She turned 50 last June and felt a significant change in the universe when her internal clock moved from 49 to 50. If she was captain of the starship Enterprise, we would have just come out of some worm hole into an alternate time zone where days pass much quicker, and your hair turns gray and wrinkles appear overnight.
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| Earlier this year, Liz traveled to Mexico looking for the Fountain of Youth. She found a beautiful hat instead. |
I had no such shift in reality. When I turned 50, I decided to grow a beard to mark my age in pictures that will live on for years to come. The idea was to grow it for a year , but now I've decided to mark the decade, not just my 50th year. That way when I hit 60, I'll shave it off and look ten years younger. I can start my fifties all over again.
Turning a certain age will make you re-evaluate your life and in doing so make you realize that you need another 50 years to do all the things you haven't gotten to yet. That means you have to stay healthy and find a way to do it without going broke.
Staying healthy is never an easy thing, especially when you get older. Years ago, Liz and I took an exercise class called Combat Endurance Training. If it sounds tough, that's because it was. Created by some marine workout junkies, our instructor had us doing things to our bodies that only masochists would enjoy. After about three years, we got tired of our internal organs feeling sore all the time, so we quit.
This year, as a result of turning 50, she teamed up with a friend from Trane company to work with a personal trainer. As part of her training, she has been challenged to try things like eating vegetarian for a week, doing 100 push ups each day for a week, and running a 5K race. Having successfully conquered the first two challenges, she enlisted my "expertise" in preparing for the Festival Grandad, Three Rivers 5K race, held in La Crosse on May 4th.
After contemplating the personal risk I was taking (Liz has been known to throw shoes at me while walking, I could only imagine what she would do running), I convinced her that we needed to train outside. Get off the treadmill, leave the "Ease Into 5K" app on the IPad and hit the pavement. For my running routine, I would get up early and run around the track at Central High School. Not the most exciting thing to do, but for someone who had never run a quarter mile -- much less 3.1 miles -- I thought it would provide an easy way to gauge her progress, one lap at a time.
Our first obstacle was the weather. In Wisconsin this year, spring decided to take a holiday, leaving winter in charge of the weather. We had snow and 20 degrees into the first week of May. But like all obstacles, you can either take another path, or put on your shoulder pads and knock it down. Liz reluctantly chose the pads.
On a nice Sunday morning, with two weeks to go until the race, and with temperatures in the low 40's, we put on our Under Armor sweats and our Saucony Ride 2 tennis shoes and headed over to the track. For our first outing, I thought we would try a mile to see how she did. After a leisurely lap, Liz was breathing hard, so after another 1/2 lap we decided to walk to the end of lap two. At that point, the "Ogden" in her must have kicked in because she continued running through the first mile and half way through the second, before we took a breather. Another quarter lap later, she pushed on until we reached our twelfth and final lap. I didn't bother keeping track of time, because I didn't think we'd run the entire three miles.
Our second outing involved running the scheduled route from Riverside Park, through downtown and to the La Crosse River path before finishing at the park again. I felt familiarity with the course would make it easier for Liz on race day. What I didn't realize was that it would make it harder for her before the race. La Crosse is laid out with Riverside Park low next to the river, then gradually rising all the way to the bluffs. So, one of the toughest parts of the race is at the beginning, where you have to climb a persistent hill before leveling off three blocks into downtown. Liz and hills get along as well as Superman and kryptonite, so my claims to her that she was "doing great" fell on deaf ears.
Once we leveled off, she did better, but not to the degree that other runners seemed to enjoy. We encountered two groups of young, quick and graceful runners trotting past us, some even with baby strollers in tow. They were laughing and talking, and I could feel her disappointment grow as we slowed to a trot barely faster than a walk. By the time we returned to Riverside Park, over 40 minutes had passed, which was slower than she had hoped. Despite my best attempts at telling her she had just completed the full 3.1 miles without stopping, she showed no signs of confidence. Even her favorite breakfast at The Hungry Peddler didn't help.
