Working Class Runner

Hello from Seattle. This is a long overdue post. Life in Seattle so far has been exactly what I needed.

I took an exploratory visit in early December to secure and furnish my apartment. I packed and cleaned up back in Vegas over the following couple weeks and spent Christmas with my family before shoving off and making the long drive north (with many key possessions) soon after.

I live in Queen Anne near Seattle Center and the central location is great. I’m closer to training like I used to in Chicago than I could possibly get in Vegas (though I have a ways to go to get back in my best shape). One big reason: I finally got back to cooking and eating like I used to in Chicago. I have a full kitchen for the first time in over 6 years, and prepare most of my meals from scratch. I felt a big positive difference within days.

The health problems I’d been dealing with throughout the last couple years are nowhere in sight. In fact, the biggest health problem I had since arriving was tripping and smashing myself on the sidewalk on Aurora Avenue during a run in early January. Cuts and bruises took over a couple weeks to heal but thankfully I didn’t break or otherwise injure anything. (Lesson learned, though, to avoid running through a dark and choppy corridor in moderate rain.)

I’m sleeping far better. I recover much more quickly than I did in Vegas, even now that I’ve steadily ramped up training volume as I get to know the area again and figure out best running routes. Speaking of which…

Though I began running more frequently in Vegas towards the final three months there, I was nowhere close to the regular volume I needed (and was used to before). My volume tanked during the August drama that semi-directly led to my going remote (and allowed this move), and it tanked again during December while I focused on cleaning up and packing after six years in the same location. Even after resuming running after my arrival in late December I didn’t even log 40 miles that month.

I was concerned about my capacity to get back in marathon shape before Vancouver in May, from where I was at in December. The ramp in volume to get to where I would have liked might be too steep. I didn’t want to just jog the marathon out, or run/walk it again and risk not finishing in the 6-hour limit. But it’s also been three years since I’ve been able to run it, and if I can run it I absolutely want to run.

I had to accept I almost certainly couldn’t get in 100% marathon shape for the race. However, even 80% would give me the conditioning to run a decent effort.

I’m a fiercely independent person when it comes to many things, not to mention my training. I know how my body responds, have learned a ton about training and managing effort, and the process I best need to follow to get back to where I wanted to be and know I could perform at.

So of course I joined a training group.

The Seattle Fleet Feet store hosts a winter training cohort, and they advertised what ended up being a key hook: One of their stated goal races was the Vancouver Marathon. This is also more than the Chicago Racing Team’s one weekly workout: This cohort provided a complete 16-week training schedule, whose weekly template I found I could certainly handle right now.

Not knowing if I’d stick with them four days or sixteen weeks, I figured the $200 investment was worth the risk.

And it was certainly worth it, even if the final answer ended up being “about 4 weeks”. I’m following their training schedule to the letter and will do so until Vancouver. But I did break off from the group after about four weeks to train solo going forward, for a bunch of good reasons.

First, the program itself is great. I’m not going to go into a review about it but I would absolutely recommend it to anyone in Seattle looking to run a half or full marathon. Their plan covers either half-marathon training or full marathon training. The coaches (plus several mentors who help steward workouts) are all friendly, know their stuff, and are great communicators. They host two weekly workouts, a Wednesday night group workout of either speedwork or hills (usually on a competition-grade running track), and a Saturday morning long run at different locations around town. The weekly schedule itself isn’t daunting: Those aforementioned sessions, two other easy 3-8 mile runs on flexible days, easy strength/XT/mobility work on two other flexible days, and a day off Sunday. The plan is well structured and thought-out, and the leaders always have great feedback.

Also, I quickly made a lot of friends in the group. With the Racing Team in Chicago, though the coaches were generally friendly, typically 95% of the group didn’t care if you were there or not, and you maybe connected with a few people or a couple of social circles. I do have several Chicago friends from then, but the Racing Team there was more of something many of us showed up for and did among other people… than a community I ran with.

Here, however, people quickly connected with and wanted to get to know me. People in the group are eager to connect and talk. I was kind of taken aback. Maybe the city has changed in the decade I’ve been gone, but when I previously lived in Seattle getting people in common circles to talk beyond brief casual/relevant chit-chat was often like splitting hairs on a needle. People in the group certainly aren’t as shy, if at all. I’m sure others there have different and varied experiences, but I made a lot of friends quickly.

