A Runner’s Story: Everyone Has One, What’s Yours?

Alan -- A 64-second 400 as an eighth grader sounds darn impressive to me.

Also, that's an impressive long jump. You were obviously a natural athlete. For me, there was no "football or cross-country" choice to be made. I had no athletic skills whatsoever.

But in 1972, during the summer between 7th and 8th grade, I saw a television promo for the Olympic marathon. Some British guy narrated a preview of the Munich course, describing how the runners would be feeling -- running out of fuel, fighting an overwhelming desire to slow, struggling through those final miles of agony.

Ah! A sport for me! No ball to catch, hit, throw, kick or shoot! Just pain and hard work.

Frank Shorter won the gold that summer, which only heightened my interest. I had no special talent, but I started running a 1K loop a couple times a week. And in the annual gym class "12-minute run," I tallied the second-highest eighth-grade total.

A friend showed me the sign-up sheet that the high school cross-country coach had posted. And 47 years later, I'm still running. Or trying to.

This is long, but if you have nothing better to do…

In some respects my story is similar to Allen1959's. As a little kid I was slow, weak, and clumsy, but I loved physical activity. I couldn’t do anything well, but whatever I could do, I could do all day without getting tired. In grade school we had to take the “Presidential Physical Fitness Tests” which included a 50-yard dash. I could only beat a couple of fat kids in my class, back in the days when few kids were fat. But I still loved to run even though almost everyone could outrun me.

My epiphany came when I hit 7th grade and the fitness tests included a 600 yard run. The teacher blew her whistle, we all took off, and I immediately dropped to the back of the pack as usual. But after about 300 yards something strange happened--the other girls began stopping, gasping and cramping. I just kept running at my plodding pace, circled the field and finished second, behind the one girl in my class who had both decent speed and good stamina. In 9th grade they substituted the 12-minute run, where I was unbeatable. I could run well over 1.5 miles in 12 minutes and could lap every other girl in my class. But at that time females didn’t compete at long distances (I was 26 the first year women ran the marathon in the Olympics) and I never considered competitive running.

This was in the early days of Title IX expansion of women’s sports programs, and I was a sophomore the first year my university started a women’s track and cross-country team. I never considered going out until I read a piece in the school newspaper saying that the fastest girl on the team had gotten down to a 7-minute mile. Wait a second, I said, I could run a mile in about 7 minutes in 9th grade. So I showed up at the coach’s office. “I can run a 7-minute mile and I’d like to try out for the team.” He looked across the room at an awkward, nerdy girl who looked about 14 but had the body type of a distance runner. “Sure, show up at practice tomorrow.” It turned out they were running a 1-mile time trial, and I went out way too fast pumped up with adrenaline, crashed badly in the last lap, but still dragged myself home in something like 6:40. The coach was grinning from ear to ear, figuring he’d finally found himself a runner. Sadly, though, he had no idea how to train a 19-year-old who had never run farther than 1.5 miles at a time. Within 2 months I was on the sidelines injured and a month after that I quit the team in frustration. For almost 3 years I didn’t run a step and gained about 30 pounds.

I was rescued when I started graduate school and my advisor turned out to be a runner who did a few local races including an annual marathon. I started running again but didn’t lose any weight and finished my first marathon at age 25 in 3:47. A year later I ran 3:42 but had such a painful experience that I quit running races. However, I did keep running.

Fate wasn’t done with me. At age 28 I started my first permanent position as an assistant professor and guess what, my department chair was a serious runner. (At one time my department had four sub-3-hr marathoners out of 18 people.) I got serious about running, cleaned up my diet, lost a ton of weight, and started to improve quickly. I peaked with a 2:42:50 marathon at age 33.

28 years later I am way, way slower and ten pounds over racing weight, but still at it. I still love to run.

Episode 2: The Birth Of Animal Psycho

So these episodes won’t really follow a pattern. I guess I could write one per season or one per year, but that would be boring and predictable. Instead I will try to focus on main themes or events. Aaaaaand so we have “The Birth Of Psycho”.....

