I’m pulling a Dave Dunham and reminiscing about the good ol’ days.
In my last post I mentioned that I started keeping a running log in June 2015. The earliest entry in my first log is from June 4, 2015. It was the last day of my Sophomore year of high school. The entry reads: “9:35 PM - School’s out for summer! Kicked off summer with a 10 mile night run at an easy pace on the Veterans PKWY Trail, finished with a fast mile on the track (6:00). Beautiful night. 60° and no wind.”
Ten miles was considered a long run for me at that time. Most days I didn’t go more than five miles and I rarely did doubles. My running back then was very unstructured. I read some of the entries in that first log and I laugh. There are many days where the only notations say things like, “No running. Too tired.” Or “Planned on running today, but overdosed on chocolate instead.” I used to be so good at making excuses not to run.
I ran two races in June 2015: The Bellin Run 10k in Green Bay on June 13 and The Garry Bjorklund ½ Marathon in Duluth, MN on June 20.
I finished the Bellin 10k in 40:14 (6:29/mile). It was my fifth consecutive Bellin and the first time I ran slower than the year before- in 2014 I ran it in 40:12. I ran most of the race with a couple of old geezers (Fish and Joan Benoit). I beat Fish by 4 seconds, but Joanie, as she’d done many times before, pulled away at the end. This was the last year I let her beat me. With about half a mile to go, Meb Keflezighi, who’d already finished and was running the course in reverse as a cool down, spotted Fish and me and joined us for the home stretch.
Swimming with Fish 
Cruising past Meb to the finish
One week later, I ran the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon in 1:33:19 (7:08/mile). This was my second half marathon, the first being the 2014 Garry Bjorklund Half, which I ran in 1:35. I felt okay for most of the race, before hitting a wall around mile 11. The last couple miles were at death march pace. It probably went about as well as I could’ve hoped for considering the lack of long runs and relatively low mileage in my training.
Saturday, June 20, 2015 4:45 AM - Donning my lucky socks
When contrasting that to my running today, covering 13.1 miles at 7:08 pace feels like an easy, ordinary training run. I’ve come a long way, baby. Hopefully I still have a lot of potential left in me. Last September I ran a half marathon in 1:15. If my knee ever fully heals and if I can avoid getting hit by any more crazy drivers, maybe in another ten years, covering 13.1 miles at 5:45 pace will be my easy everyday training run. Maybe not. Running was, and always will be something I do purely for fun. It is an exhilarating feeling to run long distances at a fast clip, but the pace and times really don’t mean that much to me. They are just meaningless numbers. Why should I care.
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