Competence strained

Grinding along the gravel paths of the Davidson Mesa recreational area in Louisville on a morning meant for running fast, I was beginning to labor as I entered the final stages of what's become a familiar process lately: decide two days in advance that I'm ready for a group workout that I'm convinced should be manageable because all the miles start with the number "6"; realize during the warm-up that the session is going to substantially more taxing than I'd been willing to admit, especially given that I know I'm poorly rested as a mammal; start the workout with one or two younger, prettier and fitter runners, in this case the welcoming and chatty Nicole and Brooke; decide after about ten minutes that I need an exit strategy that won't leave me unnecessarily irked; finish up in whatever fashion works best; shake my head at my own roguishness in coming out for something that I was a few solid nights of unbroken slumber, and a couple of honest turnover workouts, away from being able to complete.

Right now, on a typical day, three times 3 miles on a flat gravel path with a minute of rest in between at the paces prescribed would probably constitute a satisfyingly hard distance run, not really close to anaerobic threshold. Indeed, lately, I've been doing some extended pick-ups on the Boulder Creek Path at sub-6:00 pace. One of my problems is probably that I've been doing a mile quick here, 10 minutes hard there for days on end, never committing to anything hard or anything especially easy. If one of the super people I'm attempting to help prepare for fast running were to pull this kind of dunderheaded bullshit, I would issue a strong, profanity-riddled rebuke by electronic mail in attempt to jogger-shame, or at least suggest stopping the behavior. This is nothing, though; I leave myself all sorts of latitude for fuckery and creative decimation of my own training rules, because, see, I'm not really training, I'm actually helping pace HTS runners from far, far behind, much like Ryan Hall was doing for his fellow Americans in the 2014 Boston Marathon.
So after I finished my one three-mile loop in the high-eighteen minute range, a football field behind B & N, I accepted that I was just tired. I'm happier than I've been in a while thanks to a pair of complementary developments, and I can sometimes dig a little deeper, and enjoy the sensation of doing so, when I don't feel as if my life remains a wasteful misadventure. If only this were enough to compensate for being old and slow early in the phase of rebuilding a level of honest running fitness for the first time since perhaps 2007. I've also unilaterally decided let the naltrexone (a functionally experimental drug I've been taking IM every four weeks starting in early February) seep out of my system, something that will take another month-plus.
The post title is not owed merely to a subpar run. I spent much of the rest of the day in a silent, scornful funk after being sharply scolded by a de facto supervisor in a manner that was as bizarre as it was discouraging; this all ended okay from an interpersonal standpoint, but I was left again with the acrid taste of global incompetence -- I can explain to anyone, irrefutably and at a moment's notice, why I suck at absolutely everything I supposedly enjoy doing. Then I completed my trifecta of athletic, vocational and interpersonal fail for the day by getting into an explosive disagreement with one of my good friends. Along the way, I managed to add an evening five-miler (well, probably closer to 4.5) to the 7 to 7.5 I racked up this morning, so if you came here for the actual running stuff, I've buried the summary way down here in overly long paragraph number four.
In describing these events just the way they were, I'm not conveying that I still had a lot more positive moments than negative ones today. The guy I'm working for way up by the boobie-bar in North Boulder is an impressively ribald fellow, one who'd be the subject of untold sexual-harassment suits were the women in his office not somehow even more pleasantly vulgar (and much more pleasant to look at) than he is. And I found out about a couple more Netflix time-wasters I need to start tackling this weekend.