Competing with Yourself

By Michele Laughing-Reeves

The alarm goes off at 5:30 am, a quick visit to the bathroom. You change into your running clothes, the ones you laid out the night before in anticipation of the morning’s temperature. You lace up your running shoes, reset your stopwatch, and then tiptoe out of the house. In the morning stillness, you stretch your muscles, take one last big yawn, and head East putting one foot in front of the other. At an elevation of more than a mile, the air is cool, but it will soon warm when the Sun rises. Despite the occasional traffic noise, coyote howls, and cows calling their little ones, you only hear your breathing and your shoes hit the Earth. One-mile flows into each successive mile, and before you realize it, it is time to head home. You feel strong, so perhaps you’ll run further tomorrow. This is how you choose to start your day.

People run or jog for different reasons, and if you’re not on a cross-country team, your reasons are usually personal. People take up distance running to lose weight, to be healthier, or to be stronger. Then, there’s the rest of us who run for fun, to compete, or to reach a personal goal. Long distance running, like 10Ks and marathons, is a sport in which you are competing against yourself. Let’s be honest, when we sign up for a 10K or a half-marathon, we register and pay the fee knowing full well that we won’t win any prize money. We show up to run a long, long way to prove to ourselves that we can do it, or that we can do it in a certain length of time. During the entire race, we are focused on our own pace, our own breathing, our own hydration, our own time, and not on other runners, especially the elite runners.

Avid runners are considered crazy for being so discipline in their running routines, why else would a person wake up so early to run 6 miles in the cold, right? Some runners prefer early morning runs, like me, while others will run later in the day. The level of “craziness” depends on what type of runner you are. The crazy-talented runners are those that are born runners, who run to win races and become legends. These are the athletes who are born knowing who Steve Prefontaine was and could match his passion for running on any given day. The talented runners may have a natural gift, but they still train as hard as athletes of other sports. Winning a marathon, like Boston or New York, is very difficult, and very fewAmericans have won either in the past decades. American Des Linden won the women’s Boston Marathon on a rainy April morning in 2018, a goal she set more than a decade earlier. The Olympic marathon gold medals are rarer for Americans. Frank Shorter

Des Linden beat me in this race; it was an honor. My last half-marathon before the Pandemic.

was the last American to win the men’s marathon back in 1972—50 years ago! Joan Benoit won the women’s marathon in 1984 in Los Angeles, making her the only American women to do so. The only Olympic gold medal won by an American in the 10K race was Billy Mills in Tokyo in 1964. Mills, an Oglala Sioux from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, surprised the world with his down-thestretch “kick” to upset Olympic favorites Ron Clarke of Australia and Mohammed Gammoudi of Tunisia. Mills has always emphasized the importance of inspiration in anything you do, including running, and to have a healthy support system, for him it was his family and the Marine Corps.

Perhaps the craziest of all are the runners who compete against themselves. Crazy in the sense that they make a conscious choice to train for months, pay the registration fee, and pay to travel to the race. Most runners are of this type, the ones who run a race they have no chance of winning and have the goal to finish 6.2 miles or 13.1 miles or 26.2 miles or to beat a time. They also have family and friends to support them. But for those who do it alone, there are always plenty of encouraging cheers and signs along the way. It all starts with the first steps and getting past the muscle soreness of the first week—and start local. A lot of runners started with the Just Move It fun run series, and now it’s already thirty years later. JMI promotes physical activities, like jogging and walking, to be a healthier community. Because JMI is non-competitive, it allows participants to enjoy being outdoors, the camaraderie, and the satisfaction of completing a 3.1-mile run/jog/walk. Those are the same benefits of running a 10K or longer race, except you pay an entry fee. There are several local races, like the Shiprock marathon/half marathon back in May, that attract world-class runners from around the country. New Mexico’s high desert and steep mountains make it a great training location for elite athletes who will compete at lower elevations and on flat paved courses.

However, most of the local races have trail courses and not road (pavement) courses. These courses are hilly and will have frequent elevation changes throughout. The Narbona Pass Classic 5K and 10K courses are famous for their steep inclines and declines. Completing either course means that you’ve conquered “Backbreaker Hill” and that is worth bragging about. The Ceremonial 5K and the Squash Blossom Classic also have trail courses, which means your training should include some trail runs. Today is always a good day to start a running routine or to start training for a destination race, like the Rock n’ Roll or Ragnar series. As experienced runners and medical professionals will advise, start slow and short and then work you way up to a realistic distance and goal, the point is to enjoy the benefits of running as you strive toward your goal.

When you find yourself, tomorrow or some morning down the road, waking up before the rooster, lacing up your favorite pair of running shoes, and setting your watch, you will definitely know that it was your crazy idea to do this. But don’t worry, there are approximately 60 million Americans who also have the same crazy idea. More curious is the fact that no one individual runner has stopped running after one race. Once you’ve ran your first 5k, you’ll want to try a 10K, and then another. You’ll also realize that you are your biggest competition, that is how PRs (personal records) are achieved. Like Billy Mills, find your inspiration and support—and let the “runner’s high” do the rest.