Our beautiful, unreasonable, endurance life

“Be careful,” my wife cautioned as I headed to the store. 

It was March 2020 and this ambiguous directive was the most she could offer given the new looming illness. All we knew was that it could kill. 

“I’ll try to be safe.” I offered uneasily. I was in the best shape of my running life, but this disease didn’t seem slowed by any of that. So I grabbed a pair of plastic gardening gloves and a makeshift mask in an attempt at improvised caution. I kept distant from others while out and disinfected everything upon returning home. Anything other than locking ourselves indoors felt like inviting disaster. I was nervous, she was terrified, who could have imagined a grocery trip ever becoming so daunting?

As endurance athletes, we specialize in energy allotment. We hypothesize, experiment, and test for the line at which we are unable. Yet this disease forced us to start from scratch. Maximum efforts were not only unnecessary but discouraged. Health experts suggested that it might be safest to conserve such strength. More prudent not to expend cooped-up energy on hill repeats when it might be needed to fend off this lurking virus.

No one really knew, so best to be reasonable, right? 

As athletic adults, we take pride in our body’s ability to overcome, but even we might be felled or end up with persistent symptoms. 

And so we hedged. 

We played it safe. 

And we waited…

But athletes always aim to endeavor, and so eventually we crawled our way back toward competition. First with time trials and then FKTs, we found limits on things we’d never before thought to measure.

Ambling about, I could sense that I was stalling…this “race” wouldn’t begin until I chose to start my watch and I was fully procrastinating. It was late summer 2020 and Virtual Races had become all the rage. This one piqued my interest because of an important competitive detail: it covered a Strava segment up a fire road that bisects Portland’s largest urban park. A favorite for athletes seeking to bathe their legs in lactic acid, it was now being used for a race. Though asynchronous for safety, we’d each be pushing against the same soft dirt with our most urgent strides.

Knees driving, lungs heaving, I was alone, throttling over and under my anaerobic limit. I was out hot, likely too much so, but without anyone nearby to compare to I pushed on. The final half mile was a particularly awful grade. Not extra steep, actually runnable at a decent incline. Just enough to almost induce vomiting as I surged in fear of losing to the ghosts of my competitors.

Curling around the final bend, I’d committed to kicking once I could actually see the finishing gate.

Beep!

Slap.

I smacked my watch as I lunged over the threshold. Placed decades ago by park rangers to keep out vehicles out, it now marked the arbitrary pandemic finish line. Gasping for air, I toppled hands to knees, exhausted and grateful for a taste of competition. That familiar metallic flavor of a race well run. This wasn’t what we were used to, but it would have to do for now.

Eventually, micro-events emerged. Still on edge, awaiting a medical miracle to inoculate us from this global killer, we balanced risk while competing in small packs. It didn't seem to spread outdoors, we reasoned.

Then, over a year in, with proof of double shots in arms, we cautiously re-emerged to mass-starts. As passionate competitors, we put in the miles and organized the training efforts, but it didn't feel quite the same. 

Uncertainty lingered…Is this how normal feels now?

As I increased my training in preparation for The 2021 Fall Boston Marathon the miles accumulated, but the effort felt off. I understood from experience how to move toward fitness, and was working to get there, but the actions that’d earned me personal bests for years weren’t producing equal outcomes. 

I hadn’t even gotten Covid! I was fortunate but also hesitant. After eighteen months of defending against risk around every corner, I couldn’t quite remember how to train with conviction.

In the past, I’d do double runs of seven to eight miles. 

Now, four felt just fine.

In the past, during long run workouts, I’d pushed aside doubt and face down fear, committed to reaching toward repetitions of unreasonably length.

Now, a steady progression run felt like enough.

Global uncertainty had trickled into my training and was sapping a small but significant percent of my preparation.

On race day I was decently fit, and I ran fine, but I felt more nervous than in years past. Before I’d step to the start with bulletproof belief that I’d prepared all I could. Now I lacked confidence because I knew that my focus had been fragmented.

Speaking with others, many also voiced concern at this new unwelcome unease.  

Though our fight or flight response had waned since the pandemic’s onset, subtle stress remained. The virus was still among us. 

Might it always be? 

Over the months, now years, since this anxiety infused our every day, many precautions have subsided, and yet the nervousness still insidiously persists. We’re vaccinated, masked, and distanced, but the baseline alertness continues, at a cost. Energy always pulls from somewhere.

Preparing for a marathon used to feel like meticulously climbing a mountain toward the sky, but now the bedrock of our lives felt too in flux to ascend with certainty. Training now felt more like captaining a ship out to sea without a plan for where to port. Prepared for an adventure, but unclear of what would unfold.

Frustratingly, some people were still managing to thrive in these conditions.  

Scrolling across the Strava profile of a young man I admire filled me with both envy and disgust. He didn’t seem slowed at all by conventional pandemic caution. His fitness continued to rise, reaching levels my old self had achieved, but which I questioned whether I’d ever regain. This was the double bind of pandemic stress, it felt at times unrelenting and occasionally overblown. Was I worried too much or not being careful enough?

In the past, I’d succeeded by rising each day with an indelible image of how race day would feel. Picturing these future moments in detail propelled me at times with excitement, other times with fear, but always with certainty that I could count on the sacred opportunity we call Race Day. But now we were growing accustomed to races being postponed, protocols being implemented ad hoc, and competitors scratching last minute.

Racers depend on routine. We eat the same meal and wear the same socks, to hit the same splits, to complete the same distance. But so many things are now new. Two years of constant caution had taken a toll on my ability to fully commit. Days spent anticipating risk had left me emotionally exhausted and competitively timid.

Unfortunately, we know that such practicality isn’t what unlocks undiscovered ability. 

Living an endurance lifestyle demands an unreasonable desire to push and a constant inclination to question. That workout you completed that you’d figured would end in failure, how else might you be selling yourself short? That mileage goal that seemed silly until you hit it, what other thresholds might mostly exist in your mind?

Living this endurance life is growing so accustomed to others remarking about your “insane” tendencies that you quit listening long ago. Recalling that is when I realized that I’ve overcome something like this before...

After graduating from university I gradually learned how to train aggressively with a full-time job. Later, when my son was born, I came to understand when to push myself amid a swirling parental schedule. And so, as this new stress settles into a steady simmer, it’s yet another complexity that endurance hopefuls must integrate into our routine.

The past two years have proven to us that the absence of illness isn’t necessarily ease. Stress consumes potential, even in small doses. 

But we’re built for this. 

What is our sport other than adaptation to stress? The same lack of reason that allows us to rise to run before dawn, and find time for intervals while on vacation, is what will enable us to set our sights on new goals while still remaining safe from this virus. 

Because as athletes, we need these days. We long to hurt again on our own terms. So much time spent focused on avoiding infection has stolen days away from our shared moments of max effort. 

Although life rolls on uncertainly, with one variant wave folding into the next, we must accept precautions while also embracing that this is now just part of the patchwork of our beautiful, unreasonable, endurance life. 

Years of simply remaining safe have reminded us that it’s only when unreasonably pushing toward our limits that we most recognize ourselves.