Running in Stages

It’s been a long time since I used to leap out of bed at the sound of an alarm and head flying out the door, like Dagwood Bumstead, to my job in an office.

Nowadays I only use the alarm on my phone to wake me up for athletic events. The little tune it plays is an annoying way to start a day – even a race day – but it gets me up and moving. I even have a little verse that runs through my head to go with the music:

Time to rise and shine,

Get out of bed you lazy elf;

Time to toe the line,

That race won’t run itself.

On race morning I go through a predictable but real cycle of emotions that remind me somewhat of the Kübler Ross stages of grief:

4:30 a.m. – Denial. WTF? It can’t possibly be time to get up. I just closed my eyes.

5:30 a.m. – Anger. Why did I pay money to sign up for this stupid race that I’m not even properly trained for? I’m gonna have to drive for hours to get there. Line up to park. Line up to get my number. Line up to pee. Why couldn’t I just have gone for a nice run through the countryside on my own time at a decent hour? I’m 66 years old for cry-yi. I can’t fake it like I used to. Let the millennials do this.

6:30 a.m. – Bargaining. OK. If I just get through this one I will never rashly enter another race again. I will be properly trained and I will practise on the actual race course six times before the event. I will not show up in old running shoes with half a sole flapping under my left foot. I will dress properly for the weather and be neither chilled to the brisket nor baked like a potato.

7:30 a.m. – Depression. As Eeyore said: All right. We’re going. Only Don’t Blame Me if it Rains.

8:00 a.m. – Acceptance. Here I am running under the starting banner. Hundreds of feet shuffling around me. For every two feet there is one mind looking to the task ahead. Everything I have felt this morning falls away, leaving nothing but my heart, my body, and my goal. For the past three and a half hours I have been asking myself why I do this. As my legs begin to warm up and carry me across the earth, I modify Yoda’s saying: there is no why – there is only do.

Once again, for the hundredth or thousandth time since I began all this over three decades ago, I am running to surprise myself. Whether I have three, four, or eight hours of effort ahead, I’m content to let happen whatever is going to happen.

All of these emotions were in play a few weeks ago as I ran an out-and-back 26k trail event through a conservation area east of Toronto. There were last minute changes to the course as a result of construction (the distance was supposed to be 25k) and fallen trees due to extreme winds. The number of river crossings was doubled from one to two.

Despite all this, it turned out to be a great day, with good running weather and paths that were not as muddy as in some previous years. The extra water crossing proved so popular that the organizers are considering making it a permanent part of the race.

I am still running, and this always seems like a small miracle to me. What began as a dare with my sedentary, chain-smoking self to see if I could finish a 10k charity event back in 1985 has kept me challenged and fulfilled in a way that I could never have expected. In a way that, if I’m being honest, nothing else ever has.

Trotting along the forest floor about midway through the race I decided I had to add one more stage to the list of emotions:

10:00 a.m. – Gratitude.

Country Roads, Take Me Home

My annual practice of choosing a keyword to shine a light on the year ahead was delayed this time and I think I know why. It could be that 2017 – when the word was "climbing" – was the most remarkable and surprising year in recent memory.

If everything last year had gone as planned it would have been an eventful but typical year, with a major birthday, a book publication, an epic trail race in Iceland, and a hiking trip through Northern Scotland. It was the unplanned that gave the year its tang and reminded me that we are never in control of the future – at least not as much as we think we are. I sustained an injury that affected my Iceland race and nearly ended my running season. And we suddenly bought a house in the country and moved away from Toronto, a place I had called home for over 60 years.

So the idea of choosing a single word to represent what I hope my year will hold seemed a bit trite.

My life on an island in the Trent River is more different than I could ever have imagined it would be. Lifelong paradigms and templates are no longer valid. We get our water from a well. We swim in the river. My front yard is twice as wide and ten times longer than the one I left back in the city. Internet download speed is not always reliable and Netflix reception can be infuriating. There are stars in the sky. I often wonder why it took me so long to get here.

And I can run for hours on back country roads and see a maximum of half a dozen people the whole time. Although I had a decent path near my Toronto home, I now enjoy the freedom from having to dodge bicycles, off-leash dogs, and belligerently trespassing e-bikes. This itself is a reason to get out my door each morning. The routes are many and varied; it is flat on the island but hilly just across the bridge. There are trails, including the Trans-Canada Trail, which runs through our town. And when I get home, I jump in the river to cool off. (I’m talking summer here of course. At the moment the spring runoff owns the river.)

So I will run a lot this year and hopefully be more sure-footed than I was last year. My first event will be Around the Bay, in Hamilton Ontario. This year however I am not doing the full 30k, but rather the two-person relay with my son. I’m doing the first leg and I have been working on increasing my speed so that he is not the last one waiting for his partner to appear. So far I have improved my pace to somewhere near where it was ten years ago.

