Tag Archives: UltraMarathons

100 Mile Training – What walls do I have to walk through?

Week 10 of a 26 week training cycle for my first attempt at a 100 mile race – The good bit is that I am feeling as fit as I every did in my life. I have not missed even one session that I chalked up on my training plan spreadsheet at the start of this year.

My learnings from the last 50 mile race last year was that I needed to work extensively on my hip and core strength while keeping the running mileage high. And that is coming through as well as I expected.

However, by nature a 100 mile training schedule is remorselessly grueling. It is meant to push the body and mind to breaking limits, break it slightly and in process make it stronger. At no point, am I even expecting a painless day.

My training plan is built to gradually ramp up the weekly running mileage as weeks go by, starting at 30 miles a week to upto 80 by around week 22 at the peak before tapering.

This next phase of training is where I move from known to unknown. It is the first time I will be consistently running 50+ miles/week for several weeks. There will be days of immense tiredness. More than any pain, the exhaustion and tiredness tests the mind and body to its tilt. Often there is no easy answer to the tiredness. Often the answer is to rest. Yet, the training is to keep moving. The intent of these coming weeks of moving through the days of tiredness is to build the ‘muscle memory’ to keep moving in the later miles on race day when the mind is too tired to will the body.

Endurance Running – My Relationship with Pain

When I talk about my running distances, I am often asked puzzlingly – “Doesn’t it pain?”.

I often joyfully respond – “Oh yes, it does. Every part of body. Parts you didn’t even know existed pain.” With a gleeful smile.

Is it always a Joy? No. The journey is often filled with hours and hours at a stretch of whatever you call the opposite of Joy is. Filled with mental chatter that is good enough to write a 1000 page book.

Yet day after day, slowly but surely the joy dwells up.

Any given day, any given run, there is atleast one part of my body operating at less than 50% and there is constant pain there. Soon in this beautiful sport of endurance and long distance running, you find out that sun rises, there is pain, sun sets and there is pain.

This is a very long and understandably complex subject interlaced with an ocean of medical and scientific intricacies. However, in my experience it is equally important to simplify this subject first. I approach pain with an attitude of “Inevitabililty”.

Inevitability

There will be pain and there is absolutely no getting away from it. That is the attitude I start every run of mine with. When I take a step and land my feet on the ground, whether I am walking or sprinting, there is some pain somewhere in the body. Often that pain is within my ‘threshold of bearability’. Sometimes, the pain exceeds my threshold and it causes a bit more of a sensation through the body. Either below the threshold or above, pain is present in every single moment.

A recognition that there will be pain in every single moment is fundamental to how I then proceed to deal with it. It takes away the mental fight of flight to comfort. It is truly fascinating how our human mind and body is constantly looking for comfort in every moment. There must be a evolutionary benefit to us humans to do this. However, in endurance running, that instinct to search for immediate comfort is major hindrance.

I know there will be pain – physical, mental, emotional and even spiritual. And I know I have to problem solve that pain. There is a great strength in knowing I am bigger than the pain and I can solve it. I can act and address the problem. Even if sometimes that solution is just patience and to let time pass.

I find physical pain when not embraced, morphes into mental agony and it when not embraced and dealt with, deepens into emotional and further spiritual suffering.

As I run, I deeply accept the pain as an inevitable part of me. I often even rejoice the moments I start a new part of body with pain.

As gurudev would say – “Pain is Inevitable, Suffering is Optional”

In endurance running, pain is in every single moment, fiercely inevitable, while suffering is far removed.

True bliss of running is that total acceptance of Pain !!!

Endurance Journey – 2023

New Year, new goals and a new training plan!

As the new year dawns, I get ready to begin the 6 month training cycle heading up to the August 100 mile race in Berlin. A training cycle is journey that includes the physical, the mental and the spiritual aspects. There is a lot of planning, to the day and sometimes to the hour as to what I need to do. Yet, the mental and spiritual side of the training is also dealing with the unknown and the unplanned. There will be days and weeks that won’t go per the spreadsheet. There will be injuries, life events and who knows what else, that will need problem solving.

Endurance is to be ‘planned to the T’ and yet be prepared for it all to go haywire. To have that confidence that I will problem solve whatever that will be thrown at me. And yet, I have to start with the mindset of not missing 1 minute of my planned training. Discipline is a given. Chaos is the catalyst that will take the discipline to the next level.

The 200 day training cycle will being in full earnest on 24th January, 2023.

1136 Miles of training runs, 80 days of weight training, countless hours of recovery and a continuous mental stream of focus on the goal!

Long Runs – Spread the Jam!

I often say – If you can run a half marathon, you can run a marathon. If you can run a marathon, you can run a 50K. If you can run a 50K, you can run a 50 miler…

Let’s put aside the concept of human limitation to the side for a short while. Let’s just dream unhinged and believe you can run as long and as far as your imagination take you. Just for a short while.

Now that we have accepted we are limitless, we begin the planning for a long run.

Imagine you have a sandwich in front you. The two slices of bread sitting on a table top next to each other. And you have a spoon full of jam to be spread over it.

Now imagine you have four slices of bread in front you. But you only have the 1 spoon of jam. If I ask you – can you spread 1 spoon of jam on 4 slices of bread now? I guess you would say Yes!

Whether you run 8 miles or 16 miles, it is possible to run with the same level of effort. Take the jam of your effort and spread it on more miles of bread! ( I know that sounds silly. But I hope the analogy made sense).

There are many aspects to running an ultra marathon but at quite near the bottom of the large pyramid of factors – is understanding your effort jam that you have in your bottle and knowing how to spread it.

Keep Breathing!

Mile 31…In the 7th hour of running.

My legs are feeling very heavy. Lower back is stiff and the hip thrust for moving my leg forward feels like moving a log of wood.

Something I have reminded myself during the later miles – BREATHE. KEEP BREATHING! WATCH YOUR BREATH! KEEP BREATHING!

It feels counterintuitive but in the moments the body is exhausted on the runs, it chooses to conserve and preserve by keeping the stale breath in and reducing the intake of fresher air. Obviously some breathing is happening, else I wouldn’t be alive to write this. It’s just that the volume of oxygen intake reduces.

The technique to fix this is simple – pay attention to the breath for a few minutes. And breathe in an out as though all you are doing is breathing. No more than 2 minutes.

Fascinatingly, that’s all it takes to get the body breathing again.

And voila – in few short minutes, the energy levels in the body start rising again.

The heaviness in the legs eases just a little bit. A little bit is all I need to keep pushing for another 3-4 miles.

While there is a lot to explore and go deeper into the science of breathing during running, the most basic component of all that complexity starts with a simple step – to pay attention and to keep breathing.

If you are not sprinting, you should be breathing.