The Rain & The Pain

Wednesday Weblog for January 13, 2021

Quote of the Week:

”You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice.” – Bob Marley

Leading Off: The Cranberry Militia

My snarky comments on cranberry sauce generated more responses from readers than any other Weblog in recent memory. Here is a sample:

"I made homemade cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I have a bag of cranberries in the refrigerator. I add cranberries to apple pie fruit crisps. Does that qualify me for a relationship with cranberries?"--Michael

"So to answer the question...I do like cranberries, but no...none since Thanksgiving and we tossed the left overs. On a positive note...our cranberries were fresh. I have the unopened can of jelled cranberries in the pantry...just in case. My wife, on the other hand, only drinks cranberries, and only if in a Cosmo."-Jim

"For all you cranberry sauce bashers/haters (whiners), I make a homemade cranberry sauce and it is yummy. We eat it throughout the year. But I will agree, the canned jelly cranberry sauce is not desirable. Maybe it’s the ridges from the can, an epicurean turn off. " -Erin

"I make my Thanksgiving cranberry sauce from fresh cranberries... easy. Rarely any leftovers. If there are leftovers, I put it on my turkey sandwich." -Marianne

The Rain & The Pain

This is a cold-weather story, and a story where you are going to do a lot of the work, because there is no punch line to the story. You may think it is about running, but it's not. You’ll see.

For those readers who are sick of running stories, including close family members, you can hop off here and just remember the cranberry militia is out there. For those of you, both of you, who think I have a sense of humor, press on.

Sometimes when I run a race, some of you know, and I know, I’m going to write about it, but sometimes I don’t know or don’t plan to write but do it anyway because something happens during the race.

Thanksgiving morning several years ago, in 25-degree weather I participated in my town’s Turkey Trot, the Holden Road Race for the sixth time and three things happened as I ran through town that surprised me enough to write down this narrative.

THE RAIN

This story actually starts the previous Sunday morning about 6:15 am. I think everyone knows that I like being prepared, so in the pouring rain, I ran the course all alone as a practice run and accepted the fact that age was slowing me down because my time was not very good.

As you get older, some of your mental abilities may get stronger, but many of your physical attributes decline. Some of us have experienced both. (You might say that running 3.1 miles in the pouring rain is a sign of mental abilities getting weaker, and you could be right.)

My practice run didn’t add to my confidence level if you know what I mean. I hadn’t been running as much that Fall since I injured my knee before Falmouth in August, but as a result of some physical therapy magic, I was probably as fully recovered as I was going to be. I wouldn’t say I was ready to fly, but I was certainly ready to try. See what a natural poet I am?

In any case, on Thanksgiving Day all 1,270 of us took off from the supermarket parking lot, down Route 31, across the railroad bridge, around the old cemetery, and across Main Street.

Since I run with an app that tells me how I am doing, how fast my last quarter mile was, I was feeling pretty good at the quarter, half-mile, and three-quarter mile marks when the little voice in my ear told me I was way ahead of my normal pace. Like, way ahead. Not ‘I’m going to get a medal’ way ahead, but still ahead. I wrote it off to adrenaline. There is more adrenaline with a thousand people running by CVS than running by yourself, particularly at 6:30 in the morning in the pouring rain.

Then we began weaving through neighborhoods with hills. As long as the street had a hill, it was on the route. No flat streets need apply. Me and hills don't get along.

THE FIRST SURPRISE

The first surprise hit me at about the one-mile mark on a slightly sloping hill: I wanted to quit. I assumed that I had started too fast and burned out. I was hurting. My legs were sore, my hips felt some pain, but mostly I was short of breath in the 25-degree temperatures and my lungs ached as I considered walking or stopping for a while.

I had a terrific 500-yard argument with myself, so I naturally won. I decided that quitting would not be who I am, or at least who I try to be. No, I knew I was just dumb enough to try to run through the pain, and I plunged ahead. The longer I ran without stopping, the better I felt about myself and so the longer I ran without stopping.

THE PAIN

There was a little bit of snow or was it rain during this stretch of the race, just another garnish. The little voice in my ear let me know that I had slowed down to my normal pace, just faster than a snail. So, while that was a little discouraging, my normal pace is a lot faster than walking or stopping, so I was still moving forward. As I moved ahead, feeling a little better, my breathing also got better as I hit the two-mile mark. It was then that I decided that I had, in fact, run through the pain, and what had seemed like a crisis a mile ago, now seemed like an inconvenience.

THE SECOND SURPRISE

As I approached the three-mile mark and the last big hill, (did I mention that you can’t run in my town without big hills?), the voice in my ear appeared to have made a serious mistake. It told me that I was picking up speed, and my pace was faster now. Could that be true? If the voice in my ear was correct, it was my second surprise: I was on pace for a fairly respectable (for me) overall time.

With that as extra motivation I was determined to finish strong. As runner after runner slowed down to walk the final 100 yards of the big hill, I just kept running. I am usually so spent at the three-mile mark of a 3.1-mile race that I don’t have anything left in the tank and coast to the finish. But today, since it had been an up and down run, both mentally and physically, I just notched it up a little bit, feeling pretty good about myself, my recovery, my time, my knee, my overall persistence.

THIRD SURPRISE

It worked, and I had my third surprise. In my sixth Thanksgiving turkey trot, as I approached the clock at the finish line in front of the Dollar Store, I realized that I had just run my personal best time for the race, by 4 seconds. Sure, it was only by 4 seconds, but it was still my personal best time, just a little bit faster than i ran when I was six years younger!

Four seconds spread over 3.1 miles. Four seconds better than 32 minutes (and five races ago) is not very much, but it doesn’t matter. If I had walked, if I had slowed down, if I had coasted to the finish line instead of finishing strong, I wouldn’t be writing this, because four seconds slower than your personal best, is a nice try, but four seconds better than your personal best is an achievement to be proud of, simply because it is a personal best.

Normally at this point I would use this story to make an analogy to life or work or some other significant area of endeavor, but I don’t have to because you did it for me as you were reading.

But I will end with this: every time in my life I’ve run through the rain and the pain, I’ve set a personal best. Not a coincidence. Just sayin'.

Surprise Photo at the End: 352 Days Left

Thanks for reading and thanks for referring.

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