Running with P-nut

He was a white chihuahua mix and he was a nervous dog. You could make him roll over and act dead like a cartoon dog just by staring at him hard enough. He was beta to our beta dog but he could love on you like no ones's business.

He had this thing where he'd walk behind you on the back of the couch and fall sideways so his back was pressed against your neck, curling into a tiny white ball of fur and warmth. He would stay there as long as you'd let him.

This is a running story though...

We were at the cemetary in Milledgeville Georgia visiting Flannery O'Conner's grave. We had all three dogs. And P-nut got loose. He tore off around that garveyard, stopping to pee on differant gravestones, looking back at us and running again.

I had never seen him run like that. He looked like one of those greyhounds racing after a rabbit, legs swung in and under, fast as lightening. It was such a shame when my wife finally stopped him. She just stood there and grimaced. Thats all it took. He stopped, looked up at her, rolled over and played dead.

Mostly P-nut was timid. He always had this whooped look on his face. You know it when you see it. You know it if you'd had it. Somewhere along the way he'd gotten beat and that never left his mind except that one day in Milledgeville.

P-nut died a few months ago. We came home one rainy night and found him curled on the floor. I hadn't paid him much mind all that week. I'd been busy. I dug his hole, tugged his ear one last time and buried him in the rain.

I'd like to remember him as that racing dog because I think he had big dreams just like I got. He just had less chance to try them out. He was mousy most days and awkward but that one time he was Emil Zapotek or whatever the dog version of fast and dangerous is. I think in his heart that's the dog he always wanted to be.

I sometimes think of all those "all or nothing" racers when I run but I end up backing off. I'm afraid to fail. I'm afraid, if I just go for it, I might come up short. P-nut saw his chance and took it. I need to step up. I need to leave it all on the trail. I need to race like my boy P-nut.

Motivational Quote #16

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.—Katherine Mansfield

This is such a big idea. You will never get what you want until you know what you've got and what you need to fix.

Its like my rush to run a marathon, for which, I want to put in a about a time of 4:30. A very modest goal. I was looking at the Twisted Ankle which is a trail marathon in some pretty rough terrain, hills, single track etc. That would be the cool race. That would be the "see how badass a runner I am" race.

I need to be honest with myself. I'm not badass. I'm losing weight which is making me stronger. I'm reading my body better. But with the time I have to train, if I want a good race time, I need to pick a race I can run easy peasy. I'm pretty sure I'm going with Scenic City.

Its a trail run, like the Twisted Ankle, which is good for my knees but its smooth and even and relatively flat. Its fast so I have half a chance of getting a decent time. It doesn't mean giving up what I want, running marathons, running crazy dangerous trail races. It means, I'll get this one under my belt and then I'll start upping the ante.

It means maybe doing the Pike's Peak Ascent but not the marathon. The Ascent will be hard enough. I need to recognize the difference between suicide and a challenge. I need to push to the impossible but have a realistic plan to get there. Its like the stunt men say, stunts are well calculated risks.

It means looking at what I have and figuring out how to get what I want in a way I can get it.

Running Tip #5

Things you need to know:

You need to know I’m running my first ½ marathon in two weeks and that in one of my weekly HIIT workouts, doing sit-ups, my back went out. Funny thing is I can run just fine with a bad back. It actually feels better to run than to walk.

The other thing you need to know is that I’m injury prone. I do face plants, roll my ankle etc all the damn time. I'm not proud of this fact. It hurts. No seriously, it really hurts. My last big race I rolled my ankle 12 times and took three face plants and one of said face plants involved snowplowing on my arms with my legs in the air about 20 yards down a hill. That night I spent an hour picking gravel out of my flesh. We call that race The Trail of Tears.

Now Saturday was the last long run before my race and I did everything right. Mostly. I got enough sleep. I had the perfect breakfast. I forgot my leggings but, like I said, I’m scrappy. Anyhow, I ran the first 12 miles brilliantly, avoided injuring myself for 12 hard ass miles but I’m now, at mile 12, I’m spent and we come up on this section of trail where a small gulley has formed in the middle of the trail and its full of rain water from the previous night. I have two choices, in my exhaustion riddled mind, either spend energy running high on the bank or just go through the water.

