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








Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Rehab, stage 3

I may run today! I've got the aches and pains down to a handful, only one serious and chronic. The challenge now is to see if I can manage to run without much pain and without altering my form much to accomodate injuries.

I found a list of runners my age or older that I was competing against 10 years ago and I thought it would be interesting to see how they're holding up. Of 77 runners, 25 have not competed in recent years (a couple died) and another 15 I consider semi-retired, as they only do one or two favorite races each year. I had myself ranked 54th on the list in 2002 and wondered where my 5K time would fall.

Here's their recent times in the order they were ranked then: 16:56, 15:56, 16:50, 18:59, 17:45, 17:57, 16:42, 17:35, 16:43, 17:13, 18:07, 17:16, 19:27, 19:53, 19:18, 19:16, 18:20, 18:49, 18:34, 20:17, 17:46, 19:11, 19:31, 23:34, 19:10, 19:40, 20:05, 18:39 [Here I'd be. The same records don't show a 5K for me since 2006(!), which I did in 18:27], 22:25, 20:19, 20:54, 18:46, 19:00, 20:36, 20:07, 23:37, 21:33, 26:03.

So, there's one national class (sub 16), 4 more under 17, another 6 under 18, 7 more under 19, 9 more under 20. Looks like trying to break 20 minutes and top-40 would be a good goal. Looking at recent 5K results for other guys my age, there's another sub-17, 3 sub-18's, 7 sub-19's and a bunch of sub-20's. I'm probably in the 23-24 minute range right now... oh, wait, I've been injured for 2 years...  make that 25-26.

It's a place to start.

1 comment:

Carilyn said...

I'm so glad to see you're progressing with rehab, Steve! And I'm amazed at the data you can compile. I can't even manage to keep track of my own times - numbers make my head hurt - but I can write a mean haiku :)