“You know people just don’t, people just don’t see how much work is really involved in this rap shit. I didn’t know it, I didn’t see it, I never saw it until I was actually in it. You really gotta be in it, to understand what it’s like, but you always gotta, people always gotta see you smiling, you always gotta put on that fake, you know what I’m saying? Like, no matter what you just been through, it has gotta be right.”
- Cypress Hill
When I shipped out to
Wyoming, I made a list of five goals.
In retrospect, I don't even remember them. Except for the one I stuck to: Running 1000 miles in the 90 days I
would spend in Wyoming. Some quick
math reveals that, on average, I would need to run over eleven miles every
single day.
It was the summer before my junior year cross country season. As everyone who has run cross country knows, the real preparation is done in the summer, and when the season rolls around in the fall, it’s all just fine tuning. That summer, everyone on our team knew we were getting ready for a huge season. We had a strong class of seniors, and we knew this would be our big shot at making nationals. Everyone was amped, and the summer really showed it. Every week people were putting up 70, 80, 90 mile weeks like it was nothing. It is not nothing to run over 10 miles a day. It is hard. And it takes a toll on your soul.
When I reached my summer training grounds, Wyoming, the first challenge was adapting to the climate. For one, there was snow until late June. On top of that, it was over 6,000 ft altitude. My first run was a three miler - for a runner at my level a three mile run was the equivalent of walking down your front steps to pick up the morning paper - but the second day I got there when I went on that three miler, I thought I was having a heart attack.
The second challenge was deciding where to train. There was a gravel/dirt road, Grassy Lake road, that lead out from our ranch all the way to Idaho. So everyday I chose to run on that road, out and back. It could have been nice to train on different terrain and varied scenery, but there was something unexplainably valuable to training on the same road day in and day out. So after the snow melted, I began my daily ventures on Grassy Lake road:
It took me a couple weeks
to shake off the rust and get my legs back underneath me after the track
season, but soon enough I was hitting the high mileage.
There are always different philosophies on training, but I was always a big fan of two a days. I got up before work and cracked out a real easy half hour jog. It got my heart rate going a bit, and helped my legs recover from the main afternoon run. In the afternoon, after work or between shifts, I would pound out the main session – a good hour or more.
On my days off, I would crank out a good two hour long run. Those runs were thrilling in the sense that they made me feel powerful. I saw my pre-conceived limits bowing down to the reality I was creating. One such reality was the volume of running my rail-thin body could handle.
To be continued next week.
See you on the other side,
from ken
Feel free to comment! I would love to hear your thoughts on the writing.
There are always different philosophies on training, but I was always a big fan of two a days. I got up before work and cracked out a real easy half hour jog. It got my heart rate going a bit, and helped my legs recover from the main afternoon run. In the afternoon, after work or between shifts, I would pound out the main session – a good hour or more.
On my days off, I would crank out a good two hour long run. Those runs were thrilling in the sense that they made me feel powerful. I saw my pre-conceived limits bowing down to the reality I was creating. One such reality was the volume of running my rail-thin body could handle.
To be continued next week.
See you on the other side,
from ken
Feel free to comment! I would love to hear your thoughts on the writing.
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