Let's Talk About High-Mileage Mountain Running Weeks

[DaCuCat]

I slept nine hours last night for the first time in recent memory, and likely since I started my climb from 40 miles a week to 100 miles a week around two months ago. This sleep logging is actually a noteworthy "activity" and since Strava is my only social media, and I'm trying to be more social, I felt like it was worth sharing some sentiments. As such I decided to do a write-up on the experience of the marker leading up to, and my adjustments afterwards.

The aforementioned mileage increase was initiated after conversing with a valued high-mileage friend, slash mountain muse, regarding some issues they were experiencing in life. Issues that I perceived to be directly, and indirectly, a result of stress load in part due to a running routine. I have also  been waiting in tow to make a leap to normalizing more trail miles for years. I moved myself near trails and tailored a work schedule for trail running over the last seven years, but more so this last year. That seems crazy to actually commit to words and I suppose I ought to take a moment to acknowledge how dedicated I have been to this personal practice.

Running 4-6 miles in the dark all of last year before work, with at least some hills, every day kept me on the ready to flip the switch towards longer daily trail runs. Always be primed. While this may seem like a small daily commitment it should be noted that last year I was finishing a teaching credential, a Masters Degree, working 12 hours a day 5 days a week, volunteering in community functions, and single parenting. Running, showering and eating for an hour in the morning may seem like a minimum daily running commitment but it wasn't easy to make happen some mornings. 

If you think any friendships have been possible,think again. Both the prioritization of running in such a schedule, and the particular nature of the person you’re listening to, makes both connections and the time to build them a near impossibility. Having this kind of intensity as a personality trait can both make running possible amidst an impossibly busy life, while simultaneously making friendships difficult to initiate or sustain. It also makes matches for what I look for in a friend rather rare, but who cares when your best friend is self-exploration through an isolationist practice such as running in mountains by your seldom. I’m truly working towards a balance however there’s no question of where my priorities have historically lied, and it’s in the hills.. 

On the relatively swift 10 mi. a week increase to 100 from 40 there was a real natural feeling sweet spot of 50-70 miles a week where I was getting enough sleep and I didn't feel any invisible "systems" begin to suffer. None of this was planned or structured and the trajectory just kind of worked out to about 10 miles added every week. The actual approach was what do I want to do today combined with what can I do today considering my commitments. I was able to do speed workouts, long runs, and even take rest days to coincide with when I had life stuff to get done. I still haven't had a “rest day” in weeks though I'm not sure I need that now that I have taught myself to rest in motion through selecting the course and style of engagement. The sauna and deep knowledge of stretching helps too. I'm not going to call it Yoga though I've put in my time in that capacity and we can chat about that a bit later on.

It's important to note that I have literally selected job assignments for low stress and schedule choice so that my work/life-quality balance is in favor of life. This is no small commitment or undertaking to achieve in our adult lives, as you know, and it doesn't happen on its own. This is especially true as a single parent, with varying split custody schedules, in a place as costly to live in as Southern California. It took unwavering dedication for years to merely put myself in a scenario where nearly tripling my mileage upon decision would be possible. As we all know, the real hurdles in adult life aren't physical abilities but rather the logic equation of figuring out how to dedicate time to this practice of cultivation. Running is the easy part, making time for mountain running is the challenge. Creating a life that sustains the space for this practice, as opposed to squeezing it in, is the goal. I like to think I’ve already achieved my goal in that I’ve accomplished making space for the practice, regardless of the inevitably waxing and waning of my routines that oscillate between peak condition and physical recovery as well as inevitable healing.

This weekly mileage marking practice is also different from doing a single 100 miler and being done. All the systems remain under sustained work load which roots you in transformation as opposed to a quick shock and recovery. This is obviously in no way meant to diminish a 100 miler, a beast of an experience, which I haven't done and I am sure would have tons of its own experiential notes that I don't as of yet have the knowledge to comment on. I need to talk to my buddy Alex more about that one. One thing I can say is my intentions were not to accomplish something, like a race, and to put it aside so much as to find a state of sustainable and healthy personal practice. This was a touchstone in my exploratory journey of this thing I love so much. There were many positive changes on the increase though at times this transformation more resembles a transmogrification in its effects on more ethereal, but real anatomical, systems in the body. Think glands and system regulation. Runners, and even academics, have a hard time analyzing qualitative data in comparison to quantitative data. Ugh, I think I'm getting flashbacks to writing grad papers on peer reviewed studies three to four times a week for the last two years... I digress.

