The writing was on the wall, as they say. The past few times
I have run with him, it has been noticeably HARD for me. This wasn’t just “fun”
running in races with my son anymore. It was WORK. But, I still always had a
slight extra gear in there during the race. I still held the hammer. Not
Monday. This was the third week of the excellent New Paltz Summer Cross Country
Series, and Monday night’s race was an out-and-back 3-miler called Patterson’s
Pellet. Nothing about the topography of this race favored the Old Man. I’m a
terrible downhill runner. And my strength on uphills can only be garnered in
very long races as relatively slow paces. So. This was a short race that
started with a steep downhill, followed by a relentless uphill to the
turnaround, followed by a continuous downhill, followed by a steep uphill
finish. Joey announced his intentions of trying to average 7:00 pace, which I
knew I could not do on this course. I told Joey I would take it easy on the
initial downhill and try to catch him going uphill. That strategy did not work.
He was ahead of me by about 30 seconds at the turnaround, a gap he would
maintain throughout the race. He did not come close to his 7:00 goal on this
challenging layout, but he ran well and blew me out of the water, so to speak. I
have not seen the official results, but on our respective watches we had 23:05
and 23:38. Or something like that. I tried. I tried hard. My breathing was
maxed out and labored right from the start of the hill climb. I was dizzy and
gasping for air and staggering after the finish – pretty typical short-race
stuff. And he beat me. Joey won. I lost. The dynamic of racing “with” him has
changed forever.
One team member, in reply to a post-race text, asked if I
was more pissed off or proud about what had happened. I admitted to being both.
But on that proud/pissed off continuum, I was definitely far more on the proud
side. My time has come and gone. I’ll keep plugging along every morning at 5:30
a.m, with my pals. But to quote a Dawes song that I really like called “So
Well,” I have a “future much shorter than his past” when it comes to running.
Fortunately, I am surrounded by young men and women who have seemingly limitless
futures, and we can focus on that. In the meantime, next week’s series race is
back at Minnewaska; it is 4 miles instead of 3 miles. Maybe this Old Man has one more rally in his bones …
I do not know this feeling yet as my kids are far far far too young to even know what running is. BUT, when I ran for you and Lou Caporale passed me in a race at Van Courtlandt Park, I believe I spewed an expletive. One that I felt I should be running faster, but later on I remember feeling glad he beat me, because it meant he outran me, which meant the team got better, I did not get worse. This is the only story I have at the moment, you can ask me again in a decade if I have a new story surrounding my daughter.
ReplyDeleteThe next step in the progression is when he starts chasing your PRs.
ReplyDelete