And of course, I saw improvement and results from the schedule and workouts fairly quickly. I didn’t find most of the workouts super daunting, though to be fair I made a point to go my own pace and let groups drop me when applicable. But I finished every long run feeling fairly good, something that hardly ever happened in all my years from starting seriously in Chicago until when I left Vegas. I didn’t have any days derailed by excess fatigue or soreness.

Now, granted: I work remotely now, so I don’t have to commute or juggle any omnipresent stressors from occupying a separate workplace with other employees. That admittedly (and much to my relief) removes a lot of stress from my everyday life that I used to have to live with. And as soon as I settled in Seattle the positive difference in my recovery, my sleep, my general energy levels, was immediate and clear. So yes, part of feeling great day over day is the fact that I live in a better environment and have the best commute you can get.

But within a month I got back to a steady, manageable 25-30 miles a week, which at times in Vegas seemed like a mountain to climb. We’ve gone as far as 12 miles on long runs, and I felt good enough after all of them that I could have ran the next day no problem (even though we have that day off).

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So then why did I leave the group? Everything’s working great, bro, what are you doing?

I had decided that I would either attend every workout, or if I wasn’t going to do so to stop attending entirely. I felt if I was going to stop attending, I needed a compelling reason to do so. It turns out that there were a few. I had some some lifestyle concerns, some training concerns, and some personal concerns.

A key motivation for moving back up to Seattle was (after decades of a not-so-easy life) to make my life easier, make training easier, and have more control over my life. Seattle was the best fit for me being able to control all of the above.

I admittedly under-estimated how much more of a complication going to a group workout at a designated time would be for me than it was in Chicago in 2017-2018.

In Chicago we also had a 6:30pm Wednesday workout. I’d commute home, change, jog about a couple miles to the workout site. The workout would be done around 8:15 or so and I would jog home. Today in Seattle, I have a whopping 90 minutes between the end of my workday and the group’s workout. We also get done around 8:00-8:30pm. Should be a lot easier, right? That’s totally what I thought up front.

First of all, rush hour traffic in Seattle is still really bad. One key change from my last time here, however, is that rush hour traffic to Ballard got a lot worse. And that’s the direction I’m headed. It doesn’t matter when exactly I leave, either. It’s a stressful stop and go grind that I wanted to eliminate after years of dealing with constant insurance fraud attempts in Las Vegas. Rush hour drivers here often drive like they have similar ambitions. The stress of dealing with it makes it harder to relax and focus on the workout once I get there.

Also, I wasn’t the early riser in Chicago that I am now. Today I’m up before the sun, and I want to get to bed by 9pm. In Chicago I woke up closer to 7am, and had no problem staying up until 10-11pm. I had time after getting home to cook. I also was more lax with my diet then, and heating a frozen pizza for dinner was not a big deal then.

Nowadays I’m more in tune with my body, food like that tends not to help my recovery and energy levels the following day, and I’d rather not have to default to ordering out or heating something like that to eat dinner. But when I’m not home before 8:30pm, and want to get to bed by 9pm, that leaves no time to cook. I’m not going to bed hungry either (certainly not after a workout). Often, despite my best efforts, I’m still getting to bed around 10pm. Not ideal.

I have done a scheduled Wednesday workout alone since leaving the group, and doing that really hit home. I was able to gear up and head out just a bit after 5pm. I jogged a few blocks away to Lake Union, where there was ample park space for the 12x400m repeats, and worked out. I ran the 400s about 2:10-2:15 pace, 2 minute rests, and had to get creative with routing to avoid other park-goers. So, though this was one of the easier workouts, it did take some time.

I finished, and while jogging back I decided to stop for tacos, thinking it was later in the evening and I wouldn’t have time to cook that night. After ordering, I sat down and looked at my watch.

6:22pm. The group workout was still 8 minutes away from starting. I was already done. Hell, had I known I had that much time I would have just gone home and cooked! It hit home then that having the freedom to start as early as I was ready was real important to me, along with having the freedom to do the workout in the morning if that made more sense.

