Best of Times…
The arrive of a new year typically causes me to think about past years-this usually involves remembering how good I used to be. Since some might suspect that the older I get, the better I used to be, I thought I’d post my best running times. Or at least the best times that I actually have supporting documentation for-I did not actually start recording my runs until the fall of 1987 and the tracking of Maine races back in the 1980s was limited, at best. There are probably some dusty records back at Marietta College as well-I should probably look for those one of these days.
As might be imagined, my current times are somewhat slower than these. But time can be cruel.
WTP will note that I have used an old newspaper clipping rather than a shirtless image of myself. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to post somewhat fewer such photos than in 2012. It will be tough, but Dr. Phil is coaching me and Sixpack Chopra (Deepak Chopra’s cooler and less annoying younger brother) is also on board as my spiritual guide.
| Distance | Time | Date/Race |
| 1 Mile | 4:54 | 8/18/1998 |
| 5K | 16:30 | 3/13/1988 |
| 10K | 33:45 | Peter Ott’s 10K |
| 8K | 28:10 | 9/21/1996 |
| 5 Miles | 26:32 | 10/31/1987 |
| 12K | 44:06 | 2/7/1998 |
| 15K | 55:24 | 3/8/1997 |
| 10 Miles | 58:04 | 9/22/1991 |
| 20K | 1:19:39 | 10/10/1998 |
| 13.1 (Half Marathon) | 1:24 | 1/17/1999 |
| 15 Miles | 1:32 | 2/16/1992 |
| 30K | 1:58:20 | 2/6/1999 |
| 26.2 (Marathon) | 2:45:03:12 | 11/10/1991 |
| 50K | 3:47:58 | 12/9/1995 |
Training the Will
In general, will is a very useful thing to have. After all, it allows a person to overcome factors that would make his decisions for him, such as pain, fear, anger, fatigue, lust or weakness. I would, of course, be remiss to not mention that the will can be used to overcome generally positive factors such as compassion, love and mercy as well. The will, as Kant noted, can apparently select good or evil with equal resolve. However, I will set aside the concern regarding the bad will and focus on training the will.
Based on my own experience, the will is rather like stamina—while people vary in what they get by nature, it can be improved by proper training. This, of course, nicely matches Aristotle’s view of the virtues.
While there are no doubt many self-help books discussing how to train the will with various elaborate and strange methods, the process is actually very straightforward and is like training any attribute. To be specific, it is mainly a matter of exercising the capacity but not doing so to excess (and thus burning out) or deficiency (and thus getting no gain). To borrow from Aristotle, one way of developing the will in regards to temperance is to practice refraining from pleasures to the proper degree (the mean) and this will help train the will. As another example, one can build will via athletic activities by continuing when pain and fatigue are pushing one to stop. Naturally, one should not do this to excess (because of the possibility of injury) nor be deficient in it (because there will be no gain).
As far as simple and easy ways to train the will, meditation and repetitive mental exercises (such as repeating prayers or simply repeated counting) seem to help in developing this attribute.
One advantage of the indirect training of the will, such as with running, is that it also tends to develop other resources that can be used in place of the will. To use a concrete example, when a person tries to get into shape to run, sticking with the running will initially take a lot of will because the pain and fatigue will begin quickly. However, as the person gets into shape it will take longer for them to start to hurt and feel fatigued. As such, the person will not need to use as much will when running (and if the person becomes a crazy runner like me, then she will need to use a lot of will to take a rest day from running). To borrow a bit from Aristotle, once a person becomes properly habituated to an activity, then the will cost of that activity becomes much less—thus making it easier to engage in that activity. For example, a person who initially has to struggle to eat healthy food rather than junk food will find that resisting not only builds their will but also makes it easier to resist the temptations of junk.
Another interesting point of consideration is what could be called will surrogates. A will surrogate functions much like the will by allowing a person to resist factors that would otherwise “take control” of the person. However, what makes the will surrogate a surrogate is that it is something that is not actually the will—it merely serves a similar function. Having these would seem to “build the will” by providing a surrogate that can be called upon when the person’s own will is failing—sort of a mental tag team situation.
