True Failure.

“I feel the need…the need for speed!”

                                    -Maverick & Goose, Top Gun(1986)

Speedwork!

I approach these awesome workouts with an ambiguous cocktail of sentiments in my head, which is equal parts eagerness and anxiety, served in a tall glass with a little umbrella...

Make no mistake, if you do them right, Intervals are hard. In general, I enjoy running. But Intervals, I only enjoy finishing. 

My program calls for mile repeats with half-mile recoveries. I’ve never really understood miles as a unit of distance, and I don’t have a track near my home where I can do these workouts on laps, so I just do 2k repeats with 1k recoveries on the road.

This was my second speedwork week in the cycle.

Yesterday, I woke up feeling confident and rested, ready to kill it. Jaw set in determination and all that sort of rot, you know? The weather, in its trend, was superbly cool. I ran an easy 2k warm-up, and then, on cue from my Garmin, shot off for the first of four planned repeats.

A quick glance at my watch at the end of a kilometer showed that I had done it in 3:58.

Now frankly, I would have been extremely happy with a 4:10 which was what I was aiming for, and which would have been a good 3 seconds faster than my last time… But the moment I saw that figure flash on my watch, I assumed that my body was telling me it was strong enough to make a 10 to 15 second pace jump… in Speedwork!

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

I kept up the pace, covering the next kilometer in 4:03, before I slowed to a jog to recover.

For all of about a minute, I felt great... but then...

I half-realized that something was wrong. Suddenly, I wasn’t looking forward to the next repeat. My recovery interval is usually paced at around 5:30, but I was shuffling along at 6:30. Ignoring the warning signs, I set off for the next repeat, still determined to meet my heavily modified target pace.

At the end of a kilometer, my watch flashed 4:09. It was still faster than what I set out wanting to do, but like an utter idiot, I found it disappointing...

PUSH! I said to myself. And I pushed.

Less than half a kilometer later, I was done...

Not a measly joule of energy remained in me, stitches stabbed my midriff, my quads were numb and the corpse of a long dead IT Band injury suddenly seemed to be crawling out of its grave.

For the first time in a really, really long time, I stood face to face with failure.

I shambled back home slowly, a black cloud over my head, and spent the rest of the day in stoic contemplation.

This is what I learnt...

I have been fortunate to be moving from strength to strength over the past few weeks, feeling everything is going my way, like Bruce Willis as a closet superhero in Unbreakable (2000), bench-pressing ever heavier weights to his own surprise...

That tends to get to one's head. The adrenaline dissolves humility and patience, and flushes it away. And I believe that's what happened to me. I started thinking that I was, well... unbreakable.

Despite what the motivational posters tell you, limits aren't just in your mind. They are tangible things.

Like ornery Haryana buffaloes, you can move them and push them with gentle persuasion and perseverance. Try to kick them, though, and you're asking to be kicked back.


Hard.


In the nuts.

Let me wax philosophical for a bit as I come to terms with this...Good runs make you stronger. Bad runs make you wiser.

And the only true failure, is one from which you learn nothing.

Week six of eighteen. I ran a cautious 12k run today, and thankfully, saw no ill effects of yesterdays fiasco spilling over. Barring an earth-shattering cosmically catastrophic event, I predict a fairly satisfactory conclusion to one-third of this training cycle with a 32k on Sunday, which I plan to run in conjunction with the Delhi Heritage Half-Marathon. That definitely promises to be a fun event.


And of course...

Happy Diwali, People!