The first thing to go is sleep. While it's counterintuitive to not sleep more with increased activity the fact is that the stress and cortisol balance is in a heightened state of uptempo. This is why many professional female athletes often have disrupted menstrual cycles. Men likely suffer some types of hormonal imbalances but there aren't markers like menstrual cycles. Additionally Male balances of testosterone and estrogen do likely have a huge impact on the ability to sustain heavier loads over more time with lesser disruptions to reproductive health. Bullishness does seem to be a huge side effect of athletes and weight lifters but that's the epitome of anecdotal. Additionally some women and men even prefer this alpha type pump. I am not one of them. This was the first I'd heard of sleep-loss issues coinciding with increased energy output but I now confirm this to be 100% true in my experience.

Who cares about sleep though when you're hopped up on adrenaline and cortisol right? don't fool yourself, they're drugs and are close to what stimulants like cocaine and speed achieve in the body/mind. There are many ways of drugging ourselves with our own bodies and we should at least be honest enough to admit it if we are doing something not unlike inducing holotropic breathing hallucination. If you’ve ever hung out with trail-runners when they have a second or two to break together it’s like a bunch of hummingbirds chattering hopped up on mountain juice.

Going to bed at 9:30 and waking up between midnight and 3am became the norm. Trying to fall back asleep at this time of truly midway through the night was abandoned. Making coffee, stretching in bed, and feverishly waiting for 30 minutes till first light became my drug. So much so that I went to bed visualizing the trail-head at 10 minutes to first light. 4-5.5 hours of sleep became my new average in comparison to my previous 7-8 hours. I was chomping at the bit, and simultaneously perturbed, when the inevitable 2-3am rollover occurred and I knew my so-called night's rest was done.

Oddly enough my deep and REM sleep remained the same between 1-2 hours each which is a healthy amount. Deep and REM however are for mind recovery and sustained light sleep is where the body recovers. It's easy to forget that stress and cortisol are regulated through glands in the body and mind. People also forget that the brain is an organ and part of the body. The idea that mind and body are separate is complete nonsense though the brain, as an organ, has its own unique function.Sleep stages affect muscle and organ recovery in ways we aren't totally clear on yet. Inadequate light sleep decimates all systems ranging from testosterone/estrogen balance to adrenal glands and even enzyme production. Things like digestive function, emotional regulation, rest and recovery in all its meanings… the list goes on. Best possible judgment in daily life obviously is out the door as you're on a different cocktail of mind juice. If you’re a CEO badass boss type this might work fine but if you’re an administrative yes person this could present issues. If this is your jam then perhaps life changes are in order to sustain your practice. Most of us will likely want to be sensitive to the changes, and that’s coming from someone who has altered their life to match this practice.

Emotional intelligence is something that wildly passionate people such as mountain runners can sometimes lack and this is part of the beautiful wildness of this ilk people. It even sounds childish to say "I'm going to frolic in nature with butterflies every day" as a full grown adult, and yet here we are. It's not beneath me to admit that sometimes my emotions get the better of me the more time I spend alone and running in the wild. If people call it a runners high then indeed longer distance mountain running is more of mainlining mountains like some sort of nature junkie smack.

There are no metrics for showing a person they aren't handling life well as a result of chemical imbalance due to physical stressors other than an amalgam of interpersonal kinks that pop-up in more than one place. Slippery slopes of the life variety one might say. Work, school, relationships, errands and other daily demands can become harder to maintain. There were definitely a couple of times where I was a minute or two late to a new job because of the shower and fuel after a run that went a little longer than it ought to have. This was the epitome of bad judgment on my part. It's hard to listen to someone complain about something trivial when two hours ago you were wondering if that rumble in the bush was a mountain lion or you just hopped over a rattlesnake and didn't even think about it. It's not unreasonable to be short with people about silly life stuff, that others don't view that way, when you were just in life or death scenarios. Nevertheless this wildness isn't something most people relate to or tolerate when you say “I don't really care about your neurotic minutia right now”. This can break relationships and harm work dynamics and the more time you spend out there the less domesticated, and more feral, one becomes. It's situational, and if you have managed to create an entirely wild life I can only say I envy you and I'm working on it.

