My knees don’t hurt.  Earthshaking observation?  Maybe not but for those who run in snow country it is sweet.  I run a lot of miles and me knees are just fine.  Mostly.  My knees only hurt in the Winter.  For weeks here its been snow and ice.  Snow on trails.  Ice on the sidewalks.  However, for the last week Carole and I have had the distinct pleasure of running on [mostly] bare pavement.  Hence, my knees don’t hurt.

The not-so-late and certainly not-so-great Lance Armstrong noted that endurance athletes experience two kinds of pain:  sweet pain & sour pain.  Any athlete, whether you run ultramarathons or swim sprint freestyle “50s”, you know sweet pain.  That breathless and bone-tired feeling followed by a crooked smile when you see your time, or think of a podium spot or maybe just imagine a beer and burger.  Maybe its the headspace you go to ignore your screaming legs approaching the crest of really long brutal climb on the bike when all you do is pray to the endorphin gods.  Whatever it is, sweet pain is just that-sweet.  We crave it.  We love it.  Sweet pain is its on medal.

Sour pain?  Sour just plain sucks.  Sour pain is a screaming achilles or bleeding blister on your toe.  Sour pain is a screaming headache from dehydration, barfing your guts out or even worse-crapping your guts out from a bad plate of pasta at the athletes dinner.  This happened to friends of mine a couple of years ago.  One related it this way:  “It was about mile 12 when I finally stopped shitting…..”  Sour pain is just misery by another name.  Sour pain is limping around on Monday after running 10 miles on snow win Sunday.

Running in snow country is one thing-perseverance.  Fresh and soft or old and packed its just harder.  Fresh snow is like running in sand and we all just LOVE that!  Old, packed and icy snow is another demon altogether.  Humps and bumps of what is often just ice.  Ice is slippery-duh!  Trails and sidewalks become little minefields of slippage.  Forget pace or rhythm.  You spend an hour dancing and hopping trying to find traction-and avoiding ending up on your ass.  At the time its just irritating.  Even a bit fun with a good running partner-which I have by the way!  Problem is the next day; or the next week.  All that commotion just makes my knees ache.  Stairs hurt.  Lunges in the gym are suddenly torture.  I walk across campus and suddenly turn into a limping one man.  Okay, I AM an old man but you get the point.

Don’t get me wrong, Winter is beautiful and you can’t exactly “fix it”, but running in Winter is not tops on my list.  Its sour pain.  And nobody likes sour pain.  Sometimes though you get a reprieve.  Its above freezing and the snow and ice retreat if only for a bit.  Bare asphalt is a thing of beauty.

My knees don’t hurt!

Okay, so Post #1 of Chasing Long:  1 year-1000 miles.  First thing I think is the what and why of the title?  Actually, I get the “why” question about WHY I do any of this crazy stuff all the time, but I digress.  “Chasing Long” are two words that pretty much describe what my wife Carole and I do for fun and adventure.  We’ve spent the last 13 years running marathons [110 so far in all 50 States and 9 countries], swimming across lakes, sloshing and slogging through triathlons [from Sprints to Iron-Distance] and long-distance cycling events [long, longer, and I can’t feel my butt distances].  The philosophy is that if we can’t go fast-which we don’t-we might as well go long.  Okay, who are we kidding; we “chase long” so we can travel to cool places, see stuff and drink beer.  And if we can stay off blood pressure meds so much the better!

So, how about the 1 year-1000 miles?  As with most good things it started with beer.  C and I were quaffing a brew and talking about how many total miles we run in a year and figured we were close to 1000 miles so why not make that an unofficial goal?  Makes for a pithy little title for a blog too!  Full disclosure:  1000 miles in a year sounds is a long way to run but we have running friends who probably do twice that or more but we also train for other events like, well, an Ironman.  Yea, keep reading.

So let’s continue this little stroll.  2017 is an Ironman Year for C and Me.  My 4th and C’s 5th.  This year is IM Wisconsin in Sept.  When you pick an IM the training tends to dominate the whole season.  We’ll train and pick other races based on whether they help us prep for Sept. or won’t hurt our prep for Sept.  Why not just skip races all together and focus on the IM…like any reasonable person?  Well, boring comes to mind. So in addition to swimming, running, and cycling around our home in northern Idaho we’ll toss other events just to keep it interesting.  What about that 1000 miles?  Didn’t forget!  That’s the reason for the title.  Pithy, like I said.

Like I said I get asked why all the time.  So I thought you-that is YOU my dear reader-would like to follow along for our Ironman Year.  How we train, what we do and see and who we meet along the way.  So sit back, crack a beer and come along as we go Chasing Long.

Post Script-I didn’t want this to be just a log of miles but rather a blog about a journey, but given that it is a journey of “1000 miles” I should, at least occasionally, give you an update on how far we’ve run.  So…..since Jan 1–80 miles.  Not to bad for 3 weeks!