I’ve found it’s
been pretty easy to blog about running when things were going good, or even to
blog about little setbacks while everything felt like it was moving forward. However, when I’ve sat down to write this
blog about my journey post Boston and what happened when things aren’t positive
it’s been a pretty tough thing for me to do.
I started blogging to tell my story and I finally convinced myself
recently that my story includes all the bad moments along with all the
good. All of it tells the journey of
Nick Klastava and it’s by no means close to being finished. And if I want to continue to blog and tell
about my experiences, I need to be able to write about the bad too. Because it’s in bad times that we can truly
find ourselves and find out what makes us tick.
This story begins post Boston Marathon when in early May I began up my
training hoping to continue to build on the fitness I had achieved. Except as I did everything was met with
resistance. My mental state was not
supporting my running, physically my body continued to break down and I was
suffering from massive amounts of fatigue.
A recipe for disaster that for many weeks I tried to push through before
shutting it down. I made many mistakes
and I hope in this article I can lay out them in a way to help others avoid, or
at least provide an interesting read for you.
The first and
probably biggest mistake I have made is overtraining the past year and pushing
too hard post Boston. This summer went
downhill way before I started feeling the ill effects. Sure when I started my build up post Boston
things just didn’t click and I felt a general sense of fatigue and in a vacuum
it’s easy to look at this tiny sample and assume it just meant I didn’t take
enough time off, but when you look at the big picture you can see mistakes I
made long before. My 2016, which I have
written countless blogs about went exceptionally well but to say I pushed my
body harder than ever before would be an understatement. I look back and see countless times when my
log screams take a rest Dummy yet I was out on Tuesday pushing through a
workout or running a Marathon in back to back weekend’s. I pushed so hard I never even made it to JFK
(my peak race) injury free. But I just kept
pushing and then when Boston ended and I wanted to get back at it this summer I
went right back into it. I can’t imagine
a race in my life that I pushed my body to the limit as much as I did Boston
this year. With the heat, sporadic training,
and really terrible pacing I made that race as hard as I could and when I
finished I was absolutely toast. Yet a
couple weeks later I am out doing workouts again, my first run back was 10
miles! In the moment, this stuff didn’t faze
me but looking back I see how dumb it was and wish I was smarter. Even as workouts continued to tank and I
received advice from fellow runners to not run races I signed up for and take a
break I stubbornly pushed through thinking I could find this magic out of nowhere
(Yeah, I never found it). There were
many times in 2016 and 2017 that my plan worked and I was doing the proper
training, but as I’ll get into more in the next paragraph it’s the times I felt
invincible that I think really cost me.
There are many
times as runners we feel inferior to our old running self, or fear like we will
never get back to the shape we once had.
We are knocked down, but we fight and scrap to get back and keep
grinding. Myself though I always find when I am trying to get back into shape and feel my
fitness is not where it is that I tend to err on the side of caution. However, last year and into this year as
races kept going my way I generally started to do foolish things, I started to
feel invincible. I mean I knew my
limits, I didn’t think I could beat everyone it wasn’t about winning, I started
to feel like I couldn’t miss (Kobe!). I
felt I could do a race and my fitness would be there and lead me to my goal and
I could turn around on short rest and do 2 workouts the following week and race
again. It was this cockiness with my own
fitness that lead to feeling like I was invincible (I of course am not
invincible far from it). It’s easy to
get carried away when results keep coming your way but eventually this behavior
will take its toll on you. There is of
course a huge difference between cockiness and confidence, we all need
confidence to reach our goals but you need to take a step back every once in a
while, and see how far you’ve come and acknowledge that. Take a rest day or break, enjoy what you are
accomplishing and realize it’s about the long game. I’ve had many friends point out to me how far
I have come when I spent a lot of this summer whining about how my running
wasn’t working. It took me some months
to finally let it sync in and realize just how special it was to accomplish
what I did, and how next time to not be so brash about it.
The third major
mistake I have made is literally ignoring my body and every sign it’s given
me. I have looked back at my logs and I
have basically been in pain some way or another since before JFK (around early
Nov 2016). As I’ve written about I got
hurt a few weeks before JFK but figured I could get it worked out, and suffered
through 26 painful miles (but the first 24 miles were solid!). I then took some time off, started up again
immediately to a new pain in my left hip area which I managed to overcome
through some physical therapy this winter and put together two good races in
March. Leading up to Boston my hamstring
pain returned but I wasn’t going to let that hold me back, which of course
acted up mid-race and held me back (The house always wins). And then post Boston when I returned to running
not only was my body fatigued beyond belief but I was and am still fighting piriformis
(just about one of the most painful feelings I have experienced, I literally
never want to sit or drive in a car).
