I'm Back, Baby !!

Yes, George Costanza had it right. Since my last post the stamina in the old legs has not gone away, so I decided to enter a competitive race. The arch rival school of my E-City school holds Cross Country races (3.1 miles) in W-Park during the summer (five in all) to benefit their X-C team. Tonight was the 4th in the series. Most of the runners are high school kids who are getting ready for the upcoming season, but a few old guys run too. The first few races of the series attracted about 50 per race. So it would be small compared to other road races. And it is run on the official X-C course with the exception of the last 4/10 of a mile or so to avoid crossing a road.

So I decided to give it a try and see what I had at my current age. It was a beautiful night: mid 70s, windy, a little humid, and a threat of a thunderstorm. At 6:45 PM I toed the line and waited for the start. I will admit I was a bit nervous having no idea what to expect. It had been 14 years since my last race and only two days since a colonoscopy. But I'm not getting any younger so I said "what the heck".

I came to the race with a goal of an 8:30 pace but I never factored in the condition of the course which is mostly run on grass, uneven and high at times. I definitely started out too fast. Assuming that the mile markers were positioned correctly, I did the first mile in 8:13. Even though I started out what I thought was too fast a pace, a lot of runners passed me in that first mile. At the half-mile I got my breathing leveled out and then just tried to keep a nice even pace.

At the 2, I was at 16:42 (8:21). For the last mile of the race I passed two younger runners and no one passed me which gave me some satisfaction. But even though I felt like I was running at a decent pace (at least faster than my normal runs everyday), I finished at 27:06. That's a pace of 8:44 which was higher than my goal. And the last 1.1 mile was run in 10:24 or a 9:45 pace which I find hard to believe.

But all in all I was very happy with the results of the night.

And as for the coaching, a second position appeared on the web but like the previous one, the location is a bit too far. So it still looks like softball practice this fall rather than X-C.

YOU'RE FIRED !!!

July turned out to be an interesting month. In my last post, I mentioned that some E-City girls were interested in having a X-C team in the fall (please read that post for all of the details). It turns out that one of the seven girls isn't coming back in the fall so we would have only been six. And it would have been interesting to see if they would have come to any summer practices. I'm currently having a hard time getting some of my softball team to come to hitting and fielding practices.

And now for the N-City team. The title of this post refers to that team. I found out this past month that the AD decided to go with another coach that would handle not only the X-C team but the Winter and Spring Track teams as well. So that is why he never answered my e-mail. I only found out from talking to the other teacher that I know there; I wonder if they were ever going to tell me.

So as of right now there will be no X-C experience in the fall. The web classifieds have only had one position so far and location was the problem with that one. I'm not sure how August will be in terms of classifieds. By now I would think that any open position has been filled or else it would have been advertised. And new openings seem unlikely unless someone were to leave their school with so little time left before September. So the fall may be spent with optional practices for the softball team (Lord knows they need it).

In regards to my personal running (which may be the sole reason for this blog in the immediate future) there were two developments, one good, one bad. First the bad--sometime in the middle of the month, after a hard and trying run, every ache and pain that I suffered earlier in the year came back. Totally out of nowhere. I could barely walk the following two days. So I shut it down for a week and the pains eventually went away. The good has to do with the stamina and strength of my legs. In past postings I expressed concern of whether I would ever get the stamina back in my legs that made a long run both easy and enjoyable. I had felt that my ## year old legs were shot and those enjoyable runs of years gone by were over. But twice during the end of the month of July, I experienced that stamina once more. Maybe with these old legs it takes longer to get them back into running shape after such a looooong layoff. I hope for now that the stamina has returned even if it only comes a couple times a week (the resurgence may also be due to a slight posture problem that I corrected but it's hard to say).

So with this good news my goal for the rest of the summer up until Labor Day is to increase mileage and maybe enter at least one Road Race.

Thank you Reader for stopping by, and enjoy the rest of your summer.