Running to Think

The Belgian Ardennes have always represented a good source of trouble for my training schedule. This location was a big deal last year, when I was training for the Ironman and this year as well, when I am adding up some extra mileage for the ultra marathon, next March.
The elevation gain is what makes the Ardennes a very interesting location to spend a weekend or more, in a cottage next to the river, with good food supply and, of course, the road that seems to go only uphill.
This time Gianluca and I spent a weekend in Ocquier, Wallon region, province of Liege. We trained twice in the weekend. The first time in Sart Tilman, on a nice trail track in the forest and the second time on the road from Ocquier to Durbuy.




The course is very technical, formed by some hills that need a quite efficient run in order to keep the pace. Higher-frequency-smaller step is the trick to survive such monsters.
We decided to head to the beautiful city of Durbuy when we were already on the road. We really didn't plan for it.
By running towards the Belvedere we could appreciate the panoramic view of the village. Many tourists could also appreciate the presence of two crazy guys running around in shorts and shirts in running-tourist mood during a winter chilling saturday. Who needs a car when you have legs?

Running on those roads was a bit like travelling without setting any destination and just enjoying the trip. We realised only at the very end that we had been running for 22 km, with a total elevation gain of 700 meters.

Here are some pictures that report the great deed.

Going downhill back home
Time to relax and prepare to get some food
		Where do I wanna go today?

23/12/2013
Coming from a week with some interval training sessions, I decided to keep week 52 for some long distance running. Except for monday, in which I've been running quite shortly and I have been doing some mobility exercises, the rest of the week has been quite crazy. Only 10km today.

24/12/2013
After the usual wake up at 5:50am, it was not the heavy rain in Leuven to discourage me from running 20 km around the canal. Due to some interesting plans in my racing schedule - of which I will be writing in some future post - I started running with my running backpack, equipped with gels and some other snacks I am not considering to use during these first running sessions. The purpose is just to get familiar with such a gadget ;)
Anyway, 20 km at an easy pace of 4':30" per km is not bad at all, considering the impressive wind I have been running against.

25/12/2013
"How can you run on christmas??" that's what some of my friends were asking. Actually, how can you *not* run on christmas? I would have replied. Things are going a bit differently this year. Spending xmas day in a soft and scented bedding with your girl is probably one of those very few things that can make running in winter wait. Just for one day.

26/12/2013
Back on the road for what should have been a 15 km running session, which became 17 km.
Running in Bruxelles city is not bad, if you know where to go. I usually head to the Parc du Cinquantenaire and start looping around.
I forgot to take some coins with me and I had to run to the bakery to buy some breakfast right after workout. Hence the two extra kilometres. The slope of the line that indicates the overall speed is clearly positive, meaning that I was running progressively faster. Average pace 4':20" per km.

27/12/2013
Here we go with the crazy part of the week. Gianluca had a wish: running together in the forest of Sart Tilman in Liege, before the new year. The course I am talking about is quite steep, sometimes crazy steep, some other times just insane. We kept the insane part out of the equation and enjoyed a run of 500 metres of elevation on a total distance of 17 km. Wish satisfied :)

28/12/2013
We planned to spend the weekend in complete relax in the Ardennes, southern Belgium. That's probably the best location for trail running or road running with quite some elevation. Long story short, we ran from Ocquier to Durbuy, went up to the Belvedere and came back home. My hands were freezing. My legs were enjoying the 700 meters elevation course. Total distance 22 km. Still calling it relax?

29/12/2013
Whenever I am in Bruxelles and that's a sunday, I know where I should be running. La Cambre in Bruxelles is a location that my running team keeps booking every sunday since 5 years, for the usual 20 km in the forest. Amazing track, amazing people. Slow pace running with some hills to run at 90% max on distances that can vary from 300 mt to 700 mt. Quite a thing.


Total mileage this week 105 km.
Happy new year.

