Teachable moments

My college held its annual Fall Academic Conference this past week. The gathering brings together faculty and members of the administrative and professional staff who work directly with academic matters. For two years in the past, budget cuts forced the cancellation of a face-to-face conference and the event took place via video-conferencing devices. Attendance fell predictably. This year, the conference resumed its face-to-face format. I found myself having a surprisingly good time at the conference and learning a great deal.

What I want to share has nothing to do with the conference itself, beyond the fact that the face-to-face format made the conversation that I’m about to describe possible. Last summer, I met a colleague who is based in central New York who was training for a triathlon at about the same time that I was. I saw her at the conference last night, and we immediately rushed into a conversation about our events and how they went.

“I finished in last place,” I said laughing. “I had a flat on the bike course, and was afraid I’d have to scratch. I was so disappointed because I really just wanted to finish. Fortunately one of the support people on the course had a tube and helped me out.”

“I was good for most of the run,” she responded. “But around mile four or five I started to drag.”

“Yeah, I got dehydrated on the run,” I said. “But I learned from that.”

“I learned from the swim, too,” she said. “That’s the best approach. You look at your mistakes in the past race, and you figure out how to avoid them in the future.”

“I’m already planning my next triathlon,” I said.

“Me, too!”

It struck me later that this conversation took place between two professors, and its focus on mistakes and what we learned was perhaps unique to those who teach for a living. It was full of what we might describe as “teachable moments,” mishaps, the averting of possible crises, critical moments that occur in classrooms that teachers who are on their toes turn into lifelong learning moments for their students and themselves. As years pass, students tend to forget most — some studies say 80 percent — of the actual material covered in a class. What they remember are the “teachable moments”.

I’ve been wanting to add a new post about my post-triathlon/marathon training. I have hesitated to do so, however, because I’ve felt that there isn’t much new to say. My running is going well, and I feel that I’ve become much more consistent and deliberate in my training over the past month since I completed my marathon than I was during the build-up to the events themselves. After meeting and exchanging news with my colleague, I wonder if the intentionality of the training has been strengthened by the “teaching moments.”

So what were those moments, and what did I learn?

Starting with the swim for the triathlon and ending with my final strides across the finish line for the marathon, several learning experiences occurred:

First, I realized with the swim portion of the triathlon that a wetsuit would be a worthwhile investment. I am a fairly strong swimmer, but uncertain weather and a slow warm up to summer limited the access I had to practice in open water. I didn’t think before the triathlon that a wetsuit would be useful for anything other than keeping a body warm. What I realized during the swim was that wetsuits improved swimmers’ buoyancy and made them more stable in the water. Even if the water wasn’t cold, the wetsuit allowed them to swim faster and stronger without using up their energy. And, on the cold water front, a wetsuit would make it possible to swim in lakes around my area much sooner than early July because they do protect the body.

Second, I realized that the “race belt” that I had seen described on several triathlon forums could shave minutes off the time spent in transition zones. Most triathlons require participants to wear race numbers, but one obviously cannot wear a number during the swim because the paper label is usually safety-pinned to an item of clothing. I had pinned my number to a t-shirt in advance, thinking I would put the shirt on over my swimsuit. When I got out of the water, I felt that it was too hot to wear the shirt and ended up spending about two minutes fumbling with safety pins to unpin the number from the shirt and re-pin it onto my shorts. The race belt would have resolved the issue because it would have simply snapped around my waist, regardless of what I was wearing.

The third teachable moment from the triathlon was about hydration. I drank a little water and sucked down half a power gel between the swim and bicycle legs, and sipped a little more water and had the other half-gel on the ride. By the time I got to the run, I was depleted, though I didn’t realize it until mile 4 when I took a glass of water at an aid station that had become lukewarm in the heat and in which a bug of some sort had drowned. Now, I’m not super-picky and a glass of water with a bug in it doesn’t gross me out. But the water caused my stomach to turn, and after I crossed the finish line, I nearly fainted from nausea. A few slow swigs of apple juice helped settle my stomach and as the natural sugars started to restore energy to my body I recovered. But I realized that I couldn’t allow such a situation to occur with the marathon so I made sure to alternate between water and the power-ade offered at the aid stations, and to take power gels every four to six miles. I also checked the cups handed to me at each aid station, and quickly discovered that the practice of volunteers holding out cups to passing runners was potentially detrimental to slower participants, like me. The liquid often would get too warm in the sunshine and from the body heat of the volunteers’ hands, and yes, being out in the open would cause the cups occasionally to attract bugs. Again, I am not picky. But when all the energy of your body is being propelled into running, even the slightest variations in temperature might provoke an unpleasant feeling. In a hopefully polite manner, I waved away the cups being held by volunteers and reached for untouched ones on tables. It worked all around.

