Runs go like this sometimes

I've been nursing an achilles strain for ten months now, a lingering and stubborn injury which put me into a boot for much of the summer and led to my ensuing inertia and sloth which caused me to put on a prodigious amount of weight, but I'm trying to come back.  This week I went for a run, or run/walk, with my past and future running buddy at my former workplace, and we went a mile and a half before I literally crashed and burned and we walked it back in.  Runners leave no person behind, except maybe during a race and even then they'll wait for you at the finish line.

The run started off well enough, an easy and very slow lope for half a mile to the Titanic statue down on the latest new DC waterfront, stopping to smell the flowers just starting to emerge from their winter sleep along the way.  Necessary stops on my part to quell the frantic thoughts racing through my overcharged body that oh yes, on this block I was going to die.  Good company promoted good talk so we whiled away the first 12-minute mile confirming with each other how calamitous our lives had become during the past year while we watched and worried about the non-stop, frenetic assaults upon our revered democratic institutions (we're both lawyers and we notice such things) that the unthinking and unseeing right cares, knows or does naught about (except to excoriate the liberal left with dripping, consuming, venomous hatred).

Torn up streets being worked upon by crews caused us to veer down unfamiliar sidewalks and as I was glancing behind me at an idle group of young men we had just passed I tripped over a riven sidewalk panel projecting upwards a good 8 inches due to an underlaying root from an adjacent tree.  Fixing the streets?  How about fixing the sidewalks, this hazard didn't develop overnight.  I went down hard, tossing my water bottle aside in my sudden descent and slamming the action camera in my other hand into the mud of the nearby grassy strip as I landed, sprawling.  I have tripped mightily over things three times due to momentary distraction since I acquired and started carrying this small camera in my free hand 5 years ago, and as during the two times I fell before, I was fortunately unhurt other than bloody road rash on my palms, an elbow and a knee.  Obviously when I descend suddenly and fast while running, I tend to come down on one side or the other except for my outstretched, bracing hands.

So we walked it in from there after I poured water from my bottle onto my wounds to wash the mud and bits of cement grit from them.  Once I rubbed the mud off my Pentax, it operated fine, another testimonial to its claim to be "shock-proof."  (The small print in the owner's manual stated this claim was verified by the camera being dropped once from a height of four feet onto a sheet of plywood without being damaged, quite the exhaustive scientific test.  But I'll vouch for its ruggedness and longevity.)  And as if in payment for my pain, a couple of blocks later we came upon three bills lying in the street, a ten and two singles.  Nobody was about except for another group of idle young men a block away in the wrong direction so we collected the money off the street and, with no apparent owner in sight, resolved to give it away to a good cause.  Since I had spotted the abandoned or lost currency first and had suffered a fall, my running partner left up to me to choose its use.  I said I would donate it to the campaign of the chief democratic opponent (Alison Friedman) of the republican incumbent congresswoman representing Virginia congressional district ten, one over from my district, a political hack (Barbara Comstock) who votes with the faux president 97% of the time but is very exposed in her district which encompasses both the conservative farm country (and vineyards and horse country) far to the west of DC and also the liberal suburbs of McLean and parts of Fairfax county.  This was a satisfactory resolution to our acquiring a small sum of money, which clearly wasn't ours, by happenstance with no prospect of finding its owner, and I have already forwarded $12.43 to the democratic candidate, which represents one ten-thousandth of the amount of money the republican has taken in from the NRA.  My friend went back to work and I drove home, glad to have finally undertaken a baby step, with the help of my running friend, towards my return to running, the first real (sort of) run I've had since last April.

Summer's Almost Gone

The summer is over, and I haven't been running since May, although I have gotten into the District a bit and seen some places and friends.  Here is the bright summer sky reflected off the tranquil waters of the Haines Point channel across from the DC waterfront.

I recently went in for lunch with a couple of my former running buddies and we took a walk instead and went to the Ai Weiwei exhibit at the Hirshhorn Museum.  We've all fallen off the running wagon due to injuries but at least Katie, on the left, hikes miles and miles on national park trails out west where she now lives and Leah, on the right, plays ice hockey twice a week.