Ditto the long runs. I realized the flexibility to head out first thing in the morning, or to do the long run in the afternoon, was real important for me in Chicago. Meeting to do an 8am long run didn’t seem like it should be a big deal to me, and I was surprised to see how much of a big deal it turned out to be. Half the day would be cooked before I returned home (though granted I also enjoyed hanging out with the group over coffee afterward, which wasn’t a problem at all). We had some messy weather for a workout that I would have ideally ran later to avoid.

My current paces are slower than all the marathoners in the group. The runners I had the least trouble keeping up with are all training for the half marathon, so their assigned workouts are shorter than the marathoners. Not only does this mean I’m often running alone (which itself I have no problem with), but this creates a problem where I’m finishing late and the coaches/mentors are all waiting on me.

Everyone involved is a class act and does their best to be accommodating. They’re responsible for making sure everyone finishes or gets back safe. But making them wait on me weighs on my mind. I don’t like making people wait on me in general. I have no problem running alone (I’ve obviously done it 99% of the time), but given their responsibility to all runners they can’t exactly leave me to my own devices if I’m training with them, even if they wanted to.

I have tried various ideas to mitigate this and finish as close to everybody as I can, e.g. showing up early and doing some early repeats so I can finish with the half marathoners, or starting long runs with a faster sub-group before dropping off after a bit to start/finish earlier. Not only have these approaches had limited success, but some future workouts are not going to allow for this (e.g. the half runners may do different distances for repeats than marathoners, or the workout is a tempo/progression that shouldn’t be split up).

Also, more importantly, the time difference on the long runs between me and the last of the marathoners will become more pronounced no matter what. If I recall correctly, there’s an undocumented four hour limit on long runs, and with the group’s longest run at 21 miles there is some chance I take a bit longer than that.

Separately, this is also the first time I’ve had to rely on my watch’s map function, as we’re running long run routes I’m not familiar with. The streets and parks, yes, but the specific routes we’re following, no. Typically, I’d run my own routes on mostly familiar terrain and know exactly where I’m going, but here I need the maps to tell me where to go and when to turn.

Thanks to some glitches in Garmin’s map-GPS code, I’ve gotten off course and lost on a few occasions despite following its instructions. Though I was able to correct the routing problems without too much damage, it did ruin at least one long run (I did link up with some half runners, but had to cut my run short), and my getting lost compounding the duration of my (already longer-than-others) long runs probably creates concern with relevant coaches/mentors. Again, they’re good sports and it’s their responsibility, but I don’t want them to worry about me.

If I’m running a route I devise myself, this doesn’t happen. I never got lost in Chicago or Vegas, or Flagstaff or Big Bear, or Vancouver, or the outskirts of Detroit.

Finally, I get along great with everyone I talk with. There are people in the group I don’t talk with, and I leave them alone. But I have gotten the growing impression that some people are not comfortable around me at these workouts, for whatever reasons. And some I believe have stopped attending workouts because of it. (I will note, as far as I can tell, that no one I regularly talk or run with feels this way, certainly to my knowledge none of the coaches or any mentors I’ve spoken with.)

It admittedly makes me uncomfortable to know people I run with feel that way. I don’t want people to feel uncomfortable with showing up to something they’ve enjoyed for months, years. I can see how important this community is for a lot of the people there. I’m the new guy, and it’s easy for me to just not come in anymore, especially if I can still do the training plan on my own.

Now, if this was the key reason, I’d put it front and center. But the other factors I mentioned above have been on my mind for a while since we started, and they’re critically important. If anything, the growing discomfort forced me to seriously think about everything else. I think participating would have become an issue at some point down the road anyway, even if everyone was cool with me.

As a postscript, before I decided to stop attending… I realized my stated intention of attending every workout would have been impossible anyway. The final Saturday meetup would have been a shake-out run before our respective races, but I’ll already be in Vancouver. So I would have had to miss it.

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While it appears silly to build walls of text about a group I trained with for four weeks, again I think this group is great, I enjoyed their company, and I admit I miss a lot of them. They were a helpful place for me to get closer to the training shape I was aiming for (and of course still building). I’m sure friends and I will cross paths again. We all run the same streets and parks, after all!

I also have to remember what brought me out here in the first place, and the life I’ve put great effort into creating for myself here. I spent six years saving and building for this. I want to make sure I still have the independence and space to do what I need, now that I’m here and have the freedom to do as I want and need. So, ultimately, I decided to double down on those choices.