Fifteen Mile Trail Run or What Was I Thinking?

 

 I had serious doubts about doing a fifteen mile trail race. I like to push myself physically, but what is that limit anymore? It used to be easier to assume that I had the stamina and ability to do just about anything. Now, I don’t know. My energy level could range from functional to dead tired with no consistency. Would I injure myself by spacing out, resulting in a fall that would render my knee into a bloody pulp? Get exhausted and walk the whole way? 

At least I knew what the course was like, having ridden it by mountain bike many times. It had some nasty rock strewn sections. Once to the seven mile point, it got easier and downhill. Still it was a long way. My goal was simply to finish in one piece.

At the start, everyone took off, leaving me mostly alone. This is a common event for me. I figured that I would catch some of them later. My arm and knee still hurt from a bad fall the week before, so I started slow 

After two miles was where all the rocks started. This was a tough part and went uphill. One time I fell lightly on my hands. Most of the time my toe would hit a rock with no loss of balance. I kept up with an older man, but passed him eventually. It was slow going. I wasn’t worried about time, just completion of the distance.

The older man picked his way carefully among the rocks. Maybe this was how he avoided injury. Is frequent tripping an old person thing? At one point, I saw that he took a wrong turn and yelled at him. It was my good deed for the day. I lost him and didn’t see him after that.

Occasionally, I could look at the desert vistas instead of staring at the ground hazards. Four Peaks mountains still had snow in the crevices. The park stretched on into the horizon. Trail running is certainly more scenic that the boring streets of road racing. Saguaros beat shopping malls anytime.

My gurgling insides finally forced me to stop and find a bush. Luckily, no one was around. This is an advantage to trail running–being able to use a bush rather than carrying a load around. It was a long way to a restroom. I cursed inwardly my colon, which wouldn’t behave itself.

Running this route verses mountain biking was definitely different . The distances that would by pass quickly with a bike stretched out with running. I can coast on a mountain bike. I can climb rocks without falling. It seemed like I was going nowhere slowly and sometimes the anxiety of wondering where the hell I was and if I was lost took over. I had done this trail many times on a bike, but it was more desolate and vulnerable on foot. I overtook people sometimes and wondered why the hell would they be lagging back there with me.

I knew that the endpoint of the climbing was the shelter with the skeleton dressed in a serape, but I thought I was lost in the endless twists and turns of a trail that went nowhere. I was happy to see my boney friend. 

My friend with a different costume.

The next aid station had coke! Coke has saved me on long endurance events when my energy was flagging. I drank some and continued. My slogging pace picked up. I think that a 50k runner lapped me because he was moving much faster . I was on the downside slope, with some rough, rocky patches that were not as bad as the first stretch. I shuddered to think what negotiated that when I was tired would be like. The miles seemed longer and longer.

I passed another runner who was walking fast. Being polite or annoyed, she let me pass. I moved faster. 

I crossed the park road, hoping that it wouldn’t be much longer, but it was. Would this trail ever end? Four miles to go and it was easier to run. The ground was smooth and the coke had kicked in. Where did this energy come from? Too bad it didn’t come sooner. The trail twisted and turned and I hoped to see some evidence of the parking lot, but nothing appeared. Then the restroom structure loomed in the distance. I kept running hard just to get the damn race over with. I was under my modest goal of 3:45.

Finally, the race ended at the humble finish line. Total time was 3:41. The skin of my knees and hands was still intact and I had mostly stayed upright.

This was a really low key race, so no medals, announcers or timing system, except someone writing the time on paper. This didn’t matter to me, but I wondered what was the point of running trail for fifteen miles. Running verses biking the trail was one of the draws  to see the difference. I had only run a tougher half marathon trail in Page, but two miles more wasn’t that significant.  Maybe it was to prove to myself that I could do a long run after a pandemic, cancer treatment and being older. I hadn’t even done a road half marathon since 2019.

We like to think that we are in control of our destiny. Doing crazy things gives me the illusion that I can defy age, expectations and physical limitations. If I can run fifteen miles, maybe that will hold off infirmity, fat and appease the joints that hate me. No one expects people my age to be doing such activity, but why should years dictate the end? I won’t live forever, or may even die next year, so why not do it now when I am able?

Or maybe it was just to feel just a bit like my old normal self again, rather than a depressed, achy, tired cancer survivor. I didn’t get my usual race high, but still could claim victory.

