Managing the Low Points "Come on Joe, Let Yourself Have a Good Day" (Thriving)

Fa thump, fa thump, fa thump was the sound of my forefoot and mid sole strikes echoed by the rhythm of my breathing ha whoo, ha whoo, ha whoo and finished with the feeling of my heart beating kwa fump, kwa fump, kwa fump. It is hard for the rhythm of contact with the land, lungs and heart beat to synchronize so effortlessly, but that was how I felt as I powered through the thirtieth mile of the JFK 50 miler. That is the point when I know I can finish, but something different occurred this year. I was having an amazing day with nothing noteworthy to complain about. My legs hurt, but I had no heat cramps, I was tired, but extremely motivated, my brain was so taxed that I could not remember the names of the people around me, but somehow I was managing the math for all my mileage splits in my head. Everything was as it should have been for the strongest run in my life.

Usually this point is a reckoning and the finish my sole motivator, but this year I went into beast mode. I grunted in a primal desire to push forward. I was right where I wanted to be, still very tired, but from worthy effort and I repeated a mantra that had gotten me to mile thirty so strong physically and mentally. "Let yourself have a good day." Sometimes it is hard for me to have positive outlook. It is hard to believe that I can have good days. Sometimes in races like this my worry over an unmanageable low point will sap my energy, slow my pace down, and make something I love to do burdensome. People tried to pull me out of my race though.

"If your were in track club you would definitely run intervals and you could run sub 9 hour pace... I usually run that pace."

I am always annoyed with people who tell you they are having a bad day when you pass them. I could have got in my own head, but I waited for a rugged downhill, pulled away and said:

"Well, I run trails, mountains and stairs because that helps with me PTSD. My biggest issue is preventing panic attacks on runs so I focus on that. I seem to be doing great today, and I am just happy that all the causes of my panic attacks left me with my life, arms and legs. I am lucky to have days like today." He was apologetic, but I was too focused on the trail to acknowledge it. I did enjoy nothing-ing his attempt to correct his previously callous statement.

Most of the time I think it is in poor taste to over share these sorts of personal details with some random person on the trail, but in this case I was pissed off. However, like my injury at Bradbury Mountain in August I had earned a great day through all my hard work. Just because that guy ran harder last year didn't give him a pass on this year's lower level of training. I thanked Chick Hill again for all the rugged 7 minute mile paced rocky downhills that made this separation so easy and a conversation that could have been unsettling gave me a lot of confidence. It was a real battle this year to shave 55 minutes off of last year's finish. It took so much focus and discipline to run the first leg of the Appalachian Trail (AT) in a way that maxed my ability to climb with the fact that an elevated heart and the thick fall air were common triggers for me.

I ran on the razor's edge between hard effort and the prevention of a panic attack. I could do this because I trained myself on the terrain that most reminded me of combat and the explosion that gave me mTBI that inevitably made me a civilian. I wasn't going so far as criticizing someone's performance, but I had worked so hard and through real adversity. I wasn't going to have some track club split counter tell me how to train and run my race. On my second ultra I has used that style of training plan, but it landed me in an Intensive Care Unit for three days, so nothing was taking me off my plan.

PTSD and panic attacks were becoming a bit of an advantage. Running your best race without burning yourself out is a similarly difficult balancing act. A life that revolves around managing my anxiety was actually making me better on race day. But it was more than that.

I seemed to be gliding along effortlessly on the first section of the AT and the pace was not difficult until the late forties. I continued to run effortlessly on the first half of the C&O Canal. My deep longing to transcend and merge into the place I live in Maine had made my greatest strength running on rough and rocky trails. My feet slammed into rocks several times at JFK, but my balance kept me on my feet. On the single track trail my movements were light and I passed people with ease. The whole year I needed those rough trails because they were the only place I could stay in the moment. People kept complaining and I held my tongue until the last section of the AT.

"I love this shit so much... I am so happy to be here."

This made me look a like sadist, but it was true and this attitude was helping set the conditions for a great day. It had been hard and my biggest problem was consuming enough calories to keep going strong. I would eat PowerBar apple sauce and get sick for a few minutes while my digestion was competing with my quadriceps for energy. This would be worth it when the more slowly released applesauce carbohydrates paid dividends late in the race.

