I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the body. Not in a Golden Globe kind of way, though. As in how fabulous Jane Fonda looks or get a load of Angelina Jolie’s bone-thin arms; the supermarket tabs really do have it right, she must be starving herself, the camera cutaway to hubbie Brad, train-seal clapping at his waste-away woman.
No, the body as vessel. Something that you think you know, but is more than likely a stranger to you. It is most common to just go along doing the same things to our bodies and they, of course, do what comes naturally: adding a pound or two each year after twenty-five so that a 120-pound woman at a quarter-century is a normal-enough-looking 155-pound woman at a half-century. BMI (Body Mass Index not fab, but not obese either .¤.¤.)
As poet Stanley Kunitz wrote, “I am not done with my changes.” In the beginning, change can be hard. And, that, of course doesn’t exempt the body.
I run or stretch or work out with weights every day now. Well, occasionally I’ll take a rest day. But the Boston Marathon is about 80 days away. And thankfully the regimen I’ve been following since the summer is paying off. I’m keeping my race weight of 150 pounds. My energy levels are as high as they’ve ever been. And I’m sleeping like a baby. On a recent Tuesday I ran ten miles at a moderate pace with hills and felt like a boy.
Five years ago I would’ve just gone out the door and ran. Not given much thought about food or conditioning. At one point my wife M said I’m built like a tree. That it seemed I need only run and I would be healthy and fit, primed for years of long-distance running. That was back in the day when I started this blog, the summer of 2010. Out the door and I’d be back in two hours, red-faced but hardly winded after running not just long but hard. Thus the blog’s name, Running For Your Life.
No more. Now I’ve got a routine. With 11 weeks until race week, I’ll run 9-10 miles on a Monday, then on Tuesday, stretch-weight workout at the gym, hard-run through 13 minutes, 1.8 miles on the treadmill, and then Wednesday more weight work, stretching and more treadmill, 30 minutes, fast, most of that time either with a steepish incline or uptempo pace, sub 7-min mile. Then perhaps a rest day. The next, a longish run. Wednesday, at the 11-weeks-until-D-Day mark, I managed to run 14 miles comfortably. In eight weeks, if all goes well, with plans to increase the long run by a mile each week, I will have put in a 22-miler well in advance of race day, Monday, April 16. The idea is to run longer, faster, stronger.
More important, though, my body feels not only strong but limber.
What else am I doing differently? On the runs themselves I wear therapeutic hose, which has corrected (so far!) shin splints, a heavy-running training problem I’ve had in the past. And shoes. I used to wear snug-fitting Brooks. Thanks to a heads-up shoe saleswoman at JackRabbit Sports http://bit.ly/aQsH8 that’s changed. I went a size up, which seems to have eased the forefoot pain, which has hampered my training (and led to eventual race discomfort at the Steamtown Marathon 2010).
A physiatrist also pointed out that I’d been favoring my left leg, my DVT-affected one, so I try to be more conscious of striding out on my right leg rather than letting it be the trailer. The roomier shoe also has helped with my tendency to pronate mildly. Now I believe there’s more balance to my stride.
A stronger core also helps to lighten the impact of my footfalls; my head lifted up as if held gently by a puppeter’s string. I also like to try to cushion my strides, as in imagining that I'm running not on asphalt or a park trail but on ice.
TMI? Too Much Information? Maybe. But it’s all there in The Runner’s Body http://amzn.to/2Qp3Pr.
Which means carbing up. Drinking juice, water. No soda as a regular fluid for months now. Coffee and red wine, yes, but TRB implies that these particular beverages can actually improve health and performance. Overdrinking too has gone by the board. I can’t remember when I was last hungover, or awake in the middle of the night from alcohol rebound.
It’s been strange. And yes, it was hard to make these changes. But now, instead of seeing these practices as hurdles, I don’t even think about them. Maybe, in the beginning, I didn’t run for my life. Or I did, but in a different way than I do now.
Next: Running for Your Life: Notes from the Fourteen Miler
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