All in all, it went well, I think, though I do have to be wary of doing the hard stuff harder than my fitness level calls for. I know I’m supposed to push myself to a certain level of discomfort when I do speed work, but I have a hard time knowing how hard that level should be. Since I haven’t raced since last Thanksgiving, and since I’m in nowhere near the shape I was then, I find myself in a nebulous realm of wanting to punish myself but knowing that doing so can really undermine my long-term attempt to get more fit.

So I’m trying to learn to feel my way, to use Perceived Level of Effort, though that is taking me a while a gauge. And I guess that’s okay. The shift from looking at a watch to listening to your body and your breathing requires patience, and ultimately that’s the point. I have to trust in myself, trust that I’m not going to let myself down or give up, even if that means I have to use trial and error and it takes longer to get as fast as I’d like.

More than anything, watching the races reminded of the simplicity, the purity of running, especially cross country. There’s nothing tricky, no gimmicks, no scoreboard of flashy lights or spectacle. Just the mixture of speed and grit and determination that marks all the participants–from first-place finishers to those bringing up the rear. Just singlets and shorts and shoes and the purity of running.

Of course, it’s early September, which means it’s too early to expect that we’ve actually turned the corner from summer. By the middle of next week, the highs will climb back up around 80 (at least according to the most recent forecasts I’ve seen). Not bad, and it certainly beats 90-degree days. But I’m reserving my emotional abandon until we get a full week under 80.
I’ll believe it when it happens.

One unexpected side benefit is that I’m getting in a bit of cross training. Just to break up the monotony of hearing my feet thump along on the belt, I’ve been warming up or cooling down by riding the stationary bike. It’s also a good test of my discipline. I know that the only way I’ll be in any shape to race come spring or summer is by continuing to add up the minutes and miles now. They say the blues is suffering transformed into art, so I guess the treadmill qualifies as paying my dues.

I’ve been thinking about this lately because my wife, mi esposa, La Senora Arizona, trains more for triathlons. She did her first sprint triathlon last fall, and she’s planning to do an indoor one later this month. I have noticed about triathlons something that I haven’t encountered among many who have joined the newer running “boom” of the last decade or so. It goes beyond their own enjoyment, their own effort or success, to a sense of those competitors who have gone before them and who will come after. In triathlons, for example, competitors are expected to adhere to the rules for things like the use of headphones or not drafting during the biking leg. They actually have marshalls who enforce the rules and warn or even disqualify athletes for breaking them.

This strikes me as a sharp contrast to the road racers I’ve competed in, where walkers line up near the front of the start line and chat amiably with each other four abreast while runners end up nearly colliding to avoid running into them. Or where folks pop in their headphones knowing they’re supposed to be prohibited. Or where costumes and spectacle reins, people trying to determine who can be the cleverest, the funniest, the most outlandish. And I’ve seen the message boards where all of this behavior is defended in the name of “more people participating in the sport” or “popularity” or “the money it brings in.”

Triathletes seem unconcerned about such issues. They seem to have, even the slowest of them, a respect for the sport that matters more than how entertaining each participant can make his or her own race. They don’t talk about how “boring” the sport is, or how they could never compete without something (cheerleaders? rock bands?) to keep them distracted.

This contrast came to mind today when I read an article about the first Master’s race of one of the greats of middle distance running, Eamonn Coghlan. I wonder how many of today’s bucket-list marathoners know his name and what he meant to distance running once upon a not-so-long-ago time. I wonder how many scramble at odd hours of the morning or night to catch streaming video or online  broadcasts of the distance races at the Olympics or World Championships or major marathons. I wonder how many recognize that they run in the footsteps of those who trained in cotton sweats and raced in plain cotton or polyester singlets and shorts.

You see, I don’t just love the act of running; I love the people who love it, who have sacrificed for it, who raced when there was little or no money, no admiration, nothing but the desire to test themselves and share their love with whoever had the same desire. I love those who are passionate about running, whether or not that means winning, whether there are 20,000 people running with them or 20.

