What my puppy teaches me about growing old

In my adult life, I’ve had periods of a couple of years where my fitness improves in huge leaps, and others where I find myself in a creative rut and a fitness lull. At the moment, I’m riding the crest of another fitness high; eating clean, getting faster, and actually working my way through Tim Noakes’ denser-than-bad-cheesecake “Lore of Running.” Reading this brick last night in preparation for going to bed at 8pm, I got to a section about the aging runner. Noakes says (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Every runner reaches a point where their best days are no longer in front of them. Furthermore, by a certain point, you should mature to a point where your competitive urges have been satisfied. Beyond that, running should be for health and enjoyment, since you're never going to get any faster. There is evidence that every runner has a finite number of training miles in his or her legs. If you love running, cross-training may be a good way to ration the miles remaining to you so that they will last you for the rest of your life.” This was the first time that it ever occurred to me that getting old was something that was happening to me as an athlete (I've been old as a human being since I turned 28).

If you’ve known me for a long time, you know that my relationship with running has followed the same plot arc as When Harry Met Sally, passing through mutual indifference, hate, surrender and acceptance, and eventually unpassionate but comfortable love. For years I also wanted to qualify for the Boston Marathon, but that story followed more of the unrequited circles of the love story between Screech and Lisa Turtle. I would sign up for a race thinking that even though nothing had changed about my training, that this time I would seal the deal. And the marathon (Lisa Turtle) would put up with me for about 15 miles, and then smack me in the face and send me slinking home with no doubt as to what a bumbling loser I was.  

Ten years later, I finally figured it out quite by accident on something like my 20th marathon. This current build-up is something like my victory lap, one more serious serious season where I pull out all the stops to see what I can squeeze out of myself. But when it’s all over, there is no next mountaintop quite as inspiring to justify the level of commitment it would take to get there. A three-hour marathon? Forget it! I would still need to cut another 25 minutes, and the last time I ran that pace in a 5K I puked my guts out at the end. (However, to be fair, a woman in all pink and pigtails finished after me, and when she saw me grabbing my knees and puking up magenta vomit, she said with disgust to her male companion, “That was the girl I was trying to beat!” At which point I let loose with another stream of pink vomit. Which tells you exactly what I think about women who wear too much pink.) Another Ironman? Been there. Done that. Wasn’t fun either time. Go into the stupid far ultra thing? Why? Nothing good happens after your 6th hour of consecutive exercise. Run faster over shorter distances? See the above anecdote about pink vomit for a strong argument against this one.

The Oatmeal just about sums it up.

Lately my fantasies haven’t incuded any podiums, medals, finish line clocks, or trophies in them. Instead, my athletic fantasies have included a log cabin without wifi, a 50-mile drive to the nearest grocery store, and me and my dog going for long trail runs every day for just as long as we feel like. There’s something about running with him that makes me unspeakably happy. Actually, I know exactly what it is that makes me so happy: his dufus grin that he wears the whole time that we’re running - ears back, tongue flopping around, and a doggie grin so big it makes his eyes look all fucked up.  

When I’m with my pooch, I can’t worry about the pace, because sometimes we just have to stop and sniff something. Because I can’t tell if he’s sniffing around to find the perfect pooping spot or just because some wascally wabbit passed by that way recently. There's nothing to do but just stand there and let my heart rate drop and the clock tick away. In this way, my dog has taught me patience.

Then again, sometimes the wascally wabbit himself crosses the trail in front of us, and my dumb dog tears off down the trail dragging me at a 6-minute mile over rocks and roots. I may have the same look on my face that my mother had when she was teaching me to drive on the freeway, but when he does finally slow down and look at me he’s got such an excited look of, “Did you see that?! Did you see it, ma?! I almost caught it!” that my apoplectic heart swells.

Sometimes the wascally wabbit is off in the bushes, and Oscar unexpectedly takes off in a perpendicular line to our intended path. For half a second I have enough time to think, “oh shit, better brace myself,” before the leash around my waist ruptures my kidney while he simultaneously comes boinging back to me when the leash recoils mid-stride. You can’t pace through that kind of thing.

I think that all of this means that I am maturing (or ripening). I can’t imagine a life in which I don’t work out every day, but I think the next challenge will be learning to work out every day without a goal. I wonder what that looks like... I have a feeling it looks like a dufus block-head dog tearing off down the path after a goose or deer with a shit-eating grin on his face, tongue hanging out, and no plan for what he would do once he caught that wascally wabbit except that it will be really fun… and be followed by a really great nap.