the hill

Tuesday, I attempted the 8 mile loop with the big hill.  Unfortunately, right before the hill, I stopped and bent over to untangle the dog and leash, and SVT kicked in.  And it stayed for at least 20 minutes.  My tricks didn't work, not carotid massage, not relaxation, not slight hyperventilation, nothing.  I tried jogging up but gave up, even though it really didn't matter what I did.  I was going to be uncomfortable no matter what.

This was the longest bout I've had in ages, probably since the operation.  It was very demoralizing at first.  Oh, ____, this again, what's the point, etc, etc.  It's a relatively harmless but uncomfortable thing which could theoretically wear my heart out a couple of decades or so early, but at the time, it assumed a graver magnitude.  I walked up the hill while sinking deeper and yet also while slipping out of my body somehow, floating to the relief of incomplete presence.

And then, at the top of the hill was a clump of vivid red sumac in a sunlit field.  Sumac tethers me to familiarity in general, the smell, the look, especially during this fall season otherwise devoid of red leaves.   I clung to that red sumac and further pulled myself out of myself in the process.  I don't remember being with the dog except that I stopped to let him sniff and let myself stare at the red leaves.   He was a very good boy.  We stayed on the summit for an indefinite length of time.  My state of mind was not very temporal.

Eventually, with an almost audible click, my heart rate went back to normal.  We headed down the hill, I broke into a light jog to help clear things, but it was so fatiguing.  We walked and jogged--just downhill joggged--home.  SVT is perhaps the ultimate cardio workout.  The 20-30 minute bouts used to leave me tired for about a week afterward.

However, it seems that I'm stronger now.  I was tired the next day and just walked with the dog, but the following day, I felt strong enough to run the 3 mile loop.  It was an almost 3 mile loop to be accurate: the last time I ran the 3 mile loop, with my husband and the dog, another pitbull-type dog that is usually tied up ran out to greet us...fortunately in good humour.  It was larger than my dog (who is supposedly larger than a 'purebred' pit bull (there is much debate about the breed, or umbrella of closely-related breeds/strains, etc)--its head was proportionally much broader than my dog's.  We stopped and let the dogs sniff each other then calmly walked away.  There wasn't much else we could do because it ran out so suddenly.  It seemed like a pretty chill dog after the initial few seconds, but some dogs eventually take a dislike to each other and so I altered our route.

Friday, I ran for 7 songs on the TM--a tempo run.  24:10, so about 3 miles on the flat.

Saturday, I walked with the dog.

I'm omitting the cross-training workouts I did this week out of laziness; at least I did the workouts!  Oh, I should mention the pistol squats I did on Friday, because the delayed muscle soreness was a factor today.

I'd thought about attempting the 8 mile loop again, but it was already too warm (Tuesday was also a warmish day, which could have been a factor).  Plan B was a long easy run on the treadmill.  I found a video of the 2012 Rotterdam marathon and started jogging.

But my ass hurt too much to go slow.  I needed to apply a certain amount of force and/or momentum to push past the discomfort, like one needs to apply a certain amount of force to separate two magnets stuck together. Or a certain amount of force to push a gate open--that's a more appropriate comparison.  I pushed the speed control up and found that 6 mph was more comfortable.  Breathing was still easy, but there was enough momentum to help.

This really wasn't 6 mph.  I've mentioned the stinginess of the FREE treadmill before (I am not ungrateful, just realistic)...it's about ~1 mph in the midrange off, I think, at least in terms of effort because it is also set at a slight incline at its flattest setting.  6.5-6.7 feels like tempo run which would be about 7.5-7.7 on the flat outside.  The lack of flat outside adds to the confusion.  Really, I cannot tell what I should be running.   I should just ditch all numbers and just gauge effort, but I like numbers.

Anyway, I ran for 2 hours.  Tiredness emerged quickly and stayed.  I kept having to tweak things to avoid points of fatigue.   There were a few minutes here and there of relative ease, when balance and positioning were optimal and I recaptured the hip piston action I've been pursuing like a silently fleeing wild turkey blending into the shadowy brush (a friend mentioned turkeys on FB recently, and I've been thinking of them and the way they can melt out of sight).  All too soon, however, the turkey was gone and I was edging into inefficiency.  But, somehow on a very uniform running surface, I managed to change things up often, and time went by relatively quickly.

For the last half hour, I bumped the speed up to 6.3 mph (~7.3ish) to avoid accumulating discomfort.  This strategy worked well the last time I was starting to feel bogged down.  7.3 mph is 8:13/mile, which is a very mechanically comfortable pace for me...it's a bit harder than 9 min/mile, and burns glycogen more quickly, but is nevertheless easier in a way.  8:05-8:15/mile is my happy pace zone, I guess.  I was very tired during the last half hour, but being in my happy pace zone helped a lot, as did the timing of the marathon footage.  The first woman crossed the finish line at my 2:29, leaving me just a minute to slog through sort of on my own.

This run was a huge confidence booster because it was a test of stamina, which is my weakest point in running.   I am not fast, but I do better at the faster shorter workouts, and I develop endurance--long and slow--relatively easy and can coast about for hours in comfort, even beyond the marathon distance, when I'm fit, but I dislike breathing harder for more than a few minutes.  My breathing wasn't 'hard' during this run, but it was a steady 4-2 and 2-2 rhythm, which is faster than usual on my long easy runs.   It was probably mostly 2-2.  The hills here have forced me to accept that for longer periods of time, I guess, and I don't notice it was well.  And perhaps the SVT has made me a little bit stronger after all.  Maintaining a heart rate in the 228-240 beats/minute range is not something I can usually do; I'm lucky to get much above 200 during the toughest interval workouts.  At any rate, moving from 5.7 to 6.0 as a long run pace was a big development.

I signed up for a local (hilly, of course) marathon which happens to be in three weeks.  I still have time for a long slow run, either outside or on the TM, and maybe a couple of 8 mile big hill runs.  I have not been training very much compared to the past, but in the past few months, I have done a few runs in the 2:30-3 hr range outside, including 2 that were about 3 hrs long (but slow because the temps were 31-35 C, not including humidex), and a 2:50, a 3 hr, and two runs around 2:30 on the TM.  Not too shabby.