DC Spinster

I haven't timed myself in a mile in a long time.  Last decade, when I was in my fifties, I used to run my neighborhood mile and try to keep it under 7 minutes, usually finishing it in the 6:40s or 6:50s.  But that was before my injury in 2009, which laid me up for two years.

It took a long time, and a lot of weight coming off, to get back under nine minute miles.  Then when I got the weight off, I could do a sub-eight again, but I can't approach 7 minutes in the mile anymore.  I know that in my 3-mile race last spring, I did a 7:30 first mile before I tired and struggled to finish in 24:29 (8:10).

Recently I ran a timed mile in my neighborhood, without looking at my watch during it, to see where I was at in non-competitive conditions.  As usual, I started in front of my house, and ran up the block, slightly uphill, for the first quarter mile.  Then I gained level ground and ran down the side street to Railroad Avenue, which parallels the flat W&OD Trail, thinking the whole time, now that the incline was behind me, about turnover.

I burned down Railroad Avenue and back, traversed the side street again, and turned down my block, which was now a slight, but welcome, downhill.  I was tempted to look at my watch but I eschewed it, not wanting to be demoralized as I feared, now that I was approaching the end stretch, that it would show that I would be mired in the eights somewhere at the finish.  I kicked as much as I could, reached the dumpster marking the finish line in the strip mall parking lot one house past my house, and clicked my watch . . .  at 7:4668, which I rounded down to 7:46.

I was delighted.  It's a start.

I have run two races this year, and this would be one of them, quite unexpectedly so.  Where was our last team member?

To avert disqualification, because all five runners must run in order for the team to be scored, two minutes before race time I went to the scorer's table, picked up the last bib and pinned it on.  "Just call me Andy," I said to Greg.  (I was a volunteer at the race in 2010, and I met Meb for the 2d time.)

Greg was delighted.  "Do you think you can pace the commissioner to a 7:30 first mile?"

"Sure," I said, "but that's as good as it gets with me these days and it will use me up for the rest of the race, Greg."  I really hadn't trained or prepared myself for a fast three miles but I was going to try to get the team captain off to a good start while the three burners on the team jack-rabbited off.  (The 2010 team was captained by Commissioner Brill, white-framed sunglasses.)

I head the running program for my agency as a wellness committee board member, and I'm responsible for assembling the annual 3-mile Capital Challenge racing team.  As always, our entry had to captained by a commissioner.

It was suggested to me to ask the youngest commissioner, who comes from an athletic background.  She's a former ballerina dancer who, although she hadn't run any races, runs two or three times a week to keep fit, and I took her out on a 3-mile run on the mall to see what she had.

She had no trouble keeping up with me.  We ran the three miles in 26:14, an 8:44 pace.

 The good news was she was indeed a runner and the bad news was I didn't know if I could keep up with her.  It looked like our run was pretty effortless to her, although she did appear to need a little coaching on pacing, especially at the beginning of the run because her finish was strong.

I recently ran the monthly running of the noontime Tidal Basin 3K. I've done over 90 of these races and this one was the most interesting by far.

You might know that I was recently elected president of my running club. Suddenly people come up to talk to me now, who never seemed to notice me before. Usually they want something. A president of another club I spoke with recently advised me to learn how to say "No." No, no, no.

This 3K race kicked off in the rain. I set off and as usual, another club member, a friend of mine who is faster than me, came up on me at about the quarter mile mark. But he didn't sweep by and steadily get ahead of me, as usual. No, no, no.

He fell in beside me and started talking to me. Now, I like to be social when I run. I talk to lots of people (except for those antisocial types wearing headphones).

But this friend wanted something from me, or rather, from the club. I won't get into what it was but there was nothing improper about his request (you can always ask). It's just that he wasn't going to get it. But he had plenty of time to make his case. Did I mention that he's faster than me?

As we ran side by side for long minutes while he went on about how the club could benefit from the synergies he could bring to it through this or that skill that he possessed, I ratcheted up my pace to my top speed, hoping that I could run away from him and save the conversation for later when I could concentrate. No dice, he just loped along, chatting me up easily.

I answered in one word gasps. I listened carefully, to make sure I didn't reflexively say, "Uh-huh" at an inauspicious moment. This was very taxing, both physically and mentally. I couldn't let this old familiar race just flow, as usual.

Whenever I took a straight line through the curves I had to dip behind him or else bang into him because he took the curves without cutting the corners. Once I left the sidewalk to cut across the roadway towards a far curve and we did collide and almost fell. It was nerve wracking.

