I ran a 10k last weekend.
Well, “run” is probably an over-dramatic term. I finished a 10k race last weekend.
I placed dead last. The person who finished one position in front of me was 50 minutes faster than me.
5. 0.
This isn’t a verbal conversation where I say 50 and you think 15. Five in the tens place. Zero in the ones place.
“Lee J,” you might ask, “how does a wiry thin person like you come in last in a race so short? Can’t you walk faster than 3 miles per hour? If you could, you could almost get three miles (half the race) in 50 mins.”
And you’d be right.
I could have walked the entire length of the course in less than 2 hours. My finishing time was 2:39:20.
So what gives?
My wife and I signed up for the 10k maybe 3 months in advance. We ran the same race last year and we both needed a training goal to help motivate higher capacity work.
Then I had a friend who needed a research subject to be part of her PhD project. I qualified, and the study protocol lasted about a month.
The protocol required that I immobilize my left leg and use crutches for 10 days. My particular 10 days overlapped with the date of the race.
So I could have dropped out of either the study or the race.
But there were ways (and reasons) to accomplish both.
I knew when I started the study that I would be on crutches on the same day the race occurred. I knew how the timing worked.
And I accepted it.
I opted in.
I thought—perhaps naively—“it won’t be that bad.”
Let’s consider the obvious for a moment.
It took me 2 hours and 40 minutes to travel 10,000 meters. Six and 1/5 miles in 160 mins. That’s 25 mins, 42 seconds per mile.
I have never finished last at anything I have done in my life, let alone last by nearly half again as long as the next person.
Outwardly, simply by sheer observation, I was humbled.
But what was going on that no one else could see? What was going on in my head that no one else knew?
I started on crutches three days before the race.
My muscles were sore after the first day. I discovered I have a bunch of stabilizer muscles I never use.
Day 1 on crutches revealed several strips of muscles in my shoulders that I had to use to stabilize my swinging. And they were revealed the next morning by burning soreness.
Day 2 woke up core stabilizers from my hips to mid-ribs. It was like I was wearing leads to a tens unit around my midsection constantly. I spent a decent amount of that day (a Thursday) crunching around, looking for a wheelchair.
Because I thought I was going to simply collapse in the middle of the race based on how my body was reacting.
I didn’t find a wheelchair.
Or I didn’t find a wheelchair I could move myself.
I found wheelchairs that were battery operated and ones someone else could push me in. But I didn’t find one I could control the speed of with my own muscles.
So I could have completely wussed out and just rode an electric wheelchair over the whole course.
I went to bed on Friday night before the race very sore, but hoping I would experience the same types of “fourth day” adjustments I did when attending late summer volleyball camps. During camps the first three days were miserable and soreness increased massively. Then somehow on day 4, my body had adjusted and soreness wasn’t inhibiting my performance.
So I hoped that would happen.
And it did to some extent. I’m in my mid 30s, so I don’t recover as quickly as I did in my teens, but my body did adjust to the specific demands I had been putting on it.
Now all I had to do was race.
In an incredible amount of hubris and ignorance, I speculated I would beat the moms with strollers.
These are usually the last finishers of any short race. (Having never been at the end of a 10k, I didn’t realize these racers don’t enter races longer than 5k as a general rule.)
So I wasn’t actually competing against them.
During the first three days of crutches I had kept up with people I’d traveled with. (Looking back, they were probably nice and adjusting their pace to match me.)
The other thing is never done was crutch more than about 400m in one go without stopping at least for 10-15 seconds to rest and readjust.
So how did the race actually go?
Before I started, I chose to not consider any outcome other than finishing. Stopping midway was simply not an option. Regardless of what happened, I was going to finish. Even if it was 10 hours later. Even if the whole race was cleaned up and gone. Even if I had officially been marked DNF, I was going to cross the line. And no one nor situation was going to stop that from happening.
No amount of hand blisters. No amount of underarm chafing. No amount of blood, sweat, tears, frustration, whining, or anything else was going to stop me.
I was going to finish.
I figured, based on a minimal amount of practice, that the distance was not so great that my issues would be endurance-based. My body (probably) was going to hold up.
I knew my challenges were going to be mental.
I would have to endure muscle soreness and fatigue that runners know nothing about.
I might end up with blisters on hands and in armpits.
I might end up tearing the skin under my arms and bleeding.
So I started thinking through all the worst possibilities two weeks before I started on crutches.
I chose red race-day clothes purposely to hide any blood that might start poring from armpits I expected to be savaged by the crutches.
And I ran my race.
The best I could.
I hadn’t realized how much impact a slight grade uphill or downhill would trouble my progress.
I didn’t realize how an uneven surface side to side would challenge crunching mechanics and demand more energy to traverse.
And although those are small things, they added up over the course of the race.
But it didn’t matter.
I was going to finish. All I could control was step-plant-swing. Sometimes I could reach farther to plant. Sometimes I had to make much shorter “steps.”
I felt like I was tired and sore around mile 3. Like “this is probably where I’d stop, if I had my way.” “I’ve tested myself enough. I feel the burn. It’s probably ok to stop here.”
We’ve all felt this way. Heck I lifted weights with this mentality today. “I’ll just do one set to failure, <excuse, justification, rationalization>.”
I should have done more sets while lifting today. I should have followed my own example from last weekend.
I discovered the place I want to stop, the place I want to quit and be done is less than 40% of what I can actually do.
Because I finished the 10k. And then I had to crutch 200m back to the truck. And I spent another 45+ mins the rest of the day moving around on the crutches. (Yes I had some rest and sit down time, but I still had to get myself places.)
So, takeaways:
- Be open to challenges. “It’s hard” is not a reason to not try.
- Don’t quit early. Your body and mind can take more that you think they can.
- If you opt in, finish—no matter what conditions or headwinds may try to convince you to quit.
- Have charity toward the last finisher. I never understood why the last person often got louder cheers than the winner, and I still don’t think he deserves louder. But maybe there is an unknown aspect why he’s finishing last.
So, will I crutch a race again? Heck yeah. But probably only if I’m injured.
I appreciated the different approach. At some actual level, I wasn’t sure I could finish—I was unsure about my capacity.
But I didn’t mentally question whether I would finish. I was going to do it.
Was it hard? Yes. Did it take longer than I thought? Yes. Did I bleed out my armpits? Blister my hands? No.
Am I glad I did it?
Yes.