hero

I watched and cheered yesterday as my eldest son had enormous success as a runner. I can't run these days. I am in a season of healing, at best, a season of limping at worst, while I deal with a painful injury to the cartilage and tissue behind my right knee cap.

He, my eldest son, has not been running much this Fall. He maybe runs once or twice a week with his mother. Usually finds an excuse not to get out there on the roads and trails. We don't argue about it much. He has school and soccer and more importantly, I don't want to fight about something as joyful as running. If you don't want to get out and train, don't. I want to get out and train, but this is not about my running, or lack thereof.

He looked effortless and smooth through until after the finish line. He was breathing hard, but his stride never fell apart. Clearly, an Autumn as a midfielder making crosses and square passes works for some cross country racing. He came to find me quickly after the race for the breakdown of how it went and what I thought. That a 14 year old will still give me a post race hug is about as good as parenting gets.

Sons want to share athletic successes with their fathers. I wanted to do the same. Talk to my dad right after. Or if he wasn't present, give him the long version, the play-by-play.

He's my hero. Running well on, well, very little running.

I want to have headphones in and do a track workout to this tune -- My Hero by the Foo Fighters.

Running Considered

As a runner I consistently take stock of what works and what does not. What habits and tendencies lead to success. What patterns lead to failure. At least this assessment and reflection has been necessary for me over the years to learn, grow, and improve, but perhaps most importantly to cope with the difficulties of injuries. I have tried to learn from injuries and setbacks, getting sick, when to run and and when to rest, but the cold hard truth that I have learned over the years has been to accept some mystery and then move on. When and how injuries come is not always as predictable as everyone else around you seems to claim, but there is a silver lining. With time and patience almost everything heals.

The author at Smoky Mountain
Running Camp, July 2016

My first truly disruptive injury was in 1989. By October, and the heart of the cross country season, I had overcooked things with training and my body was basically falling apart. Our team was running fast about three times a week and I was no longer the boss of my body as I had been the year before. A coach that didn't listen to the athletes was the last thing I needed, yet, what I had. This pain and the communication breakdown were the first major setbacks I had incurred in my fledgling running career and I didn't know how to proceed. My knees hurt on nearly every run and I was unable to complete my first competitive cross country season. The coach implied that I wasn't being tough, and even at 14, I knew he didn't believe what was coming out of his mouth. He was simply frustrated and didn't know what to do to get one of his fastest runners healthy again.

I went from being the fastest runner on the high school team to one of the walking-wounded, side-lined for nearly all of the next four years. I have since connected the fact that I was not only growing muscle tissue from hard training, but I was entering a two year period of rapid genetic growth. I just had not grown much at all during my middle school years and I went from five feet to six feet tall in less than two years at an inopportune time for the purposes of running, 9th through 11th grade. Every time I tried to lay on the other type of neuromuscular fibers, the kind that comes from endurance training, my body would fall apart. Again and again, I tried and failed as a runner.

I did not know much then. Thought I would never run again. Thought all of my running dreams would be de-activated or un-activated. But I got better. I got back on the proverbial horse and was having consistent running success again by my mid-twenties. That seemed, at the time, like a lifetime, but it wasn't, now that I look back on it with a bit more of the long view. I had run in the decade between ages 14 and 24, but it was sporadic as I was mostly injury plagued. I unfortunately was not able to do what I had imagined, run successfully in high school and then develop into a competitive college runner. I missed that critical window during youth where big-time speed and strength is typically developed, where I might have run 4:15 or better, for one mile, and I am sad about that fact to this day. But sometimes, you get what you get.

But by age 25 or 26 I was consistently running 50 miles per week and I brought my 5K time back to an area I had not seen since age 14. I ran 16:25 in a Charlotte 5K during the year I was engaged to be married and the main thing that had changed was that by the Fall of 2001, I was experimenting with running 70 or more miles per week. This time my body was somehow able to manage a whole new workload and I was getting stronger and stronger. Friends and family would probably describe me prior to that season as having looked like a boy. I was a late bloomer, and I had high hopes for post-collegiate success now that I seemed to finally be done growing. I started to achieve some of my running goals, not everything that I wanted as a runner, but more than most. And I give thanks.

I am 41 now and while I have run trail races, and road races and 15 marathons, my true passion is that of the young runner, who pursues middle distances such as the 5K and even shorter, the mile, the 800 meters. My training for these shorter events is not all that different from marathon training. It takes a lot of miles and strength is the name of the game to competing at a high level.

