Tales of Caballo Blanco

In distance running your brain can be your biggest ally.  It can also be your enemy in equal measure.  Today my brain was well on my side thanks largely to a truly inspirational book I've just started reading. 

I'd highly recommend Born To Run by Christopher McDougal to every runner out there.  It is the best book on running I have read (although, just in case I've jumped the gun, I'll  just add that I am only a quarter of the way through).  It's largely about Christopher's search for a secretive Mexican tribe called the Tarrahumama who seem to have amazing feats of endurance.  The book describes how the Tarrahumama stage 48 hour foot races, running in little more than home made sandals and fuelled by alcoholic corn beer and home made energy drink called iskiate. It also tells the tale of many endurance athletes, including a mysterious runner known as Caballo Blanco (white horse) who is either a fugitive running from the law, or an ex-boxer punishing himself for killing a man.  Caballo Blanco is an American who lives amongst the Tarrahumama and seems to live simply to run from place to place eating nothing but beans provided by countless 'Mamas' throughout the land.

With tales from the book fresh in my mind, I set off on a 21 mile run this morning, conjuring up images of Caballo Blanco as I ran along the Roman Road to Linton water tower.  Despite the fact that I spent yesterday on a 7 hour training course that required performing various workouts with a piece of training kit called a ViPR (which stands for vitality, performance and re-conditioning) and waking this morning with buttocks of steel as a result, I felt really loose and energised once I was into my run.  I'm convinced it's the inspiration that I've taken from the book that had me bounding along tarmac and trail with ease.  I was fully aware that my pace was considerably faster than normal for a Sunday long run.  I managed to run 21.28 miles in 2 hours 30 minutes, an average pace of about 7 minutes per mile.  The lap pace shown in the photo below of 7 minutes 43 seconds per mile was my cool-down pace.  My slowest pace on the run was 7:31 per mile, on a stretch that was all uphill!  My fastest pace was 6:39 per mile towards the end of the run.

I'm sorry for boring you with all of these stats.  The point I'm making is that I was running amazingly well (without sounding big headed), and I'm convinced it's all down to the power of the mind.  I know for a fact that it's not down to doing any real quality training of late.  Sure, I've put in the miles, but I haven't put myself through a hard interval training session for weeks.  I had aimed to do at least 8 x 800m fast intervals on Thursday, but bottled out in favour of a steady run along the river. 

Today I wasn't even aiming to run at a good pace.  The only goal was to run all 21 miles and to try and enjoy the run as much as possible.  I managed to achieve this, no doubt also helped by fantastic weather which had me running in vest and shorts for the first time this year.


Back home after running 21.3 miles

The only issue that I have now is whether I should revise my goals for London marathon.  Up till now my goal was simply to finish in less than 3 hours 15 minutes, the cut off point for a guaranteed entry to next year's marathon for someone of my advanced years.  I'm now wondering if I should aim to run a sub 3 hour marathon.  I do have to ask myself why I feel the need to do this.  I'm sure I won't improve on last year's PB of 2 hours 55 minutes.  I should, perhaps, be keeping my eye on the bigger picture, which is simply to complete 12 marathons this year.  Maybe I'll see how I feel on the big day.  The only good reason I can come up with for aiming for sub 3 hours is because I can.  Who knows how many years of good marathon running I have left in me.