A Race Well-Limped

Newsletter 2023-06-12

I’m walking around the house with a severe limp and actively second-guessing every decision I’ve ever made. That can only mean one thing: I just ran my one race for the year. For the second time in a row, my thirteen-year-old, Betsy, accompanied me on this foolish endeavor because the best mistakes are made in tandem. We both went into the seven-mile course with no training, and it showed. Determination and a can-do attitude are no match for gravity and distance. As an extremely sedentary person, it’s important for me to occasionally do something semi-athletic to remember it’s much better to not move. My spirit animal is one of those coral reef creatures that sits in one spot its entire life while plankton filters through its mouth hole. I’m out here working for my food while the ocean basically has free Doordash 24/7. It was a mistake for mankind to give up gills.

I must admit, however, that the amount of raw pain I’m in today makes me wonder what would happen if I took one of these events seriously and prepared like a responsible adult. Perhaps I would know the joy of being healthy and walking around with a normal gait. This weekend, I saw that alternative in my rear view mirror. You see, Betsy and I didn’t go to the race alone. We were accompanied by a group of three extremely in-shape people. You wouldn’t think that such individuals would want to associate with me, but we all live in the same Indianapolis suburb. With dudes, friendships pretty much boil down to proximity and boredom. I lift weights because it’s the form of exercise that requires me to move the least. I can literally do it while sitting down. These guys bike and run countless miles, often in the same day. One has done dozens of Spartan Races, which are grueling obstacle courses that require you to crawl through mud, flip tires, and throw spears. Basically, they’re bachelor parties in running shoes. Another guy is training for a triathlon. He’s the worst because, in addition to being faster than me on foot, in the water, and on wheels, he can also outlift me in the gym. That’s not to say he’s better than me in every way. I can still eat more tacos.

I was the nominal leader of our expedition this weekend because I told everyone about the race in the first place and also I own a minivan. Everyone rags on America’s mom-mobile until they need to transport a posse of grown men an hour down the interstate. Slap a layer of armor on this bad boy and you could use it to take troops into combat. The race is in my hometown in Illinois, and I’ve been doing it almost every year since I was Betsy’s age. I peaked about fifteen years ago and have been phoning it in with performances of various levels of ineptitude ever since. Why do I keep going if I no longer enjoy it and am getting worse every year? Tradition, mostly. A bad idea is somehow less bad if you do it consistently at regular intervals. Besides, I don’t dislike the whole race, just the running part. I like seeing all the running club members I’ve known since childhood, and I love the free beer afterwards. Running is just a minor stumbling block on the way to the good stuff. As every true racer knows, it’s not whether you win or lose, but how many Miller Lites you can chug at the finish line. Unless you’re Betsy. Then you have to stick to soda.

My athletic friends don’t understand any of this. While they’re all laid back, well-adjusted individuals, they’re also still good at things, which skews their perspective of the world. All three had a reasonable chance to win the race outright. That wasn’t enough of a challenge for one of the guys. When I messaged our group chat to let everyone know what time I’d pick them up Saturday morning, he said he didn’t need a ride. He was going to ride his bike there. I don’t mean a motorcycle, but an actual bicycle with pedals, a bell, and tassels on the handlebars. Okay, so it was actually a very expensive racing bike worth more than my minivan, but it might as well have been the little kid kind for how it compares to a motor vehicle. The race was 66 miles away, and that was by interstate. If you take back roads and avoid gravel, it’s more like 84. He set out in the dark at 4 a.m. to meet us there for a race at 10:00. We arrived at almost exactly the same time. I passed him in my minivan a quarter of the mile from the starting line. After biking for hours, he stretched a bit and then beat me in a seven-mile run by nine minutes. He’s probably not even sore today. Afterwards, he tossed the bike in the trunk of my minivan for the return journey. I should have made him ride it home.

Betsy was a trooper through and through. She finished the race for the second year in a row. She’s not a huge fan of the running part, but she likes the adventure of going places with me and hanging out. It helped that her sisters weren’t there. While we were running in another state, my youngest two kids had consecutive epic meltdowns while garage sale shopping with my wife. The physical distance prevented Betsy from being collateral damage in the barrage of groundings that followed. I hope to recruit more of my girls to run this race in coming years. The next two in line have currently never run more than two miles, and their last attempt ended with much walking and more than a few tears. I feel the same way when I run. Being an adult means hiding the tears on the inside, and, instead of walking, running until your knee explodes. To save us all pain and emotional trauma, maybe we can find a sport to do together that requires less movement, like table tennis, but where everyone has to sit on bar stools. I’d also be open to just playing board games. You’d be surprised at the workout you can get from vigorous dice rolls.