I’m not sure how far I got down the stream when my foot went down into a cloudy patch of water and just kept going and then it locked out. I spilled hard, a real yard sale. I think I howled. Stephanie said I was Navy SEAL tough to just pop back up and keep running but the truth was the water was freaking ice cold, really ice cold like frostbite burn your skin cold so staying down was not an option and not getting back to the car fast was also not an option. I ran my balls off.

Everything went numb eventually and I finished strong. Wait for it…

… Here’s the tip:

You’re probably thinking the tip is Don’t step into anything you can’t see the bottom of and anywhere else in the running community that would be the tip but not here. The tip is this, sometimes a bad thing like a wrenchingly painful fall can turn out to be a good thing. Don’t get me wrong. I could barely stand after we finished running. I was, in fact, miserable all day because my back hurt so much but the next day and even now my back feels great. I’m not advocating this as an alternative to physical therapy or back cracking but in this case, it worked for me.

Running Log: Feruary 15 - 21

Total Miles for the Week: 24

02/16/10 Ran 6 miles at the Greenway. I did it in reverse this time. I started at the Interstate entrance and ran to Fleischman and back. My time was the same both ways, almost exactly the same, and trip back to my car seemed harder. I think there are more subtle longer uphills in that direction. I feel like I ran strong though and I could definitely feel how much better I ran warmed up. I could have run harder but I thought I needed to hold back a little. In the end, race day will get here and I'll have what I have to do the race. These two weeks I need to focus on healing and keeping up my cardio.

02/18/10 Ran 10 miles at Forest Meadow. I was stronger than I'm used to running, not faster, just stronger. It ebbed and flwed between fast and just hanging on. It felt good and I finished fast.

02/20/10 Ran 8 miles at Mission San Luis with Stepn, Steve. Neil, Doug Mariska and Ashton. This is the place to train. Its single track with fast downhills and steep ups. The only draw back is thathe loop varies from 1.5 miles to 1.8 miles so you end up covering the same ground over and over again but its so fucking hard it won't matter. It was tough but worth it.

Thrill in the Hills 1/2 Marathon

It's week one of my taper and its proving harder than I thought.

I've commited to giving up bodyweight workouts and any non-running resistance training. That said, I just started a set of pull ups and my back already feels ache-y. Not sure if its injured or just cramping. I can't risk any of that crap. I can't just go "knock a few reps out". None means none. I can't live in a bubble and I definitely don't want to get mental about this but I think I'm grown up enough to avoid push-ups and such.

The issue is that most of my weight loss came from HIIT workouts between runs. I'm a little afraid of gaining some of that back because with HIIT dieting is a bear. I'm pretty sure I won't make my goal (150lbs) but I've dropped 10lbs in a month. I need to be happy with that. I just have to be careful to cut back my feeding on non-workout days, try and figure when to eat and how much.

Its nerve wracking.

I remembered something today about my last weight loss push and how it ended. I started thinking, Is this how I'm going to have to live? i.e. eating under calory, eating bars and oatmeal, no bacon or fired food etc It started wearing me down. I started thinking I can workout like this and eat anything and hold my weight. I didn't put on weight, I think. There was a period around the same time where I was doing heavy muscle building lifts and its possible it was muscle. It doesn't matter because I bottomed out at 165. And then, like I said, I stopped caring. I ate whatever I wanted and told myself it was alright. I wasn't getting fatter.

That's some bad thinking, huh? Its such a fucking mind game. I need to calm down. I need to relax.

 I can't have that happen again and that means changing the way I think about this. I need to like eating less. It needs to make me feel good. I've got to see a way to wanting to eat like this the rest of my life.

I have to believe.

Postscript: I was running today thinking about how to come to love this way of eating. I have always been defined by my lust. I need to redefine myself. The whole me needs to change.