The IAU 50K World Championships were/was/is a slippery son of a bitch, slithering from its run in '19 in Brasov, Romania, choked by Covid (as all), meandering time & place, briefly flirting with Taiwan, Jordan, South Africa, then, deposited in India in '23, 4 years later. In the spring/summer, with a confidence that can only be a mark of delusion or an enamory of the concept of Team, I confidently (blindly) committed. The team was new by way of IAU Int'l Champ racing, but bountiful in accolades. On paper it looked like we could do something great and I wanted to be a part of that possibility.
Looming a December deadline - my
big, pointed, throbbing goal for the past several years was to run an Olympic
Trials Qualifier in the Marathon (sub 2:37), and subsequently, race at the ‘24
Olympic Marathon Trials. I’d been close. The past several
marathons where I'd tried to run the time hadn't gone well: a strange few years
of weird misfortune. There was Covid of course. There was unknowingly racing
Houston with Covid which was disastrous & whether because of doing so, or
simply for having it, I experienced a few years of long-haul symptoms.
The last time I tried to run the
time had been at Grandma's Marathon in June '23. I'd thrown everything at it.
Went sober for months, napped, incorporated sauna, engaged in a breathing
protocol to try to get my breathing back to normal, took a few-month mental
training course, took vits & supplements consistently, got routine
bloodwork. And, instead of feeling streamlined, healthful, capable, I felt
lethargic, exhausted, and incapable of adapting or absorbing. It felt like
overtraining (though it didn't appear I was), or extremely low iron (though the bloodwork didn't support it), or sickness (wasn't testing positive for the knowns). I navigated this fatigue
by cutting everything back & adding a lot of rest. I went to Grandma's and
quite quickly (at least quicker than you'd prefer it to in a Marathon) fell
into a no-power plod. I hate the no-power-plod. It feels unnamable, unnecessary,
like synapses are sleeping; that the force that should generate from the weight
of your body making contact with the ground ends in a thud above your ankles.
And you circle through Am I fed? Am I hydrated? Where am I in the
hormonal cycle? Am I overtrained? Am I sick? Am I mentally weak? I'm so
stubborn, and the course is point-to-point that finishing was a non-issue; I
ran another 2:40, of which is the platform I fall to despite a good build or a
bad. And then I went on to have the worst migraine of my entire life, took a
look at Bob Dylan's house, sucked down a malt shake and vom'd the malt shake at
the college dorms. Thinking back, it’s just miserable the amount of work,
energy, time, sacrifice, lifestyle evolution & financial loss you put in, just
to end up plodding & vomming. Though I know it’s also a function of why I
keep trying. Though I understand that what you put in isn’t guaranteed a preferred
end.
I spent the summer trying to find answers. Heavily debated a fall marathon so it wouldn't be down to so
close a wire, but ultimately chose to do the IAU 50K World Championships in
India in November, ahead of CIM in December. Now, with hindsight (though circumstantial),
this was an error.
In June/July I saw a doctor for my fatigue (of
which I’d endured for close to 6 months). They did an ekg and found I had inverted T waves. I questioned if it was covid related, and the dr.
gave a resolute No. I was skeptical of his assuredness. They were freaked out
enough to encourage me to stop running until we had more info, but it was my impression
that they might not be exactly aware of a “younger” person’s athletically
cultivated heart; I didn’t listen. We also decided to move from the
antidepressant, Lexapro (which I'd been on for 9 years), to Wellbutrin. From there I'd begin a few-months-long
investigation into my heart, which would end with a "we don't know what it
is." From my own research, I'd think covid-related/long haul, and/or a
symptom of overtraining, although when I'd taken the first ekg, it was during a
break from running, and through several more over the summer, it seemed to be
improving (by way of size of inversion), as my training ramped up. *I
understand overtraining is nuanced. Also, we never had a baseline previous to
the fatigue.* With no definitive reason to stop running, I
moved forward. I suffered pretty severely in the change to Wellbutrin and ended
up weaning myself off all meds in the fall, a month before World Champs. I was curious
as to how it might feel to train, travel and race without an SSRI/NDRI; what it
would feel like to exist raw, after having not for 9 years.
When I committed to the 50k World Champs, India was 4 months away and I felt empowered by distance in time and with the assumption that I'd prepare and be prepared.
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