23 races in ’23

Some­where around the begin­ning of the year one of my run­ning bud­dies told me that she had cho­sen a chal­lenge for her­self: to run twen­ty-three races in 2023. Twen­ty-three sound­ed like a lot of races (in 2022 I ran eleven orga­nized races. See https://splicer.com/2022/12/31/2022-road-running-review/) but after giv­ing it a lit­tle con­sid­er­a­tion I decid­ed to accept the chal­lenge that she had­n’t explic­it­ly thrown at my feet.

After all, 23 races might be a lot of races but most of the races on the sched­ule are short. It would be incen­tive for me not to neglect my train­ing since there would always be anoth­er event around the cor­ner, it would give me a chance to explore the area, and pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties to social­ize with oth­er run­ners and per­haps make new friends.

On Novem­ber 23^rd I com­plet­ed my 23^rd race in 2023. It was the Troy Turkey Trot 10K. My 66′34″ fin­ish was the fastest 10K I’ve done since I was in my 30s, 8′15″ faster than the same race in 2022. I’m reg­is­tered for one race in Decem­ber and con­sid­er­ing anoth­er, but as far as the chal­lenge I set at the begin­ning of the year is con­cerned, I can say mis­sion accom­plished.

I only gave up on one planned race, the Elec­tric City 10K in March. I hate hav­ing a DNS on the list but the night before the race it start­ed snow­ing when I was watch­ing a movie with friends in Troy. At the end of the night I start­ed my car and got out to brush snow off. I’m not entire­ly sure how this hap­pened but while I was using the ice scraper on the win­dows the car doors auto­mat­i­cal­ly locked. Road­side assis­tance did­n’t arrive to get the door open for me until about 3am. When my alarm went off after two hours of sleep I looked out my win­dow at the unplowed snow and the above-freez­ing tem­per­a­tures on the ther­mome­ter. I thought about run­ning six miles through ankle-deep slush, and went back to bed.

That was a shame, because 10K is a fun dis­tance and there don’t seem to be many 10Ks these days.

I’m not going to do «24 in ’24» next year, but I’m sure I’ll find some chal­lenge with a clever title. I intend to run more next year than this year and I do intend to run races, but I want to focus more on my train­ing goals than on an arbi­trary num­ber of events to spend mon­ey on. Now, I say that but look­ing at the list I’m hard-pressed to find races that I don’t want to do again. I may have got­ten myself into a bind.