Am I ready?
I came to believe that many healthy people have more endurance in reserve than they imagine. A half marathon is 21.1 km, and covering that distance with a mixture of walking and running may be within reach long before running it comfortably is. It could take a long time and be an unpleasant experience. That's very different from being prepared to race it. Still, the thought helped me stop treating the distance as something ordinary people could never do.
How fast could I cover those 21 km? There was only one way to find out. Going in unprepared probably wouldn't give me a result I'd like, so a few months of training made more sense. Regular runs soon showed me what felt comfortable, both in pace and distance. Consistent weeks of 40 km or more gave me confidence about a half marathon. In general, the more useful work I put in each week, the less time I'd need on race day.
The marathon raised the same question on a larger scale. Finishing a half made the full distance seem possible, though I still had to train for it. How long would it take? There was only one way to find out. Whatever my time, finishing my first marathon would be something to be proud of, and a personal best by default.
I saw sub-2:30 for the half and sub-4:30 for the marathon as reasonable early goals, with more than 40 km a week as a rough training target. Then came the more ambitious two-hour and four-hour barriers, and weeks above 60 km. Beyond that, ambition becomes personal. Those numbers were my way of organizing the challenge, not a formula that could guarantee anyone's result.
Breathing
When I was young, I read about Tibetan practitioners said to perform extraordinary feats.
The stories described tummo meditators drying wet sheets on their bodies in freezing mountain conditions. Through mantras and concentration, they were said to kindle an "inner fire." In the account I read, sheets were dipped into icy water and wrapped around seated monks, who competed to dry them through a cold, snowy night. The numbers ranged from three to twenty-one sheets. The image stayed with me.
The same book described lung-gom-pa, Tibetan travelers reputed to cross vast mountain distances at astonishing speeds. Reliable information was scarce. Only a few European observers had described encounters, and their accounts left a lot of gaps.
Their preparation supposedly involved intense concentration, a trance-like state, and mantras murmured during these extraordinary journeys. By day, the traveler fixed attention on a distant object and moved toward it without distraction. They seemed so focused that their bodies covered the ground on autopilot.
A mantra can be a sound, syllable, word, or group of words, often in Sanskrit, repeated for its effect on the speaker. What interested me as a runner was the rhythm it could give to breathing.
I liked the idea of a private running phrase, repeated silently to hold a rhythm. The words didn't have to mean much. What mattered was keeping my breathing steady.
I have no magic mantra for every occasion. Sometimes I use a simple "see-so." The familiar "so-ham" follows the breath: "so" on the inhale, "ham" on the exhale. There are others, such as "ham-sa" and "hey-soo." In principle, I could just as well repeat "ap-ple-pie."
A feel for distance
As you get fitter, your idea of a normal run changes. At first I only cared whether I'd run that day. Five kilometers felt like a lot; three didn't. That was my starting point.
I remember exactly when that line moved. My wife and I were vacationing in the Pinecrest Mountains, and I ran along the Clearwater River. The place could have come straight out of Gravity Falls: pines, mountains, rushing water, even a water tower. Each morning I wanted to get a little farther and see around the next bend. At that point I could run 10 km and carry on as if I hadn't trained at all. No fatigue. Eleven or twelve left my legs buzzing a little and me feeling tired through the day. The next morning, though, I could run another 10 km as if nothing had happened. This was mid-July, around the time my weeks reached 80 km or a little more. Such a fine line between ten and eleven.
I like knowing where that line is: how far I can run and get on with my day, and when I'll start feeling it afterward. As I trained, I could go farther before crossing it.
It works in reverse as well. Cut back, and smaller distances begin to feel like work again.
A sense of balance
There's a small, horseshoe-shaped bone beneath your tongue and lower jaw called the hyoid. Suspended in a network of muscles, it's the body's natural gyroscope. For a runner, that makes it important.
Where that bone sits affects how freely you breathe, how much energy you have, and how your body distributes the load. For us, the crucial question is whether we'll instinctively move straight ahead or whether a misaligned internal gyroscope will pull us left or right, forward or backward. A shift in the hyoid can be followed by small shifts in the neck vertebrae, shoulders, and esophagus. Your balance is thrown off. Other muscles have to compensate, your arms swing awkwardly, and you tire sooner.
Try this: close your eyes and resist the urge to peek, hold your arms straight out in front of you, and march vigorously, lifting each knee toward your hands. Do thirty to fifty repetitions, then open your eyes. Still in exactly the same spot? Excellent. Your gyroscope is perfectly tuned. More likely, you'll have drifted across the room or even reached a wall. In this explanation, that means the hyoid has shifted a little and your balance is off.
During that short exercise, you've spent some of your energy on unintended movement. A small balancing error hardly matters in a cozy room or over a short distance. Out in the woods or open country, though, it can pull you off course and make navigation harder. When you run, your body keeps correcting that small fault, kilometer after kilometer, wasting valuable energy. That's energy you could save.
That's why I occasionally see a massage therapist who practices kinesiology, working to balance muscular tension throughout the body. Something tightens, your posture changes, your gait becomes a little uneven, and your feet start turning inward as you run. Twenty kilometers later, you can feel the difference.
Working with reflexes, the therapist acts on muscles in the legs, torso, and back, even those attached to the hyoid. The aim is to bring the body back into balance and address physical or emotional disturbances. It's a way of fine-tuning the body for better results. And it can improve everyday quality of life, too.
Yoga and running
At forty-five, I really don't want to get injured. All this running gives me plenty of chances to hurt myself. I'm not especially injury-prone, but I still need to pay attention.
When I was younger I practiced wushu and taekwondo. Both included stretching routines. Even after I stopped the martial arts, I kept doing familiar exercises now and then. I'm still fairly flexible and can manage most of the yoga poses I try.
After hard runs, muscles can feel tight, shaky, or prone to cramping. I had heard stretching might help, so it became part of my routine. Usually before bed, sometimes after training, I work on my hamstrings, practice the splits, and do a few other stretches.
My back and arms can feel stiff after a long run too. I especially like stretching my back.
I tried several yoga apps and settled on one with a large library of guided classes. Oddly enough, it was sponsored by a soft-cheese brand. An unexpected combination, but I liked the lessons very much.
What drew me to yoga was the lack of competition. No rankings or national championships in the classes I knew. People worked on understanding their bodies and minds. When something clicked, people enjoyed it and kept practicing, perhaps with a new goal in mind. When it didn't, they kept practicing anyway. Nobody was chasing a personal best. The point was to learn.
Ideally, recreational running could share that philosophy. Few of us will become world or national champions. The comparison that matters is usually with ourselves. Achieve something, enjoy it, set another goal. Miss a target and keep running. You haven't lost some imaginary championship. Improvement matters more than records.
Yoga and running feel like yin and yang. Each has a little of the other in it. A good yoga session and a good run can bring the same focus, the same feeling of dissolving into the world, the same awareness of your muscles working smoothly together. Get it right, and they feel surprisingly alike.