My friends that are into endurance sports tell me that I’m built
more like a Kenyan than a Lance Armstrong impersonator. It seems
running comes a lot easier to me, with little training, whereas I’m
just mediocre at cycling, with a lot more effort. Unfortunately,
we’ll never know because I love riding my bike a lot more than I like
pounding on my knees. Well, until now…

Through no planning of my own, the 25 minutes a day of running that
has been going on at
Racing Apparel Headquarters have yielded dividends.

My running goal for the off-season was to break 21 minutes,
because… well, because my friend Ray said I couldn’t do it (easily).

So the past week or so, I stepped it up to 45 minutes instead of the
usual 25, and see if I could do a better 5k, this time at sea-level,
and on a flat course.

I tried to run it “bandido” which is short-hand, for just showing
up to the race, not signing up, and running. Hey, I’m not taking any
of their free Gatorade, and I’m already paying taxes on the streets,
so I’ve convinced myself that I somehow deserve it. Unfortunately,
only cripples and old men showed up, so I was having second thoughts
about not signing up. Perhaps, I’d show up in the top 5, and it would
be awkward. It’s one thing to end up 158th in your age-group, but
another thing entirely to arrive within a minute or two of the guy
breaking the tape. So, I buckled and paid $45 to run three miles on
public streets.

When the gun went off I kept telling myself “don’t be stupid; don’t
be stupid”. This was my mantra to remind myself not to go out too
fast. I consciously kept myself running at 7:00min/mile, hoping I
wouldn’t blow up. After the first mile, I was comfortably in 5th
place, and I started visualizing how cool it would be to arrive among
the first 3, with my friends, family, and especially my mom, watching.
I don’t think I had ever podium-ed in anything past pre-kindergarten
races (where everyone is a winner), so I started concentrating on
catching #4 and #3.

Luckily, as I sped up in the second mile, I was able to reel both
runners. The 1st guy was way out in the distance, apparently running
a race of his own, but the 2nd guy was actually within reach. I saw
my mom and sister at the finish line, so I figured I’d might as well
bury myself for the last 800 meters. Who cared if I walked the last
bit? So I pulled a kamikaze move– all or nothing– but unfortunately
as I was about to catch the 2nd runner at the finish line, everyone
started cheering us, alerting my prey and causing him to speed
slightly beyond my reach.

Long story short, I got third, but I did beat my previous record of
22:00 with a jaw dropping 19:48. Truth be told, my GPS marked 3.05
miles, which is 0.05 short of a 5k, but worse case scenario I’m safely
under the 21:00 mark, and pretty close to under 20, which is pretty
freaking awesome…especially for a non-runner.

So this is me, basking in the aura of kicking 40 years old right in
the ass, and being faster than I was in high school. My fastest mile
in high school was 6:20, and I did 3 of those puppies at 6:33 this
time, with the last one at 6:02. [And I didn’t actually throw up like
in high school.]

This one’s for you mom.

Training has started in earnest.  I’m at 7000 ft of altitude, training like all good cycling pros and trying to do what I can to not lose the fitness I gained last year (well, in my case, not so much fitness gained, but fitness lost in south Texas while drinking expensive wine and caviar– all indistinguishable from wine in a box and cheap tacos).

I hear other pros in northern latitudes are snow shoeing, so my off-season training partner and myself have taken to the trail to run up mountains in the snow.

The RV is conveniently parked at RA Racing Apparel headquarters in Santa Fe, and by the looks of it, it may never move from there (well, at least until spring).  My plan is to train in more temperate climates, but judging from the 12 inches of snow under the RV, we may never leave.

So… Velo and I went for a run today and…what the proverbial fuck…  My dog has been lying in a comfortable air conditioned apartment for the past 3 years, rarely getting off the bed (my bed), and never exercising for more than 3 minutes at a time while chasing what I can only describe as Texas rats (ugly, fat, and slow).  But apparently, a sedentary life is more conducive to athletic greatness than my periodic outings on the bike.

