I’m quoting Ernest Hemingway in the title of today’s post not so much
because of how that quote starts but for how it ends:
“The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one’.…(The man who
first said that) was probably a coward.…He knew a great deal about cowards but
nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he’s
intelligent. He simply doesn’t mention them.” –Ernest Hemingway, A Farwell to Arms
I like this quote because it makes me feel less bad about being afraid
of Nemo.
As runners we don’t die a thousand deaths but we do sprain a dozen
ankles, pull a dozen muscles, get stress fractures in a dozen places all in our
minds before we take the first step out on our run. We fear those injuries and
we fear frostbite and we are afraid that we’ll hit the wall 10 miles from home
and get pneumonia or hypothermia on the walk home.
Nemo means “no one” in Latin but if you believe the projections
coming in from the news and the weather channel Nemo is going to be a
significant storm this weekend and already in my mind I’ve had all of those
calamities listed above.
Going back to Hemingway’s quote I can remind myself that I have these
worries about the storm not because I am a coward but because I am intelligent
enough to understand the risks of running in it. The coward takes the weekend
off because of the storm. The idiot runs exactly as planned without regard for
the conditions and the intelligent runner adapts his or her plan around the
storm.
I am trying to be an intelligent runner. Trying to train smart is
already paying dividends this year such as the 15k PR and what I would have
thought of as a monster workout this past Tuesday feeling easy. To date the
training smart thing has meant taking my rest days when they are prescribed
rather than waiting until I burn out to take a day off and has meant holding
back (as much as I can) on my intervals so that I can do the entire workout at
an even pace and not running add-ons.
Now, training smart means reassessing my plan for the weekend:
Thursday: Took me a while to
get out of work and then was stuck in traffic and didn’t get home until about 8.
I decided to make dinner and push off my hills to Friday morning before the
storm.
Friday: This was scheduled
to be a rest day. Instead of resting I did Thursday’s hills: 10.05 miles in
1:2548.
Saturday: Tempo Run. The
plan was to do 2.5 easy to get to the Porter Square City Sports and do the 5
mile loop at ~6:18 pace then go easy for the 2.5 mile run home. I’m switching
this to the treadmill because I don’t think the roads will be in any kind of
shape for me to run at a 6:18 pace. The new plan is 2 mile warm-up, 5 miles at
6:18, 2 miles cool down. This will shave a mile off of my weekly total but the
workout is the 5 mile Tempo; I had only planned on 2.5 up and 2.5 down because
I live that far from City Sports.
Sunday: Long Run. I had
planned on running 17.5 miles with 12.5 coming from around Fresh Pond at
7:20-7:40 pace. The trail section of the Fresh Pond loop will not be clear by
Sunday morning and I cannot bring myself to do another long run on the
treadmill. I’m going to cut my pace for this one back to 8min/mile and run
1:12:00 out Pleasant Street and Trapelo Rd then turn around and run home. This
should give me ~18 miles total but I’ll be happy to just keep running for
2:24:00 regardless of total distance.
I hope you’re all safe this weekend!
May your training miles be ever
hilly and may all your races have free beer!
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