When a pace chart goes into atrial fibrillation (Abebe Bikila Day International Peace Marathon race report)

It was a somewhat eerie feeling at the onset—the leg muscles doing their own thing and oblivious of, or at least out of sync with, what the mind was commanding. I was just into Mile 21, on the second “back” leg of the out-and-back course (done twice) of the Potomac Marathon in early this past September. The start and finish of the course, along the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal Towpath, was at Fletchers Cove Boathouse, and the turnaround was just outside (to the west) of I-495 (Capital Beltway).

At that point of the course, the C&O Canal was to my left and, to the right, a steep drop down to the Potomac River. What flashed through my mind at the time was my out-of-sync legs catching up too late with the mind and carrying me right off the Towpath and down into the river. The onset of leg cramps in both the quads and hamstrings occurred rather suddenly, without any intimation.

I had not planned to run Potomac this year. But, after I had to sit out both of my scheduled spring marathons, the B&A and Pocono, because of a left hamstring injury, I decided to add Potomac. It’s always run in early September, on the last weekend for qualifying for Boston the following year. Of course, with weather in the Washington, D.C. region, one’s always taking a chance trying to squeeze in an early September race.

As it turned out, the weather for the race was not too bad for temperature—low 70s for high—considering what early September could be in D.C. Of course, that's still much higher than the ideal temperature of the 40s. Plus, there was the humidity. But, at least my shoes remained dry, compared with those that splashed through Potomac 2015.

My finish time of 4:34 was way off my BQ time, even that of my new age group (4:10). Most of the time loss was in the last four to five miles, as I was trying to manage those steadily worsening cramps. Basically, every time I felt the muscles tighten, I'd slow down and walk a bit. Those bits eventually added up to a lot of minutes! The following pace chart shows pace (min/mi; decreasing downwards) plotted against time. Particularly between Miles 22.5 and 24.5, the alternating bits and short running intervals reminds one of a heart monitor screen in one of those TV ER shows, when the patient has atrial fibrillation. Well, sort of.

If I'd been even paced through the entire race and taken the same amount of time at each aid station, then the pace chart would be symmetrical around the start/mid-point/finish of the course, at Fletchers Cove Boathouse. Obviously, that was not the race I ran! My splits for the four 6.55-mile segments were 1:00, 1:02, 1:07, and 1:25. Even before the onset of leg cramps, the deterioration of my pace was already evident. The dips (walking through the aid stations) progressively got deeper and wider. As the finish line got closer, though, I did recover somewhat; there was even a very small end spurt!

So, Potomac turned out to be more an extended long run, the last one before taper for the Wineglass Marathon that I ran three weeks later. The unsatisfying feeling after crossing the finish line was somewhat mitigated by the post-race injera with some kind of delicious Ethiopian hot bean sauce!

For the purpose of qualifying for Boston, I don’t think I’ll be running Potomac any more. It’s just not optimal for BQ, for two main reasons. The first is time of year of the race. Early September means summer training and sub-optimal race weather, even in the best cases. The second is the course itself. Though I quite enjoy the scenic and essentially flat C&O Canal Towpath, the runners do have to share the narrow path with non-racers. Also, this year, because of rain prior to the race, there were still some wet patches that had to be negotiated. The narrow path also means there is, for the most part, no cheering crowds. Along with the small field of runners, which means everyone is mostly running on one’s own, the race is essentially a long Sunday long run.

But, as was the case in my two previous runs of this race (1, 2), the volunteers at the aid stations, turnaround point, and start/finish were super, all cheerfully helpful and encouraging. A big thanks to them all! As well, the race organizers did a nice job in coordinating the different start times of both the marathon and half marathon runners.

A day after Potomac, I ran--slowly--a previously scheduled, wet Howard County Police Pace 5K. I used the race as a checkout run; and I was quite happy to find all the body parts accounted for and functioning. 😊

A tale of two runs

Or, what a difference two hours earlier and 15 degrees cooler make!

