Long Distance

Understanding that this is repetitive I have waded into the fray.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/running/watch-out-guys-marathons-a-boys-club-no-longer/article1598471/

Understanding that this is repetitive I have waded into the fray.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/running/watch-out-guys-marathons-a-boys-club-no-longer/article1598471/

Understanding that this is repetitive I have waded into the fray.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/running/watch-out-guys-marathons-a-boys-club-no-longer/article1598471/

Editor,

I have long figured that cycling was what runners did when they were injured (the athletic equivalent of decaf or flavoured coffee) and that ultra-distance events were where runners went to die. I figured “competing” [see comments below on this] in a 100 mile race was an announcement to the community that you had given up trying to go fast. I don’t mean to entirely denigrate what Mr. Zahab is doing and I do feel that that his efforts at raising money through running vast distance are laudable. At the same time I am a little dubious of fund raising efforts that double as a means of doing something that you wanted to do anyway. In my previous line of work it was not uncommon for people to raise money to climb certain peaks but the underlying motivation was funding what was often an expensive endeavour. I always felt that this was disingenuous.

Frankly I would be way the hell more impressed if Zahab was laying down some scorching times in the marathon and closing in on Drayton’s Canadian record, a standard that has stayed forty years too long. Giving Mr. Zahab this much ink for what amounts to a fringe event, an event where you can often count your competitors on one hand, an event where most races include a whole lot of walking, is at best ridiculous and at worst diverts attention to the fact that the nation that produced Tom Longboat, Jerome Drayton and Jacqueline Gareau, has done nothing in this event for as long as anyone can remember. Today most young people think running is what middle aged people do to lose weight. Today most older people think that running a marathon is only about personal discovery and completion (note the ever increasing garish nature of participation medals). I have to feel that this kind of article gives yet more credibility to the mind set that celebrates everything and by consequence celebrates nothing. I continue to feel that a once proud running history just got pushed a tiny bit further into the treacly, feel-good obscurity of Oprah Winfrey and John Stanton.

When Mr. Zahab runs a race that includes more that a handful of competitors and is a distance that has some kind of coherent time/distance standards associated with it, I’m interested. Until that time he belongs in the Globe and Mail or People Magazine not a serious running magazine.

Regards,

Rory Gilfillan

Editor, 

Clearly I hit a chord with your readers. 

If I have learned anything over the last few years it is this: the voices that vociferously support mediocrity in distance running are also the loudest, most aggressive and generally, most plentiful.  I am grateful that the Canadian version of this has not taken to emailing me or harassing me at work as has happened in the past. 

I am not begrudging the individual who completes a marathon in five or six hours but I am suggesting that the culture surrounding distance running places an inordinate value on unremarkable results.  The consequence of this preoccupation with participation is as predictable as it is sad.  The truth, simply put, is that kids don’t want to run any more.  As a teacher, I hear a great deal of blame placed on video games, television and the internet but I don’t believe that.  I think that somehow, somewhere in the last thirty years we stopped believing that we could compete.  Consequently there are no heroes to emulate, no Sidney Crosbys of the marathon, and no Canadian runner to pretend to be on the Middle School track.   

I would have loved to be that guy and dammit if I didn’t throw everything I had at that waking dream.  The reality is, that despite the 120 mile weeks, the two hour drives to train in Toronto, rolling shoes over every month and the years of living monastically, never mind the untold sums I spent from a modest teacher’s salary flying and driving to races, I was simply not good enough (and by the way Darlene Rahn my PR was 2:34:06 in Phoenix 2008 not 2:36.  The two minutes matter to me and are no doubt offensive to you)  

After three stress fractures, three surgeries and with my thirty-eighth birthday just a few weeks off, it’s an open question as to whether I will be able to run in any meaningful way again.  If I do recover, I would love to race an ultra-event as it has always been my plan.  I can now look forward to burying my detractors. However, I harbor few illusions regarding the significance of the event.  A lot of hay has been made out of the idea that some elite marathoners are not able to transfer their ability to ultra-distance (though I seem to recall Salazar doing pretty well at the Comrades) but by the same token there are a no ultra runners, that I am aware of, who can compete on the world (or any) stage in the marathon. 

