Zane Grey 2010

Several weeks ago, I had, basically, written off my spring race schedule. The problems began in mid-February with nagging hamstring pain, leading, eventually, to an unstable leg, which would buckle unexpectedly. Later on, tendonitis around the knee resulted in grinding my running to an abrupt halt. Training stopped and any sporadic attempts at running over a 4 week period were met with a harsh reminder my condition was not improving. Several visits to a sports chiro, which only provided temporary relief, my family sports doc, whom was bewildered in pinpointing the injury point, a prescribed MRI on my lumbar region, which came back negative, and a nerve conduction test with a neurologist only served one purpose--it cost a significant amount of money, when my wife, Olga, who is educated as a medical doctor, had the best diagnosis and recommendations all along for getting back onto the trail. I was too self-absorbed, however, in feeling sorry for myself and decided it was easier to not train at all, since I had an excuse. I eventually reached a decision to go to the race, but, only to crew for several from Austin who were running.

At the end of March, the simple act of walking over 30 miles in the span of 5 days along with self prescribed physical therapy to help alleviate the tendonitis was what helped the most. It was the first focused physical activity I had done in a month. I began flirting with the idea of walking the entire Zane Grey race. On April 2nd, I completed my first trail run, albeit, slow. The following week, I logged 63 miles of trail running to determine if my leg would hold up. The runs were slow and generic in nature, mostly, because I was worried about having a setback. I didn't make the final decision to run Zane Grey until a week before the race. Due to the sharp ramp in mileage, my body was very achy up until 2 days before the race, which was cause for concern. And, being familiar with the course, the decision to run it wasn’t taken lightly.

Pete and I had traveled to the race together on Friday morning and the night before the race I mentioned to him that several weeks before I would have never thought I would be running in the race the next morning. I was still not certain how my body would hold up to such a grueling course. But, it never entered my mind that I wouldn't finish. Mainly, because I didn't want to deal with the hassle of finding a ride to the finish line if I dropped at one of the remote aid stations. I realize my thought process seems odd, but that was my rationale, nonetheless.
 The race morning cold was something I was not pleased with, but I knew a few minutes of shivering before the race start would lead to a quickly warming body as we made the short mile to the first climb of the day. I purposefully ran without a light at the 5am start and chose, instead, to be guided by the abundance of headlamps and flashlights lighting our way. Also, dawn comes very early in Arizona this time of year and within 10 minutes, I could begin to make out the trail on my own.

The race, itself, was fairly uneventful. I never experienced any leg soreness during the race, which was a surprise. My climbing ability wasn’t ideal, mainly because I didn’t hill train. I spent about 10 minutes during the middle miles looking for the trail that, literally, disappeared into a grassy area of old tree snags. And, another 15+ minutes when I literally jumped over a huge log marked liberally with blue (on this course, blue means "wrong way!") ribbon and ran down an unfamiliar (yes, in the back of my mind, it didn't seem familiar) jeep road until I saw runners off in the distance running parallel to me up onto a ridge. I felt terrible I had led another runner on my diversion. I had one low spot around mile 20 when I was ready to write off the rest of the spring and early summer training and take it easy, but I often have these thoughts during races. And, considering to run a race next month that is twice as long on similar terrain seemed ludicrous and pointless. The simple act of telling myself to continue moving forward turned out to be the optimal strategy.

It felt great to finish and, even though I did have a pace chart, my primary goal was just to test how healed I was from my early year injury. I, even, managed to entertain myself the last 6 miles with trying to beat Olga's best finish time of 12:15--I ended up 5 minutes over. It was never my intention going into the race that I would come close to that time since the goal was to just “get it done”, but I was pleased, nonetheless. Afterwards, I still had doubts about running Massanutten, but Olga quickly vanquished these thoughts. Maybe it is my lack of confidence in finishing a tough race and the lack of going through the physical challenges I will ultimately face while covering 100 miles.

There have been many lessons learned this Spring, mainly, to never take for granted one’s health and realize there are multiple paths to the same destination. What works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another. And, making the decision to stop exercising for a month was a poor choice when there were many alternatives. I, also, discovered that I really cherish running in the mountains alone. It seems my best running occurred this past weekend when things were this way, mainly, so I can be focused on my own thoughts and contemplate life. Until next time..