Many don't know it, but there is a whole sub-culture of runners that are over the age of 30 and some as old as 100 who pursue these middle distances. I love the track, but won't race there unless I am healthy and fit. There is no where to hide on the oval, indoors or out, and while I love to run, I will only run publicly if I am "ready," a measurement that is assessed by me personally and subjectively, and tends to only occur a few times a year, if that often. I wish it were more frequent, but track fitness is serious business. I still don't want to be on the track if I can't break five minutes in the mile and that is not all the time. If I am completely honest, I think serious fitness, even at my age is only under 4:50 and I have only been there a handful of times.

Getting fit is risky, but well worth it and there are always memorable times that it didn't quite work out. In the picture above I am on the UNC Asheville Track where I was included in a week of training with 15 and 16 year old boys at a perennially awesome summer running camp. I even attended the camp a few summers as a teen. This time was July about a year and a half ago. I ran twice a day with the young horses. I did their workouts on the track. I got really fit. I had been running successfully for months prior, but this was a bigger training week, not unreasonable, but starting to incur some risk with two runs a day in the heat of summer. A month or so later, my running kind of crumbled and my knees were troubling me in a whole new way--different than my childhood trouble. I took off the next five months, sought out all kinds of therapy and treatments, thought at the time, "my running is over for good." 

But then I got better, a lot better. I started training again. Had a great summer in 2016 by breaking five minutes in the mile three separate times and headed into a Fall where my mileage spiked back to around 50 miles per week.

I did not race this Fall until a 5K Cross Country race this past Saturday. It was a disaster. My calf seized up so badly that I had to pull off the course four minutes into the race. It was such a bewildering disappointment. I thought surely that I had it right this time. I don't know why it happened. My left calf had not been a problem at all in the autumn months--until it was and I limped back toward the starting area at McAlpine Park scratching my head.

Everyone around you is an "expert" on injuries and why they happen, but they don't know your body. You may not know your body. Mine remains a mystery to me. Injuries occur for almost every runner if they stay at the sport long enough and train in a way that raises the risk bar. I wanted to break 17 minutes for this latest 5K, or at least come close, and that takes a certain type and volume of training that puts parts of my body at risk. Is it worth it? Apparently so, I keep doing it over and over again. If you ask people around me, I am generally happy and content when it comes to training. I am not one of those runners who hates all the work of training or loathes each and every run. I love it. Meet God out there. Pray for my neighbors, my enemies, my loved ones. Sort out my work during daily runs. I love to run and I love to keep trying to run fast as I age.

If I have matured at all over the years as a harrier, it has been in letting go of the need to explain and justify it all. The wisdom that has come for me is that even when I don't have crisp answers and explanations regarding the injuries, I am more seasoned and resilient about not getting "down" for too long even if there are some embarrassing and painful outcomes. I have learned that this is, or can be, how it goes and my body will get better and will usually surprise me with its' ability to heal. I support it with stretching and strength, diet and rest, but even all the maintenance does not always account for all the successes or the failures. Sometimes you just don't know how you struck gold or why you came up empty when you were certain there was oil at the latest drilling site. There are coaches around the world who will tell you otherwise, give you all the guarantees so you will write them checks aplenty, but they know better if they coach themselves and others long enough. We coaches must admit that with big goals comes big risk.

If you love to run--then do it when you can and do it over and over. For me, I love to run fast and I accept a certain measure of risk that comes along with teaching my body to cope with speed. It's not that easy on the back or the knees, but it is worth it to me. I hope you are running or exercising, or writing, or praying or fasting, or innovating in a way that is enjoyable and is for your pleasure, not someone else's. I hope you have some goals that are a bit out of reach...or are they?

George Linney has been a runner now into a fourth decade. He considers himself to be at the midpoint of his running career. He has been a writer and a pastor for far less time, but he wants to keep doing those things too!

#olderandfaster -- The Cover of Runner's World

10 more days in the #RWCoverSearch and my quest to be on the Cover of Runner's World magazine.
Vote every day for #762

These are just some of the images that epitomize my passion for running in this last season.
I hope you will support by voting.

