Move It Old Man - Messy Found Its Beat - 6 Weeks To Go
Messy Found Its Beat
My foot finds the brakes before the cliff, my toes grip the edge as I peer down into the abyss.
Six weeks until race day. I just finished three volume-heavy weeks. My body is irritated, and I have run out of gas right as I pull into recovery week.
This was foretold in a conversation the Friday before my long run. I told a friend how "durable" I felt, that "nothing seems to beat me down." I also knew my hubris "invited the gods to bring me to my knees." Saturday was a crisp, almost chilly October morning, perfect long-day conditions.
"Oh No!" I could hear myself narrating from inside and outside my headphones, my hopes for an easy day dashed as the gas and tire lights illuminated before completing mile 1.
I was a mess and looked for mental distractions. At mile 4, I watched a swan on the lake, framed by the rising sun, bury its head in the water and yank it back out, flapping its wings, fanning the mist just above the surface. At mile 8, I watched a dog dig in that same lake. At the end of every mile, I timed a 30-second walk, yearning for ease to return to my stride. At mile 16, I told my wife during a pit stop, "I just don't have it today, I really need to cry." At mile 18, I turned on The Radiance by Ayad Akhtar. Habit (the muscle I try to build the most) pushed me forward. I searched for the rhythm that would carry me, and it was harder than normal to find. It finally came when I was too exhausted to optimize. Messy found its beat.
On paper it still looked like a good day: better pace, better BPM management, and somehow I didn't bonk. I got another great data point out of that run: the felt experience of performance degradation over time. This hard-mined ore shows me a hopeful path to actually completing the race, riding the long tail of degradation downward after the apex of performance is reached. That's way different from my original strategy of keeping the easiest pace, consistently, for the whole race. Running experience says degradation is coming regardless of pace, possibly later if I go slower from the beginning. But if I don't bank time when performance is there, I will almost certainly miss the cutoff.
It's two days later and I'm still waiting for rest to come. The overtones from my overtonic system are too loud for this overtired baby to sleep through. Supercompensation is exacting a super cost.
I can't always quantify why something feels off. I'm listening, trying to find the consonance within the dissonance and wondering where to put my feet in this void. In a non-dual, nirvana sense, I've got that down. In the samsara realm, where things can be "known," I have more questions than answers. The unfolding feels like an unraveling. Is it possible that I am emotionally exhausted from a physical act? How do I occupy this unknown territory? Is it normal to feel down on a down week?
In the end, I got my tears between mile 27 and 28. I ran past a Prospect Park wedding where everyone was cheering as the couple kissed and were announced as newlyweds. They ran to the end of the aisle and kissed again. Overwhelmed by the ache of love, and the beauty of the struggles and joys that lie before them, I cried as I ran by another runner who'd stopped to enjoy two becoming one. My load lightened as I turned toward home.