Following my freshman cross country season I continued to run during the winter getting up to 50-60 miles a week. Coach K always made a big deal about running on your own and about maintaining your streak....the number of days in a row in which you run at least one mile. We didn’t have practice on the weekends. Why would you run during the week just to take a step back over the weekend because you didn’t run on your own. The same can be said about the off-season. The off-season is where bad runners become good and good runners become great. I viewed this as a competition with myself. How many miles can I run this week? Next week? I simply set a goal and went after it. I showed up to the first track practice ready to run.

Track is fun. It’s social. It’s cool. Something I most definitely was not. A 5’6”, 140lb male is never cool in high school (this was after the acid wash tight rolled jeans era and well before the skinny jean era). Track is rock ‘n roll, it’s Guns ‘n Roses, it’s AC/DC. That was definitely cool. That was definitely me. My first track meet I ran the 1600m in 4:58. The rest of the season is a blur of staring at the high jump girls, slathering Cramergesic Atomic Bomb on my legs and running 4 laps of fury! I was gonna be the next Jim Ryun! The last meet of the year I ran 4:37.

One more note....our throws coach/football coach gave me the nickname “Psycho”. Well one coach gave me that while another one gave me “Animal”. As I’ve said....I ran on emotion and intensity. Like clockwork in every race as I was coming down the homestretch to start lap 3 I would yell or growl. Sometimes I would turn to an opponent and do this. It was a way to amp me up. I then would surge strong that 3rd lap. I never had much top speed and not much of a kick so this was my way of trying to take the kick out of other runners. Of course there was that time it backfired and I got dusted in the last 10 meters of the race and flipped the guy the bird as we crossed the line. That didn’t go over very well.

So I won the top freshman award or something like that for track. I was rocking my Metallica “Master Of Puppets” T-Shirt at the awards banquet. Rock On! That’s what I did. I ran 70mi a week that summer. Banging out our “hard tempos” or “time trials” or whatever you want to call them. We called them PPMs (let the hate consume you). I got up to I think 8mi in 48min that summer, showed up to the start of cross country season as our second man behind a junior. He was always just a little ahead of me. I ended up with a 17:35 for the last meet of the season. Rocking the mileage train again over the winter, hitting more consistent 70s then roaring into sophomore track. Cuz ya know....girl high jumpers rock right?

Here we go another season of Rock n Roll High School. I end up running a 4:28....breaking our 30+ year high school record. I routinely beat the Junior who was ahead of me in cross country and would also finish just a stride ahead of him in workouts. So workouts? Let’s take a minute to talk about that....

We ran the PAAVO system. It creates a lot of heated debate, but it works for high school. It’s created state champions in multiple states. I get it, it’s a “system”. I don’t care. It maximizes the runners potential as quick as possible. I probably ran twice as many workouts as the typical high school runner. It is what it is. I would not have been as good without it. In my opinion, it just speeds up your development. I’m not going to go into too much detail here as there are a number of threads on Letsrun about it already.

At this point my running is getting serious. This is when I realized this could get me to college. So here we go another summer of mileage, getting up to 80 miles a week, 10mi PPM in 60:00. I also finally beat the Junior in our hotly contested 3 mi PPM. We would run two PPMs a week from July to mid-August. One was a 3 miler and one was increasingly longer. These were basically Time Trials. By the time cross country rolled around I was our #1 runner and the Junior became the Senior with a bad case of Senioritis. Even so, this would be the best boys team the little school from southern Indiana ever had. The Psycho Animal, The Senior, and the newly added Ex-Basketball Player would be the best top 3 around.

It’s time to get rocked!

