This was an interesting year. As a late bloomer, the past five years have been my relative best. I set my time and mileage PRs decades ago, but as an age group runner these have been good years.
With two weeks and no more races here's how it went. I'll be at 2,800 miles by the end of the month and maybe just a bit over 3,000 if you add in some XC skiing as cross training. This has been about average. In the AK years I'd run about 2,000 and ski a 1,000, since 2015 have run more skied less.
Competitively, oof, mixed bag. On paper it doesn't look bad, but if I were a sponsored athlete whose salary is based on performance, well I'd get a reduction or cut from the program. The sponsors are pretty ruthless.
That said, I'm not sponsored so it doesn't matter. I'm also at the end of my five-year age group, so you kind of expect a drop off (unless you are one a million, like a couple out there). I did get one 90% age graded result, half marathon in March, and because of that got a nomination for the USATF state association runner of the year award. However, three other guys also scored big, bigger than I did, so likely third runner up.
Otherwise, for my age group in the mile was ranked 4th US, 7th world (most of the world doesn't do the mile but 1500 m, I'm more like 8th and 50th there). Top 5 or 6 in the US half marathon (masters rankings has me at 2nd but there were some faster times at New Bedford and NYC Half this year). And in the marathon I ran two at 3:00 and 3:01, which is top 5 in the US and top 20 in the world according to the Abbott World Marathon Majors rankings (must do two in a year for that ranking list, so there will be faster single effort racers). So shoot, pretty solid.
However, fell short in two important categories. Wanted to help our team win the USATF Grand Prix road/xc championship (best five out of eight races across the country over the year), and wanted to break 3:00 in the marathon. The team thing was particularly bitter, we led the series all year but were short handed for the penultimate and deciding race, and only finished 3rd there, and thus ended up in second place. There is a lot of would coulda shoulda there. And that sort of led to some infighting on our team in the following weeks, which was very unpleasant and made me want to quit the whole thing.
The marathon. Oh man. I'm trying to get that five decades sub 3. First sub 3 was in the early 80s and and have been close on three occasions in the 2020s, 3:02, 3:00, and 3:01. Posted my results here earlier this year. That 3:01 last month was particularly tough to take and I'm just 'getting over it' now.
In addition to these the ups and downs, just grateful to be able to run--can't take health for granted--and to have the opportunity to travel more than I have in the past to go to these events. New age group next year, should be some fun.
How did your year go? What are you looking forward to next year?
