As I’ve already mentioned in recent columns that a couple of months ago, I started Effort-Based Training in my own personal effort to qualify for Boston. So far, I have found the name itself to be a paradox, as it has seemingly required less effort than any other training I’ve ever done.

In effort-based training, you have to literally allow your heart to lead your head, or you’ll do your training at too fast a pace. When you’re doing almost all your running at 70% effort or less, your head sends a message to your body that you’re running too slow, and your heart aches to cheat. It’s a tough pill to swallow when an overweight man chasing after his loose dog in the neighborhood breezes past you in his pursuit. There is a smug satisfaction, however, when you notice he’s red-faced, and still breathing like an asthmatic five minutes later while walking his dog back home.

When I first started “following” this effort-based training program, my head didn’t like the feedback my heart was giving, and, as my coach admonished, I occasionally “was naughty” by doing my runs at too high an effort. My head and my ego were at war with my heart, and two against one was hardly a fair battle. I’d look at the next day’s scheduled workout and groan to myself when I saw it was only four miles staying at under 65% effort. For me, that was too short and too slow, so I’d either add a little distance, or apply the 65% effort only to the downhill portions of the run. I couldn’t seem to “follow” the program.

I started to think about the word follow, and what a really strange word that is, especially in the context of a runner. Why would a runner want to follow anything? After all, one of the primary definitions of follow as defined by Webster’s, is “To come after in order, time or position.” If that was my goal as a runner, it would be time to seek out a new sport. The way I see it, if you follow something all the way through to the finish, the best you can possibly do is second place, because if you follow something, does it not imply that you are lagging behind?

Interestingly, one of the synonyms of follow is to succeed. How much sense does THAT make? Can you really succeed on something by “coming next in time or succession?” I’ve heard it said that second place is the first loser. That doesn’t sound like success to me.

Yet another synonym of follow is pursue. I like that one a little bit better, because in this definition, at least you “follow in an effort to overtake.” which is a goal of strategic racing. But what happens of you overtake your training plan? Then you have to look backwards instead of ahead to see what run you should have done tomorrow. It’s all pretty confusing.

After about a month of this nonsense, I decided I wasn’t going to follow the program any more. I just didn’t see how I could succeed by lagging behind, and why I would even want to succeed when by definition, succeed means lagging behind. I took one final hard look at my schedule and decided that my following days were over.

Does this mean I’m no longer in pursuit of a Boston Qualifier? Absolutely not. Am I saying I scrapped the plan that was laid out for me? Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, just the opposite is true. I stopped following my plan by putting my arms around it.

Does that sound contradictory? It might, until you look at the English language with its twists and turns once again. One word that describes this type of figurative bear hug is embrace, so by embracing the plan instead of following it, not only do I put my arms around it, but another definition of embrace is “Eager acceptance”. I decided to bite the bullet, eat crow, and swallow my pride, and without exception, accept that I was going to embrace the schedule.

So I’ve been sticking to the training, and the training has started to stick with me. I’ve begun to improve in leaps and bounds, even though I haven’t started leaping or bounding. If I can continue to wrap my arms around the training, and follow my heart, my head and body are sure to continue to follow, and I’m bound to be bean-town-bound.

I think if I spoke any language other than English, I could have qualified a long time ago!

Michael