Now our lives are changing fast
Now our lives are changing fast
Hope that something pure can last
Hope that something pure can last
- Arcade Fire, We Used To Wait
Does the passing of years have any meaning outside of a racing context? I’m not sure that it does. Yesterday I was 35 – 39, today I’m 35 – 39.
One difference is that my age is now an even number. I haven’t studied the subject thoroughly, but I’ve noticed a pattern developing: one year is even, the next is odd. Not sure what the significance is, just thought I should mention it.
I rested on Sunday after the Martinsville Half, ran easy on Monday, hill repeats on Tues, easy yesterday. Today I’m going longish, around 10 or so. Tomorrow is easy, Saturday longish again. Sunday I’ll be sitting between turns one and two at the Martinsville Speedway, watching cars duke it out on the half mile paperclip track. I’ll be rooting for BB&T. Monday will be easy, Tues will be long, like 18 to 20. Then taper.
I’m going to keep the pace up for my taper runs this time. I seem to do better when my legs are tight. The only cramp-free marathon I ever ran was the time I covered the distance by myself, five days after the Danville Half marathon. Maybe previous marathon efforts met with loudly protesting quads and hamstrings because I was too loose, Lautrec.
I guess on a day when one’s age goes from being an odd number to an even number it’s appropriate to discuss future goals and ambitions. Comment blogger Kelly suggest I sign up for Chicago and focus on preparing myself to be really fast there. The idea is tempting. Tempting because it plays into the fear of aging and death: I’m faster now than I ever have been before, but I’m getting older. Hurry! Before the Decline!
Oooooh, we used to wait. When I first read George Sheehan’s excellent book, Running and Being, he notes the faster race times of the recent past. I looked for and failed to find a quote, but I remember something along the lines of “a 17 minute 5k wouldn’t get you in the top 20 back in the day.” That was before Gu, Chi running, special diets, garmins, heart rate monitors, bpm running mp3s, and readily available advice from a rainbow of experts on the internet. They also waited for letters. They waited for dinner. They waited in lines at the bank. We used to wait.
They were also less sensitive to pain and violence. In the 60′s, a young brat swinging a cat around by its tail would make an onlooker chuckle, maybe get a little misty recalling the whimsy of youth. Nowadays, not so much. Empathy is certainly a good thing, I’m just saying such a culture is going to have a greater acceptance of pain as an inevitability of life.
So imagine it’s the 1960′s and you want to start running races. You have a better understanding of delayed gratification and you have a greater acceptance of the struggle required to achieve that gratification than does the modern hominid. That’s my competition. I want to be able to get in a time machine, enter a race, and be able to hang with those who would have been my peers had I been born decades earlier.
All of that is just a long way of saying my marathon ambitions shall remain humble from a speed perspective. I should wait for it. I have plenty of time, really. Time best spent learning how to embrace the puke threshold and tired legs. Time spent running for fun. Racing shorter distances. Achieving a better understanding of how this meat-prison for my brain works.
The rest of my 30′s is base building for my 40′s. That decade will be spent trying to get faster in a more organized fashion. I think it would be cool if my 50′s turned out to be my fastest decade. I don’t have any plans yet for my 60′s and beyond.
Long term plans are a good way to achieve goals. They’re also a good way to tempt fate; either way, if a piano lands on my noggin tomorrow, I’d have few regrets. Never running a super fast marathon wouldn’t be one of them (I don’t think. It’s easy for me to say now, since I don’t expect a piano to land on my head anytime soon. But, like the Spanish Inquisition, no one expects the piano to the head). I’m already running faster than I ever thought would be possible for me. I can start at or at least near the front of just about any race I enter and belong there. That alone fills me with more astonished pride than a yahoo like me deserves to feel.
If I’m going to make the most of my running life, I can’t get greedy. It’s not just fear of injury. It’s like drinking water on the run: it’s better to sip frequently than to gulp rarely.