Amelia Boone

Runner’s World [June 2018] had a very interesting article on obstacle/ultra runner Amelia Boone. I had never even heard of obstacle running (90 pound pack, freezing rivers, dead of winter) of which she had won 4 championships. There are pictures of her with a log on her shoulder and of her doing various other extreme things to her body. Which was kind of the point of the article.

She had grown bored with doing superhuman feats in obstacle running and had decided to take up ultra running (26.2 – 100+ miles) without benefit of a coach or training. A sucker for punishment she pushed through the pain and managed to break her femur simply by running. Not everyone can do that. The pain of a developing stress fracture will cause mere humans to stop before it actually breaks in half.

Not Amelia. Then she did rehab so incredibly bad (1 legged pushups, crutching it for 8 miles), her imbalanced body suffered a sacral fracture at the base of her spine when she incorrectly returned to running. Another 6 months rehab. This long painful journey eventually caused her to get at the root of her psychological problems that were causing her to abuse her body.

Despite all the winning and associated glory she was secretly miserable and lonely inside. She had come to believe that if she didn’t reach the podium after every race people wouldn’t love her. Sponsors would drop her. That failure would own her. This despite being a successful lawyer at Apple and a champion runner!

Wow. That someone so accomplished could suffer self-esteem issues is mindboggling. What Amelia came to realize was that sometimes she wouldn’t win, and that was okay. Friends and family  would still love her. The world would turn. She came to be grateful to be able to do what she does and not look at it as she has to do what she does. She began to find joy in the journey. And in her friends. And in herself.

Runner’s World 

 

 

 

Ultra Runner David Laney

“I think people don’t realize how bad these races are for your body. They do extensive damage; you are running hard for such a long time. Your brain chemicals get really out of whack after doing something that hard.” – David Laney

Later in the September issue of Trail Runner he talks about being in a complete funk for a week after an ultra, “post-race depression”. There is another condition your body goes into when it has gone too long without nutrition called “Catabolysis”, and your body has no energy left and starts to breakdown muscle tissue. Ultra runners who run an entire day or multiple days during a 100 or 200 miler can’t consume enough food. It is in essence “starving to death” during the run.

So let’s see, after an ultra your body starts to eat itself and throws you into a depression. Who wouldn’t want to do that??  Seriously though, when you have gone past physical fitness and into harming your body, that’s just stupid. The whole point of running is for health and the runner’s high. What David Laney describes in his on words is not good for the body or mind. It does not compute. I read Trail Runner for the wonderful vistas and stories of human triumph. Unfortunately there is a dark side to it as well.

From the October issue of Runner’s World: “In the 1982 Boston Marathon during their ‘duel in the sun’, Alberto Salazar and Dick Beardsley famously duked it out on an unusually hot day. Their sprint to the finish remains one of sport’s most epic moments.

Salazar won – by 2 seconds. Soon after, he was rushed to a medical tent for 6 liters of saline solution, delivered by IV. As he told John Brant in a 2004 Runner’s World feature: “After that I was never quite the same. I had a few good races, but everything was difficult. Workouts that I used to fly through became an ordeal. And eventually, of course, I got so sick that I wondered if I’d ever get well.”

Salazar did get well, eventually, but his racing career never fully recovered.”

Another example was in the June 2018 issue of Runner’s World about Amelia Boone. She was crushing it in “obstacle racing” (90-pound pack for over 72 hours at a time in freezing rivers in the dead of winter). She amassed four obstacle racing world championship titles and over 50 podiums in five years. All the while nearly destroying her body by not having a coach and not listening to her body.

When it should have been the happiest time of her life, “I would sob before races because I was afraid of letting everyone down.” “That if I didn’t win races I wouldn’t be loved.” “I spent years winning race after race and wondering why I still wasn’t happy. Why the more I won, the less fulfilled I felt. I kept waiting for the time the winning would finally fill me up, without realizing that winning was never going to be enough. No number of wins on earth would make me happy. I was missing the point all along – to embrace the things that truly brought me joy: the pursuit, and the sharing of that pursuit with others.”