A Week To Go!

Well ladies and gentlemen, in a week, on April 12th to be exact, I will be out in the woods, along a bank of the Bull Run River in Manasses, VA ready to cross the start line of my first ultra marathon; the Bull Run Run 50 Miler. It's been a while since I made up my mind to cross over to the super exciting side of running and ever since then I have been getting more and more eager for the day to come (at this point I can't honestly tell the difference between sheer fear and excitement...so...I'll say woo hoo! bring it on!).

Physically I'm pretty sure I'm ready to go. I've run 5 marathons in 6 months and have felt stronger at each one, telling me my legs are really beginning to adapt to this concept of running for extended periods of time. My cardio is up, I can go forever, especially when it's at a nice easy clip and I stay steady. Mentally, I'm almost at 100%. I will say that the reactions I get from a lot of my friends hasn't really helped: a lot of them just say that I'm crazy and should rethink what I'm getting myself into. Well, as some of you will know, my response to that is to laugh and say thanks for their concern and worry, but I'm ready, and I highly doubt anything too bad will happen to me, and if it does, I am prepared to take responsibility for it/them. BUT, in my head I'm really saying "shut up! A great way to support a friend is to acknowledge that he is relatively smart and has prepared well enough for the thing he is attempting and if you want to say anything in response try "good luck", "man, that's great", or, "go get 'em tiger" or something like that".

Ahem...well, now that I got that off my chest I can move on to talking a little more seriously about what this next week will entail for me. I will be taking it very low key, sleeping a lot, sitting around a lot, eating a decent amount. My nutrition plan will be to limit my carbohydrate intake through Tuesday and then begin my carbo loading through race day on Saturday. I will be studying the course a bit, mostly to figure out where the aid stations are and where I can time and place some of my crew (if I actually can get a crew together). You see, there will be an aid station every 5ish miles, but crew is only allowed to be at a select few of them. While I can refill my water bottles and get some light food and such at the aid stations, the crew will be carrying extra socks, shirts, towels, shoes and so on that I am hoping I'll not need, but assuming I will. So, I need to figure out a general time when I'll be hitting each aid station so that I can be sure a crew member will be there to help me out. The other big thing to mention here is the moral support they supply. I imagine around mile 30 I'll be needing a few major pick-me-ups, and that will really be the main job of the crew; as well as jog with me here and there for the last 20 miles or so.

All this is where I feel a bit under prepared. I really don't know what to expect out there. I have read tons on ultra running, I have read up on the course and taken everything I can from it. I have continuously fought with my conflicted mentalities of just getting out there and running the damn thing, and, being super prepared and comfortable with every tree and rock along the way. As I think about it, I'm pretty sure I am more than prepared and I really have nothing to worry about. But, when you're sitting around with a week to go before embarking on an event greater than anything you've ever imagined yourself doing...well...you tend to over think a thing or two.

But I am ready. I'm ready for the pain. I'm ready for the bumps and bruises and falls and cuts. I'm ready for the water fills and the food. I'm...not quite ready for the bathroom situation while running through the woods for ten hours... I'm ready to push myself farther than I've ever gone before. I'm ready for the unknown, the excitement and surprise of it all. I'm ready to humbly challenge myself to go beyond, to keep going, to not stop when everything I've learned is to collapse and give in. I'm ready to completely change my life in one day.

This is SO exciting!

Josh Courage

P.S. Pictures will be added on Monday when I return to my computer (I am up at my mom's place for the weekend)

Our Mayor is a Freakin Animal!

Well, as a lot of you know I am coming off my 5th marathon in 6 months and am just under two weeks away from my 50 miler on April 12th. This last marathon was great in all aspects; the weather turned out to be pretty much perfect, the course was challenging but fun, constantly changing and lined with support, it marked the start to a great weekend of sports (go Nationals!) and, I ran the whole thing (well, almost the whole thing) with our great Mayor, Adrien Fenty.

