From 0 to 100k - Part 2: Getting Started, and a Battle of a Different Kind

When I posted the introduction to this series of posts a little over 4 weeks ago, I made two statements that I knew even as I wrote them might turn out to be contradictory: that I was hoping to publish a post every few days, and that I was going to talk about some personal things that would be uncomfortable to write.

I posted part 1 a few days after the introduction, and I actually wrote a decent chunk of part 2 just a couple of days later. Then the timeline came to the part of the story where it got uncomfortable for me, and things ground to a halt. I've really struggled with exactly how to write the second half of this post for weeks now, and even as I finish it off today it is extremely difficult for me to actually post it.

Ultimately, this is the story that I want to tell. Not because it's overly unique or special, but for exactly the opposite reason. While my struggle is my own, the truth is that we all have our own personal battles. I am a strong believer that the more we can learn to speak openly about them, the better off we all will be. So I guess writing these posts is me trying to practice what I believe in, and perhaps to help encourage others to do the same.

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After signing up for the Steep Ultra 100k race in early-November of 2019, I spent the remainder of that month doing little to no running. I had averaged around 60 km per week for the bulk of 2019, and between a week of being sick and a trip to Florida with my daughter, I ended up logging just over 30 km for the entire month of November.

While this was probably a little more of a break than I had planned, my intention was always to have a relatively easy November. To be honest, part of the reason I ran so little is that for the first time in several years, I had no idea how to go about structuring my training. Over 6+ years of running on the roads, I had gotten pretty comfortable with the basics of putting together a training plan. That comfort level did not transfer over at all to preparing a training plan for a 100k trail race.

With that in mind, I took a step that I had considered in the past but never actually pursued: I hired a coach. I mentioned in the previous post that tracking Gary Robbins at Barkley had been my introduction to the world of trail running. Having followed him in the ensuing years, I knew that he ran a company that offered coaching services for trail runners, so I filled out an application during the last week of November.

While part of me was hoping I might get matched with Gary as my coach, I think I knew this was unlikely, if for no other reason than he lives in British Columbia and planning phone chats given that time difference would be brutal. I ended up being matched with a coach in Vermont, Ryan Kerrigan, who has an extensive coaching background in both running and skiing.

We had our first conversation in early-December, and he immediately boosted my confidence, assuring me that we would construct a training plan that would give me the best chance at finishing the 100k. In the initial stages, there weren't any big changes to how I had been training. The two biggest modifications Ryan suggested were to schedule my runs based on time rather than distance, and also to ease back on my "easy" pace, in preparation for increasing my volume as the training progressed.

The first of these changes was quite simple to implement, and it ultimately helped with the second. I found that if I went out for an hour run over lunch, with no pressure to run a specific distance, it was easier for me to run at a more relaxed pace. If I instead said I was going to do a 10k run over lunch, I'd know in my head that if I ran 10 to 15 seconds faster per kilometre that I'd get the run done a few minutes quicker. It was surprising how much this small mental changed helped my training.

Looking back at my runs from December 2019 now, it's clear that running a more relaxed pace took some time to learn. I was someone who had been running my easy runs in the 5:00-5:15/km range, and I managed to dial that back to around the 5:30-5:45/km range. I'm sure at the time that felt easy. After almost a year of training like this, I do almost all my "easy" runs at a 6:00+/km pace, and I feel that teaching myself to run at a more relaxed easy pace played a big role in allowing me to build the volume I needed without getting injured.

One other moment of note in my December 2019 training is that I finally did my first trail run. Ginny and I went out and ran the ECT section between Topsail Beach and Laurie Beach, and I got a proper initiation. It was around -10 degrees, and I was fortunate enough to put my foot through a thin layer of frozen mud and submerged my foot up to the ankle. Running for about an hour with a foot that was effectively frozen was a great way to make it clear that the trails were going to be quite different from the roads!

As the new year rolled around, I slowly began to ramp up my training. I ran about 170 km in January, which was split between the treadmill and outdoors. I likely would have run closer to 200 km, were it not for Snowmageddon, that quaint experience when being stuck at home for a week seemed absolutely crazy. 2020 made sure to blow that out of the water.

When February came around, I was fortunate to get out on some trail runs up in East White Hills, and started to build relationships with some runners who would play a big part in helping me achieve my final goal. Unfortunately, around this same time, I also started to battle with something much less pleasant: intense feelings of loneliness and isolation.

Hindsight can be a wonderful thing, but it can also seem cruel in its own way. Looking back at my training logs, the weekend of February 15-16 was one where I really began to connect with 3 of the runners who would ultimately pace me through my 100k. Then, on February 17, I went to see my Psychologist for the first time in 2020, because I felt completely alone in the world. It really doesn't make sense to see the connection between those two now, but it's also a reminder that when it comes to issues of mental health, reason and rational thought quite often don't matter at all.

Anyone that knows me well can attest to the fact that I'm a pretty rational person. I can be very detail-oriented, and I love to analyze situations and find solutions. In fact, I've spent the first 14 years of my working career literally working with logic. I'm a big fan of that part of my personality, but it also makes it really hard for me to grapple with another big part of who I am - someone who battles with anxiety daily.

My anxiety doesn't care for logic or reason, no matter how much I wish it did. And the thing that really frustrates me about it is that it does a really good job of hiding, so much so that it's only recently, through the help of counselling, that I've been able to properly recognize it.

For me, the anxiety resides mostly around social interactions, but in a very specific way: I find it hard to reach out to people, even for the simplest things.

If I haven't heard from a good friend in a while and want to touch base, I worry that they will be annoyed by my message, that they haven't contacted me and therefore likely don't want to hear from me.

If I meet someone new and I'm trying to build a relationship, those same feelings present, and therefore if they don't put in basically all of the work, the relationship never gets built.

If, as happens to all of us, I really need someone to talk to about something that's going on in my life, I possess virtually no capacity to reach out and ask someone to be there.

The annoying thing is, I don't feel this anxiety when I'm actually interacting with people. I'm not overly nervous or unsure when meeting new people, once the initial introduction is taken care of. I don't struggle to hold a conversation, or hide away in a corner and avoid interactions. On the surface, I don't feel that I present as an overly anxious person.

And while I'm thankful that I don't have difficulties in these areas, it is these strengths that allow me to hide the anxiety that lies underneath it all, and that hiding which often leads to feelings of isolation.

My relationships with others are almost always tied to a shared function or activity (work, sports, etc.). If that tie goes away for some reason, the relationship typically goes with it, unless, as mentioned above, the other person puts in all the effort.

Needless to say, functioning like this is far from ideal, and it causes great pain in my life. And, just as I was beginning to ramp up my training to tackle the 100k, my mental health was in a very poor state. 

Thankfully, having found a Psychologist that worked for me, and being privilged enough to be able to afford to see him somewhat regularly, I was prepared for the first time in my life to really try and deal with the anxiety head-on. Needless to say, with those two challenges lying ahead, and the major turn in the world that was about to come in March, there are some ups and downs to come on the road to the finish line in September.

I realize that is a lot of personal information to unload in a blog post that is ostensibly about running. But I feel it is essential to tell the true story of my journey from 0 to 100k, and as the story continues to unfold I hope to weave these threads together in a way that can help show that being open about our struggles can be just as powerful and inspiring as running 100k.

Thanks to anyone who is taking the time to read along, and until next time, take care.