A few years ago I was in my late thirties and on running comeback #17 from burnout and malaise. I got in a couple of okay months of training, with a few workouts and a couple solid long runs but no races. The few races I had done in the past few years had been cruddy, with several uncharacteristic (at one time) DNFs. So I was a little gun shy.
I entered a five mile race the weekend before the marathon I was aiming for so I could at least get in a competitive effort goal day. And there, in an unfamiliar place and filled with familiar feelings that were all too familiar, I stopped for good.
My crappy outings always outnumbered my decent ones by at least 10 to 1 and once internet message boards came around they put me in touch with the fact that in spite of the energy I've put into running over the years, I have actually hated it a lot of the time. But that five miler was different, in its own world of awful, such an abysmal effort that I could no longer delude myself into thinking that just because I was healthy enough to run every day, I could attain race results yielding something, anything, besides anguish and remorse.
When I got to two miles in 11 minutes flat, hurting and sloppy, I knew I'd had it, not just that day but for good. I jogged the mile back to the start/finish, my racing "career" ending in the same way my first marriage did: with my throwing in the towel, feeling quietly ashamed, and later experiencing a charred and hollowed-out psycho-emotional state that might be best described as bland, homicidal apathy.
The weather sucked that day, and I was race rusty, but this can only go so far in explaining what happened. The gun went off, and when I got to the mile in 5:27 (former marathon pace) I was shocked at how slowly I was running, although the fact that I was surrounded by hefty people and women was a strong indicator. I just couldn't go.
Whatever. Be it because of age, being a pussy, because of the cancer I was sure had to be eating me from within (sadly, I was wrong), I couldn't run for suck. My running has plunged so far into the tank that agonizing over my performances, as I once naturally did as a 30-flat guy, was no longer even possible. For me, worrying about doing "well" had become like a Down syndrome 'tard being concerned that he might not perform well once he reached Final Jeopardy.
It's not even on the radar screen now, no more relevant than to regretting the shape of my boobs. (I'm a male.) I was like a giant detached penis out there, flopping and slapping its soft, withering, and slimy way along the hot pavement as if free-existing dongs were ever meant to reach 12 miles an hour, letting out great foul spurts of toxic jipe here and again and subjecting innocent onlookers to a gruesome and raucous spectacle.
That about sums it up. My last race was for humping dick and I didn't even finish up.
Yet I was glad to have finally sailed clean over "maybe if I just try this trick" territory into an zone of undisguised incompetence, making it easier than ever to flat out abandon all pretense at ever again being "fast." I'd been on a gradual downward slide for three years, so the fact that I was finally cooked wasn't exactly a stunning revelation.
I was relieved because I could stop worrying about plane tickets and long drives to the various events I had planned and tentatively planned to do later that year. F*ck all that noise. I got up and ran some almost every day to pass the time and keep my gut from blowing up like Carlos Lopes's did. But there were no more five milers and no more marathons; no trips centered on road races, no track meets, nada. I was done. I had announced this before, boy who cried wolf style. But such vows had always been spur of the moment, anger driven statements made during periods when I knew I could still do well, and more importantly still wanted it. This was the undeniable clincher.
And so I let it go. My friends are mostly runners, these days I just don't go to the races except as an occasional cheerleader. I always figured I would quit someday but also suspected I would miss it. I don't, and that is what almost feels strange.
How did you hang 'em up?