Life Changes

I barely remember the day, but I remember the pain. I stepped across the finish line at Disney and wept, I thought at the time, because I had survived the freezing 26.2 miles that day, but I was to find out later that I wept because upon completion of that goal I was lost. I had suffered and enjoyed the difficulties of training, injuries, and of course the loneliness of the long distance runner only to find myself empty...void of life after that finish. I began living in the frailty of this emptiness, and it began to possess me. I stopped running, I stopped being me.

So now here I am deep into training for the Goofy challenge at Disney(a 1/2 marathon on Saturday and a full on Sunday). My 16 mile long run is coming Sunday and my 14 last week was the fastest I have ever run that distance by 2 minutes a mile. I feel stronger, faster, healthier, more willing to accept the pain of growth then ever before. Now I wonder, if when I cross the finish line in January, will I be found or will I weep again. Will I weep this time because nothing of my life that I had known then is the same now or will I shed tears of joy because crossing that line will be my rebirth? I just don't know what to anticipate so I just keep running.

Yes, life changes but when I am running, I am a runner and in that moment I know who I am. Gratefully, I find peace in that now familiar sound of my shoes on the ground.

The New Iditarod

This year the Disney Marathon weekend could be called the Florida Iditarod !! I'm not complaining just stating the facts. For a first marathon in which you just want to have fun, get a tee-shirt, see what a marathon is like, enjoy the Disney excellence of doing things and finish, I think the Disney Marathon Weekend is a great choice. This year if you wanted to sit in shivering huddled groups, cover yourself in layers of clothing, wear gloves, long underwear, and use hand warmers, slip into an exotically attractive garbage bag, drink frozen water to hydrate and spend hours wondering how so much fluid can come out of your nose, then Disney was good choice!! It was windy and below 30 degrees at the 5:55 start time. Weather.com says it was 29, felt like 26 and that the wind was blowing at 10 mph when the fire works went off and we started to run. Funny thing is I met a woman from Canada after the race while enjoying some coffee at Starbucks the next day and she said she likes to run in -4 degree weather back home but that it was TOO "cold and miserable to enjoy running in this Florida weather"! Go figure!!

So the cold added a type of brutality that only nature can provide and all you can do is live with it. Now in my last post I gave my goals: 1. finished the marathon 2. finish healthy 3. have fun 4. come home with my Mickey Mouse Medallion!! I want to talk about those in the remainder of this post.

First I just wanted to finish the marathon right? Actually after reading and talking to people and wondering how ready I was my EGO wanted to finish in about 5 hours. I thought if I could do that then goal number one would be greatly enhanced. Let me tell you that after weeks of being forced to slow down and rehab my knee that 5 hours was a goal so lofty that I hand to give that up by the 1/2 mark. I crossed the 1/2 timing mark in 2:55. Not because I was freezing and could not get warm, but because I had not finished training. But it is of note that each time I went by a water stop the cups had ice in them and the water was too cold to gulp so I had to walk to sip it and then it seemed to chill me down even more. But the powerade wasn't frozen! Thank God I was used to drinking it during my long runs, but it was still ice cold and kept my core from staying warm. Nature wins in the battle for warmth! I will try to remember that this August when I am forced to run late at night just to stay cool! :-)

Secondly I wanted to finish healthy. I just did not want to push so hard I got injured again. Actually my knee felt pretty darn good throughout most of the race. I never got into a good timing groove of running a certain amount of minutes and walking for a minute. I was concentrating on keeping my hat on, my collar around my neck, my hand warmers in place, my ear muffs pulled down over my ears, taking on and off my full faced wool cap, and the like. It was non-stop trying to keep warm. Who knows maybe the cold weather acted sorta like an ice pack and kept the inflammation at bay and so my knee just never got aggravated and started hurting. So maybe the cold was good thing? I don't know but I do know that at mile 20 things changed. My legs began complaining. Those little subtle twinges you get in your calves when they are starting to feel "crampy" and my quads started aching. I first noticed it when I tried to run up one of the many hills on this flat course. It just plain hurt too badly to run up the hill. I HAD to walk the hills to keep going. Then it just began to progress. I went by a food stop and got a frozen banana and was chipping away at it when I realized that I was being passed by people on crutches and with with walkers!! Even my walking had become labored and painful and it was then that I began to "force" myself to keep going. I had encountered the wall!! I was only 6 miles from finishing. I had to finish. So even if I was at risk of injuring myself I had to keep going. So goal number 2 was sorta out the door at this point because during these last miles pain was the only feedback I was getting that I was still moving forward.

