5/12/2012 20:25
Good Evening,
This is my first experience at blogging. I'm looking forward to sharing all things running with those who also love to run. My goal is (i) to share my experiences and hear your's, (ii) encourage people to try running or walking, (iii) share experience with gear, races and trails, and other topics as they come to mind.
First I think the name of my blog needs some explanation. "Musings of an old runner" might also be stated 'musings of a runner who happens to be old.' I actually didn't start running until I was 62 years old. It was hard to admit that I'm an old man, but I didn't really have any choice after what I thought were really stylish trousers got called "old man pants", young women began treating me more like their father, and clerks were giving me senior discounts without my asking.
Let me start my first blog with my story. I hope it encourages others to share their stories.
My name is Russell Vance. I'll be 66 years old in less than three weeks. During the day I'm a mild-mannered psychotherapist working as a behavior clinician. After hours I'm either running or thinking about, reading about or planning to run.
As I said, I didn't start running until I was 62. My grandson wanted to do a 5km race at Disney. His mother was signed up for the marathon and his father couldn't run because of pending knee replacement surgery. I ended up saying that I would run with him. Like so many people I thought I hated to run. After all, in high school running is usually punishment. In the Army running was never for fun and frequently punishment. Besides, no one ever taught us how to run. I was terrified that I couldn't walk 5km nevertheless run. What you have to know is that I have arthritis in all my major joints and when I went to a zoo, park, museum, etc., I walked with a cane.
I started training - which, at first, was just seeing how fast I could walk. I'm also a bit obsessive, so I found everything I could read about running and tried to meet people whom I felt were knowledgeable. My first race was the day before my 63rd. birthday. Standing at the starting line I felt a tremendous mixture of fear and excitement. What a rush! When I finished that first simple 5k, the sense of accomplishment, exhilaration, self-realization and affirmation wouldn't have been greater had I just won Boston. I had found my sport.
In the first year after that race, I ran 24 races. 15 of them were 5km, 6 were 10km and 3 were 21km (aka half-marathons). My learning curve was practically a 90 degree angle, but I loved every minute of it. I knew from the beginning that I was never going to be fast, but I learned that I'm not a 5k runner. It takes me almost that long to warm up and have the arthritis stop hurting.
In my second year I was learning that, while I'm not fast, I can run as long as I want. However, I wanted to run races, so I focused on the half-marathon. As many experts say, 'the half-marathon is an endurance race that is still dependent upon form.' The full-marathon requires too much recovery time. If you stay healthy and train well you can do lots of half-marathons. In my second year I only ran 14 races but 7 were half-marathons. In the past year I have done 15 races with 9 of them being half-marathons. I also learned that I'm a minimalist and discovered that I love long trail races best of all.
I hope that you will share your story, watch for future topics, and pass the word to other runners or would-be runners to check out my blog.
Good running!!
Russ
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