Read, Run and Write

Twenty days have gone by and this is the only time that I once more got to sit and write. The holiday rush has taken its toll. My running activity has diminished to once or twice weekly but I have increased my distance to at least 10k per run. This is not to compensate for the decrease in frequency. I just realized I liked running long slow distances more than short and fast ones.

Yesterday, I once more stepped inside Fully Booked in Serendra and inhaled that delightful scent of fresh, new books that I just love as soon as my 8-year old daughter and I entered the glass door. I was holding her small hand and instructed her to take deep breaths with me. We shared a love for books and the smell was just pure bliss. I left her at the kids' section on the second floor with my 3-year-old kid and their nannies and I went to the third floor, scanning the book shelves along the way.

Just as I turned the corner, I caught sight of this hard-bound book titled "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" by Haruki Murakami. I took it out of the bookshelf and sat on the nearby single-seater black leather sofa. As I read the first few pages, I started to get excited. I suddenly felt the urge to write. Suddenly the vision of the Moleskine flashed in my mind. I hurried to the ground floor, took one Moleskine out of the rack, looked at the price, gave out a big sigh and went straight to the cashier before I get cold feet. I have tried to write in various cheap, small notebooks before but somehow never found inspiration in them. Whether it's pure marketing or some sort of spell casted by Hemingway and other great artists to this so-called legendary notebook, the moment I sat down on the sofa again, I began to write instantaneously. Before long, I have completed what looked to be a query letter for the book that I have completed the past 3 months that I have been running.

The reason why I am so hooked into running is because of my Eureka... the discovery that all these years I've always wanted to write a book. And ever since I have done that, I felt a sense of peace and contentment like no other. It's as though I have found my place in this world. I can read, run and write the whole day, the whole week or the whole year for all I care. Everything else that truly mattered in my life became more meaningful and more significant and the things that were superfluous and superficial just lost their colors because I have found what I truly love to do. Such is the sweet discovery that I made because I took the time to run.... not to lose weight, not to stay fit., nor to compete but simply to spend more time with myself and in the process discovered more of me and my Maker.

Long, Slow Distance Runs to Prayer

Now that I am comfortable running 10 kilometers, I have decided to start with my base training. My plan is to enter a half-marathon next year, perhaps on my first year anniversary into running sometime in September-October 2009. To prepare for this, the recommended training for a beginner like me is to do base training for at least 8-12 weeks, strength training for 4-8 weeks, speed training for 4-8 weeks, and peaking/tapering for 2-14 days. But I need to adjust my training depending on when the 21k event will be. For now, I will use the 2nd International Subic Marathon on October 24, 2009 as basis of my training program because there is a 21k event listed there. I will not aim for the marathon yet because experts would advise that in order to train for a marathon, you should have been running for at least a year already, which is definitely not the case for me.

For the base training this afternoon, I started with the LSD (Long, Slow Distance). This means running at a relaxed, conversational pace lasting for at least an hour to an hour and a half. The heart rate is approximately 70-78% of your maximum heart rate. How to compute for your maximum heart rate? There are many ways:

Running for Fitness gives a formula to predict for this: For men - MHR = 214 - (0.8 x age) while for women - MHR = 209 - (0.9 x age).

If you want a more accurate way of determining your own maximum heart rate, you can do it on the track or on the treadmill. You must do your warm up first and then run at an even pace, as fast as you can. Do this for three minutes then recover by jogging for two minutes and then do the fast paced three-minute run again. Your maximum heart rate is the one taken during the second three-minute run. But please don't do this latter exercise without medical clearance especially if you are overweight or have problems with high blood pressure or hypercholesterolemia.

Anyway, it was much of an effort for me not to look at my stopwatch and note my distance because this only tempts me to increase my speed. So, I decided to enjoy the music and the cool evening air. Eventually I began to relax and to meditate. Yes, I have discovered that running is actually a form of prayer for me. While your body is busy doing the motion of running, your mind and your spirit can lift itself to heaven. I always found my running time so conducive to prayer except when I am conscious about my speed especially when am preparing for an upcoming race. But now that the race I am preparing for is still months ahead of me and I am forced to do long, slow distance (LSD) runs I am able to relax and switch to prayer mode. Running does not only refresh my body, it also refreshes my soul. LSD is the one that makes a runner addicted to running. Perhaps that is the reason behind the acronym.

Running Jargons

I guess until you've really ran your first marathon you will not be able to appreciate these jargons that I will be mentioning. But it is worth reading anyhow just in case, one of these days one of your running buddies would mention it and you would not want to be left totally in the dark. These running jargons are taken from the Complete Running Manual:

1) Bail - simply put, you dropped out of the race for a variety of reasons. You bail with composure when the reason is due to injury, illness or an emergency. You bail with embarassment when it is due to oversleeping or undertraining. You bail silently when you have diarrhea in the middle of the race.