I went to Great Falls with a friend, and we hiked its trails and enjoyed views of the rugged falls on the upper Potomac River.  It's not the District but it is a nearby national park.

I enjoyed lunch of all the fixin's from a nearby BBQ shack with my former colleague Leah at a new waterfront park in DC near the Marina.  A running group came through and stopped to do calisthenics in the park before running off, which made us feel guilty as we ate our chicken and beans.

The twenty-sixth mile was the crucible...

My friend, work mate and running buddy Leah was in her twenty-first mile in her attempt to break four hours in the marathon at last month's MCM as we slogged our way over the Potomac on the Fourteenth Street Bridge towards Virginia.  I was running with her the last seven miles to give her support and at the top of the span, the last uphill until the nasty quarter-mile hill leading up to the Iwo Jima Statue at the race's end, I had settled into my own groove after two miles of matching her stride for stride, and it was time to get down to work and throw down five more nine-minute miles to help her try to attain her goal of 3:59, which requires a 9:09 pace.

I moved slightly ahead of her and ran nines by feel, and we steadily moved past other runners.  My head swiveled around on a stick as I looked back to see where Leah was, and she was always five yards back, doggedly following.  We turned left off the bridge and burned through the Crystal City out and back, with Leah ingesting an orange slice and drinking some water but eschewing taking any more of the energy-inducing jellied sports beans that she clutched in a bag in her right hand throughout the race; she had complained of stomach unrest but fortunately not shown its effects in her steady smooth stride.

We passed by runners that I had noticed passing by me many minutes before Leah arrived at MP 19, where I jumped in with her, but there was no sight of the four-hour pace group which I had seen pass by eight minutes ahead of her.  Perhaps she couldn't break four hours today, I thought, but she was going to be close and establish a huge PR of forty or fifty minutes.  Still, I didn't know what her actual (chip) time for the race was, as I surmised that she had started many minutes late.

Leah faltered noticeably as we ran the last mile, dropping back twenty or thirty yards a few times due to obvious mind-numbing fatigue, and I had to circle back once or twice to get closer to her in support, but she revived the last half-mile due to her pure grit, and at the bottom of the final hill, with a quarter-mile to go, I dropped away.  She was greatly encouraged and uplifted at that point by running past a circle of cheering friends and, with this last bit of a little help from her friends, Leah toughed out the last steep incline and finished at . . . 3:59:05.

On to the infamous bridge

I jumped into the MCM at MP 19 when I spotted my running buddy Leah, she of the 4:51 PR, to pace her during her last 7 miles in her quixotic quest to break 4 hours with very minimal training. That would necessitate a 9:09 pace.

As I settled into running alongside Leah, I told her I was going to sprint ahead 50 yards so that I could get in front of her far enough to stop and turn and get an action shot of her running towards me that would "take" on a digital camera, and since she'd just run 19 miles, she shouldn't speed up to follow me.  She nodded in agreement and I ran ahead and turned, but as I brought my camera up she was still practically right behind me.  I got the shot but I thought to myself that she appeared fresh enough after 19 miles to be able to do a short burst of speed work, and I wondered just what her possibilities were for a 3:59 marathon.

In any case, I now started running alongside her and we conversed for two miles, and she discoursed readily enough and didn't seem either excessively fatigued or particularly out of breath.  We ran at what I thought were 9-minute miles and she kept up with me well enough, with me continuously going literally from side to side of the course to find a space to dart through clumps of runners, what I call sideways running on crowded courses, which seemed odd to be necessary at such a far distance from the start line.

