
Marathon training is surprisingly similar to Ironman training, except you don't bike or swim as much. In point of fact, if you don't want to, you really don't have to bike or swim at all. But it helps.
Week one of training for LA Marathon is in the books. I designed my own program through March 21 and it looks like this:
Monday - Tempo/interval run (6-8 miles)/Strength Training thru January
Tuesday - 60-90 minute bike
Wednesday - Medium - Long run (12-16 miles) @ 80-90% marathon pace/Strength Training
Thursday - Hill run/Interval run (45-60 minutes)
Friday - Off
Saturday - Long run (16-24 miles) @ 75-85% marathon pace w/ last 3 miles at fast/slow/fast
Sunday - "Do something" (recovery run/bike/whatever)
The first week was hard, mainly a matter of pushing the boulder toward the cliff to get it ready to roll itself. In the kinesiology world we call that potential energy, as opposed to kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is energy in motion, potential is just that - the potential for something to happen. I have the potential, but spent most of November eating, drinking, generally slothing and I put on about 10 pounds. In fact last Monday night I weighed in at 176 pounds, the most I have ever weighed in my life. Weight is all bogus anyhow because after a week of training and eating well, I am weighing in at 166. I strongly doubt I lost 10lbs in one week. But I tell you this - I feel every pound lost or gained out there on the run.
Last Wednesday and Saturday were my first quality long runs in months. Saturday I headed 8 miles North on PCH from Santa Monica and 8 miles back. Nothing - and I mean nothing - pisses roadie d bag cyclists off like some tyrannasourus rex lumbering in their bike lane when they are riding 2 wide and veering into the traffic lane. I love their indignance at my presence there when they cannot even hold a line anyway.
I really seek out aggravation and trouble.
Last Thursday I took to the California Incline for 5 repeats up and down. It is short, about a one minute up and down, but it is intense. It is one of those things where you get a surge of energy for the first 15 seconds and for the last 15 seconds but that middle 30 seconds is just sheer determination. It is also one of those things where you hit the top of the hill and want to vomit.
Last night was a key run, one of the best runs I have had in over a year. Nick from
Core Performance designed a treadmill workout that he has been threatening me with for some time. Nick looks like this guy in the picture. But, to his credit, the guy can design a workout. 22 minute workout that he put me through twice. 1 minute warm up then 35 seconds at 5 minute/mile pace, 30 seconds easy, 35 seconds at 5 minute/mile pace, repeat 14 times (28 times when you do it twice). The first few were a shocker - very fast. Then I settled into a rhythm of breathing and cadence. But the last 10 were hell. I found myself counting the seconds. By the end I could barely walk and I didn't sleep so hot last night because my heart rate was so jacked. I woke up today and got on the bike for an hour and took at least half that time just to find my legs.
But I am back and eating better and feeling better about my fitness but also life in general. The last two months have really sucked. But IronMax (when will the Iron-ball washing cease?) pointed something out to me when I was right in the thick of my relationship/financial crisis/unemployed/cheese eating malaise - tragedy + time = comedy. Being the mathemagician that I am, that resonated. I am feeling better now that I have turned to many people in my life and asked for help. One friend totally redid my resume for me, several others have hooked me up with job leads and interviews, even my dumb brother has been a real help in terms of advice and support. And things look good. I have to say I didn't know how bad this economy was until I started looking for a job. It sucks. I am ultimately not concerned but when I made the decision to spend the last year getting
TNS up and running, all the while knowing I would go back to a steady clock-punching job once it was, I didn't know things would get this bad. Well, it is.
I am at this age - 35 - where I am surrounded by friends entering into the next phase. Here I am, with a fledgling business built around my passion but also a personality that doesn't do well waking up every day needing to go out and scratch out my living and I am seeing two interesting things in my peer group. One, many of them who kept climbing the corporate ladder now want off. They are finding that they got the titles and the salaries and now the trappings of that path have turned into traps. They have mortgages and cars and they aren't happy. So many people want out. I attribute a big portion of this to the economy. I think it was probably one thing to find yourself with a $10,000/month nut when you had $200k equity in your house in the Valley, but it is quite another when you are upside down. Makes it a lot harder to swallow and a lot harder to get excited for each day.
The other thing I am seeing is divorce. This is the other thing I did not do at 25 - get married. I was so convinced that this is how life was supposed to go:
Graduate college - check
Get job out of internship I worked in college - check
Meet girl - check (and check and check and check)
Marry girl - check
Promote in job - check
Buy house with girl - check
Have 2 kids with girl - check
Become boss of company - check
Retire at 50 - check
This was pretty much the map that I thought life was supposed to follow. And then this happened:
Graduate college - check, after 8 years
Get job out of internship I worked in college - check
Meet girl - check
Meet other girl - check
Marry neither of them - check
Promote in job - check
Buy house by myself - check
Have 2 kids - almost
Leave it all (job, girl) behind unceremoniously in 2006 - check
Lose house - check
Travel around the country doing manual labor, "finding myself" - check
Land even "better" job that i hate - check
Make more money than I know what to do with - check
Rack up more debt than I know what to do with doing God knows what with it - check
Spend as much time as possible trying to get laid off - check
Get laid off - check
Spend 6 months redefining myself as an Ironman and coach - check
End up happier - and broker - than ever before - check
Build a business with quality friends, partners and customers - check
Get it up and running, figure out you miss the structure and stability of a job that you resented so much before - check
Go out, get job, do NOT repeat - in process
So this is the path I actually took. The path I am taking. It is not what I thought it would be and the fact that it is not the path that I thought it would is precisely what has caused me so much angst the last two months. Well that and having someone who had known me through the whole thing tell me I would not ever be enough for her because I will never own a private jet. Also, that sucked.
Here is what it comes down to, for me. There are always those who say - do what you love and the money will come. There are also those who say - money is all that matters.
They are both wrong, and both right.
At the end of the day for me it comes down to this - I want to leave the world a better place than I found it. That is it, that is the most fundamental tenet I can live by, the simplest rule. Every day I want to contribute to a greater good. For me, I cannot do that when I am broke because I am miserable. I also cannot do that when I am in a job I hate because it makes me miserable. So I have reached a middling point in my life where I can find happiness in the WHY of what I do as opposed to the WHAT. TNS gives me the what. That is my passion, my dream, my joy. That is the thing that I can wake up every day fired up to do. Charrissa is doing an Ironman next November; I am now excited about something through next November. I think about it every day. I run with Don every two weeks, or more; I get excited about watching him develop. Max, Susan, Lisa Jo, Lesley, Michael, Anthony, I think about these people every day and how I can help them. But the money isn't there yet. We are profitable but I need a full-time job. So the WHY of a full-time job is that if I make spreadsheets or run a company or sell sunglasses, it is just a means to an end.
For me, it took me all this time and a circuitous path to realize that the WHAT of my career is no longer as important as the WHY.