2) Bomb - use the term when you feel you are underperforming or your personal expectations are not being met.

3) Bonk - imagine a huge rock hitting your head and creating that sound "bonk". Yup, that may just be the most appropriate term when you suddenly get depleted of energy. Most likely this is caused by hypoglycemia or low blood sugar. You should have brought a banana with you if your budget is too tight for an energy bar. Lately, I've been trying to save on grocery to accomodate extra Christmas expenditures, I had to sacrifice buying my energy drinks. To prevent bonking, I make sure I have something sweet and salty to eat after I drink my plain water. They all get mixed in the stomach anyway.

4) Bus - is when you run as a group. It can offer real support and camaraderie among yourselves but can also be a cause of irritation for other runners who want to overtake your group if you are running at a leisurely pace. Hmmn, reminds me of buses along EDSA. Totally irritating when they overtake you and then suddenly swerve and block you to unload a passenger.

5) In the zone - when you are at your best performance and everything is just as how you predicted your run to be. This is opium for the runner.

6) PB - never forget this jargon... your "personal best" because even if you finished last in the race, if you finished earlier than your previous race, it is still a cause for celebration. At least this time, you were not picked up by the sweeper anymore. (That's the special vehicle assigned to pick up runners who have gone beyond the decent time and are causing undue traffic and annoyance to the other motorists). PW is personal worst. Remove that in your vocabulary. Unless your PW is your enemy's personal best. You can freely brag about it then.

7) Split/negative split. - this pertains to the time you have covered between markers in a race. When you run faster after the designated marker, then you have a negative split.

8) Ultra - not the stadium in Pasig. In the runner's lingo, this means longer than the usual marathon distance (42 km or 26 miles). If it is 80 km or 100 km, then it is an ultramarathon. It's funny that for non-runners, a marathon is being used interchangeably with the word "race" even if it was just a 100-meter sprint. When I was new to running, I thought that too. Then when I started reading about running, I soon realized how terribly ignorant I have been. So now, whenever my friends would say that I just completed a marathon when in fact, I only joined a 5-km or 10-km race, I'd gracefully correct them. But I claim it in my mind at the same time. As much as running is a very physical activity, it is even more a mental activity.

Sports Experts

I am now reading about injuries again but this time from the Complete Running Manual. I like this book because it gives detailed but simplified explanation of basic topics on running.

Did you know that there are actually many sports experts with different specialization? There's the sports physician who is what you may refer to as the "general practitioner in sports". He can refer you to the right specialist after he assesses your problem. The physiotherapists are those who specializes on muscles and bone movements involving joints and spines. They can give therapy using various modalities such as ultrasound, massage, electrotherapy and the like. Locally, they are the physical therapists. No, they are not your regular masseaus at the spa. They've earned a bachelor of science degree in physical therapy and are licensed under the professional regulations commissions. The osteopaths are also trained in the anatomy and physiology of the musculoskeletal system but their focus is on the body's self-healing capacity. So they create a state of balance by touch and pressure. I just do not know if we can categorize our local "manghihilot" under this category. What about the chiropractor? They seem to function like the osteopaths but with more focus on the limb and spine and easing fluidity of movement in these areas. The biokineticists are those who will analyze a runner's move and relate it to how it can potentially cause injury. They can prescribe a training program to correct any muscle imbalances. The posture therapist on the other hand cuts the yellow pages of a telephone directory into wedges and puts it in the shoes of the patient to balance uneven posture. Hmmn, sounds weird to me. The orthopedic surgeon is the specialist who you want to avoid as a runner because he can charge you expensively and his treatment is really invasive. Recovery from his treatment is also long. And to avoid him, you should consult the earlier specialists that I have mentioned if you think you have a minor injury that is not relieved by the usual RICE self-treatment (rest, ice, compression and elevation). Oh, before I forget, there is one more specialist that I have not mentioned. It is the podiatrist. Contrary to what my husband suggested that this is a specialist closely related to the OB-gynecologists because of how the name sounds (my eyes are rolling), the podiatrists focus on the feet and foot-related conditions such as overpronation and supination and other biomechanics which may require the use of orthotics (those special foot accessories that may be inserted in the shoes, but not the yellow classified ads used by the posture therapists). There are many podiatrists in the US but I do not know of anyone in the Philippines. Perhaps I should get a special training for this particular specialty. It's good to diversify into something which you are particularly interested in, i.e. the foot of a runner.... not that other like-sounding part.