A banana for breakfast will not provide the energy to run 10 miles. I thought it might be okay because I ate about 30 oatmeal chocolate chip cookies the previous night the banana could draw on as back up. I was wrong. About 6.5 miles into my 10-mile run yesterday and I felt like I was moving in slow motion.
I have to admit, it wasn’t only the banana’s fault. I went to Alaska for vacation last week. This vacation probably contributed to my lack of energy in several different ways. First, Saturday night I took a red eye back to Denver so I really didn’t get much sleep. Second, I had just spent a week at about 500 feet and my cells got used to the laziness in which they could draw oxygen from the oxygen rich air. Finally, I only ran about 3 miles the whole time I was in Alaska.
My second day in The Final Frontier I pulled on some running pants, a long sleeved shirt and my iPod and headed up the road from where I was staying in Coopers Landing towards Princess Lodge. Running in 55-degree weather at sea level is fantastic when you are used to running in 100-degree weather at altitude. It was fantastic. My legs never got tired and I never got out of breath. Hills were easy, air was cool and I never got thirsty.
I was looking forward to going again a couple of days later when our fantastic hostess, Marilyn announced that a young woman had been attacked and mauled by a giant brown bear… on my running route! I looked over my shoulder the previous day a couple of times, joking with myself that I might turn to see a bear trotting along behind me. I decided that I wouldn’t be able to go running again and still think of that as a joke, so I hung up my running shoes, slipped on my hiking shoes, picked up some bear spray and went for a walk instead.
I guess I held onto the hope that 10 miles wouldn’t be too hard because I actually found 9 miles to be relatively easy last week. However, I can attribute the ease of 9 miles to the fact that I found $5 in my shoe pouch before the run when tucking away my car key. I realized the only reasonable explanation of the $5 was the universe trying to tell me that I should get a smoothie after the run. With my smoothie as the light at the end of my 9-mile tunnel, I sailed through the run, only having trouble when I tried to sprint the last mile to get to Jamba Juice faster. I made a mental note to hide $5 somewhere where I will find it on marathon day. We’ll see how powerful thoughts of smoothies really are.
Back to the 10-mile run – at about mile 8 I was deep into survival running mode. Survival running mode is the desperate state I slip into during the last mile or two of any run. I just keep telling myself, “almost there, almost there, almost there, just keep going…” over and over and over. The rest of my thoughts are a little foggy. This happens in the last mile or so no matter whether I’m running 10 miles or 3 miles. People look at me funny when I’m muttering this quietly to myself when I haven’t even broken a sweat yet.
Survival mode happened a little early on the 10 mile run. I wasn’t registering much even though I was trying to look around at the other people on the trail to distract me from the fact that my left kneecap was attempting to escape my body. The trail ran under a bridge where I saw a big, stocky, brown lab, fresh from a swim in the creek and enjoying the shade wandering slowly across the path. I thought about how I was glad he wasn’t a bear but was hoping he wouldn’t get in my way or chase me because I couldn’t alter my direction or my speed very much without pain.
A biker coasted down the hill from the other side of the bridge. I looked up at the biker, noticed he was heading right for the dog, looked at the dog, and noticed the dog stop to check out the biker. Before I could comprehend what was going to happen, the dog yelped, the bike flipped over, the biker flew through the air about 5 feet, hit the ground (in much the same position I landed to break my arm last April), and slid about 10 feet to land at my feet. I limped over to him as quickly as I could, “are you okay?!” I gasped.
The biker looked up at me, his eyes full of panic, “The dog! Where’s the dog?! Is the dog okay?!” before I could reply he spun around, looking for the big brown lab, his stuff left all over the path like a yard sale. It turns out the sturdy dog was just very startled. He was already on his way to the biker, looking apologetic. When they reached each other the biker just petted the dog, the dog licked at the bikers face and all was well on the Boulder Creek Path.
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