A year ago, I turned 50 and celebrated by, among other things, jumping out of a plane. At the time, I said it seemed like a good way to celebrate every decade and that I was good until 60. That feeling lasted about a week before I realized that once a year was a much better idea. So, the plan as I turned 51 this past week was to jump again. It was an ambitious plan, as I scheduled it for Saturday afternoon following my 12-mile marathon training run. It was made more ambitious by the fact that this past week was my most tiring work week in over a year with about five hours of sleep a night for five straight nights. My thought was simply that, if I was going to burn the candle at both ends to get this all in, I couldn’t wait until it was much later into my training when rest would be even more essential. And of course, it was my birthday! (In case you forgot.) Well, as I’ve written before . . . man plans, God laughs.
Since my last marathon update, I’ve completed weeks five and six of the 20-week training program. My post here will be about one run in particular – Saturday’s 12-mile run – which tells the story of what I’ve learned during the past couple weeks.
After a very long week, where I worked 15-hour days while still getting my training in, I felt the fatigue as I was able to unwind on Friday afternoon. I prepared for the day ahead by recovering – air compression, sauna, and ice bath – and I ate my Friday night carb-loaded dinner early so that I could get to bed and make up for my lack of sleep. My training the past week was tough while running on fumes, but I got through it. I was ready to reset. But I learned that a reset doesn’t just happen overnight. Eight hours of sleep couldn’t make up for the 10+ hours lost over the five previous days, so when it was time to run on Saturday morning, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. My mind was barely thinking about the afternoon skydive. It was almost entirely focused on the 12 miles ahead. The only way skydiving came into the picture was that I knew I needed to make this run as easy as possible to be able to handle the rest of the day.
I started at an easy pace, and for the first four-to-five miles, I got into that head space where I wasn’t thinking about anything and didn’t feel a thing. I was engrossed in my music – a playlist that I am curating for marathon day – and the run was as easy as could be. But by mile six, I started to feel the fatigue set in. Instead of thinking I only had half of the run left, my mind viewed it as having to do double what I just did. That difference in thinking weighs heavily during the run. I knew this run was different. It got more different when pain started to set in at mile eight – something that never happens anymore – and I thought about cutting it short. I thought about a line from Kobe Bryant in the documentary, Muse . . . “When the game itself is more significant than the pain, you forget about the pain. Then the pain won’t get in the way.” I’m not quite at Kobe’s level in my mental focus, but the mantra helped as I kept my thoughts on the run. Still, after mile eight, I pivoted my run from the Central Park loop into the reservoir – a shorter loop where I could decide to stop at mile 10 if my body needed to. But at mile 10, I decided to go for 11 before I quit. Then, as I approached the end of mile 11, I said, if I can’t finish 12, then I can’t go jump out of a plane. That motivated me to finish mile 12. The run was tough, but as always, it was something to learn from. Most of what I reflected on throughout the 12 miles was the need for sleep.
Marathon training programs come with a very specific plan for each day’s workout(s). Whether running, cross training, strength training, or a combination of those, the plans lay out the distance or amount of time spent on each workout. But every plan I’ve seen thus far is missing one key component – the time to set aside for sleep each day. In my daily routine, I typically can ensure a proper amount each night – not because it’s easy to do so, but because I make it part of my routine. Still, there are times when work or life takes me out of my usual routine and sleep is often the first to suffer. Typically, I can make a judgment call whether to skip a fitness day to get an extra hour of rest, but while amid a training program, I feel the pressure to get in every workout. This past week, that meant giving up on precious rest to run or strength train before work. It meant working out tired and to some extent working tired as well. For some part of each day my workout – and some extra caffeine – gave me a boost of energy, but that boost fades by the end of the day. And that fading energy carries into the next day. It’s hard to catch up even during a normal routine, and it’s nearly impossible when that routine is blown up. I struggled all week to balance this.
So, as I crossed the 12-mile mark on Saturday and completed my run, allowing me to go skydive, my body said it had enough. Every feeling I had was one that was screaming for rest and recovery. That’s when I knew that, to win the day, I needed to postpone the jump. Could I have done it? Yes. But should I have? No way.
I must admit, I’m rather proud of that decision. There are many times that I’ve pushed through the fatigue to do it all. And there are times when pushing that limit has taught me that I can do more than I ever imagined. But thanks to those moments, I didn’t need to prove anything to myself by going skydiving on Saturday.
Instead of jumping out of a plane, I spent my Saturday afternoon recovering. More air compression, sauna, and ice baths. The feeling of giving my body exactly what it needed was not just a reward for my body, but it was what my mind needed too. Still, even as it was the right thing to do, there’s one reason I was able to make this decision – it’s because I already jumped a year ago, and because more recently, I jumped off a cliff.
Last summer, skydiving was about proving I could still do it. Over the 30 years that passed since my only other jump, I became someone who wouldn’t do it again. I was on a mission to get over that, and jumping was the only way to accomplish that. Since then, I’ve embraced whatever opportunity I had to fill my need for adrenaline. Whether from the skydive last summer or the rope swing this spring, I can find that space in my mind that brings me right back to it. Yes, it fades as time passes, but it’s not yet faded entirely.
Quite simply, when you do this stuff often enough, it’s easier to let it go. The past is part of the calculus of winning the day. Had I never done it before, winning the day might have been defined differently. It might have required me to push in order to prove. But this time I had nothing to prove by jumping, rather I had to prove that I could not jump.
Once again, the lessons I’m learning about training revolve around sacrifice. But this time, a part of that lesson involves gratitude for having taken full advantage of the moments before me over the past few years. At the time, I may have seen those moments only for their immediate impact of satisfying my need for thrill seeking. Now, I see them as having filled my cup in the longer term. I feel more flexibility when making sacrifices because I am sacrificing much less. This past week, I gave up a thrilling afternoon that was a luxury. But thankfully, I did not have to give up a moment that I needed to define what I’ve become. In that respect, its all very well established now. And the ultimate result is that I’m now rested and ready for more.
Aaron
For more details on the past two weeks of my training program, see below. As always, the day and training plan workout are listed in bold . . .
Sunday July 13 (16 weeks until the marathon): 30–40-minute easy pace run
