Opened a time capsule

High school was all about running, and cross country in particular. The team went to and won the Class A State Championships my freshman year but I wasn’t among the top seven who ran. We went to State my sophomore year but didn’t win. My junior and senior year we won. I could reliably knock out an 18 minute 5-k from my sophomore year on and would place top ten at State each year. I pretty much plateaued at 18 minutes and never showed meaningful improvement.

So I was on Athlinks the other day checking someone’s times and thought to search on myself. I had one race result. It was a 5 miler at Stone Mountain in September 1982. I don’t remember it but have a vague recollection. A couple of interesting things about that day.

1. That little 5 mile race of 460 people had Benji Durden and Jeff Galloway at ages 31 and 37, respectively. Durden qualified for the 1980 Olympics Marathon but the athletes boycotted. Galloway was an Olympic marathoner in an earlier Olympics. I forget which one. It must have been 1976. Durden won that day and Galloway came in seventh. Durden worked at Phidipedes which is Galloway’s running store. That’s probably why they both appeared.

2. Something got into me. I ran the five miles in 30:41 and beat my next teammate by nearly 2:30. Clearly I was taking this fun run way too seriously and they were not.

3. Our coach ran and finished in a surprising 34:27, outpacing all but two of the team members. Turns out he was only 25 years old. I would have guessed he was pushing 40.

Sad I don’t remember that day. It’s the sort of day you look back on fondly.

In other news, I did a long run today and completed 10 kilometers for the first time in this era. The time was a disappointing 63 minutes but it’s progress. I didn’t take a walk break the first 5k and that’s a first.

And after being out of town and watching my diet this week, I dropped to 169 pounds. That’s a BMI of 25.1. I’ve lost 49 pounds since last fall and I’m two pounds away from going from obese with a BMI of 32.3 to a healthy weight with a BMI under 25 in less than a year.

I met a Boston finisher this week. I’d guess his BMI is close to 20 and I feel like I need to lose at least another 20 pounds. So the dieting will continue for a few more months. I’m really looking forward to running with fuel in the tank. Too many days I feel flat.