Just-for-Fun Meet

Yesterday, my son's Middle School track team had their awards program.

After the blissfully short program, there was a very informal, "just for fun" meet.

There were no stop watches, no starting guns, just kids jumping into events they've never run before, laughing. Three girls did cartwheels for most of their 100 meter dash. A school record-holding sprinter ran a blistering first 300 meters, and then tagged in the team's best shot putter to finish out the 400. Not many shot-putters get to be the first to cross the finish line for a 400.

It was a gorgeous, sunny day, a great time.

Let me pause for a moment, here...

When a plane crashes, it's rarely due to a single thing going wrong. It's almost always a combination of factors, small things that alone would have been no big deal. But together they spell disaster.

Factor 1:
A few days ago, I had a birthday. I'm now 46, though I like to refer to it as 30-16. 30-16 feels farther from 50 than 46 does. Turning 46 is like being in the front car on a roller coaster just as it crests the hill. The other cars are still on the other side, still "clak-clak-clak"-ing up the hill, their weight holding you back. Your car is hanging, just for a moment, pointing down to your impending doom, just waiting for those behind you to push you toward it.

Factor 2:
I have barely run since January. As part of my "Year of feeling awesome" plan, I've been overhauling my core after a couple decades of abuse, kinda like rehabbing a worn out kitchen, or replacing the engine in your car just before it seizes up. To rebuild, you must first tear down, and I'm in the tear down phase. My core is about as stable as overdone spaghetti.

Factor 3:
That "just for fun" middle school track meet? Yeah, well coaches and parents were encouraged to participate.

You can probably guess where this is going.

I was a sprinter and hurdler in college. I'll save you the trouble of doing the math... that was 24 years ago. That's right, if I'd had a child right after I'd ended my hurdling career, that child would itself be out of college.

Luckily, the hurdles were the first event. It's easy to say no to the first piece of cake. "Oh no, I can't possibly, but it looks delicious."

Next up was the 100 meters, which my son jumped into. "No, really, I just can't. But thank you." The coach ran the last heat of the 100. He looked alright. He's a little younger than me, but not that much younger.

"Boy, ya know, that cake does look yummy."

After the mile was the 4x100 relay. "Maybe just a small piece..."

I talked the coach, who had just finished the mile, and a couple dad's into fielding a team. My son was also on a team, a team of young pups, with hopes, and dreams, and working hamstrings. I hadn't warmed up. I hadn't stretched. See factors 1 & 2 above.

Lined up one lane outside of me was one of the coaches for the girl's team. She could easily have been a classmate of the fictional 24 year-old born after my last college race. When the gun went off, well, actually someone just said "Go!", I blasted off the line the way ketchup blasts out of the bottle... not really blasty at all. I tried to blast. I thought I was going to blast. Didn't happen. It was like slow motion. It would seem that a stable core is important if you want to blast.

Eventually, though, I got moving, and I'm proud to say I stayed with the 20-something girls' coach, made a pretty slick baton exchange, and didn't die.

"That tiny piece of cake was very tasty. Thank you."

High-fives exchanged and smiles all around, though it took longer than I'd expected to feel recovered, and by "recovered" I mean not on the verge of a stroke-heart-attack-pulmonary-rupture-projectile-vomit-and-pass-out episode.

Once I did recover, I felt pretty good about it. I joked with my boys. They called me old and slow. But I'd held my own.

Then they announced the 200.

My son, the recently track awarded one, was running the 200, as was the boys' coach.

"Get out of my way! I'm taking the whole cake. Don't you even try to stop me! Screw the fork, I'm eating it by the hand full! Nom! Nom! Nom!"

I lined up in lane 7, with the coach in lane 8, so I could keep an eye on him. "GO!" Again, my legs took their sweet time getting up to speed, "speed" being a relative term. But I ran the turn well and hadn't lost too much ground to the coach.

In fact, I ran a pretty good race, if the race had been the 140 meter dash.

It wasn't.

