This October 13th, I will be running in my first marathon in 11 years! In fact it will be one of my first races period in nearly 8 years (team competition at the PPP is the lone exception). Crazy! Especially in a town like Bend, where nearly everyone races. But several factors led me to decide it was time.....
I started running in high school to get in shape so I could hang out at the beach with my friends and of course I wanted to look good. Most of you that know me will be surprised to learn that I didn't run competitively in high school. I loved baseball and soccer and played that through most of high school, but even then I wasn't quite good enough to make my high school teams, so it was rec leagues. I was a sports nut though. And then believe it or not I was a proud member of the "band geeks and choir queers". Certainly not "PC" terms today, but we didn't mind then. I actually excelled in music....making State Bands and even helping lead our Marching Band to the State Championship in PA. So when I started running, I really mean I was running to get in shape. I wasn't overweight, but I was a baseball player at a time when fitness was still a relatively unknown thing. Soccer helped keep me kind of fit, but back in my era, you really only played a sport for that season, and then you moved on to the next sport of activity. There was not year round club soccer, or baseball. And even if there was, as I said I wasn't that good. Looking back I believe I could have been that good with the right coaches, and with the right push from my parents. Neither of my parents were athletes, nor was my brother. So my experience with sports was purely self led, self motivated and all my parents really cared about was that I tried hard when I played. They didn't care if I played or not. As I got more involved in music, I had less time for sports, so eventually I quit team sports and after moving to West Palm Beach, Florida vanity became my motivator and I ran to lose a little weight and look good for the girls. I then proceeded to develop into a self taught triathlete entering and competing in triathlons in Chicago, Denver, Utah, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. In college I helped found the CSU Triathlon club, which still exists today, and focused all my extra time on training. Still no help from anyone other than the occasional fellow triathlete that would offer advice. Over time, I realized that I would come out of the swim in the last 1/3, then would gain a little in the bike, and then in the run would pass about half those in front of me. Still I would finish in the middle to front of the pack, never good enough to win, but always a strong enough run to get me in contention. After college, training for all three disciplines was too time consuming so I decided to focus on the one that seemed to be my strength. Then in 1996, after years of entering 5K's and 10K's and still the occasional Tri, I decided to enter a marathon. The 1996 Chicago Marathon was my first. I went into it with no formal training. I just ran. No structure to my training. I would run hard every time I ran. And occasionally I would run from downtown Ft. Collins to the "A" on the side of Horsetooth by our football stadium (a good mile or so uphill once I got to the stadium). I asked a few friends if they thought it was realistic to run a sub 3:00 marathon in my first try and most of them laughed, or at least politely told me that it would be really hard. Well, I was just stubborn enough or competitive enough....I went to Chicago and ran 2:59. And I qualified for Boston, so then I had to go do that! So my second one was Boston in 1997.....still with no formal training and not doing anything right after Chicago, I was able to run a 2:56. Now I am thinking I have this down.....keep entering marathons and keep getting faster. Next marathon was Portland my first year in Oregon....1999. I was training a little smarter but still not very smart. But I managed to pull off a 2:46. To this day I owe this one to Laura Nelson. She wanted me to pace her to an Olympic Trails qualifying time. In reality she helped me run smarter the first 10 miles and unfortunately bathroom stops for her kept her from her goal. Had we run together the whole time, she would have qualified. Sorry Laura, but thank you too! I then started thinking about breaking the coveted 2:40 timeline.....why not, everything seems easy to this point. Train stupid and run faster each time. So I tried to train smarter and then I should really run faster, right. Well, the next marathon was 2000 in Cozumel, Mexico. I don't deal well with heat, so why go to Mexico???? The marketing people swore it would be cool and low humidity, it was November after all, and we started at 5:00AM. Well, they were wrong. Hot and humid is what we got. So hot, my socks and shoes were drenched after 3 miles. So this would end up being my slowest marathon to date....3:04. I did win however, so kind of mixed emotions. My Dad came with me to this one. So cool he got to see me win, but I was disappointed in my time. I hit the half in 1:20 so I knew I could do 2:40. Next race.....2002 and Twin Cities. Same goal....same thought, it should be cool. Dad there again. Same conditions....hot and humid. And in reality I don't think I was ready to run a 2:40. But I went out in a 1:18...good start, but then crumbled in the heat again. 3:07 was my finish time. Dad was proud but again I was not happy! Little did I know that the changes God had in store for me and my life were just about to hit warp speed. In 2002 I met my wife and the love of my life! That was the start.....racing quickly became so much less important. And over the next 11 years a marathon became the last thing I could fathom. Until now. Dad passed away February 21st, 2012 from lung cancer. He smoked for 30 years so it wasn't a surprise. But it was still devastating. He watched me run my last marathon and though he never understood why I run, he always supported my running. Chicago was my first marathon so it only seems fitting that it be my first again. The race is on October 13th...my Dad's birthday is October 14th. And my friend Steve Koski wants to do it together (though we will start and finish at different time, we will be out there together). So despite just coming back from an injury and not training seriously for a very long time, Chicago it is! Finish and have fun is my goal! And if I happen to run a sub 3:15 and qualify for Boston, well that would be okay too :) See you all on the road and back here for more updates. If you would like to support my efforts to raise over $5000 for Team in Training, go to our website, www.willpowertrainingstudio.com and click on the Team in Training link.
No comments:
Post a Comment