"There's only one hard and fast rule in running: sometimes you have to run one hard and fast."








Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Okay...okay. Settle down.

That last post should've stayed in my head and not been posted (but, if I edited my thoughts, how little I'd ever write!); I'm just at that point of training where I'm getting bored and things aren't progressing the way I'd like. Sometimes I do better when I think that the race I'm working toward is just training for something else down the road, er, path.

The few people reading this that are older than I am know the feeling: you do everything right and your body just refuses to co-operate. It's frustrating to no end and I know it only gets worse; every year you get slower and you fight to make the slowdown as gradual as possible, but you end up working like a maniac to do worse than only a few years earlier and then you bitch about people who do less and win awards for just showing up and who are in their cars driving home while you're still busting your ass...

The rant endeth.

I'll focus on the 50K and decide what's next when it's over.

11 comments:

Psyche said...

I can relate. I no longer like birthdays- they signify the death of a heartbeat. 177 max? Really??

I was jusy posting about wondering how long you can expect to improve with just "running" training. It seems if you want substantial improvement, at some point you have to correct biomechanical weak links, increase flexibility and strength, and improve running mechanics.

Bottom line: It sucks to have to work harder for less improvement.

Keep up the rants:)

Psyche said...

So there really IS a way around everything! "Get used to running closer to MHR"...I'm all OVER that!

Thanks:)

Word Verification: exploger. what happens when you run too long at MHR

Diana said...

Why is it that sometimes we work so hard and nothing ever seems to show for it?
Old age......UGH!

Fast Bastard - World's Fastest Hematologist said...

My entry for the Steve Q-esque post is in.

sea legs girl said...

I also finally have a submission to the "Contest".

Title: On the importance of washing your hands after you go to the bathroom.

Sorry, the title has nothing to do with this text. I just wanted to see how many curious people I could get to click on the post.

Another chapter from Steve's evil Evil Kitchen

I am always on the lookout for a new salad. Today while I was on a run, I was admiring the way that birds take nearly anything they come upon and weave it into their nests. Rather than trying this myself, I decided it might be a good idea to actually collect bird nests for a salad. This took a few days. The first one came easily, since it was lying on the ground and with just a few broken egg shells in it. It was a scrape nest from a hawk. These are unfortunately extremely rare in Minnesota. Something a bit easier to find is the nest of the barn swallow. These tend to be built along house gutters out of mud and bird saliva. Perfect for a salad. I will not go into great detail about how I obtained these nests. Suffice it to say I was surprised how many unhatched eggs and newly hatched chicks were in them. Well, it is a good thing I am an adventurous and extremely good cook. In the end, the mud in the salad was not quite the way I wanted it to be. I decided to attempt to make a nest entirely out of my own saliva, much like the nest of the Black Nest Swiflet, Aerodramus maximus. I would then make a soup from it when the saliva had dried. I have to say, it turned out perfectly. Have a mentioned I am a very good cook? I am planning to bring samples to the Trail Mix 50k.

Speaking of the Trail Mix. I took the mean time from Helen's 50k's and the mean times from mine. I then took the natural log of each of them and multiplied them by pi and was surprised to see that this predicts she would still end up beating me.

Anonymous said...

Hey Steve, after reading your last entry. I think you should write in deph about trying to be fast again, since I am stuggling with the same issue. Is there too much scare tissue from all those fast years and that is why we can't run fast anymore?

Scream'n Turtle said...

Been fighting that "Demon" age chitter for 4 years now.
Only this year I have fully {I THINK} adjusted to not be any faster then I was before. Train harder, get slower-then injury's happen because of it.
My bright side of things now, CAN'T wait till I turn 50 ( 500 more days) Then i'll be the young pup in the age group again.
Age isn't so bad if and when you totally give in to it.
Pro's and Con's of everything in life.
Row with the punches, but when it comes back to you -make sure you FINISH it.
Steve : RECONNECT with yourself! -What's the real reason you run? Do you WANT to , or do you HAVE to?
They are 2 totally different things! Answer that million $ question and things might fall back into place.

Kel said...

As one of my 99 year old clients says:

"I just don't bounce back like I did when I was 85."

As one of my 101 year old clients says:

"Getting old isn't for sissies."

These are folks that are still coming to exercise classes twice a week.

Go run just for the hell of it...and the joy of it (tip: leave the watch and heart rate monitor at home). And don't forget to enjoy the fact that you can still do it, even if it isn't what you could do "in your prime". If running isn't fun anymore, than do something that is.

See you on the trails ;)

Mike W. said...

I thought your last post was fine, venting is good and what use is a blog if not for that. Besides if you decide to change your plans, I think that is your choice. We all compete against ourselves even when we use others to race against.

On a different but related note, maybe you should work on a mathematical model to handicap for age, weight, height, (whatever else you can come up with) compensation factor. If nothing else, I could use to justify my times :-), see you on the trails.

Glaven Q. Heisenberg said...

Man, maybe I totally missed the tone of the previous post, but it didn't strike me as being mean-spirited toward Helen or anyone else - well, except yourself. I read The Trail Vigilante's comment, then re-read your post to see what I had missed because it must've been something huge and awful and in egregiously bad taste and perhaps it even causes cancer in lab rats ... but, if it was there, I managed to miss it yet again.

Because once again I didn't see it.

And then I saw that Helen has commented, so evidently she is still speaking to you? So I guess she missed it too.

I'm older than you but I'm not competitive because as a runner? I kinda suck. So there's little point.

But I don't think there's anything wrong with a competitive runner questioning himself mid-training and wishing things were going better for him and even measuring his progress in relation to another competitive runner.

That said, I predict Helen will hand you your @$$ at Superior.

But on the bright side? You and your bad vibes will cause the Trail Vigilante to finish last because while teh Beach Boys are picking up good vibrations? You're busy laying down bad vibrations, twice as fast.

Take comfort, then. You are faster than Teh Beach Boys.

Yep. Your bad vibes are that strong, SteveQ. They're so bad, they should have their own show on Political Talk Radio.

Chris Swenke said...

Birthday's are always better than the alternative.

Wouldn't be great to finish 1st? Wouldn't be great to win my age group? Sure, maybe once but I think the view is so much better the middle. I've never been terribly fast and as I close in on 40 this coming July I don't see that changing much.

I run for that elusive glimpse of pure freedom (maybe you've glimpsed it as well). I run for the family and friends around me. I run cause my daughters think I'm nuts. I run cause my friends think I'm nuts. I run to have the luxury someday to pay for my daughters weddings.

Cliche as it sounds - Enjoy the journey!