Pete MaGill - Tell us what you did to be able to run a 14:34 5k at 46.

Jim Sorensen was runner-up in the 1996 Olympic Trials 1500m by .02 of a second. I'd say he was pretty elite.

Believe me, Pete, I have not forgotten my obligations where your beer(s) is/are concerned! (BTW, if you had stayed for the party at X-C Nationals, I would have bought you 10 beers).

There's a part of me that feels a little bad about retreating to the 'mill; but, there is a bigger part, namely, my entire lower body, that feels very good about it, Canadian or not. Anyway, I still walk the dog for 5k in all kinds of weather, so I'm not missing out entirely on the essential Canadian winter experience!

SB,

Thanks for sharing your background and experience. I've had the pleasure of running in some of the same races as you and seeing you hold your own against some very good open runners.

I do have one question related to this thread. I recall that you are a professor/teacher, so does that career, combined with the weather, contribue to your being able to train harder in the summer and peak in the fall? I find myself in a similar situation, although my most serious training is in May and June, so my peaks are a little earlier.

Thanks

nyloco wrote:

SB,

Thanks for sharing your background and experience. I've had the pleasure of running in some of the same races as you and seeing you hold your own against some very good open runners.

I do have one question related to this thread. I recall that you are a professor/teacher, so does that career, combined with the weather, contribue to your being able to train harder in the summer and peak in the fall? I find myself in a similar situation, although my most serious training is in May and June, so my peaks are a little earlier.

Thanks

My pleasure. And, yeah, I'm definitely freer to do more training in the spring and summer months; but, the winter weather and, specifically, having to run on the pavement, is much more my nemesis than time pressure. Between work and coaching, fall is definitely my busiest time, yet also when I do my best racing and training.

SB,

what type of workouts do you do in the winter and are they done only on the treadmill or do you have access to an indoor track

thanks

SB wrote: Pete, I have not forgotten my obligations where your beer(s) is/are concerned!

Hey SB, you don't actually owe me any beers, I'm just yanking your chain. But had I been offered 10 free cold ones, there's very little chance I would have said no. Now the lovely Mrs. Pete, who was along for the trip with me, may have something different to say. :-) Actually, I had to skip out on post-race beers smuggled on-site by one of the Toronto guys who offered me a cold one after the race when we met at the line (we'd never met but knew each others' names - this is really one of the best things about masters racing). The lovely Mrs, however, had watched the race in the cold and wind, and unfortunately had little desire to stand around watching me drink cold beers, haha. She's pretty good to me, but some days she draws the line. Politely, but firmly.

SB, what brand of treadmill did you buy?

SB wrote:

Rundaddy, did you know for a fact that this kid wanted his father there at his practice watching him? In my experience, most parents are at their kid's practices because THEY want to watch them, not because their kid wants or needs a parent around. I generally think the fewer parents hanging around kid's sports, and the more time kid's have to socialize with one another around their sporting activities, the better. )

Wow, rationalizations are great. "My kid doesn't really want me there". My kid wants Candy for dinner too, I guess I should just let him, right?

While I may have been the moody teen then, looking back on it now. I really treasure the times my mom came out to my XC meets. She was a single-mom and many times had to work.

Running more than 25 miles per week is a sacrifice on your family, whether you admit it or not.

I know Pete thinks this thread has been hijacked, but the OP did ask questions about his family status.

Anyway, I've been following this debate, and similar ones on letsrun concerning parents. I've been a coach for over 15 years and I have to say that in all those years I only experienced one 'helicopter' parent that I had to tell to back off. The vast majority of parents who come out to watch their kids are good, decent people trying to support their kids. The odd horror story really is an anomaly and creates a false impression. I need parents at my meets and I need parents to support my teams.

In your experience SB? What exactly is that experience?

Assuming that you're right, so what? Family life involves sacrafice for the benefits of the rest of the family. But I don't get the sacrafice thing. My dad was home from work a little before five. We'd have supper. He'd have a nap, watch some TV, maybe run some errands. If we'd eaten at 6:30 so he could run for an hour and a half life wouldn't have been much different. Or he could have gone at 9:30 or so after I went to bed.

He was around for occasions when I wanted or needed him. But this idea that nearly all of a parent's non-working time should be spent with their kids is unrealistic. Most kids wouldn't even want that.

Yes, we do have an indoor track here, but the corners are very tight, and I'm usually dealing with an injury before I get a chance to use it. Recently, I've been able to do the odd session with the kids I coach in Feb-early March.

As for the treadmill, I bought one used from a friend (a 2:16 marathoner who decided he preferred to use the YMCA instead of sweating it out in his basement). It's a Pacemaster Gold Elite-- repped for being great value for money. So far, I really like it. I'd held off getting one before this year because I couldn't afford to get one that went faster than 12mph, which is what I still needed for my tempo runs until last year. Thanks to being 45, 12mph with a 1.5% grade is now bang-on.