28.4 miles in at Antietam Aqueduct

I was running my race plan perfectly. Get off the AT (15.5)  a little behind on pace and make it to Antietam Aqueduct on pace. I came of the AT at 12:49 pace and by Antietam I was at 11:49 splits, 14 seconds under 12 minute mile 10 hour pace. I gained about 5 minutes and I was so pumped. I recognized my pace earlier in the day, but I would wait till the last twenty miles to really grind at max effort. I can't describe the joy that comes when you do something as hard as run fifty miles in under 10 hours, and how amazing it feels to still have the fortitude to push harder in the last twenty miles. I invite anyone who thinks PTSD is a syndrome of the weak to line up with me next year and call me weak on the back twenty. At this point going that hard simply maintained my pace at 11:49. I was outside of myself, though the last 8 miles of road and high winds was miserable. I was tired, cold and on cloud nine. I kept a run down hill and straightaways, and walked uphill until I reached the last mile and a half. I must have clocked a 10 minute last mile because the finish line came quickly. I looked at the clock and it was 9:50(:32).



My wife was waiting for me and we were so excited. I let out a guttural yell, as if I was some medieval knight after vanquishing all my foes. I waited for, one of my living heroes and founder of Team Red, White and Blue, Mike Ervin to cross and as I cheered his equally amazing accomplishment. I never thought I would ever be able to stay in front of such amazing runners and leaders on veterans issues, it is still hard to believe that the day was not something I imagined.

http://teamrwb.org/

When life is miserable it is so much easier for me get stuck, but it is often what I do in the low points that sets the conditions for when I feel stronger. Its hard to run my race, suck down my applesauce and just let my legs keep going. Having PTSD feels like running on a gnarly, rocky and mountainous trail when everyone around you is on a smooth surface. Yet when I am on rocky trails I am in my element, and everything feels easier when I recognize how much harder life is for me. I need that perspective. At the JFK 50 Miler most the people around me left the AT demoralized while I left fired up, and easily made up my pace before my toughest push. I had time in the bank and chipped away a little more time in the last ten miles. PTSD keeps me in the doldrums a lot more than others and I often have to say things like, "just manage this low point Joe." Sometimes when I am in the toughest place on my path and its important to let those momentary set backs be momentary setbacks. Sometimes I struggle because the path is rocky, but when I manage my low points I sometimes find myself at Antietam Aqueduct with time in the bank, feeling amazing and surging forward because I did everything I could when the path was harder and everything was a lot more difficult. The contextually accurate positive self talk that guided me to an amazing day was just a representation of a coping mechanism that I have developed over months of practice. Managing PTSD is extremely difficult but it has taught me how to thrive in some of the most challenging of circumstances.

*Ultra Runner Geoff Roess is known for focusing on the low points on 100 mile races. It keeps me going every time I have a rough day.

(Thriving) Chick Hill

The Peaked Mountain and Little Peaked Mountain faces.

On a hot, but manageable August Sunday I found myself in Bradbury Mountain State Park running the toughest race of the year. The course's 1450 ft elevation gain and equal loss in only 9 miles makes it one of the most challenging in Maine without factoring all of the roots, rocks, and New England rock-wall obstacles you traverse to get to the finish. Ian Parlin is a sadist in the way that any good trail race director should be. He decided to cut out some downhill switchbacks to add about 400 more feet of gain and let us all know that at the starting line. That's why I run his races. So while getting to the boundary road with the addition of a strong climb I was excited about my pace without any panic attacks. After two days of rain  the course was wet and slippery, and I was still in a large crowd of people. As we started the first real climb (on the old course that is) my left foot landed on a rock was deceivingly wet and slippery. My left leg slipped, and from the bruising it appeared to have slammed into another rock or stump: a fact I was oblivious of at the time. What I was intimately aware of was the movement of my leg.

I have broken my ankle before, and I have never felt my leg move like it did at Bradbury. The ankle rolled so extremely that my knee snapped by the strain. I was instantly sickened in the way that you feel when ice breaks underneath you. "Fuck! Its time for six months of rehab." My brother-in-law was behind me and he later said that he thought I broke my leg. For a few seconds I knew that I broke my leg. The pain and nauseous feeling put me into a walk before my mind even fully reacted. I needed to walk as far as I could with the adrenaline I had because I was in the most remote place on the course (another runner passed out nearby and it took hours to get him off the course). "How was I walking though, my leg was broken right? It had to be." I walked up the hill. It hurt but my leg was working. "How was it working?" Sick and crying from the shock and the pain I started to run. I didn't know how I still could, but I'd worked too hard to run my best time. I deserved this and it might be my last run of the year, and I knew that, for some reason, my body takes three to five hours to swell up. Let's go! (Oh By the way Let's Go is the modo of my of my Airborne Infantry Regiment. Glider up son!)