And all this time while I list out these symptoms and injuries never
once did I take time completely off, or skip a race because of an injury. I kept grinding, maybe being “smart” and lowering
mileage but still training. And while I
was doing it, it seemed to make sense to me.
I thought I was being smart lowering mileage and taking care of my body
but when I write it out it sounds like ravings of a lunatic(#RunnerProbs). I was constantly in pain one way or another
but since I could squeeze in a couple good days or a good race I just kept
going. These are the signs that as a
runner you need to acknowledge and address.
Running through injury after injury is eventually going to get you and
it finally did this summer as piriformis has shut me down hard since early
June.
At some point this summer I reached a point where I started
whining and feeling sorry for myself. Feeling sorry for my running, feeling
like people owed me something, whining to people who had it much worse how my
problems mattered. It was unhealthy and bad behavior and took me months to get
out of. It really felt uncharacteristic
of me and how I have been, running to me has always been joyful and
special. To find myself whining because
a race went poorly or because I was fatigued and couldn’t complete a workout is
small in the list of why I run, and ended up costing me as I kept grinding
through it. But then I realized I wasn't going to let this
define me or ruin running for me. I do this for me, for my chance to be great
at something. Running has always been a
special part of my life. It's one of the things that helped me deal with my
ADHD as a teenager. It's how a socially awkward person like myself made friends
in high school, college and now as an adult and it's how I met the love of my
life and married her. Except for a brief period, post college, most of my entire
life running has been with me through the good and bad. I honestly know deep down my life would be
very different if not for running. It's not always about running a PR, running is
what helps me deal with life but this summer I let the negativity that
sometimes surrounds it get to me and my running suffered.
Injuries, over training, a fatigued body, a crushed running mental
state all these among others are the factors I attributed to my running summer.
I had been pushing my body basically redlining it for a really long time and I
think Boston was the breaking point. And when my body broke I let it take down
everything else with it. I'd be remiss if I didn't mentioned the many amazing
friends who reached out, offered advice and just encouragement. It's refreshing
to know you have people that care. It’s
what makes the running community and running friends such a special part of our
lives. While we are out there all on our
own racing ourselves, the friends you meet and make along the way become a part
of your life and we all root for each other’s successes. I am grateful for the many people I have met
along the way and for the people who kept reaching out to me throughout this
summer.
All those
mistakes aside this summer I finally broke from my usual “Feel sorry for myself
because things go wrong" mantra. The
people who know me in life can almost pinpoint the second when something goes
wrong with me because my mannerisms change and I get quiet. It’s something I have acknowledged and tried
very hard to fix, to not even let myself get to that point. So, when things went wrong with running and
other aspects of my life this summer, after a brief period of “old nick” I
broke the cycle and took care of myself.
While I basically ran my running into the ground, I managed to have a
pretty remarkable summer nonetheless. I
took a step back from ultra-competitive Nick and met some amazing new running friends
(and shared many great runs together), I spent so many amazing days with my
daughter, wife and family, participated in some really fun friend events, and
just stopped taking running so seriously.
When I could fit in a run I did, but with all this negativity that was surrounding
my running I needed to do something to help me deal with it. I needed to do this for me, and I believe
that it’s helped me generally feel excited about the idea of training
again.
As we get out
of the summer and enter the fall I have a new hope that I will eventually get
myself to running pain-free again. I’ll
be excited to get back on the trails that I love so much, get in more runs with
my running friends, and strike this balance again that I will need to continue
this sport for many years to come. I continue
to express in words and in my thoughts just how important running is to me from
so many different aspects of my life and how to make sure I can incorporate it
into my life with a better balance. Also
I’ll make sure my daughter is included and understands all the joy and why I
run in the years to come. I have since
finally signed up for a fall race, The California International Marathon in
December in Sacramento. I am much
excited for a fall challenge and hopefully I can get to the line mentally and
physically ready to run but if not, I damn well will enjoy every second of the
journey to the starting line and appreciate everything much more after the
summer I have experienced.
