The Palidrome Mileage Program

This is the summer of palindromes. My mileage sheet (per week) for the last nine weeks reads: 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, 99, 111. It started as a cutesy way to get to where I wanted to be by July, and turned into a mileage program to see if my body could handle high mileage. Ever since I read the running cult book “Once A Runner” my freshman year, I’ve wondered if my body could hold up over 120 miles/week, and this might be the best chance I have at finding out. While it might look like I’m finished at 111, the last step in my Palindrome Mileage Program is 121. If I don’t make it there this week (or even if I do), I’ve got all of August.

What’s it like running the highest mileage of my life in Shanghai? It’s learning to be OK with being gross and disgusting as you hop by thousands of pedestrians every run; it’s like trying to go crazy, running as far as you ever have and consciously deciding “I could go further”; it’s spending your day waiting in between runs; it’s like eating so you can run, making your own food to make sure you’re getting enough protein/calcium, whatever; it’s like this: a curious popping sound started coming from my knee whenever I went too fast without fully warming up and instead of being alarmed, my first thought was that I would be able to better regulate my warm-up this way.

There are several not-so-incredible things about what I’m doing: I’m training in a city with no hills, at sea level, and deciding my own pace day-to-day (though sticking close to a range my coach wants us running at). All this makes hitting high mileage easier and slightly less meaningful. Most serious athletes do their heavy training at high altitude with a team.

There are several incredible things about what I’m doing: I’m putting down lifetime-high mileage from the center of one of the largest, most populated cities in the world, entirely on pavement and without ice baths (to keep my legs from getting injured) during monsoon season in shanghai (heavy pollution + rain = acid rain!). And outside of a monthly e-mail from my coach to the entire team, there’s no one patting my back or cheering me on, though I do get some phenomenal support from the occasional Chinese man on street corners. All this, with a full-time 9-6 job.

Speaking of acid rain I just remembered and looked up an E-mail I sent in 2008 to then-Captain Jake Gallagher:

“I've been in Beijing for a few weeks, but now I'm spending some time backpacking around China.  I just got into Shanghai from Qingdao... Between you and me, I'm afraid that with the blinding smog and all-encompassing pavement in Beijing something in my body is going to give up.  I'm safe from lung cancer for another week and a half until I return to Beijing, but I still only get about 100 meters of soft surface running a week. Then there’s the acid-rain-ensuing monsoon season. The fiya has got to blaze somehow, eh?”

It’s now Tsunami season again in Shanghai and I’m plugging along all the same. I’m still unclear whether the fact that I hold the same attitude as in 2008 makes me extremely proud of my perseverance or scared of my ignorance and stupidity. Either way, this might be the only chance I have to do this sort of training, and I’m taking life up on the offer.