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Tempering

Tempering

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More often than not, I tend to ramble on about The Process — capitalization for emphasis, clearly — with marathon training and the inherent joy and challenge of going through it and coming out on the other side. The Process, the grind, the daily showing up when you don’t always feel like it for whatever real or perceived reason, is part of how we grow as athletes and as human beings. It’s that whole “if it were easy, everyone would be doing it” thing. 

Knowing all that, I tend to hold tight to the value of fairly low expectations for myself. I may have a very vague idea of what I could possibly do on any given day, but it’s exceedingly rare that I go into a race, a workout, or even just a plain ol’ training run with an abundance of confidence about what’s going to happen. Will I fail spectacularly? Will this all go over without a hitch? No idea either way. Won’t know unless (and until) I try. 

That’s a good enough reason, most of the time, to get me out the door to see what’s possible.

I was thinking about all this stuff recently, after my eldest’s swim meet over the weekend and after reading this article from Matt Fitzgerald about his upcoming 100k. I can’t pretend to know what must be running through Matt’s head as he attempts his longest race ever, with a lot of extenuating circumstances that hamstrung his training and his ability to have a minimal-suffering race. His attitude is awesome though — show up, be there for it, and just see how it goes — and this characteristic is one that I’ve been trying mightily to foster in my own approach to my training. 

My eldest’s meet over the weekend also got me thinking about this stuff because she raced very well for her with what I’m pretty sure were fairly non-existent expectations. Of late, she has been drawn to the 500 (500!!) freestyle and has been racing it as often as it’s available in competition; they also fairly routinely do it during practice each week, too. She had been sitting at a certain time for the past 3 or 4 attempts, plus or minus a couple seconds, and she seemed really satisfied by it and happy with the consistent effort she had been putting out. On Sunday though, she took off a solid 20 seconds from her time — 20 seconds! — and when I told her her finish time after she hit the wall (the wall is good to hit in swimming…not so much in running, I know), she was FLOORED, so happy she was nearly in tears. She probably never thought she could do that, or make that huge a jump … until she did. 

radiating joy

As her mom and as an athlete, it was such a joy to witness her realization firsthand.

It is comparably joyful to see how she has become attuned to the beauty of The Process and to watch it unfold night after night at practice and week after week at meets. 

Tempering our high-achieving standards for ourselves with a heaping dose of humble pie, and who knows what will happen? It may not be so bad.

It may, in fact, be far sweeter than we could have imagined. 

one last swim meet + one more race this year

one last swim meet + one more race this year

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After I published last week’s post, I realized that I may be coming off slightly disingenuously when I talked about my running goals or plans in 2020. To clarify: I’m registered for the Big Sur marathon (finally getting in via the lottery after several attempts!), the Mountains to Beach marathon about a month later, and my CIM deferral in December. I acknowledge that, yes, I have three marathons on my calendar — two in the first six months — and marathon training inherently lends itself to a bit of a structured training. I think I’m just in a mentally different place going into these marathons (#35-37, if I recall correctly… which sounds preposterous!) than before… or at least that’s what’s making sense today. I may jump into some local races or the PA series, but nothing else is on my calendar right now for next year. 

Anyway. Last week, I shuffled my long-right-now run (11 miles) around to midweek, during school hours, to accommodate my eldest’s final swim meet of the year up in the east bay. She did great (no DQs this time in anything) and managed to improve her 500 time by about .3 seconds, so she was pretty happy. Strangely, the meet began late on Saturday because the pool was too full — yes, apparently, that is a thing — so instead of waiting 3+ hours for a mechanic/engineer/pool person to come remedy the situation, all the coaches on the swim deck used contractor buckets to dump out the excess water (and did so in about an hour). It was bizarre … but efficient. 

so proud of her
she slayed in this one. she only has a few more months of being allowed to do 25s, so she is enjoying seeing how much she can improve.

When I originally learned that I’d be deferring CIM this year, my original back-up plan was to race the Woodside Ramble 50k this weekend. Eventually, the reality of my fall training availability made it abundantly clear that a 50k wouldn’t be in the cards for this weekend, though any of the shorter race distances (10k, half, 35k) could be feasible.

After waxing philosophic for too many weeks about it with too many people, I decided to go for it at the half this weekend. I’ve only done a trail half one other time (at a local Brazen race), I’ve only run at Huddart once (when I did the 50k back in ‘14, pregnant), and it’s pretty wet right now, so it should make for a fun and sloppy-as-hell morning with Meredith.

Absolutely nothing is on the line, nor are there any stated or secret goals, so provided I finish the race smiling, it’ll be worth my drive up the peninsula and the entry fee. 

Any end-of-year races or big/exciting/anticipatory runs for you?