Quitcherbitchen

I know this is a repeated theme. Stop whining, get out and race. So, after I wrote the bulk of this episode, I thought, didn’t I just say that a few posts back? Am I just a broken record? (…which I suppose, in our sport is a good thing; different kind of record, though) And the answer is yes, I did, but the other half of the answer is that since I haven’t written much of late, “a few posts back” takes you back a year. So, like that annual flu vaccine that you should get once a year (I did… and you?... and COVID too?… but I digress…), it’s time to dust this back off, because it’s not just a recurring theme in this column, it’s a recurring theme in the aging runner. And it’s important. 

But first, some levity. Because harping is no fun without adding some fun. 

Fun, as in this year’s Mohawk-Hudson Half Marathon, after the fun of a delightful club dinner the night before, started with one of the most amusing incidents I’ve seen in my long racing career. The whole front of the field pretty much got lost. Most of the first hundred or so runners, so far as I could see, blew it. Totally missed that email. Wrong way out of the gate. 

The amusing thing is, one of my clubmates, over that dinner before the race, asked me, “Have you ever gotten lost in a race?” to which I related my well-worn tale of the 2006 Fred Brown Relay where I managed to turn left out of the driveway starting line while everyone else (correctly) turned right. (Sadly, an event that occurred in the Pre-Blog Era so I can’t link you to a glorious recap of that storied day, or perhaps, for you, not sadly.) So yeah, been there, done that, but certainly not on this scale! 

On race morning, the fast folks up front missed the first turn, one hundred feet beyond the start. Honestly, I’ve never seen anything quite so comical in over twenty years of racing. They’d announced on the PA that right beyond the start there was a hard right to take a loop around the park, but of course, nobody was listening. And apparently, despite how well this event was run, I have to surmise that there was either no course marshal directing that first turn, or said marshal wasn’t quite emphatic enough… because… they trusted us? Honestly, I couldn’t see up there so I can’t say for sure. But it seems that someone made the cardinal error of assuming more intelligence than the population deserved, a not uncommon occurrence. 

Go! And everyone surged forth, most surging right past the quick right turn. 

Somehow someone got the message, because I distinctly recall hearing shouting, “Turn Right!”, and what I saw from my spot in the field looked like a flock of birds that suddenly, by whatever secret communication they use, decided to veer right. The whole head end of the peloton zigged almost simultaneously, slicing across the grass like an open cross-country start, trying to regain the park-road. Not a stream reaching and flowing around a turn, but an entire school of fish darting right from wherever they happened to be in the scrum. 

I was just making that first turn with club-mate Paul (because, hey, we were smart, right?) when this transpired in a matter of seconds… and I must admit I laughed so hard it kind of impacted my need for oxygen. 

Admittedly, even I didn’t realize we’d be doing this loop in the park – apparently the result of moving the finish north from where we’d wrapped up the last time I showed up on this venue for the full marathon eleven years back – until the night before. (This change could have been many years ago for all I know.). And when Paul and I jogged our warm-up, even then we went the wrong way around the loop, but when we lined up for the start facing the other direction, it was pretty obvious where we were going. But I can see how those who hadn’t paid much attention – after all, we just follow the folks in front of us, right? – could have been not read in on this dirty little secret. 

In any event, that comic relief was about the last suboptimal thing that happened Sunday until the afternoon rain quashed our plans for a post-race walk the New York State Museum. From our six AM club meet-up in Albany to catch the buses to the well-stocked and organized finish area under the giant pop-up tent of the interstate overpass (handy when the rains came!), this was a first-class event, well run on every dimension. 

The course is delightful, mostly on paved trails, and forgiving, save the nasty brief-but-steep downhill coming off the rail trail. I’ll accept that my perception that the last mile stretched for three-and-a-half likely wasn’t real, but perception framed the game: a mental challenge to hold pace, mile after mile, and not gonna’ lie, it got a bit rough. But while my body complains a lot these days, my mind is still stupid enough to force the issue. Indeed, Dearest Spouse commented that she hadn’t seen my Death Warmed Over look in quite a while, and wasn’t expecting it this time. She’d figured, hey, it’s only a half, right? 

In the end, results met or exceeded my quietly unstated aspirations, even the stretch goal, and earned an age-group win. First competitive half in three years, in a middle-sized pond, pulled the rabbit out of the hat, check. 

But let’s recall why I started writing this diatribe so many years ago. This is about reflecting on running and racing as we age, and I’ve certainly aged a lot since its inception. In that time, what’s mostly evaporated is the ability to actually go fast. As evidence of that premise, Sunday’s half marathon came in at about the same pace as the track workout I’d done a few days prior. Granted, we’d all agreed to keep that morning’s four-hundreds mellow, since most of us were racing the coming weekend, but still, there’s something both satisfying and troubling about holding that same pace for thirteen. Satisfying, because I can hold up over the distance. Troubling, because I can’t crank much faster. Even my last short race clocked in only about a half-minute per mile quicker. There’s clearly a velocity ceiling here that’s making its presence known. We old folks just have a hard time making the legs spin beyond a certain level, whether on a track workout, a five-K, or a half. And knowing this limit makes it hard to want to jump into races. 