I usually run in the morning due to many factors like having the rest of the day free or simply to respect my working duties. Dealing with the pretty unstable weather conditions of Belgium is yet another reason to run in the morning if it's not raining. A wet day is always better than a wet night.
But those rare times I go running in the afternoon or at night, even though there is no such line separating the two in winter, my diet and habits can change accordingly.
After workout I need to eat. Taken this for granted, I have to deal with rule #0 dictated by nutritional sciences which says "no carbs at night" especially when the next meeting of the day is the one with the bed.

What then? How can I go to sleep right after shower? Jamais!
I would fail to fall asleep, being nervous and feeling that there would be something missing. Not to mention that it would be extremely hard to follow the regular morning schedule of the day after without proper fuel. That would result in a clamorous knock out in the morning.

I started running with Sajjad about two years ago. He actually started to run with me. Apparently I transmitted the same enthusiasm I have whenever I go out for a run. That makes me feel proud and glad that someone can see how passionate I am for running. Up to some months ago we were used to run together around Leuven.
Short distance, medium and long runs. The distance really didn't make any difference. Running with him was a motivation also for me. I could see him getting faster, running more efficiently. But more importantly I could see the same passion I had when I started running a long time ago.

One day he gave me the news I was not really waiting for.
His application got accepted and he would have relocated to Germany for the next, well, years. I went back to running alone and honestly running the same courses we were used to run together gave me the feeling that he was still there running next to me, or more accurately, behind me.

The first part of the run was usually relaxed and we were used to talk about pretty much everything, our achievements, life, politics, girls, sports, love. I enjoyed it so much and I truly missed it when he left.
 Yesterday, I received a text from a german phone number that said "will you be in Leuven the 20th? Sajjad". He planned to stay here for three or four days. Benjamin Franklin said once that "lost time is never found again".
Agreeing with it or not, would have been one more reason to lose some more time. The first thing we planned to do together was a pizza and, of course, a running session in the country around Leuven. The course we were used to run looked much shorter today.

We started fast. We finished faster. Our excitement was too high to start slower.
Every curve looked familiar. Every footstep was predictable.
Our feet knew exactly how to step in front of each other.
For the 1st km we were pacing 4':15", 2nd km again, 3rd km didn't want to be slower than the first two. Then things started to be more spicy. 3'58", 3':53, 3':50 and so on, until the end for a total distance of 13 km. Not bad for a run at 7 degrees, quite relaxed at the beginning.

Sajjad is back in town.

The London experience has given a nice shake to my schedule. I really enjoyed running in the city even though the pavement was not my favourite and it is actually pretty dangerous for ligaments and tendons.

It's almost Xmas. Still in London. After the run of yesterday I planned to have a shorter one today at a definitely slower pace. But plans are always hard to respect when I have no races ahead or when I am abroad and I want to experience new tracks or I just feel the need for disconnecting my mind from whatever is going on around me.
I woke up at 6am again, had a tea and dressed up. I was tweeting from bed something I barely remember. The temperature here in London is much warmer than Belgium. These steady 13 degrees are like a cold spring.
 Starting from Kings cross, where my hotel is, I took Euston road until Marylebone, I ran ahead until crossing Baker street. Straight up to Oxford road and I suddenly found myself in front of Marble arch. When I got to the speaker's corner, I didn't find anything to say and I kept running into Hyde park for a while. It was still dark, the feeling was the same as those nights when people get out wasted from clubs. I actually met some of them coming back from a tough saturday night. But that night was almost over and there was very little time for the sun to rise and hit my warm and bearded face.



When I was on the bridge over the Serpentine I met a guy who was making a photograph of the sunrise. We were almost there. I turned my face as my eyes were the lenses of his camera and looked in the same direction.
It was divine.
Gooses and many other birds were living on the surface of the water, the light of the sun getting brighter and brighter, and it suddenly was daylight. The city woke up. I could feel it moving forward. Nothing changed for me. I was moving way earlier and way faster than them. Faster than everybody else.
The running pace got smaller and smaller, my legs were just not running. They were rotating, fixed only in one joint of the hips, my feet were brushing against the ground with high frequency, easy as the light, as fast as the sunrise.
4'10" min per kilometer and I couldn't feel it, as easy as drinking a glass of water.
On the way back I was so detached from the rest of the world that I just couldn't see that my hotel was now behind me and I was heading towards Camden town, in the wrong direction.
I had to stop and ask a guy "where am I, mate? where is kings cross station?"
"It's all the way down man, you're running in the wrong direction," he said.
Nothing is wrong when I am running.
I turned back and went to the hotel. It was in the room that I checked the mileage: 16 km, again, before breakfast.

