I’ve logged a lot of miles in Andrew Brown Park, located in the prosperous Dallas suburb of Coppell, as the smooth paved trails are easy on the feet.  Earlier this week, I showed up for a session of high-intensity interval training — specifically, a drill called “Yasso Splits,” which consists of 10 half-mile intervals at a fast pace, with ¼ mile recovery intervals in between.  Developed by Bart Yasso, the “mayor of running” and Runner’s World’s former Chief Running Officer, Yasso Splits force you to sustain an elevated heart rate, which is thought to be good training for a faster marathon.  To get through ten of these intervals takes a bit of grit.

I’ve been doing high-intensity interval training for almost 20 years, and Yasso Splits are one of my favorite workouts, although given the intensity, I approach them with a conservative attitude and, if I’m being honest, a touch of dread.  On the drive over to the park, I thought through all those years of accumulated experience and weighed them against more recent fitness indicators, and after due deliberation selected a target pace for the intervals of 7:30 per mile, with the recovery intervals to be run at plus-or-minus a 10-minute pace.  Then, after a moment of additional reflection, I decided to cut myself some slack – let’s go with a target range, call it 7:30-8:00 pace, with the goal being to maximize the training benefit, without taking on excessive risk. 

Risk?

Whenever you run, you take on risk.  Especially when running hard. 

The risk consists of the possibility that you might damage muscles, ligaments, tendons, and even bones.  There’s risk that an injury could derail your training goals, for example, spoil your plans for that upcoming race which you’ve been training for so intensely and which means so much to you. 

There’s the risk that injuries could become chronic.  Running is not just a sport, it’s a practice of self-empowerment and transcendence.  If you get sidelined, you’d have to find a new path to pursue these life-affirming goals.

So, when we talk about needing “grit” to complete a tough workout, the real question isn’t pushing through pain — it’s taking on risk.

I’m not convinced that psychologists understand this point.  In her book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, Angela Duckworth defines grit as sticking to top-level goals for long periods of time without deviating.  She believes that grit is the most important factor for success in life, and argues that modern society needs more of it.  But in the book’s last chapter, she acknowledges that sometimes giving up is the right decision.  For example, if you’re stuck in a toxic relationship or a bad job.  In common parlance, the definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  What this means, unfortunately, is that being “gritty” does not necessarily produce better decisions.

What’s missing is the qualifier, “how long?”  How long should I push through discomfort and pain before rethinking my strategy?  Or, put differently, how much risk am I prepared to tolerate in pursuit of goals?

When I arrived at the park for my session of Yasso Splits, I was feeling sort of sluggish.  It took me 2 full miles to get warmed up and still I wasn’t moving particularly quickly.  Ten intervals at high speed is a lot of work, I thought to myself – best to think about them one at a time – so let’s just focus on interval #1 and see how it goes.  I push the button on my watch, listen for the beep, and start out at what seems a modest pace, but a glance at the read-out on my watch shows I’ve already dropped below an 8:00 minute pace.  So far, so good. 

Now, the funny thing about the paved loops in Andrew Borwn Park is that they look flat, but there are subtle undulations, and while the elevation might change by only a few inches, when you’re running hard, you feel it.  As I round the first corner in the half-mile loop and take on a very slight uphill, I focus on engaging glutes.  On the next stretch, which is very slightly downhill, I relax and extend my stride.  On the far side of the loop, some ducks and a Canadian goose have wandered onto the path, forcing me to swerve around them.  Then the trail curves back towards the starting point, and now I’m breathing hard.

My watch shows I completed this lap in 3:54, which comes out to an average pace of 7:48 — right within my target range.  And now there are “only” nine more laps to go.  But first I trot off for a quarter-mile recovery jog, glancing down at my watch again, to make sure I’m moving at plus-or-minus a 10-minute pace.

I complete each of the first four laps in the 7:40’s, and on lap five, I’ve cut my pace to 7:34 – which is exactly where I’d hoped to be.  I’m feeling good, although running hard takes effort, and I’m starting to feel fatigued, especially at the end of each loop when I’m breathing heavily.  Five more laps to go feels like a lot to do, and as I trot off on the next recovery interval, I glance down at my watch a couple of times to monitor my heart rate as it settles down below 120, after having peaked above 150.

