Little Victories

[ Ed Note:  Yep, this race was a month ago.  But this is about stories, not news.  If I’ve done this right, it just doesn’t matter.  (repeat: it just doesn’t matter!) ]

Part of my strategy of aging is to take victories where I can find them.  Sometimes they’re small.  But you still walk away with a win, at least as you defined it.  Age will get me some other day, but… not today.

A few weekends back brought the Special Agony of a Road Mile, a rather rare event these days, but one that the leadership of the USA Track & Field New England Grand Prix series thought would be a fun twist on the usual annual race series.  Fun is, in this context, a questionable word; phases like diabolical and evil genius come to mind.  But so it was to be; the best indication it was “fun” being that not a single participant I spoke to thought this was in their wheelhouse, so we were all in the same boat of, hey, whatever, let’s go get us some agony!

Leading up to this, my training had left a lot to be desired.  A persistent issue with the left heel, of which Dr. Foot Doctor assured me that nothing was broken, just yet another round of chronic tendonitis, brought both quantity and quality down notably.  As such, I’d run no track workouts for weeks leading up to a race that was, in effect, a track workout.  Nothing like being prepared!

I’d been balancing that injury against life for a while (and still am as of this late writing), pushing into races while backing off on training, repeatedly hoping the thing would heal, but just as repeatedly beating it up again, so of course, it didn’t.  I’d like to think I’m smarter than that, but let’s face it, I’m really not.

Since recovering from Boston, this tendon-induced see-saw has produced a couple of Mostly Meh races – first in Clinton on the famed Hill From Hell (Meh yes, but still took the 60s…and 50s…and 40s… but hey, it was a small race, right?), and then in Harvard (the town, not the college), on the other famed Hill From Hell, where in a repeat of last year I missed the 60s crown by seconds thanks to holding back on the killer downslope due to… of course, the heel.  To be fair, those bracketed a decent 5K at the Grand Prix series in Needham, so it hasn’t been all bad.  Just mostly.

But I certainly wasn’t in top form when along came the USATF-NE Grand Prix race series number five, a.k.a. the accursed Road Mile.

Please, God, no.

The last time I raced a road mile was a good ten years back, and that barely counts since it was all downhill and a tad short.  And to be fair, there was a track mile around that time, with not entirely horrendous results.  But that was in another lifetime.

Plus, the mile is universally recognized as a not-fit-for-human-consumption distance.  It’s too short to go aerobic, which is what we distance runners do, but it’s too long to go anaerobic and survive on your bloodstream oxygen.  You’re going to suffer.  But dumb as a mule, I’ve set out to complete the Grand Prix series this year, a feat for which you’re designated an “Iron Runner” and awarded a season-end tchotchke, so there was no backing out.

Through the mysteries of the Grand Prix scoring system, I went into this in third place amongst the sixty-to-sixty-four collection of fossils in New England.  I knew that wouldn’t last, and it didn’t; spoiler alert, I slipped, though surprisingly by only one slot – remember, this was in nobody’s wheelhouse.  And I can’t complain about being ranked among the foolish fossils of New England.  Aren’t we on the theme of Little Victories?

There’s a “Loop Road” behind Hopkinton (Massachusetts) high school, a school that most runners know only because it hosts the Athlete’s Village for the Boston Marathon, that happens to be mostly – but not entirely – flat (we’ll get back to that) and almost exactly a mile around.  When the USATF-NE people were trying to find a place to bring their evil idea to life, this venue jumped out and screamed, “Pick me!  Pick me!”  I was, frankly, relieved, since if I’m only going to race a mile, I’d hate to drive two hours, and this spot happens to be only twenty minutes away.

But the Gods of Road Construction intervened, and half the loop went off limits, so we ended up with an out-and-back; half a mile out, around a mini-traffic-island-loop, then half a mile back, which turned out to be slightly uphill.  How, you ask, can you make a mile sprint even worse?  That’s how:  Add a u-ey and make the third quarter – the worst in any mile – an upgrade.  Joy!

