outside of running...

Not to get too runner geek here but to quote the Prefontaine movie, Without Limits, "many consider running to be an absurd pasttime." And honestly, the masses may be entirely right. I mean if you think about it, only a very tiny percentage of the people who have been running since high school end up running in college. Then from there you've got an even smaller amount who decide to run post collegiately. And then you take into account that out of this minuscule pool of people that decide to train seriously after college, there are only going to be a handful of people who ever get sponsored and become professional runners.

So the question that obviously has to be asked is...why the hell am I still running?

As a runner I've never done anything close to exceptional. I was a slightly better than average high school runner, and a less than stellar college athlete. And while I'm definitely in better shape than I ever was (save maybe the first month of my senior year in cross country) in college, and being coached by arguably one of the best coaches in the country/world, what am I going to amount to in terms of running? You don't just magically overnight become a great runner. And as much as running is about the effort you put in, at a certain point it comes down to what you were born with. I guess I just haven't ever found out exactly where that limit is.

Maybe I'm living in a pipe dream scenario, but I keep thinking I've got a lot more in me then I've ever put down in a result in a race. Do I think I'm capable of going under 3:50 in the 1500? Definitely. But I've never done it, and thats another part of running. Until you've done it, its just a thought, a question left out there thats still waiting to be answered.

There's another reason I'm lucky to be running right now. Its the only thing thats keeping me fairly sane. I know that every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, I'll be given a chance to put myself through something that a lot of people wouldn't ever dream of doing. And no matter how screwed up I might be feeling or how many things might not have gone my way, for those few hours it doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. All that matters is that I step on the track and come across the line of every single interval.

First race is next weekend, an 800 at the University of Maryland. I kind of wanted a few people to be there but for a variety of reasons, they can't make it. This is a complete 180 from high school when I would have paid people not to come watch (this was a time in my life where winning or at least coming in the the top 3 in a race wasn't a ridiculous notion at all, weird how kids can be in high school right?) . I guess part of it is I miss people coming to watch me just for the sake of being there and the other part is maybe deep down I'm a bit of a show off ha. Ah well its the first one, its a rust buster, its just to get the feel of being on the track racing again. But I'd be kidding myself if I didn't want to blow the doors of some people.