With a quarter mile to go he lit out and finished many seconds ahead of me as usual. I breathed, or rather gasped, a sigh of relief as he left me behind.

Later when he said that he took my non-committal reticence to be a "No," I didn't dispute his perception. He imparted some wisdom then, saying, "I always say that you didn't ask a question if you won't accept no for the answer." No, no, no.

13:56 (7:29), 21/32, bottom third, a terrible race. It felt like I was a prisoner being escorted.

First mile:

[Heavy footfalls.]

"Hey."

"Hey."

"The race director said you're the volunteer coordinator for Saturday's National Marathon?"

"Yes."

What's your name?"

"Gail."

"I'm Peter. You must have a lot to do, with the race being in three days."

"The secret is to get other people to do the work."

"You done a 3K before?"

"No. I've been training to do a marathon, and everyone is going so fast in this race."

"It's a fast race alright. Good luck to you. I'll see you at the finish."

"Good luck to you too."

Second mile:

[Steady footfalls.]

"Hey again."

"Hi Peter. Finish just up ahead?"

"Yes, about a quarter mile. Your endurance training is showing. I thought I left you behind, but I heard you come up on me nice and steady this last straightaway. You're looking good."

"I got my wind."

"I've lost mine. There's two women further up ahead, but they're way up there. Good luck."

[More footfalls.]

"Well hello again. I thought you said you lost your wind, Peter."

"Gotta try. You're about my age. You can do it, I can do it."

"All right then. Good luck to you."

[Footfalls again.]

"Hey again. No good, I'm all done."

"You're doing fine, Peter. Just bring it in. "

Finish area:

"Congratulations, Gail. I did a 13:55. Thanks for pulling me in. How'd you do?"

"I was just ahead of you. About four seconds, I guess. Third woman."

"This is a humbling race. 7:28 pace, and 32nd out of 38 men. Now it's two and a half miles back to work. See ya."

"Bye."

You thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever

Last month I posted about spending twenty-five minutes in a full body MRI machine. I coped with the claustrophobic nature of it by imagining that I was on one of my most familiar runs, a two and a half mile out-and-back to the school yard a mile and a quarter up the way. If I'm on my game, it should take me twenty minutes, ten minutes out and ten minutes back, an 8:00 pace. It was a dreamy run, one which I unfolded in my head in real time as best as I could gauge it, as I lay within the confining chamber.

In my dream I passed the first mile in 8:10; and after making the turnaround in the school parking lot, I brought the virtual run home in 19:50 (7:55), utilizing the downhill nature of the return to make up those lost seconds. I encountered all the real-world things I expected to, running by the cemetery, over the creek at the bottom of the route, and up the big hill just before the mile marker.

In late December I actually ran the route again, a run during which I was thinking about a dream where I was running the run I was running. Leaden walls enclosed me then, leaden skies were my boundary now.

I started out from in front of my house on the grey day and rapidly rounded the corner at the end of the block. To keep under an 8:00 pace I have to get moving quickly. I ran by the road undulations the first half mile that lead past St. James Cemetery and down to the creek. At about two minutes into the run I was at my maximum discomfort in terms of oxygen deprivation as I struggled to acclimate myself to the fast pace, and I wished for a second that I was lying back in the metal tube in a dreamy state instead of outside laboring on a run for real. Then I glanced up at the limitless sky overhead, surveyed the wide open spaces around me, and thought, No way!

My breathing became more normal as I started up the big hill. Glancing at the sign on the bridge over the creek, I noticed that in my dream I had inserted an extraneous apostrophe in the creek's name, Tripps Run. Just up from the base of the hill, the yapping dog that has always accompanied me along his house's fence line again did not come out, just as in the dream, and I suspect that the littler feller is not alright.

I pushed up the hill in real life, knowing this was where I had fallen off my 8:00 pace in my dream. Past the steep first part, past the more gentle incline of the middle part, past the steepest grade of the last part, past the white-columned house near the top, over the crest and down into the little hollow below, where the mile marker is. I passed the first mile in 7:48, well ahead of my pace in my dream run. Around the further turn, I hit the turnaround at 9:30 for the first mile and a quarter. I knew my sub-8:00 pace (twenty minutes for the run) was assured now; because of the upcoming big downhill, the second half of the run is always faster on this run unless I dawdle.

I hit my driveway ending the two and a half mile run at 18:52 (7:33), a particulalrly fast run for me. I had pushed it throughout, delighted to be in the great outdoors on the run rather than inside a small metal coffin during it. I rarely go sub-19:30 on this fast run. Although I ran a negative split, it was only by eight seconds for the last mile and a quarter, which showed, given the benefit of the long downhill, that I was tiring near the end.

