It's 12:30 on an summer Saturday afternoon, and very soon, I'll be in bed for a long nap. I got up at 4:00 this morning for the one-hour drive down to Huntington Beach to do the 10-Mile race at the annual "Distance Derby". The race went well, and though I'm still much slower than I was in my "prime", I was, all things considered, quite pleased to run a 1:14, which meant I managed under a 7:30 pace for the distance.
My friends were, as usual, considerably faster. Since the 10-Mile race began at 7:00, we were all done in time to jog the 5-Mile race as a cool-down and work up a good appetite for bagels and coffee.
As I ran today, I thought back to the days when running was my only outlet. Long before I did any other kind of exercise, and long before I was active as a volunteer and youth worker, I ran. I ran with the passion of a new convert; I ran with the passion of an addict. I ran and ran and ran; my friends teased me by asking what it was I was running from, to which I would always reply "I don't know, but if I don't stop, whatever it is won't catch me!"
It's a joy today to not be nearly so single-minded. At the start of today's race, I lined up well back in the pack, watching the elite and semi-elite runners take their places. They were skinny and twitchy, checking their watches, ready to go. Though a few seemed relaxed, most had tense and anxious expressions -- a look I know graced my face often enough. It felt good to be able to laugh and joke with my companions, and even to continue our conversations through the first couple of miles of the race (until they pulled away to their sub-7:00 minute pace). I'm a long way away from the fellow who burst into tears in 1999 after running a 1:30:00 in a half-marathon in Camp Pendleton; I had trained for weeks to break ninety minutes (a significant goal for most recreational half-marathon runners), and I fell one second short. That sort of thing devastated me. I spent weeks afterwards replaying every moment of the race, trying to figure out where I might have picked up a single extra second, mentally flagellating myself for what I imagined must have been a brief, catastrophic lapse in focus and discipline. Believe me, I was a hell of a bore to be around. I talked of little else.
Yet even as I don't miss the anxiety and self-obsession associated with that level of running, I confess that part of me feels guilty for not pushing myself to my limits. One of my old running buddies told me, when I was starting to race, that if I wasn't retching and gasping desperately for air in the finish chutes after a race, I hadn't really tried my hardest. I certainly dry-heaved in agony after many a race in the late 1990s. As painful as it was, it was deeply satisfying. There was no doubt that I had given my absolute best; I knew if I had pushed one iota harder, I would have collapsed.
Today, I certainly was in an "anaerobic" zone, and I was pushing hard, but I spent the whole race well shy of the "dry puking" threshold. I'm just not willing to suffer the way I once was; I'm not willing to risk injury for the sake of a few extra minutes or seconds. But part of me, swayed by some sort of Protestant work ethic I suppose, tells me that I'm letting myself down by not going to the absolute limits of my potential every time out. Yet I realized, running along the beach today, that giving maximum effort in a race would trash me for the rest of the day. My fiancee and I have plans for later; I have obligations that require me to be alert and present for something other than a race. I don't run the mileage or do the speedwork I once did, because to do so would mean cutting back on time with Matilde or her charity; time with my beloved; time with this blog; time with my All Saints kids; time to connect with others.
As I've mentioned before, I often recite poetry to myself near the end of runs, especially when things get painful. This morning, I brought to mind what I thought were entirely apropos lines from Yeats:
The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story's finished, what's the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.
(Yeah, I know I've posted it before in a very different context. But it's one of the few Yeats poems I know by heart, and I love it so...) I know, better than many, the cost of the "day's vanity"; I've known the "night's remorse" that comes from friendships neglected and communal responsibilities ignored, all so that I might lavish still more attention on my own body and try still harder to bend it to my will.
Older, slower, wiser, and better off. Peace.
Posted by: John Sloas | August 22, 2005 at 01:36 PM