The Humbling of a Middle Distance Runner

The bikes in Amsterdam...

Yesterday was the first time I had exercised outside in about 3 weeks. It was a crisp, autumn-esque morning in Bath, and I took my Dad’s road bike out for a spin. My foot feels great, but going to avoid running on it until I see the Doc once I get back to New York. Enjoying the fresh air compared to my now accustomed to chlorine tainted oxygen, I approached the corner of Chandler and Clark to take a left and head back towards my Dad’s house to finish up the ride.

At the same time, a biker with some serious gear was taking a right onto Clark coming from the opposite way on Chandler. I beat him to the turn and settled into my 15mph tempo that I had gotten so used to. Then disaster struck.

The dude BLEW by me. I thought about trying to go with him, and picked up the tempo for a moment, but when I looked up he was already 50 meters ahead of me and drifting further away every second. I shook my head in disgust and settled into my tempo trying to avoid looking up to see how terribly I was being beaten.

I need to stick to running.

After getting my ass kicked daily in the pool I was biking my own pace and thought I was doing pretty well until this joker rocked my world. It is a humbling thing to get beaten so soundly so many days a week. Especially to women who are clearly just better swimmers than I am. I tell myself I’m staying in shape, but I am getting antsy to getting out and running so I can show the weekend warriors what’s up. Man it sucks.

The one glimpse of light I’ve seen has been the improvement of my swimming. If I was 10-years-old I would have the Haslett Community Pool records from 25 to 200-meters. Boo. Yah.

Moving up to New York on the 12th…can’t wait. Let’s Go!