The third goal was to have fun. Now did I have fun? That is a good question. I had great fun telling people I was going to run the Disney Marathon and seeing the look of wonderment on their faces. I had fun planning the trip to Disney and thinking bout having a little vacation. I had fun going out to some different restaurants and eating some new kinds of food. I had fun playing with the GPS to get around Orlando. I had fun at the Marathon Expo when I picked up my number, timing chip and goodie bag, I had fun buying some new insoles and shopping for warmer clothes to run in. I had fun joking about the cold with my fellow participants before the start of the race. I had fun celebrating my wife's birthday while we were there. I had lots of fun!

Oh did I have fun during the Marathon. I think a better word would be "experienced". I experienced running in sub-zero weather for the first time. I experienced running with nearly 20,000 people. I experienced running through all 4 Disney parks and by the Disney sewage treatment plant(yummy smell!) and of course the Animal Kingdom(yummy smells)! I experienced great joy watching the sun come up because that meant warmer! I experienced running up the on ramps and overpasses at Disney. I experienced the short conversations and the "how you doing" among the runners. I experienced such great encouragement from the strangers that lined the route that it brought tears to my eyes and thank you's from my lips. I experienced giving hi 5's to children and grown ups along the route that stood in the freezing cold to cheer us on. I experienced the smiles and help of the many volunteers that were there to give me water, food, first aid, and support. I experienced tears of satisfaction and joy when I realized at mile 24 that I was still moving and sure I was going to make it. I experienced great thankfulness that God would allow me this incredible experience. I experienced the absolute elation of seeing the finish line as I rounded the last corner at mile 26. I experienced one of the volunteers saying, "You made it Mitch!!(our names were on our number pinned to my pant leg) Your a marathoner"!! I experienced running that last 385 yards and crossing the finish line still on my feet. I experienced hearing my name called out as I crossed the finish line. I experienced tears coming to my eyes again as a young man placed my Mickey medallion(goal 4) over my head and saying "Congratulations, you did it!" I experienced my lovely wife saying to me "I am proud of you baby, I knew you would do it!!" I also experienced wearing that medallion around and hearing "good job!" or "congratulations!" or "what is that about?" for the rest of the day and the next in Orlando. And for hours afterward I experienced my knee(this blogs namesake) complain and moan about what I had done to it by running 26.2 miles in sub freezing weather but I could tell he was smiling because he had not let us down and he was proud of himself for seeing it through!

So I conclude this post with this:

"26.2 BABY WOOHOO!!!!"

My Mickey!

Click my name for my results:

MITCH BURKS #11471

Click here for some pictures from the marathon!

Disney Full Marathon

Well the marathon I was training for is at hand. I have rested my knee and ran 20 miles total last week to see if it would work and it did with some manageable pain. The pain during the day is gone for the most part and I am always surprised when I get up from sitting or get out of my truck and it does not hurt or even twinge any more. That usually creates a smile and even a happy comment from me as that has been happening for about 10 days now. I have been running a 5 mile course and trying to get a little stamina in me before I tackle the Disney run and I realize that my goal has changed and it has nothing to do with time or running even, but, finishing.

I have 7 hours to complete 26.2 miles. 7 hours. That is a long time. But it might be necessary if the pain starts or I am more out of shape than I think. All I know is that no matter what time I finish in I want 4 things to have occurred. 1. I finished the marathon(its my first so it will be a PR) 2. I finish healthy 3. I had fun 4. I come home with my Mickey Mouse Medallion!! WooHoo I have seen it and I covet it! :-)

Its going to be 30 degrees at the start in Disney World. I have to get out of bed before 3am to catch the ride to the big ball at Epcot. I will stand in the cold for 2 hours before start and I am excited to be able to do this. Its a privilege and I hope my body realizes that and lets me finish well.

More when I come back!

