I’ve gotten some great questions from students over the past few weeks, so I decided to publish some answers to them. Thanks for those who sent in questions! If you have more that you’d like answered in the future, shoot me an email (Tyler@strivetrips.org). I’m always happy to talk training or life…

 

What are the differences you see between the half and full marathon?

In terms of the difference between a half and full marathon – I think there are two big differences: one physiological and the second mental. The physiological difference comes from the fact that in the marathon you have to run to the point where you start tapping into different energy systems that you would use in shorter races. This is what people refer to when they think about hitting “the wall” – it’s essentially running out of fuel. This is an issue you don’t run into in a race like a half marathon, because your body has plenty of room to store enough energy for running for about an hour. In the marathon, you need to train this system to work efficiently under stress – particularly through very long runs.

The mental aspect also stems from the extreme length of the event. Lots of runners will do two-hour (or more) runs in preparation for shorter events. I certainly did plenty in my training for 5k up to half marathon. But to run for two hours at a pretty fast pace is something different. Many people talk about how the race “hits halfway at 20 miles” and it takes a lot of training of the mind to be ready to deal with that fact. To get to 20 miles and know you still have to run 6+ miles hard is something that is not so easy to wrap your head around.

 

What are your long term goals for running and STRIVE? 

These are two pretty fairly different, though intertwined, questions, so let me look at them first together and then separately.

The connection is mainly due to the fact that I’ve been using my running carreer as a way to help support STRIVE since I started running post-college about a year ago. I try to use my running as a platform for spreading the word about STRIVE and STRIVE projects. This has worked out pretty well so far because a lot of the people who would be interested in a story about me as a runner are also often interested in STRIVE and the work we do abroad.

Similarly – I get a lot out of having STRIVE behind me. I love knowing that my efforts on the roads can help fund our projects – it definitely gives me the extra energy to push through that extra mile. Check out this blog post for a more articulate description of this feeling.

Anyways, to get to the specifics of your question, let me break my running and STRIVE apart for second.

To start with myself – I have the fairly simple goal of trying to find my own limits. I honestly thought I would have accomplished this long ago – at least in college – but I’m still after it. Rather than look at external benchmarks like times or races or qualifying, I try to think more about just pushing myself and perfecting the process of training myself. In layman’s terms, I’d like to keep training until I stop improving.

Now, some might accuse me of dodging the question a bit, so I’ll say that I do have goals – both realistic and unfounded. My “realistic goals” are those which I would tackle if I’m essentially at the ceiling of my ability. These have been changing over the last six years of training and include everything from breaking 18 minutes in the 5k (senior year of high school) to making a national championship meet in track (Jr. yr of college), to breaking 30 minutes in the 10k (Fall ’13), to today. If I had to make a list of “final goals” that I think are achievable given my current ability, it’d be to qualify for the Olympic Marathon Trials (running under 2h18), run under 1h05 in the half marathon, and under 29’00 in the 10k. My unrealistic goals are the same as they have been since I was 17! Make an Olympic team, win a medal, set a world record (I guess I can check that one off!)

To move to STRIVE now – I think my goals are similar in that I want to see how far we can go with it. I think it’s a great model – combining community service and athletics – and I’d love to see us all over the world in another 5-10 years. I think that the kids we attract are generally the right kind of kids for the program – it’s really self-selecting. Athletes are usually really highly motivated people and that’s who we want hanging around.

I’ve also written before about the balance of the selfless and the selfish. Athletics is often a selfish endeavor – I want to improve my times and I’m focused on me and my training. For me, having my athletics career partnered with service work helps me balance those two feelings. It makes my selfish athletic pursuits a little less selfish. I want to teach kids that there can be a balance, that it doesn’t have to be one or the other, all or nothing.

