News from Delco Road Running Club

This thought came to me after this year's Broad Street Run: I plan to run this race every year as one of the regular events that get me off the couch to train and challenge myself.

This year, the date seemed to come up fast. I didn't feel I had trained sufficiently for a 10 mile run with 30,000 of my closest friends. Still, I was OK with the idea since I had been cross training - spinning and swimming - through the winter. Ten miles would be no big deal.

I had no real goal for the race; my plan was to just get to the end in a little better time than the year before. Fortunately for me, I had a few things to rely on. One, I train each year in the heat of the summer for the Baltimore Marathon in October. Two, because I have run 26.2 miles before, 10 miles should be JUST a training run.

The fact that I've run a marathon is important to my story because going the distance - 26.2 miles - at your race pace tells you things about yourself you can't learn at shorter distances. The biggest lesson, in my opinion, is how to manage your physical effort: how fast or slow to go to complete a race of any distance.

Another lesson is how to adjust to what comes next. You can feel good - really good - for many of the miles. Then you may feel really bad for others, mostly the last few (or, in a marathon, the last six).

With Broad Street, I really tweaked my hamstring in the first half-mile of the race. In fact, I'm still recovering. It was my own fault because I did no stretching beforehand, and I went out way too fast. And yet I didn't stop; it was never an option.

I quickly slowed down and went into my last-six-miles marathon mode. Now, if I had trained for this race and never run any farther than 10 miles, I still might have finished, but it would not have been pretty. Because of what I learned from all my marathon training, I was able to manage a funny stride and to deal with a hot and humid 80-degree day.

I have had training runs I'll always remember because I had tears running down my face (thank goodness for sunglasses). There was one 16 miler in particular where the last two miles hurt so much I wanted to quit. The first time I ran I was 260 pounds - 50 pounds heavier than I am today - so everything hurt. Now I fight with myself to get out there and do it again; it's a struggle to maintain the will to train.

Yet, I will continue to train. Going the distance - becoming a marathoner - has given me an awareness of my capabilities and what I can handle.

My advice to all runners is to try it once, and you will see what I mean.

By the way, my time at Broad Street was the same as last year - 1:47 - even with my cranky hamstring.

Virgil Whitsett