I've been training with him and his training group off and on since before my first marathon last October and have really enjoyed the group and been inspired by everyone in it. So it was exciting to be headed down with them to another race, especially since it is technically the only marathon in DC. Alot of the group was running the half, even Fenty was considering it seeing how he was feeling under the weather; but there were a few of us there planning on getting the whole thing in. I needed to because it would be my last long run before the real long one. Either way, it was great to ride down there with everyone and to share in the freezing cold excitement of the start of a race.

We started from the front line and began running towards the capitol. I ran next to the Mayor as he was pushing a perfect pace for me and I wanted to be able to feed off someone for a while, even if he did break off at 13.1, I would make decent time having been by him that long. We passed the half way point and kept on trucking, never slowing down at all. I stopped looking at my watch around mile 3 and just enjoyed the fact that my body didn't hurt as bad as my last four (and the fact that after the half way point, it was me all alone, running with the Mayor (another one of the group was with us through the half)). At about mile 20 Fenty started to pull away, or, a better way to look at it is, I started slowing down. I felt my legs starting to get heavy and we were entereing a long, straight and very windy portion of the course. This kept up for about 3 miles until I realized something: I wasn't really as fatigued as I thought. My legs didn't hurt, they just felt tired, I wasn't out of breath, nothing like my other runs. Fenty was out of reach at this point, on a great pace I assumed, so, I would just pick it up and go as hard as I could if I felt fine enough to do so... so that's what I did.

The last 3 miles I ran in under 8:45 per mile and I crossed the finish line with a time of 3:50:22, a PR (personal record) by around 7 minutes. The best part, I felt totally fine. My legs were tored of course, but I could walk fine, I could bend over, I could move around; it was great. And then, to add to the craziness of the day, I got to our meet up point and found out that Fenty had finished in just over 3 hours and 40 minutes, a PR by about 16 minutes (a record he held from the age of 16 he told me). We both had a pretty good run is what I'm getting at here people. Granted, his was a bit better than mine, but, I am so happy with my finishing time and hope to work on improving that over the years; maybe even besting him at some point.

(The Mayor has the Fleet Feet shirt on, I am to his left)

But this isn't why I call him an animal. If you haven't read my article on him by the way, please go to my website www.joshcouragetraining.com and check it out in the articles section. I call him an animal because today I went out with the group, two days after 26.2 and figured we'd go on a nice easy 4 miler or something. Well, with Fenty at the front, we blazed through 55 minutes of street and trail probably covering a bit over 6 miles. I was not planning on running today at all, and then, when he asked me to come out, I figured "come on, he's got to be about as sore as me, it'll be a nice jog"; but noooo... good ol' work horse himself, a guy who has got to be 20 times busier than me, sleeps 2 or more hours less than me, has a wife a two kids more than me (I have neither for those who are wondering) and beats my best marathon time has the toughness to push on through 6 more tough miles...and you know he'll hot the pool and the bike tomorrow.

What a great leader.

I am proud to know him and to be able to run next to him.

Thank you Mayor Fenty!

Josh Courage

Failure

It seems I am stuck on some somewhat grim topics these days. But through it all, I am certain that I am coming out with very optimistic opinions on all of them. It seems this is what I like to do; take challenges and find ways to get the positive out of all of them, no matter what happens, always come out with one or more good lessons learned.

So I've been stuck on the idea of failure; what it means, what it feels like, how to react to it, so on. I have talked to many people about it, pessimists, optimists, apathetic folk (there are a lot of self proclaimed apathetic people around by the way). Talked to my mom, my dad, clients, friends and all along, I really sat down and thought about how I felt about it.

What I have found is that everybody seems to have a different definition, everyone feels one way or another about it especially when it's surrounded by specific events. People have positive views on it when it's about things they love, they leave with great lessons learned and happy for the experience. But when they are experiencing something they do not like, failure becomes an excuse, something that's dirty and bad. I came away from all these chats and self-analysis with a very new perspective on what it means to truly fail, and I think I like what I've found.

"True failure is never having tried at all"

What I think this means is that failure (the kind it seems we all think about...you know, the negative kind) can only really happen if you just don't try something you want to try. As I'll explain here, just because you do not succeed does not make YOU a failure (in the negative view of it). I really only think that being a failure (being or doing something that could be looked at in a negative light by most people) is when you want something, but don't do anything about it. Or, if you did not succeed and then never try again because of that lack of success. I really think that a lot of people construe what failure really means; and because of this, they make life very hard on themselves.

