Hi.
I was never very good at running. I was okay by ordinary standards, I guess, but with college PRs of 14:33/30:29 at a D1 school I was pretty slow in comparison to many on this board.
I raced sort of OK for a bunch of years out of college. Got no faster but was respectable and dipped under 51 for 10 miles once. But at some point around the age of 30 I started to lose it. I don't know what went first, the drive or the times, but whatever the case, I've been in and out of halfass shape ever since.
This is going to sound bad, and I know I'm an ass, but here's the deal. I can handle having to bust my ass to run a 26 or sometimes 27 minute 8k. What is harder to take is showing up at races and falling behind people who look like they should not even be running or eveb walking. For instance, in last week's turkey trot extravaganza (which thankfully was out of town at my sister in law's) I went out in the first mile of a 4 mile race behind three other people. One was a tall awkward lopsided guy with tattoos who looked like he shouldn't even be running or trying anything athletic. One was a guy in his mid 20s with braces and acne and the most unruly crew cut ever. The third was someone who made Ryan Deak look like an NBA starting center and sounded like Willie Whistle when he breathed. And this ragtag force of flailing limbs pulled away to beat me soundly in a whopping 21 minutes plus on a flat course that was probably short.
Now I'm sure these were all nice enough people, but that isn't the poitn. In my younger faster days, at least the guys who beat me looked, almost without exception, like real runners. Now I'm among people who just plain look like roving, huffing piles of manure. What, then, I have to wonder, do _I_ look like? I'm already ugly as it is, but now I have to blow chunks at my "sport" too?
It's a blow to what remains of my ego from long ago glory days that never were. I see guys who are now 40 and older who have slowed down but continue to enjoy hammering away at training and racing even though they, too, look like knock kneed goofballs out there, struggling just to come within a quarter mile of their fastest ever 5K times, teeth bared as they "sprint" to the finish wearing tortured expressions as if they are being sodomized by the evil giggling ghosts of their own better days. But they still love it. I just feel sorry for them, and for all of us who are now inadequate competitors.
I guess some of us are not cut out to do this crap forever. I know I am apt to keep jogging to avoid becoming a lardass like everyone else in my family, and I actually like running unlike some college teammates who only did it because they were successful at it and are now happily glued to the couch, remote and Cheetos in hand. But I can't stand doing something I was never great at now that I am on the decline. At 33 I am not "old" but I am not going to see the sunny side of 4 minutes for 1500 anymore no matter what I do, and what I do (45-50 mi/wk w/ one workout if I'm lucky, plus usually a hard 10 or 12 miler) is crap anyway.
Happy Thanksgiving and God bless you all for letting me share. I feel like one of those "Demotivational" posters or whatever they are, but I'm fine with this, and with who and what I am...as long as I stay away from road races.\
Bye.