The Worst Possible Day

Sixty?  How the hell did that happen, and why wasn’t I notified?  And how did weeks go by before this little ditty saw daylight?  Time is flying, so I must be having fun, right?  Truth be told, when any of these articles make their way out of the cage matters to me but it’s irrelevant to you so long as I repay your donated ten minutes with a good story, right?  So I’ll give that a shot.

I’ve always preached that one of the joys of this sport is the concept of age groups, which give you the opportunity to start all over again with a fresh new game as that time flies.  And as one of those new games – the sixties – edged closer, two things were apparent:  first, that once that day came, I should get out there and race, and second, that the last thing I’d want to do just prior to that big day would be to race.  After all, why spin your wheels getting beat up by a crowd almost universally younger than you when you can wait a few days and beat up a crowd almost universally older?

I blew it on both ends.  I raced on the worst possible day.  And to make it worse, twice since then, the universe has thrown races literally at my feet and I haven’t raced.  So much for my own advice.

Less than a week after the big day – a day so advanced that it doesn’t even qualify me for AARP, been there, done that long ago – a half-marathon paraded itself, not once, but twice (out-and-back) past the door of the fine abode in which Dearest Spouse and I had arrived the previous night.  And only two weeks after that, another half-marathon paraded itself within a block of the door of Dearest Offspring the Younger’s new home, with enough turns in the neighborhood that with a brief walk, that one passed twice as well.

And I wasn’t in either of them.

But the day before?  The day when I rang up at fifty-nine years, three-hundred-sixty-four days?  Less than twenty-four hours prior to the moment of my arrival (the one time I didn’t complain about showing up at four in the morning)?  The day of several well-known races in New England that I was determined not to race?  The Worst Possible Day?  Yeah, I raced on that one.

It occurred to me to try to find a technicality.  Surely there must be some way to wrap legalese around the whole Gregorian versus Julian calendar thing and claim I’d in fact hit sixty a day early.  No dice.  Even a careful reading of the history of this astronomical mess wouldn’t get me out of that hole any more recently than about a hundred years ago in Turkey (the last country to switch off the Julian calendar, in 1927).  But hey, September of ’52 – 1752, that is – when the United States switched over and skipped over half the month must have been a hoot, though we wouldn’t have had a Labor Day parade.

OK, so I wasn’t sixty yet.  Besides, why rush it?  Ninety is just around the corner anyway, right?

But let’s work backwards.  The first swing-and-a-miss came at the Jersey Shore, two towns down from, and a short boardwalk stroll up to, the famed Asbury Park, during a reunion with the twisted minds I had the pleasure of hanging out with back in college, the crew that gave Rensselaer its infamous underground satire publication known as The Polemic.  The true joy of the weekend was that they haven’t changed, just as twisted, just as much fun, and well worth renewing those ties.  But the disappointment of the weekend was seeing all those runners parading past the beach house.  Twice.  To borrow from The Boss, the cops may have finally busted Madame Marie for telling fortunes better than they do, but she didn’t send her clairvoyance ahead of time so that I’d know there was a race going on.

My angst at missing out (that’s AOMO, not FOMO, mind you) was multiplied when I checked the results and found that based on my half-marathon split from the previous week’s twenty-miler (the one I shouldn’t have run, remember?), I would have taken my shiny new age group by over five minutes.  And this was no slouch of a race, it was two thousand strong, just in the half.  But hey, the weather was dreadful, chill off the ocean, rain, and wind, wind, and did I say wind, so I didn’t really want to be out there.  But, well, let’s be honest.  Sure I did.

Then it happened again two weeks later.  This time I had a couple days’ notice; had I been paying attention, I’d have had more, but context is everything.  I’m sure that USA Track & Field announced the national masters championship half-marathon long ago, but who knew I’d be in Syracuse that weekend?  Once I knew my plans, that last-minute email with last minute top-o-rack pricing, and uncertainty of schedule during our brief visit to Offspring the Younger, well, swing and a miss, strike two.  As it turned out, we did walk the block to the course, plus the extra half mile to see a second pass, and while I wouldn’t have won this one by a long shot, disasters aside I’d have likely hit the top ten percent of similarly-ripened old farts in a quasi-national-class race.  AOMO redoubled.

Coulda’.  Woulda’.  Shoulda’.  But hey, they were fine weekends anyway.  And I’ve still got one hundred and nineteen months of being sixty-ish.

But weeks earlier with merely one day left of being fifty-ish, the equation added up differently.  Why race on the very last day of your class and have to go toe-to-toe with folks ten years your junior?  Perhaps because it’s that much more fun if you can proverbially kick them in the shins?  Or you could say, rather than avoiding that day like the plague, why not give it one last shot?

There’s an easy way not to race:  just don’t sign up.  When race day gets closer and the price goes up, if you’re like me and of frugal mind, well, who wants to pay last minute prices (read: Syracuse)?  But even those best laid plans can be foiled.  When a club-mate mentioned he had entered one of the races of the day, the Black Cat Twenty-Miler in Salem, Massachusetts (there’s also a Ten-Miler, those who race the twenty are just twice as stupid; having finished the ten-mile course, being dumb enough to turn around and do it again) and having changed his plans, he couldn’t use it.  The race organizers were pleasant and liberal with their transfer policies, so in a fit of stupidity I bought him out of his bib.  Yep, let’s race on the worst possible day.

