About

Clyn­ton Taylor

Run­ning is an ongo­ing quest, just like life. This blog is an account of my jour­ney from hos­pi­tal bed to fin­ish line, as I over­come a num­ber of set­backs (her­ni­ated disc, sleep apnea, hyper­ten­sion). I hope that by shar­ing the ups and downs together with my learn­ings along the way, you too may reach your goals. After all, run­ning, like life, is a quest best taken together.

This blog is an account of my ongo­ing quest to become a dis­tance run­ner, and the many set­backs and obsta­cles I am fight­ing to over­come (sleep apnia and her­ni­ated disc, among other things).

I live in Burlingame, CA with my wife and two young daugh­ters, as well as a cat and bunny. I have been a veg­e­tar­ian all of my live, though am striv­ing to eat more healthy foods of late, avoid­ing gluten, refined sug­ars, and dairy. In addi­tion to spend­ing time with my fam­ily, I enjoy pho­tog­ra­phy, lis­ten­ing to music, back­pack­ing and moun­taineer­ing, and espresso, but do all of that far too lit­tle (except the espresso part). Over the recent years, I have also remem­bered how I love running.

Email me directly at clyn­ton at run­ningquest dot net.

My Run­ning Quest

The fol­low­ing is a work in progress – wear your hard hats!

RE-INTRO TO RUNNING

Back in the sum­mer of 2005 I vis­ited my best friend from Jr. High days, Aragorn (yes, his par­ents named him after the Tolkien char­ac­ter from the Lord of the Rings books) in Mass­a­chu­setts. He had taken up run­ning a few years back, real­iz­ing that the body that wasn’t suited for foot­ball or bas­ket­ball was per­fectly designed for run­ning. One after­noon dur­ing my visit he asked if I wanted to join him on his run. I thought for all of a sec­ond about exert­ing myself in the sum­mer heat and humid­ity and declined. I wanted to hang with him, but not kill myself. He sug­gested I ride his bike and I accepted, swal­low­ing my pride and con­vinc­ing myself that I wouldn’t run into any­one I knew.

We headed off – he on shoes, me on wheels. I was amazed at how effort­lessly he  ran, even up the hills. I rode along­side on the bike, huff­ing and puff­ing more than he was. Sud­denly some­thing beeped and he took off run­ning like the road run­ner. I looked behind us, won­der­ing if he knew some­thing had begun to chase us. I pumped the ped­als hard to catch up with him and asked what had just hap­pened. He explained that he was doing inter­vals. “Right,” I said, “inter­vals. What’s an inter­val?” He explained that he was run­ning two min­utes flat out every mile, based on his heart rate mon­i­tor. He lifted his shirt and showed me the heart rate mon­i­tor. I was relieved that what I had seen him put on ear­lier was not a man bra – how do you tell your best guy friend that they don’tt have the right bra size? Aragorn went on to describe that you need to work your heart at dif­fer­ent lev­els, lest it becomes too com­fort­able. I thought this sounded like some­thing off of the back of the book, “How to Have a Heart Attack: Seven sim­ple steps,” but kept my mouth shut.

When we got back to his apart­ment  Aragorn showed me how he uploads the data from his watch onto his com­puter. The soft­ware pro­gram churned the num­bers and spit out graphs depict­ing his run in terms of heart rate, dis­tance, and even ele­va­tion gain. I was intrigued. The next day we dropped in to his local run­ning store. I lis­tened in to the con­ver­sa­tion he and the sales­man, who was obvi­ously a run­ner him­self, about the ben­e­fits of the dif­fer­ent, new mod­els of shoes. The con­ver­sa­tion included words I had never heard before, like supina­tion and prona­tion. I real­ized that a run­ning shoe is not just a run­ning shoe. The descrip­tion of the tech­nol­ogy in the shoes and their bright shiny col­ors got me think­ing about run­ning in a whole new light. Instead of expe­ri­enc­ing the usual feel­ings of pain and dis­cour­age­ment that accom­pa­nies fan­tasies or even obser­va­tions of run­ning, I  began to think to myself, that maybe, with the right shoes, I would enjoy run­ning. Run­ning began to look more like a sport to me and less like a per­sonal  tor­ture routine.

