The Mile 35 Shift
Notes on Breaking Down and Building Up
At 35 years old, it takes me a good week to recover from the JFK 50 mile march.
Eight full nights after finishing this year's route, I'm still not sure my left big toe nail won't fall off.
I've asked myself more than once whether this toll is worth it. It always happens around Mile 35, and this year I started questioning much earlier. Close to the 8-mile mark, as we transitioned from the scenic dirt road of Dunstone Quarry Rd. onto a more heavily trafficked highway shoulder, my toe box started to feel constricted. My hands were freezing since the sun had just come up, and I hadn't had my coffee yet.
Mile 8 is a dangerous time to start making mental bargains with yourself.
So I put all thoughts of truncating the route or breaking the march into two days, and just kept walking. A few miles later, the “pit crew” arrived with a change of shoes and a thermos of hot tea (among other provisions), which propelled me almost effortlessly through the halfway point and beyond. If anything, it felt too easy.
After a large coffee at mile 27, I even carried my 4-year-old daughter Clare on my shoulders up a long incline (she had wanted to join for a short stretch, and then tired after about 2.5 miles). Anything to keep the pace and make it back in record time. I've found that "time on feet" is a better indicator of fatigue than distance.
Then, like clockwork, Mile 35 brought its trademark obstacle. Like last year, it was an inflammation of the internal stabilizing tendons of the ankle (the peroneals, or something). Unlike last year, it was my right ankle this time – not the left. The actual pain was not so bad – something on the order of a bad cramp – but the signal was clear:
Stop walking, or do something different.
I tried different, changing my shoes for the second time, and resorting to the same pair of walking sticks that got me through the last 20 miles of last year’s march (thanks, Steven!). I certainly wasn’t going to stop walking.
The sticks helped, but there was no gait adjustment that would get rid of the pain. The only modification that provided a modicum of relief was a kind of hop-scotch / crutches maneuver, where I’d push off my good foot – bearing the weight on the right with the sticks. This method allowed me to make up time on the downhill, but it was a far cry from the glide that had carried me from miles 10 through 35.
But mile 35 is always where things get interesting. When you push past normal limits into real depletion – hour 12, 13, 14 – the body shifts into survival mode. Cortisol rises, then falls. Growth hormone pulses. Your cells change how they process energy. The same mechanisms that kept our ancestors going during persistence hunts and overland journeys are alive and well in our modern bodies, waiting to be awakened. As the primary walking muscles fatigue, a network of smaller, less-used tissues takes over. These supporting muscles and tendons, usually hidden within larger bundles, emerge like backup generators kicking in when the main power fails. The body, it turns out, has multiple redundancy built into its architecture.
I knew from last year’s experience that my tendonitis was not a serious permanent injury. At worst, I’d hobble around for a few days afterwards (that I did).
And so I limped across the finish line, high on cortisol and probably a bit of my afternoon coffee still.
To my dismay, the more disabling after effects of the march came less from the ankle and more from the toe nail (which must have gone numb as I continued to aggravate it), and a general fatigue for 4 or 5 days afterward.
Again, the question remains: why am I doing this?
I've written a great deal about the benefits of stress in the right doses. "Hormesis" is what happens when you push right up to the point where a stress might harm you, and then back off. Find the sweet spot. Adapt. Rinse and repeat. The principle has undergirded my whole approach to fitness for the past 8 years, and it's served me well. I don't have time for long hours in the gym or distance runs, but life offers ample opportunities for quick mini-challenges: sprints uphill, a few pistol squats while holding the baby, cold plunges in the creek.
What all of these micro-workouts have in common is that the adaptation takes place after the action. You're not trying to "burn calories" but send a signal to the cells in the muscles and vascular system that they need to level up before the next time the stress arrives.
But a JFK 50-miler is different. You can't hack it or shortcut it. The magic is in the sheer stupid length of time spent putting one foot in front of the other. That works for maintenance. But there's a reason every major religious tradition has pilgrimages. The body needs duration to reach certain states.
I file the 50-mile march under what Mark Baker (aka GuruAnaerobic) calls "mega-challenges" in his book Anaerobics: Deconstruction and Reconstruction. These rare but intense physical feats go beyond workouts. Their aim is not mere adaptation, but rather a TOTAL EPIGENETIC SHIFT. Not just one or two genes, but hundreds of them. It's like your whole genome wakes up and remembers, "Oh right, this is what we're built for."
Your muscles start producing different proteins. Your mitochondria multiply. Your blood vessels remodel themselves. And a whole host of genetic “switches” associated with vigor and persistence turn on to prepare for the next big challenge.
While my toenail was turning purple, my entire cellular machinery was getting a software update.
I first experienced this phenomenon when I was still learning to sail, and got myself into trouble – running aground in Suisun Bay shortly before a high tide on a windy summer day. The encroaching ebb meant that if I didn't get out of the mud within half an hour or so, my boat would be beached and possible smashed to pieces in the rough surf as the water receded from underneath me. In response, I found a gear I never knew existed and with some choice intercession by the Blessed Virgin Mary, heaved with all my might for a full 20 minutes until the boat almost miraculously slid free.
After that trial, I was a different person – physically, mentally, and spiritually.
One of my favorite historical figures is Zeno of Citium, founder of Stoicism, who discovered his life's purpose after losing everything in a shipwreck. "Now that I've suffered shipwreck, I'm on a good journey," he said after landing in Athens, where he founded a school of philosophy. Some say he would periodically recreate the shipwreck to maintain his appreciation for life. Given how frequently I continued to run aground in my early sailing days, life provided similar opportunities for the TOTAL EPIGENETIC SHIFT without my having to seek them out.
But once I finally figured out how to read a depth chart, I needed another external source of motivation to put me in a state of near-total depletion to bring about the same shift that made me a different person.
When I look back on pictures of myself in my early 20s, I'm surprised by my all-around softness. Some of this may have just been youth, but I'm confident that the periodic mega-challenges I've built into my life are responsible for the mind and body I've developed.
The 50-mile march reliably carries me beyond the "safe hormetic zone" that I use to titrate my typical maintenance workouts and micro-challenges. The march is a wholly unreasonable and immoderate thing to do. Every year, it costs me dearly, consuming precious energy and turning me into a borderline invalid functional mid-wit for the week that follows.
But like any good mega-challenge, the temporary downswing gives way to an even larger upswing. Long-distance walking causes a temporary dip in testosterone that's followed by a compensatory surge – like pulling back a bow before releasing the arrow. Fat metabolism, inflammation response, hormone production – they all get recalibrated.
The early rains are bringing green shoots to the land, while the old growth dies away. Soon I'll be out there with my chainsaw, clearing the fallen trees, and stacking branches for the burn piles. Some logs I'll burn, while the sturdy ones I’ll keep for the outdoor obstacle course I’ve been talking about building since last year.
My toes will heal. My ankle already has. Eight days later, I’m ready for winter’s demands. Time to break down. Time to build.