A Little Help To Find It

After seventeen years of writing this blog on and off, how do you find topics that are new, compelling, and worthy of taking a wee bit of my vast (not) readership’s time?  First, you hope people have a short memory (or that you’ve found some new victims).  Second, you remind Dear Readers that every time a seemingly similar theme rolls around, it is tinged with few more years of age, uncertainty, and doubt, so hopefully it’s still compelling to journal another round of ‘active longevity’ facing the forces of age and decrepitude.

In our ongoing theme of running and racing as time takes its toll, my almost total silence over the last year has been a direct result of what might best be described as a period of quiescence.  No races, so no good reason to write, right?  Last fall’s Achilles woes, not vanquished till spring, knocked out all semblance of racing fitness. And when the weather warmed, I finally lost the long-running argument with Most Recent Doctor and had to start chugging blood pressure meds (thanks, Mom! …Love you, love those genes!), which aren’t supposed to have performance side effects, but… sure seems like… aw, who can tell?  Net result, after wrapping up last summer’s Grand Prix with a whimper at Lone Gull, I fell off the cliff.

Since then, it’s been socially enriching but often athletically lame runs.  The few races I hit weren’t really races:  slugging out Stu’s at a moderate training pace (had to do it, it was the last running, no regrets), cruising Boston at an even slower clip (sure, a surprise qualifier, but it’s all relative, and six seconds doesn’t win a repeat dance ticket), and then the train wreck that wasn’t at Mt. Washington, which never was a race, anyway.  Though I’d be remiss not to record in these pages my intense dismay when my nearly twenty-year wait to run that Just One Hill I’ve so often hiked was unceremoniously chopped in half by the organizers under questionable circumstances.  Boo to you, Mt. Washington Road Race.

So, no racing for this lad in over a year.  Why pay to run slow?  I can do that for free.

But there have been a few bright spot runs of late, and they make you wonder, have you still got it?  Is the ‘it’ still in there?  Should you chase it? Or just keep lumbering on pleasantly?

Sometimes you need a little nudge from your friends to push you over the (good) edge.

So when those clubmates, they who have enticed so many to make poor (or excellent, depending on your perspective) life choices, goaded me to shake my stupor… Damn it, had to.  A mere week ahead of the event, I signed up for the Western Mass Ten-Miler.

Seriously.  Don’t overthink this.  Don’t plan ahead.  Just jump in.

It’s a tradition in this column not to quote numbers; these stories are for all at any level of ability.  Numbers are irrelevant, and let’s face it, they’re boring, and, as already noted, everything is relative.  In keeping, I won’t here.  But suffice to say my velocity has slipped a lot, and while I accept I’m getting older and inevitably slower, I don’t have to like it.  So, Western Mass Ten?  Let’s go, and target an even-minute pace boundary that I hadn’t hit in over a year at anything longer than a track interval.  Roll the dice.

The funny thing is, telling this story to non-running friends, the first thing they focus on is the ten-mile part.  They, of course, miss the point.  Sure, I’m slower now, but the real joy is that ten miles still isn’t an issue, and I’m immensely glad for that.  Hey, it’s only ten miles. A typical Sunday morning… that would kill most of my co-workers.  I’m thankful to the sport and my buds for keeping that real as the years go by.  But, back to the point, moving at a pace that seems respectable to me?  That certainly was an issue.

This was, in short, a delight of an event.  The hosting organization, the Hartford Marathon Foundation, pretty much did everything right.  No, let me edit that, they did everything right.  And yes, you heard that from me, who can, and usually does, find something to complain about (you listening, Mt. Washington?).  Yes, I’m guilty of that – usually for good reasons so I’ll own it – but that makes it all the more impressive when a race elates me.

