Just Keep Running: 2:59 and Beyond

I love to run and I love to write. And I love to write about running.


So as anyone who has had the misfortune (I mean privilege) of reading one of my long e-mails or online posts before knows, this blog is probably way overdue. It hasn't existed until now I suppose because I've been a little hesitant to throw myself out there for the world to read my thoughts---since I'm far from an elite or even great runner and my life story isn't that captivating either I've wondered why someone would want to read a blog where I chronicle my personal running thoughts and experiences. But I've decided to start this blog anyway because I have found myself recently reading and becoming more and more entertained and enlightened by the blogs of other runners like myself. More importantly, like most of us, I am starting this blog for me, so that I have a place to reflect back on all my of my running thoughts and experiences which are currently dispersed throughout cyberspace in internet forums and e-mail inboxes. I plan to keep this blog mostly about running, but the rest of my life and my philosophy on the world are so intertwined with running that this inevitably will reveal much more about my life and personality than I probably realize.


Warning: I am a notorious long-winded typist, but I will try to keep things as succinct as I can in this blog. But not in this first post. I want to get most of my running history out there so I don't have to keep repeating it and reveal it in bits and pieces.


If you want a quick summary here it is: I started running at the end of high school about 10 years ago and I was overweight and slow when I started but I improved a lot. In college I ran 8-10 miles a day for about two or three years and ran a bunch of shorter New York Road Runners (NYRR) races on the weekends. Then before I graduated I started training for the 2006 New York City Marathon and got a lot faster at shorter distances, a 23:54 4-miler in April 2006 was probably the highlight, then I joined a running club, upped my mileage, and speedwork like crazy and ran the marathon in 3:12, which was a bit of a disappointing race. Several weeks later I ended up with a hip injury that while not particularly painful threatened to end my marathon and competitive running career. I tried to get back on the right running track and cross trained like a maniac to stay in shape but I didn't find an approach to my injury and training that worked for me until almost a year and a half later. I ran the New York City Marathon again in 2008 in 3:15, but was much happier with it than the 3:12 given the circumstances and my expectations. After that I was able to introduce greater frequency, total mileage, and more speed back into my running this past winter/spring, which was highlighted by a sub 57 minute 15K and a sub 61 minute 10 mile race. Unfortunately I got sick the week before my spring marathon, the New Jersey Marathon on May 3, but I still ran the best I could on that day, which was a 3:02, still good for my first Boston Qualifying time and a 10 minute PR, so of my three marathons I was still most pleased with it even though my shorter races indicated that something more like a 2:55 could have been in the cards.


Now for the long version and an explanation for the title of this blog.


"Just keep running" is my running mantra. It's what I tell myself when I'm struggling at the end of a hard or long training run or race. It also pretty well sums up how I got to where I am today in running. Finally, it is the first piece of advice that I would probably offer to any runner, new or old. Let me explain.


First, however, I need to address the second part of the blog's title, "2:59 and beyond." Though my long-stated goal for the last year has been to break 3 hours in the marathon, this 2:59 actually also refers to 2 minutes and 59 seconds, the time it took me to run my very first running race, a 800 meters, as a sophomore in high school. I like to remind myself of how far I've come since then from the overweight and out of shape kid who finished dead last in almost every race that spring. That 2 minutes and 59 seconds will always stick with me and I hope it will continue to motivate me and remind me of what hard work and the power of a "just keep running" approach can lead me to.


After the slightly embarassing first track season I "just kept running" consistently every day over the summer, not really keeping track of how far or how fast I was going but doing more and more as my body and mind could handle it. By the fall I was good enough to run with the varsity team in cross country and by the time I graduated high school a year and a half later I had dropped my 800 time down to 2:19---nothing to write home about but still a significant improvement from where I had started. More importantly I had been hooked on the sport of running for life.

For my first two or three years of college I ran six or seven days a week, usually for about 7-9 miles and my only form of speed work were one or two 4 or 5 mile NYRR races per month. I wasn't really training for anything but the fact that I "just kept running" was significant in itself and just from the consistency of it I did start to get slightly faster at the races I was running. Then I decided I wanted to run the 2006 New York City Marathon before I graduated so I started training more seriously and by the beginning of 2006 had upped my longest runs to 13-15 miles and as a result my race times at shorter distances started to improve noticeably from around a 6:30 per mile pace for 4 miles to just under 6. That summer I joined a local running club and started to train specifically for the marathon, doing speed workouts twice a week and maxing out my longest run at 24 miles and my highest mileage week at 76. In retrospect, I had jumped into things too quickly by increasing my mileage and intesnity from probably around 40 miles per week the year before with no faster running except for weekend races. As I focussed on one big goal race and tried to fast track my improvement and marathon fitness, I also got away from the idea of "just keep running," a philosophy I certainly hadn't sorted out in my mind yet at the time anyway, but which I had just been doing naturally before. When I ran a 3:12 in the marathon it was disappointing largely because my expectations were too high but moreso because I had really struggled through the entire race for some reason and just had a bad day from all the nerves and pressure I felt. Making matters worse I failed to qualify for the Boston Marathon (my backup goal) by less than a minute and a half.

