On Running
Written on 2024-10-06
Documenting a bunch of experiences in my leadup to the SCSM half. Raw thoughts only.
Sometimes I ask myself whether running is worth it.
That question in itself is probably wrong, because it's been established that running will always feel that it isn't worth it at some point in time, and that being disciplined and pushing through those times that I don't feel like running is what separates the good from the great and so on.
But it's easy not to buy into that, especially when I'm neither good nor great. Nor close to being good or great, but not terrible, by any standards. On the day I walked off my cross country team, my coach told me that.
Some nice flowers during my run in Innsbruck.
Routine
I try to optimise my running workouts around my schedule. And that's why running can be so solitary.
Say on any given day that I have a workout: wake up at 5am, be groggy for approx 1 min, scroll phone, take dump, measure HRV, drink water, scroll a little more phone, climb one flight of stairs, make espresso, bring gel, make drink mix, and by 30 minutes from when I wake up I'm out of the door wearing my shoes, asking myself why the hell I am doing what I'm doing. Wearing my chest strap heart rate monitor (HRM) and putting on workout clothes goes somewhere between all that.
I have a workout on tap that day, planned at the start of the week. It's part of an attempt to hit a measly 50km week in the lead up to the Standard Chartered Half Marathon happening on 1st December.
I lament my song choice as soon I hit play on my Shockz OpenSwim V1. I want the V2, because it can connect with my watch and I can switch things up a little. For now, song choices are fixed - a mix of Ari Klau's instrumentals, Christian rap and hip-hop. The tracks are played so often that I can predict the next song. But those are what gets me through the hard workouts.
As soon as I'm done with my warmup commute jog, I'm either at two places: Bishan park or Bishan stadium. It's dark and I'm probably one of the few crazies out there that early (5.50) in the morning. Sometimes, another Indian, middle-aged guy. But most days, I'm alone. A few minutes of stretching and the workout begins.
For track workouts, there is little variation: repeats of 400m, kms or (more recently) miles. 400s are rather brutal, with many repetitions, short jog recovery and the goal is really to push lactate clearance.
Strava screenshot of 400m repeats
For road workouts, they are a lot more torturous not so much because of the intensity but because of the length. Well, the tldr is that they are supposed to simulate the length of a half marathon (and the fatigue that comes with it).
After completing that workout (or not): by 6.45 I should be back home if I want to make it out of the house by 7.10 to catch the train and the subsequent shuttle bus to my camp.
On most days, I fail to do so, because of the length and intensity of the workout that causes my legs to be too jelly to run, jog, or brisk walk to the bus stop. That's why I end up taking the public bus anyway, on most days, and arriving at camp late (thanks boss for being understanding but still teasing me).
Either way, I aim to minimise time spent waiting around for folks to show up and so I run alone. I shy away from run clubs and training groups because I'd rather stick to my own schedule.
Thermodynamics
Body Battery by Garmin
I've found out certain things the hard way. Energy management has become crucial, now that I try to do everything all at once. Most days, I wake up feeling super groggy, but that's often cured by a cup of said espresso. At 10-11am I feel sleepy again, and after lunch, depending on the workload, I either power through with another cup of coffee, or take a short siesta, and probably still wake up feeling groggy.
Bad sleep hygiene is not an excuse, but I used to fall into the trap of thinking that since a hard workout was done, I could give myself a break and play some video games (PUBG mobile mainly, ew, cringe, now that I'm writing objectively about it in black and white) with my friends until a hard cut-off at 11pm. I've since tried to abstain from that and only partake in that once or twice a week.
So the next day without a workout I can afford to wake up an hour later feeling slightly more refreshed. But as the day goes by and I'm without my usual shot of espresso + completing a hard workout, I feel incredibly fuzzy by late morning. I go to sleep slightly earlier, hoping that the following day's workout would be a better one (or, if it's an easy run, that it will be executed within the correct heart rate zone.)
Status
I remember a quote that I gave in a speech years ago (and have since been jokingly teased because of it) - "If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together." The problem is when you want to go both fast and far. As quantified earlier the fast really isn't terribly fast, but it's still at a speed that not a lot of people would want to spend a lot of time running at.
I think there's very little glamour to distance running as a sport. Running influencers post strava screenshots of workouts on social media, and well, I don't. Gym-goers post videos of lifts, climbers post videos of climbs, etc. The most I go is to spend some time editing strava workout titles and descriptions, mainly for my own consumption.
I think it is a conscious choice to make it that solitary, though. I've stayed away from posting (or consuming) too much social media. There's that certain dopamine hit from seeing who saw your story or who reacted that feels too artificial and engineered.
Either way, I believe that such an experience -- or discipline, I should call it -- should be kept private, or only to communities (Strava!) that understand the pain. And it makes it easy for me to analyse my results.
Neither do I try to explain why I'm late to my coworkers in camp, nor go to lengths to talk about my workouts. Only if they ask.
Some readers (if there are any that even make it to this point) might say, "Isn't writing about your routine part of inflating your status / showing the world what you do too?" Well... yes. But there's something different between merely dumping workouts on Insta versus actually taking the time to unpack, in words, why I do what I do. So hopefully this is a piece that is sufficiently thought-provoking.
