RESPECTABLE RUNNING

For the last few years, with rare exceptions, my racing has been poor. That changed a few months ago...to horrendous. At the Brooklyn Half Marathon in May I ran my worst half marathon by far, walking at every water station in the second half. A month later it was my worst 5 miler by far, done at a pace that would barely qualify as a decent training run.

I was losing any joy in racing; even my incentive to run was fading. Each time out was exhausting and disturbingly slow. If this continued I would stop running. And I didn't know what was the matter.

And then I had a thought. This all began fairly soon after I'd begun taking a medication for a minor discomfort. It seemed to elevate my heart rate and that became more pronounced as the weather warmed. I stopped taking it. I found a different (and satisfactory) way of remedying the original issue. I went out running and found it becoming easier. So I was able to train better.

And then I ran a 4 mile race in July. It was my worst ever for the distance. But NOT by far. Only by a little. It wasn't that my heart was going to fast, just that I'd not trained adequately. It was the first time a Personal Worst felt like a step forward.

After that my training really improved. About 30 miles per week and lots of high quality speed work. A 5 mile race in August that was only AMONG my worst...further cause for optimism. And more hard training.

That brings us to today's 4 mile race. My training times, particularly in track workouts, made me think I could run fairly well. But given the strange running place I've been all summer, it was really difficult to guess how well. Certainy faster than the 8:16 per mile of July. How about the 7:47 of April or the 7:38 of exactly a year ago? Or the 7:40ish pace I'd run in a series of 4 milers at the start of 2010?

I decided to beat them all. I mean, what fun is it to try for anything less when there's doubt? So my goal was a 7:30 pace to finish the race in 30 minutes or less. The danger in trying to run a somewhat agressive pace, of course, is overestimating your stamina, going out faster than your body can support for the entire distance and ending unhappy, in pain, at a snail's pace, as everyone parades by you.

I figured mile 1, containing the tough Cat Hill, would foretell what the rest of the race held. When I did it in 7:29, exactly on pace and not feeling bad, it looked good. I speeded up to 7:17 on gently downhill mile 2 and slowed a lot to 7:47 on the difficult West Side Hills of mile 3.

Tired and very uncomfortable I tried to calculate where I stood. Did I have a shot at 7:30 pace? Two miles under it, 1 over. The numbers refused to compute. Just had no idea what was needed. So I figured I'd better run it as fast as I could.

Fortunately the last mile is largely downhill. So I ran confidently until the final 300 meters which is an unpleasant uphill. By then I had no energy left to push. People for the first time began passing me as they kicked home. I had nothing to answer with. And that's how I cruised over the finish line.

In 29:54, a pace of 7:28.5! Top ten age group (9 out of 60) honors! A performance score (don't ask how it's calculated) above 70% for the first time in over 3 years! And my best time at this distance since July, 2008!

At my best I've raced 4 miles in under 28 minutes. Long way to go to get to that. But at least this was some respectable running.