For the Love of the Game

Now that it is finally summer again and the wetness has seemingly subsided, the overgrowth in the woods is at full vegetation. The New England weather is so interesting. You may take it for granted having never left, but after living in Southern California, you pray for days that are appropriate for training. After one of the worst winters on record and summer having just arrived about 8 weeks late, the day was perfect for a training run.

Today, though, is one of those very rare and unique occasions where a training run had no purpose other than recovery. After an enormous final build and then a 5-week peak/taper period for ½ IronMan, a recovery week couldn’t have come at a better time. The body aches, the miles seem endless and the monotony of training solo has reached an unrealistic plateau, specifically resulting in a suffering morale. Recovery can be defined to mean a number of things, but to me, today, that meant “Just get out there and don’t go too hard.” Every run has a purpose: Long Steady Distance with cadence, hills, strides, volume, intervals, target heart rates, etc, but today I knew I needed to recharge the running battery and figure out again why I do this to myself. The uniqueness of today’s session was that there were no electronics to track speed or heart rate or distance or elevation. It was just a pair of shorts, a pair of running shoes and that favorite overgrown trail near my residence in my home town.

The trail is my favorite having found it in early spring this year. I ran it a couple times a week – the ground was hard and the distance just right to keep my mileage up as the racing season approached. As the wetness, vegetation and racing season came; I forgot about my trail and focused primarily on the road. For those of you that know the difference – there is not much of a comparison, but my races this year are on the pavement and my data can be consistently tracked and monitored. Being a type-A, engineer the data is important to a fault.

Today was such a sunny and beautiful day. I left the house in mid afternoon and ran through my first overgrown section to find a rafter of turkeys at the clearing. There were two adults and close to 2-dozen babies that scattered gobbling away as soon as I came barreling through the trail. I wasn’t counting my cadence; I wasn’t watching my heart rate or monitoring my watch for pace and performance. Instead, I just listened to nature: the squirrels and chipmunks running from me and going straight up sides of huge oak trees that have probably been in the area for hundreds of years. As I dodged stagnant water, roots, rock formations and crossed over streams where the trail was built through I could hear sounds deep in the woods of things that make you wonder. I didn’t hear cars or smell exhaust or see any road kill or feel scared of being hit myself, rather just the unknown of the forest - the excitement of running free and wild. I didn’t see another single person on my entire journey.

I ran on what we used to call in high school, “the cross country trail.” Now quite changed from 15 years ago, this path that once seemed never-ending takes no more than 6 minutes to run. I can remember back when I used to opt out of the run in gym class. Being a hockey player in school, I felt no real motivation to run and more importantly running really hurt. I was not good at it and, coupled with what I like to call “childhood, exercise-induced asthma”, I never felt like I could catch my breath – never knowing that I just didn’t know how to run properly nor pace myself. But times are different now; running is one of my most favorite activities. Sure, at times it still hurts, especially when racing, but the enjoyment that I experienced today reminds me exactly why I love to run so much. The inner strength and discipline that I’ve developed as a runner and multisport athlete is different than that of a team sport athlete. The ability to push the mind and body beyond my wildest imagination has produced results and confidences in my life that cannot be matched. The ability to exit the real-world for a brief period, experience the wilderness of a trail and glean all the other benefits along with fitness running is priceless. Today, I rediscovered why I run and it’s purely for the love of the game.