Go out in the midday sun. In that case I have passed the Tebbit test. That said it does not aid the running process. Sadly I was not able to run at the speed I was hoping for, which means now is the time to enter a tapering period. It is hard as I did not do my big run last week; you tend to develop a sense of guilt for not training hard all the time. And considering I am training for a half marathon in July, trying to balance the needs of one run with the more immediate needs of another is a tricky thing.
So I am now less than a week away from what will be my second running event. I may have to skip Jiu Jitsu as the last thing I want is an injury to derail all the work, that Taryn, Samiul and I (to a lesser extent) have put into it. I would like to take this moment to thank everyone who has supported me and look forward to meeting you at the big brunch.
Actually the only thing we have in common is that we don’t seek out the spotlight. While sparring, and running long distances don’t really worry me, doing the meet the “athlete” last week did, a lot. To the point I asked someone else to impersonate me and read my speech. They said no and I had to do it anyway. While not the disaster I thought it was going to be, I will not be pursuing a career as an after dinner speaker anytime too soon.
So what is the point of this particular blog entry? I will be running for charity, yet I probably ran away hardest just from making a speech in order to promote a run I was doing. Doing something that is worthwhile is often about doing something challenging. While this May 1st 10k will be difficult, and I will learn a lot about myself training for it and actually doing it, facing up to an unexpected and unwelcome challenge has taught me a lot more
They all in a key moment, pulled out of the proverbial rabbit out of the hat. As clichéd as it sounds the test of a true champion is how they conquer adversity. And a quality that goes through all of them is an unwillingness to give up. All though David Gray hated this song it does not make the oft repeated message any less true. Though the training I do is mostly physical, I am starting to learn from what I do (or do not!).
A case in point being my last cardio session. I was looking to do two hours straight on the stationary bike. Lately what with Jiu Jitsu and spending time with my girlfriend, my aerobic training has been mostly weekly running sessions and making use of the fine weather to go running at any given opportunity. I am looking to maintain my cardio during what most runners calls the tapering end of their running cycle, so as to avoid picking up any injuries. However training in my makeshift “gym” is not without issue. Primarily training without my body overheating. When I am running outdoors I am generally running at a time in the day when it is not too warm and even if it is there are sufficient air currents generated my own running motion to counteract my increasing heat levels. But indoors that means sipping cold fluids often and frequently. Like a diligent boy scout I prepared (but not enough :-( ), I had two pints of chilled water at hand … 90 minutes of constant sipping ... Soon out of cold bullets and my body heat was rising too quickly. What I had started I could not finish.
In that moment I had to make a choice force myself to finish and suffer heat exhaustion, or call it a night and be glad that having been off the bike for so long, know that I could go for a whole two hours, if I had just been better prepared. Compared to a kick in the nuts, a bit of overheating seem like an easy thing to endure. But would I be pushing to make the finish because it would be the right to do, or because it was my ego making me doing it? Ego is a not necessarily a bad thing, if used right, (why else would the Devil love it so) but misdirected ego can be calamitous.
The next morning I rose early and finished off the rest of the two hours, and then did seven rounds of shadow boxing to get develop anaerobic fitness, an attribute I am sorely lacking in. Before I had these grandiose workout routines but would end up quitting by round 3 or 4. I was trying to achieve too much (do callisthenics in between rounds to further fatigue myself). Attempting to run, when I had barely started crawling. Sometime the greatest victory a champion can have is over one’s self.