Running in the city is something I was not really missing. When I cannot choose the surface I’d like to run on I try to be as less picky as I can. I am in London city and, to be honest my running experience is going beyond any expectation. First I forgot my running headphones and I could not play any music during my workout. That's a good thing since I pay better attention to the numerous hitches that definitely come from bikes, cars or buses. Running in the city is not a joke. Running in London is even harder due to the fact that, well, I have no clue where I am running. I just keep moving forward towards the unknown. My hotel room is two minutes from Kings Cross station and I am usually taking the St. Parnas road that takes me a bit out of downtown. One more thing; running on the pavement is not really my favourite. Yesterday, saturday 14th I decided to go out for a run before having breakfast. That helps educate my body to go on low fuel and metabolise fat faster. It's like simulating to "hit the wall" after a 25 km run during a marathon. Not something I do everyday, and you shouldn't either. But I have it in my schedule. The first part of the run was quite a slow pace, exploring the environment, measuring the new hitches and the noise of the city. It was like getting familiar with a very aggressive wild animal, after I ended up in his nest. The second part of the run was pretty fast. I realised I was pacing between 3'50 and 4'00 per km only at the end of the workout, and I was doing it for a while. When I looked at the timer I was surprised to read that the last 7 km were covered in a bit less than 28 minutes. I got back to the hotel room at dawn, when the city was waking up and the first cars were honking their horns at me, reminding me of one very fundamental thing: I was running in the wrong direction.

There are so many books about running out there and more and more runners who are switching from regular shoes to no shoes at all for a number of reasons that sound scientifically sound even though might easily be interpreted as hilarious and scary at the same time. They call it barefoot running. They do it on the track and field or grass. But those who consider themselves "the purest" can do it on the road or in the forest, even on water and rocks. The scariest part of it is that very few people are saying what should be said about barefoot running. I am not here to take part of one or the other team. I'm just writing according to my own experience, how I succeeded and, alas, how I got into trouble with barefoot running. When I was a professional athlete we were running barefoot on the grass, usually after a serious workout such as a very long distance or a tough interval training session, in order to minimise blisters and mainly to build some callosities under our feet, always softened by the sweat, the warmth or just by wearing shoes for a number of hours. We were used to run barefoot on the track and field and on fresh asphalt around 7pm in the evening since early-afternoon asphalt in southern Italy can be so hot that we could have cooked eggs for dinner on it. The exercise was performed also to strengthen ankle, tendons and calves. It was not longer than 10 (ten) minutes and it was considered an exercise indeed. Not a new running philosophy. Apparently things have taken another direction with some consequences that very few people are mentioning. For instance, the steady increase of injuries such as tendonitis and stress fractures, not to mention infections, heel and calf injuries. Stress fractures are the most common injuries caused by running barefoot. A stress fracture is basically an overuse injury. The muscles usually protect the bones by absorbing most of the shocks with the ground. But when the muscles are overtired, they no longer accomplish their function and the bones get stressed more than they should. Transferring stress to the bones can create small cracks that cannot be seen as all other regular fractures that are visible under the X-ray. When this type of stress is repeated a number of times of for longer distances it can not only be just painful but extremely dangerous. Even though there are runners who are claiming that they finished seventy and something marathons in their "birthday shoes" without any injury nor issues that needed any medical treatment whatsoever, there are many others who, on the other side, got serious problems and just don't write about it. I believe that the statistic that makes people believe that barefoot running is healthy, is quite biased indeed. According to my own experience, barefoot running is not healthy. I am making such a claim due to a series of injuries I got into, even after observing the so called rules of the barefoot runner such as slightly increasing the duration of the session or starting on a soft surface. Barefoot running is very risky if it is done as a philosophy rather than a 10-minute exercise. Especially if it is performed on modern urban streets. The damage that it can cause can be so severe to set a runner's career to an end in much less than three weeks. Since Born to run, a book that talks about the Tarahumara indians, has been published and become a best seller in the running community, barefoot running has become a sexy trend. So sexy to make more and more podiatrists really busy workers. The Tarahumara indians, who apparently run barefoot (this statement is not completely true, since they wear handmade protection soles) are different from us. They were born like that indeed. More importantly, they didn't relocate to New York city or Bruxelles. Their lifestyle is different from ours and their needs are really like chalk and cheese.  Habit is not genetics. The environmental factors involved in the Tarahumara community are fundamentally different from those we are used to deal with every day.
Moreover, our society evolved towards a different direction. The one in which we use shoes. Going back in time to a shoeless life will probably sound cool and alternative. That doesn't mean the way to go. Those who are practicing barefoot running without getting any injury are, on average, not very long distance runners. The very few who can run far represent such a negligible part of the running community that they cannot and should not be taken as successful examples. Even in the scientific community there are numerous doubts and lack of evidence about the effectiveness of barefoot running. Keep barefoot running as an exercise. Not a philosophy!
This, of course, is just personal advice.