For example, a religious person could use his belief in God as a will surrogate to resist temptations forbidden by his faith, such as adultery. That is, he is able to do what he wills rather than what his lust is pushing him to do. As another example, a person might use pride or honor as will surrogates—she, for example, might push through the pain and fatigue of a 10K race because of her pride. Other emotions (such as love) and factors could also serve as will surrogates by enabling a person to do what he wills rather than what he is being pushed to do.
One obvious point of concern regarding will surrogates is that they could be seen not as allowing the person to do as he would will when he lacks his own will resources but as merely being other factors that “make the decision” for the person. For example, if a person resists having an affair with a coworker because of his religious beliefs, then it could be contended that he has not chosen to not have the affair. Rather, his religious belief (and perhaps fear of God) was stronger than his lust. If so, those who gain what appears to be willpower from such sources are not really gaining will. Rather they merely have other factors that make them do or not do things in a way that resembles the actions of the will.
An Important Philosophical Question
WTP raised perhaps the most important philosophical question of the 21st century:
How many pictures of a shirtless Mike does the internet actually need?
This question has a clear normative aspect in that it addresses the matter of what the internet needs. This could be taken as a moral question or, more plausibly, an aesthetic question. Taken as an aesthetic question it raises the issue of the aesthetic needs of the internet.
Fortunately, this is one philosophical question that admits of a definitive answer. This answer is, of course, “all of them.”
This answer can be based on numerous theories, since all plausible theories will yield the same answer. For example, the shirtless 
imperative states that “act in a way such that if a picture of Mike shows him shirtless, then it is posted on the internet.” As another example, the shirtutilitarian theory states ”actions are good as they tend to promote the posting of pictures of a shirtless Mike; wrong as they tend to retard the posting of pictures of a shirtless Mike.” Even the shirtless command theory makes the matter clear: “thou shalt post shirtless pictures of Mike on the internet.”
The Noble Philosophy Prize for this year will be going to WTP for his work on this matter.
Will
As a runner, martial artist and philosopher I have considerable interest in the matter of the will. As might be imagined, my view of the will is shaped mostly by my training and competitions. Naturally enough, I see the will from my own perspective and in my own mind. As such, much as Hume noted in his discussion of personal identity, I am obligated to note that other people might find that their experiences vary considerably. That is, other people might see their will as very different or they might even not believe that they have a will at all.
As a gamer, I also have the odd habit of modeling reality in terms of game rules and statistics—I am approaching the will in the same manner. This is, of course, similar to modeling reality in other ways, such as using mathematical models.
In my experience, my will functions as a mental resource that allows me to remain in control of my actions. To be a bit more specific, the use of the will allows me to prevent other factors from forcing me to act or not act in certain ways. In game terms, I see the will as being like “hit points” that get used up in the battle against these other factors. As with hit points, running out of “will points” results in defeat. Since this is rather abstract, I will illustrate this with two examples.
This morning (as I write this) I did my usual Tuesday work out: two hours of martial arts followed by about two hours of running. Part of my running workout was doing hill repeats in the park—this involves running up and down the hill over and over (rather like marching up and down the square). Not surprisingly, this becomes increasingly painful and fatiguing. As such, the pain and fatigue were “trying” to stop me. I wanted to keep running up and down the hill and doing this required expending those will points. This is because without my will the pain and fatigue would stop me well before I am actually physically incapable of running anymore. Roughly put, as long as I have will points to expend I could keep running until I collapse from exhaustion. At that point no amount of will can move the muscles and my capacity to exercise my will in this matter would also be exhausted. Naturally, I know that training to the point of exhaustion would do more harm than good, so I will myself to stop running even though I desire to keep going. I also know from experience that my will can run out while racing or training—that is, I give in to fatigue or pain before my body is actually at the point of physically failing. These occurrences are failures of will and nicely illustrate that the will can run out or be overcome.
