Etiquette

I was feeling OK this morning on Brush Road just
before the turn-around.

When it comes to running, and maybe some other things, I'm pretty "old school".  I'm skeptical about the value of "barefoot" running shoes, energy gels, low mileage and lots of other stuff.  Likewise, I have tended to look at runners who hare off at the start of social runs, or run fast down hills rather than hard up hills, as breaking some kind of running etiquette.  Of course, this is quite an arrogant perspective, and there are all sorts of reasons why runners run the way they do.  It is, after all, an individual sport.

The climb up Wycombe Road exposed
my fitness deficit.

The field for this morning's Terrigal Trotters "Keith's Run", was somewhat smaller because of members competing in The North Face trail races today or the Sydney Morning Herald Half Marathon tomorrow.  Before the start, I guessed that the pace might be slower early, and I was right.  These days, the Saturday runs are my only fast running each week, so I took the initiative and pushed the pace along a bit faster, and with a club-mate, soon broke away from the pack.  By the turn-around, we had a few hundred metres on the chasing pack and were running quickly, but I was tiring.  Soon, I let me club-mate go ahead and began concentrating on trying to maintain a good pace to the end.  A tough hill added to my fatigue and I was caught by several other club-mates over the remaining few kilometres.

After the run, several of them commented on how fast I had run this morning, but I knew that I had gone out faster at the start while they socialised, and felt guilty about getting unearned praise.  I got what I wanted, in terms of a hard, and for me, fast run, but I would have been further behind if I had run with them for the first five kilometres.