Tomorrow Ain't As Bad As It Seems

"...the good old days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems." -- Billy Joel, "Keeping The Faith" (1983)

So, I was running along the perimeter of the local airport with one of my athletes and my wife the other day (we passed my wife about five minutes earlier, but that's par for the course). As always, conversations of substance begin once runners get past that "oh, God, this kind of bites" feeling (usually during the first mile or so) and into the rhythm of the run.

The morning topic happened to touch upon age, aging, and most specifically, aging up into a new running age bracket. Deena, my "poster child" athlete of the moment, feels compelled to take her newly-found running strength and go "dominate the dojo." While she's not the best in her age bracket, she's become very good and will probably put a scare into the one or two gals who are better than she. Deena says she wants to see whether she can run better times at some 10K races she ran in the past, before she doesn't have the speed at her disposal. Of course, she feels concerned because she thinks she won't improve or maintain her fitness over the next couple of years.

Naturally, my job as her coach is to make sure she stays healthy in order to meet the big running milestones of her life, which right now means next year's Boston Marathon. I'm not used to thinking about training plans in time frames of longer than six months; most of my athletes to this point (in my experience as coach) haven't elaborated as specifically on their goal events as this recent crop.

Aging is an inevitable outcome. When you consider the thoroughly unsavory alternative to aging, it does seem fairly acceptable. Some people, like my wife, approach it with no small amount of grace and humor. Other persons, like me, vary in degrees of kicking and screaming, especially when we observe the ways (running the gamut from hair dye to needless surgical procedures) our fellow humans try to ignore or turn back the clock.

One of my dear friends, Ruben, has a high running pedigree; a contemporary of Frank Shorter, Jack Bacheler, Jeff Galloway, Benji Durden, Jerry Slaven, Barry Brown, et. al., during the glory days of the Florida Track Club three decades ago. Hang out with him after a road race, even when you've had a bad day, and there's no doubt you will feel much better about yourself, even before the first beer is drained. Ruben always has a kind word about every participant's performance, and seems to know exactly where the silver lining hides within the darkest of clouds. When a guy has genuinely endured what John L. Parker Jr. called "the trial of miles," raced at national championships and Olympic Trials, I guess everything else could be considered a bit of a letdown. If there's a man who has the right to play the self-pitying "I used to run this distance in..." card, it's Ruben. He's more likely to tell you a story about holding hands with a fellow runner because neither guy wanted to let the other lose. I used to think Coach Slaven was kidding when he would tell those tales after our morning runs. After meeting Ruben I knew they were all true.

Sometimes the hardest part of moving forward is knowing what to do with the past. Perhaps the best thing to do is the running equivalent of Baz Luhrman's advice in "Everybody's Free To Wear Sunscreen:" Keep your old love letters. Throw out your old bank statements.

It's the feelings, more than the numbers, that matter when it comes to running...especially as we become more seasoned.

Labor Day, Approaching

I've been opposed on general principles (read: money) to purchasing a satellite radio receiver. It's like purchasing a computer and having to pay for the internet. Oh, you mean I do that!? Never mind.

However, after five years in this town, I've learned a few things:

1. Most, if not all, of the radio stations are owned by a single entity. That means you better like a playlist loaded with country, or contemporary (read: corporate, mindless, tasteless, talentless) music genres. Oh, let me not forget the three religious radio stations.

2. What I used to understand about radio still holds true. Advertising pays the operating expenses for commercial radio. HOWEVER, there are more ads and less "entertainment" on the airwaves. When I turn on a radio I want to hear music or conversation. You can toss a shameless plug in between segments for all I care, but DON'T INUNDATE ME with bull-cr@p.

Memo to self...or memo to spouse: HD or XM for birthday. Or, let's get that inexpensive bike took kit.

Labor Day is this weekend, and I'm far from the nostalgic state of mind I was last year. I guess if the temperatures were closer to 80 degrees than 90 I might begin to think about the approach of autumn. But we're much closer to infernal than autumnal. Track workouts on Tuesday and Thursday evening (ideally) finish at 7:30, which is about the same time the sun goes down.

Positive: Temperature drops nearly ten degrees between start of workout and finish.

Negative: Still warm enough for small bugs to live.

The track's lights did not go on at 6:45 last night, either, which meant dusk approached as we were finishing our last set of repeats. Probably a one-off situation; something I hope doesn't become a more-frequent occurrence.

I'm waiting to tighten up the list of athletes who are training to run the marathon in December...but only for another two days. I mentioned on several occasions via e-mail, in the newsletter, everything but a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night that it is their responsibility to contact me personally (phone, e-mail, face-to-face), and yet, I STILL GET SECOND-HAND COMMUNICATIONS. Once again: Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot, Oscar?

While we're going insane here in the office getting the last of the interviews and daily activity logs collected and beginning to make sense of the numbers, the presence of one of the staff from one of our more-northern detachments has made it fun. I like working with persons who have a sense of humor and aren't constrained by artificial bull-cr@p. Yep, give me a WYSIWYG kind of co-worker, any time.