"Hmmm, but I'm a distance runner."

I was home in Michigan during this last week, and we were bopping around to various kid-friendly venues over the course of the week to keep our daughter entertained and to maintain our sanity. We ended up at an awesome play space for kids--$5.00 for 15,000 square feet of fun: kid cars, a kid's Meijer's, a bank, a playhouse, a stage with costumes, a spaceship...all kinds of fun. And I started chatting it up with another mom while my daughter was taking her first shot at using Elmer's glue in public.

I commented on how dreamy it is for me to come home and run in my hometown. It seems that I run fast every time I run there. It could have something to do that my hometown is on a lake, but the air doesn't make me feel like I'm running in one. In Kentucky, the heat and humidity can be so oppressive that a run on country roads feels like a slog through a swamp.

Me: Every time I come home, I drop a minute off my mile time. It's awesome.
New Friend: Oh, but I'm a distance runner.
Me: Me, too. I mean my pace. I'm faster here.
New Friend: Yeah, see I run distance.

At this point, I'm not really sure where the disconnect is. We're chatting, though, and it's nice to find a fellow runner. She tells me she hasn't run a race since before the birth of her daughter 22 months ago. I totally get this. I tell her that I ran the Flying Pig in May; it is my first marathon since, um, the marathon at Ironman in 2007.

New Friend: See, I like running the half.
Me: Me, too! It's my favorite distance. It's much easier for recovery!
New Friend: But the half is so competitive!

Now I've got it. We're two different types of runners. My friend is actually one of those folks who looks at the competition when she shows up at the line. I am one of those folks who looks at every step of the route I run as the competition. Me versus the road. There are other people there? I seldom notice (except in the case of the end-of-marathon nuttiness if you read my previous post on the Pig).

I don't know at what point I fell into this camp. I was competitive when I was doing sprint distance triathlons and could pull off a place in my age group. I liked that feeling. But I have somehow always, always known that the only person I was competing against on a run was myself. In the triathlon world, I am a strong swimmer. And given enough time on the bike, I can pull together a decent leg on the bike. On the run, I'm always just holding on for dear life.

So since making the switch primarily to running post-baby, I haven't really thought much about being competitive. I've just run. Run. Run.

I'm reading a book right now. "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" by Haruki Marukami,  and I was really struck by his definitions of running seriously or running rigorously, and it made me ache a little bit for the kind of training schedule I had when I was "competitive." And while I realized at  the time that I was with my new friend that we were different, I didn't realize until I read this book that I  have been in both camps at one point in my life and that I miss that feeling, too. I miss recognizing two different sides to my athletic self. So I've got to head back a bit more rigor in running.