Thursday, October 18, 2018

Decline and Fall

Not that my running career was ever the grandiose equivalent of the Roman Empire or the Third Reich (Nope... not read the books).

It is, however, reminiscent of Evelyn Waugh's tragicomic Paul Pennyfeather's life (Nope...not read the book. Watched the TV Show.)

In effect, after a short period of moderate, illusory success, I'm pretty much back to where I started.

Boston 2017 was an incredible experience. It's consequences- much less so. Mainly because they haven't been what I had hoped they would be.

Fearing ennui, I had set Nell as a goal for myself almost immediately after my BQ in 2016. I expected, with great hubris, that I would be meeting that goal by 2018.

2018 has been a bad, bad year. 

I'm painfully aware that I am actually farther from my race goals now than I was when I started out.

It started well, to be fair. After a mildly disappointing half-marathon at Delhi last year, I regrouped with a modicum of sanity and laid out a route map to my next marathon.

I was comfortably moving up in volume and building up a good base that I felt was needed to train for a Sub-3 time goal. Until April. Work related pressures unexpectedly amped up. And the foundation I was so diligently building just fell apart with almost zero training in April and May.

I lost some fitness here, true, but this wasn't a deal-breaker by a long shot. Time was on my side. In hindsight, I could have salvaged a good training cycle from that wreckage. 

I didn't.

As I'm writing this, I'm not entirely sure where I went wrong.

At the end of a short trip to Pune in June, I kicked off my training cycle with a couple of pilgrimage runs at the National Defence Academy, my Alma Mater, where in my distant youth, cross-country used to be a religion. I envisioned a poetic progression wherein a sequence of runs starting at the hallowed NDA gliderdrome ended with the best marathon of my life.

It wasn't to be.

Now, ever since I've been running, I have craved a fall marathon after a summer of training. The idea of training in uncomfortably hot conditions before going on to race in cold ones is one I have written about many times. This was my chance. 

July in Alwar. The first long run on my schedule... (*makes whooshing sound and imitates airplane flying into the ground with palm)

August in Hyderabad. My traditional annual testbed half-marathon... (*makes whooshing sound and imitates airplane flying into the ground with palm)

I'll spare you the details and having to listen to my awesome whooshing sounds again. The short of it is- over the past 18 weeks, I have done barely half the runs as planned. I have been simply physically unable  to do any speedwork. I have trundled through the remaining training without any semblance of motivation. 

I've lost focus. I've lost discipline.

The truth is... I've stopped wanting it.

I'm one week away from my race of the year, the Frankfurt Marathon. But I'm so far away from the race I wanted to be running that I can't even see it anymore.

I will run Frankfurt as best as I can, but I'm not optimistic.

And then, for a while, I have decided that i need to step away.

Running will always be a part of my life. That is undeniable. But the activity was just a means towards an end. The real goal was always the happiness it brought me. That is what I need to rediscover.

For now, Rome burns. Where's my fiddle?