{"id":581,"date":"2016-02-10T13:05:24","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T18:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runkevinrun.com\/?p=581"},"modified":"2016-02-10T13:05:24","modified_gmt":"2016-02-10T18:05:24","slug":"raw-miles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/?p=581","title":{"rendered":"Raw Miles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inevitably, the prose of these entries fails to meet the aspirational dreams and fantastical beliefs that I\u2019ve crafted the perfect bon mot\/insight\/tale\/\u201dblog post.\u201d I\u2019ve mentioned before the John Ford film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance <\/em>(1962). It has that famous quote:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the legend becomes fact, print the legend.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The problem with reality is that it so often falls short of what we see in our heads or dream in our thoughts. It can be a debilitating realization that sometimes we do everything we can think of and it still doesn\u2019t turn out the way we hoped or imagined. That can rob the spirit and the momentum for carrying on, for trying again, for striving to achieve something for yourself against the obstacles of realistic constraints to time, space, and energy.<\/p>\n

I say this because I worry my \u201cblog posts\u201d \u2013 even typing that as a literary concept makes me feel I\u2019ve failed my aspirational hopes for being a writer \u2013 are so imperfect and rambling that they lose much of their efficacy. In my bid to do a decent post each day, I find myself wondering if I\u2019m opting for quantity over quality, if in a mad dash to finish a post I\u2019m missing the point I was trying to make when I first set out to write the entry. Again, I\u2019m not 100% sure I know what this runkevinrun.com experiment is. I\u2019m not sure who the audience is, or if there\u2019s an audience. There\u2019s no cigar-chomping editor barking orders from a glass enclosed office, no external clock ticking on the deadline to get the words to the printers so it can make the late edition. All of the demands on getting things onto the site are because of a pact I made with myself.<\/p>\n

I say all of this because in thinking about all of this as it relates to running, I was reminded of training programs that deem mid-week runs \u201cgarbage miles.\u201d I\u2019ve never liked that phrasing but part of that is because of the definition I heard for it from runnerati<\/em>. I recently found a 2012 article by C.J. Schexnayder<\/a> that deployed that terminology for the self-proclaimed runner know-it-alls and discussed \u201cThe Great Garbage Miles Debate.\u201d There\u2019s apparently a great many opinions amongst runners as to just what garbage miles might mean. For some it\u2019s unnecessary mileage that does nothing for the training; there\u2019s quite a bit of disagreement over the fine line between under and over training. For other runners, they view the garbage miles as running for fun, the distances you do at whatever pace to get out and see the world and just enjoy the mental and physical flow of movement.<\/p>\n

When I first heard the term, it was from a runner who was dismissive of the lower mileage runs during the week but viewed them as a necessary evil to support the long weekend training run. It didn\u2019t matter what you did in those miles so long as you put in the time and distance \u2013 they were just run because this runner felt they had to be run. I don\u2019t have a problem with the notion of the \u201cgarbage miles\u201d as a necessary thing to do during the week. To be honest, I\u2019m a bit addicted to the endorphins and to the chance to get out onto the road. The time spent running can be mentally freeing, as I puzzle over something consciously or subconsciously as the miles go by. It\u2019s also a chance to disconnect from phones, screens, paper, everything. Sometimes getting away from all that noise and cacophony is the best way to return to it.<\/p>\n

As a result, I prefer to think of \u201cgarbage miles\u201d as the building blocks of running. You use those miles to maintain fitness, to build upon that base of fitness to improve endurance, speed, quality of life, or any other positive outcomes. To me the supposed \u201cgarbage miles\u201d are better viewed as \u201craw material miles\u201d or more simply \u201craw miles.\u201d They\u2019re what we use to create something greater than the miles and ourselves. I am the first to agree that sometimes those \u201craw miles\u201d are terrible and\/or \u201cgarbage.\u201d There are days when I simply do NOT want to go out and run. It\u2019s too cold, too hot, too rainy, too dreary; I\u2019m tired, I\u2019m in a lousy mood, I\u2019m feeling slothful and bloated and yucky. And inevitably it\u2019s those days that I really NEED to go for a run. Because no matter how bad the run is, no matter how \u201cgarbage\u201d-y the run might be, it\u2019s better to HAVE run than to HAVE NOT run. I may not always like going out or the physical act of running, but I can assure you I\u2019m ALWAYS glad TO HAVE RUN. I may not be happy with my speed or the experience but there\u2019s something to be said for starting and finishing. There\u2019s something to be said for the having done.<\/p>\n

Which brings me back to these blog postings. They aren\u2019t perfect. They\u2019re never going to be perfect. There\u2019s going to be typos, there\u2019s going to be missed opportunities or threads I meant to explore and failed to do justice to\u2026 there\u2019s even going to be times when I mean to discuss something and just forget entirely to do so. Whole sections may be omitted that may make the posting chaotically confusing and a disappointment to me, to you, to everyone. That\u2019s going to happen, guaranteed. But hopefully with each posting I\u2019ll get a little better. The writing will eventually get a little more focused, a little more honed. The volume of writing will serve as the building blocks. These \u201cgarbage posts\u201d enable the bigger, more important ones to pay off in the same way that the raw miles lead to a better marathon experience for me.<\/p>\n

And so I carry on, striving to improve. There will be good days and bad days. But they will be days. And the cumulative effect will be for the better. If I didn\u2019t believe that, I don\u2019t know what I would believe. The reality can give us hope or despair but the legend? The legend gives us hope. It guides us to the future with aspirational dreams of what may have come before and what might again.<\/p>\n

And so I carry on, striving to improve, searching for legends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inevitably, the prose of these entries fails to meet the aspirational dreams and fantastical beliefs that I\u2019ve crafted the perfect bon mot\/insight\/tale\/\u201dblog post.\u201d I\u2019ve mentioned before the John Ford film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). It has that famous quote: \u201cWhen the legend becomes fact, print the legend.\u201d The problem with reality is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[176,229,227,225,221,224,226,223,222,228],"class_list":["post-581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-blocks","tag-building","tag-fact","tag-ford","tag-garbage","tag-john","tag-legend","tag-miles","tag-raw","tag-reality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}