Running on Fumes

I’m running out of gas.

I know I’ve said it before but this time I really, really, really mean it.

I’m literally running out of gas.

I’ve promised myself more times than I care to admit that I would limit my weekly mileage.  It all began in 1998 when I was putting in well over 100 miles a week.  Since I wasn’t anywhere near world class, had no chance of qualifying for the Olympics nor earning a living by running lots of miles I thought it wise to cut back a bit. 

‘A bit.’  Ninety miles a week for the next eight years hardly qualifies as ‘a bit.’  So in 2007 I got serious and made a firm commitment to reduce my weekly mileage…to 85 miles a week.  OK, baby steps.  A few years later (2010) I took it a step further and cut back to 75 a week (more baby steps) where I held steady for a few years.     

Then ‘it’ happened.  I turned 60 years old and asked myself as seriously as I’m capable of asking myself a question out loud:

‘How many 60 year old men are running 70 miles a week?’

(If you happen to know don’t tell me because even if it’s only one,

 I’ll feel compelled to make it two.)

So now I’m more than five weeks into my 61^st year on earth and I’m still putting in 70 miles a week.  But this time I have a reason: My younger son Josh will be running his first marathon and he wants me to run it with him.  So I decided to maintain my weekly regimen of 70 miles a week until it got me through Josh’s first---and my last---marathon on the 15^th of February. 

Let me back up for a moment.  I’ll admit I ran my ‘last’ marathon in Honolulu a couple of years ago during the weekend I turned 58.  I’ll also admit there were three other ‘last’ marathons after that.  But this time—once (if) I cross the finish line of the Five Points of Life Marathon in Gainesville, Florida---it will effectively signal the end of my marathon career.  That’s all, folks; color me ‘done.’

Coincidentally I ran my very first marathon in that same city—Gainesville--a little more than six years before Josh was born.  I was wearing my $5 USA Olympic size 9 running shoes that I bought from the original Athletic Attic which was located about three miles from the trailer park I lived in during my senior year at the University of Florida.  (Today I wear a size 10, the larger feet no doubt a result of the millions of times they slapped the asphalt over the years.) 

This marathon will be special for three reasons.  The first two are obvious: It will be Josh’s first and my last.  The third reason is I’ll be promoting an insole company I represent all over the world—all over the world that isn’t the United States, that is—on American soil.  I’ll be wearing the company’s singlet that arrived in the mail the other day.  While it fits perfectly and is made of a fabric I like, it has the most hideous color scheme you’d ever want to run across.  At the top of the singlet the color is sort of a ‘faded coral’ and as you work your way down the singlet the color ‘morphs’ through various colors until you reach the very bottom of the singlet bearing a color best described as ‘dry urine.’   

    

Speaking of dry urine (also known as the official color of ‘done’)…

That’s an apt description of how I’ve been feeling lately.  I’ve had some sort of flu off-and-on (mostly on) for the past five weeks.  In fact I’ve been sick more days this year alone than in all the years I’ve been running combined.  I’m thinking my immune system is waving the white flag.  Various parts of my body ache almost every day; I imagine they’re rebelling because they haven’t had any real down time since 1978.  I yawn all the time, the result of a lifetime of sleep deprivation that began with the birth of my first son in 1982.  That was the year I started to run in the morning, and with a job that required me to be at work as early as 5 a.m., well…feel free to do the math.  (By the way, if I yawn in your presence and you make a snide remark like ‘What’s wrong, didn’t get your beauty sleep last night?’ my response will be ‘It’s not a yawn; it’s a critique.’  You might want to save your breath.)

So I’m still putting in 70 miles a week until I get through this next/last marathon.  After that I’m cutting back.

I really, really, really mean it this time. 

Really. 

Postscript: They day after I wrote this I ran 10 miles and then another mile in a fun run with my grandson.  The next day I ran 15 miles with Josh, our last long run before the marathon—then only a week away.  I made plans to take it easy up until and then after the marathon.  After that, I need to be running the mileage expected of a 60-year old man.

In church the morning after our 15-mile run the pastor said something in his message about asking yourself if you were young or old, and if you had to think about it you were old.

That definitely made me think.