Is the son about ready to eclipse the father?

I reckoned the day would come when Wyatt would get faster than I am.  I thought it would be about his junior year of high school, but he may be running a little ahead of schedule.  He may be getting dangerously close, in fact.  Back in August I managed a nice 9:42 3000m on the track, which would work out to about a 10:22 for 3200m.  Two Fridays ago Wyatt ran a 10:25.  Then last Friday on an evening with a 15 mph south wind he ran a 10:24 and placed third, running very strong, very competitively.  Yes, dangerously close, indeed.  Tomorrow night his coach has assigned him to specifically run for time.  For 9:50, in fact.  Eleven seconds faster than I have ever run 3200 meters in my entire life.  We will see.

In the fall I got wicked fast.  A mediocre 16:58 5k at the local neighborhood race was the result of being under full marathon training load at the time.  I’m sure I could have gone 16:20 easily with a little 5k specific training and a little more rest before the race.  I ran one workout, on Halloween in fact, that was 4 x 5000, with 800m jogs in between reps, hitting the first 3 at about 18:50 and the last one at 17:40.  Oh yeah, I was getting to be a lean, mean, strong running machine.  Then I think I fell off the edge of an overtraining cliff and I’ve been struggling to recover ever since.

Meanwhile, the boy seems to be unstoppable, thank God.  He’s just been getting stronger and stronger, his young body just absorbing all the training his overzealous coach can throw at him and turning it into strength and speed.  So, last week he told me that he had run a 3-mile tempo run in practice in 17:20.  Wow, although it was technically probably only 4800m and it was on the track, that’s still a pretty darn good time for practice, and that was only 48 hours after a wicked interval workout.  As circumstances played out, I had also planned to run a [true] 3-mile tempo run over the roads last week as part of my gradual return to hard running.  It was windy, and although relatively mild terrain, it was still a lot harder than a track.  Well, I think so.

Hey Dad, what did you run this morning? 

Well, I did a ten-mile run consisting of a 7-mile warmup segment and a 3-mile tempo segment.

What was your time?

You know, it was kind of windy and stuff this morning.

Yeah.  What was your time?

17:50.

Then he gave me that smile, and that look out of the corner of his eye.  During cross country last fall I used to sneak him Moutain Dews for two reasons.  First of all, they have a good dose of caffeine and that’s a fine, legal performance enhancer.  Secondly, he likes them, although he generally tries to be a little careful not to drink them in front of his coaches, because apparently they frown upon soda consumption.  At some time toward the end of the season, however, somebody caught him on camera, and you can see that mischievous  look on his face.  This is the same look he was giving me now.

This week as we close rapidly now upon his assault on a sub-10:00 2-mile and my 6^th assault on the Boston Marathon we coincidentally ran another workout in common.  His was an 11:00 3200m tempo effort on Wednesday.  This morning I managed an 11:04.  “I still won,” he said as I slipped out the door to take his brothers to school.

Yes, Wyatt, you still won this week’s father-versus-son time trial, and I hope you soon crush my lifetime 2-mile PR, and all my PRs, and far surpass everything I’ve ever done.  Να είσαι καλύτερος άνθρωπος από τον πατέρα σου.  That would be the answer to my prayers for you, in running and in every area of life.