The unheroic portion of our program

Clocks don't lie, although they DO exaggerate now and then, so I am forced to face the truth: I am now, officially, an Eight-Minute Man.

And I HATE it. Never in my 33 years of running, in any official race of any distance, had I put up a time  as slow as eight minutes per mile. Until the Montclair 10K, earlier this month. And I ran hard...I mean, as hard as my limited training and the relatively warm day allowed. I battled the familiar lung-pinch and leg-sag in the fourth and fifth miles. I found my focus narrowing with effort, images of spectators and scenery flying at me like film or theater creatures out of darkness.

When I turned the last corner and saw that 50:something-something on the FINISH clock, I knew. Eight-plus bleeping minutes per bleeping mile. Seeing my name on the results list, WAY down there, was gonna hurt. Hadn't I run 43-minutes-something just two years ago? Was I facing a Dorian Gray moment, my body finally registering the age it had so staunchly resisted for so long, exposing me as a posing, wannabe weenie?

Then a very good friend, waiting at the finish, set me straight. Time to get over myself. Who the hell CARES whether I'm fast or slow, medal-winning or mediocre? I showed up, ran it, finished. I had been shooting for 50 minutes but I had estimated an hour, and I had beaten that. Now it was time to shut up. Maybe, finally, I would start to understand what so many others in the races I ran through the years experienced, the five- and six-hour marathoners, the dogged men and women and children coming in near the back, unheralded, unnoticed except by friends and family. We can, she reminded me, never REALLY know what another runner is going through. But we can broaden the range of our own experience and learn to relate.

Every aging runner, every athlete, faces a loss of skill and capacity, a tightening of stride and diminishing of breath and blood flow, a brittling of bone and sinew. The fact that we keep showing up matters, for our own good and for the sake of the race. We are, in a good sense, filling out the field.

This does not excuse my reduced effort in training, my concessions to a wider life, my decisions to watch a movie or take a walk rather than hammer out a 10-miler or a set of intervals on the track. The truth is, I gave the Montclair race a good effort, and 50-minutes-plus is exactly what I earned.

An eight-minute-mile pace still sucks. But I'm not condemned to it. It reflects how I'm living -- in many ways happier than I have been in much faster years -- and what I value these days. That 43-something I clocked two years ago to take home the trophy came off a summer spent working on my feet in a fast-food place in Yellowstone Park and training on hills at 7,000 feet. Now I'm on my butt most of the day, and I've curtailed the long runs and speed work in favor of spending time with a loved one and enjoying life more. 

So I am getting over myself. Slowly, the way I'm doing everything else. And I'm remembering that the act and art of running should include joy, somewhere, the way living should. The best part of the Montclair race was having somebody wonderful waiting for me at the finish, happy to see me, reminding me of what matters most. And I still have the power to improve, with effort. Next race, the Lawyers for Kids 5K in Morris Township, I'm shooting a for the 7:59 pace...and reminding myself to appreciate being out there. We all, if we're lucky, have a rocking chair waiting. And we can still enjoy the view.       

 

Comments

[Danny G]

I've learned a lot about perspective in the past eight weeks, so let me offer some.

First and foremost, showing up and running the darn thing already puts you in a class of people who should be extremely proud to rise above the trappings of our nation's sedentary lifestyle (but you already knew that).

Secondly, all runners will get older and slower. This is why they do age group breakdowns. If you feel the need to compete with anyone at all, you can compete with them; and might I remind you that you finished in the TOP THIRD of males 50-59? That makes you far from a slowpoke.

Thirdly, my good friend once surmised that the farther and faster runners go, the more they probably hate their lives. Assuming there's truth to that, your life must be getting better.

Finally, your experiences are great learning tools for people like me. I'll eventually reach that plateau where PR's are a thing of the past. We must remember (and rejoice in) our past victories while watching the new crop of younger folks live out the same arc. Just as you can hopefully see a young Tim Norris in me, I want to be able to take great pleasure, someday, in seeing a young Danny Galioto in a beginning runner.

In the meantime, congratulations, my friend, are definitely in order.