Runnin' and Sippin' @5Points

Chapel Hill
Main and Morris
each pointing
to a dream
to bus stations and train stations
Mutual Life and Toast
even towards Whiskey
Beyu
Sure
Chicken, Waffles, Bull McCabe's
All the players and their dreams

Two runners stride up Corcoran and right
on Main and straight on northwest til Brightleaf
then right at Watts

Later against the laws of Morris
But no matter for their not driving
and bank hard right on West Chapel Hill
to buses and the big ballpark

Still later, repeating steps on Main but now right on Morris and on toward the old diamond with its Field of Dreams

As the sun comes up and the mercury rises one reflects over joe and dreams on what this day may hold

The run and the coffee are as good as the day may get
and these are good enough

One of my running secrets

First, I just had a great six mile run and boy, did I need it.  I've been fighting a cold/sinus infection for about five or six days.  I arrogantly talk flippantly about how I never get sick anymore.  This week has taught me to learn some humility and remember the frailty of my immune system.  I've felt lousy all week and of course on my first day off from Bull City in six days, when the body finally had the chance to rest, I felt perhaps the worst.

I'm stressed because I have a 5K on Saturday and I have pretty high hopes for putting up a good mid-season mark and this has not been a great confidence building week.  It's amazing how fast confidence in my fitness can slip away as if I had never run before.  So far this fall I've improved on all four of my races which I raced last year.  I've run the mile in 4:40 which is a gear these legs have never seen.  Then one measly little cold and I wonder if I should hang up the spikes, flats, trainers and burn all my running gear.  It's pathetic.  The mind requires so much stroking of it's fragile ego that the legs, lungs, and heart could care less about.  The engine parts don't care about a few easy days.  In fact, they probably were due an easy week.  Last week I ran nine times in seven days, had two awesome speed workouts of 10 x 1,000 meters and 12 x 500 meters and ended the week with an 18 miler.  It's like I can't even remember all the good work that happened so long ago.  We are talking five days ago.  Shameful.

Until this afternoon and the script was flipped just in time.  Kristen got home at 5:45pm and I was ready to sneak out for a twilight run.  I expected so little, thinking it would be another failed attempt to run and feel good, loose, free.  I didn't wear a watch, but I knew I had to shake out the legs with the hopes that I might still run on Saturday.  I rolled along for six miles up MLK and looped around Bojangles and it must have been around six minute pace.

Here's the little training secret.  I sought grass wherever I could find it.

I used to think you would only do this if you were injured and needed to take it easy on the grass.  I was even annoyed by a training partner who used to employ this technique on the same grass, but of course, he gave me the idea and now I am thanking him.  I used to think, if the sidewalk is there why not run on the thing and give the legs a little pop.  But I've learned that real power, flexibility, and just great XC (Cross Country) training comes from taking an urban run and finding every inch of grass.  It builds power.  It forces the technique issue.  If you don't lean forward and clean up the arm and shoulder action you just kind of bounce around and almost roll your ankles in the grass.  When you get into a powerful forward lean on the grass it doesn't matter if you hit a hole or a mound or a little uneven divot.  You are already toeing off powerfully and into the next stride.  It's not the fastest way down a stretch of land that offers concrete, asphalt, and grass, but the green stuff is the best for training.  It just takes a little discipline in terms of terrain choice, and this is a good mental exercise for the disciplines needed all throughout the runner's life.

It was a great run.  I don't really know if I was rolling six minute miles or not.  I don't really know if I can roll low five minute miles on Saturday.  But instead of staying holed up on the couch, depressed and more anxious about Saturday morning, I had a great Thursday afternoon run on a perfect October day.  And to rip off Frost, that has made all the difference.

P.S. I actually really like this video on running uphill.  Check it out.  The Bull City Track Club will be doing a great hill workout next Wednesday!

preparation in the key of life

 

This morning I woke from a great night's sleep

after a long day of work

and a great date with my wife

I was rested

So I wrote

For church

For what would happen before, at 2:00pm

Somewhere around late morning and on to midday

I began to clean

I threw out the excess and cleared the desk

And the floor

I was a bit later to the mile race then I’d planned

But the office was clean and I felt nourished

by tidiness at an unexpected hour

I listened to Ephesians on the drive over in the light rain and thought God is good on a cloudy, foggy, cool afternoon: There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

I made it to the city of oaks, center-city, in plenty of time

Shared a jersey with a new runner

Stretched out legs

Picked up bibs

Prepared my heart

Laced up trainers then racers

Not my most disciplined first quarter of the race

Still two seconds too fast

Pushed with a protégé

On the back side of capitol square

Didn’t hurt enough on the closing 500 meters

But that’s what next time is for

Ran 8-10 seconds faster than ever before for the distance of one mile

I’m thirty seven.