But becoming ineligible for speeding tickets is only half of the point of today’s pontifications. The other half is battling the mental side of aging. Sure, when I’m on the course, my mind won’t let me back off (indeed, some day it may kill me by this route), but it certainly does so before clicking the button to enter the race in the first place. All year I’ve shied away from a lot of racing because I just haven’t felt like I was in racing shape. Slow. Stiff. Sore. Slow, worth mentioning again. Why pay to run when you’re not going to run well? 

Lather, rinse, repeat, repeat the recurring theme. Get over it. You’re holding yourself to a standard that’s dated, unrealistic, and meaningless. Quitcherbitchen. 

I started to write this post shortly after the Harvard (town of, not college) Fourth of July five-miler, a brutally hilly race, usually encumbered with summer heat and humidity, where somehow I’ve always ended up in second place, with some other old fart having showed up to spoil the quiet satisfaction of winning something insignificant. This year, ironically, despite feeling so diminished in abilities, no other moderately rapid old fart showed up, and I took the age group win. All that really means in Harvard is that you get a gallon of local apple cider instead of a half-gallon (for second) or a pint (for third), but hey, I like cider, so it’s all good. And let’s face it, any age group win on any day is only half determined by how well you ran, the other half being, as noted, the randomness of who shows up. But the universe was trying to tell me something. Quitcherbitchen. 

Next came Canal Diggers in September, a race notorious for never having an accurately measured course, and this year it did not disappoint, it being short once again. But it’s been a club favorite for years, I’d never run it, and I’d fell victim to an offer, months ago, to sign up for so little coin that I couldn’t say no. So when it rolled around, slow stiff sore or not, it’s a club celebration, we’re going. And while again I couldn’t live up to those imaginary standards of yesteryear in my mind, it came out respectable, another Fastest Old Fart coronation (plus the nerdy fun of being given a bib to match my advanced age, which I matched with three, count’em, three, age twenty-one wristbands… adding to… get it?). Point is, again the universe was trying to tell me something. Quitcherbitchen. 

The universe was telling me I’m getting older, so what? So what if you think you’re slow? So what if you think you’re not fast anymore? So what if you can’t hold up to a standard that faded last month, last year, last decade? Own it and stay in the game. 

You’ve heard me say this in this column before. I have to keep repeating it to myself. We all forget. 

To satiate the gods of the universe, I went on a bender and signed up for three long fall races, Mohawk Hudson, the Western Mass Ten, and the Frosty Half. Boom, boom, boom; October, November, December. Quitcherbitchen. 

I often speak of how I’ve tried to learn lessons from my mom as she aged, mostly to see the things I should not do. I used to tell her that she was certainly going to meet her end, but her goal was to spend the time she had left on her terms. Stay out of “Bed Prison”, I’d tell her, referring to the seemingly inevitable demise of a nursing home bed. Stay active, live well as long as you can until you keel over. She didn’t win as well as I’d hoped on that scale. She stopped actively moving. She landed in Bed Prison. And of course, she passed, as we all will, but I’d wished the end had turned out better. 

The difference between mom’s not being active at all and my staying very active but opting not to compete because I feel I can’t do what I could a few years back, it’s different, right? Or is it? 

Accept that a race today won’t be as fast as a race a few years ago, but if the wind blows right, you can still stay on top of the game, even if it’s a different game, a different standard, a modified goal. Race pace might be the same as workout pace, but so what? That doesn’t mean you stop racing, which motivates you to keep up the workouts. While I was bitchin’ and not paying attention, it occurred to me that I’m five for seven on old fart wins (and a second place) this year. I’ve also got the inspiration of club-mates, some of whom many years older, still at it, and in many cases, still formidable competition. They can do it, so can I. So can you. Quitcherbitchen. 

Eleven years ago I ran the Mohawk Hudson full marathon nearly a minute per mile faster than this year I was able to run the Mohawk Hudson half marathon. But you know what? Both times I won my age group, and both times they gave me (and in this case, two of my clubmates, also age-group placers) the same prize: a hat. Go figger’, right? There’s no reason to think that just because you’re older and slower that you shouldn’t stay in the game. 

Quitcherbitchen. 

End Note: I’ve been remiss in penning these tales but a number of clubmates and other acquaintances have made some lovely comments to me about enjoying them, so I’m pleased to offer you some fodder. Thank you, and I hope I can meet your expectations and make your reading worth the time.