I think I’ve mentioned I started running in earnest back in 2014, the Year-of-Jp. I ran a few races throughout the year, but the main goal was a fall half marathon; there was no way I would ever do a full marathon. After all, I’m not a serious runner.
I had no idea what I was doing from the first step. I pretended to know. I downloaded MapMyRun on my phone, got some corded headphones that would stay in my ears, and even bought a real pair of running shoes! I ran around the neighborhood on routes I’d planned through MapMyRun’s website. Back then, I had a solid memory and, for the most part, could remember where to turn and such to make it back home in the allotted distance.
I was a music listener then, too. Now, I’m all about audiobooks when I run, but at that time, I was convinced I needed a beat to keep me going. Through a strange confluence of events (to be revisited in a future post), I found the artist Greydon Square, an atheist, critical-thinking hip-hop artist. I never looked forward to running, but I did enjoy the time listening to his work. Running was the only time I listened to him, I wasn’t much for playing music around the house, and there were family considerations that, when paired with my mental illnesses, kept me from doing much expressing at home.
The longest runs early on were like four miles. Maybe a six was tossed in there. But I had no idea how I was going to manage a full 13.1. Yikes!
So, I downloaded a twelve-week training plan that had me running five days a week. Seemed legit, right? I found a rails-to-trails path not far from home for my long runs, and I was off. I got into the habit of sending Nora a picture of the mile zero post on the way out and a selfie at the return. Everything was going well. An injury or two along the way, but nothing catastrophic.
I never really pushed myself, though. I did the miles that were on the sheet, but that was pretty much it. I did get caught up in doing my runs with negative splits. That is where each successive mile (or whatever the split distance is) is completed faster than the last. This is a notion that sticks with me today but is much more difficult being nearly ten years older. Even so, I didn’t really push for it. My app alerted me at each mile what my pace had been, and that was it. At that time, I didn’t have a rolling pace on my wrist to monitor. So, at each mile point, I would just speed up a little.
But I never got to a max threshold point. I never pushed that hard. Because hard is scary. (More on that in the future, too.)
I finished that half-marathon race with Nora, my folks, my two youngest, and Dave in attendance. Negative splits the whole way. To date that first half is my PR (personal record), and likely will stand the test of time. I’ve lost all the data from those running days, so now, when I look at my performance, I relate it to my efforts in “The Modern Era” or Jp’s running career.
Today, I ran my fastest 5k in the modern era.