Headwaters recirculated for 1/1/12

Looking back at what I first posted on this blog on March 4, 2008...

I'm just beginning in the world of leisure blogging, though I have started a blog for work http://georgelinney.edublogs.org/ in case you want to visit me as my students visit me.

While At Water's Edge will be mostly about running, I am also remembering fondly my prior outdoor life as a whitewater canoeist and kayaker which might have some overlap to this blog title. Every once in a while I sneak into the water skirted and surrounded by a plastic whitewater kayak, if only at an artificial site http://www.usnwc.org/. Perhaps this blog will inspire me to kayak a few more times this season.

Still the blog title, At Water's Edge, comes not primarily from images of trail running nor whitewater kayaking, but from Hebrew Scripture. The Word of God is my first love and no better place to start than in the language of the 42nd Psalm--As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?

When crossing a stream as a runner, one must make a series of quick decisions. How much does it matter to keep my shoes dry? Would I even want to keep them dry if I could? What are the pitfalls of trying to pinball off each of those rocks? Will I slip? How is my triple jump these days? Can I pronounce groin should I strain mine in this leap, leap of faith, if you will?

None of these questions seem to address the question of thirst, since the psalmists' image is of a panting deer who longs for a drink from the stream. But I will stretch the metaphor to include the thirst of my shoes. Sometimes a trail shoe just wants to get wet. Here are two of my favorite races to water one's shoes:

http://www.raceuwharrie.com/

http://www.mitchellraces.com/springmaidsplash/race.html

...Now it is the first day of 2012. I don't kayak as often as I would like or write about the sport much. I'd like to remedy that someday. I do tend to thread running and the Word together. What does 2012 hold for me? I can't wait to see.

XC Club Nats--A Blessed 2011

12/14/11
I'm starting to think about what happened on Saturday in Seattle.  It seemed like such an ordinary sort of day.  But I know it was not.
I don't take more than a minute off my best 10K every day.  In the mud.
Now I have a cold, but I don't care.  It was worth it.

12/22/11
On December 10, I ran a personal best by 70 seconds for 10,000 meters.  That's about 11 seconds faster per mile than a year ago at the same race, but in comparing all the data, the Seattle course with it's mud was about 20-30 seconds slower than McAlpine a year ago.  Maybe I can break 34 minutes in a year.  That would be great.

I didn't feel my best going into the race.  Travel was tough to the Pacific Northwest as we knew it would be.  As time would tell, a cold was coming on.  But I didn't feel particularly bad either.  Legs were surprisingly loose on the Friday shakeout run on the course.  I was having a great time with teammates and I just generally had my head in the game.  I felt calm and focused.  There's not much to tell about the race.  I ran the first 5K in 17:10 and the second 5K in 17:19.  I knew I would be near the back of the race and having experienced that sensation last year, I was okay with that.  I knew my teammates would do their thing and I would not be a factor in the scoring.  Basically, I knew what to expect and I didn't set my expectations too high.  Still, I was expecting to run much faster than I ever had before.  So there was plenty to keep me focused and nervous.  I went out pretty smart, maybe a few seconds too fast, but I held back as much as I could.  I consistently passed runners throughout the race and only lost ground in the final sprint.

I wanted to negative split, (run the second half faster than the first), but the course made that goal very tough.  It got muddier with each 2K lap and each hoof that trampled all over it.  I took wide lines rather than running the tangents and I think that was the fastest way around.  I wanted to push a button and really pick it up at both the 6K and the 8K mark, but the legs didn't have an extra gear.  The ground was just so soft and didn't give back much at all.  I was working harder, but still running the same splits or a second or two slower per kilometer.

Only real disappointment, I thought I was a little weak mentally in the last 2K.  I knew it was going to be a big PR, under 35 minutes, and I think I settled.  I knew I was the 7th runner and my score would not count for the team, but it was no excuse.  I should have pushed harder.  I think 15 seconds faster could have happened if I was just a little tougher mentally.  I should have raced every jersey in the last 10 minutes of the race and next time I will.

