June 10th- 8 mile run

I didn’t want to do this run today. I didn’t sleep well last night and I was tired after a days work. 

But I did it anyway. 

There were a couple of times on the track where I wanted to toss in the towel on this run. I could feel myself getting slower and my legs began to feel heavy. 

But I finished it anyway.

8 miles done.

And it was drudgery, even though weather conditions improved over the last two runs Temps were in the upper 70’s and the humidity was somewhat replaced by a nice, cool westerly breeze. I cut through the neighborhood and entered the Cedar Valley Trail by the dog park heading south towards Prairie Lakes Park.

The back half was very difficult though. My splits went into the ten and 11 minute territory. I felt like throwing in the towel. But I knew that if I did, then it would be a disaster.

The hardest part of this whole thing is going to involve training my mind. It moves about 100 miles and hour and sends conflicting thoughts. It had a debate in the middle and end of my run.

In some ways I was prepared for this. I remember listening to a Joe Rogan Podcast when the subject turned to ultra-marathoners. Someone said that my body was going to be begging me to stop and that the mind had to over come it.

The other preparatory step was to take a water bottle along. On the first four miles, I would treat myself to a drink when the interval was announced by the disembodied female voice. On the back half it became every half-mile.

But what did it for me was just after 6.5 miles when I said to myself “This is Mile 18. Or it’s Mile 23. We are so close to home and our body is going to be begging us to stop. But if you do not power through it, you will be doomed.”

Then I thought about one of the books I am currently reading, “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt” by Edmund Morris. Morris writes of a fateful conversation that Theodore Roosevelt Sr. had with his sickly child on Page 32, stuck out at me:

“‘Theodore,’ the big man said, eschewing boyish nicknames, ‘you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body, the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one’s body, but I know that you will do it.”

The senior Roosevelt knew that his son worshiped him as a quasi-god. Later, TR would refer to his father as being the greatest man he ever knew and at the same time the only one he was ever afraid of. So the father also knew that whatever he said would go in the mind of his youngster.

His mother, according to Morris, reported that the junior Roosevelt vowed to his father that “I’ll make my body.”

I kept playing that conversation over and over again in my mind and mixed in ultra-marathoner Courtney Dauwalter’s mantra of “I’m ok. This is ok.”

Eventually I made it home.

This ends Week 4 of “The Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer.” Tomorrow starts a new week of training at 3 miles.