It wasn’t entirely on a whim.  With no Boston Marathon on my calendar year, I’ve instead targeted a smaller regional marathon a few weeks further out.  A twenty-mile race would be a great shake-out.  It was just a really bad day to do it.

Being, as noted, of frugal mind, I’ve never been one to sign up and pay for a race simply to cover the distance.  Maybe if I lose my mind enough to join my ultramarathoning friends that will become a goal, but for now, if I want to run twenty miles, I just run twenty miles and don’t pay for the pleasure of doing it.  If I’m going to pay, I’m going to put in an effort.  So even though this race was intended as a shake-out, I figured it too warranted a shake-out.  And said shake-out, two weeks prior on the Boston course (wrapping up with good ol’ Johnny Kelly and compadre Dan) turned in the pace I targeted for the race, so, um, revise plans, I guess.  That’s what shake-outs are for.

Plans revised, our merry band including a very large club contingent headed for Salem, and when the festivities commenced it was now perfectly rational to head out on that sunny, slightly breezy morning at a pace that would have seemed a bit hot only two weeks prior.  And it was my intention to head out a bit hot.  After burning off adrenaline in the opening blocks, it was time to settle into the hard work – not just the physical, but the mental work of remembering how to race these distances.  The New York Marathon, for its various failings, wasn’t a good test, so really this was virgin ground after that long injury and COVID gap.  What kind of pace can I burn?  What can I sustain?  And though I didn’t admit it to anyone, the truth was I hadn’t written off my age group.  Even on that last day.  After all, it’s a (paid-for) race.

Black Cat isn’t a huge event, about five hundred total, sixty-forty on the ten milers versus the stupid folk, but since all run the first ten together, it’s big enough that you really have no idea where you stand.  Save a small loop in the first mile, it’s an out-and-back, and for the feeble-minded, another out-and-back.  Approaching the first turnaround, you see the leaders coming at you, and you wonder, ten or twenty, and how old does that dude look?  And what about the couple of fifties guys in my own club who I know are pretty quick?  Where were they at the start?  Now, wait a minute, don’t get ahead of yourself, you’re still the old man of the class here.  But seriously, how old does that dude look?

The turnaround – somewhere around five and a half – was a bit odd in that it really wasn’t there.  No cone, no sign, just an oddly placed water stop (at the turnaround?).  I shouted out, “Where’s the turnaround?” and got the very strange answer, “Where ever!”.  Um, really?   In a race?  That, and the oddly mismatched mile-markers – four and fourteen, seven and seventeen, and so on – all spaced a quarter-mile apart, led me to believe something was a bit amiss and it was; the course came up short; but otherwise the organizers ran a fine event (remember that liberal transfer policy!) (and food, food, plenty of food!).

But that aside, I couldn’t figure where I stood at the turnaround.  Nor could I be sure who was behind me, or how far, since again, tens and twenties, cats and dogs, Hatfields and McCoys, all mixed together and all on the other side of the road outside of my range of visual acuity.  But hey, I’ll figure it out on the second lap, right?

Meanwhile, around mile seven a clubmate crept up on my shoulder, or should I say someone crept up, as I had no idea who it was at that moment.  All I knew was something gasped and wheezed something along the lines of, “How the hell are you going to do that for another ten miles?”.  Before I realized who it was and realized he knew I was going twenty while he was trying to finish ten before hitting his expiration date, I responded vaguely, “I have no idea, it’s a voyage of discovery.”  Poetic I suppose, but I really had no idea what would happen in the second period.  Truth was, I was surprising myself with the steady, and still somewhat hotter than expected, pace. 

The thought of gauging my place on the second time around was a fine idea that had no legs either.  Approaching the second turnaround, again the leaders were obvious, but again, how old does that dude – going the other way, on the other side of the road – really look?  Then a new twist, the “sunshine starters” – the slower folks they allow to start an hour early, got mixed in.  You’d think you could tell the difference between a race leader and a sunshine jogger but after the first ten or so fast folks, it’s not so clear.  Some of those leaders slow down.  And some of those sunshiners have spurts of motivation.  I resigned myself to having no idea where I stood, but taking solace in the fact that that slightly hot pace was holding up.

Two hundred twenty-milers get pretty spaced out and lonely by the end, but after a painful last couple of miles (they should hurt, it’s a race, remember?) I came up on, well, how old is that dude?  At that point I didn’t care, take no chances, take no prisoners, take that dude down, and I did.  News flash, he wasn’t fifty-ish, it didn’t matter.  News flash, I didn’t care, it felt good.  And news flash, sure, I would’ve won the sixties by over twenty minutes, but guess what?  I wasn’t sixty.  I was fifty, and got beat by about ten minutes, but kicking all the rest of the fifties in the shins to take second wasn’t too disappointing.  On the worst possible day to race.