I did an organized 20 mile run yesterday - timed to give participants a long run just 3 weeks before the Chicago Marathon. It's like a race - participants wear numbered bibs - water and Gatorade are handed out - but no times are kept. Well, you can keep your own time, of course.
Pacers are provided. These are runners who lead other runners at a given pace. I fell in with an 11-minute-mile pace group. The guy leading us was had a nice smooth gait, and didn't look tired at all, but at mile 11 he stopped to go to the bathroom and our group kind of broke up.
At least, I went to the bathroom too, and afterwards picked up my pace to try to find my group, and all I could find were pieces of it.
At mile 17, I was zipping along, for me, actually running faster than 11 minutes per mile, when I suddenly felt a need to slow down and do some intermittent walking. My right quad (front of thigh) was threatening to cramp, and I just felt like I didn't have any more gas.
In my last marathon, almost a year ago, I also had a cramp that darn thigh. So what is up with that? I didn't used to get thigh cramps! Is it something I'm doing differently? So I turned to Dr. Google, who had various suggestions, some contradictory, but who mentioned that the odds of getting cramps go up with age.
Well, there's not much I can do about my age!
Dylan Thomas recommended rage,
and Yeats wrote bitter poems about being old.
But I try to accept what cannot be controlled.
2 comments:
This is not a comment on you but on aging.
It seems to me that generally old folks aren't that happy, but old folks who can look back and say they did it right--these are the happiest people I've met.
I'm filing that away under the "astute observations" category.
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