Pain

I've heard it said that running ultras is an exercise in pain management. Well, I did the Big Basin Redwoods 50K this past weekend and I guess it went well, but getting up this morning I was made aware of how much pain I had been managing. This was partly due to the three stupid things I did before this race, but that is getting ahead of myself.

First, the race. There are few places more beautiful to run in the Bay Area than the redwoods north of Santa Cruz. The scenery and terrain were awesome and made the course seem easier than it was. I remember on the last uphills thinking that this course didn't seem that tough and wondering why I was struggling so much and why my time was so much further back than my last race. I think the extra few hundred feet that was added due to a last-minute course change took more of a toll than I realized. That and the beautiful setting distracted me from the pain developing in my feet. Don't get me wrong. I can't really complain. I finished fairly strong at 6:23 and was able to run the final downhill section despite the pain. It's just that the pain seemed much worse than in previous races from what I could recall. However, I am learning that, just like when I used to rock climb, the brain has a way of making the painful aspects of an event fade from memory as time passes. Maybe it is an evolutionary throwback from when our existence depended on not shying away from repeating previously painful events.

Anyway, yesterday was painful. Some of it was pain that I started with and some of it was acquired along the way. I started with pain because of my own stupidity ("the three stupid things"). My son was playing basketball with a friend and his friend's father and so I decided to jump in despite only having flip-flops on my feet. At first, I went barefoot (stupid thing #1). When running around on pavement without shoes started to hurt, did I stop? No, of course not. I decided to just put my flip-flops back on (stupid thing #2). This lasted about 5 minutes before I smashed my big toe into the ground and removed most of the flesh from the tip. My question is: "who does this the day before running an ultra?" I told myself at the start of the race that this was good training for my 50 miler. I was just simulating what my feet might feel like after the first 20 miles (yeah, right). Well, all this focus on my feet made me forget my training run the previous weekend where I had tried out my new shoes (The North Face Radials if anyone is interested). The shoes were great, but caused some irritation on my Achilles going downhill. I was supposed to remember this and do something about it before the race, but didn't (stupid thing #3) and ended up with two nice raw spots on the back of my ankles.

Apparently, these self-induced foot pains (combined with the normal pains of running 31 miles on hilly terrain) were not enough according to some local Big Basin residents. The native hornets decided that a few well placed stings (I got three) would help all these crazy runners test their minds ability to manage (and then try to forget) the pain of the day's event. Well, getting up this morning, my memorywas pretty fresh. Especially once I tried to stand up and walk on my still very sore feet. I think the frustrating thing is that my legs actually feel just fine (aside from the location of the stings which now itch) My legs feel just like after a long training run. I've suspected for a while that my feet are my limiting factor in these races. I'm just not sure if they are actually getting any stronger or if I am just putting up with more pain. Maybe that's all there is to it and I simply need to continue to learn better pain management. I guess we'll see come October. If you hear reports of a runner crawling the last 10 miles of the Dick Collins Firetrails 50 on his hands and knees, you'll know that my feet got the best of me.