Once A Runner…

Danny, Darrell, and Me

I’m trying again to get my act together here… yeah, yeah, whatever: second verse… same as the first. I know, but I feel like I’m making some decent progress, slow and steady, and I’m in no huge rush, really.

I am not, perversely, being as precise about things as last time. No Nike+ iPod along for the ride (walk) this time to make sure that I capture every last one of the various different numbers that won’t really add up to nor add a damned thing in the grander scheme here. In fact, I’m not measuring anything except the hard-and-fast, quantifiable indicators of health and wellness — blood pressure, pulse rate, weight — and I’m not bothering to record anything but the weight loss progress — but only once a week — indicated in the sidebar on the right.

Given that I have that very strongly ingrained, potentially self-destructive competitive streak that tends to make me a bit reckless when I can least afford it, I’ve not been giving in to the temptation to turn any part of this into a competition with myself, nor within myself. I’m competing only on one front right now and that’s the part about keeping myself motivated to continue.

Not that it’s super difficult this time around — well, it is and it isn’t, which is pretty much true all the time. It’s difficult to do the same thing day-in and day-out when I want to go faster, when I can remember how it feels to fly and run down folks and blow them down. But it’s easier to keep my focus on what I’m trying to accomplish when I see how far I’ve slid this time, and when I have a very good example to motivate me and make me want to keep to the task.

Darrell, my younger brother (by only one year and 18 days), has been pretty much steadily keeping it together and getting it done for the past five years, and for years before that he was doing a lot of long bike rides, too, but he’s approaching 5K total running miles by around his birthday next February. He’s still entering and racing 10ks and other shorter road distances, and turning ‘em over at the rate of mid-7-ish minutes per mile. He’s doing right now what I want to be doing myself.

This past weekend marked a huge boost to my motivation, too, and that’s finally reconnecting with an old running buddy, Danny Busheme. I ran track with Danny at Kirby Junior High School and then track and cross country at Judson High School (where Darrell also joined us one year behind). There is no telling how many miles we ran together, and I can’t possibly recall exactly how many times we raced together over those five years, but it was all good… no, it was all very good.

I regret we didn’t have a track season our Senior year, but that was a choice we each made as we felt we had to take a stand or else compromise our personal integrity to stay on a team with a coach who couldn’t coach middle distance runners for crap. (Whatever, it doesn’t make us heroes or martyrs or anything. We took a stand is all, and I know very well that we lost something especially important in doing so.)

So, yeah, I’ve got more to help to drive me forward now. I’ve got Darrell really going like gang-busters out there and keeping the tradition alive. I’m back in touch with my other best running buddy now that I’ve finally managed to track down Danny Busheme. And I know I have got to toe the line and keep myself going this time, because this thing really is more important to me than the things that made it possible for me to so easily wander away from it in the past.

Danny, Darrell, and me. There was a time when we three defined ourselves almost entirely within the context of what hearts and lungs and legs could do with time and distance. I want that shit back, man. I really want it bad.