Looking Back

Since I started running again I've been showing pretty rapid
improvement. Which I suppose is to be expected going from doing
nothing other than sitting on the couch to running 4 days a week. It
has me looking back on my running during high school. I was decent
but, but far from good. During my best cross country season I think I
was running 17-18 minute 5ks, which was good enough for me to be a
backup at state. During track I ran 52 second 400s and 2:03 800s. That
was good enough to put me on the 4x800 team that finished 7th at
state. I've been wondering, what could I have done if I cared enough
about being a good runner back then to do something about it. All I
did was ran at practice and that was because I ran with a great group
of friends, but my focus was on basketball. Even if I could I wouldn't
change anything though. There is no way I would give up the hours I
spent on my driveway or in the gym playing ball and there is
absolutely no way I would give up our state championship and all the
great memories that came along with it.

I know there is no way to find if I could have broke 2 minutes in the
800 if I just would have trained harder, I'm sure I could have but
that doesn't count for anything. What I do though is see where my
limits are today and that is something I've been thinking a ton about
lately. Can I ran a mile in under 5 minutes? What about a marathon,
can my body take the punishment of training to be able to race for 26
miles? Can I get back down to my high school 5k times, or better? Will
I ever realize there are actually races between the 5k and the
marathon? Basically, I want to find out what my limits are and then
break on through to see what they truly are.

The hardest part about that these questions is that there is no easy
answer. I can't just use Google to see if I can ran fast enough to
qualify for Boston. The only way to answer them is to train and train
some more. So that is what I'm going to do, I'm going to run and I'm
going to find out what I am capable of.