So I didn’t make my 5k goal…

Here is why. I am way too competitive, but it is who I am and it isn’t hurting anyone else. One of my closest work friends and staunch political adversaries walked in to work on the Monday before thanksgiving and said let’s do the Grande meal challenge at taco bell. I was strangely drawn to this ridiculous feat so I did some research to govern the rules and discovered that there is a twelve tacos for ten dollar deal going on. Challenge Accepted! T, my favorite Cadet and I were off to Taco Bell. Twenty minutes later I was on number twelve and ten minutes later I was the champion of a contest that has no winners.

On Thanksgiving I was ten paces off the leader of a small Turkey Trot for most of the first mile. But I could not hold that pace after such a feast. I still managed to stay in the top ten (of a race with about 100) but I was far away from my sub twenty goal. So what! Life is too short to care about winning a small race in Brunswick Maine to not do completely moronic things with your friends. Next year I will definitely not do the taco bell challenge and I will try to beat the leader. But I am not nor will I ever be a professional athlete so I will never be a slave to racing. I love it and it definitely has helped me through the worst times in my life but I will never rule me. Yeah running fifty milers and Half Ironman races is crazy but so is eating 12 tacos in thirty minutes. I am crazy, I always have been. That’s all I know. That’s why I joined the Airborne Infantry and even though those days are over I refuse to not use my craziness for the benefit of others.

Oh by the way if anyone wants to go head to head, game on but please select something other than Taco Bell.

New Running Gear

Over the last few weeks I have been utilizing a Veterans Administration referral to do some much overdue Physical therapy.  Sprained my left ankle in Ranger School and it has the tendency to role on the smallest of pebbles. I also lost two tris on this year’s schedule (one that I pre registered for) do to my right knee filling up with fluid do to over use. I always believed that my hamstrings were too tight and have focused all my efforts on stretching them for years but it turns out that it has always been tight IT bands. My therapist has started to isolate the injury with exercises (primarily for the ankle) and consistent attempts to get my IT band to release through her forced stretching. I am feeling sorry for her because despite her best efforts she has not got a release. But I feel so bad because it looks like she has not enjoyed doing it, but she keeps a nice disposition and a smile and goes right to the ultra sound.
To return to the subject I have discovered an awesome new product by a company called CW-X (http://cw-x.com/Default.aspx). They have developed performance tights that provide stabilization for your joints. I have previously used their calf length tights with great success but I discovered their full length expert series and I am blown away by their support. It basically raps your knee and IT band with love as well as providing support to your calf muscles. I cycles on my trainer today and verified that performance tights definitely reduce muscle fatigue. I felt tired but the customary stiffness was completely absent. I was cruising. I pushed way too hard and started to hyperventilate (which is common for me on the move but not stationary) because I did not recognize how hard I was pushing myself cardio wise. On the bike my legs always get tire before by heart, well before I discovered these tights. They rule something fierce.
Also my friend (that I have never met) Mike Erwin sent me my Team Red White and Blue race Jersey and Hat. That was the true inspiration for my ride. I slept through today’s alarm and missed army PT so I needed to work out anyway. I am excited to get out and start spreading awareness and hopefully we can raise some money to help out struggling Vets. I think I am going to run a turkey trot on Sunday just to spread some awareness. Running for this cause makes me want to get out as much as I can. You can learn more at their website and soon you can show support buy purchasing your own T-shirt (http://teamrwb.com/). New running stuff is awesome and I am stoked to be running on a good team.

It’s our turn

The Challenge

Life has become much different for me but it has been important for me to not lose who I am. I may be improving significantly on runs but it is doubtful that I will be breaking any tape at the finish line. But that does not mean I have giving up on winning. So I have taken an appraisal of my talents and developed a new course of action for victory.

I am definitely a stupid stubborn sadist when it comes to fitness

I have had the privilege of training some of Maine’s finest young leaders who have surprisingly adopted my own sense of stubborn resilience

Raising money for a worthy cause is the only real victory (http://teamrwb.com/)

If you can’t run fast then run far

So I have somehow convinced enough Cadets at the University of Maine Army ROTC to run the Pineland Farms Trail Challenge (http://www.tri-maine.com/) to compete as a team. If we can all break 10 minute mile splits we should be competitive to win the team competition. Now I run for Team Red White and Blue but for these events our team will be running for a local charity called Run for the Children. It is a scholarship for the children of fallen Maine veterans started by members of the University of Maine Army ROTC and the Maine Infantryman’s association.  Our hope is that we can raise money for our collective mileage and receive and increased sum if we win the team competition.

My interim goals are to break twenty minutes in a five Kilometer race before the end of the year and to break forty minutes on a ten kilometer run by Spring Break.

I would like to run the Sugar loaf marathon two weeks before as my last long run and my first full marathon (I was injured during this season’s races)

Goals

Today I attempted to max my first Army Physical fitness test since I was hospitalized a few years ago. I have been training ever since I was injured and I have been able to run multiple endurance races but improving speed has been nearly impossible. But for the past few weeks I have seen incredible improvement during interval training. For the last few years I have hyperventilated and generally had serious difficulty breathing when my heart rate increased. I was tested for allergies, asthma, anemia and my heart and everything was fine. The only thing that was left was panic attacks. I was having a lot of panic attacks for other reasons so it was the only logical conclusion. Keep in mind that this is an incredibly pithy explanation of over two years of frustration.
I digress…

Coming back to the point; I have finally been able to improve speed over the last two weeks and I have been extremely motivated. I knew that I wanted to take my PT test early (to free me up for a Thanksgiving Turkey Trot) and that it would be best after an Ultra Sound at Physical therapy I selected today. All of my interval splits were solid; I was running consistently under five second on my 800 splits and about seven seconds under on my 400 splits. But I had not taken into account the sit-ups that directly preceded the two mile run and I was incredibly stiff on the track today. It was much more difficult today than in my training runs. But I was not going to give up. I knew that I was not in my best form but I kept running as hard as I could. When I came in for my sixth and seventh laps I knew I was behind on my splits and it seemed impossible. I wanted to hang it up and just take it easy and get a gentleman’s ninety because this run was sucking something fierce. But I could not. I knew that I needed to run a split that was about four seconds under my first one and my pace had degenerated about twenty seconds a lap. I was tired and have some difficulty breathing. I was miserable, but I went faster and faster all the way to the finish.  I improved my first split indeed, but only by two seconds. I missed maxing by two seconds.

