Of Human Bondage: The Burden of Contingency

A simple truth of being human is that we all share a condition of bondage.  This bondage is not to some evil empire or totalitarian dictator but the circumstance of our existence: contingency. We depend on the particular alignment of numerous accidents in order to sustain our lives and civilization.  Our daily sustenance requires external resources such as food and water--not to mention air-- just to stay alive.  Even our mental well being necessitates positive interaction with other human beings.

Given the insurmountable nature of this state of being, the challenge lies in our engagement with these contingencies. We have a choice: either we can consciously struggle against these limitations or passively play the role of a victim.  The victim feels the buffets of these barriers without expectation or understanding.  The unconquerable runner on the other hand knows, explores, and engages every boundary in order to understand and intelligibly interact with such barriers.  It is by coming up against such limits that he overcomes and pushes them back. Faster times over greater distances are achieved through attending to physical conditioning, diet, and mental stamina.

The key to successfully accomplishing such feats lies in careful cultivation and patient persistence. A good diet only has positive effects on a marathoner's performance after weeks and even months of eating appropriate combinations of proteins and carbohydrates. Endurance follows weeks and weeks of consistent running.  Avoidance of injury relies heavily on routine stretching and strength condition.  Time spent running on the road and track provides a runner with the mental stamina and confidence necessary to face the race. Improvement is seen only after a runner puts in much time and careful attention to such details over extended periods of time.

Here, once again, the utility of running as a life metaphor comes clear in how the unconquerable runner engages the limitations.  Dependence on daily nutrition becomes an asset by selecting the types of foods that maximize running performance.  By completing daily distance runs the runner activates the body's ability to increase its capacity to metabolize oxygen and glycogen efficiently.  In this way, barriers come to provide a means for overcoming and pushing beyond them. In an ironic turn, we as humans possess the surprising quality of surpassing our contingencies by wisely and carefully engaging them.  Running from them, seeking to find escape from these restraints actually leads to debilitation and weakness. 

Thus the unconquerable runner embraces and engages his limits and, by so doing, rises above the status of victimhood. 

Post Race: A Time for Reflection and Second Guessing

A week has now passed since the Las Vegas marathon.  I have spent this week recovering and reflecting on the race and my experience there.  This was the first marathon in which I accomplished all three of the goals I set before me: I finished, qualified for the Boston Marathon, and ran it in 2:59:09.  I knew in the first two miles that I would be able to finish under three hours.  I felt so good and strong for the first 24 miles.  It was exhilarating!  The last two miles were a different story.  I suffered a painful exhaustion that hurt throughout my entire body. Fortunately, I did not slow down more than a minute per mile during that phase. 

Post race reflection is a critical part of a runner's life and necessary if he hopes to improve upon his performance in later races.  As a marathon is an exceptional event that punctuates the staid quality of day to day living, it illuminates and reveals much.  The revelatory material, however, cannot be obtained except through conscious reflection and musing.

As with any great accomplishment, I have felt many congratulations from friends and even myself.  This fruit should be savored and enjoyed for all that it is but I find it can be a dangerous trap too.  Indulgence in too many feelings of a self-congratulatory nature leaves out the less pleasant but necessary questions of a more critical kind.  Did I put everything out on the course?  When I hit the wall, did I give in to the desire to slow, stop, or do anything less than my all?  What aspects of my performance could be improved by modifying my training? How will my experience in this last race inform my preparations for the next one?

I think that post race feelings have some similarities to survivor's guilt. Just as the survivor questions whether he truly did everything he could have done to save those who did not make it out of whatever disaster they shared, I find that I must find specific bits of the evidence that I did indeed do my best. In this race I simply have to remember the last quarter of a mile when I was starting to make audible sounds as I rasped for air. All I wanted to do was stop.  My body ached all over.  Instead I picked up speed and actually regained my earlier pace. This incredible exertion took its toll as I was as emotionally taxed as I was physically.  In an uncontrollable moment, my emotions took over and I began to sob between breaths.  The tears coursed down my cheeks as I found the finish line in sight.  I finished having given my all.

With respect to my training, I know that I need to increase my overall mileage from week to week. My speed was fine but my endurance needs some work if I am to avoid such levels of exhaustion (though I have never successfully avoided such a feelings in a marathon). The Las Vegas marathon was also relatively flat, the Boston marathon is not. I must prepare for my next marathon by including hill work (repeated runs up steep hills). I have put together my new training plan and have included such hill climbs.

I am always impressed by the lack of energy I feel in this recovery period but such feelings give me the opportunity to slow down and assess where I have been and now where I am going. Such a valuable gift is made possible by the total exertion of the unconquerable runner. 

Training and Preparation

"I don't train. I just run my 3 to 15 miles a day." 

-Jack Foster

Most accomplishments in life require training and preparation.  Those feats that appear in headlines or history books come about as a result of much unseen effort.  Like an iceberg, the more substantial part of the story often remains unseen.  Running exemplifies this characteristic of life with unusual accuracy.