After my run, I had my breakfast and faced the temptation of two boxes of assorted chocolates. Like all humans, I really like sugar and hence there was a conflict between my hunger for chocolate and my choice to not shove lots of extra calories and junk into my pie port. My hunger, of course, “wants” to control me. But, of course, if I yield to the hunger for chocolate then I am not in control—the desire is directing me against my will. Of course, the hunger is not going to simply “give up” and it must be controlled by expending will and doing this keeps me in control of my actions by making them my choice.
Naturally, many alternatives to the will can be presented. For example, Hobbes’ account of deliberation is that competing desires (or aversions) “battle it out”, but the stronger always wins and thus there is no matter of will or choice. However, I rather like my view more and it seems to match my intuitions and experiences.
Knowing I am Not the Best (Extended Remix)
Long ago, when I was a young boy, I was afflicted with the dread three Ss. That is, I was Small, Smart and (worst of all) Sensitive. As a good father, my dad endeavored to see to it that I developed the proper virtues of a young man. Fortunately, his efforts were ultimately successful although the path was, I am sure, not quite what he expected. Mainly because the path was mostly track, road and trail rather than field, court and gridiron.
As part of this process, I was sent to basketball camp to develop my skills in this reputable game. I was a terrible player with no real skill and I had no real interest in the sport. I much preferred reading over shooting hoops. However, I went to the camp and tried to do the best I could within the limits of my abilities.
During one drill, the coach yelled out for the best player to run to the center of the court. Immediately all the other boys rushed to the center of the court. Being honest in my assessment of my abilities I did not move. While I might not have been the worst player present, I was clearly not the best. I was not even within free throw distance of the best. For some reason, the coach made all the boys do pushups. He also made me do pushups, albeit double the number done by the other boys.
I thought this was very odd since this sort of thing seemed to encourage self-deception and that seemed, even to the young me, wrong. I recall quite well getting considerable abuse for my actions, which made me think even more about the matter. I did know better than to discuss this with anyone at the time, but I have thought about it over the years.
In recent years, I have run into something similar. I am always asked before I go to race if I will win. I always give an honest answer, which is usually “no.” This always results in an expression of dismay. While I have won races, I am now 46 years old and folks with far fewer years and miles show up to take their rightful place ahead of me, earning this because they are better than I am. My pride and arrogance, of course, compel me to say that when I was the age of many of my competitors, I was faster than they are now. But, as the saying goes, that was then and this is now. Barring a TARDIS picking up my twenty-something self to go to the races of now (to save the galaxy, of course—racing is very important) I am forced to content myself with a folly of age: looking back on how good I was and comparing the younger me with my current competition.
One the one hand, I do get the point of self-deception in regards to one’s abilities. After all, it could be argued, that a person thinking incorrectly that he is the best would help him do better. That is, thinking he is the best will push him in the direction of being the best. I do, in fact, know people who are like this and they often push very hard in competition because they believe they are better than they actually are and are thus driven to contend against people who are, in fact, better than them. On the downside, when such people are defeated by those who are better, they sometimes grow angry and concoct excuses for their defeat to maintain the illusion of their superiority.
On the other hand, such self-deception could be problematic. After all, a person who wrongly thinks he is the best and operates on this assumption will not be acting rationally. There are, in fact, two well-known cognitive biases that involve a person thinking he is better than he is.
One is known as the “overconfidence effect.” This bias causes a person to believe that she has done better than she has in fact done. As a professor, I commonly see this bias when students get their grades. For example, I have lost track of the times a student has said “my paper felt like an A” when it was a D (or worse) or has said “I think I did great on the test” when it turns out that they did not do so great.
A closely related bias is the “better-than-average Illusion.” A person falls victim to this when she overestimates her abilities relative to others, usually those she is engaged in competition with. Since people often think very highly of themselves, people commonly fall into this trap.
