All The Runners Run

Monday, October 24, 2011

A Wonderful Season Ends

Probably I had too much invested emotionally in Wyatt's Cross Country season this fall since I was hurt and not running myself. I was also very heartbroken for him that he had such a bad run in his final race of the season Saturday at the Regional meet. I am sad, sad, sad. Sad that I won't get to see anything like this again until the spring. Love watching that boy run. Now on to ordinary days through the dark, bleak winter.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

A Note About Friendship

Waiting for surgery this summer felt like a cloud of darkness over me. By the time September rolled around I was finishing up the best running year of my life since 1984. I entered the Plaza 10k just because I didn’t like that handful of slow 10k times, and no fast ones, staring at me in my running log and I decided I’d try to go out and nail one more PR, a big one I hoped, before the trip to Chicago to get my knee worked on by the cartilage super-doc of America two days later. I’m now about 22 days post-op and that race was the last time I ran. Between October 2, 2010 and September 18, 2011 I’ve been blessed to set personal records, exclusive of high school efforts, at 800m, 1600m and 3000m, and lifetime personal records at 5 km, 10km, half-marathon and marathon distances. Not a bad year’s work, but it really depressed me to anticipate it all coming to an end, especially since I feel that if my knee had been healthy I could have continued to improve. In all this I’ve found that very very few people really understand how this feels to be a runner forced to lay it all down under the shadow of the possibility that his last race could very well turn out to be his last at that level of performance. I am blessed that I have at least one friend who really does, however. Todd does.

Doctor Studly as he is sometimes known has become my runner brother, my comrade and my fellow struggler on the long run. We met through a mutual friend a few years ago and since then we have forged a strong bond of friendship in the fires of 22-mile runs at 4:30 in the morning, marathons in Boston and Austin, frozen water bottles on 16-degree mornings and humid August thirteen-milers followed by three by two miles at sub-tempo pace, all while sharing thoughts about faith, kids, wives, baseball and dozens of other topics. We’ve been there to push and support each other, share our running dreams, and see one another succeed and fail.

Now back to the Sunday morning of the Plaza 10k, my last hurrah. I left my racing flats in the car and took off for a two-mile warm up in the rain without expecting to see a single familiar soul. Turning the corner onto Ward Parkway there was my comrade wearing his 2006 Boston Marathon jacket, carrying his umbrella. I could hardly believe my good fortune. Here the dude had come all the way to the Plaza from Lee’s Summit on a rainy morning not even to run the race himself but only to watch me run and cheer me on to take my crack at breaking 35. There are so many kindnesses I have received in my life from people who love me that I wouldn’t even know where to start if I were to try to count my blessings. On that important morning, however, there was really nobody else on earth who could have ministered to my spirit in the way Todd did just by showing up and being there.

Now I just need him to go out and smoke a fast marathon this fall, and I’ll feel better about hobbling around on these crutches.

Here is the man after one of his favorite races

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Thoughts about September 2011

My thoughts are all a jumble. After about four months of spiritual struggle I now feel like I am mostly at peace with the state of my body. The surgery is now behind me and there is no way to know my running future without going there, but that’s going to be a slow one-day-at-a-time kind of thing. I feel like I am mostly at peace with God’s will for my life in this regard and mostly surrendered under His mighty hand. In faithfulness He afflicted me. May His lovingkindness now comfort me. I hope He restores my fortunes, but if he does not I will continue to move through the grieving and accept it. In the end I might end up weighing 300 pounds if I can’t ever run at my best again. Maybe not. I don’t know.

Not running (not walking without crutches!) kinda bites. I actually feel remarkably well for only being 6 days post op, and I’m in pretty good shape, although I’m sure a little bit is slipping away every day. I feel like I could go out and rip a 4:50 mile, but that would be unwise! I already miss it a lot.

Meanwhile, God bless me, I have been filled with joy watching my boy run. He’s had a couple of great races and a couple not as good, but just watching him race on cross country courses has been a balm for my soul. He is beautiful to watch. I appreciate his healthy knees and his slender form covering the ground, and I find his determined face amazing as the wind parts his dishwater blonde hair. Right now he has absolutely no idea what he is capable of as a runner. I guess I don’t either, but he seems to love it and I know that if he feels joy from it then the sky is the limit. It’s funny. I want, deeply from the bottom of my soul, for him to run well and to continue to improve and to stand out on his team and in competition, but if he doesn’t I am totally okay with that, too. Really. After his couple of races where he didn’t perform as well as he had hoped I was disappointed, but disappointed for him because I empathized with him that he had not met his goals. There has been no part of me that has in any way felt disappointed in him.

So, I feel I am in a healthy, “good dad” place with respect to his running. I am fully invested as his most passionate fan, biggest supporter and occasional advisor, but I am not pushing him. I don’t want to push not only because that’s what’s best for him, but I also don’t want to in the sense that I don’t feel the desire to do so. Literally, it’s all good. He could soar this year and end up at State, and I would be as proud as I could possibly be. Or, he could flounder and end up running the rest of the season on the JV team. Either way or any way in between, I’ll be proud of him as long as he is having fun at it. Either way, I am having the time of my life watching him run, and if it worked this way in God’s economy (which it doesn’t) then I would definitely trade what’s left of my middle-age running career for his youthful rise in the sport. You fall in love with your kids when they are born, and then you just keep falling in love with them over and over again through the years. How rich is that?