As challenging as ultra-distance may be it’s not the marathon.  It is not the wicked combination of speed and endurance but an admirable last person standing contest practiced by a handful of North Americans and Europeans who have opted out of the one race that the world contends in.  

Sincerely, 

Rory Gilfillan

Money going to athletes is a good thing. My problem, however, has to do with the sponsoring of athletes who are already there. What I think this country needs to do is work out funding to develop athletes. The way it seems to work now is that money is thrown at athletes who are considered a “good bet” on making it to the podium. Subsequently a whole lot of this money is going towards sprinting and hurtles–events that only a very few Canadians compete in. Athletics Canada sets the bar for the men’s marathon at 2:14 (I think).

There are quite a few guys that run in the 2:20s or faster that, if properly supported and coached could make that standard.

If this Olympics has taught or reminded me of anything, it’s that, as a country not only can we can compete but we can win. Building facilities would be great. I would love to see Peterborough build an indoor track but truth be told we had our chance both at Trent and at the new Y.

Trent opted not to include a track in their plan and the 413 meter outdoor track was designed specifically so it could not be used as anything but a “recreational track” Anyone who has done a 400 meter track work out understands that there is nothing fun or recreational about a track; they are places for self-inflicted but necessary torture).

The original plan for the new YMCA included an indoor track. Money was raised for this specifically. The track was excluded in the final plan.

Even if such a building was constructed there is no guarantee that it would be used in the way it was intended to be used. If you don’t believe me, try training at the indoor track in Oshawa. I have seen toddlers wandering aimlessly and un-tended accross lanes. I have seen peopl runinng four or five abreast. Tracks in this coutnry are built either for people to put their lawn chairs on while watching soccer or as a means for tennis players to warm up. I think my favourite use of a track was witnessed during my last year at Queen’s. We were training at RMC’s new field house, when I realized that the military feels that tracks provide excellent borders for road hockey games. At the Ottawa track they don’t even have an consistent direction. People choose which direction they wish to run.

My much beleaugered point is that building something doesn’t make it so, any more than buying a new pair of running shoes will make you want to run or turn you into a consistent and committed athlete. In general, this country is overly concerned with the perception of equality.  If you want t see the logical extreme of this belief system I encourage you to look at editorial in the Post called, “Lighten up Parents” that writes about a school in Massachussets who has banned skipping rope from skipping class as not all kids are able to skip equally.  This rule has been enacted in the name of self-esteem.  The truth is that Canadian society, unlike our friends to the south, is uncomfortable with anything that smacks of elitism and it is why so many people will have an issue with this new funding.  America’s versin of OTP has been going for the last 12 years.  Last I checked they won the medal count and damn if those Americans don’t love to win.  Part of the reason I raise such a shit storm revolves around the fact that what I often choose to write and talk about is the idea that not every effort should be considered of equal value. 
Money, may help some athletes get to the podium. I would love to see this money put towards sports (like distance running) that a whole lot of Canadians pursue as opposed to soley the ones that have excelled at in the past. This may provide kids with a heroic standard to aspire too and help them do all the things that make the difference between showing up and contending. Things like practicing.  Old fashion ideals like committing to a sport, and listening to your coach. 

Maybe more money is where we start.

Descartes was troubled by uncertainty.  What could possibly provide a solid, and rational foundation in a world potentially full of illusion?  If the eyes could be tricked was it unreasonable to imagine that other senses could also be tricked?   Descartes answered the metaphysical condition of existence with the simple response, “I think therefore I am” believing that the faculty of rational thought was abundant proof of his being. 

In his Meditations, Descartes, never talked about pain.  Descartes wasn’t a distance runner.