While confidence can be a good thing (and thinking that one is going to do poorly is a way of contributing to making that a reality), this bias obviously has negative consequences. One rather serious problem is that it can lead people to actually do worse. After all, a person who overestimates her performance or abilities might not try as hard as she should—after all, she will think she is already doing much better than she is, thus overestimating her performance and coming to a false conclusion about, for example, her grade. This is most likely to occur when the person does not have immediate feedback, such as on a test or paper.
It can also have the impact of causing a person to “burn out” by trying to hard it based on a false assessment of his abilities. For example, a common sight at road races is inexperienced runners sprinting out ahead of the experienced (and better runners) only to quickly discover that they are not as a capable as they had believed. It can even happen to people who should know better. For example, some years ago I went to the USA 15K championship race as part of a team. Our supposed best runner was bragging about running with the Kenyans. Unfortunately, he got passed by some female runners (as did I—the race attracts top talent) and this apparently broke him to the point where he gave up. I knew my capabilities and was honest about them, so when the fast ladies surged past me I just stuck to my plan. I knew what I could do and what I could not do—and I knew I had a lot of race left and no reason to burn myself out due to a false belief in my abilities. Fortunately, the rest of the team delivered solid races and we took an honorable third place. My experience has been that I do better when I have an accurate assessment of my abilities relative to my competition, most especially in running. Naturally, I do my best—but to do this, I must have a reasonable gauge of what this is to avoid being overconfident and to resist being defeated by my own foolish and unfounded pride.
It might be objected that my rational assessment of my abilities robs me of the critical passion that one must have to be a true competitor. This is, however, not the case. As my friends will attest, while I am gracious in defeat I also hate to lose. In fact, honesty compels me to say that I hate losing slightly more than I love winning. And I really love to win. As such, when I get to the starting line, start presenting a philosophical paper to people looking to score philosophical pissing points, or join a competitive video game I am there to win and to make others lose. But, victory often rests on knowing what I and my competitors can and cannot do. I gain no advantage by deluding myself into thinking I am better than I am or they are worse than they are. True, I am not free of self-deception. But I do not willfully add to it.
How Much is Me?
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Back in my undergraduate days I was a participant in a faculty-student debate about artificial intelligence. While almost all of the details of the debate have long since faded from my non-artificial mind, I still recall one exchange very vividly. The professor on the opposing side said that I believed in free will because I wanted to take credit for my successes. Being filled with the pride of youth, I replied with something to the effect of “of course, they are my successes.” I also recall showing some small wisdom by adding something like “my failures are also mine.” This was probably my first real attempt at reflecting on the extent to which I was responsible for my successes and failures. Naturally, this also got me thinking about success and failure in general and not just the specifics of my own victories and defeats.
Not surprisingly, I have thought about this matter over the years, often in the context of teaching. To use a small example, I have noticed that students who do well say things like “I earned an A” while students who do poorly typically say things like “the professor failed me.” At the start of each semester, at least one student will ask me if I fail students. My reply, which I make with a smile, is always “No. People fail themselves. I merely record the failure.” I follow that by saying that students have every chance to succeed and that I will do my best to ensure that they get the grade they earn. As might be imagined, being a teacher does tend to get a person thinking about who is responsible for the success and failures of students.
The matter of responsibility in regards to success (and failure) obviously extends far beyond the classroom. Thanks to a July, 2012 speech by President Obama, this matter became the focus in the political battle between Democrats and Republicans. The key part of Obama’s speech is as follows: “…Look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.… If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
While some Republicans decided to interpret Obama as claiming that business owners owe all their success to others (especially the state), the most plausible interpretation is that Obama is claiming that people who are successful in business owe some of their success to others, including the state.
Mitt Romney, who was very critical of what he claims Obama meant, actually presented a very similar view about success back in 2002: “You Olympians, however, know you didn’t get here solely on your own power. For most of you, loving parents, sisters or brothers encouraged your hopes. Coaches guided, communities built venues in order to organize competitions. All Olympians stand on the shoulders of those who lifted them. We’ve already cheered the Olympians, let’s also cheer the parents, coaches and communities.”