As a tradition I recently started on this blog, here is the summary of the last week. It has been a quite running week. I like those weeks of transition in which I try to keep my eyes away from the timer and the mind from the need of increasing the pace. In such weeks nothing really matters.

The goal of this week has been twofold. First of all going back to running constantly everyday after the 50 km of two weeks ago. Second, to gently increase the milage and build up some distance by the end of February (sounds like a long term plan to me).

I really do not respect the 10% rule that dictates there should be and increase of milage of 10% each week for 3 weeks in a row. I know that many runners take it as a golden rule. I don't think it's a formula that can be applied to everybody, as many other formulas some people speculate on or even fabricate for the sake of marketing.
I believe that every runner has his own formulas with respect to pace, milage and especially nutrition.

I enjoy running in the forest so much that I am converting most of my running activities to the trail. There's much less impact than on the road. Moreover I find the type of running more dynamic, with all these jumps I am forced to, in order to hop on mud puddles, stones and wood.
The pace is always a bit slower due to the elevation and the terrain I have to deal with. But speed is not of my concern, at the moment.

 

9/12/13 coming from a week of exercise and recovery, I decided to go out for a very easy and short run. Stretching and mobility exercises were added to the training.

10/12/2013 10km on the treadmill with some climbing up to 6-8% without changing the pace I was running at with no elevation

11/12/2013 slow and easy 13 km run from Bois de Colonster to Bois de Saint Jacques, for a total of 240 mt elevation at 4':40"/km
I had quite tired legs, due to the long resting period I had, in order to reduce the risks of that  nasty stress fracture. I also think that my fatigue was also due to a slight form of sleep deprivation I was going into for a few days.

After running 32 miles I had to deal with some issues on the right foot, as expected. In the beginning it looked like a stress fracture that I couldn't localise exactly, even though I felt some pain after running for 20 minutes. Running the day after 32 miles might sound crazy. But that actually facilitates a faster recover. Anyway, due to my (hopefully) small injury  I decided to have a break and take some rest.

Only two days later I felt already bored and lifeless and I changed my mind, heading to the gym and converted to active rest on the spinning bike. For three days in a row I had been riding that thing for about 45 km per day, adding some stretching and mobility exercises to the program.
It was relaxing even though at some point I was pushing, going "up" and "down" at a higher pace. It was relaxing because I had no target time and no target distance. It was a good alternative to laying dead on the couch.

In the middle of the week I decided to go out for a test run, only half an hour. The foot gave me some pain, I stopped immediately and went back home. No swelling and no pain at rest were two signs that gave me hope about the severity of the injury. The rest of the week has been dedicated to cycling and talking to a girl I met at the gym. I usually don't talk to anybody when I'm training and I usually lead home immediately after the shower that follows the workout.