Because of those people, while I may run by myself, never really run alone.

I had originally planned to run for 30 or 45 minutes; I haven’t been out in four days. But I felt so peaceful, so good and smooth and deep in my own body, that I ended up going for 50 minutes, feeling better and better as the time passed. The flakes swirled around me, and I could swear I heard the soft pfft of a flake as it settled into the wool cap pulled down over my ears.

After even a few missed days, in the rush and hustle of work, family, weather, I can begin to lose what it feels like to be out on the road again. Intellectually, I know I’ll like it, but physically my body begins to forget. Yesterday was one of those perfect reminders of why I do this.

The blogger is someone with wicked expertise in a particular subject.

The blogger has some unusual or quirky aspect to her life, such as she lives in Antarctica or he runs a rooftop breeding ground for lemurs in downtown Manhattan.

The blogger has set some very specific but demanding (even insane) goal he plans to achieve, such as going from couch potato to climber of Everest in six weeks.

Since my expertise is limited and I lead a rather ordinary, though fulfilling, life, I thought it might be useful to go the insane goal route, though I might prefer the term “ambitious” goal. It is this: Within five years, I hope to run what I consider the greatest race on the planet–The Comrades Marathon in South Africa.

What is Comrades, you ask? Each May or June, an entire nation (that’s right, a nation, not just a city, as in Boston) comes to a virtual standstill while people watch 11,000 runners or so cover the 54-mile course from Durban to Pietermaritzburg or vice versa (each year they alternate which direction they go). Aside from the challenge of the race itself, I’ve heard of nothing that matches the spectacle of Comrades.

The race begins before dawn with the sound of a rooster’s crow. It operates on a strict, 12-hour time limit. As the limit approaches, a timekeeper stands at the finish line with his back turned to the oncoming runners, counting down the time; he marks the deadline with a pistol shot. Those who finish after  that time, even by seconds, do not have their time recorded. They don’t count as finishers. And having your finishes count matters, because at Comrades, after ten official finishes, you receive a coveted green number.

Runner’s World columnist Amby Burfoot gives a greater sense of the majesty of this race than I can, but suffice it to say that it is my dream to toe the line at Comrades one day.

I’m also discovering–or maybe I should say I’m having confirmed–that I’m more of an individual sport than a team sport guy. The college where I work has a wellness team competition going in, and I was drafted into joining one of the teams along with my wife, hereafter referred to as La Senora Arizona, and several work colleagues. I figured this would be a little something extra to get me up and going, an added inducement to maintain training on those sub-freezing days. I had not, however, counted on the competitive fires that burn within the hearts of some team members. The woman who formed the team has sent us reminder emails about posting our weekly workout hours to the competition website, and after the first week’s tally, she pointed out that we had come in a relatively close second place, adding a not-so-subtle nudge to step it up a notch (though not in so many words).

That evening, I mentioned the email to La Senora since I knew she received the same email and I hoped to get sympathy for my view that this was more than was needed for a friendly, let’s-all-get-healthier competition. My wife, of course, had no problem with the push to get going. In retrospect, I should have know she’d react this way; this is a woman who enjoys watching replays of a good football stiff-arm, and who will talk trash during a game of Scrabble.

I realized that doing it for the team just doesn’t mean that much to me. I’m happy to encourage an individual, but I don’t expect anyone to think of me and feel some sense of obligation, and I don’t really feel that either. While I have every hope that the team does well, I won’t be disappointed in anyone who slacks off. In the end, I’m really almost pathologically intrinsically motivated; I believe in doing things not because of what they get you from others but for the meaning of the thing itself. I’m not knocking the other approach. The idea of beating the competition, of measuring herself against others, definitely gets La Senora’s fires burning, and I wouldn’t have her any other way. It just isn’t me. I knew that about myself, but I didn’t realize how much that was the case until this competition began. This could be a long winter.