The longer the distance, the greater the need for conditioning.  Even shorter runs bring with them an exponential increase in risk of injury if the runner's mind and body have not been prepared properly.  A baseline of fitness must be built incrementally, one run at a time.

As I reflect on my upcoming marathon, I remind myself of each component of my training.  I have built a baseline of endurance through gradually running greater distances from week to week.  Saturday long runs were critical in cultivating the mental and physical stamina for a marathon.  At their longest, twenty miles and further, my joints and muscle systems developed in ways that will withstand the prolonged use and abuse of the race.

My preparations have also included weekly quality workouts.  The cardiovascular system requires more than simple endurance but also strength and efficiency.  By running at a tempo pace for twenty minutes or more at a time, my muscles developed more effective ways to utilize glycogen and anaerobic sources of energy as well as raw strength.  Through interval training (where I ran repeated short distances of 800 meters to a mile with brief recovery periods between bursts) I have augmented my cardiovascular system's capacity to get oxygen to exhausted muscle cells. 

I have also been mindful that in the end it is in the recovery from these runs that true conditioning takes place.  Only by eating a good diet and allowing plenty of time for the body to rebuild from the rigors of training have I been able to cultivate a level of fitness that will enable me to improve upon my last race performance.

In the final two to three weeks before the race, I have enjoyed the fruits of the training by tapering the number of miles I run.  In the taper, I run less and take time to build up stores for the actual race.  The challenge of the taper lies in an increased desire to run: I find myself craving the distance and the speed.  As I get closer and closer to the starting line I begin to feel like a race horse at the gate, yearning to put it all on the track.  

Because of these unseen and quiet preparations, come Sunday morning, I will be at the starting line on the Las Vegas Strip, up to the challenge of the race.  In light of the many training runs, the race will be a reward, a gift to myself, and a celebration of the journey to compete.  The culmination of numerous runs and countless hours, this contest will reveal a bit of the unconquerable runner within me. 

Affirmation of Life

The temptation to deny or runaway from pain, though a very natural and understandable impulse, can lead to an impoverished and empty life. Pain does more than simply warn us of damaged joints or torn muscles, it provides a necessary contrast for sensations of wholeness and wellbeing. I submit that life, in its totality, cannot be affirmed without embracing pain.

An affirmation of life makes fulfilled living possible in the here and now of our world. Its antithesis, life denial, requires a retreat from everyday living and a concomitant fixation on an otherworldly vision. Most importantly, when we affirm life, we accept the interrelated and dialectical character of being human in a limited existence. Once we embrace such an understanding, the good and the bad of life can be navigated more effectively and appreciated more fully.

The ancient Greeks seemed to grasp this concept as indicated in their dramatic works. Greek tragedy has been interpreted most famously as a means of channeling off negative feelings and resentments within the community and its members (a process known as catharsis). Another interpretation offered by Friedrich Nietzsche is that in such dramatic productions, the community affirmed life and celebrated the painful struggle against the limitations of human effort on the stage of religious festivals. The benefits of such engagement included a renewed respect for their community and the roles each of them played in the ongoing struggles of life.

While I enjoy a good Greek tragedy as well as the next person, I am currently reflecting on a more visceral, life-affirming encounter with pain. I will be running in the New Las Vegas Marathon this coming Sunday, December 2. This race in particular inspires a number of thoughts on the pain and challenges intrinsic to running a marathon as well as the opportunities to come away with a renewed appreciation and greater understanding for life in its totality.

It is not my first marathon, so I have a general idea of what the encounter will be like. Yet, I have not run this particular race and every course possesses its own characteristics and particular challenges. Furthermore, there are so many variables within such a long and protracted race I know that I will meet new challenges. But there is one feature I am confident will be consistent with other marathons I have run: the pain.

I run every marathon with a hope of out performing previous races. This may mean a personal record or only a personal best for the type of course (if it is particularly mountainous, for example). I usually set three goals in the face of each marathon. Accomplishment of any one of these goals means that I encountered and overcame discomfiting forms of pain. Failure means that I reached the limit of possibility and arrived at the breaking point in my pain threshold. Such meaning, of course, presumes that I will invest everything that I have to attaining these goals.

The three goals I have set for this marathon are: first, to complete the race; second, to qualify for the Boston Marathon again (3:15); third, to finish with a time under three hours. I feel pretty confident about the first two goals but am not sure about the third. The fastest time I have run is 3:00:14. This course appears to be more difficult but I have been training at a higher altitude so I could be in a better position than might be thought. Either way, the challenge is there.

Over the remaining days between now and the race, I will visualize my participation, the pain, and accomplishment. I focus on steeling myself for the encounter and the overwhelming feeling of exhaustion that awaits me in the upcoming days. My past experience and training inspire me with a curious confidence that I will prevail and realize further the unconquerable runner in me. I also know that I will return from Las Vegas revitalized and possessing an embodied affirmation of life in its totality.

Glenn Cunningham put it best: "In running it is man against himself, the cruelest of opponents. The other runners are not the real enemies.  His adversary lies within him, in his ability with brain and heart to master himself and his emotions."