Not in week 49.
  

I was a child when my father was training for his first marathon. I have the vivid image of him running for a distance I could not begin to comprehend at the time, when everything looked much bigger than it really was. Probably my father too. The joy of finishing a marathon was the only thing that I couldn’t understand and I kept underestimating for so many years. That was until I finally ran my own marathon, and suddenly, everything began to make sense again. After crossing 26 mile mark, my father changed.
He became more poetic whenever he talked about running. I remember that he said once “a marathon is just like life”. I never got the meaning of that quote and again I underestimated it. As of late, I think I found out the meaning of that phrase.
A marathon is like everyday life in the sense that we can appreciate our efforts only at a certain point: Only when we stop running. That memory kept me curious about running and endurance sports to the point that I wanted those words to be meaningful, for me. That was the main reason for which I became a long distance race walker. In Italy that was a big thing at the time. There were so many good schools to learn the not-so-natural technique and strategies to do it faster without breaking the rules and being disqualified. Heal on the ground and blocked knee are the two rules that make race walking one of the most deleterious sporting activities that a kid can get into. I was really good at that. I won a number of regional and interregional championships, I got the first position at the national criterium of race walking in Caorle (Venice), back in 1996.

My future was already planned as a professional race walker when I had to deal with the first injuries. The older I became the longer I trained and the more I was exposed to more or less bad injuries that played against me and shattered my dream of participating in the olympic games of Athens 2004. Distance running was the patch in my career as an athlete. I tried to fill my life with that. That was the only thing I could do.
 My bad physical conditions forced me to stay at home, putting me in a state of depression since no other sport was on my wish list. I hated football, and still do, I had no feelings for tennis and the like and I never wanted to play in teams in general. Running has always been the mirror of my personality, the place where I've always been comfortable, the peaceful path that always made me feel at home. Especially when I was far from my real home and family.
 So many times I've been struggling with the usual difficulties of everyday life. As a guy who's always been abroad, living on his own, no family, no relationships whatsoever, very few friends and too many goals to focus on, I was barely paying attention to the details, forgetting that life can start from the finish line, if only I could stand still on my feet. That's what I found in running.
The ability to survive until it's over, till the finish line. Maybe that's what my father meant with "a marathon is just like life". Maybe, as I will tell him one day, life is a marathon of which we have no clue where the finish line is.

Be Great, Powerful Beyond Measure

The dinner following an intense workout like a 50 km run (ok, even for much less than that) is probably not very well appreciated if it is too heavy to digest or eaten later  than usual, maybe right before going to sleep. Even though I consider eating late quite negative for my body, I cannot hide that it occurred to me a number of times.
Here is a nice receipt that helps muscle recovery and tissue rebuilding with a good amount of proteins and vitamins.

Ingredients
100 gr of crab meat (this provides 18 grams of proteins)
1 spoon of olive oil
half lemon
1 teaspoon of sumac
1 tea spoon of black pepper
1 spoon of mostarde of Dijon
1 fresh tomato
6 brussel sprouts
1/2 red onion


Instructions
Prepare the crab meat in a dish and mix it together with oil, lemon, pepper, mostarde, add some salt and let it marinate for about 20 minutes.
In the mean time cook some brussel sprouts with a small red onion. Cook the sprouts slowly, using a lid and keep the steam inside.
Cut a fresh tomato in cubes and compose as in the picture. Sprinkle some sumac on it.

