I Did It. Takeaways From My First Track Race in 40 Years.

Last night I ran a mile in 5:45. For a 58-year-old man who hadn’t raced on a track in over forty years, that’s a respectable time. In fact, age-graded by World Masters Athletics, it puts me at a 77%, which is a “regional” or “competitive masters” class outcome.  Still, I have some disappointment. But before I get to that, I want to tell you what happened first, because it wasn’t disappointment at all. It was joy, and it showed up long before the gun went off.

I’ve coached track off and on for two decades. Middle school kids, mostly, teaching them how to find and hold a pace, how to push through discomfort.  I love that work. But last night I got to stand at the start line as an athlete, not a coach, for the first time in over forty years. I forgot how different that feels.  The specific nervous energy of it being your own body on the line, your own race to run or ruin. I’d honestly underestimated how much I’d enjoy just being back in that role. Whatever happened with the time I am really glad I gave myself that experience.

And I wasn’t alone out there, which is its own story.

Curriculum Night Dad, who I’ve written about before showed up just to watch. My massage therapist, who’s worked on my wife and me for about ten years, and who I credit more than I probably say out loud for keeping this aging body capable of running at all, came too. My wife and both my daughters were there. My youngest, who was on the last middle school team I coached, told me afterward she was “so impressed” that I put myself out there and actually did the things I’ve spent years telling other people’s kids to do. A friend of mine, a former Nike-sponsored 800m runner I sometimes train with, offered to come before work ran long and kept him away.  He wasn’t asked, he just offered. And he texted me this morning:

That means a lot coming form a guy who used to get paid to race by the best in the business.

None of them had to be there. And it’s not lost on me that they probably wouldn’t have been, if I hadn’t spent the last couple of years doing the work on myself, on how I show up for the men and family around me.  The stuff this newsletter is actually about. The relationships that put people in the stands last night didn’t happen by accident. That’s Connect, not as an abstract pillar of a newsletter, but as something that materialized as actual humans being trackside on a week night for me. I am grateful for it.

Now for the race itself. There were so many runners, they held two heats and a meet official put me in the second row of the one-mile starting curve. I had told my family I would try to run at least a 5:40 mile, starting with even splits of 85 seconds each, then see what was in the tank for the final lap.

My first lap was close to perfect: In spite of starting in the second row, shortly after the gun, two teens in front of me jump out fast, leaving an opening lane one behind them. So, I stepped into lane one during the first curve and immediately locked in. I know what 85 seconds feels like and I nailed it. At the end of lap 1, the clock said “85:00.00.” I was controlled, on pace, exactly what I said I would do. 

I wanna pause because that in itself is kind of a big deal. To not race in 40 years, jump onto the track in a crowded start, navigate traffic and lock in is very difficult.  So, yay me!  But then in the second lap, with no actual physiological reason, things fell apart.  I got scared. Not of the pain.  Decades of distance training have taught me pain is manageable and to be expected. This was something else. I’ve written before that in my training for this, I’d hit around 1000 meters and feel my body just stop moving oxygen to my legs, everything shutting down to a crawl, no warning. It happened enough in workouts that some part of my brain decided to just not have that last night, especially with people watching. So I backed off a smidge. My rhythm got off.  Instead of being unconscious, which is often the case when I’m running, I was very conscious of things being “off.” Not because my legs or lungs said no.

By the time I found my rhythm again, it was the last lap. I was five or so seconds off 5:40 pace, and I told myself I might still be able to make it up. Yet as soon as I surged, I held back again. I wasn’t hurting, my brain just said no, until the final 200 meters, when I finally let go. But it was too late to matter.

There were five seconds sitting on the table. Probably a lot more than that, to be honest.  I felt like I ran a hard workout, not a race.

Now, don’t think you know where this is going because “man is hard on himself, learns self-compassion, grows” is an easy way to wrap up a newsletter.  But life isn’t that tidy.

I feel several things at once, none of them canceling the others out. I’m proud I finally stood on that line as an athlete. I’m moved, genuinely, by who showed up and why. And I’m disappointed because I know what I left out there. All of that is true at the same time. I think people have a hard time holding multiple things as true at once, but that’s the case for me today.

I’ve written before about why I’m even doing this. In 2005, at 37, I ran a 4:39 road mile in Boston almost by accident – I jumped in as a side event during marathon training, found myself in the lead, and used a high schooler’s kick to push me to the win. That race told me something I couldn’t unlearn: in twenty years since my 4:36 in 10th grade, I’d only lost three seconds. I’d walked away from track at 16 without ever finding out what I was capable of.  And I had proof I’d wasted two decades not asking the question. I promised myself I’d stop doing that. I’ve run purposefully ever since, but this year I traded ultramarathon training for mile training, at 58, on a body that’s spent five years learning to go slow and long instead of fast and short.

I also wrote back in March about affective forecasting, the research showing humans are terrible at predicting how achievement will feel, that gold medalists crash and bronze medalists celebrate. Last night tested that in a way I didn’t expect, because the hardest part wasn’t the outcome. It was catching myself, in real time, choosing the safe version of an effort I said I wanted to make. That is the hard part that I will spend a lot of time thinking about in the coming days and weeks.

I can use the experience for myself and the kids I coach.  Because it’s one thing to see someone else feel something scary in their body and quietly negotiate with themselves down to a slower pace. I’ve usually had something to say to them about it. Turns out knowing the lesson and living it in your own body is not the same skill. But I also got to hear my own kid tell me she was impressed I finally did the thing myself.

So now I’ve got a real question, ten months out from when this track meet series comes back around: What do I do now?

My heart wants the 100-miler I’ve been thinking about for a few years now. Choosing that would mean the grueling, grinding effort I already know how to give, instead of the raw nerve I apparently don’t have yet at mile pace.

Or, what happens if I don’t walk away from the fear I just met? A year of real mile training. Achilles work, strength work, actually learning to sit inside that 1000-meter moment instead of flinching from it.  And then coming back to this same track to ask the question again, on purpose. No guarantee the Achilles cooperates. No guarantee the fear resolves. Just the chance to find out.

I don’t know which one I’m picking yet. But I know this much: whatever I choose, I want to be the kind of person that people will offer to come watch.

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