Still Running Crazy (and barefoot) After All These Years

My favorite word at times like this: yikes.

Who is this slightly deranged, way-too-smiley, newly minted sexagenarian in the above photo?

Did someone say 60? Yep: summer of 2019 has launched me into a whole new racing category: 60+

What better way to celebrate than put together some haphazard red-white-blue body decorations (aka running kit for any friends across any ponds) and see who else is prancing around in their 60-69 year-old skin?

1st-2nd-3rd place women 60-69

Last Thursday, July 4th, there were nine of us ages 60-69 running the 10th annual Orange Park Acres 10k “Epic Challenge” (out of 219 runners), and I managed to barefoot my way into second place in my (did I mention I just had a birthday?!) new age group.

 

My first mile split (the only one I checked on my watch) was 10:32; as the above results show, I was pretty consistent for the next five miles of windy undulating roads and horse trails through Orange Park Acres, just outside my home town and site of many happy horse-riding memories from my early teen years.

However (and runners LOVE to explain away any perceived less-than-stellar running performance, don’t they?) to say my training the last few months has been sporadic is to make a travesty of the concept of “training,” with the usual excuses (too busy hiking Yosemite and New Mexico and Paria and Grand Canyon and having fun with the grandkids to run much; then there’s that nagging foot pain . . . ) to help soften the blow of realizing I’m just pretty darn ploddy at this point in my life. I’m sure there are snails (granted, they have fewer legs to keep track of) that can move at a 10:26 minutes/mile pace.

What pleased me immensely, though, was that my finish of 1:04:48 was only four seconds slower than when I ran this race two years ago.  Here’s to incremental dwindling legerity!

Thinking of a favorite saying of my physician father: “I may not be good but I’m slow.”

All of which is to say: shouldn’t having the old odometer turn over to 60 give me a free pass to not-so-humble brag that I was the only bleepin’ barefoot runner on a course that coursed over horse poop (Orange Park Acres being an equestrian community and all) and rocks and bark mulch and weed stickers and dust and hills of loose gravelly scree and water crossings and more road apples and blacktop pavement and . . .

Now this is a trail race!

 

Winding through Orange Park Acres on Rollercoaster Trail.

Only first-in-age-group finishers got one of these “lucky horseshoes.” Maybe next year?

But everyone had unlimited access to these delicious filled mini-pies from The Pie Hole in downtown Orange. I ate four . . . coulda had more . . . didn’t want to end up on the floor . . .  [cue drum machine]

I did win (by virtue of hanging around till everyone else left) an award for my silly/awkward/yikes costume . . . not sure if I’m proud of that or not . . .

Costume award winners

OK I’ll own it: I’ll always be a youngest child lookin’ for attention . . .

That was the fun stuff; the angst-y secret as to how I was able to run after nursing a very sore right foot–that mostly only hurt when I ran–for the last month or more?

The Cuboid Whip.

Yeah, it sounds like an 80s dance move (or worse), but it’s a fairly do-it-yourself-able procedure that can put a square little foot bone back in its place . . . resolving, as our whip-smart PT friends like to say, “disruption of calcaneocuboid joint integrity due to recurrent or forceful eversion of the cuboid.”

AND when I say “do it yourself”? Around here that’s always code for “Hey, Steve, can you fix this [name any part of a house or car that can break]”? Being that kind of helpful guy, husband Steve did his best the afternoon before the race in a situation that neither welding or duct tape or gorilla glue or zip ties or welding could fix. (Steve’s an old welder-guy by trade.)

So . . . we watched more than a few cuboid whip videos on YouTube (insert slightly off-color old married people joke here), and then Steve gave it a try. And another. Four unsuccessful whips later, we called off the operation and I hobbled around the rest of the day with my traditional “before-race bad mood” exacerbated by the fact that I had not been able to run more than a few minutes at at time for the last several weeks, but I had “paid good money” (there’s a throwback phrase to a dysfunctional past) for the race and by golly I was gonna run. Dang it.

After dinner, I made one more slightly embarrassed request for another whip-it go-round, to which Steve agreed, although why he would want to subject himself to another bout of “no, whip it harder at the end” when it nothing to do with, you know . . . anyway . . . he’s a good sport after 43 years of dealing with my running-obsessed crankiness, so  . . . he whipped it one more time, and then yelled out, “I felt a bone move.” (Scary thought: if any of this post is ever quoted out of context, our grandkids are gonna think we’re even stranger than they already do . . . )

Anyway, the recalcitrant cuboid had shifted back into place! Maybe I would be able to run the next day.

And I did.

No pain, just major hamstring agony as I hauled my slightly out-of-shape self up all those Orange Park Acres hills.

Hamstring pain? Now that was new. Sigh. Back to the drawing board, which has included reading Chi Running this past week and learning that my uphill technique (and maybe my entire life, according to Chi Master Danny) needs . . .  mmm . . . adjusting.

So I’ll embark on another course of self-improvement and see where it leads. In the meantime: Summer!

Mr. and Mrs. Oriole, some of our neighbors.

More Steve work: a garden full of squash and tomatoes and peppers, oh my.

California natives provide pollinators and bug predators for the veggies.

Baby butternut squash . . .  can’t wait!

Happy Summer Trails!