From Northampton, (a town I’ve spent little time in, and which by the end of the day I’d realize what a gem I’d missed,) we were shuttled to UMass Amherst, where, to my delight, one of my highly competitive (and favorite) clubmates, on recovery from her outstanding run at the Chicago Marathon and therefore not looking to push any limits, offered to accompany this old decrepit guy looking for redemption from the World of Meh on the point-to-point trajectory that would bring us back to Northampton, seeking what we’ll call ‘X’ minute pace.  I hate to call her service pacing, since we really didn’t know what our speed would be, but the service is the point:  Clubs give you the joy of people who, based on where they are at that particular moment, are willing to turn a race into a supportive event, or do oh so many other things for you.  Case in point, at the same time, two other clubmates were equally offering similar services to a third.  We are, in our very genes, tribal.  It brings out the worst in us.  It brings out the best in us.

But all that settled… a race!  At last!  It’s been too long!

We set out on a slight upgrade and by the mile were already ahead of that hoped for X.  I hadn’t expected to reach terminal velocity for a few miles.  Bonus.  And from there it only got better.  The juxtaposition of targeting a pace with the attitude of “it’s only ten miles’ turned into almost a comedy.  After a few miles of streets through Amherst, we hit the rail trail – the Norwottock, part of the Mass Central, which will eventually connect all the way to just a mile north of home-sweet-home – and hunkered down.

After all, it’s only ten miles.  Actually, by then, eight.

Soon, we weren’t cranking X.  We were cranking a lot quicker.  So maybe there still was some ‘it’.  It wasn’t a cruise, it was work.  And that was glorious, because I hadn’t felt that ‘racing isn’t support to feel comfortable’ feeling in a long time.

It’s only six miles.

Mid race, she’d admit that her coach might not be thrilled with the pace we were laying down – she was supposed to be recovering, remember – and that she couldn’t keep it a secret from him – a good reason why I don’t use Strava.  I suggested she just step on her watch.

It’s only three miles.

If I have one complaint about this event, which was, as noted, perfectly run, is that the course got a little tedious.  The rail trail was delightful, but uniformly so.  Can you complain about that?  Answer?  No.  But it made our focus on the pace all that much more front-and-center.

Working hard, my verbal commentary degraded into grunts.  I wasn’t sure I could hold the effort for the distance, but isn’t that the glory of pushing the envelope?  My high-tech watch would later tell me (erroneously, of course) that my heart rate reached a level that would kill a younger person and most livestock.  Clearly an aberration, but amusing.  And it felt great.  Someday, there may no longer be any ‘it’ left, but that Sunday wasn’t someday; there was still ‘it’.

Two miles from the end, we crossed the Connecticut River on a rail bridge the map hints is barely more than a quarter mile long.  By then, it felt like three quarters.  Toward the end of the traverse, my guardian angel, who’d tried so hard to keep her competitive genes in check, could stand it no longer, and put down the hammer, dusting me by a minute and a half by the finish.  I thought I’d lagged, but the data would show that was all her, coach be damned, finally having a little well-deserved fun of her own (later she’d tell me how great it felt to pick off oh-so-many in that last mile-point-five).  Meanwhile, rather than fade, I held on and even gained a few seconds at the end, and wheezed into Union Station like a tired steam locomotive.  Nowhere near a best, but not so bad when those glorious age-grading tables were engaged.  And satisfyingly agonizing.

Could I get back to the world of the living?  Could I hit that target pace, not seen in a year?  Yes.  With a little help from my friends, a better phrase was eviscerated.  And would I have even tried this without said friends alongside to push me back into the pool?  Probably, no.  Oh, and did those other two clubmates bring home their charge?  Of course.

Remind yourself that there is no last time, no ‘not going to do that anymore’ – at least till we’re in the ground or our legs fall off.  Even then, take a break, get back on the horse; let your friends talk you into it.  Use every drop of your ‘it’.

Postscript:  Two weeks later (since I never get these stories out in time) a different clubmate asked if I’d pace her in an upcoming race I wasn’t really planning to run.  Seriously, how can I not?

Failure to Achieve Expectations

 

It’s April, so yes, it’s Boston Marathon time, and yes, I made another trip to the dance.  And this year I flat out failed to achieve my expectations.

