"There's only one hard and fast rule in running: sometimes you have to run one hard and fast."








Saturday, August 28, 2010

Reasonable

After calling it quits on the racing career, I had to ask myself if there was anything I felt I left undone. There's two things that are not especially difficult that I never did: 100 miles in 24 hours and finishing the Superior 100 Mile. I could still do those (and no, I don't mean at the same time. Breaking 24 at Superior's not going to happen).

Given the trouble I have running at all, I wondered just how reasonable it would be to try the #$%&* 100 Mile distance again. Earlier in the week, I planned a long run only to quit at 8 miles. Today, I decided to see just how far I could go. The heels and achilles tendons started to ache at about 7-8 miles, but it was tolerable and, with both humidity and pollen count low, I thought I would make it to 25 or 30. I quit at 15.5 (around 2:30). The pain was there, but it wasn't getting worse and you learn to run ultras in discomfort, I just couldn't do more. I'm really out of shape.

Okay, so that's about 1/7 the way there. I'll take that.

5 comments:

Glaven Q. Heisenberg said...

I'll take that.

You'll take it and LIKE IT, BITCH!1!

Oops ... sorry! I thought this was Etienne Rapide's Maison du Douleur. Not Steve Quick's House of Running.

So what I meant to say was ...

You'll take it and LIKE IT, BITCH!1!

SteveQ said...

Dang! I learned something. I thought the Frenchfied version of Steve was Stephan (or Stephane, and with an accent over the "e", but I forget which type). "Douleur" I know not just from dolorous, but from Algernon Swinburne's poem "Dolores" (Notre Dame des Sept Douleurs).

Yeah, crazy redheaded dwarfish ENGLISH poets taught me French.

Anonymous said...

You have the speed (you could snag a sub 21 hour on a good day), toughness, and overall running knowledge to achieve these goals. The only thing holding you back is your current injuries.

If you had the patience to take a break from November-January, your injuries would likely be cleared when you started running in the late winter. You could rebuild your base in the spring with your newly acquired fresh legs, run 5k-50k races in the summer, throw in a 50 mile race or two, by September you would kick ass on a 100 miler.

However and whatever you do, the main thing is to heal your injuries - If anyone can do it, you can.

Kathleen said...

I agree with Anonymous -- take some time and actually recover and then think about some of these things.

SteveQ said...

Anonymous, there's a problem with that. I train well in winter and have (usually) one good race in the spring, before allergies take over.