Muscle recovery also takes a huge dip though at this point in the game a runner is likely so efficient that they don't need too much recovery unless they're being playful with speed and surging a bit. Without a doubt I did this as well, and I knew it. I used saunas, stretching, and other tools as super-balancing levers to sustain this extra push. Even so, I’m likely gonna have to rest my Achilles after a few bad choices on trail converged. That’s just how it goes. Being mindful and making good choices is important to mitigate all the inevitable growing pains. They will still happen but it’s important to be aware of this inevitability so we can not beat ourselves up mentally when it occurs.

I don't advise playing "Strava Sonic the Hedgehog"(™) and diving for crowns at the tail end of a 15 mile 4,000 ft. gain trail run with reasonable GAP(grade adjusted pace). This advice is only compounded when you've been doing this for countless days before and for a potentially indefinite amount of days after. Some of us will anyway and I did too. Looking at you Magic-Pratt Bomber{wink}. We all know I only borrowed that crown and that any number of the former D1 XC runners in these hills will have it soon{double-wink}. After all, if you're doing this stuff you're probably a part bonkers for fun and part looney-tunes character anyway. Apparently I'm a roadrunner which is to say leaving tracks everywhere but rarely seen, a solitary creature, and confusingly named being that it's really only ever on trail. I also always feel like something is trying to get me when I’m in the mountains which is likely true but nevertheless plays into my looney tunes character's modus operandi.

Obviously sleep is a huge component in all things we don't see but some of us runners look at muscles and measurable metrics alone. I’ve noticed that runners gloss over, and sometimes scoff at, the need for real sleep. When emotional intelligence invariably gets compromised then the ability to monitor qualitatively measured systems goes out the door. This can be dangerous in these mountains in tangible ways when split second decisions must be made in an almost subconscious capacity. Decisions like hopping over a rattlesnake or stopping short and angering it ought not be tainted with imbalanced minds and can indeed be a life or death matter. At the very least an airlift and six figure matter.

I feel like a completely different human after just going down to 7-10 miles a day for a few days. Not feeling beholden to a number is also very liberating and revives my love for running even more. I wasn’t really aiming for 100 so much as knowingly wanting to increase and once at 70 saying maybe this week or next I’ll give it a go. It was never a long mission or a big deal. Even the idea of a week as a start and endpoint for measuring cycles is kind of insignificant as you're likely using some company's auto selection for when that seven day cycle starts and ends. Thinking of the last seven days as a rolling tally might be more helpful but then why not 10, or 30, or anything else?

Let's be honest, we're all going forward indefinitely regardless of how that looks for each of us. weekly cycles of measurement was never my thing unless it's some barely looked at quick glance of trying to sustain a base of say 30 miles a week. Even this was just to know where the floor is so I could click everything back on again with little time to get truly going. Think of winter work and family schedules when there’s less light and the dark mornings are cold. This is what I did over the last year until the Spring season because I knew I was going to up my mileage when trails were warm, sunny, and I had rattlesnake hurdles to jump. I feel completely rejuvenated from sleeping well and all of my systems re-balancing. I always thought these things to be true based on what I saw from others however I am serious regarding actually knowing what I am talking about and as such I needed to experience it.

If I had most of the day free, and wasn't intent at moving at reasonably swift paces, many of these effects would be lessened. This is especially true if I normalized this mileage and didn't have to worry about income or children. Even something as simple as being able to get a second run in would make 100 a more natural number but I'm now working 12:30-8:30 so I can have the first half of the day for long running mornings when I want. I am generally in bed within 20 minutes of getting home. 

As someone who worked, and worked out, overnights at one point in my life I am in a unique position to state that as a sustained practice it wreaks havoc on everything about you. My five day a week 10pm-6am NYC nightclub door-guy period in life was a real hoot(get the owl reference?). I also bar-tended and managed restaurants in New York for years and the last call for drinks alone is at 4am making leaving around 5 the norm. I would feverishly rush home to try and get to sleep before the sun came up every day so I had a semblance of sleeping at night though my sleep schedule was 7am-2pm. My social abstinence over the last dozen or so years is very much a product of a sort of overexposure allergy as a former Metropolitan area New Yorker who worked in real estate, night life, is one of nine children and was likely a closeted introvert the entire time. Are we still confused regarding my desires to be relatively isolated in the mountains?

