So, I finally decided to crap or get off the dryer (this is from a story about my brother's friend Monds. I may share it some day). I need to either get going for a fall race or become Mr Hobby Jogger for a year. Neither are bad options, I just have been debating and soul-searching as to which I wanted to do. One complicating factor in this is that I am not yet mature enough to do a race for fun. I go in to a race trying to either set a PR or trying to get a time that indicates I'm on track for setting a PR later. This is not exactly a healthy way to go about pursuing your hobby, but it's been a fact for over a decade now so I doubt it will change. As evidence of this, my sister once asked me if I wanted to come up and do a 5k that she was doing with her husband. Instead of saying "Sure, what a great family experience. I'll ask Dawn if she'd like to run as well"; I asked her two very specific and important questions:
*-Is the course certified? I don't want to set a PR and find out that the course was short. Even worse, I don't want some slow time because some schmuck can't measure 3.1 miles.
*-Is it hilly? I don't like hilly courses. My times are way off.
She didn't even reply back to me. I don't blame her. In her mind I'm probably the guy that comes to a pick-up game of touch football with cleats and a mouthpiece. I think I'm this way largely because I race to set new physical limits for myself. If I'm not doing that, I can recreate the rest of the race experience by running around my neighborhood and then eating a bagel afterwards while playing loud music. I can even fish out some old medals from races I've forgotten and have a fake awards ceremony (this is a good way to spend a Saturday morning in the 'burg, but I digress).
Anyway, after deciding that I was going to race this fall, I decided on the Army Ten Miler. The choice here also reveals some unhealthy mentality. I want revenge. In the 2007 Army Ten Miler I was very fit, feeling good and clocked a 67:30; well short of my target 65. It was also 90 degrees that day, but that didn't stop me from getting ticked. I have exacted revenge on the Charlottesville 10-miler course before and it is, in fact, pretty sweet. So, as much as one can get even with 10 miles of pavement winding through our nation's capital, that's my program.
Now to the geek part. I was getting excited about the prospect of training for this and exacting revenge on pavement. Then, I really got excited when I committed my program to spreadsheet.
Yep, I have my program on two pages of excel. The training phases are color coded. I won't bore you with the rest of the details, but there are times when I find myself excited about something that would be a boring class assignment to a lot of other people. I've learned to accept this inner nerd, just like I've learned to accept that I don't like running for running's sake and that I am able to personify and subsequently hate a road race course. Anyway, the good news is that every time I get tired during training, or when I am not able to work up enough hatred of the Army Ten Miler course to get me out the door; I can always look at my beautiful spreadsheet and get invigorated.