A num­ber of months after return­ing home to the San Fran­cisco Bay Area, I got around to pay­ing a visit to my local run­ning store. After sev­eral sprints down the side­walk in a num­ber of shoes I walked out in a shiny new pair of new Mizunos. I felt like a real run­ner! Unlike the other sports I had been into – climb­ing, ski­ing, or back­pack­ing – I only needed to make one pur­chase to be ready to rock and roll. I began to run in the evening on the track at the nearby high school. Things went alright. I enjoyed get­ting out of the house, into the warm night air. I liked being under the lights and how they made it eas­ier to imag­ine a crowd cheer­ing me on. It felt real. I was sur­rounded by other peo­ple at a vari­ety of stages in their run­ning and gen­eral ath­letic abil­i­ties which I found moti­vat­ing. I ran past some, and was passed up by oth­ers. But what was impor­tant was that I was out there. I had started my quest. I even packed my shoes on a busi­ness trip to Atlanta and man­aged to get in mid­night run. It felt good. Not the run – I felt like crap –  but the fact that I had actu­ally made it out run­ning even when the odds were against me doing so (travel sure makes it tough to keep up a routine.

Well, it wasn’t too long before the work load became an insur­mount­able obsta­cle. I barely had time and energy for two of my respon­si­bil­i­ties, and work and fam­ily won out. That would be the case for the next few years, as the travel con­tin­ued to increase and my sleep decreased. I didn’t even have the energy to think about run­ning let alone actu­ally get­ting out there and doing it.

CATCHING MOM

Some­where in there my mother began to run for the first time in her life, and had kept increas­ing her dis­tance until she had actu­ally run the LA Marathon a cou­ple of times. She had also man­aged to con­vince my father to get out and run again (it had been decades). They reli­giously got up at 5:00am on Wednes­days and Sun­days and logged runs up to 20 miles. I was extremly impressed. But it was also a kick in the ass. I have to tell you, being out­run by your par­ents is quite the wake-up call! My new goal became being able to beat my mom in a race. And that was no small goal!

I started to walk in the evenings, regain­ing some strength (and between you and me, try­ing to fig­ure out how to actu­ally run again). I headed out again in the evening, this time with books on tape or whlie talk­ing with friends and fam­ily. I fig­ured if I multi-tasked I would be more likely to be able to find and keep the time to run. And for awhile, it actu­ally worked. I was able to increase my dis­tance and quicken my pace.

Yet as I increased what my body could do, the wear and tear became notice­able. It wasn’t long before the neg­a­tives of run­ning began to out­weigh pos­i­tives. I was exhausted for a cou­ple of days after each run. I ached from the moment I opened my eyes in the morn­ing to the time I finally drifted off to sleep at night. I even noticed the fatigue dur­ing the night. It became even harder to focus at work and my mood took a nose dive. This cer­tainly wasn’t the runner’s high my friends and fam­ily talked about. With the per­ceived value of run­ning tip­ping into a neg­a­tive space, I slowly stopped run­ning all together.

ANYTHING FOR A REST

At about the same time my sta­mina took a severe hit from my increased run­ning, a col­league told me he had done a sleep study at Stan­ford and found out that he had sleep apnea. He explained what he had learned and how he was now using a CPAP machine to help him breathe at night. He shone as he told me how he actu­ally woke up feel­ing rested and ready to attack the day. As he described his prior symp­toms and his new-found energy, I real­ized I might be suf­fer­ing from the same prob­lem. I took his advice and went in for a sleep study. The results indeed showed that I had severe obstruc­tive sleep apnea. I dis­cov­ered that dur­ing the over night sleep study I had com­pletely stopped breath­ing a whop­ping 38 times and only dipped into restora­tive REM sleep once — and that was only for 35 min­utes! My body sim­ply wasn’t get­ting enough sleep to repair itself from the day’s activ­i­ties. No won­der I was always sore and tired!