Audacity

As a man I love gadgets! As a runner I like running gadgets or accessories. So I have a Nike+ Sportband, an mp3 player, a pouch to hold my mp3 player, a set of cool headphones, a 4 bottle water belt, compression shorts, Glide, Gu, and I am dying for a Garmin 305. If you run you know what I mean. Running accessories are not only fun they are down right necessary for split timing, interval training, heart rate training, knowing distance, time, tempo, pace and the like and of course you need some tunes for motivation!!

So imagine my incredulity when I saw a woman running in my neighborhodd wearing NO accessories!! What is wrong with her she didn't even have on a hat! Just out there running! She was scooting along at what seemed to be a 8-9 minute pace, had some perspiration built up and was of all things just smiling! How can you run without any accessories and still smile? Her favorite song wasn't pounding in her ears. She wasn't taking a sip of electrolytes from her water belt. She wast slurping down a new flavor of Gu, she wasn't even looking at a Garmin or Nike+. Go figure?

That is what I call audacity. She has the audacity, ( 1. boldness or daring, esp. with confident or arrogant disregard for conventional thought, or other restrictions.) to run just for the sake of running!! That's just wrong!!

Next time I see her I think I am going to pull up alongside her in my car(cause I can't catch her if I run after her because I am carrying too much stuff and of course my knee hurts) and toss here a package of Gu...just so she will be officially one of us...a real runner! :)

The Betrayal

Today is the 2 month anniversary of "The Betrayal". Two months ago my knee began to hurting too much to run. It has betrayed me! Or maybe I betrayed it by not taking good enough care of it?! In any case I have been unable to run any reasonable distance since I ran 18 miles Oct. 24th. And...I feel betrayed.

What I say here will not make much sense to someone who just ambles through life without a goal upon which to focus. But if you have an goal that drives you, you will relate.

In January of 2009 I was sitting in a Geckos restaurant having lunch with my brother, who was a runner and a physician. I weighed almost 260 pounds and was lamenting to him that I was in a death struggle to loose weight and I could not seem to be able to accomplish that with any degree of success. I was fat and depressed remembering how I had lost 70 pounds without exercising 10 years back and how easy it seemed then and how impossible it seemed to lose even a pound now. He made a casual statement that really captured my imagination. he said, "You know bro, if you would just start running you could eat whatever you wanted and would lose weight and keep it off." Hmmmmm...really? Could it be that simple? Well he kept his weight under control and he was cut from the same gene pool herd I was. Well maybe it was true.

I am a pretty obsessive person. Maybe everyone is but I recognize it in myself to be part of my personality...who I am. When I am fat I am fat because I love food and I love eating it more than anything! I obsess about my next meal or what I am going to eat when I get home it even when I have a menu in my hand. I talk about eating and food, joke about it, dream about it, LOVE it!! I stand in front of people with my rotund belly bragging that I have won a Buffet Championship! I unashamedly declare I am a professional eater! lol I am way into food when I am into food. Then when I go on a diet..oh my!...its all about my diet...I can talk endlessly about the 3 ounces I lost by eating cardboard cutouts of hamburgers and drinking only water. The stream of words about dieting coming from my mouth is copious, lengthy, loud, and BORING! But I proudly announce "I am on a diet, watch me roar!!" Whatever I am into...becomes an obsession.

So just imagine when I started running and my weight began drop and my body shape began to change and I went from staggering down the shoulder of the road near my house to running for 30 minutes non-stop for the first time!!! Imagine eating all the healthy food I wanted to eat and still seeing the scale drop. Imagine even eating the occasional cookie or chips or fries and still watching the scale plummet from 260 to 195. Imagine that I could now boldly and confidently declare I was a runner when I entered a 5K in my city and won 2nd place in my age division. Imagine the growth of this obsession when I ran 2 5k's in one weekend and lived to tell about it. Imagine getting involved in training for a marathon! Imagine what I thought about, talked about, dreamed about. Just imagine how this magnificent beast called Running began to grow inside me. I was a Runner! A Runner!!! Fat Mitch was now trim healthy and training for a marathon! People around me, while sick of hearing me talk about it, were proud of my effort...I was proud of my effort. I began to identify with running and the desire to run, the need to run. I was finally, a Runner. Finally.

Then....Betrayal!