Now that just a hint of fall is in the air, and that dripping hot August 5^th 19-mile run is far enough away in the rearview mirror, it seems a good time to replay it and see what changes I should make for the next time in similar conditions. The following two figures are of the run’s pacing and map, respectively, from my TomTom Spark 3 Cardio watch.

Basically, I hit the wall--at Mile 8. The entire run just felt different. Temperature at finish was 91F, with humidity still near 80. Looking back, obviously, I should have started earlier that morning--by at least couple hours. It wasn’t quite heat exhaustion during the back half of the run; but there were perhaps intimations of it. Dehydration? Probably. The usual 22 oz Nathan bottle I carry on long runs definitely wasn’t enough. And, had I not fortuitously run by a water fountain at a local park, I would have run dry and likely run into trouble. Definitely need to better plan for refills! Before the shower, the scale showed a seven-pound weight loss, which seems to be within the average of two pounds of sweat per hour of intense activity. The recovery of the lost pounds was fairly quick, as typical, within a couple days or so.

The entire run felt different, but the back half decidedly so. I was into some new, Twilight Zone-like territory. Ears felt waterlogged. Voice sounded foreign. Skin grew a layer of salt crystals. It didn’t even occur to me at the time that, being evidently a salty sweater, my body was running low in sodium.

In previous hard runs, my legs would partially recover by walking, and I’d be able to run a stretch before the next walk. This time, the legs didn't recover by walking; they continued to feel fatigued. In my mind at the time was the Potomac Marathon coming up in five weeks; so, I decided to not chance it and walk the last three miles home. Over the back nine miles, I walked about half that distance in total. Cadence (stride rate) was 142/min; usually it’s 168-174. Total time was about an hour longer than usual for 19 miles.

The body acclimates to heat, from a number of physiological adaptations, including integrated thermoregulatory, cardiovascular, fluid-electrolyte, metabolic and molecular responses, over a period of about one to two weeks. (See, e.g., Armstrong, 1998; Nielsen, 1998; Prazak, 2014; Sawka et al., 2016; and Chong and Zhu, 2017, a review.) So, if I had run the 20 miles on August 12^th in similar conditions, I probably would have done better. (August 12^th was over the same route, just a mile longer.) But, by far, the big difference between the two runs of August 5^th and 12^th was 15-degree cooler! The result was a two-minute faster average pace. (For comparison, the July 29th run in California was done in cooler and drier conditions.)

The following nomogram from Cheuvront et al. (2010) shows the effect of temperature on marathon pacing. My pacing as a function of temperature accords fairly well with the chart.

If endurance, according to Alex Hutchinson in his book, Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, is “the struggle to continue against a mounting desire to stop," then I lost that struggle on August 5^th. Perhaps, in such conditions, I should have stayed closer to home and run my usual long run route (three miles from home at its farthest).

In fact, such a struggle was the August 5^th run that, for the first time ever, I made a nine-minute Starbucks pit stop at around Mile 18 to get coffee; which greatly helped getting me through that last mile! (Btw, my TomTom watch has a nice auto-pause feature, which produces an average pace based on actual activity, not including, e.g., time in a Starbucks getting coffee.) The guy who made it to the barista just ahead of me had some kind of complicated order. With my ears "waterlogged," I only caught a few words: can you add ... caramel ..., I can't do that, but I can ... Standing right next to him, I was thinking, hey buddy can you hurry up I just want to order a tall coffee and get out of this way-too-air-conditioned place (for a sweat-soaked runner). I suppose I was fortunate, the way I must have appeared, that the police wasn’t called on me. But, then again, if my skin had a somewhat darker hue from all those summer months of running ...

He broke the marathon

From Alex Hutchinson’s article on last Sunday’s Berlin Marathon: Eliud Kipchoge didn’t just break the marathon world record; he broke the marathon. Hutchinson wrote that, during the Nike Breaking2 attempt last year at the Monza racetrack, Kipchoge had told a reporter, “The difference only is thinking. You think it’s impossible, I think it’s possible.” Though initially not convinced, Hutchinson, after Kipchoge had run that unofficial 2:00:25 world record, began rethinking. Then, after last Sunday, he now thinks one "can draw a direct line between 2:00:25 at Breaking2 and 2:01:39 in Berlin."

