For me, these days, that is the entire battle. Insofar as 5K races are considered at least. Usually, once I show up, I realize how age has thinned the competitive field and I stand a fair chance of getting some recognition.

Woke up late today – thanks to going to bed late last night. For a brief moment, I considered dropping out of the race. Here is where the hiked up entry fees help. Felt too guilty to not show up after spending so much money.

It was a watchless run again. I had no idea of time till I reached the end of the race and saw the clock. It was 30 min 9 seconds. The race results came in quickly. Got a second spot again in my age group. There were about 24 in my age group. Like I said, I need to just keep getting older and not stop running. Speed be darned.

Interestingly enough, exactly on this day, 11 years back, I ran exactly this same race and finished 6 minutes faster than today!

The race chip on my bib malfunctioned when I crossed the starting line. So, I got the default gun time of 0:00. Which implies I was the first guy to get off the line. In reality, I was back of the line and it took about 15-20 seconds to reach the starting point. The results would not have been much different though. The guy who beat me was a clear 3 minutes ahead of me.

I am not sure I can do that kind of sub-9 min pace ever again.

I wish I had thought about this before. I might have enjoyed my runs even more.

Continuing with not wearing a watch for my runs. I do seem to enjoy the runs more. Also, I underestimate how much I have run on my way to the half point and then overestimate the distance on my way back.

Within two weeks of the last race (which left me in quite some aches and pains), I decided to go for another 5K race. Some like Sharmila might be tempted to ask “এত রেষারেষির কি আছে?” 🙂

Truth be spoken, I was afraid that I will hurt myself again. So, decided to try a new thing. The problem of getting hurt stems from me pushing myself too hard. And that comes from constantly watching the speed and distance on my Garmin.

This time, I decided to enjoy the run. No watch, no phone. Just go and run. My life, my race – not trying to beat anybody. Just trying to come out on the other side gracefully.

Turns out, I really enjoyed the run. The chip time showed about a couple of minutes slower than the last race. About 10:23 seconds per mile.

I did not care who was passing me and who I passed. I did not care how much was left and if I was falling behind my target. Anytime the body gave a warning, I slowed down and anytime the body allowed, I speeded up.

Thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I am going to start running without any watches all the time. I just need to figure out how to keep track of total miles being run.

… but that was a small price to pay to get the whole trail to myself for the morning run at temperatures of 7 deg F with windchill ( -14 deg C).

Somebody had posted on Facebook earlier this week that he was expecting me to call him to go for a run when it hit 16 degrees F one morning. The exact person is not important here, but let’s take Samaresh as an example 🙂

A couple of days later, when it hit 13 degrees F (and this is without windchill), I invited him to come out and run with me.

I think he said something like he was too busy posting on Facebook from his fireside 🙂 🙂