Technically, the year isn’t over yet, even if it feels like it’s lasted for approximately a decade already. Most notably, there is still one more weekend to go, which would normally mean I could squeeze in another race.
However, that will not be happening. I don’t know when it will happen again, actually, because by now it is just a stupid waste of money for me to participate in races. I may be accustomed to low ferritin levels, but as any attempts to raise it seem to be having the opposite effect, I’ve come to a point where I feel knocked on my ass all day, every day. I’m not going to stop running, because I don’t feel any less crappy that way; but it’s one thing to go slog around the neighborhood for free like the big fat useless blob you are, and another entirely to pay to do that. So.
On that note, I can recap the year now, since nothing else will happen in the next eight days to change any of it. In summary, I fell miserably short of my goals in shorter distances multiple times; I surprisingly ran a few PRs in longer distances. The italicized times are still from 2020 time trials. Which means that, yes, I failed to run my fastest-ever 10K, but officially, I didn’t. (I also didn’t run a 4-mile race this year. So that’s excusable, even if the only thing it’s excusing is my failure to fail at something else. Ditto the 30K.)
Mile: 5:49 –> 5:42
5K: 19:46 –> 19:18
3.35 miles: 22:55
4 miles: 26:46 –> 26:12
5 miles: 33:56 –> 32:47
10K: 41:47 –> 41:10 –> 41:19
15K: 1:13:12 –> 1:05:12 –> 1:05:09
10 miles: 1:07:49 –> 1:06:55
Half marathon: 1:29:52 –>1:28:52
30K: 2:14:14
Marathon: 3:09:28 –> 3:08:09
I suppose this just proves what I always knew: I am far better at longer distances than shorter ones. If I can run a 3:08 marathon and not feel totally wrecked in the process, I shouldn’t have such difficulty running a sub-6 mile or a sub-20 5K… yet here we are. It really, really messes with the dysmorphic voices in my head, because somehow up there it makes sense that body fat can propel you to respectable finish times in longer races, but not in shorter ones. And once those voices get going, there is absolutely no stopping them; they are having an absolute field day with this ferritin situation, because obviously that’s just an excuse to cover for the fact that I really am nothing but a useless charlatan.
Yeah. The mental space was not a good one in 2021, and that’s even accounting for the fact that I did somehow scrape together some PRs. I can’t even imagine what will happen in 2022, when managing that seems highly improbable.
I’m really kind of terrified.
Running Break 