Progress
Intervals.icu fitness dashboard
I think writing such a negatively-themed piece was one of the causes of my workout failing the next day after the time of writing (today). But it also leads rather nicely to my next point, which is how progress is incredibly non-linear in running. And how sometimes months of grind don't pay off because of terrible execution on race day.
I also think that thinking too much, or posting too much about running, makes me overoptimise for it. To me, there are some signals when someone is optimising ruthlessly for something: spending tons of cash on getting fit, feeling the need to justify what you're doing vehemently or spending almost every waking moment thinking about that thing. To be clear, I don't think optimising ruthlessly on something is necessarily bad -- most of the time, it isn't. It's just that when life throws you a bunch of external circumstances that you have to handle and forces you to let go of the thing that you've been optimising ruthlessly for, it can be a hard, hard thing to do.
Still, as an amateur (or sub-amateur) athlete, getting sick sucks. Because my gains are so incremental, the significant time I spend running and adopting the 'I'm an athlete' mindset can be completely undone by even a minor sickness. A cold or flu lasting just a few days often sets my fitness back by three to four weeks, making the setback disproportionately large compared to the brief illness. Therein lies the problem: if sickness were to take away any feeling of self-worth or identity derived from working out, "run-maxxing", or even "life-maxxing" (in the case of Byran Johnson), where then would your identity lie? If we were to optimise for one goal and discard all others, how would it feel if that one goal would slip away?
Questions
Strava data piped directly to sheets, too lazy to convert Zulu to Hotel
I think there's a balance to be drawn between ambition, drive and being content with the external circumstances that life throws your way.
Every week, I would sit down for at least an hour, pull up my Strava Data Google Sheets (made a script so that I can view everything in rows), open intervals.icu on a separate window, and plan for workouts for the week ahead. Every other week, I'll head down to Red Dot Running Company (best selection of gels, but far), RunningLab or Decathlon to pick up an assortment of gels (since practising nutrition for race day is super important!) which comes at some non-trivial cost.
And on those days that my workouts go terribly and I stop mid-rep, mid-tempo, totally exhausted, I ask myself - why? Why am I spending so much time and energy on this thing when it's not going to get me anywhere (or I think it would not get me anywhere)? Is it a waste of money? It's so thankless, there's no recognition, but I do it anyway. Super irrational.
At that point, a "You're doing great!" doesn't help because I'm not. All the lessons that should've been learnt in terms of intensity control are already exhausted (pun intended). Attempts to see the workout in a positive light succeed, only temporarily, before my mind gets too preoccupied with the next task at hand to mull over the incomplete workout -- perhaps a form of escapism brought about by circumstance.
So if you ask me -- Why? Why do I continue? -- I'll tell you I don't know. I can only hazard guesses. Maybe it's a combination of factors. It's for the days that I manage to complete a tempo that I've never completed before. Or a distance that I've never ran before. Or that one time when that Indian guy at the stadium stops to check in when he sees me stop running midway despite never having said hello before. And of course because I spent money signing up for a race (but I would still continue running for fun even without one, just maybe not to this extent).
Weekend Warrior
All the above reasons are too ephemeral and inconsequential. That's why I like to keep running as a serious side hustle.
There was this one passage that I recall from Ultramarathon Man that takes any of my described plights to the next level. Ultramarathon Man was written by Dean Karnazes, known for running 350 miles in 80h44min without sleep in 2005:
"Yeah, just a little sore".
"Weekend-warrior syndrome?"
"You could say that."
My fifteen minutes of fame were yesterday's memory. Today I was Dean down the hall in the office second from left. There was glory in running, but there would never be fame and fortune. Happiness, though, cannot be measured in monetary terms. My job paid the bills; my running satisfied a deeper passion.
That's true for me, just without any of the fame or glory (😂). Neither do I necessarily agree that running always satisfies that deeper passion. Running just to hit a particular goal time can be deeply frustrating!
Finding Company
On the day I walked out of my school's stadium leaving my cross country team behind, I made a promise to myself: that I'd figure out self-coaching and bring myself back to the level of fitness that I'd once achieved while in training full-time. I'm not sure why that conviction was so strong. I don't think it was a desire to prove my coach wrong; it was more of an internal desire to see how far I could go (as an aside, I believe that setting external goals/ metrics can only take you so far). And that period of time where I could train pretty much without limit is now, during NS, outside of training school.
Recently, I've been switching things up a little. Starting from last month when I was back from travelling around Europe, I ran my long runs on Saturday with my friend. I'm surprised at how engaging in conversation while moving at a rather decent kip can be so fun and enjoyable. While I dread pulling myself out of the bed on Saturday mornings at 5.45, the prospect of having someone to pull me through the whole 90-120mins of running makes the task at hand seem a lot less daunting. Yay for the company on Saturdays!
We come up with interesting names for our workout titles.
Besides that, that's trying (daily) to put my identity in something that is fixed, unmovable and unchangeable. Knowing that running freely (and fast!) is a gift. Being able to appreciate the gift without beating myself up should be what I'm deriving joy and satisfaction from. On those days that sickness or injury hits, I can rest in knowing that my worth is not determined by my main hustle or any side ones either.
I don't think I'll be giving up running anytime soon, or at least until the race is complete. Perhaps some day I might try something else, but for now it'll be silent determination in (mainly) solitude.