so before i was interrupted
i was going to talk about time and distance.
.
the journey runner develops a different relationship with time and distance.
in normal running you think of a distance in terms of how fast you can run it.
on a journey it becomes a matter of how many miles you can cover in a period of time like an hour…..
.
all day long.
.
sure, you can think of it in terms of minutes a mile you can run.
but a lot of other factors come into play.
like walking off course to go into a filling station for food
or climbing down a slope to dip water out of a cow pond
then there is the part where your running pace plays no part…
.
when you are unable to do anything except walk and walk
and walk some more.
even your running pace is likely to betray you in special circumstances.
like day 2, when your body refuses to believe you intend to do this again.
or when your legs are a uniform diameter from the knee to the foot
and your ankles have ceased to exist.
.
before you know it,
your miles per hour take on dimensions you had never envisioned while making your race plan.
3 miles an hour.
then 2….
.
sometimes 1.
.
to keep pace with that dread cutoff
instead of running 8 hours out of 12
you start having to run more and more hours out of 12.
9 out of 12
10, 11, 12…
.
maybe even 13 or 14.
.
so when you sit and look at those 12 hour totals for distance
they do not relate to the runs you do in training and races.
30 miles in a 12 hour span reflects some serious effort.
.
quite possibly 12 miles reflects an even greater effort.
and 7 probably means they spent half of their hours trying to sleep on a concrete pad behind an abandoned convenience market.
.
you cannot really evaluate the statistics of a journey run
until you have been on a journey to understand the relationship between time and distance.