And I guess that brings me to my long-term goals with STRIVE. Not only do I want to see positive changes in the communities with whom we work, but I want to see positive changes in our students. This will be my fourth summer leading trips and I’ve already seen some incredible changes in students. For me, that’s one of the best parts, is staying in touch with kids for the years to come (made easier by facebook) and seeing them grow up and mature. If I can be a little nudge towards growth and maturity and developing as a person who cares about your fellow human being, that means the world to me.

Where do you see yourself in ten years?

Man, I wish I could tell you where I’ll be in ten months! It’s a really hard question because I feel like most of the biggest catalysts in my life have been pretty random and unpredictable. Both starting to run and working for STRIVE were actually pretty random events and those are probably the two most important things in my life now!So, I guess I can tell you what I’d LIKE to be doing in ten years (based on my current state). I’d like to be working with STRIVE, I’d like that to be a bigger program, with us able to tackle bigger and more permanent projects in more areas. Will I still be leading trips? Maybe, I’ll be almost 34 at that point, which is about how old Nic is, so if he can do it, I guess I can too!

I’d like to have a family and be “settled down” at some point. I’ve been pretty nomadic for the last year, which is fine when I’m a solo 23 year old, but I could see that changing.

Will  be running? I certainly will. At what level? I guess that depends on whether I’ve found my limits yet. I know that I’ll always keep running. Whether I run 20 miles a day or 20 miles a week, I’m not sure, but I know it’s a part of me that I’ll never be able to get rid of.

Could you share a unique experience you’ve had in your racing, training or living in South America? 

I kind of feel like every experience is unique! But if you want a good anecdote that kind of has a point – I think my trip to the Guayaquil Half Marathon is a good one.

This was in the Fall of last year. I’d been training hard and living here in Quito for about 3 months (up at altitude) and I was planning to head down to sea level to race a half marathon. I really loved Quito – I had a great job that gave me free housing, training was going super well, I was responding well to the altitude, etc. I was starting to really think about planting roots and staying for a while. I think in a way I was really over-glorifying it, but at the time I was just infatuated.

Anyways, I take the bus down to Guayaquil the day before the race. It’s supposed to be about 6 hours, ends up being close to 10. I’m literally pounding on the door of this office to get my bib # (even though I was invited by the race director) since I’m so late. I sleep at the house of my friend’s family – who are some of the kindest people I’ve ever met – they literally slept on the floor so I could have their bed (and they’d never met me before).

Race morning comes EARLY – 5am gun, so I was up at 2am – and I’m feeling kind off. I pass it off as race-day jitters and forget about it.

10km into the race I’m on 1h06 pace and feeling great. At 15km, I’m in first by a good 2-3 minutes. At 10 miles, I start getting awful stomach cramps and have to pull over and start retching. I try to start running again but every step is like getting punched in the gut.

I end up jogging in and getting passed by only two guys. I spent the next 30 hours pretty sick with food poisoning/exhaustion.

I guess the moral of the story is that it’s easy to lose sight of the drawbacks of something when you’re still in that honeymoon period. I was so enamored with Quito – the mountains, the low cost of living, the altitude – that I ignored the possible downsides (like getting food poisoning the night before an important race). Could it have happened in the USA? Sure, but it’s probably a lot less likely.

Now, I see both sides of Quito. For now, I think the positives still outweigh the negatives, but it took an experience like that to kind of jolt me into realizing that there were downsides at all.

For a longer and more well written account of that race and the events around it, check out this blog post

What does it mean for you to be running the Boston Marathon?

What running Boston means to me – sheesh, there’s a lot there. Running the Boston Marathon is something I’ve thought about since I started running in high school and now to finally be just a couple weeks away is pretty intense. Particularly with THIS Boston – coming a year after such an awful tragedy last Marathon Monday – there’s going to be a lot of emotion on race day.

But, I feel like this is our chance to show resilience as a people and a city to hardship. What better way to show how tough a city is than by running for 26 miles? Whatever happens on race-day, it’ll be an honor to just say that I stood there on the starting line in this historic year.