Adarq.org

Miguel Angel Tellez
37 mins · Melilla, Spain ·
There are races that define you as an athlete, and others that define you as a person. Today was definitely the latter.
LA CARRERA AFRICANA DE LA LEGION, a race held in my hometown in Spain, but physically located in Africa (Google Melilla and you will understand). After several editions, I was finally able to find a way to do it. This race is certainly outside of my comfort zone: 50k with 70% off-road trails and a lot of hills. So, pretty much the opposite I use to train for, and something impossible to replicate in Miami.
Anyway, the race is AWESOME. Perfectly organized and very special thanks to the Legionaries.
I have all my family watching the race (something almost never happens in Miami) and many friends from many years racing or watching it.
Then, AT MILE 5, in an asphalt area with no danger at all, I don’t see a curb while saying hi to my family and I severely twist my left ankle to the point I was very close to falling down. I immediately realize that was a bad one and I loudly profess some profanities. My race was over. And in the most stupid way possible. I had ahead of me 26 miles of hills and off-road terrain. No way I can finish this one...
Or can I...?
In any other race, I would have retired. Period. I have never abandoned a race except once for a mechanical problem on the bike and another one when a car run over me. Still, I always say and believe, that you should abandon a race if it is jeopardizing your health. We are not professionals and we are not kids anymore! Most important thing is to stay healthy for many more years.
BUT this wasn’t a normal race. It was the Legionaries race. In my hometown. With all my family watching. So... what do I do? Just keep going. I am determined to finish that race even if I have to do it crawling!!!
The rest of the race was, as expected, a grueling, painful experience, with my ankle hurting pretty bad, particularly going downhill, and in off-road areas. I was literally limping most of the way down and couldn’t help but cringe and moan almost constantly.
I stopped at mile 15 and got an improvised bandage fix. It helped a little, but not too much. Also had to stop several times to put back the bandages that were falling apart from time to time.
The last 5 miles, though, were flat and on asphalt and, since I was limited by my twisted ankle for a good portion of he race, at least I had some energy left in the tank, so I pushed hard and was able to pass 4 runners.
Ended up sprinting and screaming of pure joy & rage at the same time.
Just after I crossed the finish line, I sat down... and from that moment on, I simply couldn’t walk. They had to take me to the medical tent, where they confirmed I had a “pretty decent” sprained ankle. ”So, when did you twist your ankle? at mile 5” 😵 (exact doctor’s face).
From there, my family took me home and we celebrated my odyssey. They couldn’t believe I had been able to finish.
This is a race I will never forget.
It is a race that forged me as a person. Problems at work or in daily life? Piece of cake: If I had the guts to finish that race, anything else is a walk in the park! 🙂
A lot of people wonder why we do what we do. Why suffer over training, racing. Why so much sacrifice. Well, this is why. This makes you stronger, it makes you feel alive. Only athletes will understand this though.
By the way: finished 7th overall.
DISCLAIMER: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. IF YOU HAVE AN SPRAINED ANKLE DURING AN ULTRA MARATHON, BE SMARTER THAN ME AND RETIRE.

Quote from: Joe on April 21, 2018, 09:34:58 am

http://japanrunningnews.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/the-miracle-in-fukuoka-real-talk-from.html

First in a series of blog posts BY YUKI. The links to the other parts are in the above.

"I’ve always done 4 to 6-hour trail runs, but last summer I started doing a lot more of them. Using the Shin-Etsu Trail I ran longer than 45 km two days in a row and jogged more than 40 km three times in a single week. In the fall I even started doing ultra long-distance jogs on flat ground. In October I ran 100 km mostly along the Tone River from Shibukawa, Gunma to my house in about 7 1/2 hours. Leading up to Fukuoka I did a lot of 50 km jogs which I hadn’t usually done in the past."

oof! And his jogs aren't so slow. 100km in 7.5 hours is 4:30/km or 7:15/mile. I mean slow for him, of course, but I had got the impression from how others were talking about it that these jogs were like 10+/mile

Sick quote (and very adarq) in the second part:

"There’s nothing better than being fast for being competitive, but there’s an element of being competitive that you can’t learn just from being fast."

There are those who look at that kind of ultra long-distance jogging and say, “Running slowly is meaningless no matter how much you do,” but I think the people who make that kind of criticism have probably never done it themselves. If you actually experience the feeling you get after about three hours, the “I can endure this fatigue in my legs, but if I lose it mentally I’ll immediately want to quit” one that’s similar to the light-headed sensation at the end of the marathon, the numbness of hands and feet and loss of concentration that come after that, the feeling that your stamina is evaporating from the core of your body, and the overpowering sense of euphoria you get after going over the wall, I don’t think you can call it “meaningless.”

The confidence that is built by doing ultra long-distance jogging, the knowledge in the second half when things are getting tough that “I’ve run 50 km and 100 km so I know for sure that my stamina isn’t going to break in the second half. The internationals running next to me haven’t done 100 km so I know that my legs are the ones that are still going to keep moving when things get down and dirty,” has really helped a person like me who tends to get discouraged easily.

Times are something that are dependent on variables like race day weather and the way the race plays out. By doing dozens of marathons I’ve come to understand what those who came before me meant when they said, “More than time, the marathon is about competition.” So when the people backing these fast young guys tell them, “You have to run a good time in your debut,” the runners may be saying “sub-2:10 at a minimum” to try to live up to those expectations, but I think that in saying that they are probably stringing themselves up by the neck. If the goal is ultimately to run 2:05 or 2:06, I think that instead of saying, “Let’s rock the marathon right from the first time,” and jumping in only to die and taste the torments of hell, to suffer injury and trauma that will destroy your self-confidence, saying “Who cares what time you run in your debut? I want to be able to achieve my goal in the end,” and holding back to run at a pace that suits you will let you finish thinking, “Marathons are fun!” and let you run later marathons in a positive state of mind.

think it’s also important to learn from the Japanese marathoners of the past. It seems like a lot of athletes these days believe too much in the way that the Africans and the Americans do things, but I don’t think that modern athletes who can’t better the times run by past Japanese athletes can rightfully call those past athletes’ training methodologies “outdated.” Needless to say not everything about the way that Japanese athletes trained in the past was correct, but I think there are more hints about how to get better to be found there than by looking at how Africans train.

Every time I read them I found a number of things that could be helpful, but what I began to feel most strongly was that compared to the greats of the past the amount of “ultra long-distance training” I was doing seemed overwhelmingly insufficient.

I began to feel that even if I were doing something similar to what Africans do, it would just be a lesser imitation of their approach.

The surprise I felt at seeing the pre-race breakfast of a Kenyan Olympic medalist in New York and thinking, “They can run 42.195 km on such a small amount [of food]?”