Shut It Up, Me

Longtime readers of This Blog and You will know that it is my habit to run in the annual Pound the Pavement (PTP) 5K which has been hosted by the family of a friend of mine since 2005. Though PTP fall on roughly the same weekend each year, it usually takes me by surprise and in my seven years of participation, I have only put in any preperatory training twice. My worst performance (25:25ish) came on the heels of an anterior talo-fibular ligament tear that put me on crutches for about a month. For the past few years, my attitude has generally been, "I may not have done great, but at least I ran faster than I did when I tore my anterior talo-fibular ligament!"

It's not so much that my body wasn't in 5K shape this past Saturday, althought that is certainly true. It's more the case that my brain wasn't in 5K shape. As most of you probably know, 5K falls squarely in the "middle distance" category of foot races, and a reasonably fit individual could finish one handily with a minimal amount of training. I hadn't really put in any training at all and I was a little apprehensive about how I would fare against the race times of previous years. This whispering self-doubt turned into a rasping bark shortly after the starting pistol was fired. I doubt that I had even gone as far as 100 yards before my every footfall seemed to shout, "This is hard! You could stop! This is hard! You could stop!" My inner conflict continued to rage as runners of all shapes and sizes streamed by me.

I was heartened as I plodded by the timekeeper at the 1 mile marker just as he called out, "Eight minutes!"

"Eight minutes!" I reasoned hopefully to myself, "I can still finish this thing in under 25:25!" The happy thought flitted away almost as quickly as it had come; the heat of the mid-July morning coupled with the choking humidity and the crushing weight of my own 240-pound bulk sent my mind careening back to the matter of my impending collapse.

"This is hard."

"Shut up! I've done it before!"

"You could stop."

"What, and just stand there? I'm going to finish; it's not that far!"

"This is hard."

"I KNOW!!"

All in all, I wound up packing it in at 27:22, recording a new worst time for myself and theoretically setting a much more attainable goal for future years! Now I'll get to think to myself, "I may not have done great, but at least I ran faster than I did when I just really didn't want to run at all!"

-Ryan