I got my first taste of depletion and grit for 2009 on Monday.
We were in the middle of a spring snowstorm that dumped up to a foot of snow on some parts of Aroostook county. Just getting adjusted to having a hyperactive German Shepherd puppy around the house, I hadn't trained in a day or two. Leah was in bed, the dog had finally settled down. It was 11 PM.
Screw it...I thought..I'm going running.
I filled my water bottle with Gatorade, bundled for the snow, and was out the door.
I ran out of town, south on Route 1, hoping to do a nice loop...maybe an hour to an hour and a half.
My MP3 blared. My headlight glared against the snow blowing sideways, driven across the wide open potato fields.
I ran by the State Park, feeling the flow. You get this unexplainable feeling sometimes when you are physically exerting yourself in the middle of nature's fury. You think..this is hard core, but it feels...right. Want to feel alive? Go trail running in a torrential downpour, or in the middle of a snowstorm.
I looked at my phone, and I had already been out 1 Hour, 25 minutes. Why wasn't I at the turn?
I was running past tree farms covered in snow- a winter wonderland. I felt like elves might come out from behind their posts at any moment. If I hadn't started getting so concerned about time and the fact that I only had a little gatorade left, I might have really enjoyed the experience.
Times like these lead to feelings of paranoia and extreme exposure to the elements. In a sense, it becomes like a survival situation. You have to make an effort to calm your mind down in order to think clearly.
My initial reaction was to run faster to get to the turn quicker... I did for a minute, and then realized that I was not being rational. What if I was going the wrong way? I came to the end of a field where the road just ended. Great.
I looked at my bottle and realized I would have to run at least another 1.5 hours home on zero nutrition and zero hydration. I was a little demoralized, and it was hard to pull myself out of that slump for the rest of the night. When you're depleted, you feel more pain because your blood sugar is so low, and it only gets worse until you get something else in your system.
It was 2 AM when I trudged into town, feeling more like an animal than a human. The city lights burned my eyes; I had turned my headlamp off when my batteries ran out before the turnaround an hour and a half ago. Hungry wasn't the word to explain how I felt. I wanted food. Now.
I trudged into the apartment and downed 2 chicken burgers with cheese and ketchup in between chugs of orange juice. Laying down in bed, I wondered...what happened tonight?
The next morning I had to know.
I drove my route and was surprised that the sunny morning had melted the snow on the roads, clearing things up. I turned around only yards from the road that was to take me home. The snow on the roads the night before made the field seem indistinguishable from the pavement.
I'll file this one under lessons learned, as well as a great workout for my mind.
I guess the lesson here is, number one, always prepare for the worst..and number two, don't make rash decisions when you know you aren't thinking clearly.
I love crazy workouts.
No comments:
Post a Comment