Cowboy Hazel

My grandpa died when I was in second grade, so there's not a whole lot that I remember about him. There were, however, two things he used to always tell me that have stuck with me since childhood. The first was, Never eat watermelon seeds or a watermelon will grow inside your belly. That's how I got so big. The other, which he would often say when I was whining that he had beat me at checkers yet again was, Always play against someone who's better than you. That's how you will improve. You don't gain anything by winning over an easy opponent.

That second saying comes to mind when I look back on all the people I've been able to run with over the past couple years. I was thinking about it the other day and realized that every runner that I've trained with here in New York has been a faster, better runner than me. And, I believe that a lot of my successes over the past year have come from being able to follow in their footsteps (pun intended).

There were the runs in Central Park last summer where I was focused on nothing but trying not to puke while keeping up with Sarah and Baker, the long runs with Antonio where the pace was intense but I'd try to smile and keep up so he wouldn't know how hard I was working, and then, of course, the impromptu speed sessions with Sarah along the Hudson where we'd pick targets off in the distance and race to them. They all pushed me more than any running on my own could ever do.

But, it's not just in pushing intensity that running with veterans helps, but also in becoming a smarter runner. Yesterday morning, I headed out for a 15 miler in Central Park with one of my Vermont teammates, Jeff. It was the first time I'd run with him and I was nervous about keeping up as he is way faster than me. I was thrilled to hear him say that it was going to be a slow easy pace, 8:00 or slower the whole way.

We started and the pace seemed aggravatingly sluggish. I kept lurching forward, then throwing on the brakes, much like a 15-year-old learning to drive. We were chatting about a whole plethora of topics and eventually I was able to slow down and settle into a groove. Meanwhile, Jeff was keeping us on pace like clockwork. 8:04, 7:49, 8:00, 7:54, 7:53, 8:00, etc... all the way through mile 12.

What had been annoyingly slow pace at first soon became a struggle for me to maintain as the heat and humidity set in. By the time we reached the last half lap of the park, I was so exhausted, I didn't even notice that he turned up the speed. Mile 13 was 7:45, 14 was 7:37, and then we did the last .87 at a 7:05 pace.

When I got home and saw the numbers, I was thrilled – Even though it's always my goal to take it easy and then speed up at the end, this was the first long run in my life that I actually did. Of course, if I hadn't been running with Jeff, I would have probably started at 7:30s or so, gotten to mile 4 or 5, hit the wall, and slowed down to a crawl as always.

So, lessons of the day: 1.) Run with better runners and learn from them. 2.) An annoyingly slow pace at the start of a long run will not be annoyingly slow later on. And 3.) Don't eat watermelon seeds.