The Good Old Days...

As Nathan just posted, this has been a pretty epic racing year for a lot of us. For me, I think it was a combination of Carl's coaching, getting on iron supplements, and not being a student anymore. But whatever it was, I definitely feel like my running really turned around. It was especially satisfying to see my old high school coach Liz at the finish line of my half-marathon PR at Kaiser (1:26:55). Back when she was coaching me, I was doing cross country 5Ks around 30:00.

But even when I was slow, I loved running. Growing up in Marin, with the rolling single-track trails of China Camp just minutes from my front door, I almost never had to run on the road. And in high school cross country, pretty much every day was another romp around the legendary and beautiful Mount Tam. In college I discovered Envirosports trail races and I even managed to snag a couple of the coveted rubber chickens.

But after Carl got our group into a more racing-oriented training plan, I started to get to know the pleasures of going fast. Bounding along a forested dirt trail is still as pleasant as ever, but it's a totally tame kind of joy compared to the nauseating glee of pounding out some 800s on the track or willing yourself to kick at the end of a disgustingly painful 5k. The past year has been all about speed.

But then last week I went on a run that had me nostalgic for the old days of classic running club. I took Allison and Christina up to Tilden to do a loop I hadn't done in probably three or four years. It turned out to be a jarring, muddy, steep, and fairly ridiculous run. I was feeling pretty gleeful but it was clear that Christina and Allison were not, due to my (unintentional) false advertising of the run as a nice single-track with rolling hills, because that's what I remembered. Guess I had different standards for what constituted "rolling" back then.

In any event, I felt really guilty, especially since Christina is coming off an injury and Allison was racing that weekend. So I told them to wait for me on the road while I ran the last 15 minutes to the car and retrieved them.

It's pretty fun to feel fast sometimes, but there's something really innocent and pure about those kind of hilly hidden muddy foresty exploratory runs, right? It's been a great season, but after injury got in the way of racing for the past couple of months, I'm looking forward to a few weeks this summer off the track and up in Tilden, finding new trails.