March 20, 2012
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Running and Growing Up
I’ve been plateauing in my Boston Marathon training and I’ve been wondering what I could do to get a boost in my performance level.
What better than to e-mail your former track coach and perform the exact same workout as a high school varsity runner.
I can’t tell you the amount of awkwardness I felt the first day coming into practice and being surrounded by kids who potentially were half my age. While realizing that however, I also couldn’t believe to tell you the difference I’ve really had in my level of fitness compared to when I was running competitively in high school.
The distance team did a sprint 4000m workout, which consisted of 1600m, 1200m, 800m and 400m run one after another. The workout in itself wasn’t much of a problem, more so that it was 90 some odd degrees. I used to be frightened of running anywhere over 400m, continuously. That was simply due to my illogical fear of collapsing from running too much. But somehow, that all changed and I began running long distances close to the end of my collegiate career.
Something that I found really interesting was running with these kids, their mentality is to sprint really fast out of the box and just go “balls to the walls” and not think about it. Only to realize that they’re struggling to put the pedal down during the final leg of these workouts. I used to think the exact same way as these kids. Only to realize that when I began running later in college, I didn’t care who was looking at me or how fast I was going. Rather, I would work to my pace and ability that I was comfortable with. I discovered that by time, I began to be really good at starting late and just catching people from behind. That of course is a bit different within racing conditions, especially if you’re stuck in positional hell.
I ended up running with the coaches kid. Mind you, he’s a brilliant runner… and only a freshman in high school. They were just booking it during the 400m workout and I had been stuck in the back as always. But my strides got longer and I began breaking into a full sprint. LJ (the coaches kid) saw me and started freaking out and you could tell. He started maxing out and it wasn’t long until he actually was going for it in the last 100m. I saw what he was doing and I increased my stride and pace and just ran right by him.
There’s no pride associated with beating a high school kid, that much I know. They’re here to help me become better at a once in a lifetime goal that I want to accomplish before I hit 30 and I’m there to help them in the limited time that I can be there, to show them that it’s really possible to become faster.
But I’ve learned that while I’ve become stronger and am in the best shape of my life right now, I’ve learned that I’ve become just a bit wiser. That little connection between me and LJ taught me that five to nine years ago, I would have been doing the same exact thing that he did; booking it during the first 300m and trying to put everything in and just run out of gas by the last 100m. I’ve had the mental awareness and thought process to realize where I am and am able to be tough enough not to succumb to those around me.
Probably as I look back through writing this, I’ve begun realizing that it’s not simply that I’ve become smarter. I’ve matured.
I wonder if this has applied to anything else in life, as I wake up for another day to run.