I didn't plan to run 32 miles the day of my 32nd birthday because of Dean Karnazes who apparently did the same for his 30th birthday. We just happened to have the same idea and I must admit that it's a very challenging one.
So I changed the training schedule of the last months to be able to finish 32 miles by the 30th of November. The very first idea was just to get my feet to the finish line, wish myself a happy birthday and drink a beer with some friends. But things went differently. Very differently.
First, I found a holy soul of a friend who accepted to be my pacer and support me by bike, providing me all the stuff that I might have needed while covering the distance of 51.5 km. Priya was very excited to help me. Although she's very passionate about sports and she loves running, I had the feeling that she was not aware of the type of work she would have been involved in and the responsibilities she had accepted to take.
Being a good pacer is not a job that everybody can do. Runners are usually pissed when something goes wrong with the pacer who has to stay as much as he or, as in my case, she, can. Attached to the runner, she has to search and deliver stuff in a matter of seconds and catch up as soon as possible when she falls behind while reorganising stuff in the luggage. Add to that the fact that the aforementioned backpack is usually heavy and that a live twitter stream had to be updated and the job might become a nightmare. I know how it can be. I used to be a pacer when my dad started running marathons and I was a kid on a bike usually much bigger than me, with a backpack definitely taller than me, a timer I constantly had to look at and all the duties that had to be carried out upon request.

We started at 10:30 CET from Leuven in the flemish region of Belgium, crossed the city and headed to Oud Heverlee in the countryside to have a peaceful run with no cars around. Peaceful places can hide trouble though, in the form of uphills and irregular terrain that usually make the run more exciting but not as smooth as an ideal course would be.
Since the beginning I was worried about the left foot which, coming from a stress fracture some months ago, could have given me a reasonable cause to quit the challenge. I had been worrying for nothing, or well, for the wrong foot. The right one was giving me some signs of weakness and stress from the extensors and another zone near the tarsus already at km 12. It was a very weak signal, weak enough to be completely ignored for the rest of the day.
The sight of a little blonde girl who smiled at me as she knew what I was running for convinced me of the fact that all those little aches were just a side effect of my body’s adjustment to the pace, the distance, etc.  I knew I was wrong. But that helped. So I winked at her, she smiled me back and I kept running.

I was not following the pace I planned to run at and started a bit faster probably due to excitement and the low temperature. I was so sure I would have lowered the speed sooner or later. Therefore I ignored that too.
At km 15 we started going up, approaching a nice zone called Zoet Water, next to the forest of Oud Heverlee, with a natural water spring. No need to stop for a refill this time.
The run was going smooth and I was approaching the 21st km when I informed Priya that finally there would be no more climbs. I hadn’t even finished that sentence when we entered the city of Leuven again to go to de Vaartkom, the canal that goes to Mechelen. But, to get there we had to run on the ring,  a quite steep and 3 km long ring. I was relatively fresh and that climbing gave me no reason to worry.

The second part of the course was all along the canal. Basically no elevation. But the milage was starting to kick in and the 34th km was the one that I felt for the first time on my legs. Numb, completely. I had a banana and two pieces of boiled and salted potatoes and kept sipping water slowly and constantly for about 10 minutes. At km 37 I felt fresh (such a beautiful oxymoron) again and kept going shrinking the distance to the full marathon. I don't remember much of that part. I passed at km 42.2 in 3h21' and felt great.
I didn't know that I was raising the wall I would hit very soon. That crash occurred just ten minutes later around the 45th km, when I suddenly felt my legs like two heavy stones, my stomach incapable of processing any food nor fluid. Any action was kind of futile. But the clock was ticking and the only thing I could do was to read the pace of 5 min sharp per km. I found it hard to go below it.
Less than 7 km and I would have been allowed to wake up from that nightmare. But 7 km is long, especially when the body is not helping to move on and when the foot I had been ignoring started yelling out its disappointment in the form of an acute pain like the one of a large needle stuck in the middle of the extensor tendons, ripping apart tissues at any collision with the ground.
Still, 5 minutes per km. Not slower. Not faster.
At km 48 things got better again. So much better that I got excited again and when I met a group of old retired people on their saturday afternoon promenade along the canal, I shouted at them "gentlemen, I'm running since 48 km". They were scared.

I was not running the last three on my legs. Rather on my mind. My fuel was a mix of adrenaline, dopamine and endorphins I was producing for free that made me forget everything around me and focus on the finish line I could see now.
I raised my arm to the sky, then stopped the timer and hugged Priya.

The 30th of November I thought myself a lesson. Achievement is an attitude. Sometimes it is good to keep such statements in mind.
I am 32 miles old.