Eight weeks of grieving the loss of my dear friend, Cold Beer, was enough to make me feel pent up and stir crazy. Spring was beginning to show herself with sunshine that warmed the face and smells that promised brighter days ahead. A time of renewal, just what I needed.

 I began with a walk and found that the intense shame and emotional baggage of alcoholism didn’t feel as heavy when I was busy noticing nature. After a few days of walking, I began running again, the only way I knew that worked…walk 4minutes, run 1 minute(so I could do the math easily) and repeat. For anyone who has ever developed any amount of endurance to their running, you KNOW that this walk/run business is a far cry from your true running talents, but it works if you can be humble enough to accept it. I figured I had been humbled to my knees over the past few months, and I needed this to work. I needed to run, like I wanted a beer, but I wasn’t going to let the beer win. So away I went.

 Several weeks later, I was running 10 and 1’s with the natter, chatter still raging in my head when I decided that I was going to run the Good Life Fitness Toronto Half Marathon and I was going to rope my friend into doing it too.

 To keep me busy and off the sauce, my friend agreed. I totally could have celebrated with a glass of red wine, but I didn’t, I ran instead. I ran with hope and happiness, two things I hadn’t felt in a long time. My happy headed thoughts led me to some corny rejoicing in the power of the human spirit to heal itself, in my case through something as rudimentary as running.

 I enlisted a ten week training plan that I plucked from some website and since I had eight weeks until race day, I promptly stroked out the first two weeks. All I needed to do was to stay focused and to make sure I never ran by the liquor store. I was a great runner as a kid. This was like coming home. I never doubted my talents and abilities as long as I could stay sober.

 As the weeks passed, I was desperate to be free of the monkey on my back. Run, I told myself. Just run. Don’t think. Just run. Feel the road. Breathe the air. I need to run… feel… breathe. These are the things I did over and over. I developed habits. I needed certain socks with certain shoes for certain routes. I ate the same foods before a run. I obsessed about the right amount of hydration…then it hit me! I was kicking the beer alright, but I was knee deep in NEED for the daily run! I had a new addiction. I truly am happiest when I am consumed by something and this “something” wouldn’t give me cirrhosis. Cheers to that!

I am a recovering alcoholic and point blank, between you and me, running has kept me sober for 17 months. Oh, yes, this is fresh! I could relapse as I write.
Being sober is a new idea for me, but running is not.

Long before I drank seriously, I ran, as most kids do, effortlessly. I ran for play, I ran for sports, I ran for transportation, I ran for competition and some days, like Forrest Gump, I just ran.

Running was equivalent to freedom and freedom meant unburdened time to think. I would mull over the possible problems on the next day’s math test. I would contemplate the all important decision of which boy to play with before the math test. My mind would wander to what I would wear for the math test, knowing full well that I was really designing an outfit to wear for the boy, not the math test. If the truth be known, I was really only concerned about beating the boy, in the next week’s 100 meter sprint.

Those thoughts were so easy compared to the constant dialogue in my head, theses days. There are two distinct voices chattering in my psyche and not in a “coo-coo” kinda way. The battle rages in a “Good Angel” vs. “Bad Angel” way.

Bad Angel: “…go home and drink beer!”

Good Angel: “…after the next kilometer.”

Bad Angel: “You know you can taste it.”

Good Angel: “Oh, yes I can”.

Bad Angel: “Just one icy, cold glass of beer.”

Good Angel: “No, six icy glasses.”

Bad Angel: “Go now!”

Good Angel: “…after the next kilometer.”

Sometimes the kilometers go on for a long time before the temptation to drink has passed…but most mercifully, it does recede. On a good day, 5-10km nips it in the “Bud”, on a bad day full of worries and fears it can take much longer to quell the Bad Angel’s demand for comfort…“Southern Comfort”.
This is in part, why I have decided it’s time to challenge BA’s chatter natter in my brain matter with 42.2 km. The farther I run, the more I notice the trees, the gardens and the houses and the less I hear “beer, beer, beer”. I am hoping to out run alcoholism with this plan. It’s working so far.