The MCM is a huge race, with many scores of thousands of runners, but to still be sideways running twenty miles into a race suggested that for whatever reason, Leah was among the slowpokes of the race, because with the oddball exception of solitary runners blazing by us occasionally at a fast pace, we were steadily moving up amongst the racers and we steadily started passing runners I recognized as having passed by me while I waited for Leah before she came by.  We turned left at 14th Street and started over the long bridge over the Potomac, which represented a major uphill for the weary runners in their twentieth mile as the Pentagon on the Virginia shore comes into sight off to the right.  I now assumed a path breaking spot five yards in front of Leah and she doggedly followed wherever I went as we worked our way through runners at about a nine-minute pace, with me wondering how close she actually was to the magic four hour mark, knowing as I did that the four-hour pace group was still several minutes ahead of us.

Seven More Miles.

Early on the morning of the Marine Corps Marathon, I lay in bed figuring out what time my running buddy Leah might be passing by milepost 19 if everything went just right for her in her quest to break four hours.  That requires a 9:09 pace so I figured that nineteen 8:30 miles, if she passed the start line right when the race started at 8 a.m., would have her running by Seventh Street on Jefferson Avenue in the District on the Mall at the earliest at about 10:42 a.m.

At 10:35 that morning I was in running clothes at the agreed upon spot on the Mall at the nineteenth mile marker of the race, anxiously scanning the faces of an endless stream of runners going by.  It's hard to pick out an individual runner in such conditions because you can't stand in the roadway and let them stream around you, you have to pick one curb or the other and watch the entire street from the side.

The four hour pace group went by, a little clump of about thirty runners following two runners holding up signs saying 4:00.  No Leah, and as the minutes passed, I began to worry that I'd missed her.

It had been raining earlier but it was now dry and the day was heating up, with the temperature climbing through the fifties and the humidity starting to rise.  I discarded a cotton t-shirt I'd been wearing to keep warm while I waited but I was still overdressed with a long sleeve running shirt and a light vest.

About eight minutes after the four hour pace group went by I spotted Leah, running steadily at a good pace, by herself amongst a horde of runners.  She looked good for someone who had just run nineteen miles, but then she still had seven miles to go.

I jumped into the race and fell in beside her.  For me it was showtime, because for weeks at noon I'd been practicing running six-milers at what I perceived to be a nine-minute per mile pace.

I had practiced running fifty-four minute six-milers diligently because I sure didn't want to let Leah down and falter as the miles rolled by at a nine-minute pace and perhaps have to drop out earlier than at the last quarter-mile-to-go spot at the base of the last hill rising to the MCM finish line at the Iwo Jima statue in Arlington.  I lied a little to Leah right off the bat by telling her that the four-hour pace group was only about four minutes ahead of her, but she seemed completely uninterested in that and we didn't discuss it further.

I didn't want to discourage her by making it seem like the four-hour group was too far ahead to catch but she knew something that I didn't, that because of the crush of people at the start, she didn't even pass the start line until twenty minutes into the race.  And Leah knows that the steady pace wins the race.

Leading up to the MCM.

The build up:  My running buddy Leah, she of the 4:51 marathon PR, wanted to break four hours at this year's MCM.  With eight weeks of training.

But do not believe that Leah cannot do what she sets out to do.  For long runs during those weeks I think she ran a 14, a 16, an 18, a 20 and a 14, and then she pretty much took the last three weeks off.

Resting her legs, she said, which indeed does have value when near a marathon.  She did run a six-miler with me early in the week leading up to it and I ran it hard, because I had been practicing my six-milers for weeks leading up to me jumping in with her during the last six miles of the marathon to help her out.

She had no problem keeping up, I was the one who had a problem keeping up with her.  We ran a slow three miler later in the week, and I told her to do a couple of fast miles on Friday and that I'd see her at MP 19 on Sunday.

She wanted to break 4 hours, how?

A year ago my running buddy Leah had commanded me to run the last 6 miles of her 2015 Marine Corps Marathon ("MCM") with her, which I forgot about till she reminded me of her demand sometime earlier this fall.  I had forgotten about it because she really hadn't been training for a marathon, she only started to train seriously for it about eight weeks out.

She seemed to think she could go from a 4:51 marathon PR to a 3:59 marathon merely by wishing it.  But let me tell you something about Leah, she's incredible.

She's also fast, faster than me now, and steady too.  I taught her to crave hills on runs, and now she regularly smokes me on any uphill we find and take.

