Michael: Vanity

Sage’s aroma
Sporadically on the trail
Delights the senses.

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

There are three criteria I use to judge how enjoyable an experience a race was:

1. Does anybody recognize me at the race?
2. How many women beat me?
3. Did anyone older than me beat me?

By these measures my first two races as a 60 year old went reasonably well.

In the Phantom 20 miler a guy I was catching up to kept looking back at me in that peculiar way that had me thinking I should know him. When I caught up to him, he asked me if I was Michael. He mentioned that we had met four years ago at the Verdugo Mountain 10k; a race in which he cleaned my clock. That’s a long memory and if it was tossed at me as a way to psyche me out it had mixed results. Shortly after our brief discussion I fell. But after the 10 mile mark he faded badly. We did have a nice discussion after the race and if we cross paths again, it’ll be nice for us old dudes to at least give some recognition to each other.

Nobody recognized me at the Verdugo 10k the next day.

At the Phantom race no woman beat me. At Verdugo, two women beat me.
In both races no one older than me beat me.

I don’t have a matrix or point value for these questions, or even know there evolution or when the three became ensconced in my methodology when analyzing results. But for whatever goofy reasons, they’re now a part of my racing experience.