Running, be it in a dream or in actuality, is liberating.

Speed workouts make you faster in races. My best year racing , 2006, when I set or came close to all my PRs, I did track workouts once a week pretty much all year. That speed work that year made me run at age 54 like I was 48 again, when I started racing.

So last Wednesday evening, after doing six and a half miles on the Mall on noon, I went to my club's regularly scheduled weekly track workout so I could lead my half-marathon training group in the prescribed workout, three single-miles at a ten-mile race pace with a 400M recovery jog between each split. The target race is in mid-March and we're trying to build up the group slowly, so no one gets injured.

The regulars from the half-marathon Program were there. A bunch of marathon Program trainees were also there, and coaches Katie, Eric and Andrew led them on their rounds.

Matt was there, the fast coach in my Program. He's a modest guy who isn't whippet thin like many obvious runners. He gets the competitive, fast trainees who always run faster and faster at the end of training runs to show how bad they really are. But Matt always finishes right behind them on their shoulder, smiling and talking, no matter how much they crank up the pace at the end. Then they enter a race with him and he crushes them. Last year our best trainee did a 1:31 half, an outstanding effort. (He went to all the track workouts.) He finished ten minutes behind Matt.

I was a little sore from my earlier run but it was a nice evening for running, cool and not windy. The group was happy with eight-minute miles and we took turns leading, putting the burden on a new pace-setter each lap to figure out a two-minute turn (I know, a 400-meter track is about three yards shy of a true 440, but we try not to get totally obsessed at these workouts).

We hit each mile at a pretty steady pace, about 7:50. The very last lap of the workout, the competitive juices started flowing and a couple of the participants announced that they intended to nail a 7:30 last 1600. So with half a lap to go, off three of us went on our horses. Matt didn't come along on our ending sprint as he, in fact, is not competitive in that way. Just fast. The fit and fast woman in the group, a triathlete by preference, led the charge and I was hard pressed to stay glued to her shoulder.

But I did.

I had been avoiding him for months. You see, he's actually much faster than me.

Some people at my work call the weekly noontime runs I lead the M and Peter Show, because they think we run too fast and so they don't come with us. Truth is, we run mid-eights but if other runners come along, we'll slow down. Just being out running is what is important. There is nothing like running up and down the historical National Mall in the middle of a busy workday to take a break from the stresses of work.

But M is faster than me, and he's been working on his speed lately. He drags me along at sub-eights on these workday runs sometimes. He's been traveling a lot and I was secretly relieved to take a break from supercharged assaults down the Mall whenever he comes along and no one else does, which is often. Still, these runs are good for my soul because despite the concept of running long slow distances to build the aerobic engine, which I understand as a coach and in theory, I still believe in my heart that to run fast you gotta run fast.

Wednesday morning he signaled me on facebook and asked if I was running at noon. I wrote back that I was, so we hooked up.

He had a little mercy on me. We ran at a pace where I could actually gasp out answers as he kept up an interesting conversation. I like talking to M, he's interesting and his makeup is much like mine in that I'm mostly German. His father is German and he has dual citizenship. I love his Oktoberfest stories.

So we blazed up and down the Mall and around the backside of the Capitol in about fifty-four minutes, basically the same six and a half mile run I had done two nights earlier with Sasha's Monday Night Footmall group except that it was nineteen minutes faster. (Above: At the September 2007 Tidal Basin 3K with, l-r, our agency's rock star G 10:56 (5:52), Dane Rauschenberg, myself 13:01 (6:59) and M 12:46 (6:51). M was coming back from an injury and it was the closest I ever came to catching him in a race.)

M and I work for the same agency but he works about a mile away in a different building. When it was time to part and return to our respective workplaces, I was relieved to be able to slow down a bit.

I still had to lead a track workout later that day with my half-marathon training group.

A week ago yesterday I ran a special edition of the free noontime Tidal Basin 3K Race. The RRCA had a Run To Work Day for its 50th Anniversary, as I understand it, and the DC representative set up a Friday running of this monthly 3K race, normally sponsored by my running club, the DC Road Runners.

It was a sparse turnout. At noon, the sponsor was begging people jogging by on noontime runs to participate in the race. A workmate of mine ran by, halfway through a six-mile monument run, and I waved him over. He was game, although he had never run a 3K race before. I told him not to start too fast and then to kick it up as he felt comfortable.