With 60 meters to go, I decided to make my move. Problem was I didn't have a move. My legs had checked out. In fact, most of my body gave up.

"Too. Much. Cake. Why did I do that?"

You'd think I'd have been humiliated, a once moderately successful Big 10 sprinter pooping out two-thirds of the way through a 200. But at that moment, I didn't have time for embarrassment. I was 100% focused on reaching the finish line before I died. It was clear that I was going to die, probably on the track. I just wanted to make sure I went out having finished the race.

I crossed the finish line, a good 10 meters behind the coach, and almost everyone else. I did manage to beat my son, but only because he'd just finished a hard 400 right before this race started.

Some slightly lower high fives, fewer smiles, I found my son and we swapped some smack talk. I walked across the field to retrieve my shades and camera, walked back to say bye to the boys, got to my car. This all took 10, maybe 15 minutes. Yet when I got to my car, my heart was still pounding so hard I could hardly turn on my phone, let alone dial 911. It was a good 30 minutes before I felt like I'd survive my foolish attempt to reconnect with my youth.

We all want to feel young. We all want to play with our kids. We all want to pretend that a pair of running shoes is actually a time machine. Sometimes all of that want overcomes reason.

Had I not just crested that hill toward 50, or not been keeping myself from running for so many weeks, or not brought running shoes to the track, that disastrous 200 would never have happened. I'm not sure yet if that would be a good thing, or not. I'll let you know in a few days when, hopefully, I have feeling in my legs again.

Good running,
Doug

No takers

Well ... that was disappointing.

I bet this is what it feels like trying to unload Brickyard 400 tickets.

Is the Mini-entry market really that flooded?

I'm going to assume that it's not because the deal required a token donation to just about the most wholesome charitable organization on the planet. This has got to be more attractive than buying one on Craig's List, right?

I'll put it down to low traffic in this dark corner of the interweb, at least in the I-need-a-mini-number-3-days before-the-race demographic.*

Good running,
Doug

*Turns out it's pretty happening for the I-need-an-image-of-Ren-&-Stimpy crowd.

Mini Entry Up for Grabs

Hi gang.

I have, in my slightly smaller than average hands, one entry for this Saturday's 2011 One America 500 Festival Mini Marathon in downtown Indianapolis, IN.

This card, and all of the benefits it entitles, could be yours!

Problem is, I can't use it. Well, I could use it, as a coaster, or to fan myself, or to marshal crumbs off of a table, or to give one of my enemies one hellacious paper cut. I can't, though, use it for its intended purpose: running the half-marathon this Saturday morning.

If you are itching to run the Mini, you can have my entry.

Seriously, take it.

Take it!

Put your hand out and take GET BACK HERE!

What?

Of course there's a catch. You think I'm rolling naked in a pile of Mini entries? I've got one. This one. The one I paid $60 for and can't use thanks to some unreasonably uncooperative muscles.

Here's the catch: You can have the entry for the price of a donation to the American Red Cross. You decide how much, but the largest donation pledge in the comment section by 11:59 Wednesday, and verified with an emailed copy of a receipt of an e-donation by noon on Thursday, gets the entry.

Tie breaker: Tell us why you want to run the mini and/or why I should give you my entry. Points for being funny, or moving, but mostly for being funny. Judgement of the blogger is final.

Click the comment link and crack open your wallet.

Good running,
Doug

Grete Waitz

It wasn't that long ago that women were not allowed to enter marathons.

The keenest medical minds of the time were virtually certain that should a woman even try to run that far, her uterus would fall out.

I am not making this up.

In 1967, Katherine Switzer entered the Boston Marathon as K.V. Switzer. Once the race had started, race officials, including the race director, tired to forcibly remove her from the race. They were intercepted and unceremoniously shoved away from Katherine by her teammates.

This was the world that the great Grete Waitz competed in. Well, as much as she was allowed to complete.

Before the 1980's, there were no distance races for women in the Olympics.

