October 1, 2022
I’ve been a runner for my whole life. I love to run. Living in Bozeman, MT, I love being out on the trails putting down miles in the snow, among the flowers, up and down steep terrain, pushing myself, suffering and reveling in the feeling that I am lucky to be outside among so much beauty. In part I run because running keeps me in shape to engage in other sports: skiing, mountain biking and backpacking are my other passions. I also enjoy running races. I do a handful of races most years and I have been racing for much of my life. I’ve won my age group a few times, but most of the time I’m somewhere in the pack: top 20 percent some of the time, somewhere around the middle just as often, even picking up the rear on occasion.
This year I got off to a great start. I won my age group in the Baldy Blitz; I was top geezer among 6, and I won by a margin of nearly 6 minutes. The Baldy Blitz is a challenging 4000-foot climb in just under 4 miles up 8700-foot Mt Baldy and then we turn around and run right back down. The climb is steep, and this year there was ice and snow on the upper 2 miles of the mountain. Consequently, the upper section of the descent was a matter of hoping your sneaker treads had enough grip and that you didn’t go sliding off the mountain ridge. I wore spikes on the upper half of the course, they allowed me to run hard downhill, while my competitors were curling their toes desperately trying to gain a bit more purchase on the steep ice. I think the spikes were a big factor in my win.
I expected that I would be competing for top geezer in the other races I ran during the summer, but my performance was never quite there. I was a middle of the pack guy in all my other races. My biggest disappoint was in the Bridger Ridge Run: 20 miles of technical mountain running. I’ve run this race twice before. The first time was when I was 58 years old. I ran it in 5 hours 54 minutes and I was happy with that performance. Three years later I ran it a second time, in 6 hours 45 minutes that time. Pre-race jitters left me with little sleep the night before my second race, so I had an excuse for my poor performance. I was determined to improve that time this year, three years later once again. I figured that if I got a good night of sleep, I could run it in 6 hours 15 minutes. I did get a decent night of sleep, as good as one can expect when the alarm is set for 4 AM and one has a big race ahead of them. But my performance lagged even the one that had embarrassed me 3-years ago.
I ran the race in 7 hours 10 minutes. I could blame part of my slow time on an ankle ligament that had been bothering me all summer, and on the blister I developed on the first big descent. Sure, they added some minutes on the descents and on the most technical parts of the course, but mostly I was just slow. Before I even crossed the finish line I found myself questioning whether I should ever run this race again. I was 64 on race day, 65 three weeks later, maybe my time hasd passed.
But I’m not one to give up easily. You don’t trail run, ski, mountain bike and backpack well into your 60s if you give up easily. The 60s are a time of increasing physical challenges. I’ve come to refer to the 60s as the arthritis years. This is the period of our lives when arthritis begins to stiffen our joints, when body parts begin to deteriorate in earnest, when one does not move around without aches and pains.
I’ve been fighting through building arthritis issues with lots of physical therapy. Thus far, those aches have not been enough to sideline me. But working out all spring and summer long only to end up as a straggler, that was much harder for me to accept. In the days after the race it became clear to me that I had two choices: give up on running races this long and hard, or adopt new training methods that would at least give me one last chance to improve my performance.
As the title suggests, I’m making the second choice. At least I’m going to give it a try. My method of training has always been go out and run as fast as I can. Over the years, I had read the occasional article about modern training methods that involved lots of slow running, but I found it way hard to do. I’d try talking to myself while running; “this must be Zone 2 because I can talk out loud pretty easily,” to no one in particular. But that never lasted for more than a few minutes. Time constraints played a big role. If I’m running at lunch, there’s always that 2 PM meeting. If I’m running at home, the demands of family were ever present. So I’d pick up the pace, complete the distance I planned to run, and jump back into life.
But two things happened this summer that have me delving deeper into modern training methods than I ever have before. That poor performance in the Ridge Run that may be terminal if I don’t figure out how to improve, and I retired August 1st. I now actually have to time to slog around my running courses at dead slow pace in hope of improving my aerobic conditioning. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. I’ve done it six times this week and have been managing between 18- and 22-minute pace. Ouch! It’s hard to run that slow. Then there’s the “what if the neighbors see me moving along like a snail issue,” and retired or not, it eats up a lot of time.
It's been comfortable this week, but what happens when it is snowing out and the temps hover around zero and it’s dark. Slogging along at dead slow pace is going to be difficult, maybe dangerous. The plow might roll my frozen carcass off the road in the morning.
I am determined to give this a try, so I guess we will find out how this plays out and whether it sets me up for a great time in next year’s Ridge Run. If not, I at least hope to be able to say that I didn’t go down without giving it my best shot.
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