I elected to try soft tis­sue surgery first to see if that would clear my air­ways enough to allow me to get a good, rest­ful night’s sleep. After a few hours in the oper­at­ing room I left with no uvula (it was now attached to the roof of my mouth), a tongue that had been blasted with radio-frequencies (to reduce its size in the back of my throat), a wider and ‘rot0-rooted’ nose, and no ton­sils. But I gained a heck of a lot of pain! Recov­er­ing from the surgery took 3 weeks and lost 20 pounds. To keep myself pre­oc­cu­pied, I watched all episodes of all sea­sons of The Office (UK and US ver­sions) and Entourage, and the first and sec­ond sea­sons of 24 (to this day, I can’t hear the ‘tick-tick’ of the clock on 24 with­out feel­ing a lit­tle throat pain).

I never quite got back to run­ning after those surg­eries. I admired those who would get up early on a busi­ness trip and run, but I was still too tired, and too good at mak­ing excuses. Then some­thing hap­pened. As a Christ­mas present from my sis­ter — a for­mi­da­ble swim­mer who had started run­ning marathons as well — I received a Garmin 305 wrist watch with GPS and a heart-rate mon­i­tor. This incred­i­bly thought­ful and gen­er­ous gift would turn out to be a real win­ner. Now I could have my own data and be able to track my progress. It also enables me to not over do it. Fol­low­ing the guide­lines from a begin­ning run­ning book my par­ents gave me, I real­ized the impor­tance of keep­ing my heart rate from going to high. I had run too far, too fast before and would get sick from the overexertion.

It hadn’t been too long alo that I had gone out for an early morn­ing run only to come back with a days-long limp because I had come across a woman run­ner two blocks into my jaunt. Not want­ing to be seen walk­ing, even if it was serv­ing as a warm-up, I began run­ning quite quickly. After spend­ing a night camp­ing out in the back­yard with the fam­ily in our new tent, my mus­cles were as stiff as the ground I had tried to sleep on that night. Try­ing to run fast in that con­di­tion was cer­tain to bring agony. But stub­born and rather igno­rant me kept run­ning ahead of the female beauty behind me. For­tu­nately, I turned into the park and she kept on run­ning straight. Oth­er­wise I would have torn a mus­cle, or worse, fallen over right in front of her! As it was, I stopped, bent over, breath­ing hard like a moun­tain climber who had just reached the sum­mit, try­ing to catch my breath.

As my pride had already got­ten me into a good deal of trou­ble, it would take a great deal of exper­tise and con­vic­tion on the part of seri­ous run­ning coaches to get me to walk and run rather than try­ing to just gut out a run (and suf­fer­ing the con­se­quenses for days, includ­ing a bat­tered and demor­al­ized will). For­tu­nately, my father loaned me the book he had fol­lowed when he began train­ing for the LA marathon, Com­plete Book of Begin­ning Run­ning by Runner’s World mag­a­zine. There are a num­ber of tips and sug­ges­tions in the book (some of which con­tra­dict one another)  but the biggest take­away for me was that walk­ing is a part of a run­ning plan. I had never felt ok with walk­ing. If I were to go out for a run, I rea­soned, that meant run­ning. Any amount of walk­ing meant I was fail­ing. Pretty log­i­cal I fig­ured. And the fact that this logic was rooted in a strong sense of ego had meant there was no way I was going to be seen walking.

GEARING UP AND GEEKING OUT

Christ­mas of 2008 turned out to be an impor­tant one. My sis­ter gave me the incred­i­ble gift of a brand new Garmin Fore­run­ner 305 watch with heart-rate mon­i­tor strap. It also has an altime­ter and GPS. What was also packed in this device was the the key to keep­ing me moti­vated: met­rics. i began run­ning the next day, Box­ing Day, and kept up my run­ning for the next five months. No mat­ter rain, shine, tem­per­a­tures of 15 degrees faren­heiht, or even over­seas travel, I went run­ning at least twice a week. I worked out my max­i­mum heart rate (MHR) and set the watch to beep whever I hit 65% or 85% of my MHR. This allowed me to run with­out worry that I would be over­do­ing it. I would start off run­ning until the watched beeped, indi­cat­ing I was at 85% of my MHR, at which point I would start walk­ing. I would keep walk­ing, no mat­ter what, until the watched beeped again sig­nal­ing that I was now at 65% of my MHR and it was time to run again.