And making matters much much worse I tried to jump back into heavy training too quickly afterwards and I ended up tearing the labrum in my hip and developing a stress fracture as well. Since the labrum is cartilage it basically can never heal and sugreries on it are still somewhat experimental. The good part of it is that a lot of us have tears in the cartilage and may never realize it and it is often the compensating tendons and muslces which actually end up causing much of the pain. The first doctor I saw about it told me to not run any more marathons ever. After the stress fracture healed and I went through some physical therapy I tried to carry on with my running anyway and get right back to where I was running 7 days a week, but even after taking 5 months off from running while cross training like a determined maniac to stay in shape, I was back on the sidelines about 6 months later from when I had started running again with similar hip problems. I finally found a new doctor that was much more positive about my running future and I saw a physical therapist that helped get me back on the right track. More importantly instead of trying to jump right back into training for a specific race or with a specific destination in mind (the narrow miss at a BQ had really haunted me for a year and I wanted to run a marathon and get it so badly but there was nothing I could do about it) I "just started running" again and listened to what my body could handle in terms of distance, speed, and frequency. I continued to do a lot of cross training and long slow runs when I did hit the road and made my way back to the New York City Marathon in 2008 for a 3:15 that was a million times more gratifying than the 3:12. As I look back on it, what got me through those two injury plagued years and back to the marathon was that I at first "just kept cross training" and then eventually I figured out how to "just keep running"again. My hip still got stiff now and then but it felt stronger and healthier than it had two years ago when I was hardly running at all so I decided to keep building on what I had been doing.

Finally, this past winter and spring I could tell my body was ready for some faster running again and I just started to gradually add more miles and more days on the road until I got back up to some 70 mile weeks this spring. Unlike my first serious attempt at the marathon, the only other marathon where I was really able to train how I wanted to (a luxury I didn't really have in the second one, NYC 2008) I didn't follow a set training plan but just ran miles and did tempo runs once or twice a week as I felt like it, the only real structure and set workouts I had were the tune-up races I ran and two or three long progression runs that I planned out. In the end it resulted in my most succesful string of races ever as I set PRs at every distance I attempted which included the 5K (just over 18), 5-Mile(sub 30), 15K (sub 57), 10 Mile (sub 61), and Half-Marathon (sub 1:24). I couldn't live up to the marathon time those shorter races indicated in large part because I got pretty sick the week of my race but on May 3 in the New Jersey Marathon I still ended up with a 3:02, a 10 minute PR, a Boston qualifier, and one of the smartest and relaxed races I have ever run, and far and away the best-paced and most intelligent of my marathon performances. It was also on that day that I really learned how the idea of "just keep running" really applied in a race situation. In the past I had been too reliant on shooting for a goal time or running to what my watch said, but on that day I really didn't know what to expect because of the illness and what my body would be capable of so I "just ran," basically on the principle of even effort and I kept telling myself "just run" and don't worry about what could have been or what's going on with the clock. If I had approached that race differently I think the potential to blow-up and crawl into the finish, missing another BQ in the process, would have been very likely.

So what does "just keep running" mean to me? It means to be patient and listen to my body and that the key to improvement and enjoyment in running is to be able to consistently run and do so injury-free, which in the long run will allow me to continually run further, more often, and faster (up to a certain age) if I am patient enough. There are so many approaches and plans for running, but at the end of the day that is the advice I would give to a struggling or clueless new runner and it's the same advice I would give to a more experienced and speedy veteran who may have hit a plateau or is suffering from an injury. If you are able to "just keep running" year after year it will get you much further than the alternative and sometimes when we try to get too analytical about this sport it can become counter-productive and in the process lose its joy---that is why I have addressed this in my first blog entry, so that when I am looking for guidance or am struggling from an injury or a bad race or training cycle that I will come back to this post first and remember to "just keep running" or to get myself healthy enough again so that I can do that.

That's all folks---I promise future posts will probably be shorter and in most cases a bit less serious and more entertaining to read. Happy running!