By mid-November I had hit my stride. I kept going for short swims, did a Turkey Trot 5k in 30:05 (I was pissed I didn’t go sub 30, which I blame on the one mile hill at the end) and didn’t over indulge at Thanksgiving. I was now in the 170lb area and felt and looked so much better that I was just happy most of the time. December I slowed down a bit, tired from a stressful semester, but I tried not to sabotage myself with Christmas eating.
On January 1st I ran the “Hamilton Hangover 5 Miler” -- a race I signed up for on a lark and wasn’t sure I’d be able to get to because of child care obligations. It was being held at a park just 20 minutes from my house, but it was at noon, an unusual race time and one harder for me to commit to. I didn’t even know until about 10am that day that I was going to be able to run it.
I think not having any time to stress helped me a lot. I just threw on my running gear and jumped in my car to head out. The race was cold, but the atmosphere was small-towny and convivial and the park we ran in was quite pretty. I blasted through the race maintaining a sub 10 minute mile pace and finishing in 47:23. I was beside myself! I had seen my splits on the digital timing clocks on the course but couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing, 9:47 for the first mile 18:23 after the second mile. I was convinced the clocks were broken. Seriously. I thought it was a mistake.
I’m still not sure how I did it exactly, other than I decided I had nothing to lose, so I might as well go all out and see how long I could keep that up. I also tried to catch people and pass them, something I’d never felt up to before that day. I still focussed on being friendly, thanking the volunteers who came out to give us water on a cold afternoon, saying encouraging things to other runners when it seemed appropriate. But all of a sudden I could feel this new feeling. I wasn’t even sure what to call it. I had felt it in other situations, but never in sports. And then I realized what it was. I was feeling competitive.
Now, to be clear, I will never be competitive in a road race in terms of competing against other human beings, the kinds of gods who finish 5ks in 15 minutes. But by January 1st I had really begun to compete with myself, wanting to improve on my previous best times. I think I could feel it beginning when I ran the Trenton ½ and was so excited to do so much better than I had in the Philly ½. And, to be honest, trying to pass just one person in front of me, and then one more person, and then maybe one more was a good way of helping me get to my personal best. So maybe I was just competing with other people at the back of the pack, but I was still competing. And it felt really good.
Later that week I completed a 16 mile training run in preparation for my “taper” (one of those lingo words meaning cutting back on mileage prior to a big event). Honestly, I didn’t exactly taper before the Key West ½. More like I dwindled down to nothing. I ran 2 and 3 milers a couple of times in the next two weeks. Sure, five months earlier even that would have been an accomplishment, but now it was slacking, pure and simple. I was on break from work and I was feeling laconic and like resting on my laurels a little, as my dad would have said.
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