For the marathon itself, the main lesson that I learned has to do with training. While I was very happy with the outcome of the race, I knew that a lack of consistent running and of building up distances had really not given me as much stamina as I would have liked. I know I paced myself well throughout the race, but I also know that my minutes-per-mile pace slowed considerably after mile 18. I have seen that pattern repeat itself in some of the runs I’ve done since the marathon. My longest run, post-marathon, was tonight and it was 7 miles. I did a 5.5 mile run earlier this week and a 5.2 mile run last week. All of these runs were easy and gentle, and I gave myself permission to slow down, walk or do whatever my body felt it needed to do to make the runs a pleasant experience. At the same time, I ran with my iPhone’s MapMyRun GPS tracker on so that I could keep track of my minutes-per-mile pace. What I have discovered is that my first two miles tend to be quite slow as my body warms up, the next few miles tend to be quite a bit faster, and that I once again seem to run the final mile at a slower pace. I hope to build what are called tempo runs into my workouts later this winter and in early spring in hopes of increasing both my speed levels and my endurance. But for now I appreciate the awareness.
Overall, I feel like my colleague does. We are both looking forward to our next events. I hope to do the same triathlon and same marathon next year with a goal of bettering my time with each, as well as perhaps a 5K, 10K and a half-marathon so I have more practice with running at what are called “race paces.”

Post-marathon

I’m into Week 2 of marathon recovery, and have been trying to think of what I might be able to say about this phase of marathon training that might be interesting and meaningful.

It has struck me that there’s little to say. I finished the race, and felt exuberant. I slept late the next morning, and when I woke up, I still felt exuberant so I immediately began writing a recovery plan to prepare me for a repeat performance next week: Fronhofer Tool Triathlon at the Olympic Distance only with better training; Adirondack Marathon seven weeks later with a goal of finishing in 5:15 or better.

I wrote a plan that included a week of complete rest (as in uncharacteristic couch potato activity), and then a series of steps over the next several weeks that would get me slowly but steadily back on my feet, on my bicycle, and in the swimming pool by the end of the year. My hope is to start 2014 with a base that I am able to build off the base of good fitness that I built in the past year. My hope also is that the four to six pounds that I would still like to lose slide off in the next few months.

And, since then, well, I’ve been carrying out the plan.

A few things I’ve learned:

1. Recovery works best if you take it slow and are patient with yourself. The memory of jumping back into running shoes too soon after marathons #3 and #4 and the resulting stress fracture still haunt me, and when my shins throb to remind me that I indeed did just complete a big endurance event, I take the throb as a gentle hint to go easy.

2. It’s better to move a little than not move at all. The best thing that I think I did for my body was to keep standing and walking for about a half-hour after crossing the finish line, and to spend the day after the marathon doing some gentle housework and gardening. I washed dishes, picked tomatoes and peppers, and started to organize our very messy sitting room. Those activities did tire me enough to help me appreciate the extra sleep that I allowed myself and seemed to prevent the lactic acid from building up in my muscles. By the middle of last week, I didn’t feel sore at all, and was once again able to bend forward in the yoga pose of uttanasana and put the palms of my hands under the soles of my feet. I didn’t push myself, but I didn’t particularly baby myself either. For instance, I have been climbing the stairs to my office on the third floor of my building for the past year. I didn’t see any reason to change that good habit and take the elevator just because I had run a marathon.

3. Sleep a lot. I was amazed at how much my body craved rest last week. I generally try to sleep eight hours a night but noticed over the past week that I often was stretching that eight hours to nine or even ten hours when I was able to. I felt grateful that I have the kind of job and lifestyle that allowed for this luxury.

I did my first “run” on Monday. It was a gentle one-mile jog in my neighborhood. I took it so slowly that I didn’t even bother to change out of the jeans and long-sleeved shirt I had been wearing. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the workout produced a very light sweat. I did a 1.15 mile walk this afternoon, and hope to do one-milers every day for the rest of this week. Next week, the plan is to build up to two-milers along with a few bicycle rides.

October opened with a new moon coming this week and some new challenges. On the positive side, I was thrilled that my sister, who had risen to the September “wall-sit” challenge, wanted to take on a new challenge for October. When I suggested that we each aim to walk or run at least a mile a day for the month, she was agreeable, and our contract was struck. On the not-so-positive side, October and November will create a challenge I haven’t experienced for more than three years, which is finding a way to exercise without the safety net of the Saratoga Springs YMCA. We had to suspend our membership in order to take care of some pressing financial matters. It was a hard choice, but hopefully the right one for helping me train myself in the art of a different kind of health: financial health. I hope to be able to rejoin the Y in December, and in the meantime am looking forward to getting out in the fall sunshine more often on my bicycle and in my hiking boots and/or running shoes.
More to follow as the month progresses.