Of course, my expectation was a PW – Personal Worst – and that was the up-side.  My realistic expectation was a DNF – Did Not Finish – which, being a local, can simply mean fading into the crowd and hitching a lift home (handy having that escape hatch, eh?).  So strong was that expectation that I got a little testy prior to race day, snapping a bit when well-meaning folks wanted to track me.  People!  It’s going to be a train wreck!  So.  Please.  Just.  Don’t.  My heartfelt apologies to any who caught that vibe, including Dearest Spouse.

But it didn’t turn out that way.

Despite the last year (really, year and a half) of nagging injuries leading to new nagging injuries, subsequent crappy training, resulting lousy fitness (I know, I know, I hear you say, but you still run marathons… just go with it, it’s all relative), toss in a medical scare that took a year to resolve, and my mood was dark.  How dark?  As in, haven’t posted to this blog since August dark.  And it’s not that I haven’t written; there have been multiple aborted attempts to write something that maintains my positive attitude toward running and racing into antiquity.  But getting to that positive message has been tough, and subsequently those essays ended up on the cutting room floor.  That dark.  Surely, I’ll be over this and back in shape by Boston, right?  But crap, here it is, and I’m not… dark.

So, I showed up in Hopkinton, lined up, and set off on a jog to see what happened.

As an old co-worker used to say, “Cut to the car crash,” and the car crash is that I failed to achieve my expected DNF, failed to achieve my expected PW, and instead ran a Boston qualifier time for next year (though not by enough to get me invited back to the dance, that being how the system works).  And I have to say, I lost some credibility, having always been an anti-trash-talker, downplaying expectations, but this time being pretty far off-base.  Eh.  I’d rather be oh-so-wrong in that direction.

Before you say, “I’ll never believe you again,” keep in mind the reality.  The nagging heel injury – circa late ’23 – yes, twenty-three, the fight has been that long, flared beyond ‘ignore it’ stage by last summer, and though I finished the USATF circuit last year, the last couple outings were Meh and Tragic, respectively, as my training saw more and more recovery gaps and my waistband just saw more gaps being filled.  Interspersed with that was the year-long saga of the debris of the late ’23 – yes, twenty-three again, the fight has been that long – saga of the defective meds, resulting UTIs, and doctors proclaiming doom and gloom – which took a year to resolve and admittedly took a chunk from my mojo energy.  Then the roughly three hundred and fourteen medical and PT appointments to cure the heel (mostly, not entirely, successful; snake oil was involved which I deem to have been… interesting, but pretty much just snake oil and a boat payment for the podiatrist) which allowed an uptick in training that succeeded in breaking other stuff.  Which left me staring at March having logged nothing longer than a broken up fifteen-miler, ah, but I’ll run (the penultimate) Stu’s 30K then pop in a twenty-something and be ready… but Stu’s fouled up a knee so badly as to force another three-week break.  Just weeks before Boston.

So, I mean, c’mon, I had my reasons to be glum and of low expectations.  Don’t track me, please, it’s going to be ugly.

But last Monday dawned as close to perfect as you can hope for in any marathon, cool, dry (actually, very dry), sunny, some breeze but nothing troubling, and I had nothing to prove, and it was… freeing.

Also freeing was starting in the last corral (of the second wave) and expecting to run a half-hour behind my qualifying time (at best).  All those folks starting with me had similar qualifying times, and most were hoping to beat those times, which meant they all took off, I didn’t, and there was nobody behind me, so… the quietest, most open-road Boston I’ve ever experienced.  Not lonely by any means, but not crowded like usual.  At least until the over-achievers from the third wave started catching up around Wellesley.

It was never easy and never fast (though the famously quick downhill mile one clocked in the quickest mile I’ve run in months), but it was never awful, either.  I recall thinking somewhere around mile five or six that the way I was feeling was more like what I’d expect at twenty-three, but it really never got any worse, and hey, with no goals, trundle on.  Freeing.

