The returning runner

Act 25 – “Attitude” – use it or lose it…

I sat both mesmerized and disconsolate. Superstar Frank Shorter would churn through an amazing 8:27 indoor 2-mile. A gladiator at any distance…But, now, in front of me streamed a line of high school 2-milers. The letter had come out a week or two earlier, a dozen or so runners named but not me. I wasn’t listed to compete. I knew all the guys there. I should have been on the list. I was sure of it. I made a commitment – I would beat everyone in that indoor race sometime that year. I used that chip on my shoulder as motivation. Forget that there were probably good reasons why I wasn’t on the list. I must have been cheated! Well, I did beat every one of those competitors that season.

I played a similar game five years ago. A local runner, Robert Qualls, had beaten me in two races over a weekend and he was older than me – the next 5-year class (I was 60 and he was 65 at the time). The first was the Reno mile, an out and back road race. He ran 5:45 and I ran 5:50. The next day was the 8k Journal Jog. He wasn’t in sight at the finish. But, I had been fighting a stomach flu. I was sure that I could beat Robert when healthy. A month or so later we met up at the Reno 5000 5k at Bowers Mansion. Normally a slow starter, I passed Robert after about a quarter mile and kept on going beating him by nearly a minute. Who knows, maybe he had a stomach bug… It didn’t matter, I had used “attitude” to both motivate me during workouts and give me the “eye of the tiger” in the race. It wasn’t until five years later that I would learn that Robert wasn’t just a good local runner but world class for his age group.

Well, today I am playing the game again. I was planning on running in the World Masters Indoor Championships at the end of March. Some scheduled minor surgery scuttled those plans and I didn’t enter. Of course, the doctors had to reschedule and now my surgery date falls well after the championships but now it’s too late to enter. Ugh. So, the solution is simple. I must run every race I can and post times that would have obliterated the competition or at least put me in the “hunt” at the “Worlds”.  Hey, not their fault. None of the competition wronged me. They aren’t bad people (in fact really great people). Just the head game that I play ;O).

No blog next Friday. I’ll be traveling to Monterey for a long President’s Day weekend and either catching a 5k there or the Fourmidable 13k in Auburn. Fun times ;O)

“I’ll be back, we’ll be back.” - Jalen Hurts, after 2023 Superbowl loss