Project 245 Week#6
What it is like to run 100 mile weeks and other stories
100 mile road
So, I am aware that I shouldn’t complain and frankly, I’m fine but I just think that whining can sound funny and often makes other feel less alone. This afternoon(Monday, 18/03), as I was heading out for my 2nd run Béné could tell that I wasn’t in the mood. She asked me kindly if it was difficult for me to get started and later as we were walking out of the door, she asked me how long I was going for. I told her atleast another hour or so and she replied “Wow, you’re brave.” I replied “Yeah, or stupid. Kinda depends.” We laughed and I got this idea about writing how it feels to run high mileage weeks, week after week. I am not the only one doing it and people do it with conditions a lot worse than I have. But this is my story and I will pepper in bits about others, to comfort you that I haven’t got it all bad.
Why run high mileage?
Marathon training is, as Scott Fauble put it, “A desolate hellscape.” The goal usually is to feel fatigued and pull off workouts when you’re fatigued, a strategy which makes you really good on race day but mostly miserable the rest of the time. I have non-runner and beginner runner friends and I feel when they see people run so many miles, they wonder what we gain from this training. Frankly, other than finishing in front of the the majority of the field and maybe sometimes winning some prize money, there’s not much more to it. People around me are all amateur runners, we all started because it is healthy and we all continued because it is addictive. And high mileage is not the only route to success. I know plenty of people who do well with lower mileage. Jake, for example, thrives on a consistent 50 mile weeks to smash 14:03 for the 5k. But I know I am built differently and if I did that I wouldn’t even come close to my PB.
Why? Why do I run 100 mile weeks? Or even 75-80–90. Anything over 60 frankly counts a relatively high and above 75 begins to get serious. Arriving at 100, you average 14.5 miles (23 kilometers) a day. Well, whenever I trained I noticed that performance improvements for me are proportional to amount of load I am able to create and then finely taper off. In 2018, I did this for 18 weeks before an October marathon but had run couple of 100 mile weeks and relatively high mileage all winter. In those 18 weeks, I averaged 95.37 miles, with 11 weeks over 100 miles. I had run a marathon PB of 2:56 until then and was stuck at that since 2014. That autumn, I ran 2:35 for the marathon. High mileage weeks create that load stimulus for me and my body is definitely able to handle it (That’s an important point, everyone is unique and not everyone can handle that much running. I don’t just run but do 12–14 hours of cross training per week to handle this load). It does seem stupid to head out of the door again, to cram in another hour of running but the resulting training load is something my body responds very well to and so the road becomes my bride.
There was a period when I was running even more mileage than this. In 2020, I ran 13 straight weeks of 10+ miles in a row including building upto 125 miles (200k) and doing back to back weeks of 125 and 122 miles. I was really hammering back then and because it was COVID and work was both crazy and not so busy once everyone settled into home office, mentally it was easier to cope up with. It’s a shame I couldn’t find out what that training would’ve done to my marathon time and because I was still having problems with self-control back then, when it came time to back off training I didn’t and of course ended up getting injured. Over the last years, from end of 2022 through 2023 and 2024, I have done cycles where I picked the max mileage up from 70 to 80 and in October last year, even ran up to 90 miles a week. I felt confident that with that sort of conditioning, I can bring myself to 100 mile weeks and so I brought in a few of them for this training cycle. When I run Valencia marathon later in the year, this base training will come in handy.
Some Challenges
Right now, I am still young enough to handle this workload. I have a decent life, I don’t have kids and frankly, that affords me a lot of freedom. I can choose to run whenever and my sleep is mostly disturbed my own anxieties. One of Jake’s friends is an elite marathoner who runs upwards of 110 miles a week. His wife is an extremely good runner too and they have a daughter. I don’t know how they pull it all off. People do make it look easy but anyone who runs that sort of mileage will tell you (even the ones who run professionally) that it is not easy. The fatigue builds and things kind of feel surreal. You look for ways out. This morning, I picked up 2 marathoning books I trust and tried to convince myself that 5 weeks out from the marathon is the ideal time to reduce the mileage. Spoiler alert: It’s not. I walked away from reading the plans and sighing, accepting my fate. It’s like your prison release date has been extended another 2 weeks. Also, I am waiting on other news and I did my faith week, which was great and I know the news will come when it comes. But it just feels difficult, you know? It’s ok, I sometimes cry while running to let out the pressure and started reading David Goggins’ 2nd book “Never Finished” to get a kick to my backside.
