What's Your Running Potential?

This year, I took up a new pursuit, running. Well actually it's old because I ran some 30 years ago on the high school cross country team at Robinson in San Juan Puerto Rico. What's new about it though is that I now enjoy it. In school I was only after The Varsity Letter. Now I'm 44 and have new incentives like healthiness, stress management and goal setting. I really started up this running thing this past fall and now I am sucked into this sport in a big way! I log my miles, record my times, read articles, watch movies and talk with any unsuspecting soul that may seem mildly interested.

My first goal is to run the local 5k race at our annual summer Catfish Festival in Shoals Indiana. When I started running the course this fall I clocked in at just a bit past 30 minutes. Sizing up the situation, I declared it feasible, with hard work to break into the 25 minute range by July 2007. Well, yesterday I finished with a personal best of 25:05. Not blazing speed but that is knocking on the door of my high school times. That makes me happy especially now that I'm about 30 pounds heavier!

But as I was entering the details of that run in my logbook I started asking this question, "What's my real running potential?" I have set a new goal for the Catfish run at 23:30 (a 95 second improvement on my pb). Is that doable? At one time that was laughable, now it's not. It's not beyond the realm of possibility. Yet now I wonder, can this aging body actually do better than that?

Here's why this sport has charmed me at this stage of life. I am truly learning that I can do a whole lot more than I thought possible. I have heard my wife and friends tell me stuff like that for some time and felt they were just trying to make me feel better. Now I am starting to believe that it was more than stabs at propping my confidence levels- that they really see potential I have not seen in myself.

As a 44 year old who has asked is the best behind or ahead, I have tended to belive the earlier. All that is changing as I lace up my shoes and head out the door to face the course that becomes the proving ground for a preferred future.