Train(ing) wrecks

Most people study other runners' training logs primarily to learn specific workouts and overall patterns they can apply to their own training or to the training of people they advise. At least they say they do, anyway. A less typical -- but not unheard of, even if most people won't admit to doing it -- reason is to keep tabs on a rival.

I myself like to look at training logs for the sheer wreckage some of them proudly reveal, with their creators usually being the last ones to know the reality of the stories they tell the world. I'm not alone in this tendency. It's classic schadenfreude.

Specifically, I follow logs characterized by total obliviousness and by rampant denial.

The oblivious person will post evidence of things like spontaneous 22-milers the day after a hilly 10K, followed two days later by a 12 x 400m at 3K race pace track session that "mysteriously" goes completely to shit halfway through. This is usually someone who was shelved with an injury for at least three straight weeks at some point within the past few months, and is intent on getting back on the shelf as efficiently as possible.

This is not someone who understands the risks and that great results often require grave gambles with health and sanity; this is someone who knows no other fucking way and isn't interested in discovering one. This type of runner is someone you -- okay, I -- would help if he or she were a personal friend, or seemed to be struggling in earnest. But for the the most part, his or her very occasional race triumphs between catastrophic setbacks justify, at least to me, not intervening and instead continuing to pass the virtual popcorn around between a few other gloating pals who like to indulge in shitty cackles at others' expense.

The runner in denial is mired in a different bucket of shit. Chances are fairly good that he or she is far more experienced than the average runner but has less than 10 percent of the insight you would expect of a veteran, often because of intermittent substance abuse or a frank mental disorder. These logs are interesting because they show that their curators are hip to the right terminology and have a basic grip on the dos and the don'ts of training, but believe they can supercede reality merely by dropping in the right adjectives.

That's not helpful, so here's what I mean: Say you have a runner do does a hilly-as-hell half-marathon on a Saturday. This is someone who races a lot and runs a lot overall, with 70- to 80- mile weeks being typical. He or she is plainly motivated first and foremost by a compulsion to exercise than by a genuine desire to excel; these goals, of course, can be harmonized under the right circumstances, but more often wind up in sharp opposition. So, the day after this hally 13-1-mile all-out effort, the person goes out, sore as shit, and runs 15 miles at a typical, decidedly non-laid-back pace. However, because he or she knows people are watching and judging, he or she is careful to label this one "easy 15" or "recovery 15" or generate some other inherently goofy nonsense term in an effort to subvert the fact that he or she just went out and did something verily inadvisable.

Sometimes this type is gloriously relentless. I have seen logs very much like this:

M - Easy 10 @ 6:30 pace
Tu - Easy 10 @ 6:20 pace
W - Medium Long Run @ 6:45 pace
Th - 8 including 5 x mile at 10K pace (5:30)
F - Easy 9 at 6:25 pace
Sa - Easy 7 at 7:00 pace
Su - 10K race in 36:30

And the pattern more or less repeats itself until this person, too, winds on the disabled list or someone steps in and says "Sir, I think you've had enough."

Think of the difference between the posted sample and the same sample without the adjectives and qualifiers. Anyone with a handle on basic math would say, "That person's training way too fast all the time for her ability." All of the uses of "easy" in there don't change a thing, save one: They show that the person is grossly overestimating his own ability level. One you've been following this sport, or circus, for long enough, you learn that it's more often than not completely pointless to suggest that the person scale back this or that so that she can actually advance closer to the level she's aiming for, because this sort of runner (who, remember, may be faster than you, or more experienced, and on top of that off her rocker) will treat such input as the crassest of insults and ignore you completely.

In either case, best to just bookmark these blogs with creative and profane titles and continue enjoying the derailments and the grinding of biological gears.