On laps 6 and 7, I nail the 7:30 pace, continuing to focus on glute engagement as I motor up the almost invisible uphill grade, and then as I glide down the almost invisible downhill, relaxing and lengthening my stride, before powering through the last stretch, at this point out of breath.  The ducks and that goose have crossed the path and found their way to a nearby pond, meaning that the trail is clear of obstructions, except for occasional pedestrians and kids bicycling to school. 

The fatigue is mounting, but I complete lap 8 at a pace of 7:25, which is slightly faster than target.  This is encouraging.  I love to race, and I love the idea of running well.

On lap 9, I’m cruising along the slight uphill, when suddenly my left calf muscle tightens up.  That’s not good.  Several years ago, I experienced a cycle of frequent calf strains, which morphed into posterior tibialis tendinitis and sidelined me from running for nearly a year.  So now, I dial back on conscious effort, focus on letting my body run rather than pushing it, remind myself to stay loose and fluid – and try to let the left calf muscle relax.

I make it to the end of lap nine, and my pace was still quite good – watch reads 7:24.  But now it’s time to have a serious conversation.  With myself.  About risk.

Back in April, I’d signed up to run a 5 mile race the week before the Cincinnati Flying Pigs Marathon.  This was a calculated risk.  But I’d thought back over my twenty years of experience and concluded that muscle strains during high-intensity running were actually quite rare.  When I was first getting into speedwork, I’d suffered a mild hamstring strain, but had recovered from it in a couple of weeks.  About four years back, I’d suffered a more serious hamstring strain while doing hill repeats, which had prevented me from running fast for nearly two years.  How my butt had ached while sitting in the car on long drives! 

As it turned out, I went out hard at the 5-miler and ended up winning my age group.  But at mile 3 I felt a sharp twinge in my right leg, just below the butt.  From a 7:00 pace, I decelerated sharply to around 9:00 per mile, and by the time I reached the finish I was limping.  A week later, I showed up at the Flying Pigs Marathon with a pocket full of Ibuprofen and a plan to walk the hills and jog the flats.  Somehow I got it done, although it was the slowest marathon of my life.

So now, with only one lap left to complete the Yasso Splits, I considered my options.  On the one hand, the drill consists of ten intervals, not nine.  I’m a big fan of completing whatever I set out to do.

On the other hand, once again I was signed up for a big race in a week’s time.  Stopping now was certainly a valid option and probably the most sensible.

Pain is a signal of risk.  How far you push through pain is really a question about how much risk you’re willing to take.  Of course, risk is inescapable in our uncertain world, for life is full of mystery.  Sometimes tenseness in a muscle is a precursor to major injury.  Sometimes it’s just a niggle that will go away.  And which it is — most of the time – there is no way to know.

“Smart grit” is when you push through pain based on an accurate assessment of the probabilities.  “Stupid grit” is being pointlessly stubborn or ignorant.

Older runners have lots of lived experience to draw upon.  Even so, we can’t always be right.  And we need to avoid the risk of excessive caution.  The fear that manifests itself in a small voice piping up about how “I’m old and therefore I can no longer do this.”  We have to fight this fear, lest it become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Which is why old runners need to keep taking risk.

Younger runners don’t have as much experience.  Pushing through pain is how they learn.  Arguably, until you understand where the real limits lie, you might as well keep pushing.  That’s why older runners encourage youngsters to go out there and try.  We encourage them by sharing our experiences and by leading by example – in other words, by staying in the fight ourselves.

After I completed lap 9, I headed off on the recovery interval, glancing at my watch to ensure I was keeping to a 10-minute pace plus-or-minus.  I found that running slowly, with a shorter stride, took some pressure off the calf.  The big race coming up was an ultramarathon, which I planned to run quite slowly, meaning that the tight calf muscle was less significant as a risk factor, although still an important consideration.

Well, they say that “the dose makes the poison.”  I made my decision — I would apply a very small amount of grit.  In a highly controlled manner. 

With that, I pushed the button on my watch, listened for the beep, and took off on the final lap.  Once again, I focused on glute engagement on the ever-so-slight uphill grade, since good form is so important.  Once again, I relaxed into a more open stride on the downhill, letting my body run instead of forcing it to do so.  Out by the pond, the ducks and goose were picking through the grass and looked quite busy and engaged.  As I rounded the final corner, the tension in the calf resolved, and I finished hard, breathing heavily, my watch indicating a pace of 7:21. 

Yasso Splits successfully completed, I jogged back to the car and drove off to breakfast.

[1] https://thelongbrownpath.com/2015/05/23/running-yasso-800s-on-a-bright-blue-track/

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