There are things that happen in your life that you immediately know will be remembered forever. Things that you will look back upon with fondness for the rest of your days. We all have them, and they're special and unique to who we are.
I was fortunate to have experienced one of those this past Sunday.
My first Ironman was Ironman Arizona in April of 2007. My dad came down to Tempe to see Deb and I race, and it was great to have him there. The day after the race, sitting by the pool at his hotel, he had some interesting thoughts about the day. He basically said that he didn't "get it" until he saw it happen. Only then did he see that it wasn't so much a race as a celebration of life and an opportunity for people to prove to themselves that they are capable of something extraordinary. I think what really impacted him was seeing so many people in their 50s, 60s, and some 70s, finish the race. That seemed to shift his perspective in a fundamental way in respect to what's achievable.
Motivated by this, he got a bit more active through 2007 but it never really stuck - he had some knee problems and never really got going.
If you've read my running post, I am a firm believer that distance running is something that most people are well capable of. Assuming you don't have a specific injury that prevents you from doing it, of course. But most people just plain do it wrong and don't give themselves the right amount of time to do it. Most of the how-to out there - books, magazine articles, personal trainers - is just flat wrong and leads to injuries and other poor outcomes. People have unrealistic expectations of how fast they'll improve and they just run too damn fast before they're ready, it's that simple.
Anyway, we started him on a program of running. All easy running, starting very small and building up slowly and consistently over months. He took to it well and in April, he completed Bloomsday, a challenging 12K race in Spokane. We were off to a good start, and with that done, we looked for a half marathon as the next goal.
At this point, most of his training was in the high 10-to-low-11-minute-per-mile pace. I found a few race options, and the best one seemed to be the Skagit Half Marathon. It was a good option because it was flat and about an hour from where I live. The problem is that it was only two weeks after Ironman Canada. Being pretty familiar with my recovery curve, that's cutting it very close, but I figured I could manage 10:30 miles at that point (my IM race pace is usually around 8:30) without much trouble.
Dad took to the training very well and made just amazing progress. He fell in love with it and before long was getting up and over 20 miles/week. What was especially good to see was how much he was enjoying the training. It's been great to watch. He started asking for more miles at a faster pace even. Nope, sorry, we're sticking to the protocol.
In early August, I started to become concerned. But not for him - for me! See, as his mileage increased, so did his pace. All of as sudden he was running miles in well under 10 minutes on a regular basis. Oh shit! I knew that if he got much faster, it was going to be a challenge for me to run with him.
Well, he got even faster and stronger. I scheduled his longest training run - 1 hour and 45 minutes - for race day at IMC. He went out and ran the IMC run course while I was on the bike. Afterwards he told me it was no problem. He was ready.
Finally his race day came. We were treated with a just perfect, glorious fall day in the Northwest. We drove up to Burlington for the race, got our stuff ready, and headed to the start line. The gun went off and we started cranking out miles. It's normal for the first few miles to be a little to fast, and this was no different. I had an idea of how fast I thought we could go without getting into trouble and so we did most of our miles at 9:45 pace. He was comfortable at this pace, and so was I. Barely. By mile 9 he was talking about how great he felt, and we even picked it up a bit in the last mile or so, clocking an sub-9 final mile. He finished so strong. I was worked. :)
At 58 years old, less than 6 months from starting running, he comfortably finished a Half Marathon in 2:05, a time that was well faster than his goal. Now we're talking about "what's next." Amazing.
So the title for this post. The whole day was an absolute highlight for me in so many ways. I was so happy for him to have such a great experience out there and to share it with him and to have helped get him to the starting line. Something I won't soon forget...
posted @ Thursday, September 11, 2008 5:12 AM