This sys­tem worked quite well for me. There were def­i­nitely times when I didn’t want to stop run­ning and start walk­ing, but I did so reli­giously, whether there were beau­ti­ful and fit women and men around or not. In fact, I think hav­ing the watch helped me jus­tify to myself that other run­ners would know that I was some­what of a seri­ous run­ner for hav­ing the watch, so even if they saw me stop, per­haps they would think it was part of a train­ing pro­gram, not just because I was a loser. And screw what peo­ple though. I now had a goal of run­ning long, a plan and the gear that would get me there.

My par­ents and sis­ter told me that they had decided to run the San Fran­cisco Half Marathon, as the third and final race in the Cal­i­for­nia Dreamin’ race series (they would then get a large medal and spe­cial jacket for fin­ish­ing all three races, hav­ing already signed up or fin­ished Surf City and Long Beach). I decided that this was my year. I had the gear, had been suc­cess­fully run­ning for a cou­ple months now, and didn’t want to be out­run by my mother and father again. So, I reg­is­tered for the first half of the San Fran­cisco Marathon. And what a run it would be! I looked at the race map and envi­sioned every part of the course: start­ing at the embar­cadero near the Ferry Build­ing, around past the wharf near Ghi­radelli square, up the hill behind the Fort Mason, down the Marina and through the beau­ti­ful Crissey Fields under the Golden Gate Bridge, then across the bridge (actu­ally run­ning on closed lanes of the bridge, not just on the side­walk), back across the bridge and though gor­geous Pre­sidio, and down the streets of the Rich­mond to the end in the park near the De Young. Wow, what a beau­ti­ful tour of the city.

TRAINING FOR THE HALF MARATHON

For the next few months, I would replay those scenes of run­ning the course (espe­cially run­ning across the Golden Gate Bridge) of the San Fran­cisco Half Marathon over and over in my mind. They were a strong moti­va­tion for me to con­tinue to get out of bed and onto the streets no mat­ter what. I con­tin­ued run­ning two to three times a week, even in the face of sev­eral chal­lenges, for a few more months. When work took me to Europe for two and a half weeks, I packed my gear (shoes, socks, water belt, elec­trolyte pow­der, fuel bars, and since part of the trip would be in Oslo, Nor­way, gloves and a hat). Even after work­ing and spend­ing time with clients late into the night, I got up and went for runs.

I even got up before the sun on a day off in Oslo, when the tem­per­a­ture was in the 20s. After I put on my lay­ers and downed an espresso in the lobby (the front desk had been kind enough to have an espresso ready for me even before break­fast opened), I headed out into the chill of the night. I started off slowly, run­ning down by the water’s edge, past a twelfth-century fortress. Off in the dis­tance on the hill across the bay I saw another cas­tle lit up by lights (I later found out it was a school, but in my mind, it’s still a cas­tle!). The air was crisp and still. I loved the way it brushed against my face as I ran, reviv­ing me from my night’s slum­ber with every step. I con­tin­ued run­ning, fol­low­ing my gut as I went. I enjoyed not know­ing what I would find around every cor­ner. After a cou­ple of miles of run­ning the first sun beams began to dance around me and off of the win­dows on the closed stores and restau­rants. I began to climb a hill that didn’t end for at least another mile. I kept going, enjoy­ing the extra chal­lenge that each inclin­ing block brought. I looked at my heart rate on my watch and saw that it was up around 170.

I finally made it to the top of a hill in a park that over­look the whole city. The view was incred­i­ble. I could see the whole fjord and the hills on the oppo­site side. There was snow in this park so I con­tin­ued cau­tiously, wind­ing my way down into what must have been a uni­ver­sity. The stren­u­ous run was catch­ing up to me. My IT band was sore and my legs were scream­ing for more oxy­gen. For­tu­natly, most of the run was now down hill. There were also a num­ber of peo­ple out­side along the route now. Hav­ing more eye­balls around kept me run­ning strong as I didn’t want to look tired in front of them. As I entered down­town again and ran along the side­walks, I had to dodge peo­ple as I went. It made the last mile or so fun.

Please read and share your thoughts, tips, and goals. Hope­fully we will meet on the trail or road.