What happened last Sunday changed everything. Everyone is rethinking the sub-2-hour marathon.

The coordinates of reference for a marathon have changed. In this latter post, I’d asked, does Kipchoge’s 2:00:25 at Monza make it easier for him or others to better Dennis Kimetto’s then official WR of 2:02.57? Have the coordinates of reference for a sub-2-hour marathon changed sufficiently? It sure looks that way! I’d also asked, for mere mortals like myself, how to change the coordinates of reference in order to run one’s personal sub-whatever? Maybe, after last Sunday, the question should be, has Kipchoge’s stunning achievement also changed the coordinates of reference for the rest of us?

Here are some amazing stats from Kipchoge’s WR run. And this one from Twitter (@mescottdouglas): Kipchoge ran his second half in 60:33; only four Americans have run faster in an open half marathon. (2:01:39 is almost twice as fast as my PR--at least his second half is not twice as fast as my half marathon PR!) Kipchoge’s times in the following table are hard for me to even imagine. I think my new goal (after Boston) is to run ONE outdoor lap in 69 seconds. :)

Distance	Average pace
Mile	4:38.4
5K	14:24.9
1 lap outdoor track	00:69.2

Here’s a short video from Runner’s World, in which Kipchoge said, after setting the new WR, “The lesson of running is to train well, and then have full faith in your training and show the proof in the race.” Before he broke the record, Kipchoge had said, “I keep running for its beauty. You have to love running. Yes, the pain is there, but it’s part of the joy. The marathon is like life.”

Oh, how true! The marathon is the perfect metaphor for life.

Up and back in Tucson, AZ

I’d planned it to be a quick side trip, up Tumamoc Hill and back, about 1.5 miles each way, 30 minutes total. The start was at the intersection of Tumamoc Hill Road and W Anklam Road, around the midpoint of that Wednesday morning’s 12-mile run. Turnaround was just below the top of the hill where Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona maintains a student observatory. See the following maps from Google and my TomTom GPS watch.

I was attending a meeting in Tucson that week. Before each such trip, especially to a new place or, in this case, a place I’ve not been to for many years, I spend some time planning for the morning runs. I quite enjoy doing that—anticipating and visualizing new routes, new sceneries, local life.

Usually, with Google Map, I’ve a pretty good idea of the routes I’ll be running. This time, though, I somehow didn’t pay enough attention to the elevation change and, as a result, underestimated the time needed for this side trip by about 30 minutes. Added to that several more minutes for a bunch of photo-stops along the way. So, by the time I got back to the meeting hotel, showered, and went down to the meeting, I was late--and missed breakfast.

But, the views from up on Tumamoc Hill were well worth it! The run began at the hotel, just west of the University of Arizona campus. It was mid-July, so I knew it was going to be hot. The high humidity (in the morning), though, was unexpected; Tucson was in the middle of their summer monsoon season. I got going around 5 am, heading west from the hotel, mainly along W Speedway Blvd.

On W Speedway Blvd, just west of I-10

On W Speedway Blvd, near Pima Community College

On W Speedway Blvd, viewing west; beyond the mountain range in the background is Saguaro National Park.

Tumamoc Hill Rd; Steward Observatory is on the peak in the background (~center of photo). I took this after the up and back side trip.

It was a bit after 6 am, when I started up Tumamoc Hill Road, already fairly crowded with mostly hikers and a few runners. It was not the quiet ascent I’d anticipated. I slowly ran up not quite half way, covering the more or less straight segment of the road (see Google map), then stopping to take the following two photos, viewing north and south, respectively.

 

The observatory at the top of the hill is not open to the public. So, the highest point on Tumamoc Hill Road reachable by most is just below the peak.

The view, though, is still peak-view.

Viewing east; downtown Tucson in the background

Viewing ESE; Sentinel Peak Park ("A" Mountain) in the mid-ground

Viewing SE; Tucson Airport in the background somewhere

It was so gorgeous up there that the thought of just hanging around for the day did briefly cross my mind (😊), before I headed down the hill, then along W Speedway Blvd, and back to the hotel.

