GoodPeopleStory

Pushing through the pain

I usually bust my ass off everytime I’m out there, to take the best out of each workout, you never know when the next one will be.

As mentioned in “Beautiful Spring, welcome back !” I had decided to run easy. So I did. I was trying to reproduce the economical stride of the ultra running champions who I would watch way too many times on youtube, through their accomplishments during the most competitive races in the world. Here I was, becoming Anton Krupicka or Scott Jureck running in Boulder, CO or Geoff Roes kicking it at the end of the recent Chuckanut 50k.

The pace was consistent, comfortable so I could loose focus on the trail’s stones and turns and fully enjoy the warmth of this beautiful Saturday afternoon. As my foot would step steadily on a soft natural mat of brown dead leaves, fresh leftovers of a winter that had left not so long ago; I was on my own yet strangely connected to my surroundings. It was magical.

I was climbing up the trail I’m used to train on until I got to a certain point, a point I actually never went past. I was feeling amazingly fresh, definitely no intention to stop the fun that soon, I kept going into the unknown.
Discovering new trails has always been a big thing to me, especially when alone. Miles were passing by as I was cruising up to a road, and oh surprise, snow ! Well I still hadn’t had enough of my sudden escape into the wild, I kept going. First on a single track and then on the XC Skiing slopes. This definitely reminded me of a run I did back in Canada with Adam Campbell. I made it to the bottom of the ski lifts and as I didn’t see myself running up the slopes, I admitted “I guess that’s enough”. I looked for the bathroom, filled up my water bottle and here I was, rolling smoothly down the new trail I had just found.

I had purposely left phone and watch at home so I had no idea of the time or distance I had run so far, but I was starting to feel my legs. I reminded myself that I was out there for fun but I still had to be careful… well that was just after I fell face down in the snow !!

Ahh lack of experience and youthful enthusiasm… I love when you smack the back of my head saying “tsk tsk Martin, you know if you try and chase this downhill biker you are going to trash your legs”… Whatever, life’s too short, especially when I felt like I have a shot !
We went back and forth chasing each other for a while. I was passing him on very technical session or “hurdleing” the freshly cut tree that had fallen across the trail, and he would overtake me on the rolling parts. This lasted about 10 minutes until he took off for good after he congratulated me on the speed… I smiled. He rode off. I nearly cried !! How painful it was as I did slow down to a more reasonable pace, I was baked, legs trashed, nothing left !!

The “I’m running just for fun” was now far behind, the competitive part of me had taken over and I acknowledged “This is good. If you can keep going with massive pain in the legs, it will get you stronger for the next race, keep it up”. I did. Made it to my flat, grabbed some water and went in the lake soaking my legs.
As I limped back to my appartment, I was shivering from the cold and at this point I had tears in my eyes. For some reason, the pain wouldn’t go away. It was hardly bearable so I layed down on my bed, waiting to feeling better. Such feeling never came and I started cramping so I swallowed 3 Saltstick pills, and jumped into the hot shower, at this point, the benefit of the cold had become the least of my problems.

I eventually felt better after a while and as I type those words I have this pain in my legs that rhymes with this satisfying feeling of great accomplishment.

As much as this can sound dumb to go out for an easy run and come back half broken, this has had a very positive impact on my psychological status, no doubt about it.

Tomorrow, I guess I’ll take it easy,if only I can even dragg myself out of bed !

Keep on running.

— Martin

Beautiful Spring, welcome back !

Last night, Friday night, was ending another rough week, working overnights to finalize a project and overall pretty intense. Nothing but the usual after all! But that time I made an important decision that sounded a bit like that “screw it, I am not doing ANYTHING this week end but chillax and rest ! I need it and totally deserve it.”

After a late morning in bed watching the movie “127 hours” (that has become my #1 favorite movie, I really recommend it), I decided at 1pm that it was a reasonable time to get up and open the only window of my quite dark flat… you know, to let some air in ! And air indeed came in… A warm breeze coming from the lake, refreshing and announcing only one thing: Spring had arrived !
What a feeling. That was enough to get me have a banana, wear my shorts and a sleeveless Tshirt, grab my hand bottle and two gel (when such excitement hits, you never know for how long you’re gonna be out there, so supplies are in order).

1.30pm I was running out the door, for a reason that didn’t occur since… well I don’t even remember. Lately, there has been only two reasons why I run. The first one is to stay fit and prepare my racing season, pretty basic.
The second one, that has unfortunately taken over the first one, is to shake the stress away, empty my mind, try and not hit nervous breakdown basically !

Well today, I was heading out into the mountains for neither of those reasons. I decided to leave my stress at home rather than try and get rid of it on the trails, and I didn’t want to train either. All I could think of, with a bright smile on my face as the sun hit me, “today I’m going easy, I’m just going to run for the sake of it.”

Now the story breaks down into two parts. The running part and the Entrepreneur part. Depending on your passions, you might want to stick to one or the other, unless like me, you are keen to EntrepRUNNER-ship !