The big hurt before the bigger hurt...

20.3 miles

3 hours 2 minutes
6:10 pm start
mid 60s, rainy

So I did it: 20 miles of pain before 26 miles of pain.

I spent the evening prior driving back from Galena with Nicki and stopped drinking coffee around 8:30 pm, switching to water for the three hour ride home. I fell asleep when we got home around midnight and got up at 8am to prep for a study group at 10. I offered to bring donuts in an effort to avoid the coffee I wanted so badly, but knew I shouldn't have. Coffee arrived with one of my classmates and managed to get into me, along with a few fistfulls of mini-donuts. A bottle of Gatorade accompanied me through it, though.

In ther early afternoon, I got to meet the newest member of team Rausch - little Parker James (not PJ) - a clear and, I now know, effective inspiration for long runs. His mom and dad are doing well. Cooing and recording poop cycles. Being parents, yet surprisingly still their cool selves. On the drive back from our visit, I started getting butterflies about the run. Would I be able to go the distance or sputter out and fail like my last big distance run? I thought it best to just dive in.

After peeing nearly clear liquid all morning, I realized I was probably peeing out a good bit of necessary minerals, so in a touch of panic, I scarfed down a large amount of potato chips for the salt. Nicki suggested that the oil might not be a great idea. I thought she was probably right, and in a counter-panic I immediately stopped. I planned my route, grabbed my super-goos (discussed in the previous post), took a few last gulps of water, put on my running costume, and started my assault on the pavement.

Starting out northbound, I ran to Bryn Mawr before a long trek southward on the lake path. I passed my home stretch turn at Montrose at the 30 minute mark on the dot after a quick pee, putting me on pace for 9-minute miles. Confidence high, I trudged on.

At the 1 hour mark, I took my first walk and my first power-goop. I avoided going into a pitch black public bathroom to pee and continued at 1:03:00 down past North Ave. beach. The twilight was superceded by heavy cloud cover, and the sky was dark.

By 1:35, I was passing by my old nemesis, Buckingham Fountain, choosing not to stop for water there for fear of it getting into my head. My pace was still strong and I felt good. I had been starting to get into grooves on long, straight stretches where the blinders engaged and the running felt totally automatic. I kept going, around the Shedd Aquarium and down the long drive to the Adler Planetarium. And as I jogged around the back side of the museum, the noise of the city was suddenly dampened and all I could see was the dark blackness of the lake spreading across the horizon. Stunningly peaceful, but I wasn't about to linger. There was work to be done.

At 2:00:00, I took in my second goo-bag walking past Grant Park. With what I hoped would be only about one more hour of running to do over what seemed like a heck of a long way home, I started up the engines again at 2:03

The rain started when I passed Navy Pier and started out along the beach at Ohio Street. It was warm, but strong and steady. Rain always motivates me when running and it was hard not to speed up with the waves lapping at the walkway a few feet to my right and the raindrops pouring down around and on top of me. WIth no one else on the path, I felt like Mr. Kickass until I stepped into a three-inch-deep puddle at a water fountain past Oak St. Beach. Wet feet brought the reality right back to me.

The rain slowed and gradually stopped, and amidst the balancing act of psyching myself up and trying to conserve energy, I realized I was getting tired. I took another three minute walk around 2:30 and braced for the home stretch. For the preceding 20 minutes, characterized by periodic tingling waves of adrenal steroids coursing through my veins, I had been trying to estimate when I would really start to need those boosts. I decided that I would need to allow myself to call up the reserves after crossing Diversey Harbor.

At Diversey I was ok, but the rain started up again at Belmont Harbor, and with a little more attitude this time. And the hurt started to really sink in then too. It was raining hard enough that I had to squint tightly to avoid and obscured view of the growing puddles on the path. My undershirt started to sag deeply as it clung to my chest, restricting my belabored movement slightly enough to throw my rhythm off. My focus was on maintaining the integrity of my stride--staying strong.

After 2 1/2 hours of running without a thought of my lungs, my breath started coming less easily and I found myself grunting and vocalizing thru it, sounding like my dad when he was frustrated trying to fix somethin in a small enough space where his hands couldn't do the work he wanted them to. I was yelling at myself to keep going.  Then in the next few steps, I'd be telling myself how Michael Jackson "Bad" I was for still running. Had there been ANYone else around, I would have attracted many a leery eye. But by the time I got to Montrose, the psychological pain was receding, as I knew I had reached the point where I could comfortably walk home without feeling too much shame and without risking passing out where no one would find me till morning. I walked another minute, then lumbered the last mile home, even giving a sprint-like effort on the last block.

When I walked in the door, Nicki smiled and congratulated me, pointing to an enormous burrito and tall glass of water which, she assured me, had my name on it. I sloughed my saoked running costume and weighed myself, noting a 6 lb. loss, and jumped in a hot shower.

After a banana, two ibuprofen, a couple glucosamine/condroitin tablets, some salted last-tomato-of-the-summer from mom's garden, and the entirety of that gigantic burrito were washed into me with a gallon or two of water, I slept the sleep of a thousand years, satisfied with my effort.

Chicago Marathon, here I come.



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the sub-eight minute mile...

6.2 miles

48 minutes
8 pm
62 degrees and "smoke" according to the forecast on weather.com

A nice nighttime run. Very fast for me. Very fast.