The definition of failure is simply: to not succeed. If it was always simply looked at like this, I think there would be way more happy people in the world. Failure is not a negative thing, it does not mean you suck at life, or even at the thing you are trying, it simply means you put forth a goal, and you did not achieve that goal at that time, or in that effort, that is it.

Now I don't want to take away from the disappointment of failure. It does hurt to not achieve ones goals, and a lack of success should never be taken lightly. But that old saying "it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game" really has some meaning to it. What I mean here is that if you set forth to achieve a goal and train for it, and work towards it, and never compromise your pursuit in any way and still somehow don't get there, that is not true failure, that is reaching your limit. From there you know that you gave it your all and the only thing you can do now is work harder to achieve it next time. You learn from your experience and you push forward. During this time of pushing to your goals you'll realize that every day is filled with smaller versions of what you are attempting. Every day, every moment you try something (a miniature goal) and you either succeed and move on, or "fail" and try again a new way; or, after you re-evaluated your first attempt. The next day is filled with much of the same, as is the next, and the next, until you final goal is either reached, or just out of reach. If you really looked at failure in such a negative light all the time, according to this process, you'd probably be the most depressed human being in the world, even if you reached your goal. I say this because all along, you just keep failing over and over again. But the funny thing is, most people don't see those failures as failures. Trial and error isn't failure, it's trial and error. Well, not achieving a bigger goal can really be seen as just trial and error on a grander scale.

Be pissed, be frustrated, be bothered that you did not succeed. But then take that and use it as motivation to learn from your mistakes and go after it again. Too many times have I seen on the ball field, or in the gym, or (and this is the scary one) in life, that people do not succeed and proptly call themselves failures and walk away with their head hanging. Well if you walk away and never come back then yes, the harsh truth is, you are a failure! But if you sit back, look at why you did not succeed, and come back in a new and stronger way, you never really truly failed, you just hit a speed bump, found a door that was a little difficult to open, or tried to run before you could walk.

If you take this attitude, you will never truly fail in life. I can say this because if you are constantly pursuing your goals, without giving up, you will come to two conclusions no matter what:

You will succeed.

You will learn that you actually can not do it in a healthy manner.

The latter is not failure by the way. If I have a goal to squat 1000lbs, but every time I keep pushing I just keep injuring my back and knees. Well, perhaps, if I were smart and very concerned for the well-being of my back and knees, I would stop. I would accept that my body can't handle it, I reached my bodies limit (a wonderful thing to find by the way) and hold off from pushing further. And if I want to return to this goal another time, well, so be it, but for know, I am at a limit. That is not true failure.

But, if you make a goal and never really put all (and I mean all) your effort into achieving that goal; then walk away. You failed. Or, if you put it all and just went about it the wrong way, and in the end you don't succeed. Then, you re-evaluate the process and still want the goal but still just walk away. I think that is failure too. This last one is a little iffy but let me tell you a story...

A guy wants to pack on about 15lbs of muscle and become a better athlete. Without knowing a thing about lifting he hits the gym six days a week and spends a good two hours in there working and working and working. After a couple months of great results he starts to realize his strength, energy and level of play start to deteriorate. So what does he do?

Well, if he says "shoot, I guess lifting just doesn't work, what a waste of time, I can't do this" and walks away; well, I think that's a failure. But if he says "man, maybe I went about this all wrong", then he reads up on lifting and nutrition, and his sport, talks to some professionals and begins again from a better angle; well, that is a process destined for success.

The point here is folks, life is full of little failures; but if you sit back, look at what happened, and keep on going failure is not a negative thing at all. In fact failure can be one of the greatest lessons we can learn, and should be welcomed as one of our best teachers. I have not succeeded many, many times in my life; but when I look back over the years I can say with much confidence that I am not a failure. I have always pushed for more, for better, always wanted to find that limit with the hopes that I would never reach it and could keep on pushing. My experiences have been and will continue to be recorded in this blog.

Share with me some of yours...

Never Stop, GET FIT

Josh Courage