This article reminded me of a few weeks ago passing a guy around my age, only to have him speed up, forcing me to go faster. Suffice to say one of the fastest "jogs" of my life, (oh and he broke going up poplar hill).
This is final paragraph in New Yorker article I've always remembered:
I quit competitive running when I was sixteen-just after the summer I had qualified for the Ontario track team in my age class. Late that August, we had travelled to St. John's, Newfoundland, for the Canadian championships. In those days, I was whippet-thin, as milers often are, five feet six and not much more than a hundred pounds, and I could skim along the ground so lightly that I barely needed to catch my breath. I had two white friends on that team, both distance runners, too, and both, improbably, even smaller and lighter than I was. Every morning, the three of us would run through the streets of St. John's, charging up the hills and flying down the other side. One of these friends went on to have a distinguished college running career, the other became a world-class miler; that summer, I myself was the Canadian record holder in the fifteen hundred metres for my age class. We were almost terrifyingly competitive, without a shred of doubt in our ability, and as we raced along we never stopped talking and joking, just to prove how absurdly easy we found running to be. I thought of us all as equals. Then, on the last day of our stay in St. John's, we ran to the bottom of Signal Hill, which is the town's principal geographical landmark-an abrupt outcrop as steep as anything in San Francisco. We stopped at the base, and the two of them turned to me and announced that we were all going to run straight up Signal Hill backward. I don't know whether I had more running ability than those two or whether my Africanness gave me any genetic advantage over their whiteness. What I do know is that such questions were irrelevant, because, as I realized, they were willing to go to far greater lengths to develop their talent. They ran up the hill backward. I ran home.
Haha, I have always contended that a psychiatric test would be a far better predictor of running ability than a physical. The degree of insanity corresponding with a runner's ability.
A long time and many pounds ago, I was running north on LBI with the intent of doing some 6 or 7 miles. About a mile or so into it, I hear footsteps behind me. I was actually feeling OK and decided that I wasn't going to let this guy catch me. Well, for over a mile, he was at my heels, slowly gaining, despite my best efforts to pick up the pace. At last, he catches me, but doesn't pass. It turns out, he just wanted someone to chat with.
He turned out to be a pretty cool guy and we ended up running together for awhile. I suppose at some point I turned back. But I returned with a sense of shame: here all I had been concerned about was my ego and he just wanted some company. I never dared tell him the truth.
Nice story. I can't think of one as good, but I did think of this one. In Boston, on Sundays I often did a fenway run that was about 10 miles. The key for me was running a slower pace than my week-day runs. As I was finishing up...coming out of the fenway park area (not the ball park) with a mile or two left, I saw a couple of runners at a decent pace. I felt bad, but I decided to speed up a bit to run with them--they were going at a slightly faster pace. When I joined them I said something like, "Don't mind me if I sound a little disoriented, I"m just finishing up a 10 mile run."...to which one of them replied, "Don't mind us if we sound a little disorientated, we're just finishing up a 20 mile run."
There is a second part to the story. One of the runners mentioned he was traveling to Denmark to run in a race there. I think it was a marathon. It turns out I was good friends with an excellent runner from Denmark who was working for Arthur Young for a year in our office. I gave him the name of my friend and he ended up staying at his parents' house in Denmark for the race.
Great stories, unfortunately I have never been able to talk during a run, too busy focusing on not passing out. Running and I have never seen eye to eye.
8 comments:
That's where you always got me. Damn your mental toughness.
This is final paragraph in New Yorker article I've always remembered:
I quit competitive running when I was sixteen-just after the summer I had qualified for the Ontario track team in my age class. Late that August, we had travelled to St. John's, Newfoundland, for the Canadian championships. In those days, I was whippet-thin, as milers often are, five feet six and not much more than a hundred pounds, and I could skim along the ground so lightly that I barely needed to catch my breath. I had two white friends on that team, both distance runners, too, and both, improbably, even smaller and lighter than I was. Every morning, the three of us would run through the streets of St. John's, charging up the hills and flying down the other side. One of these friends went on to have a distinguished college running career, the other became a world-class miler; that summer, I myself was the Canadian record holder in the fifteen hundred metres for my age class. We were almost terrifyingly competitive, without a shred of doubt in our ability, and as we raced along we never stopped talking and joking, just to prove how absurdly easy we found running to be. I thought of us all as equals. Then, on the last day of our stay in St. John's, we ran to the bottom of Signal Hill, which is the town's principal geographical landmark-an abrupt outcrop as steep as anything in San Francisco. We stopped at the base, and the two of them turned to me and announced that we were all going to run straight up Signal Hill backward. I don't know whether I had more running ability than those two or whether my Africanness gave me any genetic advantage over their whiteness. What I do know is that such questions were irrelevant, because, as I realized, they were willing to go to far greater lengths to develop their talent. They ran up the hill backward. I ran home.
I was going to say I have never done recreational jogging, but after the New Yorker story, I had better not.
Haha, I have always contended that a psychiatric test would be a far better predictor of running ability than a physical. The degree of insanity corresponding with a runner's ability.
A long time and many pounds ago, I was running north on LBI with the intent of doing some 6 or 7 miles. About a mile or so into it, I hear footsteps behind me. I was actually feeling OK and decided that I wasn't going to let this guy catch me. Well, for over a mile, he was at my heels, slowly gaining, despite my best efforts to pick up the pace. At last, he catches me, but doesn't pass. It turns out, he just wanted someone to chat with.
He turned out to be a pretty cool guy and we ended up running together for awhile. I suppose at some point I turned back. But I returned with a sense of shame: here all I had been concerned about was my ego and he just wanted some company. I never dared tell him the truth.
Nice story. I can't think of one as good, but I did think of this one. In Boston, on Sundays I often did a fenway run that was about 10 miles. The key for me was running a slower pace than my week-day runs. As I was finishing up...coming out of the fenway park area (not the ball park) with a mile or two left, I saw a couple of runners at a decent pace. I felt bad, but I decided to speed up a bit to run with them--they were going at a slightly faster pace. When I joined them I said something like, "Don't mind me if I sound a little disoriented, I"m just finishing up a 10 mile run."...to which one of them replied, "Don't mind us if we sound a little disorientated, we're just finishing up a 20 mile run."
There is a second part to the story. One of the runners mentioned he was traveling to Denmark to run in a race there. I think it was a marathon. It turns out I was good friends with an excellent runner from Denmark who was working for Arthur Young for a year in our office. I gave him the name of my friend and he ended up staying at his parents' house in Denmark for the race.
Great stories, unfortunately I have never been able to talk during a run, too busy focusing on not passing out. Running and I have never seen eye to eye.
Agreed. The above was an unusual circumstance. If you can talk while running, you aren't running hard enough.
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