My story is the ultimate hobby jogger saga. I was put in soccer and basketball year round as a kid to stay somewhat healthy by my parents. I stopped playing at age 12 and did typical kid things like rollerblading, skateboarding and bmxing. I started at 15 to help with physique and got into 90 minute runs in the first year. I kept the runs at that maximum throughout my teens and twenties getting into the barefoot and minimalist scene and decided to run half marathons and eventually a marathon. After my first marathon I realized trails were my best event and started to run those exclusively and get age group awards at local races. Then I moved to ultras for the fun of it and am in the middle of the pack from 50km to 100 miles. I'm now into the maximal cushioned shoes for these races but still run barefoot every now and then. I'd like to do a 200 miler.

My story is probably very common in hobby runners.

I feel like my life is plateauing and wanted to find something to improve myself upon. One day, I listened to David Goggins' interview with Joe Rogan and I was fired up. Signed up for a 10k run 3 months out and started training for it. Just finished the 10k run in 56 minutes which was great for my level and I aim to keep challenging myself going forward.

Started running in the 7th grade and in 8th grade broke the 800m and 4x400 school records, and ran 14 miles non-stop that same spring at 14 years old.

Quit track after 9th grade because I was only a good, but not great 1500-3000 meter runner. I completely ignored the 800 meter and 400 meter because I just assumed I was a long-distance runner.

Plus I wanted to smoke weed. I should have kept doing track but focused on the events I set middle school records in.

But I came down with a mood disorder in high school anyway, and the depression would have capped my potential anyway.

Now I'm 40 and in my second year as a runner again.

And I'm mentally/emotionally crippled/disabled.

In school I was one of the worst in sports. I was actually enthusiastic about running and at times did think about doing some training outside school so I could be fitter. I was also interested in gaining lots of muscle by weight lifting but again I never bothered. When I was 22 I decided I wanted to be fitter so occasionally I would run on a threadmill and go to the gym. I did this about a dozen times maybe and just stopped, but I was keeping fit from cycling. When I was 23 I decided I wanted to do a marathon. I signed up for one 3 months before the start and bought my first pair of running shoes. At the time I guessed I should easily go sub 4, maybe 3:45. I ran 3:20, and was after being injured for half of those 3 months.

After the marathon I was on/off injuries for over 1.5 years. I didn't know how to train so pushed too hard all the time when I should have been recovering. I attempted a marathon the year after my first, and dropped out after 14 miles. I was slightly faster than the 3 hour pacers when I dropped. I hadn't run for over 2 months before the marathon, and was training entirely through the elliptical machine and also walked/cycled plenty. This was the craziest thing I ever did. My legs were completely destroyed and took a few weeks to walk normally again.

I joined a running club when 25 and started training properly and became consistent and ran regularly/smartly. Over the next 2 years I got the 5,000m down to 15:57, mile 4:40, 3,000m 9:13, 800m, 2:08, 10k road 34:30, 10 mile road 55:36. The following year I went downhill with sickness and inconsistent training. I haven't run a PB in 4 years at this point. I want to improve again. I have been running very consistently this year(and most of 2017 and 2018), but I don't know why I can't seem to run fast now. I haven't gone sub 17 for 5k since the end of 2015. I am always disappointed with my results. I know I should do better and can. I recently did a half in 75:16, which suggests that I am better than 17 for 5k. There doesn't seem to be much difference between my 5k and half pace. I want to move to the marathon again soon and run it properly. I could probably run 2:35 now. I want to join a club again as I have been training alone since 2017, which may be my problem. It is hard to judge your training on your own. That is my next goal.

I don't have a running story that I think would be remotely interesting.

This is interesting. A couple years ago the Department chair of our local university's English/Writing Department asked me to consider writing my running memoir.

I started running in 1971, 1 year before the "boom". I ran through the 70's, 80's (with one break for about 18 months when I quit because of ongoing injuries), came back, ran through the 90's, 2000's and now into the 2010'sand I plan on continuing for a few more decades.

I ran in 6 mile road races that were anywhere from 5.8-6.4 miles and the 50 or so runners didn't care, we just wanted to race each other.

We'd meet at a track for an impromptu 1 mile race and go on group runs that ended up just like races.

Good times. I miss those days.

