Track and Field Blogs - Desiree Davila

Oh, gee, what is it tonight?
At least just tell me what the hell is wrong,
Do you want to eat, do you want to sleep, do you want to drown?
Just settle down, settle down, settle down...

Right about now I’m pretty much in the heart of my marathon build up for the World Championships. The segment started with a few ‘self-esteem’ workouts and a nice and steady increase in mileage. I am now fully ‘in it’ and long ago I kissed the double digit mileage week’s goodbye. These days it’s a healthy diet of high mileage, long strength workouts, and long runs. Sometime after the two+ weeks of logging 110+ miles kicked in what I like to call, mileage irritability. Yes, mileage irritability. I remember a team meeting freshman year at ASU where Walt Drenth pretty much summed it up, at poor Dan Rodriguez’s expense, commenting on the adjustment to the college lifestyle and training workload -- “Dan, I know that you’re a freshman and right about now all you want to do during the day is sleep, eat, and sit on the toilet but you have to go to class too.” We all laughed at poor Dan but every freshman in the room secretly wondered if Coach Drenth was inside their mind. After the daily runs, these three things are the essentials in my life right now and the rest just becomes an annoyance. Stupid stuff, like someone breathing too loud, smiling too big, having too blue of eyes can make me want to scream. Why? Who knows, it’s totally irrational and yet for some reason the guy at the next table who lightly scrapes his teeth against his fork while eating breakfast makes me cringe. Essentially, it’s premenstrual without the puffiness, and chocolate is still required.

I'll give you give candy, give you diamonds, give you pills,
Give you anything you want, hundred dollar bills,
I'll even let you watch the shows you want to see

Non runners call it being a *$%&. In Once a Runner, Denton refers to it as “breaking down.” “The toll on the runner, however, was high if he chose not to slack off. Psychologically as well as physically, he paid the price. He became weak, depressed; he needed 12 to 14 hours of sleep a night. He was literally desperate for rest, spent his waking hours with his legs elevated, in a general state of irritability. He became asexual, rendered, in the words of the immortal limerick, really quite useless on dates. He was a thoroughly unpleasant person.” Call it what you like, but it happens to the best of us.

We are runners. We’ve all been there, standing with our toes in the paint of the red line seeing how far we can lean over it without falling flat on our face. Fortunately for me, I’m surrounded by people who get it. When I’m with The Boy on a second run and I threaten to “eat his arm off” if we don’t have food soon, he knows it’s a day that I’m hungry AND tired. When I’m in the middle of a 14 miler with the group and Carol asks for the 3^rd time “Are you doing anything fun today?” and I reply “NO I hate fun, stop asking.” She knows it’s only because I’m on my 107^th mile of the week and still have 11 more for the day. She knows in a few hours after a nap and a meal I’ll be up for grabbing second breakfast and some coffee with her. The man at breakfast who scrapes his teeth against his fork, well, there’s a good chance we may never be friends. Mileage irritability is my constant reminder to take care of myself all the time. I sleep better, eat better, and hydrate better because of it, if I didn’t I would surely Hannibal Lecter someone.

I’ll give you anything, anything, anything

It all sounds pretty horrible and you’ll probably like me even less after reading about it, but it comes with the territory. Stepping outside the comfort zone is the price I pay to find out how good I can be. If I planned on backing off every time running got difficult I would hang up my shoes and take up knitting.

The next few weeks bring the big workouts that tell me where I’m really at in my training and the four letter word in me will be replaced with excitement and a whole new energy. I’ll step to the line in Berlin knowing that I’ve kicked, clawed, and gutted my way through anything and everything that’s been thrown my way and came out on top. When race day rolls around, if I play it just right, in that moment everything will be right in the world, all my struggles will be rewarded, and this daily torture will make sense in the end. Running is funny that way -- it beats you up, breaks you down, and still keeps you coming back for more.