El Viejo

When I first started running 25 years ago, in my 40s, there was this guy on the indoor track at the fitness center I ran on during cold winter days. He was at least 10 years older than me, probably more, and he would lap me like clockwork no matter what my pace. I used to think, “If only I could run like that guy. If only I could run like him.”

Eventually, over the years, I became that guy, a stronger runner for younger runners to chase, lapping the others in the gym, finding some success in local races. By chance I ran into John fifteen years later during a run in a local forest preserve. Now he looked old. He looked slow. He was slow. He was coming towards me and I waved him down and introduced myself and told him the story, and he laughed…we laughed. “Well you don’t want to be like me now.”

But once again, a few years later, here I am, and I am him again. 

Every few years the photographer David Jaewon Oh asks me to stand still for a portrait when he comes to town to shoot a running event. The first photo is waiting for the start of The Humboldt Mile in June 2018. The second photo, waiting to cheer at the Chicago Marathon in October 2023. There may be more somewhere to fill in the gap, but these are enough for me to react like Winston Churchill did when confronted by painter Graham Sutherland’s famous portrait of him, which Churchill later had his wife destroy. The semi-fictional exchange from The Crown sounds about right: 

Winston:  It is not a reasonably truthful image of me!
Sutherland: It is, sir. 
Winston: It is not! It is cruel!
Sutherland: Age is cruel! If you see decay, it’s because there’s decay. If you see frailty, it’s because there’s frailty. I can’t be blamed for what is. And I refuse to hide and disguise what I see. If you’re engaged in a fight with something, then it’s not with me. It’s with your own blindness.

Yes, well. I would almost rather be called slow than old because at least there’s something you can do about slow, although…now I have no choice to admit, I am El Viejo. And I embrace it, yes I do.

A few months ago one of the faster runners in our crew (if only I could run like her) told me to stop using the word slow when posting on social media, mostly in reference to myself, but really for everyone. We’re so happy to see you out there with us, she said. It’s about the experience and the support and not the pace, she said. She’s right of course, and those are things I already knew. What to do with this competitive fire still left, somewhere down deep, and not a little competitive insecurity: 42 age group awards, want to make it to 50…and in saying that, I’m showing the insecurity of the what ifs…what if I had tried harder in high school, what if I hadn’t sabotaged myself with so much alcohol and tobacco, what if I had started younger and stayed with it, what if I hadn’t gotten sick. My own blindness.

There are only so many days. One of my regrets, and I’m a person who has so very few regrets, is that I didn’t start running marathons sooner, that I waited until I was 61, because surely I could have gone sub 4 or something that never would have been enough. As it is, I’m coming up on 250 races, only one of which was a DNF because I messed up some meds. The list of DNS had been growing because I’ve become smarter about backing off in the face of undertraining mostly due to injury–one of my mantras is to live to run another day–and I’m almost ready to stop counting even as I’m nowhere near ready to stop racing.

Following that mantra, and helped by the reminder from Kim (my sister was named Kim too), this season I accomplished what I set out to do: I ran every race I signed up for except one, which I missed because of COVID, and I hit a modest time goal in my last 5k that indicated to me that I was in fact on my way back and gave me a green light to turn things up for next year. I did cut plans for a couple of fun runs at the end of this year and the start of next because my wife Mary needs to heal a foot issue, and those races would not have been the same without her.

Next spring will be light: the season opener at my 15th Shamrock Shuffle in March (still a little sore at those guys, another story), and a time check at the Ravenswood Run 5k in April. Then it’s getting my daughter married before I pour in the heat of the rest of the schedule, and stress this old body to see if it can take the load of marathon training in 2025. If that happens, great. If not, and I’m back to being a 5k/10k kind of runner, with an occasional half marathon thrown in, that’s great too.

Because now I’m solidly El Viejo, who gets to say things like every day is a gift, every mile is a gift, every step is a gift, every breath is a gift, every start line is a gift, who gets to say things like that and mean every word. And I guess now that’s my gift to you, because my running is really not about me any more. It’s not that my time has passed, it’s that my time means so much more now than to worry about the time to the finish. Living in the moment with all of you, in the crew, in the mid-pack, inevitably in the back of the pack, wherever we may be, that’s where you’ll see El Viejo for a while longer at least. Not in any hurry to be anywhere else anytime soon.

Of course one thing that won’t ever change is my closing mantra:

There may be younger runners. And there may be faster runners. But every once in a while, on a warm summer evening into the setting sun, there is no more magnificent runner, than me.

So, see you all out there in 2024. It’s been a joy and an honor to share the road with you, and always will be. If you call out El Viejo, I’ll answer to it because I own it now, with honor and pride, with appreciation and humility, and with a great deal of gratitude. Thank you for letting me tag along.