LucKY: Sorry about the knee. Perhaps since running didn’t cause the problem then getting back to running will be easier.
Mopak: Traipsing across France beats the hell out of running any day!
Wow, such great work oldmanage! Slow and struggling folks such as myself provide juxtaposition to highlight how truly extraordinary high end performers are.
Tue: 45 rocky trail including 10X 15 sec sprints on a steep hill section
Thr: 23 min rocky trail, easy
Sat: 5K race (3.14 miles, actually) 3rd age, 20th overall. 25:05 or 7:59 pace: splits 7:52, 7:45, 8:24
Sun: 45 min rocky trail, 800 feet climbing
The rest of this is a long race-recap, so if you are like me, the above gives you the cliff notes and you can skip the rest of it. Oh, and Michael Wardian was there and he hung out with us at the pub...
My 5K race was pretty close to what I expected. It was 76 degrees at the start with 84% humidity. Our track and CC teams from HS and College use this race as a reunion race since our coach, who coached many of us in both HS and then later followed us to college to coach, founded this race in 1975. After the race we head over to a local pub (walking distance) where we all hung out in college. It really is a great event to get to see everyone from various teams, with the common denominator being our coach. As I said last week I was not ready to race but coach wanted me to run, so I ran.
There were 67 people in the 5K and 57 in the 10K.
I set my Garmin for one screen, Ave Pace, and tried to stick to 7:45. The first mile is uphill and I hit 7:52. I felt good, but, pretty much was clueless about how I was supposed to feel. Having not raced for 3 years I have lost the feel in races.. The 10Kers split at the 1 mile mark. It’s always interesting in these races to see who peals off and you are either relieved or disappointed. The second mile reverses back down the same course, being downhill. I hit 7:45 and felt OK but I started getting hot. As usual I was picking out white-haired people but, also, as usual, you can be wildly off in guessing who is in your age group. Some old looking guy with a really long white beard was 3rd over-all. I was like, “jeez, that guy is flying.” I later found out he was 42. I wanted to go up to him and accuse him of “fake aging” with something like: “You think it’s so cool to look old, wait until you actually are! Crap will break on you you didn’t even know you had!” Instead, I congratulated him.
I got to 2 miles and, essentially, I was done. About 3K is all the endurance I had. I crawled 8:24 the last mile but only lost one place to a 30something kid. I finished and felt way too fresh! That’s when I realized I just was just not tuned to race.
Several things were shocking about the race. My coach, who is 75 finished the race strong, was resting and sipping fluids. We were just chatting and he just dropped like a sack of potatoes, completely unconscious. We all thought heart attack, or worse. The squad checked him out, ran EKG’s and he revived fairly quickly. They wanted to get him to the hospital for follow-up but he refused. He wanted to make the reunion. Two hours later….he’s just hanging out with us at the pub like nothing happened! And he’s still fine. Apparently it was low bp on standing too quickly. All is good.
The other shocking thing is seeing my old teammates and hearing their health stories. Out of, perhaps, 100 of us, only 6 were able to run. Knees, cancer, multiple heart attacks, arrhythmias and, of course, death have taken their toll. Interestingly, two of our local top masters runners (not in out group) , now 65 and 70 had mild heart attacks fairly soon after running Boston last year. I mean, these guys were 85+ % age grade folks. I wonder if there is a “Boston” special edition heart stint…..it could be cool…..
Disturbingly, of the few of my teammates left, I was a full 5 minutes ahead of the rest of them. I wanted to complain about being so slow but I’d just sound like a jerk to them. But, damn, I WAS slow.
So I got my lifetime (extreme) personal worst race out of the way! I won’t be racing until I get closer to 60 in Jan. I’ll be bumping up my Sun run and mix in longer tempo’s which will reduce the crash-and-burn at the 2 mile point.
Best of all: NO INJURY! I survived unscathed, other than my ego.
Thanks for listening (if you could stand reading it) and have a good week folks!