Our final attempt to train for the race was back at Central's track, where we decided to run a mile and a half. My thinking was to conserve her energy (the race was in four days) and to help her overcome the initial "wall" she had encountered earlier. Success was tempered by her frustration at anything I said, especially the attempts to push her harder. "I'm not cut out for running," "Don't tell me what I can do!" and "Do you want to sleep on the couch tonight?" slid out of her mouth as easily as the sweat from her face.
I wasn't worried -- because we had a very comfortable couch.
The final piece to her 5K training was to put together a playlist that she could listen to. I'm sure she was thinking that music would make the pain of running a little easier to take. The bad news is, nothing makes the pain less. Your mind may like listening to "The Love Shack" by the B-52s, but your legs still send signals to your brain that scream WHY AM I DOING THIS? IT SUCKS!
Nonetheless, we spent an evening putting together some of her favorite songs, like "Panama" from Van Halen, "Girls Got Rhythm" by AC/DC, "Dancing With Myself" by Billy Idol and others from when we used to head to the bars at 10:30 after work.
I just hoped Travis Tritt's "T-R-O-U-B-L-E" wasn't a sign of things to come.
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Race day arrived with temperatures in the high 30s and a threat of rain. Ideal conditions if you were a duck on the first day of duck hunting season. Or an incumbent politician hoping for a low voter turnout.
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| Once a champion, always a champion. |
Nonetheless, Saturday morning dawned, and LuAnn, Liz and I prepared ourselves for the race. Weather called for rain, so we didn't know what to expect. And the wind was chilling whatever moisture was in the air.
Finally, it was time to line up. As we reluctantly left the protective cocoon of the warming tent and shuffled to the starting gate, my thoughts wandered to Monroe, Wisconsin 28 years earlier.
I was remembering a day I ran with Liz's dad back when I was just starting to date her. It was a hot and windy day, and Don was out to prove to his future 26-year old son-in-law that he could run further and faster. He couldn't have been much over 50, but he ran like he was 35. Like all things that he did, Don couldn't settle for second place. Before the hour-long run was over, I was bent over, sucking for air and he was running up the stairs to his house, well ahead of me.
While Liz didn't share the same competitive spirit that her dad had, she was still his daughter, and I was confident that she would not back down from the challenge.
With the start, everyone rushed from the gate and headed around Riverside Park. LuAnn quickly jumped ahead and increased her speed. I could sense the panic in Liz as she watched men, women and children run past us, almost effortlessly. I had tried to warn her that some runners make the mistake of running too hard at the beginning of the race, then suffer toward the end. Adding to the risk was Liz's choice of music now pounding in her ear buds -- I could literally hear Nickleback's "Burn It To The Ground," coursing through her body.
We continued up the hill on State Street, then turned by my office onto 6th, as more and more people streamed past. As we continued through the intersection I could hear her say, "I've got to stop..." But after a few quick jumps, she pushed on and we crossed the first mile marker at a little over twelve minutes. As is often the case, your mind shuts down and your legs carry you through the next mile. Then we hit the La Crosse River trail for the final mile of the race. With sweat running from her face, Liz slowed, trying to catch her breath. With the chords of "Girls Gone Wild" on her IPod, she was off again straining to keep up with the distant crowd that was now turning past the Grandstay Residential Suites on Front Street.
As wonderful as the thought of finishing a race is to your tired body, the final stretch leading up to that point can be shear agony. I could tell the stretch of Front Street that leads to Riverside Park was becoming unbearable for Liz. I tried telling her she was almost done, but I don't think I was registering on her radar anymore. All she could think about was the painful breathing and tired legs.
But in true fashion for anyone facing the reality of turning 50, she somehow found the extra energy that screamed, I'M NOT QUITTING NOW! Putting aside the pain, she rounded the final bend and focused on the finish line. As we crossed that line, approximately 6,680 strides later, the race clock above us indicated 38 minutes and 28 seconds.
By my calculation, it was an improvement of over two minutes from only a week earlier. Not bad for someone who used to say she couldn't run.
Now if I can just get her to climb that hill on Hwy 33.
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