Discovering New Ground

Megumi's comment on my post from a couple of days ago has been in the back of my mind all day. There, she wrote that when running well

every step down a trail i've never been before, every minute longer than i've ever run, every loop run faster than i've gone before, is like this cool new thing that is fulfilling in some way that's totally independent of everything else... i found out new things about the world and about myself, and it just so happened that becoming faster was a side effect of that.

But, persistent health and injury problems have kept her from training consistently. And although she's now resumed regular, organized, goal-driven training, her performance and general fitness, critically including the feel of running, are not approaching her previous levels. She describes the effect as:

now it's kind of like i'm in this no-man's land. since the year off, everything i've been doing training wise kinda feels unsatisfying. it's almost always slower, shorter and more tiring to boot. i so very much want to discover new ground again... but there are days when that seems ridiculous since my body won't even cover the old ground anymore... and then i feel discouraged and discontent.

There's a strong element of arbitrariness and inexplicability in running. My experiences with injury are the opposite. My best race ever was probably my 15:28 5000 at conferences my senior year. I dropped my PR 18 seconds in that race. The eight weeks immediately before that were six weeks of being injured, a 16:04 5000 at multi-duals (I don't remember why I went from not running at all to racing, but I did), then two weeks of regular short runs never exceeding one hour, three track workouts thrown in, and then 15:28.

I was similarly injured for most of senior cross country season before running two PR's at the end. Overall, I think I've had at least six layoffs of at least a month, and maybe two or three layoffs of three or more months. Each time I've returned to top shape in about half the time I spent being injured.

Ian seems to be the same way. He hasn't gotten back to 15:07 shape since 2001, but he's been back to 15:45 shape regularly, despite highly-yoyoing training levels (we occasionally bonded by aqua-jogging together while simultaneously injured).

Kamalah seems to return to high fitness very quickly; Gustavo does not.

Then, some people are more injury prone. I've had a full gamut of injuries, but recovered every time. Ian's had a full gamut and still struggles with them. Matt seems hardly to get injured at all. An old running friend of mine, Stuart Calderwood, was up to something like 22 years of running every single day, last time I checked.

Some people are naturally fast. Some train regularly without really improving.

Who knows? So much of deciding to be a runner is just this ridiculous crapshoot. We have a lot of control over our performances, but are also largely at the mercy of forces that are either random, or presently far beyond our understanding.

It appears to me that if so much of what allows you to run fast is a meaningless dice toss, then it doesn't make sense to judge your success at running based solely on performance. This last sentence carries an even-more-deeply ingrained but dubious premise: that running is an activity in which we should judge our success at all.