After a few weeks of low grade pain–life gets hard to imagine without its constant presence.  It begins to feel like it always was.  I had been on long runs that used to feel like that.  The kind where I forgot that I had ever done anything else, forgot that I had ever been anything else.  My life began, ended and began again on Old River Road in an old pair of Sauconys.  Out there I could easily slip “the surly bonds of earth”.  Running long was the closest thing to peace and balance that I could find in a world full of lists and obligations.   Out on the road I could forget that running, paradoxically, had always been in part about manufactured stress, stress on the body, stress about the next race and stress that one day I wouldn’t be able to go faster.  I thrived in the paradox and the polarity of a sport that never really was a sport to me but a means to feel alive out on the frontiers of exhaustion.

It isn’t easy to change.  It certainly isn’t easy to let go.   I feel like I am at the ending of Catch-22.  On the table before me is a deal.  If I promise never to run again, I will be released from pain.  I will be given free time.  I will be well rested.  I will fit in.  But like Yosarrian I can’t quite do that even with the abundance of evidence that I have collected over the last year.  Instead I continue to strive and find another way.

At this point I have run just over thirteen marathons although it may be fourteen.  This is a very subjective review of some of these races:

 Royal Victoria Marathon-October 1996

This was the race that started it all.  I had been running strange distances all summer in my work as an intern at the Canadian Outward Bound School north of Thunder Bay.  The school was based about 70km down an old logging road.  Since I often finished work just after 5pm and due to the sun not going down until after 11pm, I (as Forest Gump once said) started running.  The great thing about this logging road was that every kilometre was marked.  Every evening I would go out and try to run a little further.  By the end of the summer I asked a colleague to drive me to the highway and with a peanut butter sandwich in my pocket and drinking from rivers I crossed en route, I ran the sity-seven km back to the base (in a time of 5:57).  When I got back, a colleague of mine asked me, “why don’t you run a marathon or something?”.  I chose to run the Royal Victoria finishing (think in a time of 2:53).

 Toronto Marathon 1999

This was done with a few friends from the Outward Bound School.  At this point I thought people trained by simply, “running a lot”.  I did no speed or hill training.  I remember hearing later that I looked like I was wearing an old gym uniform from the 1950s.  This was also the year the that the organizers thought it would be a good idea for the walkers of the Marathon to start a good three or so hours prior to the official start of the marathon.  This meant that in the final few terrible kilometres of the marathon I had to weave around walkers, sometimes walking hand in hand.  Time:2:43 and change.

Boston Marathon 2000

Boston is the promised land of the marathon runner.  This was a typical Boston year.  Temperatures hovered in low digits and there was a headwind most of the route.  I had a plan to try and run a 2:36 but in the excitement of the start which included kids playing Eye of the Tiger on a tape player in Hopkinton and high fiving while I went by, I threw out my race plans and went like hell.  I was on fire of course until the Newton Hills.  I think the wheels came off somewhere around Heartbreak but I have no real recollection.  All the hills seemed like heartbreakers at that point.  I remember, vaguely, entering downtown Boston, seeing the balloons and not caring.  This is when another runner came up beside me and said, “come on 1192, let’s break 2:40″.  I have never forgotten that.  Due to the rain and wind, I succumbed to hypethermia.  I have strange recollections of following someone to the medical tent and then having them disappear only to find myself in an alley alone.  Following this race I would not race another marathon for three years.  In the training following Boston I sustained three consecutive stress fractures in my left tibia and eventually convinced a children’s orthopaedic surgeon to insert a tib/fib rod and intermeduallary nail.  Three years later following an encounter with achilles tendonitis i was back at it, training for the National Capital Marathon.

 National Capital Marathon 2004.

No one ever really explains the hit your confidence takes when chronic injuries finally heal.  I just didn’t know if I could do it any more.  I wanted to run faster but as I stepped to the line, I just wanted to know that I could cover the distance again and perhaps, run sub-three again.