I was upset but only for a few seconds. I was quickly happy.  First it is silly to be upset when you have met 99% of your goal but that was only a small reason. Primarily I was happy because of how much the run sucked. I have been running hard for my whole life and it almost always sucks when you are racing. This time it sucked and I could still breathe. It was still hard to breathe but that is normal. It sucked but I could keep going fast. Running long duration races helped me connect with the part of myself that could easily endure misery and this was comforting when I was depressed. To be able to still perform well again is all the better. Life is hard and that’s all I want. I don’t want all my problems to o away that would be lame. I just want to remain conscious when it sucks. I couldn’t do that a month ago. Today sucked but I can’t wait until it sucks more.

My absence

One of the hardest things I have ever had to face in life is depression. I seem to always embody a positive attitude externally no matter what is happening inside. I have taught myself to suppress fear, panic or any display of stress; so much so that I often do not recognize my own stress. But sometimes it goes too far. About a year ago today I started having difficulty breathing every time I exercised and it took me months to even realize that it was the result of panic. Though my body constantly goes in to fight or flight responses, that are so significant that I have difficulty breathing, I rarely feel fear itself. It has taken me about six months to even recognize that I was panicking and even longer to except it as truth. Enduring hardship has become second nature and it has become difficult to even grasp that I am having problems.

This is both a godsend and a terrible problem. It seems that I usually recognize emotional issues when they are far too severe. This is what has happened recently. I don’t know why nor do I care. But for the past few months life’s little curve balls have been difficult to deal with. I began to repeatedly imagine death at my own hand. Things got really low for me no matter how good life was going. I would try and try to put on a happy face but when the slightest problem would arise all I could do was wish to end it all.

Something needed to change. I put some non essential things on hold (namely this blog and some of the incomplete assignments I had to make up from last semester) and I began to be brutally honest with myself and my therapist. I felt and at times still feel a great bit of shame about this depression but I have discovered something amazing. Though I felt like people would think less of me for telling them this I have found the opposite to be true. My therapist explained to me that suicidal ideation was a natural physiological response to depression caused by trauma. I felt compelled to share this with Rachel and was terribly frightened that she would be ashamed of me. To my surprise she was only sympathetic and supportive. The whole process only strengthened my resolve.

Still despite this my refuge has been the trails and the gym. I know that I will never actually hurt myself but I have been murdering myself in the gym. I have set new personal bests rowing and on the Stairmaster and have finally began to improve my speed when running. I am on track physically to get back into my prime again. Pushing yourself to the next level is similar to depression. To get past it you need to recognize how much it sucks, accept it and push past it. It always seems to me like a weaker part of me is left behind. Making the body stronger naturally helps the psyche.

More importantly becoming a stronger endurance athlete helps me understand that I may not have ability that I once had. But that I can make myself better every day and though I may never be who I was before I can still be who I want to be. It makes short term memory, constant migraines, and the simple fact that when my excited puppy accidently pommels my forehead with insanely hard head (causing me to be dizzy, nauseous and giving me a terrible headache) easy to take. I can’t and will never be able to take these problems away. But I can still accomplish all my goals if I focus on what I can improve and rather than on what I can’t.

Training and Resilience

Since I was a Cadet at North Georgia College I have never new when to let my body rest after injury. Exaggerated stories of me maxing the two mile run with a cast on my leg are still in circulation. Enduring pain has always been something I could do, this is who I am and what I am about. This is why I am pushing my body to knew heights despite the pain. But recently I have come to realize that pure grit is useful during a race (and definitely in Combat) but it is not the way to conduct a training. I started on the road to high endurance races because after I  completed a trail 25K I experienced my first night of peace. On the Trail itself I felt my body start breaking down and became incredibly weak (I foolishly ran a 10K with Rachel and sprained my ankle early in the race) but I refused to except this ran through it. After that sleeping was easy for a while. It gave me hope that no matter how bad things get, I can just refuse to except defeat and move on with my life.
Pushing on despite vertigo, dizziness and my eyes blurring has become almost normal but recently there has been no satisfaction after a long work out. Last night during a nightmare I kicked Rachel and I have been thrashing about in my sleep constantly. I was training for this weekend's Maine Adventure Race and it did little to help me during the night, as it did before. Like usual I stepped up the physical challenges by doing over four hours of cross training on Tuesday. I have been almost useless mentally and physically since.
A student in Ranger school simply sucks it up and moves out every time, no matter what. This is what perseverance has come to mean to me. Maybe to truly persevere I need to learn to relax and enjoy life without having  kill myself physically.
I am always going to kill myself physically. Come on, I am that stupid kid in military school who took of an air cast to take a APFT. I always enjoy spending time at home and on the road with Rachel. But maybe to reach these new heights and to get the sleep I need to push myself to knew heights physically I need to except my current lot in life and learn to relax at work.