Wednesday Weblog for August 11, 2021 |
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“Everyone has their own measure of success. Don't ever stop until you reach yours. Once you obtain your personal best, your confidence will soar within. Then, you will find yourself pursuing even more than you ever thought possible before.”
― Christine E. Szymanski
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Leading Off: Yes, It Is a Running Story, Sort of |
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Sunday I will run in my 7th Falmouth Road Race, along with a reduced field of 8,000 other runners. (Normally 12,000+ participate in the event). Gary, a loyal reader with a home in Falmouth who has run it 22 times, has promised to run with me after I've run it 22 times, so I only have 15 to go. Challenge accepted, see you in 2037, maybe.
The photo below is of runners about to enter the 'no breeze' zone of the race and is another great picture of me. I am a little hard to see, but I am the one in the ugly pink and blue singlet, swearing at some chatty folks to concentrate and get out of my way. I am right behind a guy who shouldn't be wearing spandex, and just ahead of an 11 year old girl, and I am flying. Not sure you can tell that from the photo?
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The 7 Mile Falmouth Road Race has been my personal Super Bowl each August. Running it for the first time, at the time, was the achievement of a lifetime for me, considering my age and the late start I had with this running thing.
It was a huge fundraiser for the non-profit I was dedicated to as well, raising more than $100,000 over the years as volunteers and staff ran as members of the 'charity' program.
7 Miles with 12,000 others on the shores of Cape Cod with free frozen yogurt bars at the finish? Are you kidding me? Who else gets free frozen yogurt bars after a race? It took me about an hour and half to complete the course the first time and stay out of the medical tent. But I was hooked.
The day after that first race, I started planning for the next year. I was hooked. Seriously. still I track everything I do all year, gearing up for the event using (surprise) an Excel spreadsheet to help. I track every run, every distance, my average heart rate, maximum heart rate, average pace, pace per mile, etc.
I try to leave no detail to chance. My socks, my shoes, my shoelaces, my hydration, my nutrition, my playlist, my knee wrap, my foam rolling, my strength training, my warm up, my sleep, my damn toenails even got attention, and no guy pays much attention to his toenails.
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So picture me, with 365 days of preparation, hundreds of miles of training runs, emery-boarded toenails and all, standing at the start line with 12,000 runners on an unusually cool August morning 20 yards from the Atlantic Ocean, with adrenalin pumping through my veins. (It wasn’t really pumping pumping, and I think it is arteries anyway, but I’ve always wanted to use the phrase ‘pumping through my veins,’ and now I have).
My fourth personal Super Bowl is about to start and…..an 11 year old girl starts taunting me. (I know that line surprised you.) Delaney is the daughter of a friend who is also running, and I might have challenged this young lady earlier in the morning because I was still hurting over being beat by this young girl when she was 10 years old the year before, running her first Falmouth Road Race.
Anyway the challenge was on. I now had the edge I personally needed to excel: the opportunity to defeat an 11 year old. This particular 11 year old quite frankly won the trash talking contest before the race because my vocabulary was.....SEVERELY restricted. Vocabulary is limited when talking with an 11 year old, if you know what I mean. Lots of words were unavailable to me.
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Now before you get too judgmental about my attitude, why don't you run 7 miles with a ten year old and see how you feel when you get beat? It is a serious ego blow, and you don't have to be a manly man to be devastated by such a result. You also have to give the kid a lot of credit for picking on me, I mean for running that far that fast. Probably no one reading this could run that far when you were ten.
With a little help from the weather person, who delivered a cool, low humidity day: I knew I was going to set a personal best before the race even started. With a great year of training plus being motivated by taunting from an 11 year old girl, I was able to run the Falmouth Road Race in the astonishing (to me) time of one hour and twelve minutes.
Let me expand on that: everyone was astonished. Why astonished? That’s 17 minutes faster than my first time, and ten minutes and 32 seconds faster than my previous best. The first year I ran this event, I was hoping to have at least one person finish behind me. On my fourth try in 2018 according to the official records, 4,073 runners finished behind me. Four-thousand, seventy-three.
Yes, I have some proof at the end of this story.
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Oh, and one of the 4073 behind me was an 11 year old girl. The photo is the view she had of me for most of the race.
Unfortunately for me, the following year, perhaps motivated by being embarrassed by a senior citizen, she finished slightly ahead of me. Last year it was a virtual event, so there was no trash talking.
I don't think she is running this year, probably afraid of losing again. I am running, with no fear of being beat by a 14 year old girl.
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BOSTON MARATHON VIRTUAL EDITION UPDATE
Days until event: 59
Fundraising Goal: $10,000
Dollars Raised for Boston Bruins Foundation: $3,375
Number of Generous Donors: 16
Post Race Party: Loretta's Last Call
Attending Physician: Dr. Glenn Markenson
Long Training Run Last Week: 10 Miles without hospitalization or severe pain
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Surprise Photo at the End: Look at All Those Behind Me |
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Joe's Positive Post of the Week |
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Ed Doherty
774-479-8831
www.ambroselanden.com
ed-doherty@outlook.com
Forgive any typos please.
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