The Road with a Broken Heart

Years ago I was a real runner. A man who wanted to train for ultra marathons and other hardcore races. I had no fear of not finishing, I was young, I was stupid. All of my “running” life I ignored the obvious truth behind my limitations, I knew what my body could do and what it couldn’t do, but I kept pushing it, trying to break it during every run. I fully understood that I am no longer that guy with the full beard and long hair who ran only to run, I am no longer the kid in college trying to prove to the world that I am not worthless. I understand these things. But it is hard to let go of that mindset. It was a way of life for me, I craved the run… I needed the run. It was how I expressed myself, like an artist painting on a canvas, a writer starting on a blank tablet. It was who I was, who I am.
Years before the present, I was a hardcore runner. I ran 90 or more miles a week. My track event was the 10,000 meter. I lived for it. I wasn’t the best, but not the worst. I was in the middle somewhere. I tried to train harder so that I could taste victory, to feel what a winner felt like… my day never came. To truly understand who I was back then you would have to know how I trained. I ran two a days 5 times a week and two long runs on the weekends. I ran 5 miles in the morning and anywhere between 7 to 12 miles at night. I ran all my runs as hard as I could. Some said that I ran too hard for too long and that I was going to get burnt out. I ran my “long runs” at seven minute mile pace and ran upwards of 18 to 20 miles. I trained hard and ate only healthy foods and got eight hours of sleep a night. My resting heart rate was under 42 beats per minute and my VO2 Max was near 65. Some would say that I was addicted to running, I wasn’t though. I was addicted to what running made me feel like. Nothing felt better than the feeling of full muscle failure, knowing that your body is getting ready to shut down and all you can do is continue to run. I was obsessed with it.
My obsession turned to ultra marathons. The idea sprang into my head when I was having a discussion with a former coach. He said that I probably would be pretty good at them. He said I had the right build and the right muscle fibers. I was an long distance runner already I just needed to make the transitions to longer long runs on trails. After training for a couple months I was running two super long runs on the weekends with a healthy base during the week. On Saturday after work I would run 20 to 25 miles, and on Sunday afternoon I ran 30 or more miles. The first time I hit 30 miles I felt the run pulsate through my body after I finished… this was going to be fun. I was probably running over 100 miles some weeks but I didn’t really keep track of my runs that well. Most trail runs were from experience of what pace I was running at and for how long, sometimes I had a GPS watch on.