When is five miles uphill an endspurt?

When Scott Jurek was at the base of Mt Katahdin, Maine, nearing the end of his 2015 successful attempt at the supported FKT (fastest known time) record to traverse the Appalachian Trail (AT) end to end.

Mt Katahdin, AT's northern terminus. (Licensing info)

Jurek had begun from the AT's southern terminus on Springer Mountain in Georgia some 46 days and almost 2,200 miles earlier. As a percent of the total distance, five miles is ~0.2%. In comparison, endspurts (of typical runners, not elites) in marathons range from a mile (?) to the last quarter mile, even for those who hit the wall and were death marching it to the finish. If one waits until that last lap, the endspurt would still be almost one percent. But, of course, a one-percent endspurt of a marathon is very different from a one-percent spurt at the end of an AT FKT attempt. Jurek fought the AT (terrain, weather, bears, ...), and the AT won. He was, in his own words, broken and obliterated, with nothing left. Or at least he thought he'd dug as deep into himself as possible and come up empty. Yet, with the end in sight, five miles uphill, somehow, somewhere, he was able to tap into a reserve that he must have thought didn't exist. A reserve just beyond the limit set by the Central Governor; a reserve located just a bit closer to death.

View near the southern end of Roaring Brook Road, 2-3 miles east of Abol Bridge, where Jurek began his final leg of his FKT record, 10 miles to the base of, and then five miles up to, Mt. Katahdin (in background). (Licensing info)

Day after day, of Jurek's 46 plus days on the AT, I followed along, enthralled by the story of his journey, as chronicled in his recently published memoir, North. His wife, Jenny Jurek, the only support crew person who accompanied him through the entire distance (coordinated rendezvous at road-trail crossings), contributed a really interesting and informative aspect of the story from the crewing perspective. There was also a host of others from the ultramarathon community who came out to help (El Coyote, Horty, Ralsty, Speedgoat, ...!), over various parts of the AT. It's that kind of community. My vicarious journey was made a bit more real, thanks to Google Maps and Street View (or is it Trail View on the AT?). My journey also extended just a bit to Jurek's digging deep into himself. I could relate, albeit at a different level.

Digging deeper to run faster--what is that, exactly? In response to his wife, who's an ultrarunner herself and who'd asked why she couldn't run fast, Jurek said, "You can, but you don't like to hurt." Which is a topic that Alex Hutchinson also delved into in his new book, "Endure," a story of the physiology and psychology of athletes and the as yet unsolved mysteries of endurance and the mind-body relationship. Hutchinson defines endurance as "the struggle to continue against a mounting desire to stop." In either story, the mental aspect of running--or any endurance activity--is a dominant theme. In a slight twist to this familiar statement, Jurek wrote, in chapter 12 of his book (Day 35), "I've heard said that ultramarathons are 90 percent mental. And the other 10 percent? That's mental too. I was in the thick of that other 10 percent." He was discussing motivation--how badly does one want it.

For the first several chapters, I was reading both books simultaneously, alternating chapters, which was kind of interesting. North is a monumental case study of Endure. But, eventually, North won out. Not quite a fair competition, because North is a more naturally gripping story. I wanted to find out what happened the next day on the AT.

In yesterday's morning long run (16 miles; week 7 of 16), over the last few miles, I thought about Jurek's FKT and digging deeper. I like to think that that's what helped me to speed up towards home.

Above 30-40 miles per week

In the early weeks after restarting training, following a layoff due to injury or other reasons, the body feels out of sorts, as if its various parts are just slightly misaligned, not quite fitting in with each other. It's been more than 15 weeks since that injury to my left hamstring-glutes area, sustained during the last long run before taper for the early April B&A Trail Marathon. That race turned out to be my first DNS. My usual modified 16-week training program has a 3- instead of a 2-week taper. B&A preceded May's Pocono Marathon (also a DNS), by six weeks. This nine-week period, consisting of mostly test runs and couple of test races (previously scheduled), easily has been the longest period that I've had to mostly stayed off the roads. In the six weeks plus since Pocono, I've been able to ease myself back into normal training, currently in week 7 of the 16-week cycle for the early September Potomac Marathon. Still, my recovery from the injury has been at a frustratingly glacial pace.

