Napa Valley Marathon(NVM) stumped me once in 2020. Back then, I had fallen sick just a few days before the race and I had to drop out. So I had a score to settle with NVM this year.
I did timely registration for 2023 and started training for the race. By Oct/Nov 2022, I was getting 2–3 runs/week and by December I was comfortable running 12 miles, even on weekdays. 2023 started normally, but somewhere after Jan 5th (I won’t bore you with what happened on Jan 5th), I started feeling physically very weak during runs. I remember one morning run where I was planning to do 10 miles, but my body was not ready even for an easy six. On that day, I felt I might not be able to run NVM this year too! And I started to realize that the stress was making me weak. It took me a few days to get over it, I’m so glad that I didn’t let my mind play tricks on me. After a few days, I started feeling better/stronger during my runs. My first long run was an 18-miler. I did that on a very cold and rainy day but I was really feeling good about myself. So I stayed on my training schedule and tried getting as many 10-milers as I could. I had to bail out only once during the training, I was supposed to run 12, but couldn’t drag my ass and called my wife to pick me up at mile-6. I did my two long runs (20 miles) on 02/06 and 02/21. At this point there was no turning back, all I had to do is to show up at the start line. While I was telling myself and everyone around me that “I care less about my timing”, I knew that I hated my timing, 5:05 finish at Chicago in 2021. But I still didn’t have any concrete plan to beat it and I didn’t bother to think about it much.
Two days before the race, my daughter took me out for a dinner, as an early carbo-load and celebrate her job (I’m still waiting for money she borrowed to pay the bill🙂). It was a really fun dinner and I was uber-happy to see my daughter becoming a young independent woman. Saturday before the race was busy — I had an early morning music class and then practice for the upcoming concert. I also have been more careful than usual in eating a healthy breakfast every morning — Oats+Chia-seeds (soaked) + Banana and yogurt. And I noticed that the days I ate chia seeds, I felt stronger as a runner (I heard about the effects of Chia-seeds, first while reading a book about https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a20954821/born-to-run-secrets-of-the-tarahumara/). For the rest of the Saturday, I stayed hydrated and ate some more carbs — sweet potatoes, pumpkin-puri (fried bread), rice, etc.
Anushka had offered me to give a ride to Napa(one of the rare benefits of your daughter getting a driver’s lic 🙂), even though we had to head out to Napa at “4:30 AM”. It was supposed to rain on the race day, so I had packed my rain jacket and old-faithful-garbage-bag. We left our home at 5 AM, it was raining hard on the way but knew that Napa will be relatively better. Reaching there was a breeze, Anushka dropped to the start line, took pictures wished me luck, and took off. She was going to pick me up at the finish. I walked to the start line, in the windy/chilly/drizzly morning.
I was surprised (gladly) by how small this race was, I started to dislike monster races like Chicago. Just for the smallness, I might run it again next year. There were a small number of runners hanging around at the start line (yeah, of course, looong line for the loo). A small warm-up led by a tri-coach was a blessing to beat the cold of that morning. We took off at 7:30 AM., I was armed with a rain jacket and garbage bag. I was really scared at the pace I ran the first mile (8:07), I had to tell myself that I need to slow down or else I might not be able to sustain through the race. I stayed sub-10 till mile-10.
In general, I find it hard to modulate my pace during the runs. Here I was starting to get tired, so something needed to be done. During training runs, I use the Galloway method (10:1), but I was not following it during the race. So I told myself that, I need to modify Galloway to conserve-and-run. I ran on flats/downhills but used uphills walk/jog to regain strength (NVM is a rolling hills course — generally downhill). conserve-and-run was starting to work. While in the mode, a light bulb went off in my head — that started to give insights about my slow finish at Chicago. I realized that I go into self-pity mode at 20+ miles (“Oh I’m so tired”, “when will this be over”, “should I quit” and so on) and it slows me down i.e. I take more walk-breaks than usual and the race becomes walk-more and run-little. I really wanted to break this vicious cycle this time. And this is when ZombieRun was born. Let me explain what it is and how it happened:
When I was running tired/exhausted at mile-11, I closed my eyes, not completely — but half closed, opened again, and closed for a few seconds. This Half-closed-eyes-running took me in a dreamlike, half-awake/half-asleep trans-like state and I wasn’t feeling as much tired. Also, it helped me not get irritated by noisy, stompy, keys-jingling, or faster-than-me runners. Running started to feel like gliding. Yeah, pain/tiredness was there, but it now was much bearable
By mile-13, I have mastered this half-asleep-running. Now all I had to do is to keep at it. In this trans-state, I was telling myself that “I’m not running, all that is needed is to let the body just drift” and it started to work.
My mind played one more trick on me while approaching mile-13. I would start thinking that 13 miles is done and I’m marching towards 14, but this just made mile-14 feel extra long, mentally. Once again, I forced myself to not think about the next mile until I have crossed the mile marker. And things started looking good. But After 4:35 pacer passed me and I said “hell with the timing, just get your butt across the finish line”
Despite the zombie run putting me at east, I got a massive cramp in my left leg, but I decided to ignore it, chugged on Gu and water, and kept going. One more cramp at mile-24, but by then I was thinking about “where can I get good Fries after the race”? Cheers from the finish line were now audible and I kept going. I knew that I have a shot at 4:45 finish. With the finish line in sight, I noticed one dude running just one step ahead of me for quite some time, and I had to beat him. So made the final dash and secured 4:42:43! My daughter was there to cheer me at the finish line and drive back. We managed to grab our favorite In-Out lunch together (yeah Fries!)
This is how I’ll sum up my first-ever ZombieRun:
- Close your eyes while running (half close, open, half-close and repeat), it’ll help you distract from pain and other annoyances-when-tired
- Tell yourself that you are not running and just let your body drift (is this poor man’s chi-running? it could be, but I didn’t pay any special attention to my posture)
- If you really can’t drift, take really tiny walk breaks and go back to jog and then run again
- Visualize something fun/silly you did with your friends/loved ones (I usually visualize silly things, my daughters’ faces and our ever-playful dog Jellybean)
- I also counted Surya-Namaskar steps (sun-salutation) from mile-22 onwards, but could only count for 3 sets, and then my mind drifted off. but that was long enough for me to drag my body further
What did I gain/learn running yet another marathon?
- Marathons are super hard, period. Train well or just don’t do it. And even if you have trained well, you will need a bit of craziness/mental strength to keep going after mile-20. Marathons let me test my own tenacity and perseverance.
- Life happens and life events might drag you down during the training. But if you stay with your training — you will emerge as a stronger person. In my case, I lost my job on Jan 5th, 2023, in one of the craziest job markets and the stress from it was affecting my fitness level. I’m so glad that I didn’t give up & it literally saved my ass.
- Long-distance running gives you the opportunity to think/ponder and get lost in thoughts or nothingness. It has a cleansing effect on the mind, it allows you to think through the fog of thoughts & worries.
- The reassurance I get from races is “If you can get through 26 miles, you can pretty much get through anything that life will throw at you”.
- How many people can can claim that they can run 26.2 mile long races? And I can brag that I have done 8 of those.
Next time I might pick a trail-run, not anything super-crazy, but something like 25K.. but I’ll keep at long-distance running and hopefully learning. Also, I hope some runners will use the ZombieRunning technique, to make their races a tad bit less painful.
