A New Year

Sitting down and figuring out goals for this year is turning out to be a daunting experience. I have truly enjoyed my 2010 running year, as I reconnected with old friends, ran in a few races, watched my athletes transform into competitive runners, and rediscovered the simple joy of feeling the wind on your face on a chilly morning while your body is in motion. The two biggest highlights being; running with Phil during the Christmas break for two days through puddles and slick mud on single track trails and hanging out with Phil, Stu, and Chip at Masters Track Nationals in July sipping a couple of cold dark ones reminiscing and laughing so hard that I was sore for two days. Looking back, I met very few of my goals that I set out for the year, but what I did accomplish and experience was far better than what I thought would make a memorable return to the sport.

Throughout my competitive running career, goals were based on ascending the hierarchy of the list competitors that I would face and which races bore the best chance of projecting me higher up the scale. In other words, how do I get faster and where? The structure of my training and racing schedule was based on answering these two questions. However, at 43 and soon to be 44, I will never run as fast as I once did. Not that I was ever super fast, but I was decent and could hold my own, but that time has come and is now gone. With that said, I now find myself asking, "how do I set running goals for the new year?"

As I look back on 2010, it is the people that I ran with that made it such a great year. Giving my high school team mate Shannon a bad time for running with her iphone and joking around about it as she shoved it in her jog bra. Running with Lino, who is 20 years younger and pushing me to challenge myself out in a deluge of Biblical proportions, cursing Poseidon. Laughing so hard over dinner as my athletes are telling stories, using mock voices the night before Mt Sac and seeing the excitement in their faces as they line up to race the best in the state. Hearing my athletes imitate our coaching staff out on an easy run, saying over and over, "push, push, you've got to push." Splashing through puddles like you are 5 and who cares if your shoes and socks are soaked, you are getting wet anyways. Not once did I run a personal record or even a Masters personal best. But, I had fun.

I know this year I want to run more. I want to race more. I want to run in some races that I have never had a chance to run in the past, such as the Carlsbad 5000 and a trail race. I know I want to run in the World Masters Championship in July, just so I can wear the ol' US of A across my chest for once in my life. But most of all, I want to savor those mornings when I am out running at 5:00am and the only sound is my own feet hitting the frost laden leaves on the trail and my own breathing in rhythm with my stride, grateful that I can still put one foot in front of the other the way I love to do it. I want to sit and drink coffee with old and new friends after an hour of swapping tall tales of the ghosts of ourselves circling Rocky Hill or some tree-lined, winding deer trail covered in the glory of our own sweat. I want to be a runner.

As I head out the door, a new year and a new run awaits me and I know that if 2011 is anything like 2010, it is going to be a great year of running and I do not have to have a huge set of goals to motivate me. It is enough now, to know that I am a runner and I have some of the greatest friends in the world, who share this experience with me. As always, stay healthy, keep running and I will hopefully be sharing some kind of dark liquid with you after a race or run laughing our old gray tails off.