For the number of times I’ve advised Boston newbies to use great caution in burning energy high-fiving twenty-six miles of crowds, I just didn’t care this time and plunged on in when I needed a lift.  There was a lot more hootin’ and hollerin’ than usual, including plenty of quite intentional shouting out of mile and kilometer marks, notably crass in response to the Boston Athletic Association’s decree that “foul language will not be tolerated on the course”.  Well, damn, let’s test that out!  Tell that to the young lady who tracked me down at the finish to tell me that my “foul” shout at twenty-three (“Three [bleep]ing miles to go!) gave her the boost she needed (yes, I watched for young kids before those verbal emanations…)… freeing.

So many uplifting moments; it seemed when I’d get a little dragged down one would appear, or I’d just start shouting out and make one happen, because, freeing. At sixteen, Dearest Spouse seemed to have a troubled look but later explained it was merely relief that I was smiling and happy and very much alive after all that bellyachin’.  At twelve, twenty-two, and twenty-three, my club peeps manning volunteer stations gave me huge lifts as I tried to perfect the art of hugging without stopping – and without hurting them.  Random shout-outs – by name – all long the course – how DO they find me?  A lot of recurring chit-chat with other like-minded unpressurized runners.  And the comic moment of the day, when I opted to partake in the scream tunnel and dove in for a peck-on-the-cheek and was soundly rejected “OH GOD NO!” by a seemingly welcoming young lady chosen at random.  I mean, you were hanging over the rail invitingly.  I mean, do I really look that old?  Even with a hat and shades?  The youngster next to her was more than happy to take up the slack, and the laugh I got from this was yet another lift.

But all aimlessness must come to an end, and when it became apparent that at my leisurely pace I most certainly would not DNF, the OCD Runner Head of course started doing the math of at least coming in under the next hour increment.  And when it became apparent that barring a faceplant, that would happen, next came the math about the PW, but of course I hadn’t committed my previous PW to memory since I didn’t expect to be close to it, so it was merely a guess.  And when it seemed I might have a chance at flipping the second digit of my finishing time down by one – really, a re-run of last year but twenty minutes slower – I made that last turn onto Boylston, glanced at my watch, and swore a bit because I knew my last walk break at the monumental hill over the Mass Pike at twenty-five (the One I Most Despise) was going to make that digit flip very hard… but not impossible.  Ah, life would have been so much easier if I’d just walked a full minute back then and made it impossible.

Once upon a time one of my sprints probably looked like sprints.  At my age and in my condition, what passed for hauling ass down Boylston Street would have made a good video for Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks.  There was a lot of grunting and the best I can say is that that last segment was a hair quicker than mile one and yes, I even passed a bunch of people.  Let’s just say I had about three minutes of racing after a nice long run.  It wasn’t pretty, but it was satisfying.

At Boston, you never quite know which mat or line is the actual finish, nor did you know which was the actual start, so when your watch says you nailed it by four whole seconds, it might be wrong, and you’ll have to wait to find out.  Turns out it was six seconds, and it also turns out that flipping that second digit down a notch made it a qualifier.  Honestly, that was so far out of the realm of possibilities at the start of the day that it didn’t occur to me till later.

Which brings us back to the positive message with which I like to end these treatises.  This week’s recovery runs still have me feeling a bit broken and a bit old (that might be the last two days working on a home improvement project on the floor, getting back up oh my god… but hey…) and I’m still not in the shape I want (though at least I got this great twenty-six mile training run in last week), but it’s all relative.

Last month I hit twenty years since returning to running after that twenty-plus year gap since high school.  Twenty years ago I couldn’t make a few miles non-stop, I weighed more than I wanted, and my knees hurt.  So the fact that even a few miles are an effort now, I once again weigh more than I want (though less than back then), and my knees hurt…  So what?  I’m twenty years older, and this running gig has kept me in the game, plus blessed me with an amazing community.

If that’s the result of failing to achieve my expectations, bring on the failure!