The view from Little Peaked Mountain.

Chick Hill is not actually the title of the mountain that I have been climbing a lot lately, but it is what here everyone calls Peaked Mountain, which is situated near Chick Hill. I like that about Peaked Mountain. A lot of people climb it, but few really know its actual name. Even fewer truly appreciate it. Most of its trails are overgrown, its rocky road up to the cell phone tower is the only thing that is, albeit reasonably, well maintained. Its older, perhaps better, ridge-line trail has been absorbed into the forest. The fire break/road like surfaces are as technically difficult as any trail in the area. This would be where I would reconnect to my strongest mentality. The drive to Clifton Maine has become an obsession of mine lately. The whole week I am be excited about my sole foray to the mountain. I read maps, look at Google imagery to try and find new trails to run. I was working out, exploring and fusing with the place.

Birds eye view of Acadia National Park.

Peaked Mountain felt right, it was poorly managed, in places grossly clear cut, in others the forest had claimed the trail, and it was small and underrated. It felt like me, and I was building a relationship with a place. Not the tired and common unrealistic anthropomorphizing of a space, rather I was falling in love with its flaws as well as its charms. I'd come home covered in its tall unchecked grass, at times bleeding with little bits of mountain inside my knee and palms. Weeks later I would vacuum little bits of mountain from under the door mat for almost 10 minutes. I've bled and swet into the place and carried a little of it home with me with every trip. Too many people try to shape the land, or possess it, but few are shaped by it and let themselves be possessed by the space they live in. Even fewer would feel that way about a place with a man made road, a large cell phone tower, and beer bottles strewn about at the summit. Not me, I loved the place because that felt more like me. I could see Acadia to the south and the larger peaks to the west. Running goals that this place would help me meet, but I was deeply attached to the imperfections of the space. This was life and space that defied narrative: imperfectly appropriate. It was so much more like myself, in its beauty, its unkept and unfinished nature, yet at its summit was one of the most beautiful scenes in vacationland (Maine). Peaked Mountain had recharged me in ways that I haven't felt since I went to war.

Check the wince. Image Credit Maine Running Photos.

Bradbury was decidedly frustrating because of the sprained ankle, but I'd been here before. I'd sprained my ankle at my first 100 mile attempt and I went 29 miles on it before deciding it wasn't worth it to risk worse injury (my main effort that year was JFK and I wanted to get to the line uninjured). I'd sprained my ankle early on Bradbury's 12 mile Bruiser and finished. In Ranger school I had the worst sprain of my life on the march to Darby and made it through the whole phase (I recycled because I was too weak with that ankle). My wife says,"if Joe's gonna sprain his ankle its gonna be in the first two miles and he's gonna finish;" she just gets me. I was frustrated because I was doing so well and I thought that I wasn't going to have an improved time.

Bloodied compression socks. TRWB

No, I was ready for this and I could still do it! I'd spent too many days on Peaked Mountain and I'd earned an excellent performance. That was different, for the first time in years I felt like I owed myself a victory. I was worth it, and I might have even owed it to Peaked for all the time I spent on it. More pragmatically the way I'd run Peaked Mountain prepared me. On my toughest 8 miler, I started by climbing the grade 8, 1.5 mile, 800 ft gain, category 3 climb up to the summit. After catching a toe I scraped up my knee and it was initially bleeding pretty bad. I pulled my compression socks over it to stop the bleeding and ran down the mountain. Halfway down the mountain I checked my leg and the bleeding had stopped. Let's go! I wanted to add some to speed to my total pace so I turned unto a firebreak that led to the actual Chick Hill. I took a left hand turn down what, I guess, was a logging road that wasn't on the map and didn't make it to Chick Hill. The initial climb made my calves all but useless so I had to rely on my quadriceps to ensure that I could hike up the summit and still be at a good ultra pace (12 minute miles).