CANCER TREATMENT AND EXERCISE

Ironman California 70.3, 2016, Last official 70.3 finish

I NEED exercise. Without it, I get depressed and cranky. An addict must have the fix despite bad weather, injury or sickness. I have ridden my bike with a broken hand in a cast, in hail storms and in hundred degree heat. I have limped to finish a run race with my knee torn open from a fall. Common sense does not always prevail.

Some people that know me think I am insane for even attempting long distances, or any distance at all, for that matter. I don’t do many full or half ironmans anymore due to injury and lack of speed. On the spectrum of crazy, I consider myself to be fairly reasonable. A hundred mile trail run or double ironman is not in my future. A reach goal is fine, but suffering excessively is not. Nor is being pulled from a race because I am too slow the finish the long distance within a time limit.

People who are seriously active also like to compete with one another in races and socialize. We have a common bond of loving physically brutal activity. It transcends political views, economic status and even personality. It doesn’t even matter how bad we suck at the particular activity. I am a horrible swimmer, a mediocre cyclist and a slow runner, but I do it anyway. Competing against myself is the object, since I have little chance of beating anyone else.

So anything that is an obstacle to this fix is a major imposition. Even early stage cancer treatment is disruptive. The body does not like being cut open, given toxic chemicals and being burned from the inside out. The abused tissue and bone reacts by saying “piss off, I am going to take a nap” upon any request to expend energy.

General recommendations for exercise with cancer treatment are 150 per week aerobic, 75 minutes harder effort. Quantifying effort is a vague target. One is supposed to be able to talk with effort during aerobic, but this would vary according to how physically active one was before cancer. If a person never got off a couch to walk a mile, it would be way more effort when unhealthy and suffering from the inevitable side effects of treatment.

Information about recommendations for a person used to activity is sparse. Maybe the “experts” assume no one does more exercise. Some say “listen to your body.” This advice is not helpful if the body and the brain is giving conflicting messages. Experts suggest some movement even if tired, but what is the limit? My heart rate goes up higher than normal even with slow movement. The balance is finding what the body can tolerate without stressing it too much.

Before, only two to three hours per week of physical activity was very little to me. When my cancer was diagnosed, I was training for an ironman. The peak was almost twenty hours of swim, bike and run. This amount is not typical, because it is entirely too time consuming and exhausting. Normally, it used to be about twelve hours per week for me.

Along came cancer and smacked me down. My usual training was altered drastically. Instead of biking or running hard or long, the intensity was determined by  fatigue. My body was in control, not my mind. The effort that would have been pathetic six months ago, was now the norm. It was utterly humbling. A ninety minute bike ride was now forty-five minutes. A ninety minute run was now thirty. It was a big loss of fitness from where I used to be in. I lost my mojo.

Each treatment had its insidious effects and misery. Surgery made me tired and healing cut tissue and chest muscles hurt. After clearance from the doctor, it was tough to run with the pain at first. The parts did not want to be jiggled. Gradually, I recovered enough to run a 5k race three and a half weeks later with a fairly normal time. That was the last race for a long time due to fatigue, weakness and the coronavirus cancelling the world.

Radiation, which was only a week, but twice a day, made me feel weak, tired and a little nauseated. The feeling of an all over body sickness would come and go.  Short bikes, swims and runs were s a struggle to get through.

 Unlike radiation, chemo had cycles in which I felt like utter crap for ten days, then merely bad for the other ten days. The predictability was an advantage in planning, but the side effects on the bad days were worse than the other treatments. Minimal training was a struggle in the bad days, then a little better in the good days. Sometimes I could barely walk a mile. It was nothing resembling what I used to do. The goal was to not totally deteriorate into a sagging bag of bones.

The easiest form of exercise was walking, which was done in the days right after an infusion. The hardest was running, which only went well in the second or third week of the three week cycle. Even good runs were slow with not much stamina. My legs were too weak to push off and I would have to stop and walk to catch my breath. Improvement was slow, only to be destroyed with the next infusion. Races became only a memory. So did having fun.

Even with a weakened physical state, some exercise was better than nothing. Sick or not I had to have my fix.  I would have been in a much worse state without it. It felt much better to move than to give into the depression and fatigue. It was a weapon to fight back with. Cancer and it’s toxic treatments wouldn't win. But some days it felt like I was losing to it.

Whether I will ever feel normal again to is yet to be seen. Losing physical capacity and energy is frustrating. To not be in control is scary. All I can do is forge ahead and hope some semblance comes back of what I was before treatment. It will take time, patience and persistence.