Red Light/Green Light

A few years ago I wanted to run fast, push the pace, and see how quickly I could cover large distances.

The same notion fires me up, but I no long have the desire to burn the house down each and every time I line up for a race.

With the seasoned lifters at my noon class, we call this maturity.

When you’re new the game, you can push it hard, make expensive decisions and be able to buffer it off. But as you become more seasoned, you realize the juice isn’t worth the squeeze, and you start making better, more mature training decisions. Something along the lines of, I could do another heavy set of 8, but I don’t need to.

In an effort be more mature in my training, I realized what I wanted more than being fast, was being capable. Meaning, I would rather run a race a little slower, but not have to limp around for 48 hours afterwards. I didn’t want training to disrupt training.

So I focussed on running these long distance races with the idea that, if I want to, I can train tomorrow. I should be in good enough shape that this effort won’t sideline me.

Nothing made me realize how important that was than yesterday. I pulled in the driveway after driving 50 minutes home from a 3 and a half hour race. I was stiff, achy from the drive, dehydrated, hungry and ready to get out of the sun. Elliot didn’t care about any of those things though. He wanted to play red light, green light and run through the splash pad in the backyard. He wanted to chase me, so there was no hiding. Right back to running.

I knew I could have pushed a little harder on the last lap of the race. I knew I could have shaved a little time off, and dug a little deeper. I could have suffered more. But it wasn’t worth it, because being able to get out of the truck and start playing was.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain