Tuesday — Dead Air for a Podcast
Getting to FootWorks for the Tuesday/Thursday fun run is an exercise in faith these days. There might have been ten or fifteen people there when I first started, but this summer there have been plenty of nights when it was only me.
Generally I can count on Marcel, though. He lives right across the highway, after all. He showed up a few minutes before closing, and it looked to be the two of us when a figure came around the corner that I thought I recognized. I couldn’t be sure, because sometimes it can be a span of months between sightings. It was indeed Bryce. He’s a little older than Marcel but a natural runner with the form of an Olympian. Running with him guilts and inspires you to pull those shoulders back, hold your head high and keep turning those feet over. As we got going, I teased Bryce about making his semi-annual appearance to inspire the rest of us to better form. At the beginning we were joking that he only shows up every six months to show us who’s boss.
Among the three of us, I knew it would be a solid run. We’re roughly parallel in speed, though Bryce and Marcel generally have the edge. They’re much younger, their speed is better and they don’t have the joint issues and other accumulated nonsense that can make the same effort look less obvious on them. But we run as partners. Nobody gets left behind with either one of them.
My TrainingPeaks prescription that night was “Run – Easy”: 30 to 60 minutes, all Zone 2, about 90 seconds over 10K race pace, comfortable stride, conversational. This is the sort of terminology I am apparently only now learning after more than two years of running. I had assumed an easy run meant other people could talk while I listened and tried to catch my breath. I’m only just figuring out what Zone 2, tempo, and threshold actually mean — and I suspect this was at least partly Bryce and Marcel’s introduction to the vocabulary too. They seem willing enough to let me drag them through the experiment.
At first we were talking enough that I joked we should make these runs into a podcast. Somewhere around mile three, though, I pointed out that this was becoming a lot of dead air for a podcast. The heat and humidity were certainly part of it. Bryce’s heart rate was getting into the 160s at points, Marcel was in the lower 150s and mine was still in the upper 140s. I had never really cared about heart rate before this training cycle and the virtual coaching, but now I was watching it. I can generally sense when somebody is flagging even if they aren’t directly in my eyeline — when their breathing got too heavy, I would pull us back a little. I rarely breathe hard myself, mostly an occasional blow-hole exhalation when the effort spikes, but Tuesday was challenging even after we keyed it down.
Wednesday — Where the Pavement Tilts Upward
The next morning was still hot and humid, but the sun had not completely risen. I’d swapped my Thursday hill assignment forward to meet the Rickenbacker group, and a scheduling mix-up meant I ended up running most of it alone, salvaging exactly one hill with another runner near the end. There are more efficient ways to organize a group workout, but apparently none available to me.
I had jogged down toward the bridge watching my heart rate, and mounting the incline with that in mind felt almost like a relief. Tuesday had been about trying to keep things easy. On the bridge, I wasn’t trying to keep speed. I was keeping form. As the pavement tilted upward, my feet started turning over faster in smaller steps. I felt a little like Fred Flintstone driving, but there was no pounding or jarring. It was smooth, effortless and without conscious thought. It reminded me of that feeling when the air is exactly the same temperature as your skin. The exertion was there, but there was no argument with it.
At the top I took a walking interval and watched a stellar peach-colored Miami sunrise over the bay. There was a breeze up there and I could actually appreciate it. When I descended the other side, the familiar form and cadence came back into alignment. Not the braking, fraught feeling I’ve experienced in the past. The smaller, faster steps were simply more stable in both directions. Watching Bryce run flat makes beautiful form look effortless. Somewhere on that bridge it clicked that I have my own version of that feeling. Mine may just show up when the pavement tilts upward. I didn’t have to prove anything, look like anyone else or be the fastest. I just needed to feel right.
Thursday — Not Today, Jeff
Thursday was cooler, and Marcel and I both showed up in carbon shoes. He had just gotten his and was breaking them in; I decided at the last minute to try mine. They felt great and squishy, which became most of our early conversation. Marcel normally talks considerably more than I do, but he wasn’t talking so much on this particular run. He has more natural speed; I think I have more natural stamina. We’re both improving in opposite directions, and this was one of the rare times so far when we both seemed to have enough leeway to play with it. That matters. This run would not have happened the same way if I had been alone, with different people, or even with the whole FootWorks group.
Coming around the bend before the dead end, Marcel was breathing hard enough that I offered to slow down.
“No, let’s take it to the end,” he said.
Okay.
I never meant to end in a sprint. I just kept moving my feet, taking us on to the end like the boy said. But my feet were feeling their oats. A bit of mischief crept in, like the Morgan horse my running coach once compared me to. The stretch is a lot longer than it looks when you’re staring down it, and I was feeling good and a little amused, so I just kept increasing the pace by degrees to see how far we could take it. Marcel was feeling his oats too. To the end we did go, with a Kentucky Derby finish.
Marcel pulled it out at the last second and got there first, already giggling. I threw my arms out a little like a runner breaking the tape.
“Not today, Jeff. Not today.”
I have to restrain myself from reminding him that I am older than his parents and about twenty pounds heavier than him.
We hit the dead end, turned around and kept going much more slowly while we tried to catch our breath. By the time we got back to FootWorks, we were both exhausted, but there were those slight smiles of wonderment on our faces when we bumped fists.
“Good run.”
Friday — Without Trying
Good sleep does not come easily to me, which is why the next morning registered so strongly. I woke suddenly. I didn’t gradually wake or lie there wishing for more sleep. I woke, rolled over and out of bed and onto my feet, immediately into a walk. It wasn’t a conscious or willed choice. It just happened on its own and so naturally that it almost didn’t feel like my body. After three days of thinking about effort, form, pace and what “easy” was supposed to mean, the strangest part was that the change showed up most clearly when I wasn’t trying to make anything happen at all.
Three very different runs reminded me that training isn’t only about getting faster. Sometimes it’s learning what effort feels like, sometimes it’s discovering the form that fits, and sometimes it’s having enough room left to play. Philadelphia is still the destination, and I’m running it as a Parkinson’s Champion. If you’d like to support the Parkinson’s Foundation along the way, you can donate through my Philadelphia Marathon fundraising page.