In the 1976 Olympics, as the world record holder in the 3000m, the longest event she could enter was the 1500m, because the Olympic committee deemed longer distances unsuitable for women. That, and they didn't want to have all of those uteruses littering the track. Nothing screws up a tight Olympic Track and Field schedule like a long uterus cleanup delay.

Luckily, the New York City Marathon (known in this corner of the internet as The Best Damn Road Race in the World) let women race. In 1978, Grete was invited by none other than NYCM founder and race director Fred Lebow to enter the race. But not as an elite competitor, as a "rabbit". That means that she was given the job of setting a specific pace for the lead women through a given distance, after which, her job done and presumably her limit reached, she would let them go.

She was a sacrificial lamb.

Thing is, this lamb snatched the knife and went all ninja on the would-be slaughterers.

In that marathon, her FIRST marathon, Grete Waitz won the biggest, baddest of them all.

Oh, and she set a world record.

Ka-F'in-boom!

Can you imagine? That's like the guy who pitches batting practice stepping in and throwing a no-hitter to win the World Series. Or a guy from the cheap seats putting his beer down, borrowing a helmet, and winning the Superbowl.

Or even better, it's like the dude driving the pace car for the Indianapolis 500 deciding not to pull into the pits, instead taking the green flag, jamming the pedal through the floor, smoking the field of 33 for 200 laps, and drinking milk in victory lane.

Ok, not quite that, but still... unreal.

After the race, she was hurting so bad, she swore she'd never race another marathon. But we all say that.

And like us, Grete came back for more.

But unlike us, when she came back, the next year, she won the New York City Marathon again.

And again. And again. And again.

And again.

And again.  And again.

And again.

9 times. In 11 years.

No one else, male, female, or hermaphrodite, comes even close to 9 wins at NYCM.*

She took the gender barrier and shoved it right up the tailpipe of whoever it is that defines gender barriers.

And she did it with unflinching class. As a runner, she was as tough as a pit bull on angel dust, but she also had the heart of a lab puppy.

Grete died on Tuesday April 19th. She was 57.

She was a runner. One of us. She had the same love and passion for lacing up and going out, and for other runners, that we have.

I know because I was lucky enough to meet her.

Grete and me.

November 5th, 1999 at the NYCM expo, I was just wandering around, slack-jawwed, mostly in awe of the fact that I was in the NYCM expo. Eventually I went past the Adidas booth, and there she was... just standing there.

There were just under 13 metric-zillion marathoners walking around just like I was, but they apparently didn't recognize her.

My mouth went dry, and my knees got a little quaky, but I thought "When the hell am I ever going to see Grete again?" Turned out, not surprisingly, to be never, so it's a good thing I walked over.

She was totally engaging and charming and everything that you'd hope she would be if she were one of your heroes. She talked to me not international super-star marathoning goddess to midwestern hick flatlander who would be eaten alive by the bridges in a couple days, but runner to runner. She asked how my training had gone. She asked how I felt. She asked if I needed any hints about the course because, you know, she'd run it a few times and knew it pretty well.

That's why I love our running community so much. From the top of the tip of the elites to the back-of-the-pack, we are all runners.

When two runners meet, barriers disappear, guards are dropped, and real connections are made, forged from experiences shared, separately, but understood and respected by both.

When I heard the news of Grete's passing, my mind froze for just a second, the way it does when you hear something that you just don't want to believe is true.

I talked to her for 5 minutes, over 11 years ago, yet I still felt as though I'd lost a friend.

Such is the bond of one runner to another.

Good running,
Doug

*Bill Rodgers, another hero of mine who I've not only met, but run with, twice**, is closest with 4 (consecutive) NYCM wins. (Winners list is here.)

**Remind me to tell you those stories sometime.

Nice articles about Grete are here and here.
A nice article about the emergence of women's Olympic marathon is here.
Picture from here and me.

My neighborhood

I really enjoy riding my motorcycle to work. When the weather cooperates. Which isn't often, lately.

