“Jeez, Erin, could ya hurt a little for it?!” Learning to Dig Deep and Suffer

My biggest goal this training cycle is to learn to dig deep.  I’m working on it so here’s a little progress update interspersed with some words of wisdom from some of the best road racers in Halifax along with some training jokes.

If you follow my training blog, you might recall that at Freeze Your Gizzard Half Marathon, my winter tune-up race, one of my goals/order from coach was “No Pretty Pictures.” As in no photos like my California International Marathon pictures that produced the title of this blog: “Jeez, Erin, could ya hurt a little for it?!”.  Freeze Your Gizzard produced a series of photos that look like this.  Coach Lee McCarron says, “Not good enough. Still too pretty.”

I tell Lee that this is all I have.  He can have a smiling happy face or a serious face. I don’t have anything else.  He tells me that everyone has a damn pain face (lol): “We need you to grind a little more.”

So I carry on training in pursuit of learning to grind more.  If this was an easy thing to learn, I would have accomplished this years ago. It’s not easy.  It’s ambiguous and fleeting. How does one grind more?  Or be willing hurt more for it?  If it was as easy as telling myself to do it, I would be doing it already.

I talk about this with Jamie, my most regular early morning running partner and one of the best grinders out there.  In fact, a group of us had just been talking about Jamie in his absence at Road Hammer after-practice-beer, agreeing that Jamie is one of the best racers there is.  

Jamie and I talk about who is amazing at racing. Not necessarily fastest, but best at getting the most out of themselves. We agree that our Halifax Road Hammers list is this: Denise Robson, Nick McBride, Lee and Jamie. I ponder what % I am actually getting out of myself in races.  Like, Jamie notes that we’ve watched Denise train at a 3:05 marathon and then go and hammer out a 2:51.  Like, wow, how is that even possible?  According to Jamie, there’s no one better than Denise. Denise is getting the absolute most out of herself every time she toes the line.  I estimate that I’m getting 87% out of myself.  My Cali marathon was an 8-minute PB but I looked at my race photos.  There’s more there.

“Erin, you get really distracted,” says Jamie. “By the crowds and the scene and the thoughts.”

I do.  

Saturday practice after Freeze Your Gizzard serves up my first lesson in grinding.

My own Road Hammers pace group recently died due to natural causes.  Damian is in a penalty box right now. Linda is running high mileage for her marathon.  Nick has moved up because he lit up the indoor track this winter. Morgan is busy with school. Maddy moved to Fredericton. That leaves: Erin.  At this particular practice, I’m excited when Marie-Soleil shows up. We can run together. I won’t be alone.

Marie-Soleil and I start out together during for an epic-workout of 6 sets of 3-2-1 minutes.  Because the rest is 60 seconds and the intervals are short, all of the Road Hammer pace groups remain relatively close together.  As we begin set 2, Marie-Soleil tells me that she can’t maintain the pace: “Go join the boys ahead,” she says.

I look ahead. Still within contact is the next pace group with a membership of Mike M (make that Mike MacKinnon, lots of Road Hammer debate over who the Real Mike is, lol), David M, Justin C and Jake H.  It’s the Big Boys.  I have never been fast enough to hang with them.  Well, correction: David and I recently did a mile repeat workout sorta together in which I told Lee after 3 of 5 miles that I was going to barf and Lee said, “Good! David, take her back out there and don’t let up on her!” and David almost killed me.  So that is the Big Leagues.  

I have a split-second to make my decision. Run solo or join the Big Boys? With Lee’s words in my head, “We need you to grind more,” I catch up with the Big Boys on a 60 second jog rest and tell them that I’m going to tuck in.

Garmins beep and set #3 begins. This feels like grinding. I am running off Mike’s left shoulder. Probably closer than necessary but I feel like if I lose contact with him, with the group, I’m toast.  Am I doing it? I don’t watch the pace, I just keep my eyes up and I hang on. My only though is “I will not get dropped.” I stick with the guys for the next 4 sets.

I figure that Lee will have some choice words for me. We don’t run by him until set #5. He yells something, probably “are you ok!?” but I can’t hang on to Mike’s shoulder and listen to him at the same time.

“What the hell?” says Lee, laughing after the workout, “Are you moving up 2 pace groups on your own”  

“I am fast now, Lee,” I say.

