Trinity Academy Reindeer Run 5K - Dec. 6, 2020

Feeling like I had one more shot at a decent 5K in 2020, I went back to one of my familiar early December courses - the Trinity Academy Reindeer Run in Caldwell. 

I ran this race in 2013, 2014 and 2018, with a finish time of 18:35, 18:40 and 18:20, respectively.  Now, two years after my fastest course time, things are dramatically different.

After bounding down that first short hill on Hatfield Street, the work began after the turn onto Smull Avenue.  For the next mile and a half, I pushed uphill with all my might, disappointed at how much slower I was running compared to a mere two years ago.  My heart sank when the first mile clocked in at 6:51.  

What the hell happened to me this year?  Is it possible that I had COVID and did not even know it, and now I am feeling the after effects of shortness of breath while my heart feels like it is struggling to pump hard enough to meet the level of activity I am trying to perform?  Or am I just getting old?

Whatever it was, I needed to crest this damn hill, now on Mountain Avenue, and finally did so, turning onto Forest Avenue with a 6:49 second mile.  

All that was left to do was make up as much time as possible on the downhill to the finish line.  A 6:05 third mile was the best I could muster, finishing the race at 20:24, more than two minutes slower than 2018.  

So that is it.  No more 5Ks for a while.  No speed work.  No tempo runs.  For the next few months, I will do some marathon training - going for long, slow miles.  And maybe, just maybe, I can enjoy the run for sake of it.

My Own Personal 5K #3 - April 5, 2020 - Verona, NJ

These are weird times.  Everything you normally do, the way you do it, has to change in some way.  But I would be damned if I was not going to run the post-marathon 5K as scheduled.  I would have to improvise, but I would do it.

As part of my recovery from the two marathons, I had planned to run the St. Cassian 5K in Montclair and Bloomfield - at Brookdale Park, site of my first 5K ever, back in 2006 - scheduled for April 5.  Then the coronavirus started to spread.  By the third week of March, I was working from home.  Shortly after, events started getting canceled.  

OK, no problem.  I am a disciplined guy.  If they cancel the race, my backup plan will be to get the course map from the website, show up at the park later in the day, and run the damn race myself.

Sure enough, by the end of March, the race was canceled.  Then, at the beginning of April, Gov. Murphy shut down all state and county parks, of which Brookdale is the latter.  I drove to the park in hopes that maybe the shutdown was only to stop people from driving to the park and congregating in groups.  However, there was yellow "caution" tape at every entrance, so I drove to neighboring Verona, where I had run the Labor Day 5K in 2011.

The course starts on Lakeside Drive, flat for the first half-mile, until a turn onto Hillside sends you uphill.  At 45 years old, I am now feeling the effects of aging after more than a decade of hard running.  Nine years ago, I bounded up that hill and made the next turn onto Forest to hit the first mile marker in under six minutes.  Not so this time, with a 6:22.  By the time I got to the turnaround on Forest, not even at the halfway point, I was already feeling winded and running out of gas.  But at least I got to go down that hill, which helped me get a 6:13 in the second mile.

Back onto Lakeside, I pushed as hard as I could, turning onto Bloomfield Avenue and then into Verona Park (which, as a municipal park, was open).  There were people strolling while wearing masks and cops present to - I assume - ensure that people did not get together in groups.  And then there was me, loudly grunting and huffing and puffing my way into my imaginary finish line.

I managed to hit mile three with a 6:09, finishing near the boat house with a final time of 19:22.  Looking at my times now, I am happy to see that I negative split every mile.  But at that moment, all I could think of, while gasping for breath and jogging a couple of miles to shake it off and cool down, was how nine years ago I did that course in 18:33.  I thought about how only four years ago, I triumphantly ran sub-18-minute 5Ks at two consecutive races.  And now, it is a struggle to even hit the low 19s.  

This is the day that, I imagine, every runner dreads - the day that you realize that not only are your PRs permanently in the rearview mirror, but you are never even going to come close.  I have reverted back to my run times from a decade ago.  And eventually, I will end up with results that are slower than even that first 5K in Brookdale Park, as a 31-year-old.  

I asked a running colleague who recently turned 60 how he coped with it.  He told me two things - first, to start looking more at the "age-graded" scores on result lists because it gives you an idea of how you did for your age; and, more importantly, he told me to keep putting in the same effort.  The result does not matter as much as long as you know you are giving it all you have, just like you did when you were running PRs.  

Sound advice, regardless of whether there are actual races to run.