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Outrunning the elderly...

9.8 miles

1 hour 20 minutes
6pm 75 degrees

As I set out for a run today, I ran past an apartment building that was selling a wide variety of tropical plants on their front yard. Intrigued, I had to stop, jog back to get Nicki, and ended up with an awesome philodendron selloum, which I chose not to run with, but instead pick up after.

On the run, only 2-3 miles in, running at a steady and slow pace, I started passing a guy who was struggling. He was moving along at a decent clip, but just slow enough that I had to pass him on the path. He was older, sweating like crazy, red in the face, and panting like a dog without the wagging tongue. As I started to pass him, only going slightly faster than him, I began to realize that he was speeding up to match my pace. I could hear his footsteps behind me speed up a bit and his breathing speed up even more. This irked me. "Why, old man, would you try and keep up with someone half your age who is just starting a run, when you are clearly well into yours? Are you so proud as to risk your health to prove that you can keep up with a random other runner?" Because I didn't say this out loud, he didn't answer, and instead kept my pace. I sped up. He matched it. After 5 minutes or so of being sure this guy couldn't keep this up, I started to get wierded out: was this guy in some sort of midlife crisis mode that might inspire him to murder me if he couldn't run as fast as me? Aren't most older people homicidal? I sped up to a speed that was more appropriate for sprint training and kept it until I was confident that if I looked back, old man murder wouldn't be within striking distance with a sniper rifle.

The rest of the run went fine and I was not assassinated. Hope you enjoyed my crappy photoshop capabilities.

I know I've put this post up well after the fact, but I need to say thanks to everyone for donating. And thanks for doing it so fast. My little thermometer went up to deadly fever heights within days of a stupid email request for help. I'm stunned! I'll get to some well deserved thank you's very soon. But consider this a preliminary.

THANK YOU!!!

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Disappointment and the reality of the situation...

15.6 mi.

2 hours 16 minutes
10:30 am
low 70s

So this weekend I was supposed to get into 18 mile territory, taking me to the 2/3 mark. I was unsuccessful. My plan was to run down the lake--for the hydration benefits that route offers--all the way around Soldier Field and back. This would constitute just over 18 miles, but it was just not to be.

It all started out ok. The weather was phenomenal: cool, gently breezy, sunny. I felt good running. I felt relatively well-hydrated. I had a Clif bar for nourishment that would take me into almost 3 hours of running. I had a half leftover veggie burger a few hours before the start, as I didn't want a full belly going in.

To make a long story short, I got all the way down to Buckingham fountain on the lake trail. I could see the Field Museum, and behind it Soldier Field, and I thought, "ya know, it's gonna take another 45 minutes to run around that thing." So I pulled up, finished what was left of my Clif bar, and headed back. I wasn't overly tired, but I knew that I didn't really want to run any further. I guess I was bored, maybe just eager to get back home. So I went. And that's when the mental and physical game really began.

I haven't really had to deal with mental exhaustion since pretty early on in my training. I think it was about 7 or 8 miles (a distance that is laughably short to me now) when I was really unsure if I'd be able to run it without injury, after feeling some pain in my hip. The distance started itching at a part in my head I can't reach and psyched me out. The same thing happened on the way back. My gait felt good and the legs were tired, but not in real pain. But by the time I hit Oak Street Beach on the way back, my upper abdominals and diaphragm were starting to spasm, making breathing really hard. One of a human being's most primal urges is for the draw of breath, and we tend to panic pretty universally when we can't do this. I recognized that it was getting harder, understood the panic, and tried to put it out of my mind and keep running.

By the time I hit Irving Park on the way back, I had told myself "20 more minutes and you're home. Just run it out." I stopped at Broadway and Montrose at a light about 15 minutes later and put my hands on my knees, panting and groaning, my diaphragm unable to open my lungs enough for sufficient breath. As I leaned over, I suddenly got light-headed. I stood up immediately and got my legs going, and ran as steadily as I could till home.

After dealing with the serious dehydration and malnourishment I had just put myself through, losing about 7 pounds in water over the course of 2 hours (I weighed myself this time), the chills and some nausea mixed in with total physical and mental burnout followed.

But I was more disappointed that I hadn't gone past that stinking fountain.

I remember swimming in Buckingham Fountain after a World Cup game in '94 when I was 12 with my dad. Probably 200 Bolivians and Germans were climbing on and swimming in it. I thought it was funny, but he was adamant that this was a once in a lifetime celebratory act. No way would CPD allow people to swim in this sacred Chicago landmark en masse unless they were volatile foreign football hooligans. I'll never forget that day.

Now I'll have new view of the fountain. A more solemn one that reminds me how close to Soldier Field it is, and how I missed out on a goal that I hurt myself trying to get. Had I just spent the extra (probably) 25 minutes or so and run past the fountain, I'd have finished 18 miles. Sure, I'd be in pain, but I was already hurting pretty bad. And I don't think another 25 minutes worth of pain would've killed me. What doesn't kill you, when you're working on muscle strength and endurance, literally makes you stronger.

So, kids, the lessons learned today are as follows:
1.) Pain is transient, and must only be respected as such.
2.) I will run 18 miles if it kills me.
3.) Bathing in Buckingham Fountain is very fun, and highly recommended.


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