Velo ran circles around me, waited for me on every uphill, and when I thought he was actually getting tired, he was merely pausing to pee on the 500th tree today.  At various summits, I actually caught him looking back, with his mouth fully closed– not even tongue out to regulate heat.  Mind you, Velo is 56 in dog years, so the geriatric canine crowd is already passing me, and my season hasn’t even started.

It looks like dog food is doing more for hematocrit levels than veggies and beer.  I wonder if Alpo or Pedigree can also sponsor me.

On Thanksgiving day I woke up to loud pounding on the RV door. For crying out loud, it was 7am and I was on vacation like the rest of America. Hadji was screaming something about a 5km turkey trot at a local school. As much as I tried to reconcile both words, I couldn’t figure out why they would call it a trot, because the only one trotting would be me. Perhaps, this was a personalized race for moi!? Unlikely!

I scream back something about being tired, and my bastard of a training sergeant said something along the lines of “we have the rest of the day to be tired”. I’m like…it’s Thanksgiving, it’s the only day of the year when I drink coffee just to be sufficiently awake to keep on eating.  Being tired is not part of anybody’s Thanksgiving plan.

It was below freezing, so I put on every conceivable item of sports clothing I had and walked out the door: I looked like a poorly decorated Christmas tree. As soon as I got in the car, Hadji said…we’re only going to warm up for the race, so go get your dog.  I still puzzles me that Hadji thinks I need warming up. You don’t need warming up when all you’re going to do is start slow and then taper off.

My trusty partner Velo, came along, and I was forced to “warm-up” 3 miles up to 8000 feet. I tried as best I could to hide the fact that the “warm-up” had been a race in and of itself.  At this point we drove back to the house, shed some clothes, and drove to the race, where over a hundred people had decided to duke it out for a turkey or pie.

I ran positive splits, which is to say, the worst way of running a race– the first mile at 6:40, the second at 6:45, and the last one at 8 something– I progressively got slower and slower. Somehow I managed to get passed by cripples, little girls, and cardiac patients, all on my way to scoring a personal best of 22:00, at 7,500 feet, in freezing temperatures, long pants, and with nothing flat but the 5 meters under the finish line banner. Luckily, I have a lot to improve, and running’s not even my sport!

At the finish line we met some other pros. These were west Kenyan runners, and possible one of the few people who make me look fat. Since pros tend to congregate together, I introduced myself as a newly minted pro, and proceeded to trade training and diet tips.

Apparently, I’m fat…by a long ways. At 5 foot 3 inches, one of them weighed 102-104lbs, depending on the time of the year. So, all things being equal (which they’re clearly not), I would have to weigh 116 pounds to put out the kind of speed his lanky ass legs can put out.

When I was racing my bike, I managed to drop down to 138 lbs one year, and friends of my parents thought I had cancer. I can only imagine what they’d think of me at 116 lbs. Clearly, I’m going to have to either find another sport, or find other things on which to improve.

I thought perhaps I could lose a few pounds, so I grilled them on diet. Apparently, that’s a no go as well. Breakfast is tea and milk. Second breakfast is 3 slices of bread, fruit and orange juice. Lunch is rice, lean red meat, and fruit. The afternoon snacks consist of nuts. And dinner is enough to weather you through the night without waking up hungry. Apparently the trick is to always be semi-hungry, but not starving. Again, nothing I’m willing to improve upon. I’m going to have to concentrate on training.

Initially I thought training was very doable, until I realized their 18 miles a day weren’t on a bike. They were running. The easy weeks in the off-season include 80 mile weeks, whereas the regular weeks mid year consist of 140 mile weeks. Hmmm… I wonder if I’m currently even doing 80 mile weeks on the bike… probably not.

Ok, so I can’t get any skinnier for fear of affecting my social life. I can’t eat less, because…well, beer tastes so good, and I can’t train more unless the 80-140 miles are on the bike, so that pretty much leaves sleep. I’m sure I can sleep more– even on par with professional athletes. So there!

But then again, I’m not getting paid to win races, but to write, so back to eating the pie Hadji won at the turkey trot!