What's interesting, however, was once I got back above 30-40 miles per week, all those misaligned body parts seemed to just shift into their proper places. They all fit. Running felt delightfully familiar again, with that certain rhythm. This threshold of familiarity probably varies for different people, depending on the level of training. For elites, e.g., it may be 60-70 miles per week.

The human body is fascinating.

Coordinates of reference

The last chapter of Oliver Sacks’ The River of Consciousness, published in 2017 (posthumously), is “Scotoma: Forgetting and Neglect in Science.” Merriam-Webster’s definition of scotoma is a spot in the visual field in which vision is absent or deficient. In Sacks’ chapter, scotoma involves, first of all, prematurity, i.e., an observation, insight, or discovery ahead of its time and, thus, “could not be integrated into contemporary conceptions.” But, it also involves “a loss of knowledge, a forgetting of insights that once seemed clearly established, and sometimes a regression to less perceptive explanations.” There is a lack of language to describe what is premature. What is premature does not fit into the contemporary coordinates of reference. Scotoma is common in all fields of science. Sacks gave numerous examples, including Mendel (plant genetics), McClintock (molecular biology), and Wegener (geology). Related to scotoma is the “sudden explosion of [scientific] activity, when enormous advances are made in a very short time,” somewhat like, as Sacks noted, “punctuated equilibrium” in natural evolution. As applied to running, see examples of (sort of) “punctuated equilibria.”

Another what seems to be a change in the coordinates of reference related to guns in the U.S. is signified by the recent March for Our Lives in Washington, DC and across the country. The change is illustrated by the graphic in this tweet from Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action. The top infinite loop is like the premise of Groundhog Day or, earlier, of couple stories in The Twilight Zone. The bottom escape from the loop is effected by the change in the coordinates of reference. This change has been led and sustained by the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL who had survived the shooting there on Valentine's Day. Students have historically been agents of fundamental changes. Likewise, the students from Parkland have changed the metanarrative of guns in the U.S. 

That day in March, I went down to DC a few hours before the start of the scheduled events. Sitting there in the Starbucks near 7th and D St., NW, watching people (many young, but also of all ages) stream by, I had a palpable sense that this time is different, the coordinates of reference have changed. There's movement. There's hope. There's energy--and it's not from the caffeine.

Near the Starbucks and looking down 7th St. towards Pennsylvania Ave., NW

On Pennsylvania Ave., National Gallery of Art in the background

Wendell Berry, in his 1971 “The Unforeseen Wilderness: An Essay on Kentucky’s Red River Gorge,” wrote, “… a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.” There have been many later variants of the quote, but all reference three generations, focused on the middle one. I prefer this one, “The young does not so much inherit from the old as the old borrows from the young,” which only references two generations, focused on the younger one. And, now, the young, regarding guns and many other problems of which they will bear the brunt, is calling in the stewardship loan. Whichever variant, this quote, in itself, is a change in the coordinates of reference.

Also in March (4^th) was the death of Roger Bannister. On May 6, 1954, Bannister ran the first ever sub-4-minute mile (3:59:4). For decades, this goal had been thought to be unattainable. There is an entire literature on Bannister’s achievement and its meaning, including, not surprisingly, the mental vs. physical aspects. His recent death has led to an updating of this literature. See, e.g., New York Times’ obituary. In The Power of Impossible Thinking, Wharton School’s Yoram Wind and Colin Crook has an entire chapter on Bannister as a case study, emphasizing the importance of the “mental model” with which one views the world. "What you see is what you think."

To which, Tim Noakes or Bruce Lee might add, “What you think is what you do.” Lee, in one of his letters (in Letters of the Dragon), included the poem, "Thinking," by Walter D. Wintle, which begins with “If you think you are beaten, you are;” and ends with “But sooner or later the man who wins is the one who thinks he can!”

