songs of experience

A comment from Dave Couper:

I’d been meaning to comment on something from your interview with
Tony Waldrop. Your blog entry about the Gallop & Gorge reminded me
about it. You wrote “… the difference between 26:53 and 29:53 is
world’s apart. I really was in another world at that time in my life
… and she, Joan-Nesbit-the-runner, is alien to me now.”

Compare that with what you quote Tony Waldrop as saying:

“So many years have passed since I was an athlete that I no longer
think of myself as that individual, and it’s almost as if it’s
someone else. I’ve put that part of my life behind me.”

In some ways you are saying very similar things:
“alien to me now” … “almost as if it’s someone else”

That was the one part of what Tony Waldrop said that I could identify
with. My last PR happened more than 21 years ago. I’ve continued to
run and race regularly, but I’m not the same person. I feel so
different from that person that I’m embarrassed when someone asks me
about my PRs. I usually try to mention “recent bests” rather than
PRs, because the recent bests are who I am now. When I was much
faster I never thought of myself as fast … because there were
usually plenty of much faster guys. My placing in races now is often
better than it used to be 20-25 years ago. I don’t think it is just
because South Africa has (or had) many more fast runners, I think
that even in the U.S. there were many more people running relatively
fast than there are now.

By the way, I checked the current Cardinals Track Club race database
but it doesn’t go back as far as 1997, and we didn’t move here until
1998 so I won’t have a newspaper clipping of the 1997 Gallop & Gorge
in my pile of running-related clippings, so I can’t help you remember
your time from that year.

Run happy! (There’s a story behind that expression that I may get
around to telling some day.)

Dave