What you fear most is an injury – a sprain or worse – that will sideline you for weeks. You lurch to the side, almost wipe out completely, then regain your balance and hobble for two or three steps. And then it becomes clear that the pain is passing and no major damage has been done.
For some reason, this seemed to happen to me about four times as often as to my two running partners. They were both almost as good as our four-legged companion at navigating the terrain.
After it happened a few times, it became harder to stay relaxed; unfortunately, that apprehension can make it more likely to happen again. If you’re tense, you don’t react as fluidly. When it happens a few times in the space of a few hundred metres, it can become very frustrating.
But that didn’t overshadow the benefits. Here I am, I thought, a few minutes and an eternity from my home, drawing in clean air and working up a comfortable sweat, and with good company.
After a while, as on any long run, the conversation gave way to a comfortable silence. The sun was peeking through the trees as it rose over the hills, illuminating the wet terrain. The leaves beneath our feet changed from a mixture of yellow, green and brown to a brighter combination of reds and purples. It was as peaceful as anything involving exertion can be. A rhythm settled in and there was only the gentle sound of feet on leaves, the occasional twig breaking.
Until I disturbed the calm by stumbling once more.
Faster, harder
iRun to challenge my perceived limitations Cassandra Williams, Ontario
When I ran my first marathon, I went deliberately slowly. I was less concerned about finishing time than finishing at all. And I knew that if I fed any hint of a time goal to my compulsive, competitive personality, I would risk going too fast.
So I avoided the temptation of aiming for a sub-four-hour finish, trained with a 4:15 pace group and finished in about 4:08.
That gave me an obvious goal for my next marathon, which I planned to do the following spring: to break four hours. But in between, I decided to run a fall half-marathon and use it as a test of whether I had the capacity to go a bit faster.
I’d only run one half-marathon before. Using the same principle of avoiding a time goal, I finished in about 2:03. So for this next test, I figured anything under two hours would be an improvement. I joined the 1:50 pace group at a clinic and started working towards a specific finishing time for the first time in my life.
I figured if I trained for 1:50, I would have a bit of room to spare. Even if things didn’t go well, I could still break two hours.
At this point in my life, one of the things I liked about running was that I wasn’t very good at it. It’s rewarding to find out that you excel at something, and it’s fun and enriching to be a leader and carry some responsibility. But I discovered one of the reasons I liked running, at least at first, was because I didn’t feel any pressure to be the best or run at the front of the pack.
I run my own business. On family trips, I’m usually both the driver and the navigator. I’m a little competitive, so I feel the urge to win whether I’m at work, participating in a recreational sport or even playing board games with kids. I had a pretty good winning streak going in Horse-opoly before my wife pointed out that it might not be healthy for my step-daughter to lose every game.
But in my first marathon clinic, I was happy to fall in behind other more experienced runners during training runs. I was glad to be a follower and not a leader. There’s a lot less pressure in the middle of the pack.
As I was training for this half-marathon in particular, I felt especially happy to fall in line behind other runners. My father’s health was deteriorating, and I found running my only diversion from confronting the fact that he would soon be gone.
So when they asked for volunteers to lead the 1:50 pace group, I started looking at my feet. Unfortunately, the store manager was a friend, and when no one else put up a hand, he singled me out.
I told Jen, the clinic leader, that it felt wrong to be leading a pace group at a speed I had never run before. She reassured me that I would be fine. Besides, there was no one else to do it. I wasn’t even sure I could break two hours in a half-marathon and now I was leading the pace group that was supposed to go ten minutes faster than that.
I have a hard time saying no, so for the next few months, I led a small group of runners on their weekly long run. It went better than I expected. In fact, one day one of them gently complained that we were going too fast. Jen just happened to be nearby so she asked, “Still worried you can’t run fast enough?”
Maybe it was because after slogging through the winter training for a marathon, this time we were training during the summer for a fall event. Maybe it’s because I was a group leader and had no choice but to talk to the other runners. Either way, I discovered that I was enjoying the social aspect of the clinic a lot more. I got to know several of the runners and our runs together became something I looked forward to every week. My life consisted of going to work, visiting my father at his hospice and going for a run.
About ten days before the race, my father died. After the funeral, I decided there was no reason for me not to run the race I’d been training for. My aunt, who travelled from England for the funeral, offered to come out and cheer me on.
I told myself I would be very happy with anything between 1:50 and 1:55 and certainly wouldn’t be disappointed as long as I finished under two hours. But to my surprise, I managed to sustain a steady pace and finished in just over 1:44, much faster than I ever expected. Jen was right to believe I could go faster than I thought I could.
Not surprisingly, I liked the feeling of hitting a time goal and exceeding my expectations. It’s good to aim low to avoid the risk of disappointment. And there’s nothing wrong with trying not to put too much pressure on your running, especially if you’ve got other pressures in life.
But you also shouldn’t avoid the chance to live up to your potential. I’m glad I was pushed into running harder. It gave me the chance to surprise myself and the incentive to try to go even faster in the future.
The Beer Mile
iRun for beer Daryll Smith, Ontario
Canadian runners are not the favourites to win the Olympic marathon. No Canadian has won the Boston Marathon in a quarter of a century. And no Canadian has ever been the holder of the fastest recorded time in the mile.
But one Canadian runner has a stranglehold on the world record in another event: the Beer Mile.
What’s the Beer Mile? It’s as simple as this: A mile is roughly four laps of a standard 400-metre track. In the Beer Mile, you drink a can of beer before each lap. Four beers, four laps.
And Jim Finlayson, a two-time Canadian marathon champion, has done it faster than anyone in the world. You know the once-elusive four-minute mile? Finlayson, of Victoria, B.C., is closing in on the five-minute Beer Mile. Finlayson’s world record performance of 5:09 is more than half-a-minute faster than anyone else.
I know this for a fact: I couldn’t do one or the other in that time. Running a mile or drinking four beers would take me a lot longer than five minutes. Finlayson can do both. Not bad for a guy who stumbled upon the event only a couple of years before his world-record performance.
In 2005, Finlayson entered the Dave Smart Tribute Beer Mile, a fundraiser for a foundation named in honour of a Victoria triathlete who died at thirty-three of melanoma.
“I had no idea what to expect,” says Finlayson. “I entered for fun and I figured I would just go as hard as I could and see how it turned out.”
It turned out very well. Finlayson finished first with a time of 5:13, much faster than the world record of 5:40. But he drank his favourite beer, Guinness, which has a lower alcohol