Time, My Strongest Competitor

Speed has never been on my side.  When I was in high school, my softball coach once told me that if I ran any slower I’d go backwards.  And I couldn’t even be offended; he was right.

My very first race was a 4 miler that I ran in 2009 at a 10:09 pace.  Now, although I am slow, I am quite competitive. Now that I had a baseline, I spent the next 4 years trying to beat myself.  A year and a half later I ran that same course with a pace of 9:12, and a year after that I had it down to 9 minutes flat. 

I’ve always tried to run each race faster than the last one.  Sometimes I succeed, and sometimes I fail.  At the beginning of this year I set up a goal to run a personal best for each length race I had.  My first race was the NYC Half Marathon in March.  My best time for a half marathon was the same race in 2010 on the exact same course, when I ran it in 2:11:11.  I was all set to beat my goal – and ended up running it in 2:18:01.  Not even close.  I was upset about it until I learned that I actually broke my foot during the race, so I cut myself a little slack (and even decided that 2:18:01 is a personal best for a half marathon completed on a stress fracture).

Because of that stress fracture, my race season has been a complete mess.  I wore a boot for over 3 months and didn’t run for more than 4.  My first race back was a 5K that I had to walk the first 2 miles of and do the rest using intervals of 1 minute running to 2 of walking.  I finished that race in 49 minutes even.  I have 5 milers I’ve finished faster than that.

As this year has progressed, I've worked my way up to a run/walk interval of 4:2, which is how I’m going to tackle the NY Marathon next week.  For the last few weeks I’ve had my knickers all in a twist trying to figure out what my marathon pace will be, how fast I’ll be able to push it, and wondering if I will be able to finish the race before dark.  I’ve done so many calculations that I started seeing them at night when I’d close my eyes and try to sleep.

Last Friday I went to my Weight Watcher meeting.  I’ve been at my goal weight for close to 4 ½ years, but I still attend the meetings pretty regularly.  I have to admit that every now and then I think that over the last 5+ years of meetings that the topics have become a little redundant, that I kind of have this healthy weight thing down, and that there isn’t anything new to learn.  Wrong.

This week I learned a bit about a woman in our group named Dee.  She’s been on Weight Watchers about 6 weeks.  Every week when you weigh in, the receptionist tells you how much your weight has changed (which has had me begging these women if I could please weigh in naked, and once had me threaten to cut off my own left hand if I didn’t reach my goal weight).  But not for Dee.  She has asked the receptionists to give her a thumbs up, down or sideways to indicate the direction, but for 6 weeks this woman didn’t want to hear any numbers.  It was at her cardiologist’s office that she learned that in 6 weeks she lost 22 pounds, something that took me close to 6 months to accomplish.

I learned about this because Dee was telling us all her story, and how she is no longer a candidate for a heart surgery she needed 22 pounds ago.  I was impressed.  Not that she lost 22 pounds or is curing her own heart.  I’m thrilled for her for those accomplishments, but that’s not what got to me.  Dee never asks for the numbers, just the direction.  It doesn’t matter how far along she is in her journey and when she’ll reach the destination as long as she keeps moving in the right direction.

2011 Finish Line

There are 3 starting lines (and 4 different starting waves ) for the marathon in an attempt to ease the congestion of 47,000 people all running together: blue, orange and green.  Blue and orange take the upper deck of the Verrazano-Narrows bridge over to Brooklyn, and green goes on the lower deck.  People hate the lower deck start for 2 reasons: 1) men on the upper deck pee over the sides of the bridge (and if you’re a guy with an orange or blue start and you pee over the side of the bridge, all I can say is gross.  Really gross), and 2) GPS watches often don’t work down there.

I have a green start.  I’m not worried at all about the men above me (trick: run in the center.  No guy can shoot that far).  But the GPS on my watch won’t work until I get to Brooklyn.  And thanks to Dee and the lesson that I learned more than 5 years into my Weight Watchers experience (that I ended up accomplishing without having to cut off my left hand), I don’t think I’ll turn my pacer on at all.  Obsessing over time and competition will definitely get me to my destination, but how much would I relish the journey?

Next week I’m going to run the best race I can, and I’m going to do that by soaking in every single second of all 26.2 miles of it.  If I look over at the spectators and see my old softball coach, I might even turn around and run past him backwards :-).