I’m a middle-aged distance runner.
Which is translated as I’m old and slow.
I’m also a Navy Reservist, which means that twice a year I get graded on how fast I can run a mile and a half.
Over most of the last decade, I’ve taken a smug satisfaction in being able to be pretty competitive in running that mile and a half twice a year. It’s not tough to excel at the run – anything better than 12 minutes (8:00/mile) is pretty competitive.
So, two weeks ago, I turned in an 11:04 for the mile and a half. I also ran a mile from the gym to the track before the run, and then did about 3 miles after, ’cause I needed to add mileage as I had been expecting to run the Vermont City Marathon on Memorial Day weekend.
Well, I woke up on 4 April with a stabbing pain in my left heel. F*sck, I said, and blew off my long run that weekend.
I tried cranking out a mile on 6 April, and 3 on 9 April – both times I woke up hurting.
So I took off a WHOLE WEEK, and tonight I tried running again. The first half mile rocked – my legs are fresh, I’ve been riding a bike all week – man, I thought I was good. Woke up with no pain, walked a lot today.
But, about a half mile into the run, I started twinging each step.
And at 3/4 of a mile, something “snapped”, and I limped back home.
My heel’s been throbbing for the last 4 hours, despite a fair amount of barley malt, yeast, and hops as medication. I’m really upset (p!ssed), ’cause the weather in Alabama is phenomenal for running. Man, I want to run.
I rented a bike and have been riding like a madman. I’ll likely do 40 or 50 miles tomorrow morning. But I’m crying because it hurts to run.
Stupid marathons.
It’s 50 years since Gargarin orbited the planet. In the 20 years after that, we sent men to the moon, started a long-term space station, landed on most of the planets in the inner solar system, and made the first reuseable heavy-lift space vehicle. In the next 30 years…
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that space stalled in the ’80s. Our national psyche changed in the ’70s and ’80s. First we centered on the individual – self worth regardless of the approval of the community. Then we decided that “greed is good”, and made selfishness a virtue. Even religious conservatives have, rather than “denying your father and following Me”, that everything centers on an individual’s family, regardless of the rest of the community.
In the two decades after that, we decided that even a non-binding responsibility of the individual to think of the good of the community was equivalent to Soviet communism. No more pledging “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” to everyone else in the country – what a bunch of hippies must have written that. I’ll get mine, thank you very much.
We need to get back to thinking that we can do great things as a society for the benefit of all mankind.
I dug this article at Velominati (as well as much of the rest of the site). He is, however, breaking a cardinal rule of belgian beer by using a pint glass, but everything else is good.
(Proper glas via Vestio)
I cannot recommend Paris-Roubaix enough. Hugely long race (more than 250 KM) through the North of France, across the fields of Flanders, and with almost 20 sections of cobblestones dating back centuries. Most poignant for me is the stretch through the Ardenne, where vicious battles were fought in both WWI and WWII.
It’s a hugely old race, finishes with three laps on the velodrome at Roubaix, and has been won by most of the legends of the sport. AND, this is the next to last time George Hincapie will toe the line.
