Of course, at midnight Wednesday the calendar flipped not only to a new month, but a new year.
A year I am excited about from our running perspective. This isn’t going to be a post about what our goals are going to be for 2020. If you have read through this blog enough, you know the goal Ryan will try to achieve at the OneAmerica 500 Festival Mini Marathon on May 2. I do have one personal goal and that’s in our race on July 4th at the AJC Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta, Georgia. I am keeping that one close to the chest and only telling a couple of people.
We have two other races set up for the fall – the Coach Hathaway Memorial in September and last night I registered us for the CNO Financial Monumental Half Marathon in November.
The unique thing about this year’s schedule is there are no 5ks. We have the two mainstay half marathons that we will mainly focus on during the year. The other two races – Peachtree and Hathaway – are both 10ks. The Peachtree Road Race is a bucket list for me. As I said in my last post, it works out perfectly for us with my work schedule. The Coach Hathaway race has two distances – 5k and 10k. I think it will be a better test for Ryan to run the 10k. It will allow us to see where he’s at in his training with just over a month to go before the Monumental Half.
Not only is the Peachtree Road Race a bucket list event for me, it’s also a chance for us to visit with family on both my wife and my sides. I have looked forward to running Peachtree ever since my Aunt Lee and Uncle Bill moved just south of Atlanta a few years ago.
We really enjoyed running the Coach Hathaway race last September at Southport High School. It was nice to reconnect with my second-grade teacher Mrs. Hathaway. We also like the story behind the MARBLE they give to the age-group winners. This year instead of getting blue ones for winning our age groups in the 5k, we’ll look to earn them in the 10k.
The Monumental has become our goal fall race. We take pride in that weekend because the races along with the events surrounding them have become a fall tradition showcasing “Hoosier Hospitality.” It’s another example showing why Indianapolis is THE Racing Capital of the World!
We also take pleasure in hosting friends that come from out of town to race. We relish in meeting up with our running friends throughout the Central Indiana running community that we likely haven’t seen since the 500 Mini. It’s also fun to see those runners who are “business-like” at the expo and on race day. They are the runners who come to Indianapolis on a mission mainly to obtain that ultimate Boston Marathon Qualifying Time. I tease on my twitter feed that it seems like a remote Boston Marathon Expo has broken out with all the runners wearing their Boston Marathon “Celebration” jackets.
This year, instead of our regular post-race party, we will host a pre-race-pasta dinner the night before Monumental. Everyone that attended last year’s party seemed to think it would be a better fit for the weekend. My wife tends to agree and well since she’s the boss…
After our break, I mentioned in my last post Ryan decided to forgo running track this spring. He told us he wanted to dedicate all of his effort into training for the 500 Mini and breaking his elusive goal once and for all. The decision was completely his own.
Sometimes as we cool down from our runs Ryan and I will be goofy. OK, I’ll be the silly one. I’ll usually take my phone or lately since we have been running in the dark my Knuckle Lights and pretend it’s a microphone. I’ll begin doing the world’s worst Howard Cosell impersonation. Although I call myself “Coward Hosell.” I’ll begin doing the interview and asking Ryan questions about that day’s run. As we continue to walk back to our house, I’ll also talk about the upcoming race and how training is going. Yes, sometimes I’ll kid him about Jordan and watch his face get as red as the band on his Garmin.
There are times I wish I’d pay the extra on WordPress to be able to post videos so you could be entertained and see what I am talking about.
We had finished our run on Monday – a 6.2-mile run on Mullinix Road that according to those in the know emulates what the course will be like at Peachtree in July. I took my phone out and went into my “Coward Hosell” gimmick. I asked Ryan what he thought of the run we completed. He replied he was pleased with the run and enjoyed running the hills and yelling “Charge!” as we ran up the big hill of Mullinix. I asked him a couple of more questions and then probed him about why he chose to focus primarily on running the Mini in May instead of running track. He answered, “The races in track are too short.”
During the brief stint Ryan ran for Indy Genesis, it was good for both of us to go our somewhat separate ways. It allowed him to interact and compete with other runners his age. As I ran alone, I focused on my own running and to see if I could set some new personal records – primarily my PR in the half marathon, which I crushed at the Valpo Half in October of 2018. I also concentrated on my MBA classes during this time.
Last spring after I completed my MBA, I stopped running in the mornings when I noticed the times of Ryan’s runs weren’t matching the times Coach Ben wanted. Remember Ben was no longer coaching for Indy Genesis, but he was putting the plan together for Ryan to train for the 500 Mini. There was no one else on the Indy Genesis team running the mileage Ryan was at the practices. I began running with Ryan at the practices to pace him to the desired times. The approach worked as Ryan came close to his ultimate goal time at the Mini last May.
During those evening runs in the spring last year, it made me realize one thing – I MISSED US!
I missed asking Ryan to recite his mathematical tables or quizzing him on study questions in other classes my wife wanted him to work on as we ran. I remembered how fun it was for us to pull practical jokes on each other as we ran. Yes, I was glad to have our game of playing “Slug Bug” when we would see Volkswagen Beetles drive by us.
As training winds down for an upcoming race – usually the 500 Mini or Monumental – people will ask me, “What’s your own goal time for the race?” with an emphasis on own. They are somewhat surprised when I respond that I don’t have a time goal for myself. “I’m past the point of setting my own goal times. This is about getting Ryan to his and nothing else.”
When we run in the local races, I have no problem leaving Ryan as I have at the Sparkler Sprint or last year at the Coach Hathaway Memorial Race – where I finally went sub-20 in a 5k. The Mini and Monumental are different. There are too many runners and too many variables that could happen if I left him.
At the 500 Mini last May, when I suddenly fell apart and had nothing left to stay with Ryan, I could tell he debated on staying with me or continuing on to the finish by himself. It wasn’t going to be fair for me to have him stay. Up to that point, Ryan had executed the race plan designed by Ben to perfection. It would be only fitting for him to try and finish it and crush his own PR.
As I held back tears, my voice cracking, and rain drops beginning to feel harder and colder as they hit me, I told him to go and stay with the pack of runners we had been with since we left the Indianapolis Motor Speedway part of the course. I was quite pleased there were officials from the 500 Festival who knew Ryan and allowed him to stay at the finish line and wait for me.
Which brings us to the question – “Where are the Runnin’ Rueffs as the new year begins?
To answer that question, we are gradually building the mileage back up. Ben is putting the training plan together as we prepare to start training for the 500 Mini. Ryan has joined me in the IronStrength sessions after easy runs and appears to enjoy it.
Still looking back at Monumental, one of the aspects I think we are going to change is our pace for the easy runs. During the training for last year’s 500 Mini we ran and didn’t care about the pace. For our Monumental on our easy runs I wanted us to concentrate more on running our “sexy” pace. The status quo is to run your easy runs anywhere from a minute to two minutes slower than your race pace. Even the world’s fastest marathoner, Eliud Kipchoge, has said to go at a snail’s pace for him of over nine minutes a mile on his easy runs.
We are going back to just running and forgetting about pace on the easy-run days. I’ll let Ryan dictate the pace and we’ll go from there and see what happens. I think because of his autism, maybe it is best this way because of how he registers it from a muscle-memory standpoint.
As you can see, we are excited about the races and running. In the words of Stephanie Bruce, we plan to “go for it” in 2020.
Rueff Report 