The Excitement of Changing Things Up – iRunFar – GWC Mag

I could write this story about many topics, as it’s really about all the good that goes with trying something new, going in a new direction, or otherwise changing gears. There’s excitement. There’s also excitement in its alter ego: fear. There’s growth. There’s failure.

I could be talking about my adventures in fly fishing. I could be talking about learning new roles here at iRunFar. Or, I could be talking about running. Running fast(er-ish), to be specific.

I guess it all started last November when I traveled back home to where I grew up in New Jersey and jumped into a slightly-short-of-five-kilometers cross-country race along with a bunch of family. Things were spicy off the start line with kids sprinting, high schoolers going out hard, and some of the nearly 1,000 others being a bit over exuberant. I was aware that I, too, was going out too hot, but didn’t want to get stuck behind loads of people when they blew a cylinder a few minutes later.

To make a long story short, I somehow kind of stuck it. The course was short, but I averaged 6:16 per mile for 2.94 miles. That’s a large contrast to my normal 10-minute-per-mile pace, which occasionally goes a hair under nine-minute pace, slogging around the roads of Silverton, Colorado, where I live.

There are lots of reasons why I’ve not tried to run fast for a long time. As is the case for so many runners, I’ve trended toward longer, slower races and outings over the years. I had my fill of sharp and fast training through high school, college, and the years that followed. I usually live at 9,300 feet in elevation with most runs going up from there. Most importantly, I’ve been increasingly slowed, in many ways, by my bum Achilles.

With all that as background, that fast(er) Thanksgiving Day effort got me thinking of what I might be able to run for some shorter distances if I actually did a little faster training. On top of that, to do my faster training, I’d have to keep working on rehabilitating my Achilles, restrengthening my lower kinetic chain, and otherwise get to improving many of the bits of my running that I’ve let atrophy due to the cocktail of pain, fear, and dysfunction said injury has consistently served up for a few decades.

So, here I sit in Wanaka, New Zealand, where we’ve been staying the last several months, having run some intentionally harder efforts in the three-to-six-mile range of late, finally having run strides at the end of at least four runs the past fortnight, and even having run a 5k time trial a few Saturdays ago.

Last November, I did have dreams of setting a sub-18-minute 5k goal for 2024, but a 20:40 time trial last week suggests otherwise. In the end, the time itself doesn’t matter. It’s all the fitness, health, and enjoyment that I hope comes from the journey of trying to run faster.

Ok, time to get out of this chair, throw on some shoes, and find a little speed.

Call for Comments

• How have you shaken up your running in recent years?
• Ever dip back into faster running after a long break?

[Author’s Note: Since writing this essay, I ran my first Parkrun — these are free weekly 5ks held around the world! — on the shores of Lake Wanaka and managed 20:20 for 5k cross country.]