Of course I hate being showed up by a person I have been mentoring in running, but she is a determined, no-nonsense runner and she once told me, in the middle of last year's HM when she coldly went on ahead of me mid-race to finish four minutes ahead after we had supported each other for the entire first half, "I'm in it to win it."  I knew last month that she was thinking she could do a 3:59 marathon with inadequate training, and if she asked me to jump in and run with her to shepherd her home those last 6 miles at this year's MCM, well, I wasn't going to be the person who let her down and caused her to do a 4:01!

Or better yet, put it in a bottle for me.

My running buddy Leah had set her goal at a sub-4-hour marathon, which would be besting her PR by, oh, about 52 minutes.  All right then!

Twelve weeks before the event, the MCM, she wanted to do an 8-mile run at noontime on the Mall as she started to ramp up for it.  We couldn't finish the run and had to walk much of the seventh mile.  (Leah training for the MCM.)

This didn't bode to well for running a marathon in eleven weeks with plans to smash your PR by increasing your previous-best marathon pace by over 2 minutes per mile, but she did have some medical issues which were cleared up through the power of Western medical magic although she lost another couple of weeks of training while her RX took effect.  I want a bottle of those pills.

We still ran at work, our normal six miles, and she reported her weekend long runs to me, sometimes doing them with her husband who is faster than her.  Still, I was concerned about her ability to even finish the race without crashing and burning as her weekend long runs as the race approached went something like this towards the end--14 miles; 16 miles; 18 miles; 20 miles; 14 miles; 10 miles; race weekend.  (Leah at her pre-race dinner party at her house, an event for runners only and which doubled as her law school reunion.)

 

   

The Blood Draw Deferred.

You might know that runners are obsessive. Perhaps you know that I donated 100 whole units of blood over thirty years and then, once I hit the century mark, I started in on donating blood products. Lately, every time I become available to donate, I drive out to the INOVA donation center and give.

Two weeks ago my next blood donation was due, but my running buddy Leah, who was trying to break four hours in the marathon, had asked me to run the last 7 miles of the Marine Corps Marathon with her the very next week. I wanted to donate blood on schedule, and I thought I could maintain the 9:09 pace necessary to break four hours, but I didn't want to let her down by hitting the wall because of depleted red blood cells. For a week after a donation I can often feel fatigue or a lack of energy during the difficult part of a run, whether doing a fast pace, during the fifth mile or on a long hill.

Leah's marathon PR was 4:51 so nobody thought she could throw down a 3:59, except for her. As for myself, I thought it was possible but unlikely, although I thought for sure she could achieve a huge PR. Last year she ran a 1:50 half-marathon with less-than-optimal training, lowering her PR at that distance by over 25 minutes.

I would do anything for Leah because she is my friend and one of the wisest people I know, and I seek out her counsel when I have an intractable problem. She has been making tremendous strides the last two years as a runner and has surpassed wherever I am, although we still run together. Soon I'll tell you how she did, with minimal training, but suffice to say that I'm glad I didn't donate as soon I could have, or falter in the steady, unchanging pace when I jumped in to accompany her for the last seven miles.

She Broke Two Hours.

My running buddy Leah, a co-worker and friend, runs at noon with me two or three times a week.  We both came back to running from long layoffs due to injuries in 2011 and have worked diligently since then to get back into shape and maintain it.

I was always faster than her, by a lot.  Before my layoff, where I put on a lot of weight, Leah and I wouldn't run together except on certain occasions like, say, an evening Holiday Season Festive Lights run from work.

That was, Back Then.  Now she's faster than me and makes me work to be able to even hang with her on our noontime runs.

I saw this coming while we were training for the Navy-Air Force Half Marathon in mid-September last year and suddenly I was seeing nothing but the back of her on hills and I couldn't catch up, and on the flats too unless I made a conscientious effort to get even with her and stay there.  She posted a 1:50:59 at that race, a huge PR of over 20 minutes, and I came in at 1:54:53, my second slowest half marathon.