It’s not all horrid by the way. There is mostly joy or neutrality. Some days feel absolutely great. Especially, when the run is longer because that’s literally what your body is building strength for. Some days, you don’t find the energy but in such moments you shouldn’t despair. The best way to approach it is so just convince yourself to get started and do 5 minutes. Maximum 10 minutes. Eventually, when you start moving things get easier because it is the inertia in our lives we find hard to overcome. Once you gain momentum, you begin to roll and things tick over. Towards the end fatigue creeps in but it is easier to finish when you know where the finish line is.
Any sort of mileage can feel tedious. Even if you love the thing, at times that thing can feel like an obligation and you just need to get through it. Listen mate, you’re an adult. Things will suck. Get used to it. Lacing up for a 2nd run can feel in the range of “Yay, it’s sunny and I am amazing” to “Ugh, time to head to the gallows”. Like I said before I know that running high mileage is not the only way to success but I know what works for me and sometimes that “gallow-y” feeling is hard to swallow but you tell yourself to shut the fuck up and minutes later it is all fine.
I also know what it feels like to have been overweight and really unfit. Deep down, I am scared of becoming that person again. I am where I am because of my discipline but I used to be a soft ineffectual nobody. I am scared that it still is dormant in my psyche and one day, my old fat self will rise from the dead. I much prefer to be a little tired than feeling ashamed of my body and being at the risk of disease. When I was 21, I had high blood pressure and was 10 kilograms overweight. Now my blood tests are good and yes, I know it is not because of running 100 mile weeks but 100 mile weeks are part of the “lifestyle” along with “Kale, 8 hours in bed, stretching, core, 3 liters of water and copious amount of reading and journaling.”
In Conclusion
For me “marathon training” isn’t a “desolate hellspace”. It’s definitely difficult but many good things are difficult: Finding true love, self improvement and almost anything worthwhile. Running high mileage, feeling dazed and confused because of it are parts of the process. It isn’t dramatic, our lives are not movies. That’s a problem I usually have with stuff. I have a tendency to take things personally and make them about me. And then I overreact to stuff but when I look back at things basically nothing is bad, it’s just my perspective which is fucked. I am learning to deal with that and the fact that drama should be reserved for actors. Also, this isn’t a cry for help or anything. I know what I am doing is difficult and the timing of it just makes me a little more annoyed with stuff than it should. I know crying while running when you feel a deep connection to Parkway Drive lyrics isn’t normal either. But hey, I already know all of it. I also have faith that thing training will pay off and life will work out for the better. But being in the middle of it, it just doesn’t always feel “fun” and I’m ok with that. I love running and love running lots of miles. Like an old Kenyan saying goes:
Run lots of miles.
Some of them fast.
Rest once in a while.
I didn’t rest between my training cycles but now I am grown, have a personal life and something to do during my time-off and hopefully less crazy in general. The 5-week rest period after the marathon will be taken as a competition by me much like this training block. If training hard is difficult, so is taking time to rest. I will hold myself accountable and take proper rest so that I can come back stronger for Valencia marathon.
Other Stories
Oh, last Saturday there was the Sound Running meet “The TEN” which is a 10,000 meters running event (and some others but the highlight was the 10,000). The race was won by one of the most talented US runners, Grant Fisher (who as per a recent podcast is also an engineer, which just ranks him higher on my list. Personal bias), in 26:52.04.
In 2nd place though was the incredible Northern Arizona University star, Nico Young who had just last week won the NCAA titles for the 3k and 5k. The 21 year old Young clearly is a 21 year old because he recovered well enough to set a new US collegiate record of 26:52.72. (Another US collegian, Habtom Samuel finished in 26:53.84). Total of 8 people broke the Olympic standard of 27:00, which is frankly incredible. I personally was looking forward to India Steeplechaser, Avinash Sable running a rather fast time and breaking our old national record of 28:03. Sable DNFed but Gulveer Singh, who is coached by the former record holder Surendra Singh, broke his coach’s record by running 27:41. That’s a solid time and I am so proud of the Indians getting out there, training in foreign countries and steadily improving֫. I think it is the Neeraj Chopra effect of 1 Indian man showing the rest of the country that this athletics thing can be won by us. Now, we are rising. There’s young Parvej Khan, who finished 7th in the NCAA mile and has run 3:55 for the mile. I am sure that in the next 5 years, there will be a huge crop of Indian runners dominating at the world stage.
And here’s the weekly picture quota:
Thank you for reading.