As with Obama, the most plausible interpretation of Romney’s remarks is that he is claiming that the athletes who made it to the Olympics owe some of their success to others.
These claims about success in business and sports seem to be intuitively plausible. Obviously, people do not appear as grown, educated adults ex nihilo via the power of their own will. Less obviously, but still rather obviously, business owners do not create their business out of nothing. To use a silly example, a business owner obviously does not invent the currency used to conduct business. In the case of Olympic athletes, they obviously do not just appear on the starting line with no support or assistance from others.
Outside of the reasoning damaging sphere of political rhetoric, the idea that people owe some or even much of their success to others (and perhaps even to the state) certainly seems intuitively plausible—at least enough so that anyone who claims to be entirely self-created would shoulder the burden of proof. In any case, I would infer that anyone who can engage in such an act of self-creation would easily handle something as trivial as providing evidence of his/her amazing origin.
Assuming that I am right about this matter, the interesting question is not “do people owe some of their success (and failures) to others?” but “to what extent do people owe their success (and failures) to others?” Making this discussion manageable does require certain assumptions that can, of course, be challenged. I will be assuming that people have meaningful agency and that the universe is not strictly deterministic or entirely random. To illustrate this, I will use the example of a prize drawing after a 5K race. For those not familiar with such events, some races feature the usual earned awards (what the runners get for running well) as well as a prize drawing. One common way to do this is for the race director to pull out a runner’s race number from a bag. Interestingly, people often applaud as loudly when people win the (hopefully) random prize as they do for people who earn (hopefully) a trophy.
In a deterministic universe it makes little sense to speak of meaningful success or failure. To use my analogy, if I “win” the prize because it is determined that I will win (that is, it is rigged) then I have hardly succeeded and the others have hardly failed—there is no victory, there is no defeat.
The same holds true for a completely random universe. To use an analogy, if I “win” the prize because my number is pulled by pure chance, I have not succeeded and the others have not failed. Things have just happened by chance.
Success and failure, then, would thus seem to assume that the agent has a meaningful role in the outcome. Going back to the analogy, while I would not have succeeded by “winning” either a fixed or random drawing, I could succeed by winning a trophy in the 5K via my efforts. Naturally, the nature of this agency in even something as apparently straightforward as a 5K race is something of a mystery. However, for the sake of the discussion that will follow in additional essays, I must make this assumption of mysterious agency. After all, I want to think I earned all those trophies and I am obligated to accept the disgrace of my failures.
Fighting Time
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Although scientists and philosophers have speculated that time is not real (though they have never missed lunchtime on that basis), it certainly seems to be real enough as an opponent.
When I hit 40 and won my first Master’s award (Master=old), I started looking into the impact of aging on running. I had, of course, learned about aging back when I took anatomy and physiology, but this was a bit more real. While I will spare you the details, the gist of it is that once we humans hit our mid to late twenties, we start a slow spiral downwards (or rapid, depending on how one handles it). While everyone notices this, competitive runners tend to notice it more. This is not because we are somehow more realistic or more perceptive. Rather, it is the fact that we get to see the aging play out it cold, objective numbers as our times get slower and slower. There is also the subjective factor: runs seem to hurt more, one’s stride feels less snappy, and recovery seems to take longer. Or maybe gravity is just increasing in a selective manner-that is, under me.
Fortunately, there is some compensation for these harsh facts: running and exercise in general can be used to fight time. Running is especially effective at literally keeping the cells younger (no magic, just biology) which is why runners often look younger than they are (or, more aptly, other folks look older than they should). Exercise is also critical to resisting two major problems of aging: muscle and bone loss. Like an eroding sandbar, time eats away at the very makeup of our body. Fortunately, exercise that builds muscle and bone can slow down this loss, thus enabling the body to handle aging better. Exercise can also help with balance. Since falls tend to be a major threat to the elderly, building up your fall avoidance and resistance is a smart thing.
