Thanks for starting us up, Stone, and sorry for your loss. Mortality is not cool. Except that it's what gives value to everything else... like a race with a finish line that moves towards you... turning 50 this year was way more of a thing than turning 40... please notice that while I complained about the weather here, I never once wished that the summer would pass faster. It's difficult to live in the moment until all you have is a moment.
As I wrote that, my daughter came in and my first reaction was to hide the screen, to hide the allusion to my mortality. Instead, I read it to her. She's an aspiring "graphic novelist" and she has an appreciation for truth when expressed properly. She did appreciate it, but, thankfully, she doesn't need to understand it yet.
Go get it, Chicago peeps. It's a moment!
Male, 50 yo, 5’7”, 127 lbs
Goals: sub-40 10k, sub-90 HM
Upcoming Race: 11/04 HM
M: 11.6k: Easy in the hills
T: 18.5k: WU + 10k at Threshold effort + Easy home
W: 8.9k: Easy in the neighborhood
T: 11k: Low aerobic in the rain
F: 9.6k: Easy Commute
S: 14k: WU + 蘆洲夜跑10k (10.66k) (Does that display as Chinese characters to you guys?)
S: 23.5: Easy
Total: 8:30 - 98km - 2500 ft
Highlights: I won my first road race ahead of an obviously weak field at a clusterfvck of an event: three different distances divided among 6 different starting waves-- HM, 10k each in three waves + 3k runners who can go out with any wave of HM/10 that suits them. All in the dark. The course ended up long by nearly 700 meters. It was unmarked and at one point lit only by motor scooter headlights parked on the side of the path. Appraising the situation on the starting line, I guessed it would be unmarked, so I started to rearrange my watch faces to show me distance. As I’m doing this, 3,2,1, the gun goes off 5 minutes early. (After the race, I was told they started sending races off early because, well, they decided to.)
So we’re off! Not counting the dozen or so kids who lined up in front, I’m out in 5th place. By 1k or so, I’m in second. I can see the 1st place guy 100 meters ahead despite the hundreds of runners all out on the course ahead of us because he’s being led by a race official on a scooter, the Taiwanese version of the lead car. I catch him at 3k and ask him how he’s feeling. We’re starting to run into the wind now (about 12mph from 2k-7k). I offer to work with him, but he tells me to go, so I do. I didn’t break 40, but I feel I am in shape to do so. I had no idea where I was on the course and I assumed it would be either short or long so it was difficult to judge when to put the hammer down. I just chased the scooter, felt strong, and enjoyed being in front. Of course, the computer chip system had me coming in as 6th since it was such a Taiwanese-fire-drill of an event, but they straightened it out for me and 2nd and 3rd. I came through the 10k mark at 40:52, but I had lost about 15 seconds at the turnaround getting a wristband, so I estimate a 40:37 performance on a more normal course.
Lowlights: Craig Kimbrell pitching to Aaron Judge in game 1. I had the Sox -1.5. Could’a been another pair of Kinvaras.
HM Training (4 weeks to go): Saturday’s 10k performance VDOTs me at 51 = 89:37 for the half marathon with still a month to go. Entering the home stretch. Planning some kind of faster-than-goal-pace (effort) workout for Tuesdays, goal-race-pace (effort) training on Fridays, progressions on Sundays.