One advantage of becoming a runner in midlife is that I delayed the inevitable connection between age and performance. If a person runs at their peak performance in their 20's and 30's and 40's, they probably have hit their Personal Record somewhere in there.
But since I didn't start running till my late 40's, I had never felt that I had run as fast as I was going to. At my level of fitness, the degree of training was a much more important variable than age.
I call this the Duffer's Paradox.
This last spring, I changed my stride a bit and hit a 2:04 half marathon, and had hopes of even doing a sub four marathon. Not a lofty goal for runners, but to steal an idea from Blake, one goal for the Lion and one for the Ox is tyranny.
But now I find that I may have hit my personal best, and 2:04 in the half will be as good as it gets. I had quite a bit of pain early in the summer, which flared back later on, and it appears that I have stress fractures in my upper legs.
Don't get me wrong, I haven't given up running. But I know the day will come when I have to start thinking of other motivations for running than hitting new personal records.
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