Devil’s Den Disappointment and the 40 Mile Week
Coming up on two weeks ago, I ran a ten-mile race in Culpepper, Virginia. Because of the August heat and State Route 666 being nearby the race is aptly named: The Devil’s Den.
The course starts and finishes at the Culpepper Sports Complex and is essentially a ten-mile lap around some rustic roads that in the right kind of morning light could maybe pass as scenic. The edges of mountains are out there if a runner can maintain an upright posture through the run. There is one part of the course that is an out and back. I have never liked out and backs with the exception of Fury Road.
This year marked my second year in a row running this course. Last year I ran it after having just had Covid-19 for the first time. That run did not go well. I noticed the impact of Covid most whenever I tried to run. It took the full 12 days of the virus running its course for my lungs not to seriously burn when I ran, but my running efforts were sluggish for about a month: longer durations for shorter distances. I would come in through the door and Gillian would comment on the deep red, almost purple tint, of my skin. “Fuck Covid,” I would say, and sometimes still do. It was not the flu. It was a different beast — hitting the body differently — , and I noticed it most when doing the one activity that places me the most in tune with my body. As I sometimes say, fuck Covid.
I apologize for taking us back to talking about the Covid. I’m sure you hate out and backs as much as I do, but my attempt at a running renaissance is inextricably linked to the pandemic. When I was still teaching and we were sent home in March of 2020, I started running with real consistency for the first time since high school. The routine became every other day, but I didn’t really know what kind of progress I was or wasn’t making because I never run with a watch (or a phone) and the 2020 race schedule was limited. I was just running to run, staving off boredom and frustration, generating time and space outside the home.
When the 2021 race schedule kicked into high gear, I signed up for a couple local races I had halfheartedly signed up for in prior years and a few more runs at distances I had never raced. I was shocked by what a difference the return to a routine had made. I wasn’t shaving seconds — I was cutting minutes. This occurrence left me with somewhat mixed feelings however.
On the one hand, I was amped to be running and racing the way I was. I had apparently missed the act of physical commitment to a competitive goal. On the other, I felt some regret for having neglected the discipline as I had for nearly two decades. As a younger runner, I never really considered how amateurism can stretch well into adulthood — that sport doesn’t really have to end if you consciously keep doing it. That at the heart of the word amateur is the word love.
On a wave of rediscovered euphoria, I signed up for a local half marathon at the end of 2021. After the first five to six miles, I was running in the top ten of the event, and I started having those delusions of grandeur that can either empower one to an awesome finish or send one crashing and burning. But I feel like I landed somewhere in between. A few male runners passed me by and then the top female runner caught up to me in an out and back portion of the course that was preceded by a faultline-sized hill. She and I went back and forth for the last few miles, basically trading off Caboose runs. I was hurting. My form deteriorated. I tried to stay with it. I got dusted, but I had never run a half marathon so fast. (I also hadn’t run one since 2001.) So I signed up for another in February. I ran it, not as well, but I enjoyed the second one more for being on a trail and in the woods and much, much colder. Then I ran a 5K in March of 2022, and I was spotted limping days later: “What’s wrong with your leg?”
The right side of my body was shredded in all the worst ways, and I spent all of 2022 and all of 2023 so far playing whack-a-mole with remedies and solutions to the pain that is always in my right hip and glutes and down to what I believe is the plantar fasciitis I contracted in July going into the Devil’s Den race. There have also been a few Achilles heel and tendon scares and multiple calf strains.
What I now believe is that while I hadn’t suffered a major blowout I had been flirting with one ever since December of 2021 when I really pushed my luck with the discord between my race day effort and my race day preparation. I should have been tracking my runs better going into that half marathon.
Once upon a time in high school and college, I logged such data, but I have always been an intuitive learner, reader, writer, teacher, what have you. But what separates those activities from running is that the intuitiveness of those lettered activities is always recorded in the activity itself. That’s not the case with running. The body knows how it feels, but it doesn’t know the mileage or the time, not consciously, and therefore that crash that could have been predicted and therefore avoided really does come as a surprise.
I might not have had nagging injuries if I had been logging my runs, but most likely that would have been because I would not have fallen back in love with running in the first place. I would have been burning through my Netflix queue or playing Wordle on multiple devices. Scratch that. I would have been playing HoopGrids. But what I enjoyed so much about running in the pandemic is that it had nothing to do with tracking data related to the virus or recording numbers as I would in a gradebook. It was all about being free within a routine, but I didn’t want a number near the doing. I liked to save the numbers for race days, and I raced a lot in 2022. But trying to keep the discipline self-contained within the body was crushing it (again, not in a good way).
The second and third half marathons of that year saw me approach the ninety-minute mark in the half, and the number is now one I am desperately seeking. I daresay hunting. If I hadn’t taken a hiatus from serious running for most of my 20s and 30s, it’s a number I’m sure I would have already. And coming out of that first Devil’s Den run after contracting Covid, I vowed to stretch my long run each week by a few miles now and a few more later. I did that, and I think the results could be seen in those last two half marathons of 2022. But, again, my body was beat to hell. I was running sore pretty much everyday I laced up a pair of shoes.
Still, I went into this year’s Devil’s Den knowing I had run a solid pace at a 15K earlier this year and had a couple decent 5Ks in 2023 as well. I felt assured that this year’s Devil’s Den would tell me I was on track and ready for the three half marathons I plan on running this fall and early winter: AthHalf in Georgia, Richmond Half in Virginia, Blue and Gray here in Fredericksburg. What I found out is that I’m not ready to do what I’m hoping to do, at least not yet.
The first five miles of the Devil’s Den ten-miler were solid. Then we hit that out and back stretch. Then we hit a long stretch of road where not only the heat hit me but witnessing runners better prepared to deal with the heat hit me. The pack passed me by. And I ran the race worse than the year prior. It was hotter, sure, but I was unfocused. I say I was unfocused because the only run I had been focused in on were my long runs. The race was on a Sunday. I spent the following Monday watching some YouTube videos and brainstorming. And the brainstorming led me into an act of retracing: What were the patterns and habits and weekly mileage totals I had once done and could possibly do again? Did the aches and pains of the last year have more to do with a lack of discipline in my training than they did with my age and expectations? I don’t rightly know, but that’s the experiment being run with each tweak to the routine.
Counting the mileage from that disappointing race, I ran over 43 miles last week. I mixed up the distances and intensities. I gave each run a unique focus. I still managed to fit in the form running and weights that I started doing back in November of 2022. Basically, I started doing all the stuff a high school coach asks runners to do that causes most unserious runners to complain. I did it then. I can do it again. Some things have changed. Others have not. I also reloaded on running shoes. And I am on track for 40 miles again this week.
