“Bonking”

At the beginning, while I was just considering running this thing, months ago I read an article online about what type of people are attracted to running ultra marathons. It said people in their 40’s who are ex-athletes who’s athletic careers never went as far as they wanted it to seem to gravitate towards these things. And the men were usually bigger than average for runners (Like over 6 feet tall and weighing more than 200lbs). When I read this I thought… “yup, that’s me.” Weird. I wrestled back at Syracuse University as a walk-on and had all of these dreams of making it to the NCAA tournament but that never happened. I ended up “walking off” the team in my sophomore year. This always bothered me. Even up until very recently and that was over 20 years ago.

This article was the first time I’d ever heard the term “bonk”. The writer said if you bonk at mile 20 you’re screwed but if you bonk at mile 30 you can finish. I never got an actual definition of what “bonking” is but I’ve lived it many times so I’m pretty familiar with what happens.

Basically you lose all fluidity. Your body’s exhausted and your mind becomes unwilling to push hard. So you start walking. But that allows all the lactic acid to freely build up in your legs which tightens them up making everything just that much slower. The best strategy to avoid this is to run through it which means digging in and running through pain. That’s what I’ve heard. But I know what keeps me from running through it. FEAR. In my life I’ve run 26 miles or more only a handful of times. The experience is still relatively new to me. So, for example when I dehydrated last May, I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know why I became a human “coffee maker” in the port-a-potty. And that’s freakin’ scary! You start thinking something’s wrong internally… Is it my organs?? What’s going on with me?!?! Then you start saying, “Well running a race isn’t worth hurting yourself or going to the hospital,” which is completely sensible. So you start to take it easy and then you “BONK.”

From the mile 38 aid station to mile 40 some more runners caught up to me. “Lauren” (who’s name I’m still not sure of) from the “40 club” was now on pace with me. She was very nice. She wore a bandana on her head one of those spandex-type running tank tops made for women. She was running and walking, running and walking. I went back to my slow jog. We hit the top of the hill and there was another aid station. I think this was a makeshift station… I don’t know. It came up quick between mile 38 and mile 40. It seemed too close to the last one. I wasn’t complaining… more fluids.

Lauren’s support was either her husband or boyfriend. He was driving a station wagon. I told her I thought I was a little dehydrated. We started talking about the color of pee when you get dehydrated… funny what you can talk about to a complete stranger when you’re running 50 miles together… She offered me some Gatorade from her car next time he pulled up and I said no thanks because I was carrying enough water on my back. I avoided all of the non-aid station stops. I felt like I might get too comfortable with the stopping. I didn’t want to turn the last 10 miles into a never ending stop/start, walk /jog, stop/start.

I was definitely slowing down during the 30 to 40 mile stretch but for this run you could say I “bonked” somewhere around mile 40… The last 10 miles had markers which was helpful and I remember very clearly stepping over the mile 40 mark. It was the first time I’d ever run 40 miles!!! That right there was an achievement! I was jogging and I started walking so that I could get my phone out to call Liz. I dialed and Steve picked up.

“Hey” he said. I was surprised to hear his voice. He was finished! Man… He killed it! I didn’t get into any kind of discussion with him. I just told him that I was on mile 40 and slowing down and it could take me a couple more hours. That was about the extent of the conversation. My mind was getting tired… I knew that by how little I wanted to talk. I wasn’t irritated with Steve but I knew I could very easily get irritable. Its what happens when you’re mind gets tired. You can’t focus so any little thing can set you off. At least that’s what happens to me. I remember back in 2006 when Liz and I trained for the Philly marathon together I’d have these Jeckyl and Hyde moments. On one 18 mile run I was feeling really bad and she started talking about home finances to get my mind off it. As she spoke I thought, “Finances?!?! You want to talk about finances!?!?” Part of my mind was convinced she was intentionally messing with me… Like “I’m in all this pain right now and this is when we’re going to work out our future financial plan?”… I got really angry. I say “part of my mind” because there was a rational side that knew how ridiculous I was being… The impulse is very close to wanting to act out like a 3 year old having a tantrum. I didn’t snap at her or anything then. I know better than that… I just stopped running and started walking. I “bonked”.

For the final 10 miles the hills became less severe though Lauren warned that they weren’t as flat as everyone kept saying because she had a chance to do a test run on the final 15 miles earlier in the year. It was true. There would be long stretches of incline and declines ahead.

Lauren kept catching up to me and then running behind bushes to pee. I’d move on and then she’d catch me again. After a while I jumped behind some bushes to go. Nothing happened. When I came out Lauren and another man were jogging along together. Later he stopped by a mailbox to pee. It looked as if he was having the same difficulty I was… I think this was dehydration taking the form of some crazy, random running/walking/peeing dance with us. When you get dehydrated, it feels like you have to go but nothing (or very little) comes out. It’s unpleasant. None of us were really talking at this point and none of us cared about the other stopping to pee in broad daylight. Lauren was really stopping a lot though. It seemed like every time there was a bush she’d run behind it. I felt bad for her. I finally asked if she was ok and that said that it had to be annoying for her. If it was I don’t think my inquiring helped any. She said, “I’m ok.” And kept going. I may have annoyed her. I probably would have been annoyed by that. I just kept quiet from then on. We were all hurting. That was obvious.

