Flashes of Panic

I ran eight miles, more or less, on Sunday at the Ashley Reservoir in Holyoke. Last time I tried that was late in March, when the pool was closed, and the result was bad for my plantar fascia. Big setback. This run was just hard, and I finished thinking I might be on my way back again.

On the way back from Holyoke, for some reason we decided donuts were in order, and we stopped at Atkins Farms for the purpose of procuring some. I couldn’t decide, so I went for both, and sat down with a chocolate glazed and a chocolate cream-filled. I discovered, also, that Atkins donuts are about twice the size of normal donuts—in thickness, not in circumference. So, two massive donuts for lunch.

This would not seem to fit in with any effort to hold off the weight gain that usually comes with reduced activity. At a given mileage (say, over fifty per week) I reach the point where I can eat pretty much anything, and I generally do. When injured, however, things can get ugly pretty quickly.

I’m not terribly concerned about becoming overweight; from racing weight, I have about thirty pounds of slack before I even reach “average.” However, runners live with a certain brutal equation about weight: two seconds per pound per mile. In other words, for every extra five pounds I carry, I will work just as hard to run a minute slower in a 10K. Obviously, there’s a limit to that equation, which is when there is no longer any “extra” weight; reducing beneficial mass (like the muscles that drive one forward, the bones that hold one up, the fuel the muscles burn, etc.) will hurt one’s results just as much as carrying dead weight. But for now, let’s just accept as a given that I’m at least ten pounds, probably more like twenty, on the right side of that break point as well.

(I established a “floor” of sorts in my first two years in college, when I ran my PRs at most of the standard distances; around that time, upperclassmen from the crew, knocking on doors looking for recruits, told me I was “twenty pounds too heavy to be a cox and twenty pounds too light to be a lightweight.”)

I can’t stand dieting. Loathe it. I’d rather run eighty mile weeks. On a treadmill. I’ve got better things to be worrying about. I don’t want to be in the habit of stepping on a scale every morning and letting that number rule my consumption for the day.

So I consider my long-term goal (“racing weight.”) I consider general steps to take. (Fewer cookies and jelly beans. More mileage.) Then when I’m at the college to swim (once or twice a week, in other words,) I step on the scale there and check my position. If I’m not headed towards the goal in a general sort of way, I make course corrections. In between, I don’t think about it much.

It’s the difference between navigating and steering, between being the captain of the ship and checking position every so often and being the helmsman with hands on the wheel and an eye on the compass. I feel like I’m in charge. And if I say the crew gets two donuts for lunch, the crew gets donuts.

I tend to apply this approach elsewhere as well, but it’s not always as successful. (We’ll discuss my continuing education career later. I hope.) I think I’m happier this way, though.

Now playing: Best Imitation Of Myself from Ben Folds Live by Ben Folds