My dad ran & I wanted to be like him when I grew up. When I started training seriously at 22, it became an obsession which I now attribute to the idea that humans are still biologically nomadic.

A fateful step was hearing about the longest race in the world, 1300 miles in New York. Competing in it, and subsequently organizing the longest race in the world to pay the benefits forward, has defined my existence.

The first Running Boom in the 70's even hit my little southern town. Our gym coach decided he wanted to have as many kids as he could get from our school to participate in the 5k. Our gym coach was a real fitness guy, not just a dude that rolled out basketballs in the gym, he had us do calisthenics every Monday, and we had "apparatus" every Friday, that was climbing ropes, pull ups, dips, etc.. then after every class we ran a 1/4 mile loop around a field.

They made an announcement that if you wanted to participate in this race to come to the gym. I went. For some reason I went, maybe it was simply to get out of class. I had no athletic talent, I had never been on or even interested in ANY sports like little league baseball or pee wee football (youth soccer didn't even exist back then.)

We started training every morning before school in Feb & March, then ran the race in April. We worked up to running 3M per day and he would give us 100 Mile Awards for anyone that reached it. It was great. I ended up finishing OK, I was one of the better runners in my grade. The race I ran I won a trophy- I was hooked.

We didn't have Middle School track, but my parents were supportive enough to take me to road races in the area, so I stayed with the sport until I could start running with the HS team in the 8th grade (a year early.) I went on to run in HS and college, and I still love to get out there.

As a Master's runner with my PRs well in my past, I still enjoy pushing myself and competing vs the other old fools that should be doing something more relaxing on a Saturday morning. I also enjoy the "Zen" aspects of the solitary run in the cold, or the rain when you don't even feel the run- you feel like a big floating brain just navigating through the trails. This sport has helped me in more ways than I could list, but mostly it has allowed me to maintain a healthy lifestyle and surround myself with a number of positive friends. ( I can only compare myself to many I grew up with that are in much much different situations.)

i'm one of the younger, novice runners on here. i enjoy seeing your posts because you are always knowledgeable with how you reply. good story i enjoyed reading the origin of the legacy runningart!

Episode 3: From Local High School Legend To Drunken Disappointment

This episode is going to read like a Motley Crue autobiography, from the highs of success to the lows of over indulgence. Strap in kids!

My junior cross country season was something special. We had three runners pushing each other day after day. We even did workouts in the morning before school. There was myself, the Senior, and the Basketball Player plus the Three Others. The Three Others were on the team but they were quite a bit slower than the top 3 and so we tended to train in two separate groups. The Basketball Player was just someone the Senior convinced to run. You see the school always had a problem with fielding a full team. During my first two years we had baseball players, 400m runners and 300m hurdlers in our top 5. That wasn’t a problem for The Dragons.

The Dragons were the conference cross country powerhouse and even had success at the state meet and a state champion in their history. Their school didn’t have a football team so cross country was their football. How convenient. Their coach was even a neighbor to our coach, Coach K. The Dragon Coach and Coach K even ran the same “system” (remember this for later). That year our top 3 would battle the Dragons top 3.

I started off the season the same way I ended the last one, with a 17:35. That would be my only race over 17:00 the rest of the season. I would again be the number one runner on the team, won a number of races individually and we even won some meets as a team! The Senior was consistently right behind me by no more than 30 seconds and the Basketball Player was consistently right behind him by 30-45 seconds. We had a very strong top 3, probably the strongest top 3 in southern Indiana. At our conference meet I was second behind the top Dragon and we finished second as a team. The Dragons ran a different Sectional. So I was able to win Sectional and our team qualified for Regional....the first time that’s ever happened. We would see the Dragons again at Regional. I placed third, battling a Dragon and a Red Devil the whole way. I even slipped and fell as we were going up a hill in the last mile. Again our team advanced!! At Semi-State the top 5 teams and top 15 individuals not on those teams advanced to state. We placed 6th as a team and I finished second behind a Dragon. So we had two individuals qualify for State and a third barely miss it. The State meet was a blur. I finished 30th in 16:16 is all I can remember. The next day the Basketball Player and I ran the Regional AAU Qualifier in Louisville. I won in 16:01. I’m still trying to figure out how that happened lol. It was a hard packed pancake course, so that probably had something to do with it. A few weeks later we drove up to Hammond, IN for AAU Nationals. I ran 16:30, but have no clue what I placed. At that point I was just ready to start revving up for track.

