Laborious training on Labor Day weekend

I know, it’s shocking, I’ve been calling my running hobby, my second job. Short of family genes when it comes to sport, of training at altitude like the Kenyans, but not short of being… short, which might help when running hills but isn’t the best trait to go fast on roads, I’ve had to work hard to move up from the middle of the pack where I started in my first road races in France. I was barely training, swamped into the startup life, an amazing mix of excitement, passion and workaholism. I started running seriously upon moving to the Bay Area at the end of 1998. We were coming to spend 2 years in the US and I had set the goal of running a marathon, before our return to France. Then that turned to 27 marathons and 203 ultra races, and counting. Oops! Got addicted to the thrill of testing and pushing the envelope. I didn’t even know about Boston (the marathon) when I ran my first marathon in San Francisco. 3:30 after quite some… work already. Then San Jose in 3:25, albeit the additional work put into it. I was quite disappointed by the small increment but went on persevering. Working harder. Even starting speed work at the track (De Anza College) thanks to Don Murdoch’s motivating coaching. Will never forget, how that gave me the discipline to work harder and also be curious about running tips from the other members of the Stevens Creek Striders club. While I’ve been hard enough on myself not to need much additional help, I’m super grateful to that group which got me on the right (single) track. And foot. Plus the connection to Western States by becoming the aid station captain at Last Chance, for a few years. More fun. And more work too!

Fast forward 20 years and I need to work even harder to rebuild muscles and mind after two annoying injuries: a fissured tendon at the end of 2018 and torn meniscus in 2024, the latter leading to 7 months off running. Hard physically, and even harder mentally. To most watching, I’m back. Yes, mostly. But, and although not measured scientifically of course, my guess or estimate is that my shape is still 10% lower than where it could have been without these injuries. Speaking if science, maybe I should listen more to my Coros watch because it surely has A LOT to say, most notably that I rarely wait to fully recover between training days, and that some of these runs end up concluding in an Exhausted mode. Plus more than a dozen of metrics that I haven’t delved into. One is intriguing me the most since I resumed training a year ago, though: the predicted marathon time. In almost a year of, to continue on the theme of this post, rather hard word, I only shaved a few minutes off it and it’s now plateauing between 3:09 and 3:10. Not bad compared to the 3:45 Boston Qualifier time for my age group but 8 minutes off the law I had established in my early Masters years of running road marathons in 2 hours plus my age in minutes. Would now place me at 3:01… In optimal racing conditions that is. I’m thinking I should try again.

Writing this I reflect on the contrast there is between just working harder, versus with more discipline. And, yes, I tend to slide toward the former, just logging more miles and aiming at pushing the pace. I should do more cross-training, more speed work (scoop, Cupertino High School is refreshing their track of 20 years!) Meanwhile, it has been closed since June…), more strength training, more stretching. More…

Back to the title, how much labor did I put in this weekend? I had big plans, I wanted to at least do a 50-mile run to Fremont and back, like I did so many while (over)training for Spartathlon in 2023, with a couple of 200-mile weeks. On Saturday morning, we had a small backyard maintenance project, so it was already getting hot when I was ready to go, around 10:30. And rather late anyway for an 8 to 9-hour training run. I went on to run 25K along the Cupertino rail track, down to Campbell.

I was resolute to leave early on Sunday, to take advantage of a cool morning. Woke up at 5:30, got some breakfast and was ready to go by 7:15, loaded with a few GU Energy gels and chews, 8 S!Caps and my two Ultimate Direction bottles. But with a problem right off the bat: just before leaving, Agnès asking me “do you really need to do a 50-mile, why?” Ahh, the why which is questioning all that hard work and mining the mind and motivation. She was right, my next ultras will be in October and November so, why training hard now. Well, just because training for an ultra is a long game. Just because, you’d better do these long runs way ahead rather than showing up tired on race day (hence the tapering). But, again, it’s not science, or it is rocket science as a matter of fact. As we say in our ultra community, we are experiments of one.

The first mile was the toughest. First, nowadays with the additional years, and running almost every day, my body takes more time to get to a comfortable pace. On one end, it was 65F and it felt really nice for running, before the peak of 90F expected in the afternoon on the other side of the Bay. And I was happy with the minimal soreness after yesterday’s 15 miles. On the other, that “but why” resonating in my head… I settled in the next 10 miles for a pace of 8 minutes/mile, plus or minus 2 seconds. The streets were so quiet on this Sunday morning that I didn’t have to even stop my watch to cross De Anza boulevard, then Homestead or even Fremont. By mile 5.5 I was done with the street part of the course and on for 40 miles on the bike path to Fremont and back.

Because I didn’t have to stop my watch to cross the large arteries of Cupertino and Sunnyvale, I decided it was an opportunity to run to Fremont without any stop. I was on track until mile 10.5 when I got into this major trail closure at Shoreline. It’s unclear what they are working on except that they are moving mountains, literally. Between the creation of a new pond for wildlife, or expanding the marsh, they are also raising the levée along the sailing lake of Shoreline. There I was with my goal of not stopping my watch, I did press the button while find a forbidden way to go around... At least it was Sunday before Labor Day so there was no soul working on the pharaonic thing.

While running through the Palo Alto Baylands, I crossed path with good friends walking their dog. Another good stop to catch-up. And talk about the why again. At that point, it was around 9:30 am and the temperature had already risen significantly. I decided I was going to cut this training run short, to only 50K, by turning around at the defunct Palo Alto yacht club. I contemplated adding the loop around the airport but the why had killed me. Well, not just that, it was also getting harder to maintain the 8:00 pace. I refilled my bottles at the parking lot, at mile 16, and retraced my route back. With the heat, I lost quite some sodium --this royal blue enhance the trace of salt-- as well as a few pounds of (body) water. In the why registry, not sure I need heat training anymore for the rest of the season...

This Monday, aka Labor Day, I was flying to Italy in the afternoon, for a wedding there, plus a visit of the Vatican. I rounded up this training weekend with another 15.5 miles (25K) by running loops in the neighborhood. It felt a bit less laborious, but still quite some labor to finish with an average pace of 7:57. For a total of 100K over the 3 days, and a 91-mile week, for a big change. The left knee is a bit sensitive, just enough to remind me that I can’t log as much as I used to…

Finishing this post after a good 6-hour sleep on my flight to Rome, thanks to an upgrade in Business. During my Monday run, the street traffic was pretty much inexistant, the neighborhood looked dead, except for some an interesting distraction: with so many people out of town, the Cupertino Fire brigade was dispatched to test all the fire hydrants. I stopped at one to thank one of the firefighters and teased him that this was work, on a Labor Day! He replied that, since there were on duty anyway, they may do something useful! At least I wasn't the only one working on our streets on Labor Day!

And you, did you work this Monday? At work or on your running?