No Time Like the Write Time

When I was a young runner I ran to get fast.

I was a prisoner to my watch. I looked at it on every run, I clicked the lap counter at every mile. If a run wasn't as fast as another, I was angry. When I raced I had magic numbers, 5K 24 minutes, which became 21, which became 20, which became 19. 10K had magic numbers, so did a marathon. If I wanted to dig up an old running log I could tell you the time in which I ran every mile of the 2000 Grandma's Marathon.

Now most days I don't wear a watch. I never train with one. I do wear one in 100 Mile races, sometimes I even remember to start it, but I rarely look at it. I remember thinking in Vermont that it was weird, the first time I looked at my watch we were 8 hours in. I was thinking, geez, do I ever even go 8 hours in a work day without looking at my watch? No. The next time I looked at the watch in Vermont was at 14 hours, 6 hours later.

Well, lately I've needed a watch, not for me, but for my track team. You, see, I time them. They run in circles a lot. So, as I've been training them, I've had to borrow a watch from Tyler, he's a great kid and a talented runner. Oh, I have a watch, but I can't use the stop watch feature, until today. I can't use it, because it still has my splits on it from the Ancient Oaks 100 from back in December 2007 on it. I've never really looked at the splits nor analyzed them. I had an idea of keeping my time for each of the 29 loops (29 loops of 3.477 miles, or whatever equals close to a hundred). Well, 100 laps seemed daunting, so I then decided to keep them in sets of 3, then I could give myself a better picture of how I was running, as a bathroom stop or food stop would be averaged over roughly 10 miles. Also, the last set would seem fast as there would only be 2 loops in that set.

Ok, not a bad plan, but then the day got hot, I was slowing down, and I didn't want to know the truth, I couldn't handle the truth. So, I stopped my little click-watch-a-thon sometime early in the race and let the good times roll. Here's what the watch would have told me that day, had I looked at it. (Seriously, I know my time was 22:47 something, but I don't know how I got there, and when I finished, I had no idea how fast I was, I figured somewhere between 20 and 23 hours, I was on the money.) Ok, here are the splits:

Total time: 22:47:54
Loop 1: 38:58
Loop 2: 39:09 (total 1:18:45)
Loop 3: 40:59 (total Set of 3= 1:59:07)

Now I went into 3 loop set mode:
Total 4 -6: 1:55:17 (total time 2x3 loops= 3:54:24)

Total 7 - 9: 2:16:37 (9 lap total 6:11:01)

Total 10 - 12: 2:25:02 (12 lap total 8:36:03 and not even 1/2 way done!)

And the A.D.D. won't even handle 3 lap mode:

Total 12 - 29: 14:11:50 (29 lap total 22:47 something)

There you have it. I have decided not to analyze it. Really, whomever that dude was that ran in second place for 90 miles took precedent over the watch at some point. I just wanted to catch him, and I did. Joe Ninke, in first place was too far ahead, he lapped me 3 times (but I lapped him back once and could have a second time, I was on his shoulder, but it was his last lap, and I didn't want to detract from his victory. If the race had been 112 miles, I'm pretty sure I'd have won) so I didn't worry about him.

Any way, for what it's worth, now those times are recorded and I can give Tyler his watch back.