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This is part two of my series on training for the Hood to Coast relay race next weekend.

You’ll remember I did this on sort of a lark. I committed to the team before we knew for certain if we were in the race. You see, there are thousands of entrants, and the race organizers limit the field to around 1,000 teams (apparently 1,040 this year) and so you have many applicants submit applications for a lottery. My first runs were without the knowledge that we would be racing, but after my admitting I needed to do something to lose some weight.

I was plagued by back problems from 2000 or so until 2006. The doctors (general and chiropractic) gave good advice, and almost all of them included weight loss in this advice. At the start of this training I weighed in the neighborhood of 270 pounds, give or take depending on the day and the number of trips to the bathroom at weigh-in. I’m a shade over 6-2, but 270 pounds was still way too much.

In 2006, I did read up on John Sarno’s back relief system and that helped, but in 2007 things were again creeping towards problematic. I knew I needed to lose some of those 270 pounds. . Even at the hefty weight (My idol was fellow UK alumnus Jared Lorenzen, apparently) I fancied myself in somewhat of a decent shape. I started out with doing two miles at a time, without regard to pace, just to get the distance that I wanted to get.

The first time I stepped on the treadmill, it took me thirty-one minutes to cover 10,560 feet. I understand there will be some reading this that might not be able to do two miles in that time, and please know I am not demeaning you at all. I was just mad at myself because I really thought it was going to be no problem to go out and run 12-13 minute miles from day one. That’s not a tremendous pace in itself, but I expected to be around that given that I was just starting. I found out that there was literally nowhere to go but up.

The first runs in late August were a struggle that had me kicking myself. Or rather, I would have kicked myself were it not for the ridiculous pain in my knees. I was just a few runs into the program and my knees were aching in ways they had never ached before. There was pain in the tendons, and in the muscles around the knees. The kneecap itself had pain; it was so bad I was convinced that I was feeling pain in a BONE.

It didn’t take very long for the serious runners on the team (I’ll be doing runner’s profiles in the next couple of days for all the teammates) to figure out my problem: I was running in indoor soccer shoes. I figured, hey, soccer players run like mad; they can’t be all that bad, right?

Wrong. These were the shoes I had:

They are not meant for training. So I took two weeks off and bought a pair of New Balance off the shelf and started running in those. The difference in the two pairs of shoes was absurd. I was having less fatigue in my feet and my knees felt brand new. Some of the soreness was just from the knees being used heavily for the first time since High School Tennis, but I have no doubt that the lack of support in the soccer shoes was the main culprit. I was soon running two miles in as few as twenty-eight minutes!

We still didn’t know if we were in or not at this point, however. It was hard to make myself stay on it like I should have done. So I would get on the treadmill 2-3 times a week, but I wasn’t really pushing myself, looking back in hindsight. Then on October 31st, race organizers cashed the Team’s check. We were in.

I got scared at that point, but it was a fright mixed with excitement. I felt a little ashamed that I hadn’t been doing much training wise and was already feeling like I was letting the team down. I once again told myself I was going to make sure I was ready but I had to face a bigger issue within myself.

My problem has always been motivation. When properly motivated, I have found there is little I will not enjoy doing while also doing it well. Unfortunately, I have a hard time making myself do something until there is little time and by then it must be done quickly. Now that we were in, we had a deadline, but it still seemed so far away and I couldn’t convince myself that these runs nine months in advance made any difference. Luckily, Bobby Pentagonz came through with a lifesaver.

It was just a simple spreadsheet (well, simple isn’t right - there was a good amount of time and thought that went into the sheet) but it gave me what I needed: a place to see my results. I hadn’t been tracking myself, so I was gauging myself on memory. I wasn’t setting goals, so there was no way to meet them. The spreadsheet made it real. It was a visual representation of my physical work. That felt good. Something as simple as just writing it down became an accomplishment. I was getting somewhere.

My times went down. My mileages went up. I could do two miles in under twenty-five minutes. I did my first three miler in just under thirty-nine. In early January 2008, I did three miles in under twelve minutes per mile. I did two in twenty-two minutes, nine minutes faster than when I started. In late January I broke eleven minutes a mile for three miles in two consecutive runs.

I’d made a lot of progress, but there was still work to be done. In the race, I would probably need to run at least one leg of 5+ miles. I wasn’t there yet, and I was tired. I took it easy for a month. Part was my body was tired, part was it still seemed so far away. Again, hindsight shows me the error of my ways. Stay tuned.