As for how I ran Saturday, I did better than I thought I would, even with my considerable slowdown from last year. My expectations for myself were very low. No one puts less pressure on me than me. I was actually having a strong race through most of the course. Between miles four and five, I felt so good that I wondered why I only do this once a year. Then I hit mile six and my body reminded me. The human form is like a convoy of ships: It can only go as fast as its slowest part. Usually, the lagging component is my breathing. I simply can’t guzzle enough oxygen to get my awkward, unwieldy body to go. This time, though, the weak point was my legs. I pushed until I had about a mile left, at which point my quads and hamstrings decided they were simply done. I slowed down enough that a guy who was next to me with a mile left to go beat me by three minutes. Either he had the most amazing ending sprint in the history of recreational running or I decelerated by fifty percent for the final stretch. Still, that’s better than the alternative. In most races, I get to the end and have an impressive final kick. That looks good for the two spectators who are sort of watching but is a total waste of potential. It means I should have pushed harder for the entire race rather than just for the ten seconds at the end. This time, I can honestly say I gave everything I had. My slow, plodding finish was actually a victory shuffle that proves I gave it my all. I don’t need a huge trophy to commemorate my heroic performance. My grossly swollen knee is enough of a souvenir.

As I slowly made my way to the finish line, I had no idea how the rest of the group placed. I thought it would be funny if my friends came in first, second, and third and people got the impression that our nondescript Indiana suburb was somehow a running power house. Our top trio actually finished between fourth and twelfth. Our fastest guy cut five minutes off his already blazing run from last year, yet there were still three people ahead of him. How well you finish at races like this depends largely on who shows up. Some years, his time might have been good enough to win it all. This year, it didn’t even get him a medal. Next time, we’ll have to find the addresses of the three guys ahead of him and slash their tires before they leave home.

Our top guy didn’t get an official medal, but he did come away with an even better prize. He won our traveling trophy: a massive, authentic made-in-Japan German beer stein I picked up from a second-hand store years ago. Before the race, we give each runner a time handicap based on how they ran the previous year. It’s basically a most improved award, but with more complicated math. I took home the stein last year because it’s not hard to get better from rock bottom. It helped that I fell and hurt myself in the race two years ago. To get worse from that, I would have to run backwards. When I passed the stein on to its new owner, I was supposed to fill it with beer and present it on one knee. Our top guy doesn’t drink beer, which definitely has nothing to do with why he’s so fast. Instead, I took a knee and gave him a beer stein full of diet soda. With my luck, that will just make him faster. He’ll have to speed up quite a bit to win most-improved honors two years in a row. With our dramatically slower performances this year, Betsy and I have set ourselves up for a good attempt at the stein in 2024. If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on her. She’s still young with lots of upside. I plan to gradually slow down year by year until my average pace is a nap.

Even as my entire body throbs a day later and tells me I’m an idiot, I can’t help but feel that the race was a success. Everyone in our group said they want to do it again next year. I’m way past the point where I get nervous before these races. I just show up to have fun, even if “fun” is simply various forms of hurting myself. It’s a guy thing. Hopefully, it will soon be more of a girl thing, too. My eleven-year-old, Mae, starts middle school cross country this fall. I strongly suspect I can talk her into doing my one annual race at least once. Kids don’t actually know you’re giving them bad advice until they test it for themselves. Parenthood is all about destroying your children’s trust in you one misguided family tradition at a time.

As for me, I’ll keep doing this race as long as my legs can support me. I proved I can still roll out of bed and run seven miles, even if those seven miles will prevent me from getting out of bed for all the days thereafter. I could have done hundreds of miles in practice so I could compete pain-free on race day, but all that training would have hurt, too. Not training at all and then being hobbled for a few days afterward probably results in the least net discomfort overall. Once again, the low-effort approach is the right one. Laziness conquers all.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James