That winter I consistently ran 80 mile weeks and 14 mile long runs and finally broke 16:00 on our 3 mile PPM. I was ready to roll. The pressure was on! Then I just somehow fizzled out a bit. I was racing a lot more as our team needed the points. The Basketball Player broke my 1600m school record by a sliver, under half a second. The Senior and the Basketball Player duked it out over 800m all season to try and lower the record. They barely missed it but the Senior ran 1:59, 1 second off the record. I consistently ran a low 4:30s 1600m and sub 10:00 3200m, always running the 3200m just to get the win. We won our Conference Meet on the last event, the 4 x 400m relay. Finally at the end of the season I ran the 3200m fresh at Sectional running a 9:45PR! At Regional I barely missed going to State but still ran a 9:38 PR....just 2 seconds off our school record. It was a great season, an end of an era of sorts as the Senior and Basketball Player would not be around next year.

That summer it was business as usual. Weekly mileage in the 80s with a 14mi long run, PPM, etc. My senior cross country season was mostly a disappointment until the very end. We did not have a complete team. Only 2 others would join me that year. It was a lonely season as I worked out by myself. I was expected to run well. I did not. I was a little slower than last year, and my legs felt heavy. I didn’t win Conference or Sectional or Regional and was only 8th at Semi-State where the previous year I was 2nd. Remember the Red Devil from last year? We’re both seniors and he’s on fire winning races and competing up front while I lag behind. At the end of the year Coach K and I decide to back off the training a bit. Finally at the State Meet I have my one good race. I weave through the masses and finish in 12th running a 15:53 and beating the Red Devil and all of the others who beat me that year. It was a redemption of sorts.

That winter once again is business as usual, 80 mile weeks and so on. That year the state added the 4 x 800m relay. So most meets I ran the 4 x 800m relay, the 1600m and the 3200m. We won conference again. At Sectional I got my 1600m school record back by running 4:27 and won the 3200m. At Regional I led wire to wire running 9:36 and qualifying for state, tying our school record in the process. Next up the Indiana State Track & Field Meet.

I was ready to just go for it. I would run my race and make a move. So, my 3200m move was always similar to my 1600m move. Somewhere around the halfway point I would surge. I felt like this is where runners would lag as they await the last lap or two. In previous races that’s what happened, after the first mile I would always take off.

The gun goes off and we start. Everyone is running like a mad man. I’m tucked in the back and hit :66 for the first lap. Everyone up front must have run :63 or so because I’m almost in last. Everyone settles down and I weave myself towards the front. The week prior I had run a workout of 3 x 1600m in the pouring rain in 4:43-45 with a 1 mile jog between. Like clockwork we hit the first 1600m in 4:45 all in a bunch. During lap 6 I decide it’s time to go so I surge ahead and I’m leading the whole damn race! About 200m later I’m passed. That euphoria was short lived. With 2 laps to go we are still in a bunch. This is where everyone leaves me lol. I drop back to 5th then 6th then 7th over the last 200m. I could literally reach out and touch 5th as I crossed the line in 7th finishing in 9:32 and breaking the school record. The race was won in 9:24 with most of that breakaway in the last lap. It was a great end to the season and to my high school career.

I had finalized my college decision a few months earlier. I received recruitment letters and packets from various schools, some big, some small. I narrowed it to Eastern Michigan, Eastern Kentucky, and Indiana State. Hindsight being what it is I should have gone to Indiana State. Instead I ended up at Eastern Kentucky where I proceeded to discover binge drinking. I went from a 27:30 8k to 29:00 8k to being kicked off the team for two arrests for public intoxication and I somehow developed a slipped disc in my back. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Now I’m just another statistic. I stopped running and put on a good 20lbs. I even stopped going to class and went from a 3.0 gpa my first semester to a 2.0 gpa my second semester.

