My High School Self Surprises My 2010 Self

I began running in high school.  It was mostly on a whim.  I figured that I should stop being anti-social, so I decided to join the soccer team.  Being a small school (about 100 students), there weren't any tryouts to get on the soccer team.  In fact, there were so few students in my school that they cancelled the soccer team.  The next day, my chemistry/algebra 2 teacher stopped me in the hallway and said I should join the cross country team.  I had no idea what that was, but I said ok.  Being the kid who thought an 11 minute mile was tough, you can imagine the awakening I got on the 2nd day of practice when we ran 7 miles.

Throughout my sophomore and junior years for both cross country and track, I was slow.  I was even a member of the Slow Group.  I really enjoyed my time in the Slow Group, and didn't mind being slow.  Sure, I was thrilled the first time I didn't come in last at a meet, and that 5k time of 38 minutes was a bit embarrassing, but we ran because we enjoyed it and each other.  We didn't need speed to keep us coming to practice each day.

Then they graduated.  Most of the Slow Group graduated, and I was left with a choice.  I could go to my senior year and still be slow, or, I could work hard over the summer, and assume the mantle of being the fastest on my team.  I chose the latter.

My parents recently sold the house I grew up in and have moved to the 'burbs.  The last time I was home, I had to go through a lot of my things, and came across this piece of orange construction paper:

Yes, my pre-engineer self constructed a scatter plot.  I remember pulling out the green marker after each meet my senior year and putting my time on the chart.  I notice some interesting things about this chart.  First, there is the negative trend line.  I got faster over the course of the season.  I also notice how optimistic I was—I constructed the chart so that when I got that 17:xx time, it would fit on the scale.  That never happened, though.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the plot is what happened at the 4th and 5th meets, and then the 9th and 10th meets.  My time went up for the 4th meet (DeLasalle), but then dropped to give me a PR at the next meet (LHN).  The same thing happened for the 9th meet (Plymouth Christian) into the 10th meet (conference finals at LHNW) where I ran my fastest time ever.  Is there something to be gained from this?  I remember the faster times better than the slower ones, but I do remember that DeLasalle's course at Stony Creek was fairly hilly, and that the weather was warm for Plymouth Christian's meet at Cass-Benton Park.  Was there something about being slow that pushed me harder in my next meet?  Conference finals was the race of my life—the course was perfect, the weather was perfect, and I was going to run as fast as I could.  I pushed, and I pushed.  I fell short, though, and missed being all-conference by 2 places and breaking 20 minutes by 4 seconds.

These days, I have other goals for my running.  I run so that I can get that sub-4 hour marathon.  I run so that I can go for miles and miles.  I run to get away from it all, even for only an hour.  But, when I'm on a hard tempo run, or when I'm scaling a mountain in mile 7 of a half marathon, and find myself ready to ease up because it's getting tougher, I can still see that clock ticking at the end of the long final straightaway around Thelma-Spencer Park  19:50…19:51…19:52…and I push harder.

If I ever find myself with a DeLorean and a Flux Capacitor, maybe I'll go visit high school Matt and tell him that he may have been on to something.  I probably never would have ran a 20:03 if I hadn't ran a 22:43 the previous meet.  Heck, I would have never ran a 20:03 if I didn't limp across the line in 38 minutes just 2 years prior.  Some people are born fast.  Others, like me, need to run a marathon in almost 5 hours to run one in less than 4.