Hi everyone, I'm Larry and I've been a runner for a lot of years.
In all those years I've seen and tried pretty much everything. I've been occasionally fast, mostly slow, healthy, injured, motivated, demotivated, frozen, roasted, dehydrated, overhydrated, soaking wet, bone dry, overfed, underfed, and more than I care to remember, in need of "facilities". In short, I've been in pretty much every state of the running experience.
Including the state of "wow". Almost every day I run.
I'm not talking about age group records or personal bests. Or crushing a 48-hour endurance race. Or lungs burning, legs on fire. Or even runner's high.
I'm just talking about the actual joy of running. The part past the plodding.
The "better”.
The wow.
My mission is to help all of us life-experienced runners, beginner or veteran, be better. To discover and share the good in running, the wow, in the most fun way possible.
A bit about me...
I'm over 50. I'm a husband, a dad, and as you know, a runner.
One cold autumn day in Grade 10, my school bus passed the high school senior cross country team running along a dirt track next to the road, miles from my high school. My first thought was "how would anyone get way out here without using a car?" They had on matching school-colors, grey sweat pants and sweat shirts. And they didn't look exhausted. In fact some were smiling. Most were talking.
I knew one of the kids from class, so the next day I cornered him to find out what they were doing - and how someone could actually do that. He said why not give it a try, so I rounded up my basketball shoes and gym gear and went out with the beginner group the next Monday. I managed that fall to work up to running 2 miles without stopping.
That Christmas my parents got me a pair of Adida ROMs and I was officially in the game.
I negotiated university with very limited running, but met and ran with - which impressed the hell out of me at the time - my wife-to-be (she has never run since - I'm shrugging my shoulders too). And we graduated, got married, got jobs, set up apartment and for the first time in a long time we had some time on our hands.
Time to relax. Time to eat and drink. Time to watch TV. Time to let, in my case, pounds pile on. By September my pants weren't buttoning anymore, and my school jacket was three sizes too small.
The chubby me was starting to happen.
On September 22 that year, I dug out the Adidas, threw on some grey sweat pants and a hockey jersey and plodded around our apartment block. I didn't throw up, but almost. I got the stuff out again the next day and went before supper.
Since that day I've logged a lot of miles. I've gone through generations of shoes and gear from the old ROMs all the way to Five Fingers and back. And though the gear and the shoes change with the seasons, the running is the same. It's the one constant I've had through all the changes in my life – through being married for 35 years, raising two great children, through all the ups and downs of love and relationships and work. It's been my through line.
It's deep in my bones.
...and Us
By lacing up and getting out there we're defying the odds.
We're defying our age.
We're having fun.
We're staying fit.
We're making friends.
I'm not an expert runner, nor have I ever been one. I don't have all the answers. I've been doing this a long time and I know what makes me happy and what works for me. And I want you to have what I have - to be as stoked as ever been to be out there. And to keep on keeping on, safely and surely. To be that timeless runner - and to know that there's no end to the wow in sight.
See you out there!
Larry
Founder of timelessrunner.com.