Still, the outcome was predictable.  I told the church a few days before, great day--33:59.  Bad day--35:00+.  I got out of Club Nats what I put into my training all fall--a huge PR and one of my most successful races ever.  Can I go faster?  Absolutely.  I had said all along that my intention was to take cyclocross more seriously next fall, not be in running shape this time next year, but now I am not sure.  I really love running and I want to keep moving forward, quietly, patiently, wiser for what has occurred in 2011.  Perhaps some cycling and swimming in the summer and then back to what I know and love best.


...I'm still sick, but who cares, really.  Even my immune system knew when to break down.  The only exercise I have done in the past 12 days was a long run at Uwharrie (could not pass up that opportunity) and a cyclocross race in Winston (I performed dreadfully with a smile on my face).  It is as if my body simply said, "We will not perform, not now.  It's our time off."  I think of my body as parts in case the plural seems odd.  My body has been in a hibernating, recovering, putting on weight sort of mode.  But it's time to get back off the couch.  Time to pull out of this chest/sinus virus and get back to work.  I ran 11 minutes steady today and felt terrible.  No problem.  Tomorrow I am waking up early to run with friends.  I don't expect it to feel great.  I just expect to show up.


Training goals leading to Boston...but there is no rush in the next month.  As 2011 becomes 2012, I just need to run and enjoy it.  Run fast.  Do other stuff like INSANITY: THE ASYLUM^™ which is on the way from Team Beach Body. The running goals are very simple.  Over a 10 week period from January 30-April 7, I will accumulate 1440 Kilometers (a little over 900 miles).  Flesh that out with a lot of long runs, progression runs, speed work like 400s and mile repeats and a bunch of hills.  All that and I should be able to run about 2:40 at the Boston Marathon on April 16.

I may seem overly confident, but here was my 2011.
I keep up with seven Personal Records or PR's as we call them.
Mile
5K
8K
10K
10 mile
Half Marathon
Marathon

In my 36th year on the planet, and my 28th year of competitive running, I set PR's in all those distances excluding the 5K.  I have never had that kind of sweeping success at anything.

What did I do???

• I pastored the Tobacco Trail Church.  I consider the training and racing one of the most important aspects of my pastoral ministry in God's church and my personal prayer life.  Church and running feed one another.  They always have, but 2011 was the first complete calendar year of my life when I was pastor of a church.  I don't think the athletic success is unrelated.  Others will disagree, but that gives us something to talk about, and that something is Jesus.
• I ran more miles--a lot more.  As many as 85 per week this fall with one or two hard speed workouts.  In the Spring my marathon training peaked at 100 miles in a week.
• I took Juice PLUS+ every day.  All fall I doubled the dosage.  I also drank a lot of smoothies.  I think these two contributed to less sugar consumption and more front-loading of nutrition early in the day.  I didn't lose a lot of weight, but people thought I did.  So, I guess my body changed.
• I ran with a lot of friends.  Most consistent training partner was Jason and less consistent, but still very important, the rest of the Bull City Track Club.  This whole network meant a lot of accountability, fun, encouragement, discipline, tweaking workouts and probably 20-30 extra runs that I would not have done in years when I had fewer running peers and very few faster harriers to chase.  I ran a lot those other years too, so 20-30 extra runs in a year is a decent addition.  Sometimes running with faster people can beat you down, but you skip a few runs with the group and run by yourself.  If I had to choose, I would run with the pack.  It works for wolves and such.
• I wrote more about running.  It helps me put it the experience in perspective and enjoy the process.
• I worked at a running store and I am always being encouraged and educated by others successes and even failures.  Running can get pretty lonely, even when you train with others, but hearing how it is going from hundreds of other runners really helps me stick with it.  I am a part of an extensive running community which includes Bull City Running Company and BCTC, Trailheads, Godiva, and running friends all over the country.  Runners are weird.  Most of us will admit to this fact.  But we love running and we recognize the benefits of sharing it with one another.  I've always done this, but it grows and grows as the years pass and 2011 showed a steady growth if not a spike.

Even with all this I am still scratching my head.  I feel truly blessed by God.  Like I have been struck with a gift and one that I must not take for granted. Cumulatively on my six PR distances, measuring from 2010 and earlier I improved 26 minutes and 33 seconds.  I feel like I have started over as a runner--been re-purposed.  I don't want to be greedy and I remind myself that I hope to be participating in this activity 40 years from now.  But I don't want to squander this gift either.  I think, no, I know, I am still a runner.   Maybe next fall I can shave a few seconds off my 16:25 five kilometer mark.  Easier said than done, but I can do it.