What's really interesting is that, once Bannister ran a sub-4, many others soon followed, a few of which with new world records—within 46 days, in the case of John Landy of Australia. (The current WR 3:43:13 was set by Morocco's Hicham El Guerrouj in 1999.) Now, it could have been just timing; i.e., had Bannister not run that day, perhaps Landy would have been the first to run a sub-4. But, Bannister did run, and he did seem to have broken the mental barrier more than the physical. Bannister himself said, “It is the brain not the heart or lungs, that is the critical organ, it’s the brain.” What had changed? Not the distance, and not the running conditions or runners (at least during that same general period). What had changed was the context, the framing, the mental image: the coordinates of reference. The supposed physiological limit became a goal that someone else had already achieved. There are other factors, of course; see, e.g., these two articles by Ross Tucker (1, 2). And, running a sub-4 is still hard!

On a more quotidian level of running, there are examples of the effects of changing coordinates of reference, both internal and external (to the runner). An internal example is the use of mantras to calm the turmoil of the mind during a race. A familiar external example is the Rashomonic encounters with exiting cars from driveways or side streets. To the runner, it's "Be careful, don't get run over by the car." To the driver, it's "Be careful, don't collide with the oncoming cars." Nowhere is the runner in the driver's coordinates of reference--scotoma!

So, does Eliud Kipchoge’s 2:00.25 record, achieved in Nike's Breaking2 Project, though unofficial, make it easier for Kipchoge or others to better Dennis Kimetto’s official WR of 2:02.57? Have the coordinates of reference related to a sub-2-hour marathon changed sufficiently?

And, for mere mortals like myself, how to change the coordinates of reference to run a 3:30 or even a sub-3?😊

Why I'm a conservative ...

... when recovering from an injury, on the way back to running again.

In all my decades of running, I've been quite fortunate to be able to count the number of times I've been injured with the fingers of one hand. Injured meaning I had to stop running for more than a few days. The injuries were due to both accidents and overuse. One of those was a fall on ice on a post-snow storm run, during training for the 2014 Shamrock Marathon. It took me some two weeks to get back on the road again. The most recent injury (related to the left glutes and/or hamstring) was likely due to overuse. It was incurred this past March during the last long run before taper for the B&A Trail Marathon.

It has now been nine weeks since that March injury, over which time I've not really trained. The gradual loss in fitness has been frustratingly manifest. At times, it has driven me up the wall--literally. Here, I was bouldering at one of the Earth Treks climbing gyms, with a guest pass. I'm considering signing up for a membership. Climbing is excellent cross training for running (upper body, core, feet, toes)! Despite the frustration, though, I've been largely successful in listening to my body and

remaining a conservative. In my test runs over these weeks, I could definitely still feel the injury area as not being normal. But, it has been encouraging that those runs have not aggravated the injury; and, indeed, ever so slowly, normality has been creeping back.

In addition to the test runs, I've also run two test races (previously scheduled): Pike's Peek 10K ("Pike" as in Rockville Pike, MD) three weekends ago and Frederick Half Marathon two weekends ago. In both, as has been the case with the test runs, I still felt the tenderness of the injured area and held back and did not push. I remained a conservative. There were no post-race adverse effects. The recovery continued. My pace for the two races were 80 to 90 seconds slower than my PR paces for 10K and half (achieved at these same two races). I definitely felt more fatigued at the finish than is usual. Everything considered, however, I was generally satisfied.

More recent test runs have felt much closer to normal. But, although, at the time I decided to not run the B&A, I was cautiously hopeful that I will have recovered early enough to still run the Pocono Marathon (tomorrow!), I've reluctantly decided to skip Pocono as well, my second DNS in a row! Without having really trained for some nine weeks now, tomorrow's run would be a rather slow one; it would not be a race. More importantly, I've not done a long run since that March injury. Even at a relatively slow pace, I'm not sure how my body would respond to 26 miles. Thus, I'll remain a conservative. My registration fees for both B&A and Pocono are for good charitable causes; so, that's all good. I plan to register for both again next year.

