High Five By 55

My Miami Marathon pacing experience has put me in a place I have rarely encountered since beginning running in 2016. I am completely and totally devoid of motivation to run. I'm so bummed by the entire experience that I just don't feel like heading out the door right now. This is not an uncommon experience for runners as I understand it, but it has been uncommon for me. In fact, I can't remember a single time in at least the past 5 years when I've felt this way. Sure, a day here or there where I didn't want to run crept in. Or a series of days where I wasn't super excited about it, but still mostly wanted to go. But this time is different. This time I really don't want to go run. So I'm going to just go with that for a little while...sort of. I have a dog that needs his exercise and loves running, so I'll run with him daily. But I'm not going to do any specific training, at least for a few days, perhaps even a few weeks. I'll let the funk be ...

The Miami Marathon. It's by far my favorite marathon to pace of those I have run. I love the course. I love the energy. I love the people. I just love it. And I've been looking forward to pacing at the Miami Marathon for months, almost as much as I looked forward to my own race at California International Marathon last year. But, alas, I had my worse performance as a pacer ever at the Miami Marathon yesterday. A truly shitty day. One that has me questioning marathoning (and definitely pacing) until I figure some things out. (Warning: poop content begins below. I meant "shitty day" quite literally. No photos, though.) I was set to pace the 3:20 group at the marathon. This is the fastest group I had ever paced, and had only done it once before. On that prior attempt, I missed my time slightly, as I had to make a late 24th mile emergency porta-potty pitstop and just couldn't catch up in the small amount of course left. But I had no concern about the pace for the Miam...

I seek adventure. I seek journeys. I seek experiences. A big reason I do any of this running from 5ks to mountain ultramarathons is this pursuit of adventure. And yes, a 5k can be an adventure. An internal one. But an adventure nevertheless. And in some respects, among the hardest I've tried since it's just me against myself. But mostly I'm seeking adventure in grand places, preferably with pleasant company. Though I very much do also like to spend time alone. This High Five By 55 idea is really the pursuit of the grandest adventure and journey. It's not about completing any single race. It really is about the journey that prepares me to get to that race. And that race my never happen. Who knows. The ultimate practice I want to take out of this project is remaining focused on the journey instead of any discrete step. I wrote about Bighorn doubts yesterday. That's focus on the discrete step. It's okay. I should have doubts. A mountain ultramarathon is never easy ...

I can't say why. There's no good reason for why. There's plenty of time to get ready. Yet I find myself with deep doubts and misgivings about being ready for Bighorn 100 in June. Once I'm done pacing Miami Marathon this Sunday, the training will very much focus on being ready for Bighorn 100. And I'm not racing the event, not trying to meet any time goal. I just want to go to the race, finish the race, practice being challenged and trying to remain comfortable in discomfort for a long period of time in the mountains. Yet, I'm really apprehensive. More apprehensive than I was the second time I prepared for Ouray 100, a significantly more challenging race.  Perhaps it's because I will not have run a 100 miler in nearly 2 years by the time Bighorn rolls around. Maybe it's because I'm using a lower mileage training plan, though that's also what I used for Ouray. Maybe it's because I've kind of taken a lackadaisical approach to planning for th...

Yesterday I paced at the Vero Beach Half Marathon. I do really enjoy pacing even at a smaller race like this was. A little local thing, not a huge field, but a bunch of people just trying to have a good time and see what they are capable of. And me there to help a few of them along. It was a rather cold morning for South Florida, 46 degrees at the starting gun. It made for a perfect morning to run hard, though a very chilly one to be pacing at an easy pace. I was unusually untalkative during the run, though I think that made sense. When pacing a marathon, I try to engage my group with some simple dialog. Nothing requiring more than a two or three word answer, but a little chit chat. I didn't do that yesterday. And the truth is, at half marathon pace, holding even a short conversation shouldn't be very manageable.  The course was pretty, though a bit windy with lots of twists and turns through a variety of neighborhoods. Not a course I was going to memorize ahead of time. It als...

A random thought this morning. I don't want race swag. Not a t-shirt. Not a medal. And absolutely, positively not all the other bric-a-brac that's often found in the race "swag bag."  As I type this, I have most of the race bibs from races I've participated in hanging behind me. 50 race bibs. 50ish times I've been given a shirt and a medal or buckle. And 50ish times I've gotten a bunch of other chachkies that generally went into the trash within 24 hours.  Of those 50 shirts, there might be a dozen I've worn more than once or twice and half a dozen I actual like. The rest might have gotten used to paint in or as a rag or worn once during a training run and left somewhere when it was removed as I got too hot. The medals and buckles, there's a grand total of one I give a darn about. The rest sat in a a bag for months and years until I recently hung them up in my running gear closet, where they still are largely hidden away and unseen. It all feels so...

