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.