Only One More Month of Marathon Training

April 15^th is getting so close I can taste it.  It tastes like a combination of sweat and tears that have been running down my face during my last few training sessions.  The day of the Go! St. Louis marathon will mean a few different things for me.  For one, it will signify the end of my training.  It is a beautiful thought except when I wonder if that ending will be due to some sort of cardiac arrest that I find myself in on the side of the road.  I am already telling myself that this will be the last time.  There is no way I will put my body or mind through this ridiculously tedious and painful torture of marathon training again.  Yeah, yeah, I know… I have made this same promise before.  In fact, I made this same promise last year.

This past Sunday, I made it to my goal of running 20 miles at a time.  Look at this past sentence for a second…  Yes, I know I am a complete idiot.  Who the hell would do something like this to himself?  The nearly 3 hours I spent running were among the most boring 3 hours I have ever experienced in my life, and that is before the physical torment that comes with my legs being pushed as far as they physically would be willing to take me.  I feel like an old car when I get up to these insane distances. 

My first car was a 12 year old Mazda that leaked more oil than I would have ever realized was possible.  Although the car was not much to look at, it drove pretty well.  It seemed to get me from point A to point B alright, and the false sense of security this gave me was dangerous to say the least.  I can still remember the first time I tried to see how fast the car would go, as any self-respecting 16 year old male is required by his pubescent testosterone levels to do.  This car that ran so well and easily when driving 30-40 miles per hour in town became a rattling pile of all too loose screws and bolts as the speedometer reached the insane heights of 85 miles per hour.  It took all of a few minutes before the smoke coming out of the exhaust left the carcasses of birds in my wake.  Even my malformed 16 year old brain was equipped with the logic to see that this was a terrible idea.  Some things just were not meant to go fast.

Unfortunately, my body is the same way.  I remember last year at this time when I ran 16 miles at a time and told myself that after running such a long distance, what is another 10 miles.  I had taken more runs over 10 miles than I would care to count, and this distance was little more than a boring but comfortable distance for my long legs.  At least this is what I told myself.  The thing I never took into account was that like my old car, my body would never understand what it was to function after running 20 miles until I was forced to do it.

The pains in my legs that were only faint annoyances at mile 13 became cramps that threatened to bring me to the ground.  That feeling in the bottom of my foot which felt like the stretching of my plantar fascia turned into a fire beneath my arch, ready to engulf the rest of my body, and then there is the mental torment.  I do not even want to think about the thoughts that went through my head as the marathon went on.  I went from smiling at a funny sign or counting down the miles to cursing anyone who had the strength in their legs still to accelerate up a hill, and didn’t I already pass the 18 mile marker? 

I have no doubts that as I begin to taper my runs in order to let my legs heal from the pounding they have taken over the last few months of training, I will develop that same irrational confidence that led me to making the mistake of signing up for the marathon in the first place.  I have no doubt that the euphoria of going to the marathon expo will cause me to think about the time I will put up on April 15^th with pride, and wonder if I should make a habit out of this.  I could run a marathon a year couldn’t I?  Maybe even two if I start to feel really ambitious.  The great philosopher although extremely unintelligent human being once said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”  It is going to be rough when I am 16 miles into my second attempt at the longest run of my life and realize that the boxer who has made a career being made fun of in retirement understood what I would not allow myself to accept.  When that marathon punches me in the face, it will not be wearing gloves.  It will hit me like a pissed of Mike Tyson whose Tiger has been stolen, only a few short hours after I stood at the starting line, smiling and telling myself that I have a plan.

Why Adam Wainwright’s Best Days Are In Front Of Him

Before last spring training’s devastating injury to the Ulnar Collateral Ligament in Adam Wainwright’s right elbow, he was hitting his stride as one of the top pitchers in baseball.  Before undergoing surgery to replace the ligament with a tendon graft, a procedure known more commonly throughout baseball circles simply as “Tommy John,” Wainwright had been the closer for a World Series Champion, he had been selected to an All-Star Game, and he had finished in the top 3 for the Cy Young award voting two years in a row.  For those two years, he was the best pitcher in baseball who was not named Roy Halladay.  It is a difficult sell to say that a guy coming off of a multi-year stretch like that has even bigger things to come, especially after taking an entire year off and having surgeons cutting into the his pitching elbow.

Wainwright will be joining a long list of pitchers who are coming back from Tommy John surgery, and the results have been largely positive for many of his peers including Carpenter, Westbrook, McClellan, and Garcia on his own team.  Could there be a better place for Wainwright to be after his surgery?  He literally cannot go anywhere in camp without running into someone who has been a teammate of his for years who has been exactly where he is now.  He was on the team when he watched Chris Carpenter come back from his own torn UCL to finish 2^nd in the Cy Young Award voting.  This is not to say that we can write him down for 20 wins already.

It appears that the Cardinals will wisely be monitoring Wainwright’s innings closely during his return to major league mounds.  Carpenter, after coming off of a year and a half of rehab and a short stint of abbreviated outings for the Cardinals, came back to throw 192.2 innings in 2009, his first year back after Tommy John, and he enjoyed career highs in win percentage and ERA.  While these are lofty goals for Wainwright this season, it is not out of the question that this season he could be a very effective pitcher.  It is not out of the question that after this year, Wainwright could become the best pitcher in baseball.

I was once a pitcher who stood 6’7 and was fortunate enough to pitch for an NCAA division I school that was nationally ranked.  Unfortunately for me, this is about as much in common as I have with the talented Adam Wainwright, except for one thing: I once felt the pop that came with the tearing of my UCL during a pitch.  In my case, the ligament was not completely torn and I was able to continue to pitch with damage that will always exist in the joint.  After the day that I felt that pop, my life as a pitcher was never quite the same.  I would have good days where my elbow would feel fine and my velocity would sit in the 89-91 mph range, and just when I would be excited about the prospects of being healed, I would see this range dip into the mid to low 80’s in future games.  I had multiple games where I would throw a pitch and walk around the mound until I could feel my little two fingers again or the pain would subside enough to be able to throw the next pitch.  The bottom line was that I would never be able to be a consistent and effective pitcher without the full use of an intact UCL.

Adam Wainwright was able to pitch in the Major Leagues at an amazingly high level with a similar injury to what I experienced.  In 2004, Wainwright was diagnosed with a tear in his UCL that although it did not require surgery at the time, was indicative of a future where a surgical consult was just one pitch away.  Having experienced pitching with an elbow that could go at any time myself, I am absolutely amazed at how great Wainwright has pitched since being called up to the major leagues.  He has been nothing short of fantastic during his career with the Cardinals, and now we may finally see what he can do at 100%.  Scary thought isn’t it?