Professional athletes, or someone being supported by a significant other or family, could certainly sustain this routine and normalize it while lessening the effects. Time is money though and this requires a day of work aside from the graduate school and kiddos to structure running around. It's a huge plate and I've had to eat it all in recent years as many of us have.

I know that I am physically, emotionally, and psychologically stronger because of the "gains" a big week puts you through. This includes the experience of over 100 miles, mostly on trail with every mile alone which is a unique experience by its own right. As a personal practice, one I cannot endorse, I also don't bring my phone and try not to use earbuds with a watch. I also don't like to stop, and generally don't drink any water so much as stay hydrated and salted before. If I do bring water it's an emergency waste flask with 500ml of "in-case" water that I seldom have more than a mouthful of if I need. I do this because I try to know the limits so I take preparing for them, and maintaining balance, seriously. Let’s be honest though, my “smaller weeks” of a natural feeling 70 miles are no less big weeks to almost anyone other than outliers among outliers.

I learned about hydration and limits in the NYC Bikram yoga studio, circa 2008-2010, which was completely different from the music playing-feel good yoga studios of Southern California. Think 118 degree 90 minute boot camp, on one leg, where your instructor screams pain is weakness leaving your body(or something like that) and encourages you not to take a break or drink water. They would also remind you, while on one leg and so drenched in sweat you're losing the grip that's keeping you standing up on that leg, that if you're not smiling you're doing it wrong. You hold that for 90 seconds and then do it on the other leg. If you think I'm being dramatic tell that to my big and adjacent toes on both feet that I lost feeling in for several months due to a forward bend that became so deep the sacral nerves crossed. They told me I should be proud. This was a point of pride for them that I was told few people achieved. I was horrified and had no idea if sensation would return which it didn't for several months.

This interest in lack of distraction allows me to deepen my running practice in ways like keeping me focused and serious about not being reckless. When your running form is efficient enough, and distractions are minimized, you can go to a sort of autopilot mode where you start to experience mind-chatter that's more like being stalked in the wide open mountains. This is a completely different type of experience that I would only be able to describe as "staring into the abyss long enough such that you experience the abyss staring back at you"(Nietzsche). When one makes friends with the abyss it can make a person difficult for non-vacuum based friendships to commence or endure. See... I shouldn't be talking like that in a social forum.

I did this experiment because I was inspired by a friend's actions and had been waiting years to flip it on for myself. I was also concerned about the impact on this friend since it seemed like they were struggling with things not running based and I wondered about the impacts of the routine. Everything I suspected could be attached to large round number weekly mileage goals was indeed something I myself began to experience and manifest. This was hard as I imagine it is to go deep cover as a detective in that you submit yourself, knowingly, to losing yourself a bit. That's not even necessarily a bad thing if you meditate on it beforehand and prepare yourself though it makes it no less real when you experience it.

It's quite easy, dare I say natural, to gaslight yourself into denying such sustained volumes of physical load in real life aren't bad for you when the body is humming and you're ascending mountains with friends. Practically speaking it's almost impossible to arrive at that conclusion. This is further compounded by the fact that the life based issues that manifest have seemingly no correlation with actual running or the incredible, borderline manic, type sensations it produces and sustains. Tell that to someone with a substance abuse addiction when they're still up in the air and they'll laugh you away too. Tell it to them when they're down on the ground and need a fix, or a runner healing from an injury as we all have and will, and an entire breakdown of identity crisis proportions ensues. No one element in life should alone define us as it leaves us definitively compromisable. I am not going to stop running more than I ought to in the mountains but I am going to laugh at myself for knowingly being haphazard and reckless so I maintain perspective and offset the danger of living a life of overdoing it by lying to myself. Even now I wonder if I’ll be sitting still for a few days, or several weeks, to watch my achilles heel up. This makes me feel equal parts agitated and curious how much thirstier and quicker I’ll be once my forced recovery is done.