A funny thing happens when you approach the end of a long run and you’re in the beginning stages of exhaustion. The last few miles can become torture. For me its always been the final 2 miles whenever I’ve fallen apart. Its happened to me on 18 mile runs and its happened to me on 6 mile runs. It doesn’t matter how far. Its always the last 2 miles. That tells me that even though it hurts, the mind starts making things worse and actually working against you. My theory on this is that this is some kind of survival reflex that your mind instigates in your body to get you to stop. I think that even though there is pain and you feel it, your mind actually exaggerates the pain. That’s why the fast runners can “run through the pain” as they say. There’s actually nothing wrong. You’re definitely tired and aching a bit. There’s soreness if you stop but nothing is really WRONG. Then the brain hits this point where it says, “Ok pal, enough is enough.” And it starts pouring all the pain and angst on. If you can discipline your mind enough you can actually beat the pain and feel better. I’ve done this. Steve actually helped me learn this on one of our training runs…
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…It was a back-to-back-long-run weekend in the middle of the summer. I was supposed to run 22 miles on Saturday and then another 17 on Sunday. I fell apart on the Saturday run and was due to run the 17 miler with Steve the next day. I told him I was concerned that it was going to be a horrible run and that we should really take it slow. According to the training schedule we were supposed to pick up the pace on the final hour of running. This really had me worried. Especially because I’d had such a poor run the day before. I ended up walking the final 2 miles on that one.

When Steve and I set out the next day on the 17 mile run we broke it up into 3 hours We took the first 2 hours very slowly. This was by my request. It was raining buckets upon buckets of water when we started. Definitely the worst rainstorm I ever ran in. We hit the last hour of running somewhere around mile 11.

Steve worked out hard. I don’t think he ever ran as slow as he did while running with me. He told me once about the “VO2 max” (I think that’s what its called) approach to his work outs. From what I gather this is a mode of training that entails constant running to the point that you are out of breath and getting your body accustomed to maintaining that level. It gets you faster and stronger. I want to look into this further as it seemed to be really effective for Steve. My training approach was more traditional. It involved doing lots of long “taking it easy” kinds of runs. Everything I’ve ever heard or read about marathon training says that increasing speed and distance at the same time during your training is a recipe for injury. Steve is a prime example. Last year was the first he’d ever trained for a marathon and when he researched all of the training programs he skipped any beginner schedules and went straight to the intermediate ones. Once he started he said that he would push himself to run harder through the intermediate schedules. He basically ignored all the warnings and as a result he injured himself. He got a stress fracture on his leg and ended up on crutches. That’s right, he cracked a bone just by running! I never knew that was even possible. That’s why I dubbed him Steve “the Maniac” Millard. He’s an ex-marine and he’s one of the quietest guys I ever met but I learned that when I ran with him he wouldn’t stop talking. We’d go out on 30 mile runs and he’d tell me all about his job or the Marine Corps and we’d talk about life and Liz and Laura and our kids. We’d go on and on talking for 3 and 4 hour stretches. Then we’d stop running and he was back to being quiet. Steve’s a good man.

I just kept up with him. As it turned out I ran a sub 9 minute mile on mile 16. It was mile 38 on the weekend. Steve said, “that was an 8 minute 45 second mile!” I couldn’t believe it. “See? You can do it!” he said.

I think a lot of “bonking” is mental. BUT I’ll add that its not ALL mental. The pain is REAL as well. And when you hit the saturation point of lactic acid in your legs it feels like there’s drying cement slowly oozing through your veins turning your legs into two stiff pillars. Eventually you find yourself just hobbling along. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

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Mile 40 also marked the end of the beautifully spectacular lake and mountain scenery. We were now hitting long stretches of road through farm land which has its own kind of appeal. It reminded me of going for runs down in Middletown, Delaware when I’d spend weekends at my cousin’s house back in high school. Just road, fields and more road. Lauren and I kept on. We lost the guy who was in our peeing dance. I don’t remember if he went ahead or fell behind… and Sarah caught up to us. This was the first I was running side by side with her since mile 6 or so. The “40 club” was reunited! We chatted a bit. But we were all tired. The conversation wasn’t strained but it wasn’t bubbly either. My thoughts were on finishing this run. I’m sure their’s were as well. Approaching was the mile 42.5 aid station.

It didn’t matter that I had “bonked” or that I was hobbling along… My spirits were high. Later, after the race I saw photos of me. People commented that I looked like I was happy and that I didn’t look tired at all. It immediately makes me think of the smile patrolman. I was happy. I was in pain but I was happy… smiling in the face of adversity… there’s no doubt in my mind that it makes the unbearable more bearable.

…One more theoretical note before I go into the final seven miles... I find it peculiar in a way that we always separate the physical and mental aspects of our existence. For instance a smile that makes pain more bearable or the fear of pain actually creating the sensation of pain… I talk about these things as if they are discoveries. But they aren’t. Why do you hug a child who skins their knee? Does a hug have any medical value to a skinned knee?.. I doubt it but being a dad, I know if my kid hurts themselves I’ll pick them up and hug them. Its an instinctual reaction. So what is the value to this? Emotions are physical. A hug helps the baby find their own comfort. We know this. If a parent left their hurt 3 year old to cry and cry and cry we might question the person’s ability to parent. I may think, “Does this person have any love inside them?” And we’d feel sorry for the child. Also, if you really put yourself into an empathetic state of mind you may even find yourself crying with the child. How cruel a world we live in that allows children to suffer. We are all suffering children. We all lose parents and friends. We all have broken hearts… if we pay attention we all know this.

While this seems a bit like a tangent I’m getting at the basic principle on which I found the motivation and drive to train for this run and to accomplish it. Put simply, it was all about taking action which is, by definition, physical. Herein lies the tie-in to Congo. But more on that later…