Roll the Dice

Running through the fog

My adversary appears

To urge me forward.

Roll the Dice: Wednesday, December 8, 2021

 At the NoName 50/25 I ran one of my best races ever. My time of 2:01:36 was the fastest I’ve ever run a 25k. The conditions were perfect and the course was moderate with many fast downhill sections. More so than my performance was how I ran and also how another runner who finished behind me approached the event.

 This was one of the few races, or even runs for that matter, where I felt my mind and body were in the game from beginning to end. I always try to tell myself that if you want to feel you’ve accomplished something special you’ve got to roll the dice and push it a bit possibly risking blowing up and having to DNF or significantly slowing at some point. I’ve done both of those too many times. But Saturday wasn’t one of them. I just felt on this side of the edge for two hours and it felt great.

For another runner it didn’t.

Early in the race a guy passed me I chased him In the fog and as the race rolled slightly uphill and meandered through some beautiful single track, I would catch glimpses of him now and then. Finally, as we approached a long downhill section at the 10k mark, I edged passed him.

At the end I waited for about 10 minutes as I wanted to thank him for setting such a strong pace for the first section of the race. But he didn’t show and I had to get to work. I asked the first woman finisher if she had seen him and she told me he was walking a bit further back when she passed him.

I figured that dude had rolled the dice as well and came up short. I hope he’s not discouraged by his second half struggles because for me that’s what competition is all about; discovering where that edge is and riding it for as long as you can. I don’t have any trail races planned for quite a while, but I do hope I’ll see that dude again so I can properly thank him.