MISSING AN OPPORTUNITY
(from the archives, 2000)

I once kept a fairly detailed running log, but have drifted away from it during the last couple years.  It was never used as a dangling carrot, forcing me to catch up to my "goal" mileage.  Instead I would use it to track events in my life, easy enough to pull out to refresh my memory over some happening from the previous years.

As my running become less and less disciplined (and less and less often), I began to show less attention to the log.  I realize now that this was a mistake, and I hope to start being a little more orderly.  Recently I had an experience that could have been avoided if I had continued to keep an accurate journal or log.  I believe I would have seen this coming, an experience that I do not wish to duplicate.

It didn’t strike me until this week, as I have finally recovered from close to three weeks of flu and bronchitis, that I realized that I should have been able to see myself getting run down and my resistance being lowered.  As I put together the final touches of the WMAC Snowshoe Series results and stories, reading over the articles, I was suddenly aware that I pushed myself too much without resting adequately.  While reading my race report for the Hawley Kiln Klassic and filling in the gaps mentally there it was looking me right in the face…..

In a period of 11 days I had snowshoed around the 7 mile Kiln course three times, marking the course and cutting away blowdowns; snowshoed and readied the 9 mile Moody Spring Course once; and ran the Moby Dick 16 miler.  While this may seem like nothing out of the ordinary for many experienced trail runners, combined with all the travel from Connecticut and a full work and home commitment it was just too much for me.

The real trouble was I had lost track of what I was doing each day, and didn’t allow for proper rest.  It wasn’t the time in the woods so much as the early starts and all the driving.  I didn’t space things out very well, basically because I had no reference point.

If I had kept a running log or journal, I think I may have been able to look back over those weeks and realize that I was burning the candle at both ends.  I had used a logbook in the past for just that purpose while getting myself ready for events.  It makes sense that I could have seen trouble coming.

So my suggestion to everyone is to start a journal if you don’t currently have one.  It doesn’t have to make you a slave to mileage; there is no reason to use it that way if you don’t want to.  But when things go right or wrong, at least you will have a reference point to go back to, checking what happened during that time in question.  It is important to fill it up with not only the running parts of your life, but the real stuff as well.  You never know when it might come in handy.

March 15, 2000