What to do about qualifying for Boston 2019? There is one more marathon for which I'd already registered, Wineglass. But, that's at the end of September, the results of which would be for Boston 2020. To give myself still a shot at Boston 2019, I recently signed up for the Abebe Bikila Day International Peace Marathon. I had run this race along the Potomac River twice before, in 2014 and 2015. It does mean training through the Washington DC summer; the 16-week cycle begins Monday!

The human body recovery process is fascinating. As week after frustrating week passes, dark thoughts arise about not being able to run again. Then, when the body finally is ready to run again, it seems to happen rather suddenly--one moment can't, the next moment can. Regardless, as this tweet from Desi Linden, 2018 Boston Marathon winner, on getting back to training, advises: easy does it is the smart way.

Another words, be a conservative!

Not DNF but DNS

Two races do not a trend make. But, this was the second time I've done a practice run as my final long run before taper on the same course as that of the race, and, then ... things didn't go well.

Usually, such a practice run is a luxury of training for a local race. One gets to test out the course ahead of time. But, so far, for me, luxuriating has not turned out well. The first time was the Potomac Marathon 2014, which was my first and only DNF. This time was the B&A Trail Marathon on, naturally, the B&A Trail, one of those rail-to-trails, near Severna, MD. Three Sundays before the race, I ran 22 miles of the course, just before my three-week taper of a 16-week training cycle. Overall, it was a good run. I felt good. The weather was nice. I found out the course was not as flat as I'd thought for a rail-to-trail but, generally, not a difficult one. In any case, having run it, I felt mentally prepared. Pace was 40 seconds slower than my PR pace (Pocono 2016) and 28 seconds slower than my current BQ pace, which was just about what I was aiming for. I practiced hydrating and fueling on the run, at about every five miles. And, I negative split towards the end, finishing at 8:58, my PR pace, for Mile 22.

Everything seemed fine--at the time. Somewhere past Mile 13, I did start to feel a kind of soreness in my left hamstring, nothing particularly different from others in the past that I'd run through without much problem. I felt fine after the run, as I stretched a bit, before driving home. Still, given my three-week taper, I decided to be, what I'd thought at the time, super careful and take a week off and just work on the core.

As it turned out, and as was the case with that gorgeous morning run in Paris, sometimes, it's hard to know which soreness/pain to run through and which ones to trigger the alarm and stop. I ran an easy six miler the following weekend and found out the soreness was still there ... hmm. I test ran again (six miles) three days later and almost had to walk the second half home ... damn.

For the next week and a half, up to race day, I didn't run and just continued with core exercises. Still, up to the day before, when I was picking up my bib, I was debating whether to run the race. There was definitely some loss of fitness; so, it would have been a relatively slow run, just to finish--and not very satisfying. More importantly, Pocono 2018 was coming up in six weeks; it's my last race this year before the cutoff in early September for qualifying for Boston 2019. So, I reluctantly decided to not risk it and gave my timing chip back to one of the volunteers.

I did pick up my race shirt, and the quote on the back tempted me the entire way home.

So, last Sunday's B&A turned out to be not a DNF but a DNS, my first and hopefully only one. I'll definitely sign up to run it next year. But, first, Pocono. This past Monday, I did a really easy two-miler on the treadmill; no problem. On Wednesday, I went outside and ran four miles; felt good. With my hopes up and thinking perhaps eight or ten miles on Sunday, I went out yesterday (Friday) for a six miler. I couldn't get past even two miles!

There are now only five weeks until Pocono, and I'm starting to worry just a bit that I won't have time to get back my fitness--or, to even recover enough--to race it. This morning, with frustration mounting, I came across an article about Tim Don, the world record holder in the Ironman triathlon, who had suffered a broken C2 vertebra from an accident during training in October last year. Six months later, he'll be running the Boston Marathon (this Monday, April 16) with a goal time of 2 hours 50 minutes! A quote from the article: "If I'm going to recover, I'm going to bloody recover. I'm going to push the boundaries and come back as soon as I can, as best I can, and try to be even better than before. Why not?"

Indeed. Onward.