I am not done with this tool of time/distance and in my personal spin of monk-like isolationism. I do however think that my sweet spot is 50-70 on the average adult work/family week with daily runs between 7-15 miles. Since I’m not beholden to any number so much as “hooked on a feeling” I know I’ll have bigger weeks and smaller weeks though I will fight to not have many of the ladder. I create a window because flexibility and non-rigidness is also hugely important since as we all know, it's the flexible tree that weathers the storm. A few shared miles are a good add on too though I struggle to find company that I gel with, and let's be honest... I'm sure my potential company would have the same issue with me.

It's worth noting that I only started running around 6-7 years ago in my early to mid 30's and that I view it as more of a fruit of the tree that blossoms by way of many personal practices. Running is a manifestation and expression of my mindful practices and less of the end all be all which is why I am not hunched and head forward like many runners are. In my teens I was a working waterfront lifeguard, and swim instructor, on lake beaches in New York's Hudson Valley. In my early 20's I was a weight lifting maximalist and was easily 25 pounds, to my now 135 lb. 5-10 frame, more muscle mass. I then tried my hand on the velodrome in competitive track cycling. The list goes on and I've lived, and been injured, in many athletic past times. Mountain trail running is not merely another athletic pursuit, it feels like an arrived upon spiritual practice. I consider form and function to be one. I would never sacrifice approach for speed, though working on my approach continues to produce quicker, and more comfortable, truthful speed. A useful analogy could be that we don't obsess over a rose to make sure the bush continues to flower. We must tend to the plant and merely enjoy the flowers as they invariably continue to blossom. From what I've seen, runners who aren't well rounded tend to injure and fall off of the beautiful practice. Injuries are inevitable but blaming the practice, as opposed to being honest about our decisions leading towards the injury, is disingenuous to ourselves and will spoil the purity of the practice. This innate pattern character flaw likely didn’t begin with this practice and will likely continue after.

It's important to consider whether we are going out on foot into the mountains to find, or to escape ourselves. For me there was never any delusion that I hadn’t addressed years back in other practices. Finding truth in myself is why I go out there though many of us haven't asked that question, or know the answer to be the ladder. This is a lesson I learned the hard way after traveling to Vietnam to spend a few months, the first of two times, to "get away". After the initial six weeks passed, my usual kinks began to pop up. I had the realization that regardless of where I go there I am. We may feel the sensation of escape for a bit but if we stay long enough anywhere our core selves will start to play peek-a-boo. Drowning our inner voices out with boisterous company is also something I see most people doing. This only prolongs any chance at self exploration that paves the way for true self-awareness. We all need to take a long hard look at ourselves on a somewhat regular basis lest we lose perspective on what our lives look like. At the core I think perspective, be it atop a mountain or of ourselves, is something all mountain runners are seeking both consciously and subconsciously.

We don’t always need to yield to the inner truth though it’s important to see it as it may prompt other needs to be met. If running, or any other activity, serves as escapism then it takes on no less an addictive quality than grabbing a handle of Jack from the corner store. More healthy, possibly, but not if you're so cooked due to ignoring your health that you don't skip over the rattlesnake so much as onto it. You can also just slip right off a mountainside which even on my best of days just simply becomes a very near reality. There's just something awesome about rounding deadly curves at high speeds and I should probably talk to myself about that one. It's great to go bonkers for a feeling but for longevity of love in life we need to be very serious about guarding its sustainability. This sometimes means practicing forbearance.

Obviously this is anecdotal and personal, and my weeks will vary, but I have too many Medical Doctors in my family to not want to share my findings as well as speak this way. NYC is 3500 miles from Southern California, and I'm from a different background even here. While it's English I speak, and I've been out here over a decade, you gotta understand I'm from essentially many worlds away culturally. I also know that what little I have engaged with running communities it seems discussions of weekly mileage and race preparation routines are a hot topic though not historically my topics of interest. I wanted to do a deep dive in hopes of sharing from my personal exploratory approach towards experience. I hope anyone who reads this and is interested feels comfortable to pull me aside and talk with me about it. I'm genuinely interested in engaging despite how I may manifest in social settings. I hope by this point you can simply understand I'm not necessarily built to be the town Mayor but I want to engage more. Running up hills is not my uphill battle{Insert cheesy wink emoji here}.

Honestly, let's talk about it.

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