(Listen to my emotions here) In one day I went from being a runner to being a loser! A Limper. When I was asked how the running was going I was embarrassed to say, "Well I injured my knee and I haven't been running for a while." I felt shame for not being able to run any more. Maybe because I had talked so much about it, reveled so freely in the joy of it all, was so bold as to identify myself as a runner, to announce I was traing for the Disney Full and now I was just a limper. Betrayed.

My running friends just sort of looked at me with that "Aww you can't run anymore, I understand how you feel, except I can still run and in fact I ran 15 miles today so I am not a loser like you." look. Runners are a pack and while they may not always run together they hang together and talk running and the last run and the longest run and the best run stuff. I know I was a runner once. So when I became a loser, a limper I had no new stories to tell, I had no more identifying events to include me in the pack. I was out. I understand because I would do the same thing. The healthy runner cannot stop running because someone got injured and can't run anymore. This is not the Marines. Its just running so I understand. But the healthy do not understand the limper's pain. So I was betrayed by my body and misunderstood by my pack. In my head I was alone.

Talk about an identity crisis!! I just wanted to be a runner. And there is one identifying mark for all runners...they run. I could not run, so therefore I was no longer a runner. I was crushed by this betrayal. While my knee pain worsened somewhat, my emotional pain grew exponentially. Every time my knee would twinge in pain it would send a signal to my brain that said..."Loser! You will never run again." It was not long before I began to believe it. So when my weight began to climb I went to the local gym and used the elliptical trainer and stationary bike to try to keep some level of fitness. But you know what that did mostly? It reminded me that I could not run and all I wanted to do was run.

So I was on my way to Disney Marathon minding my own business when...

After an 18 mile training run that I was inadequately prepared for and inadvertently failed to cool down properly after I lost the non-painful use of my left knee for running... and that pain was soon to be knee to hip. Go figure my first 18 mile run...I finished it and felt great for the effort and now...nothing...no running. What a bummer. Can you relate?

The "if I run more than 2 miles pain" progressed to "if I sit still for more that 5 minutes pain" to "running, walking, sitting, or even trying to sleep on my left side at night pain".

So?? Was I:
Unprepared?
Just not built for running?
Pushing to hard?
Improper after care procedures?
Too old?
Doesn't matter because by this time I was a runner and I loved being a runner and I loved running. I have to run! I can't give this up! Are you with me?

I am writing about this today...but it happened Oct. 24. I was on schedule to have run 28 miles 4 weeks before Disney and then a proper wind down to the day and then...tragedy. My mind is still not right. Can you feel my pain?

I started running April 6th 2009. I remember the day well because not only was it the day I started running but it was also the day I realized that running was NOT for me. I couldn't do it!! I hated it, my calves hated it, my lungs hated it and even my mind hated it! But because I am who I am(and I was competing with some women in my office!) I kept doing the run 1 minute walk 1 minute program for that week and then the next week did the run 2 minutes walk 1 minute and so on until that warm October morning I walked out of my brothers house in Nokomis, FL and we set off on the journey. We had trekked the 12 mile run and the 15 mile run together and we would tackle this one together too. I had a great day! He had a not so great day. I walked away from the experience limping. He ran 27 miles two weeks later. Hmmm...so much for bragging that I beat him, but that's another story.

Now 9 weeks later. I recently ran 6 miles before my knee started to hurt and my dead ego allowed me to stop running at that moment. I was running 9:30 miles with an 8:52 in the middle for fun. It wasn't bad, I felt weak at the beginning and got stronger as I ran but when that old familiar pain started I was frustrated and hurt because now...I just want to run without the fear that my knee will start hurting. I remember those days...they were great an I took them for granted. I won't ever do that again.

I am not sure how I progressed from just wanting to run a little to keep my weight down to competing in 2 5K's to training for a marathon in less than 6 months(well I do know how I got into the Disney full..the 1/2 was already sold out!) but here I am and I want to run long...even in my pain I wonder what running an ultra would be like. Sigh...anyway...I am trying to let my leg heal...but its hard because running has no patience. It is there inside you all day wanting to be freed...to be loosed upon your favorite route, to be brought to bear upon some time or distance like a sword brought to bear upon a fearsome enemy. Running is a beast that rages inside your heart and when you cannot run it is tamed and muzzled and made to be timid...no longer a raging beast but rather a whimper. I miss the beast.