More discoveries in the closet. This from a collection of about 30 t-shirts from races I ran in my running prime. The Charleston Distance Run is 15 miles, including some brutal hills. I loved running it.

So I’ve got shirts from a lot of races. Some of you may remember the Carbide 10k, another really hard race in the hills behind the Tech Center in South Charleston. Then there’s the Poca River 15K along the beautiful Poca River. The 20k from Fayetteville to Oak Hill, again in the rolling hills of West Virginia. The Coonskin Park 10k, maybe the hardest 10k race I’ve ever run. Back then everything was 10k. I went to California one year and ran the Brentwood 10k. That was cool.

But what do I do with all the shirts? Put them back in the box and take them out again in another 30 years? Remember the old days when I was a real runner?

In 1985 (before many of you were born) running was big. There were over 1400 runners in the Charleston Distance Run that year, including the Norwegian legend, Greta Waitz. She won the New York City Marathon nine times, including 1985. And there she was in Charleston. That year I ran the 15 miles in 1:37:50. That’s a little over 6.5 minute miles. Out of over 1400 runners, that was good enough for 160th place. My neighbor across the street, Dave Kline, finished in 1:25:14. Now Dave was a runner. But if I had run that same time in 2019, I would have finished in the top ten. In 2019 there were less than 400 runners.

Times change. Now all the races are 5k. And nobody wants to run hills.

I still do. I may not be as fast as I once was. I’m not interested in the 20-mile training runs it takes to run 15 in a race. I still do a little speed work, because, yeah, I get a kick out of winning the old man’s division.

And the truth is, the longer I can do that, the longer it will take me to get old.