The plan was to have a separate heat for the masters men, USATF only (they ran a separate race for the non-USATF “All Comers”), and I tried to explain to Dearest Spouse how, in the absence of the usual masses behind the USATF speedsters, she should expect to see me pretty far back in the pack, read, damn near the end.  Then at the last minute, a lifeline, because the event had grown so large, they split out the sixty-plus USATF men into a separate heat.  Fifty of us, ranging sixty up to a ninety-year-old.  Cool!  I won’t be last!  OK, so this wouldn’t be quite so embarrassing.

Warming up for an event like this is simply not possible.  Outside of marathons, my fastest mile is almost always the at end of the race.  This isn’t age, it’s genetic, and goes back to my high-school days, where I’d be tagged for the track two mile which, for me, consisted of seven laps of playing with my food and one lap of beating up my rivals.  So on that Sunday, I figured five miles of warm-ups might suffice to get my bones close to loose, but certainly wouldn’t have the pumps primed.

It's hard to build a full story around a race that takes but a few minutes.  We’ll work it down to bullet items (gloriously not bulleted, because really, outside of work emails, they’re no fun – and they’re probably not fun there either).  Commiseration with my fellow fossils before the gun.  Mild shock that after the gun I wasn’t instantly several light-years behind the leaders.  Hitting the quarter-mile, on the downslope, where the race organizers thoughtfully posted a race clock, at a pace that made me think my “below X minutes” might be possible.  Coming off the downslope to the flat, passing Dearest Spouse, who’d honed her photography aim on earlier heats.  To the turnaround at a pace that a mere quarter mile after “maybe under X minutes” quickly turned that to “then again, not”.

And then the race began.

On the return trip, with the field pretty much sorted out and already in agony (did you notice the prevalence of the word “agony” in this article? …it’s not by accident), I am passed by… heck, I don’t know him, but this is a team sport (I didn’t mention that before, but it is) and he’s wearing a jersey of a team that’s likely a contender… and besides, he passed me, and I still have pride if nothing else… and this cannot stand.

This is a good time to point out that as I’ve aged, I’ve discovered my inner Rafa Nadal, that is, it’s easier to grunt than to keep silent.  If that makes no sense to you, it would take too long to explain, but Dearest Spouse will understand.

I am grunting.  Bigly.

Said rival I learn later is named Paul, though I did not know that at the time, but that’s irrelevant at the moment.  Did I mention?  I will not let this stand.

As the upslope makes itself known, that third-into-forth quarter-mile being the reverse of the initial first-into-second quarter-mile downslope, I dig deep.  I think of those middle school kids I used to coach:  Hills are your friends.  And I grind past Paul.

But we’ve still got a quarter to go and he doesn’t intend to go down easily.

I can feel him off my shoulder.  I can smell him (figuratively, not commenting on hygiene) coming back to re-take the lead in this micro-race.  Because the universe has compressed to this micro-race.

No.  Just no.  In the universe that has shrunk to the ten-foot radius around me, I’m not going to let this happen.

In the last tenth, the course flattens, bends to the right, finish line, hold this dude off.  Everything gets tossed in the furnace. Which at my age isn’t a lot, but it’s what I’ve got.

Little victories.

It really didn’t matter in the end.  My team beat his team by six seconds, even after accounting for our respective team leaders, both of whom are built on Alien DNA, so if he’d been a half-second ahead instead of a half-second behind, we’d still have won the team competition.  And the time that the race officials recorded didn’t make sense based on what was on my watch, and even if it had, I wouldn’t have broken that “X” minute mark.  And I wasn’t that pleased with the actual number, whether mine or theirs.  But none of that mattered. In this tiny universe, I told myself I would beat Paul.  I made sure I would beat Paul.  And I beat Paul.

Little victories.  Take them where you can 

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Photo Credit for the 2nd photo: Leslie Poitras, https://www.facebook.com/I.Run.Run.Ran