On the topic of parents and kids sports, I'll just say that "my experience" is one of parents competing with one another using their kids as implements. In my view, even the most well-meaning parents are far too emotionally invested in their kids athletic endeavors, and I think kids can feel this. After structuring our kids sporting activities to the nth degree since pre-school, we need to give sports back to them a little bit and start letting them discover whether they like to do them for reasons other than parental approval. My dad was an extreme case in the opposite direction, having seen me run maybe three times in my life; but, I actually didn't mind. He was still interested in hearing how I did, and I knew from the beginning that running was my thing and my thing alone, and liked it that way. I simply don't think our kids need us to watch them as much as we think, and perhaps hope, they do. Although, I'll admit that, in the case of a very busy single parent, an appearance at a sporting event can be a very touching and encouraging thing for a kid.

HRE and SB are in denial living with a me, me, me mentality. Your kids need your support. You are the parent. Skip a run be a dad.

Dumping off your kids to be developed and raised by coach or their teachers is a cop out. Your wife or ex-wife should not be the sole provider.

....steve suck it up and run on the roads...if we have snow and i run outside then u can too ;-)

aging wrote:

HRE and SB are in denial living with a me, me, me mentality. Your kids need your support. You are the parent. Skip a run be a dad.

Dumping off your kids to be developed and raised by coach or their teachers is a cop out. Your wife or ex-wife should not be the sole provider.

Very few people spend as much time with their kids as I do. I've never missed a band concert or a teacher's conference involving either of them. I live in a place I'm not fond of because it makes them happy. I've managed or coached thirty five baseball or basketball teams that they've played on. In two and a half years of running high school cross county and track, my oldest son has run three races that I've not been at and in each case it was because I was doing something with my youngest son. I drive them on their paper routes when the weather is awful or when they're pressed for time. I spend a lot more time with them than my wife does. And there is still time to run for an hour or two a day.

I don't know what your life is like and I'm not writing all this to pat myself on the back. But just because YOU can't be a decent parent while still doing a fair amount of running doesn't mean it's impossible. I don't know what your problem is with people who run seriously or semi-seriously but it's time to get off your high horse and stop criticizing the lives of people you don't know.

There is always a link to my e-mail on my LR postings. Send me a message asking what my wife and kids think of me as a husband and father. I'll forward it to them and let them answer. And then, just for the heck of it, I'll do the same to you and your kids.

PS

When I was 15 and my dad was 43 he had a heart attack. He was told that he needed regular exercise so he pretty much started walking for an hour most days. On days when he didn't walk he'd play nine holes of golf and that usually took a couple of hours.

So by your reckoning he was supposed to skip most of that exercise because it meant he was away from his family for an hour or two each day? How was the time he spent preventing another heart attack any different from the time a parent who is a serious runner spends preparing for competitions?

Hey Pete McGill... I'm the OP. Just learned of your recent effort of 14:49. Absolutely phenomenal. Thanks for posting. We need to keep guys like you on the front page as it puts thing into perspective. BTW, I'm 37 and I'm born again. You're showing what's possible.

HRE wrote:

But this idea that nearly all of a parent's non-working time should be spent with their kids is unrealistic. Most kids wouldn't even want that.

This is true. Most kids don't want you there every minute of their life and it's not good for them either. They have to breathe too. And they would certainly want you to chase your dreams. It's okay to have some fun. Sans the guilt trip

This seems to be getting more true as my kids get older. With the exception of a Weds evening track workout when the weather is nicer, my weekday workouts are during lunch when my kids are at school. I plan my weekend runs around my family's schedule, which sometimes means starting my long run a little earlier than I'd like, but it seems to work well for me.The only complaint/guilt trip I have had was in 2006 when I was racing a little too frequently. I've cut them down to ~20 per year and run remote races at locations my family is interested in visiting. Now they actually tell me I need to race more when they get the bug to take a roadtrip.

Pey wrote:

This is true. Most kids don't want you there every minute of their life and it's not good for them either. They have to breathe too. And they would certainly want you to chase your dreams. It's okay to have some fun. Sans the guilt trip

aging wrote:

HRE and SB are in denial living with a me, me, me mentality. Your kids need your support. You are the parent. Skip a run be a dad.

Dumping off your kids to be developed and raised by coach or their teachers is a cop out. Your wife or ex-wife should not be the sole provider.

This is precisely why I normally don't bother posting on this site, and get impatient by the time I get 3 or 4 posts into any thread. "Aging", if you're going to try to be provocative for its own sake, at least make an effort to be funny and/or original. Or, perhaps you WERE making an effort and this was the best you could muster...

Why would anyone entertain assumptions one way or another about the quality of a person's parenting based on their performances in master's running? If we're going to say the being really good at something as a middle aged person necessarily puts one's parenting into question, why stop at running performances? If we were discussing literature, would anyone say "Yeah, you won the Nobel Prize, but at what cost to your kids?" Or, is there a double standard that says its permissible to take time away from your family if you're doing it to make money, but not if you're doing it to pursue other goals? I'm actually tempted to agree with the other poster and suggest that some of you (fellow masters) would, in the face of a performance like Pete's 5k, like to salve your wounded egos by convincing yourselves that people like Pete or Tony Young must be fanatics who put their running above their family responsibilities; and that, if you weren't the paragon of conscientious parenting that you are,you would be just as fast. I apologize for the disappointment you're bound to feel when you discover that fast masters are generally no better or worse as parents than anyone else.