Following the release of my book last year, I find myself at a bit of a crossroads where my writing is concerned. There are many things I would like to try, and I need to remind myself that no one is telling me I can’t. (I figure I can get get some good work done on my novel while I'm waiting for Grace and Frankie to load on Netflix.) The signs at my crossroads point to many paths, and I am not going to limit myself to just one.

I spend a lot of time on the highway because I still travel back to what my friends call “civilization” once a week. When I do, I drive to the outskirts and take the train and then the subway. This takes longer but saves me the stress of trying to drive in gridlocked traffic – one of the reasons I left the city. Multiple routes also add to the adventure of travelling.

Because of all the above, the word I have alighted on for 2018 is “pathways.” Whatever happens in the coming year, I have a feeling it will involve being on the way to somewhere: a town, a lake, or a finish line. There will be paths I plan to take and paths that appear out of the forest, beckoning me or challenging me.

About Time

In you, my mind, do I measure time.

St. Augustine

Four laps of 12.5 kilometres each make up the Run for the Toad 50K race course. In the three years I have run this event, each lap has looked somehow different to me each time around, so beautiful is the setting.

Like many forest-based trail races, there is a sense of being removed from time and space. Despite the colourful signs marking each kilometre and the thoughtfully placed aid stations, this course has a labyrinthine layout that seems designed to turn you around and around so that you are never really sure where you are. But if you are running trails, knowing where you are is secondary to the experience of moving yourself along the quiet paths. Of listening to the whispering of trees. Of asking your body to carry you, and to feel it respond.

Runners doing the 50K are allowed to leave gear bags at the start/finish so you can drop or add clothes each time around – perfect for a chilly start or a rainy day – and you do not have to carry all your nutrition with you.

This year I turned 65, and maybe because of this milestone I have been aware of time passing more than before. Sometimes I have even felt my age, a new experience for me. Partly because of my injuries last spring, the Toad was my chance to get at least one long race done in 2017.

And so I presented myself at the starting line on a bright cool fall morning, ready to run.

The paths in the Pinehurst Lake Conservation Area are unfailingly lovely. There are the expected tree roots – not too many – and lots of rolling terrain, but no long killer hills. There is one short steep climb near the end of each lap; by the last time around it is an old friend.

I was quite enjoying my day when at the end of the second lap I overheard two runners talking about a cut-off time. This was news to me; I had no idea there was a time limit in this race. I had never seen anything on the website; maybe it had been announced at the start. (Note to race organizers: no one ever listens to what the announcer is saying at the starting line).

I asked a volunteer about it and she seemed to think that, yes, there was a seven-hour cut-off. Last year I had finished under that time anyway, so if there was a limit it hadn’t affected me.

At that point I became a bit concerned. I had been ambling along quite happily with no thought of a particular finishing time. Seven hours should be enough time for most people to run 50 kilometres. But I am a slow runner to start with, and this year I had intended to do four nice leisurely laps of the course, playing the senior citizen card and finishing when I felt like it.  

All of a sudden, my plans acquired a new dimension: time. Could I make the cut-off?

Love them or hate them. 

Cut-off times are a feature of many races, for different reasons, mostly valid. After all, the event has to end sometime (and the volunteers have to go home). The most draconian cut-off I know of is at the Comrades Marathon in South Africa, where an official will physically bar a runner from crossing the finish immediately after the final gun has sounded, even if that runner is two feet from the line.

Whether there was a valid time limit in place at Run for the Toad or not, I decided I had better get moving. This turned out to be a great exercise in pacing and pure willpower. I didn’t exactly set fire to the pine needles on the path, but I worked a bit harder and managed to keep such a steady pace that, remarkably, my fourth lap was an even split with my third. On a normal day I would have slowed toward the end as I stiffened up and began to feel lazy.

Whether you are an elite runner or a slowpoke like me, going for a personal best or just trying to get yourself to the finish, there are going to be some physical consequences involved in running 50 kilometres, probably some discomfort. You will get worn out and your muscles will protest the effort. I felt all those things, but the time limit – real or imagined – motivated me to put them aside and push myself just a little harder. 

I never did find out if any time restriction was in effect or if it was all in my head. As it was, I managed to knock a few minutes off last year’s time, so it was a non-issue. The timing system seemed to keep registering runners up to the eight-hour mark.

In the end, as I ran through the woods on my final lap, the ticking clock ceased to matter; only the extra effort did. My negotiation was no longer with time; it was between my mind and my body.

Time as an abstract does not exist; its only significance lies in what we do with it. After all, isn’t being a runner simply the chance to ask something more of ourselves today than we did yesterday? And isn’t that what makes it timeless?