Based on my recent Facebook posting regarding Good days and Bad Days, I would like to follow up on this theme, or at least add to it, if you will indulge me.

It should be simple enough to understand that a positive attitude helps, and a negative attitude hinders, performance. Regardless of how you interpret various situations, one aspect that needs mention is how important it is to stay in the moment— to focus on doing what you can do at that moment, and to not dwell on the past or project to the future.

One of the things I’ve noticed within the fine group of athletes I have raced against, with, and coached, is that those who have been most successful all have the innate gift of having the ability to put what is not important out of their minds until after the training or race is done. Maybe this means they have bad hearing combined with poor short term memory, but although it is frustrating when they can’t remember the workout I just told them, I prefer to think of it as a bonus and not a hindrance—when something happens, they deal with it calmly and appropriately, and then forget about it. They don’t worry about what happened and they don’t worry about the next thing that could happen because they are confident in their ability to deal with issues as much as they are confident in their ability to compete at the level they want.

There is a snippet by Mark Gungor, a psychologist, here:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BxckAMaTDc

In it, he explains the difference between a man’s brain and a woman’s brain. While I totally disagree with any disparaging remarks about women’s brains, I absolutely agree with his assessment of a man’s brain.  Or at least my man’s brain.

I spend almost all my training hours in various boxes—I don’t need music, I don’t need outside stimulation to do my workouts.  When I ride, I think about riding and am in my pedaling circles box.  When I swim, I am in my swim box. When I race, I am in my race box. There is a part of my brain that is working to filter the necessary NOW information from the necessary LATER information, just like the spam filter on my computer—it’s running in the background and it separates what I need to know from what I do not need to know and puts them in their respective boxes.  Anything that is irrelevant to my performance, though it may get noticed, gets stored for processing in the LATER box.

If you think about it, any high level athlete that performs on a huge stage for big rewards has an ability to focus that exemplifies what Mark is talking about—the golfer who sinks the $1 000 000 putt with ten thousand people watching has to be in his/her box.. The professional basketball player with the game winning, last second three point shot sees everything on the court until they are ready to take their shot, and then sees nothing but the net until after the release. Regular athletes might be in their box as well, but the walls of their box are not as strong as the professional one and a waving fan could intrude and make them lose sight of the goal. The pro box is tougher for the extraneous information to get into, so they make the shot. This drives home the fact the difference among people with similar abilities at any given task is often not the physical strength, but the mental strength and focus they possess.

As another example, when it comes down to a sprint finish with 100m to go in a race, it is likely the person who wants to beat the other most that will cross the line first. They may pay dearly for the effort after the race, but the thoughts of the price are in the LATER box, not the NOW box.

If you think about it even more, which I have done ad nausea, the simple phrases we hear when being taught the basic lessons in sport and life come to mind:

1. “Keep your eyes on the ball, Rick.”

2. “Look where you want to go on the bike, Rick.”

3. “Keep your eyes on your fries, Rick.”

4. “Think about what you are doing, Rick.”

5. “Run through the finish line, Rick.”

6. “Swim through to the wall at the end of every swim interval, Rick.”

7. “Watch out for that pothole, Rick.”—okay, so that one does not work, because as soon as you look at it, you step in it, thanks to point #2.

Having 30 years of interval training experience, I have always felt one of the benefits of doing the interval workouts on the track or road is that you get a chance to practice turning your focus on and off and adjusting the levels required.  Laugh and giggle during the warm up, recovery and cool down, but when it is time to run hard, focus.  Between intervals, put the focus on the back burner, but keep it ready.  With 10-15 seconds until the start of the next interval, start cranking up the focus again so it is fully on at go time.

This is absolutely something every one of you should work on. I suggest a special focus be put on this aspect in every workout. Start with trying to manage 2-3 minutes at a time of great focus before letting other thoughts intrude, then try again. And again,  And again.

Hope this helps

And yes, it does bug the heck out of my wife when I am in my nothing box J