The berry eating
Meadow mauler ignored us
As we sauntered by.
Thursday, March 9, 2017
Last Sunday I ran a 12k race I also ran two years ago and this year I was two minutes slower. I chalked that up to stronger headwinds and a tactical mistake as opposed to a decline in performance. But am I rationalizing away an age related performance loss?
Thankfully, no. But how do I know?
To objectively test my hypothesis on Tuesday I decided to run an old tempo run that I did consistently and recorded the results from two years ago. That section of road is out of the wind and therefore allows for a consistent comparison of results over time. Two years ago I ran up the hill to the turn around point in about 40 minutes then back down in about 20 on a pretty consistent basis. On Tuesday I ran up in 38 minutes and down in 21. Those numbers reassure me that my conclusions about my performance in the race seem to be accurate as opposed to just wishful thinking. That buoys my optimistic assessment that I should be able to go under 5 hours in my upcoming 50k in the states if the weather is decent.
I’ll get another reality check later in the summer when I run the Bull Dog 25k, a race I’ve run several times in the past. I’m still hoping, even as I approached 60, I can race against age and win a couple of times.
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