Pacing

Just before sunrise, I took to our sleepy street, banana yellow Sony walkman in hand, and trudged along until I hit my turnaround point, a crumbling relic of a former bridge connecting my home town, Mt. Pleasant, to Sullivans Island. If I timed it right, I could watch the first promise of light race across the marshy waterway, all dappled honey and lapis with the shimmer of new dawn. Seagulls squawked and swooped, menacing even at this magical hour.

It was almost one mile to the very tip of the old causeway, which felt like an Olympic distance to my eighth grade self who longed to be an athlete but thus far hadn’t managed to find my sport. The popular girls played volleyball or basketball, both of which centered around a spherical object I had zero attraction to. I couldn’t dribble or shoot, especially while being chased or blocked. (why is this considered fun?) I resented the stinging reminder of the volleyball all along my forearms from my failed attempts to set it up for the taller girl who could spike and win the point. Even tennis found me darting away from the whizzing yellow orb for fear that it would hit me before I could take a solid whack at it in return. So I ran, alone, three or four mornings a week with Duran Duran whining through my headphones as I relished in my secret sport.

Over time, running became my thing. Not a formal thing, as in, I wanted nothing to do with cross country or track, but the one thing that I did to feel keenly alive, whether zipping along a muddy path or hammering it out on an uneven sidewalk. Any team construct felt like it would challenge the union that running and I had become, marring my joy with its relentless rankings and heated coaches. Throughout my college years, I kept at it, hitting the woods as much as I could, always in solitude or the quiet company of a friend who relished the same. Eventually, I found my way to entering some races, motivated, mostly, by the discipline of a training schedule and the potential of covering a distance that seemed unfathomable at the start. Eventually, I called myself a runner as that movement seemed inseparable from the woman I had become. Running was sport, yes, but it was also spirit, almost holy in its capacity to transform me.

Distance became the grail. I ogled the legendary ultra runners while flipping through Trail Runner magazine and kept tabs on races like Western States and Leadville 100. Once, on our way up to Portland, Oregon, I insisted that we spend the night in Ashland so we could visit Rogue Valley Runners, a shop owned by Hal Koerner, a renowned ultrarunner, and staffed by a rotating line up of up and coming young badasses. When Hal asked if he could fit me for shoes, my cheeks and neck flushed rosy red like a young girl who has just made contact with her longstanding celebrity crush. (yes, of course I ‘let’ him fit me for shoes) What separates these runners from your average marathoner (me) is a constellation of factors but central to their success is their ability to pace. 100 miles, 150 miles- these are distances that require extreme discipline and self awareness around when to keep it reigned in and when to throw open the throttle and rip.

So pacing became the heart of my training, and I got really good at it. On our weekend runs through Redwood or Tilden, I held us back on the steepest hills, shortening our stride to maintain rhythmic breath until we crested the peak. On distance days, I warmed us up for at least the first three miles, steadily increasing our pace until we were confident in crushing the last mile with all the reserves we had left. Even in a race, I was undistracted by those zooming by me. I stuck to my plan and hit my target pace almost every time. Last September, some friends flew out to run the Mad River half marathon with us, a fairly brutal course of winding hills and long, long ascents. My friend kept wanting to surge ahead but I’d run the course during our training and I knew better. “Watch”, I cautioned, “that whole group of eager beavers will be blown out in a half a mile.” We sailed past them at the top of the hill as they gasped and moaned, stopped completely to catch their breath.

Most races these days have official pacers, staff who carry signs with target finish times and runners gather around them like groupies at a show. Ultra runners have personal pacers, sanctioned partners for certain legs of the race, who help the runner stay awake, safe and moving. I’ve thought about this so much over the last couple of months as more and more research connecting Long Covid symptoms and recovery to ME/ CFS comes to light. Despite many decades of being under funded and often ignored, ME/ CFS has a few champions who have much to teach the suddenly rabid field of Long Covid study. And all of it revolves around pacing.

Last week, I returned to work half time, which is a huge step for me as my job isn’t what I would consider low stress. My mom also came into town, and despite her having strictly quarantined prior to her visit and PCR tested a few days before arrival, I freaked the moment she got here, totally panicked by the idea that she’d picked up Covid while taking small sips of water through a straw under her mask as she flew from Charleston to Burlington. (there really aren’t good data driven charts about this particular scenario :) In response, we masked up and I tested us EIGHT times. In response, I walked farther than I had, faster than I had and tried to keep up with this fantasy I’d conjured about going out and doing things because we had a visitor. In other words, I did zero pacing.

Post exertional malaise (PEM) is the official term for, hey, woman, you are not paying attention to your body, you have forgotten all about pacing. It shows up in various forms; mine is a sordid cocktail of sore throat, flu like feelings and an aching chest (this didn’t help the Covid reinfection panic with my mom, obv). It can take days or weeks to resolve and then more time to return to ‘baseline’, which is the elusive tightrope that hovers between feeling Long Covid ok and Long Covid very much not ok. Mastering what it takes to maintain baseline, for me, is very akin to figuring out how to run a hill without blowing up or cresting with a lot of gas still left in the tank. There are some good ideas out there about tracking and rating activity to help learn, over time, what zaps and what nourishes. Some long haulers set a timer for every 90 minutes or so and give 15 or 20 minutes over to meditation or rest. Not unlike a race training schedule with its rigor and required off days. I like the idea of my own personal pacer, someone to tell me to go chill out, stop flitting about like a bored preteen but I’ve yet to identify a qualified contender. So this will be my LC focus, learning to pace in a whole new way, stopping motion altogether before my body does it for me. And may I carry this forward well beyond my recovery, a new way of being with my body that gives more than it takes.