So anyway, it's been a while
The Groton (Mass.) 10K was held today, thus marking the eighth anniversary of the last time I put together a serious, wire-to-wire competitive effort in a running race (I wasn't fit, but I at least tried hard and put together a 33:40).
I half-assed a few road races in 2008, including a marathon, acting in most of them as a pacer for a masters friend for part or all of the distance. I have DNFed some track races and jogged through a couple of 5Ks under cover of aliases.
To those serious runners who wonder if you’ll ever reach a point where running hard just doesn’t seem important: If you’re anything like me, you’ll have quit racing for a solid year to eighteen months before you’re able to candidly admit that you’re not just in sabbatical, you’re in retirement. In my case, this realization never seemed as banal as I might have expected. I rather looked forward to being one of the spastic bangabouts who uses running to table any latent urges to do something vaguely antisocial, like go on a shooting spree in Yankee Stadium.
As of Christmas of last year, my running, like every other me-thing I care to mention, had been almost wholly erratic since April of 2008, and realistically since well before then. Nevertheless, it shepherded me through some rough shit in one piece even as I mentally flipped it the bird and ranted about how much otherwise useful time I’ve spent doing it, writing about it, planning it, and worst of all babbling about it. I'd been hindered by a broken ankle off and on since I hurt it in July 2012 and endured some bruised ribs last winter. From time to time, I had angrily lost interest in the "sport" even when it was the only thing paying the bills; I had no real life focus, and was far too besotted to much of a time to even daydream about competing in earnest again, much less get in shape for it.
2015 has been steady as she goes so far. I find life interesting, even the bullshit. This has robbed me of my cherished nihilism and laid bare an outlook that is undeniably hopeful and positive. Not surprisingly, both my work life and my hobbies have enjoyed resurgences.
Having been a runner every day of the year since about January 15 save one, I know I'm finally involved in a training bout I am not going to shit away somehow, as long as I don't get hurt. I haven’t kept track of my mileage and can tell you only that in a few of the past 14 weeks or so, I've easily exceeded an average of 60 or 65 minutes a day. Much of this has been high-end jogging. Not many hills. Only one formal workout – a 3.5-mile treadmill progression run at sea level a couple weeks ago with successive half-miles in 3:00, 2:56, 2:53, 2:50, 2:46, 2:43 and 2:37. Only during the -mile did I really feel like I was working hard. This translates to 5:41 pace for the whole thing.
Well, hell; I’d better stop. This wasn’t supposed to be a blog post anyway. It was supposed to be a wry one-liner of a Facebook posting noting for the 679th time that I don’t run competitively. No one should really care about the navel-gazing of a fellow who was never even very fast, but shit happens, so here I am.
Anyhow, I'll fill in the obligatory bloggy stuff -- who I am, what I've done, why I'm doing this again -- later.