Today I've woken up extremely sore. Mostly in the butt, but in the legs in generally. I haven't done any training that is particularly intense. However, I have layered on a bunch of new types of stress really quickly. I think this is the culprit. I had been in a pretty rhythmic training structure for several months. Easy run, hard run, easy run, hard run, rest, easy run, long run. Repeat. The body was pretty accustomed to that rhythm. But in the past few weeks I've layered on some light strength and stability work and I've added recovery yoga (which is still pretty intense for me) and a weight vest when walking the dogs and, in the past week, incline treadmill hikes. None of that which very much volume and none of it with terribly high intensity. But all of it is new to my body after months in the previous rhythm. Maybe it was all layered on too quickly. So, this morning I skipped the strength and stability workout. This evening I'll still run, but I may not do the ...

This week I'll be pacing a half marathon in Vero Beach, Florida. Next week, I'll be pacing at the Miami Marathon. I enjoy pacing very much. In many respects, I enjoy pacing much more than I enjoy racing. Whether it's formal pacing like I'll be doing the next couple weeks, or acting as a pacer to a friend or stranger at an ultramarathon; I feel great satisfaction and reward in pacing. Far more than I do in the vast majority of races I run. Oddly, I also feel stronger and better prepared when I pace than when I race. That's rarely a true statement. In just about every case I can think of, I would have been better prepared in almost any race than any pacing gig. Yet, on the day, pacing feels way easier than racing ever does. Yeah, some of this has to do with pacing generally being done at a pace that's much easier than I would race. That's true often, particularly in marathons and shorter. But not necessarily in ultramarathons. And even so, pacing feels easier....

Well, it took me all of one day to fail to write daily in this space. Damn. Well, I'm back today. And one of the themes I'm really working on right now is simply accepting everything as a practice. I'm practicing writing here daily. I have not perfected that, so I move along and continue practicing going forward. And I forgot to write yesterday because I ran during the time I have set aside to write instead. It's not a time I normally run, but I had an aerobic threshold drift test on my training plan to do and wanted to do it during a comfortable weather window. So that's what I did. I think I'm okay with putting actually running ahead of writing about running.  This was the second time I've done the aerobic threshold drift test. And the second time it did not go correctly. The idea is to run for 60 minutes (after a long 15-20 minute warm up) trying to hold a target heart rate believed to be one's approximate aerobic threshold heart rate. If done at the ...

I've done a poor job at writing in this space daily. I'm going to try to be more deliberate about it going forward, being more deliberate to just dedicate even five minutes each day to jot down a thought or two. I may click "Publish" and I might not. But just write each day and see what comes of it. I think I've been hesitant in writing because the idea of this project, while it really excited me, also has been feeling too nebulous and too long term and too ill defined. Sure, I have the goal. A goal I really want to achieve. But it's just a goal and there's a ton to fill in between now and trying to hit that goal. I also don't believe goals to be all that valuable to life. Yeah, they can offer some motivation, but they are also limiting and almost always underwhelming when achieved. It is that space in between here and this moment and actually taking a shot at the goal that's the really valuable stuff. The process. The journey. The learning. Whatev...

As I really begin to dive into this project, into this entire idea, I'm wondering what to focus on for this year. There is lots I know I have to figure out, and lots more that I don't even know I need to know and figure out. But for 2024, I think I'll keep it simple. Focus on fitness. Specifically focus on getting stronger. Both stronger as a climber and descender, and building a stronger body overall. And stronger from a muscular endurance perspective. And stronger from a recovery perspective. I think I've pretty much picked up the vast majority of the aerobic capacity my body is capable of building. Sure, there's always more, but I have a feeling I'm in that area on the diminishing returns curve where the amount of effort needed for even minor gains is so lopsided as to make it a total waste of time. So, I'll just work to maintain my current aerobic capacity with the minimal amount of work required to do so. And that will open up time to work on strength i...

One of the things I plan to be more deliberate about during these coming years of the High Five By 55 project is recovery. Nah, that's not a fair statement. I've practically avoided anything "recovery" for the past several years, anything other than not stacking hard workouts on back to back days. So let me restate that. One of the things I plan to be is accepting of and focused on during these coming years of the High Five By 55 project is recovery. One of the recovery practices I'm working on making habit is a three times per week recovery yoga session. I ran into this recovery program through Uphill Athlete and have been trying it out kind of irregularly the past couple weeks. It has been a wonderful change for me. An opportunity to slow down, to breath, to lightly stretch some things. At least in Level 1, which is all I've tried so far, there's really not much to it. Breathing, some light movement, long holds of just a few poses. And yet, it is tremend...

2023 is a wrap. And I wrapped up the year with one final race on December 31, a local 10k race that allowed me to set a personal best at the distance…mostly because my personal best was very soft since there aren’t a lot of opportunities to run 10ks around here. So I woke up, had a small breakfast, and ran the two miles from home to the Florida Atlantic University football stadium where the race would be starting. I had only ever run one 10k, years ago in preparation for my first time trying to qualify for the Boston marathon. At the time, I surprised myself by running a 40:30 time which seemed way faster than I should have expected. This time things would be very different. I just wanted to check off that under 40 minute 10k thing in an official race, though I had unofficially done so during longer races. That meant I could run a nice, controlled pace with effort, but not having to really take any risk or push too hard. And that’s really all I wanted to plan for, having run very littl...