He asks about the pace and I say that I don’t know. I could either run and hang on or look at my watch. But not both.  I will check when I get home.  At home, I see that we were right on Big Leagues 8-10km pace @ 3:47/km.  I am happy. I ask for permission to run with the guys on Wednesday:

“Oh, you’ve made your decision.  Not permission, I’m telling you that you’re with them from now on.”  Though this comes with an order not to red-line every workout.

At our next practice, Wednesday, the guys give me grief for titling Saturday’s workout Grind it out with the Big Boys on Strava.  “Why’d you tell everyone I had a big gut?” says Dave.  Wednesday workout is super windy. We go out together, along with Patrick, this time so a group of 5. Four guys, one Erin.  On the way back, the guys tell me that as payback for the big gut comments, it’s my turn to break the wind: everyone single file behind Erin.  So they all do get behind me. Ineffectively.  I am the smallest. But fun is important. Hehe, of course this is where we run by Lee who isn’t in on the jokes and is tempted to yell at the boys to Jesus put the smallest runner in the back.

With the exception of my excellent wind-breaking skills during one windy set, I tuck in behind Mike M and Justin and run tight on them. I need to maintain contact so I don’t get dropped. No pace watching, just running.  I believe that this is helpful because I’m finally not thinking 26 distracting thoughts about: pace; perceived effort; shoes; calves; ponytails; are my gloves too warm; look how nice the setting sun looks in the sky; how many workouts have I run with Damian in the history of time; back to pace again.  I’m just running and hanging on. That’s all.

So that’s where I am at. Making small improvements at grinding it out in practice. There will be a mile repeat workout in the future and I will plan to ‘pain train’ that one.  The guy who I ran with at CIM, Stephen, is my Strava friend and I just saw him post a mile repeat workout in which he says he got into the Pain Cave. We have the pain box and sometimes the pain train with the Road Hammers but not yet a pain cave. Do I need a Pain Cave? That’s a whole other blog post.  

So that’s Road Hammer workouts. What’s next in learning to grind more in racing?

This is one of the best books that I’ve read about mental fitness: “How Bad do You Want it” by Matt Fitzgerald. I’ve written about it before in the context of runners being #bettertogether.

Books are great. I’ve read this one twice. I have some real-life examples that are just as good or even better from my Road Hammer training partners: Nick, Jamie, Lee, Denise.  Don’t worry, I’m not letting our brightest running stars’ secrets loose.  No one is going to be able to easily adopt these strategies as their own. That will take years of practice.  

Up first is Nick McBride. Nick was training with me in a pace group this fall as he clawed his way back to both health and fitness after an injury.  He was super psyched about the Indoor Track racing season this winter because he has track stardom in his collegiate background.  

At the first 3000m race we did in January, Nick went out with me.  We went through 1000m together at 3:43.  Then he turned on that track stardom background and proceeded to pick off everyone in the race and win the race.  His last km was a 3:21. #respect.

He said that he decided, “I’m either going to win this race or die trying.”

Training partner Mike M who finished in 4th said, “I was running along then this fat guy blew by me and took the race!”

So I asked Nick (not at all fat): how are you so good at racing?  How do you decide that you are going to win the race or die trying and then actually do it?  Personally, I sometimes think that I would like to do that. But I will not, can not, do not?

Here is his answer:

Experience is probably number one reason. I have probably ‘failed’ more than I succeeded in races.  But since I have done it so much I try to learn from the failures.  My university coach said there is no such thing as a bad race as long you can learn from it.

I go through things to get ready. Before a race, I try to visualize the race and predict when the pain is expected to come.  For road and cross country races you also want to see the course as part of this exercise so you know approximately where the turns/hills are.   When the pain comes, I say: “Hi pain I was expecting you… now get lost.”  In the race, I also break it down into smaller and smaller segments as the race goes on.  For example in the 3k, I start with 1k, then 500, then maybe another 500 then maybe 200m segments until the finish

Nick says that he is also driven by his biggest racing regret:

Mentally bailing in my last university race.  First, some back ground to the story:  I had two main goals in my university track career, one to win a CIS Medal and two, to qualify for the CIS Championships in an individual event.  Two weeks prior to my last university indoor race, I ran a 1500m pb of 4:01 at Moncton to win the AUS championship and qualify for my first individual event at the CIS (now U Sports) Championships (Goal # 2 accomplished).  The night before my last race, I had run the 3rd leg of the 4 by 800m and we won the bronze medal (Goal # 1 accomplished).  Having reached my goals, I was not focused as much as I should have been for the 1500m race.  My goal in this race was to break 4 minutes.  Instead, 400m into the race I got pushed to the outside of the track. Instead of getting back into the main pack, I coasted through the rest of the race finishing well behind everyone else.  After this race, I felt embarrassed for myself, my coach and my team.  To this day, I regret how I handled this race and not chasing after the 4 minute barrier.