Total. Downward. Spiral.

Episode 4: Rebirth and Fast Freddy

So my first year of college didn’t go as planned. Backing up to the summer before I was putting in those 80+ mile weeks and even hit a string of 90s. Beyond the drunken hijinks I simply wasn’t adapting to the different training style. It’s all about the law of diminishing returns. Sometimes you just need to go back to zero.

So that’s where I was. I heard the Dragon’s Coach was taking over at this small NAIA school that just started its program. It had a cross country program in the 80s for a couple years but since then nothing. This is where I would get my restart, under a coach that used the same system I had used in high school. It was a cross country only school, so there was no track in the spring. Slowly but surely I would regain my fitness, again climbing my way up from the bottom. I went to a sports chiropractor to pop my disc back in place and that helped tremendously. I started running 30:00 for 8k and bit by bit got better and better until I was the top guy on the team again. In my last year there in my last race I ran a 26:20 PR....missing nationals by 15 seconds. I knew who I had to best and could literally see him slipping away over the last 2 miles.

This was around 1999. I had been running a few road races in the spring. The year 2000 was a good year on the roads. I would put in my first 100 mile weeks that winter in preparation for my first marathon. There was this road race series in Louisville, The Triple Crown of Running (cue the horses!), and that was my new goal as well as the marathon. I was still training myself under the same high mileage high intensity system, even though in hindsight it probably wasn’t optimal for these longer races (although my PRs at these distances would state otherwise I think). The Triple Crown included a 10k, a 15k and a Half-Marathon. I believe I finished 3rd in each race....32:08, 48:47, 1:09:40. This would

be my lifetime PR for the half-marathon and 10k as I was shifting focus to the marathon. I would run my first marathon that spring at the Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon. I went out I think in 1:15-16? Then had to walk most of the last 10k. My calves cramped up hard and I finished limping in 2:48. I didn’t think much of the tendinitis building up in my heels and just trained through it. Another big annual race for me was Fast Freddie’s Festive Five Mile Foot Feast. Huh?

Yep, Fast Freddie’s Festive Five Mile Foot Feast was your typical competitive Thanksgiving Day run. This is the bragging rights race for collegians with nothing better to do. You saw your former teammates and rivals all lined up and ready to go. I had run the race annually since my sophomore year in high school 7 odd years ago. I’ve always wanted to win this race and typically would be top 5. This is the year I was really ready for it and I won running 25:19 for for 5 very hilly miles. In fact the race finished with a good half mile to a mile climb in which I surged ahead of a younger rival for the win. Turkey was on me that day as the first place prize was a butterball.

Sometime during this 1999/2000 period is where the username Runningart2004 was born. You see, ART is my initials and I was also an Art Major at the time and like every running dreamer I wanted to qualify for the 2004 Olympic Trials Marathon, which at the time only required a 2:20 marathon. Surely I could turn my half marathon pace into my marathon pace in 4 years right? Right?

Episode 5: Marathon Dreams And Abject Mediocrity

So first a little historical background. My first email account was on a VAX terminal at EKU. I somehow discovered the U Oregon t-and-f Listserv. This was like the Bronze Age ancestor of Letsrun. After that was RunGroteScheif then TNFMedia then Letsrun then everything got crazy. Somewhere in all this I was able to discover different training programs and more importantly different books. Remember books? Front cover. Back cover. Words inside? I read Jim Ryun’s book, Lydiard. Ron Daws, Jack Foster and eventually Daniels and Martin/Coe and others. I was determined to become a marathoner.