Exercise alone, as they say about losing weight, is not enough: diet is also important. When I was young, it mattered less what I ate (or so I thought). Being older, I have less margin of junk (so to speak), and I have had to change my diet to be significantly more healthy. What is actually pretty cool is that what I eat now is not only better for me, but it actually tastes better than much of what I used to eat. It does help that I am not a poor graduate student: eating well is not a luxury, but it is not as cheap as ramen and generic rice puff cereal.
My main goal is not to live really long (although I am fine with that) but to have a good life as long as possible. That seems to be something almost any of us can do, with a little planning and a lot of sweat.
In the end, however, time kills us all. But all races must end and the glory is in the running.
Dread Mill
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I am a lazy runner. I do not like speed work or hill work. I prefer to simply run distance at a comfortable pace. I have been like this for as long as I have been a runner, which seems to be at odds with the fact that I have run some pretty good times and was even all-conference twice in college cross country. However, my laziness is a relative sort of thing. Back in the day (that is, back when I ran 33 minute 10Ks and 16 minute 5Ks) my comfortable pace for my lazy distance running was 7:00 minutes per mile for 13-16 miles. Back then, I was a running machine: I could lock into that pace and keep it mile after mile.
While I am lazy by nature when it comes to running, I also love to compete. As such, I was willing to set aside my laziness during track and cross country seasons and endure speed work and hill work. After college, I settled back into my lazy distance ways, although I would engage in some social running, even if it involved visiting a track. I did, of course, keep racing and that seemed to work out well.
Sadly, it is no longer back in the day and my lazy ways have ceased to serve me well, mainly because my comfortable pace for 13+ miles is no longer 7 minutes. While I have tried using my GPS watch to force me to run harder, my natural laziness proved to be stronger: I’ll speed up for a mile, then I’ll start slacking until I catch myself.
Thanks to my summer unemployment (budget cuts at the university) I had plenty of extra time and started going to planned and supervised track work outs. Normally I loath doing that, but there are few races in the summer here in Florida, so I just told my lazy self that this was racing (I am, oddly enough, not lazy when I race). However, I am back to teaching again and have to return to my usual schedule, which means no evening workouts. However, these had helped me so much I wanted to keep working hard. As such, I needed a way to defeat my own laziness.
As I mentioned above, I had tried my GPS watch. But its beeps and data fields lacked the power needed to be a cruel master of my running. I needed something with the power to prevent my laziness. In my desperation, I turned to the much hated tread mill (or, as runners often call then, “dread mills.”
My girlfriend recently moved to Orlando, leaving behind her very nice Nordic Track treadmill at my house (along with 7.6 tons of other stuff from her apartment). While I normally scorn treadmills, I realized that the damn thing could force me to run at a certain pace. This would, I reasoned, force me to run fast and also help retrain me to running at a fixed pace. While the readouts for distance and pace are probably not dead on, they are probably pretty close. In any case, my Garmin watch provides accurate time and heart rate data so I would know how long I had been running and my effort.
So, I warmed up by running a few miles outside, then fired up the dread mill. The first time I tried it, I must have triggered some sort of per-programmed workout or death trap: the thing suddenly sped up to a much faster pace and activated the incline feature at the same time. That got my heart rate up pretty good before I could stop it. After re-setting the infernal thing, I was able to run a test 5K on it at a moderate 6:45 mile pace. That worked out pretty well, although the boredom almost killed me. I got some water and then did a five mile run outside. That helped me sweat out the shame of being on a treadmill.
I did find that although the treadmill has some big buttons for controlling the various settings (mainly speed and incline), working them while running was rather awkward and they did not always react when pushed. While I did see that it could be programmed, the actual process seemed to be pretty annoying and limited in its functionality. That is when I noticed the iFit slot (really just an SD card slot). I went online and found that cards could be used to load workouts. I did not want to make Jillian Michaels any richer and wanted to design my own workouts, so I did not buy any of the preloaded cards. I figured that the iFit files were pretty simply (just commands to adjust speed and incline) and found some free software to create my own files. The software is not fancy, but it gets the job done. Because of the way iFit works, it seems that workouts have to be programmed in one minute intervals (this can be exceeded, but is supposed to cause some minor problems). Fortunately, my workout cap on the dread mill is 3 miles of hard running and some rest jogging, which means I only need to program in a bit over 20 minutes. I did read that some SD cards do not work with the iFit readers (usually the ones that are larger than 1 GB). I tried a 32MB card that came with my digital camera and it worked fine. The actual files are very small, so unless you load the card with audio (you can link audio files to the workout, but I do not) a small card should suffice.