Well we can now see razor-sharp focus now along with experience with and willingness to fail leading to big rewards for Nick.

Lee McCarron is amazing at racing too and often quotes his laser-sharp focus as one of his ingredients to success. He also acknowledges that he has an above average capability to race far about his current fitness. He’s just so good when the gun goes.

Jamie Lamond is so good with his mind too. He expects and gets 100% out of himself every time.

On the run, while we were talking about how he gets 100% out of himself, we were also talking about other training partner Ian M who we are currently missing (come back, Ian!).     Jamie and Ian have ripped off many workouts and a few races together.  Jamie talks about looking over at Ian while hammering up a hill and noting how powerful Ian’s quads are:

“Wow.  I am doing with this with my mind.  Like, with rage. Ian is actually using muscles!  I’m using…. chakras!”

Jamie is so good because his mind is so good. He’s all in. He’s all the way willing to hurt for it.  And he does.  Matt Fitzgerald’s book has the following line: “the greatest athletic performances spring from the mind, not the body. Elite athletes have known this for decades and now science is learning why it’s true.”

Finally, we will leave it to Denise Robson to show us just how powerful the mind is and how to harness it.  Denise wrote us a little mini-essay that she titled:

“How I try to get the absolute best out of myself racing” by Denise

Freeman Churchill, pedorthist at Orthotics East and 2:34 1981 Boston marathoner once said to me many years ago and I have never forgotten it: “visualize your entire race the night before the event. The start, the finish and everything in between.”

If you know it’s going to be rainy or windy, see yourself dealing with the elements.  Know if you want a PB there is going to be pain at some point so visualize this pain and how you are going to embrace this pain.  I remind myself when that pain comes that I have earned this with so many miles and sacrifices for this race and some pain is not going to stop me from achieving my goal.  

Because adrenaline can easily take over at the start of the race when the gun goes off, I repeat: “calm, calm, calm, relax, relax, relax.”  Make sure you don’t focus on where anyone else is.  Run your own race.  Hit your own paces and everything will come into place.

Pacing is key.  You need to know what is a realistic goal time (based on your training) and run that suitable pace until the end when you give it everything you have to finish even stronger.

I know I have what most people call high pain tolerance and what I call high suffering tolerance and it can be a major factor in races; especially, if you and your competitor are equal with your running abilities.

However, I believe one can increase this suffering tolerance but you need to become familiar with it and you can become familiar with it in some of your training workouts.  There should be a couple of toughness workouts to expose yourself to suffering.  Train with people who are faster than you to either help you suffer or suffer along with. *smile*

Now you know, Erin, every workout is not a suffer-fest but you need to get out of that comfort zone and just suffer and learn how to deal with the suffering and get through it so you are familiar with it when it comes on race day.

We always have deeper reserves of strength left to tap into.  We can not let our mind think we don’t.  When you think you are spent….there is always a little more suffering you can do so visualize this suffering and visualize digging deeper and practice this in your training.

……………….

Our Road Hammers’ wisdom pretty much line up with the chapters in Fitzgerald’s book:

• Champions have learned how to give more of what they have
  • Lee racing above his fitness level time after time.
• Mental toughness determines how close you can get to your physical limit:
  • What Jamie calls running on his rage or chakras.
• Bracing yourself for a tough race or workout can boost performance by 15% or more
  • Visualizing it like Denise and Nick talked about.
• The only way to improve performance is by altering how you perceive effort
  • What Denise calls exposing yourself to suffering in workouts so that you are familiar with it
• Learning from failure
  • Nick’s greatest weapon and advice
• Wanting it badly
  • We see this with all 4.

Matt Fitzgerald’s book promises that “these lessons will help you push back your limits and uncover your full potential”  Sure.  If you want it bad enough and train/practice for it enough.  Fitzgerald’s book was criticized as not being a “how-to.”  But really, is there a how-to?  I don’t think so, not an easy one. There’s just trying harder, practicing and becoming familiar with the suffering, wanting it more badly time after time and being open to failing.

So I’ll get back to work at Road Hammer practices: trying hard, practicing and becoming familiar with the suffering while I hang onto Mike M’s shoulder and wanting it badly.