Slowing Down

Slowing Down

Before I begin this article I would like to take a quick poll. Raise your hand
if you run in races when you know you are far off your normal conditioning.
Good, I’m glad that most of you raised your hands.

I may have not raised my hand a year ago when I was in fantastic condition. Races were competitions to me, the chance to show off my hard work. Races could wait until I was
Ready to run my best.
But the past year has been humbling to say the least. It would be easy to stop racing until I gave a more “representative” performance, but I decided that would be stop me from racing altogether. So races have become my source of conditioning.

Although I have proceeded to run personal worsts at almost every distance I have attempted this fall, I feel none the worse for it. I know I have been getting some funny looks from people who know my faster version, but runners are generally a very supportive group who admire anyone who toes the line.

At the Swamp Devil 15K in November, I was passed at the five mile mark by a runner whose build and attire said “jogger” out loud to me. In the unlikely case that someone would recognize him if I identified his dress I will leave that anonymous. I happily had some good miles near the end and saw this guy very close to me. I said to the guy with me, “We can’t let him beat us”. But he did, just slightly. And at every race there have been runners I have rarely competed with regularly dusting me off.

Almost every race since August has had a similar theme as I have continued to manage
to reach my diminished goals while running times I would have not believed possible a year ago. If this experience has taught me anything, it is simply to never take good conditioning for granted. Remember the effort it took to get you there.

These articles are not easy to write and I am not sure they make for good reading either.
It is much easier to write about how you ran your latest PR in the marathon. I had no problem last year pouring out page after page about my marathon PR. I am sure runners would rather read about success stories instead of the struggle just to run. But for those of you who hit the skids as I have, I hope you’ll save this and realize life goes on and you should race no matter how long it takes you. It’s still a lot better than the alternatives.