Secretly I was pleased. I knew I was faster than this workmate. I have been remiss so far because I have only been successful in persuading workmates to run this race who are faster than me.

My doppelganger Peter was there and I gave him the disinformation that I felt really bad that day. He laughed me off knowingly and then told me he felt bad.

Off we went at noon, eleven of us. The runners froze into place a quarter mile down the road when I ran by Peter, as customary (he often runs by me again the last quarter mile) and Gary ran by me a short while later, as usual. After that, no one changed places anywhere in the race, it just gradually widened out.

I ran well. The guy in front of me steadily stretched out his lead over me, a process repeated all up and down the food chain ahead of me and behind me. I finished sixth in 12:52 (6:55). Woo hoo! I broke 13 minutes for only the second time this year (12:59 in April was the other time). My mile mark was 6:49, and my 2K mark was 8:37, exactly the same as two days earlier. But somehow on Friday I ran the last 1K eight seconds faster than on Wednesday. Go figure.

My workmate ran an excellent 14:04 (7:33) and he came in DFL among the men. Is this a tough race or what?

Afterwards there was trouble. A Parks Policewoman in a plain wrapper spotted us, a small knot of emaciated men and women in short clothes gathered around a plain folding table holding a water jug and cups set on the grass by street's edge at the intersection of Ohio Drive and FDR Drive, 3/4 mile from the Jefferson Memorial and 1/4 mile from the FDR Memorial. She parked alongside us, got out of her sneaker and strutted over to ask for our "permit" to "gather" on Park Service land. The race sponsor said he thought that as long as the "gathering" was under 25 persons, no permit was needed.

"That's just for demonstrations," she said, "not gatherings. And no permit has ever been issued for here. Well?"

I didn't help matters when I blurted out, "Free Tibet!"

She lectured us and told us to read the "regulations" (sure, we'll get right on it) because "it's all in there." Grandly saying she'd "let it go this time," she contemptuously surveyed our pathetic, sweating skinny little group standing there in abbreviated clothes acting as respectful as possible. Then she parked her fat ass in her unit and left. Bah!

Yesterday I tole you about the single best inspiration I got when I first started running in 2000, the comment to go longer.

Today I’ll tell you what was the single best advice I received at that time, the suggestion to run early. I consider these two conversations, both so different, to be the linchpins of whatever success I have enjoyed as a runner, I really do. I can relive both conversations in my mind’s eye as if they occurred eight days ago instead of eight years ago.

I was talking with a colleague at work about my effort to lose weight by running and dieting. She said simply, "Run in the morning. That way you’ll never have an excuse not to run."

So simple and yet so...true. Her advice immediately took hold in me and I developed the habit of arising from bed, donning my running apparel, going to the curb and beginning my run in about 3-4 minutes. I would run 2.1 miles out and back at a swift pace and be back in under twenty minutes. I would head inside and enter the shower in about 2-3 minutes. That was it. I went from lying in bed to entering the shower, my run already done, in twenty-five minutes.

I stayed with this routine for at least three years until it became ingrained. I developed a liking for running alone. It gave me time to reflect, to sort things out. When my wife filed for divorce, thus initiating five years of nuclear litigation, running kept me sane. Because divorce litigation is insane.

My routines have changed somewhat, to be sure. I like running with people now. I don’t run so fast. I run longer (further). Sometimes I run on the Mall at noon.

But whenever I need to jump start my running, I return to 6:30 a.m. runs of short and fast duration. My old standby route is 2.5 miles out and back on a nearby secondary road that cuts through the warren of subdivisions around where I live. This run includes a pretty nice hill and has a large school parking lot at its furthest point, which I use for running backwards while pretending to be an NFL cornerback. There are a few steps there too which I pound up and down whenever nobody is around.

If I hit the turnaround point at right around ten minutes, I’m running well and will finish with sub-eight minute miles (it’s downhill on the way back). Those are morning runs worth remembering. Evening runs just aren’t the same.

My running world is simple. I divide people into two groups.

Faster than me. Not.

There are some hazy persons, to be sure. Tweeners. You know the persons. Sometimes you beat them in a race or at the end of a run, and sometimes you don’t.

But you also know which camp they really belong in. Do you secretly gloat when you beat them? They’re faster. Do you worry about them all race? You’re faster, but not by much and maybe not for long.

People can move from one group to the other over time, as you get better or they get better. You see them at the track and you grumble, It's not fair! How do they have the time? So that's how they been beating me! It's time to reassign that runner.

But no one is ever not in one camp or the other for the long term. Occasional successes or failures are merely moments for euphoria or somberness. It's simple.