Running With Perseverance

I love the fitness/running/blogging community, but sometimes I have to remind myself that I am older than many of my friends in the blogosphere, and I have to stop myself from getting jealous of their “disappointing” 7-minute miles and constant stream of personal records (PRs) in every race they do.

As I was preparing for the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler (which was not a PR, but was a great race all the same), I explained to my son that sooner or later (maybe this year), I was going to have to stop chasing PRs and focus on beating the line of decline. I read about this fateful line in an article in the June 2012 issue of Runner’s World, in a piece about how Peter Sagal  beat the line and set a marathon PR in his mid-40s! (He was 46, so maybe I can’t give up on PRs for one more year.)

Professor Ray Fair of Yale University has done complicated statistical analyses on mountains of elite athlete performance data to arrive at this simple, inarguable conclusion: After the age of 35, everyone will see his or her best time decrease by almost one percent per year–for me, that meant one to two minutes. When I called Professor Fair to ask him if “everyone” included “me,” he asked for my best marathon times over the past few years, and then pointed out (with some pride) that my results–declining from a 3:20 in 2006 to a 3:27 in 2011–tracked his line of decline almost precisely.

Now, I know runners my age who continue to set PRs, but that is not my priority. I run for fun, for my sanity, and for stress relief, but I have to admit that I am just not willing to put in the effort it would take to keep setting PRs.

So, what does that mean for my race goals? Even when I know I am not going to set a PR, I take my training seriously and I push myself during the race–but should I?

When I begged off a work project this weekend, I told my colleague (who also was running the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler) that I sometimes don’t feel well after a race. “That’s because you run too fast,” he said. To some extent, I know he’s right. I don’t ever feel sick after my training runs, because I don’t push myself that hard. But does that mean I shouldn’t try my hardest during a race? With my type A personality, that might be harder than talking myself through 1.5 miles of headwind on Haine’s Point!

I am thinking about all of this as I get ready to run the GW Parkway Classic–my all time favorite race on a relatively hilly course. My finish time last year was close to this year’s finish time for the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler, which has a flat, fast course. So, once again, I am facing doing “worse” than last year. Can I shift my goal away from running as fast as I can? Can I really focus on enjoying the day? Would I be happy with a race where I didn’t give it my all?

As I ponder all of this, I am thinking about three great posts I read last week:

Kierston wrote about choosing to be positive about doing the work it takes to reach your goals.

Carrie wrote about sticking it out when the first mile sucks.

Lea shared her tips for tricking yourself into getting through a tough run.

Do you try to set a PR with every race?

How do you set goals when you know you can’t do better than you did before?