As comfortable as my boots are, they aren't nearly as comfortable as running shoes, so I keep a pair on a shelf in my office, as opposed to schlepping them back and forth.

My new office, despite all of it's glorious windows and bountiful sunshine, can be a bit chilly in the morning. Luckily I have a spare fleece jacket handy.

This morning, as I changed from my jacket to my fleece, and from my riding boots to my sneakers, it occurred to me that no leather jacket or Italian motorcycle can change my true nature ... I am Mr. Rogers.

Good running,

Doug

The cure for a bad run

There's only one cure for a bad run.

Tequila.

Kidding.*

The cure is a good run. And today I had a good run.

I didn't do anything different. I wasn't particularly fast. It just went better. It felt like it's supposed to feel.

The run turned my whole day around. I didn't feel like stabbing anyone, for the entire afternoon!

I highly recommend finding something that makes you not want to stab people, and doing that.

And fine tequila... I recommend that too.

Oh, and limes and salt, don't do that. Just drink better tequila. And sip it, don't shoot it. You aren't in college anymore.

Unless you are, in which case still don't do it. You will look less douche-like, and you might not throw up, if you sip good tequila, instead of pounding the cheap stuff.

Good running,

Doug

*Not really. Tequila makes everything better, right up to the point that it makes everything much, much worse.

Image from here, which happens to be an informational site on tequila. I give it a B-.

Long Slow Run Downhill

It's #3 thing that runners fear most.

Top of the list is injury. No one wants to be injured. "Injured" is derived from a German word meaning "not running".* We don't like not running.

Second worst is a botched race. All the training, all the planning, all the money, flushed down the metaphorical toilet. Bad weather, poor sleep, illness, out too fast, doesn't matter. They all mean a missed opportunity, "wasted" training, and probably a missed goal.

Today, I got to experience #3: Long run epic failure.

In the regimen of the modern distance runner, the long runs are the foundation on which all of the training is built. The primary colors, the musical scales, A, C, G, and T. Without the long runs, the rest of the training is pointless, nonsensical, mishmash.

We build our training around these weekly treks. We plug in the long runs, adding a couple miles each week, and then sprinkle the other training in where it makes sense.

They can be boring. Tedious, even. But they are necessary, and usually, not that big of a deal.

In the old days, I used to look forward to the long runs. They were a chance to clear my head. And since they are run at a slower pace, I could just set the auto-pilot on "cruise" and just knock out the miles.

But today isn't one of the good old days. My long run was a drawn out, slow moving torture.

Not sure why, but this morning, I just didn't have it. And by "it", I mean anything.

We've all felt like crap, especially early in the morning, but we know that once we get moving, get a little warmth in the muscles, we'll feel better.

Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, the crappy feeling lingers. It hangs off of your shoulders, dragging the ground, like an anchor.

Imagine having to sit through a horrible movie, starring you, while someone with large triceps goes off on your feet with a hammer.

I had no pop in my legs. Small hills slowed me to a crawl. Four times I just stopped, bewildered, and pissed beyond words to see that I'd only gone 1.6 miles since the last time I'd stopped, bewildered. The dog looked up at me, if I'm not mistaken, with a hint of disgust.

I was running like an old man. Older man.

Thing is, these runs are crucial. They build up the endurance and strength that we draw from during our race. They also build us up mentally. Knocking out the long runs give us the confidence that we will make it through the race with grace and power and speed.

That's why blowing up during a long run is so demoralizing.

We can rationalize why it happened. We can adjust our plan. But you can't make it up. You have to face the fact that one of the blocks of your foundation is cracked.

I cut the run short. I stretched. Then, I sulked most of the day.

Then, I showered.

Then, I turned the proverbial page, put that miserable "run" behind me, and rejiggered my training schedule to try to salvage my race.

Getting back in racing shape isn't easy. We have bad days. We have awesome days.

I think the scale tips decisively toward awesome.

Good running,

Doug

* This is not true.

Image from here.