A possible explanation

You can add me to the list of former competitors that still have a pair of spikes in the closet over a decade later. I've thought about those spikes from time to time in the last 12 years. Looking back, I was as far from putting those bad boys on in 1999 as I am in 2009. You couldn't have told me that back then.

There is one trait I possess that has kept those old Nikes around: unreasonable optimism. In order to be a competitive runner in the first place, you have to have a lot of unreasonable optimism. No reasonable person would put themselves through what competitive distance runners do to themselves. There is a lot of ridiculous optimism that goes into a running career. All runners are guilty of making goals that are a long reach for themselves. Also, at the end of that career, if the runner actually recognizes that its the end, they have complete belief that they could have been or actually were better than the PRs that go in their running logs.

So, some of the optimism has faded over the years. Repeated achilles injuries can do that to you. However, I can't count the number of times that I have said to myself that I need to really give it another shot.

In order to deal with my achilles injuries, I have found that I can run really far (I have run a couple of ultras). However, I no longer aspire to run really fast. I guess if we are looking for comeback stories on this blog, my storyline will be my comeback from running a few miles slowly to running a lot of miles a little less slowly.