The List
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Back in the day, I was a pretty good runner. However, I made the mistake of trying to stay good in my 30s and beyond by using the strategy of my 20s. This mainly involved running 80-90 miles per week and training everyday. This worked great for a while, then I found myself getting worse. Foolishly, I responded by training harder and that merely made things worse. As luck would have it, this cycle was broken by an accident: I fell off my roof and tore my quadriceps tendon on March 26, 2009. This took me out of running for quite a while and had two major impacts (well, three if the fall is counted). The first is that I was forced to cross train (that is, do stuff other than running). The second is that I was forced to rest. Somewhat ironically, when I was able to get back to racing, I was faster than I had been in recent years. I am, in defiance of age, still getting faster. I’m obviously not as fast as I was in my youth, but it is great to be improving rather than declining with each race.
This improvement restored my competitive spirit and I found myself creating the List. The List is a list of my fellow runners, specifically those I want to beat. Being realistic, I actually have several lesser lists. After all, the List consists of everyone who is faster than me. My main lesser lists are my 5 List and my 10 List. As you might imagine, the 5 list consists of the next 5 people I want to beat and the ten list, well I am sure you get the picture. I also have a special list of people I really, really want to beat. Usually, these people are my friends. Yes, I do tell them that they are on the list.
Like some other athletes, I have a somewhat odd approach to what counts as beating a person. Merely finishing ahead of a person does not count (although I do accept any award that goes with doing that). To count as a beating, I have to finish ahead of the person and they must be at full strength. This means that if the person is sick, injured or suffering significant emotional distress (going through a divorce for example), then the beating does not count (unless the person insists that these conditions had no impact on their run). So, there are some people I have finished ahead of, but I do not accept that I beat them. I don’t expect other people to follow my system. So, for example, I don’t take issue with the people who say that they beat me when I started racing again after my leg was busted. After all, they did finish ahead of me and that is the standard view of beating.
Clam Festival Classic
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While I visit my family in Maine every year, I haven’t always been able to run a race wile visiting. I have done the Beach to Beacon a few times, but its popularity has made it difficult to ensure an entry. This has made it somewhat hard to plan a visit incorporating a race.
This year, however, I ended up arriving in Maine on July 15th, the start of the Yarmouth Clam Festival. It features numerous healthy (kayak, running, and bike races) and unhealthy (fried foods) activities. I signed up for the Class Festival Classic 5 mile race.
I woke up early, as I always do on a race day, and was pleased that the weather was nice and the temperature was just under 60 degrees. Having been running in the sweltering conditions in Florida, I was looking forward to some cool running.
I picked up my race packet and strapped the chip to my leg and was ready to warm up. I’ve used all sorts of race chips over the years, but this was the first time I used on that attached with a velcro ankle strap. I actually found it the least annoying of the chips-I didn’t have to mess with my shoe laces or worry about the sticky plastic strip failing to stick.
The race had a good turnout, as I could see at the start. A bit tired from traveling the day before, I took off at a conservative pace and focused on running consistently. The course was all paved and had several relatively small hills. The master’s record for the course is apparently 25 minutes-I ran 26 minutes on 5 mile cross country courses when I was in my 20s. I didn’t run that fast this year, only crossing the finish line after 33 minutes. Since this is my old 10K (6.2 mile) time, this shows that age (and bacon) can be tough on speed. The winning time was just under 25 minutes, which was rather impressive.
I am looking forward to running it again.
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