But you can try, or you can make a halfhearted attempt.
I actually had a decent summer of racing. I jumped into a few races and won at least three smaller events. That means I also won first place in my age group. I also set post-surgery PRs on every time trial I ran, except one. The fail came today, but I'm still feeling OK about it. Keep in mind that none of this is very exciting. It just means that my slow times somehow beat out other runners on particular days.
Considering how windy it was this morning, it probably wasn't the best idea to go run on the CU cross country course. Despite feeling like I was jogging at times and running in place against the wind at other times, I put in 28:55 minutes of some kind of effort. The fastest time other than the race I ran there, which was a 27 something, was 28:35 last year. At the time, I felt pretty good about it. Even though I was only 20 seconds slower today, I feel like a slacker.
I know that dodging dogs and people and having to be perhaps overly cautious regarding where I place my feet doesn't help me run fast, but I do like the course. Today, I actually felt relatively strong, but, unfortunately, it didn't translate into any kind of spectacular speed.
The main thing to celebrate is that I'm not facing any upcoming surgeries, and I'm running. It's not always pain free and it's most often lopsided and wonky, but it's still much more pleasurable to run without intense pain. Sometimes I look back and wonder how I managed with some of the injuries I had.
In other unrelated news, I'm still learning that I don't have to feign friendship with people who treat me and others badly. I'm always floored when someone does something shitty and then tries to turn around and make the person he or she shit on feel like trash for having a reaction to the bullshit. I'm also not happy with people who compulsively lie, and it seems quite often the people who treat others like crap are the same ones who lie. Yeah, I don't have to take that.