My second marathon met the same fate as my first....a crash and burn with tight cramping calves. Again at the Pig in 2001. This time I took my tendinitis seriously, didn’t run a step for weeks, invested massive amounts of Ibuprofen, applied DMSO with Ibuprofen, stretched and so on. One big change I made was to switch to lighter lower profile shoes which allowed my calves to stretch appropriately during the running stride. I started in the ASIC DS Racer but moved around quite a lot with brands, until I started getting free shoes from the local running store.

My next marathon was the Derby Festival Marathon in Louisville, KY in 2002. My memory is foggy but I’m sure at this point I was putting in 100+ up to 110-120 miles a week, and probably doing some sort of tempo run or marathons pace run, plus mile repeats. I got to the point where I loved rolling off mile repeats. I remember splitting maybe 1:13-14? I know I was on sub 2:30 pace through 18-20 miles until the wheels came off. This one I was actually able to finish running, Although the last 2 miles or so were over 7:00 I finished in 2:33:58. Pretty happy. Now between that 1:09:40 half marathon and this sub 2:34 marathon I was able to wiggle myself into some free races and free hotel rooms. One was the Hartford Half Marathon where I got chicked by a Kenyan and the other was my next marathon, Rocket City in Alabama in 2003.

At some point I started running for the local Fleet Feet store, which had a deal with Brooks so I had some nice racing gear and would do the majority of my training in the Brooks T3 racer. We had a nice little group, ran some forgettable team races here and there, ran a few heated weekend long runs here and there. Good times. For the next couple of years I would focus on mostly the marathon, running 1-2 a year. Training was 100+ a week upwards of 120-140. One year I averaged 100 miles a week the entire year and had a 500 mile February (non-leap year). Interestingly I set my 5k PR during this time as well running 15:43 on the track and 15:47 on the roads. My marathon times jumped up and down but eventually I got smart and ran a couple fast courses running Chicago in 2005 and 2006 where I set my PR of 2:32:50....again repeating the pattern of hitting halfway between 1:13-15. I did get better at holding it together and in that 2006 run I creeped into 6:00+ territory only in the last mile or so into a strong wind of death lol.

So my marathon scoreboard would be as follows:

2000: Cincy 2:48

2001: Cincy DNF

2002: Louisville Derby 2:33

2003: Rocket City 2:37

2005: Sunburst 2:46

2005: Chicago 2:35

2006: Chicago 2:32

2007: Louisville Derby 2:40

2007: NYC 2:53

It got to the point where I needed more and more training to get less and less result. I was able to run 5:45 pace at the drop of a hat but would just crash and burn over the last few miles. In hindsight I should have adjusted my time goals as many of these courses or weather conditions were not conducive to decent times. I also got stuck in no mans land a number of times. Really, I should have just ran Chicago every year and I probably would have gotten sub 2:30. Maybe I should have ran more? I kept doing the same thing expecting a different result. What would of happened had I gotten up to a consistent 140-150 miles a week? Who knows. Probably just more mediocrity.

Alan

Episode 6: The Aftermath

Today I find myself in the Army. I run 3-4 times a week and still do workouts. I run just enough to be a big fish in a very shallow pond, more like a puddle. Back in 2008 I got married, had a baby and started lifting weights. I was always kinda big for runner of any caliber. 5’6”, 140ish pounds is a good 10-20pounds or more heavier than “ideal”. So I lifted weights, put on 20lbs and just started to enjoy another pursuit. Today I’m up around 180lbs, lift a 1000 pound total and can still shuffle around at mid 7s without much trouble. I might be able to still break 5:00 but that’s a big ask and may need a month or more to train for it lol.

We all have a story. One that defines you.

So what’s your story?

Alan

I started running in 6th grade and am now a junior in college. I was the typical mediocre high schooler, running 16:40s in cross country and 4:3x, 9:5x on the track. I haven't seen much improvement over the past few years but I continue to believe the lie that one day I might actually be good.

I was a football player (or at least I thought I was) who ran 4:40 for the 1600 in 8th grade after deciding to give track a try. Any guesses on how I ended up?

Where does having sex in a sandwich shop fit in this?