I was busting my butt (literally) and quads to maintain nine minute miles so that my ending split would still be at running pace with all the hiking involved. I pushed up Little Peaked Mountain's summit at a good hike and ran up Peaked again. My pace on that 1900 ft total climb was faster than last years Breaker. I began to realize that I needed both the climbing calves and quads to manage the terrain at the Chick area so I started adding faster flatter running with my dog Darby and my mountain days got better and better. I felt awesome, and fulfilled.

More importantly I'd hiked so much at racing pace. Just minutes after my sprain came the south ridge of Bradbury Mountain. I was not feeling up to running that kind of grade just yet so I leaned forward put my hands on my knees and hiked. To my surprise my walking wasn't only keeping pace, but gaining on most of the runners around me. The descents were more difficult. I had my ankle fully extended when it twisted so it seemed to only really be acting up on steep downhill terrain. The down hill was easier physically, but I couldn't shred and gain speed. It was frustrating to basically lose all the calf strength I gained climbing Peaked, but I'd also focused on hiking and quad strength. Two out of three wasn't bad.

Last climb. Ian Parlin in left corner. Image Maine Running Photos.

On the descents I just kept telling myself "10 minute miles, push with quads. Run with quads on the flats, don't waste a second when your ankles don't matter." Still I was very practical about my climbs. The summit trail is foolish to run anyway. Its 200 ft gain in maybe a tenth of a mile. I just ate an Espresso Love Gu, hands on knees hiking, and I lost very little on the worst climbs. There is about a mile of descent afterwards and I would hold onto the others as long as I could and then back to my ten minute mantra. When I saw the top of the last climb I was ecstatic. I ran up ignoring the pain. I held my pace on this descent, "who cares about pain in the last mile. The pain will subside a lot more when I stop running right?" At the beginning of the last climb I'd looked at my watch and saw that I was at about an hour twenty. My best finish was 1:51:20 so I think I was also charged by what I'd done. I ran at full speed, ten minute pace be damned at that point, and caught two who closed up on me after the last descent. 1:42:21 was my finish nine minutes faster than my best time.

Where's the medic?

"I can't believe you finished the race" was how my brother-in-law greeted me. He'd beaten me and I didn't want to steal his thunder by complaining about the sprain, and imply that he'd won by default because I think he would have prevailed regardless. We made our way to a fireman who checked to see if I'd broken my ankle. Apparently I hadn't broken it and as I sit here drafting this post icing my swollen ankle, I am surprised at how well it is healing. I have subsequently ran my fastest two splits to the the top of the mountain, back to back with only time to refill my bottle so it seems like I've recovered. At Peaked I'd gotten better at small quick steps and the only good thing about the sprain was that I hadn't fell. A quick small step pulled my leg up before all of my weight was placed on my precarious ankle and it was relieved of a break or worse injury. In remembering those moments when I felt like I owed myself a great race regardless, I am reminded of why it is I race on trails. It reminds me of how tough I can be in a crisis.

No matter how much writing, research, and advocacy I do for PTSD I still deep down feel weak. Races like Bradbury, and days like on Peaked when I hurt myself, but still pushed on, remind me of how I respond to injuries. They remind me that I finished the Darby Queen a day after a minor surgery once and another time without all the skin on one of my heals. They remind me that I am excellent at finishing physical challenges even when I am injured. They remind me that all the stereotypes and perceived stigma about PTSD being a result of weakness are bullshit. I don't know how to be a tougher person than I am (sure there are tougher) and I have PTSD. I am both the 90% disabled vet and the guy who finished one of the toughest races in Maine despite an injury. Better, perhaps even tougher, runners called it quits for the same kind of injury that day. Physical injuries are so much easier for me, because they are concrete and have time tested solutions. Rest, Ice, elevate, and compress. With every sprain, fall, cut, and painful day on the trail I am reminded the value of recuperation, and it helps me value and manage my invisible injuries a little better. I also feel like I owed it to Peaked/Chick for what I'd learned and becoming closer to a space is helping me with all my triggers in ways that I wouldn't have expected. By getting attached to this space I am having an easier time remembering that it is not Iraq, and that helps a lot. Transcendence for me comes with effort that pays dividends in every facet of my life, but it also helps me see a place for what is is and not idealize it in ways that are unrealistic. Home was never the ideals I shaped in my mind to escape the the hell that is war, and it takes time, for me miles, and effort to recreate my sense of safe space. I'll still sprain ankles, get bloodied and bruised in my safe spaces, but every-time is an opportunity to get a little stronger, push a little harder, and value the same recovery from the wounds no one else can see.