I didn’t come this far to only come this far.
This week’s consumption of motivational content
126 Days Since My Stress Fracture
I hesitate to mention running progress because it has been so damn fickle. Each step forward has been followed by one or two steps back.
BUT. After several uneventful, pain-free runs the last two weeks, I am starting to slowly feel like myself and gain confidence in my foot.
Then I saw this post while I was scrolling IG from pro runner, Sara Hall.
It was like she caught me day-dreaming about flying around Lake Tahoe in June and crushing the Santa Rosa marathon in August. Feeling my pace and cadence recklessly pick up.
I envisioned hammering monster workouts in my head.
Stop it.
The goal isn’t to run 5 x 5 minutes with walking breaks, pain-free.
Be patient.
Don’t mistake no pain for full strength.
The goals are to run healthy, run consistently and hopefully, eventually, run fast.
Glad we settled that.
It is a lot cheaper when you’re your own therapist.
‘The pursuit of an audacious goal is as worthy a lifestyle as I can imagine.’— Peter Bromka
Peter Bromka is a sub-elite marathoner, family man, seemingly has a real job and occasional writer.
His post this week, Burn The Boat discusses his reluctant pursuit of the Olympic Trials Qualifier for the marathon after shaving 5 minutes off his PR in December (2:23) at CIM.
I have loved all of his posts the last few years, but this was particularly inspiring because of the relative goal. He takes you through his thought process, logic, fear, excitement and ultimately his commitment.
This winter at the Cal International Marathon a train of dreamers will leave the station on 2:18:59 pace and I’ll be on it. Because I can.
…
Falling into cadence with a marathon pack is delirious and elusive. Simultaneously running entirely separate races, while gaining strength and confidence from the collective, no one checks your admission to this train, you just buckle up your lactic threshold and ride.
…
That’s all fine and well, but 2:18:59 is still too fast. I’d have to PR in the marathon by 4 minutes and 28 seconds.
Which is a lot.
Except if it isn’t.
I’ve PRed by 5 minutes in the marathon five times, in the past five years.
I’ll resist the temptation to copy and paste his entire post. Just check it out if you get a chance.
Bromka wrestles with this goal that seems equally unrealistic and just as possible as his other recently conquered running goals.
His pursuit definitely inspires my own.
I had Santa Rosa Marathon tentatively on the calendar for August, 2018. I am confident I would be able to complete it. Maybe even notch a modest PR if everything goes perfectly. But I don’t realistically have the runway from my injury recovery to go for my dreamline 2:45 goal by August.
Plus, that abbreviated timeline will likely run counter to my first two goals of running healthy and consistently.
If I really want my 2:44:59, it would be wise to take the extra three months and hop on the CIM ‘train of dreamers’ [well, the women’s OTQ train. Half an hour behind Peter].
There will be no Olympic Trials glory for me, either way. But there is something satisfying about an arbitrary goal that you have to give several layers of context to explain to friends and family.
Whole 30 Take-Aways
Stacy and I wrapped up Whole 30 last week. Below are a few things I realized throughout the process.
- I previously ate an obscene amount of bread.
- I loved the way I felt after a detox.
- We ended on Friday and I binged on food and drinks all weekend and now feel like shit again.
- I hated being on a restrictive diet around friends. So we just didn’t. We skipped Whole 30 on friend hang-out days. It just clarifies your priorities. Feeling great does not justify being on a weird fad-diet in social situations.
- The meals were delicious.
- It takes a lot of thought and prep-time.
Overall, I felt great. I lost 10ish pounds. It changed the way I look at food by making me much more aware of what is in the food I am eating [or choosing not to eat]. While we didn’t stick to the guidelines 100%, we accomplished our objectives.
Going forward I plan to limit bread and added sugar during the week. That seems sustainable.
‘Every man for himself.’
I recently started reading, Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard, founder and owner of Patagonia Inc. about the history and business philosophies of his company.
I’m enjoying it so far and look forward to mining it for a future diet book report.
Chouinard’s friend and occasional climbing partner, Tom Brokaw, recounts the following story to Life magazine when asked ‘What was his single toughest climb?’
Probably when my friends, including [Patagonia founder] Yvon Chouinard, and I did Kautz Glacier on Mount Rainier. I had never really done ice-climbing before, and they gave me a 30-second lesson in crampons and ice-ax use.
At one point, we were going across a very steep patch of black ice, and if you slipped you would’ve gone about 1,000 feet. I said to Yvon, ‘We should rope up here,’ and he said, ‘No way — if you go, then I go, and I don’t want to do that. This is like catching a taxi in New York on a rainy day: It’s every man for himself.’
It’s been helpful to me to be [Yvon’s] friend, he makes me think about things in new ways.
Hell no. That sounds terrible.
