Re-Dedication, for real

A little more than a week ago, someone ran away from me in Central Park.
No, I was not wearing my rapist costume, aka my normal wardrobe. Nor was a offering children candy. I was running. And--here is where it becomes noteworthy--so was the other person.

My first year living in the city (2003+), I didn't have much money or many friends, so I didn't have as much to keep me from running more often. Also, I was closer to my competitive days and so naturally a little more plugged into it. Almost always I ran in Central Park. Two things used to constantly impress me: how many people seemed to run in NYC, and how slow they all were. For the latter, I should really say, how no one I ever saw was fast. Of the many many runners I encountered in the park, they were all no better than recreational, even the competitive-looking ones were past their prime (so was I, really). After a few months, I noticed that no one ever passed me in the park, or anywhere else, for that matter. I mean literally, I was never passed in the park. So after I made that observation, I would think about it and occasionally look around wondering if someone would pass me that day. It never happened. I remember one or two instances where I saw someone approaching fast from a tributary path and I upped my pace just slightly, enough to stay ahead of him. The streak continued. There were two other notable instances I remember clearly: one where a guy was certainly running faster than me, only he was going in the opposite direction so I didn't have to count it, and another where a woman was doing some kind of interval work around the reservoir and I popped up onto the loop just after her and she moved on ahead faster than me (I did pass her eventually, after she reached the end of her repeat and stopped to walk).
I can't remember exactly how long it was (at least a year) before someone finally passed me running in NYC, but it happened, though it remains to this day an exceedingly rare event.
But it happened last week. What makes it different is that the guy wasn't running fast and he didn't look fast. He was a gangly almost awkward dude running maybe 6:40 pace. Now, to be fair to myself, he passed me just after my turnaround point, before I had gotten back up to speed, and after he got ahead he didn't continue to make ground on me very much. The fact remains that he did pass me and he was running faster than me, maybe by about 12sec per mile. (Let's also make note that six-plus years ago, the phrase "before I had gotten back up to speed" never applied. I used to jump over three-foot solid barriers at high speed while barely breaking stride, for crying out loud.)

When I was running competitively in college, our long slow runs would check in around 6:40 pace. Sometimes a touch slower or faster, but that was the guideline. If, as often happened, I was running on an unmeasured route, I'd just divide the time by 6:40 to get the distance. So 6:40 was about the upper bound on my pace then (I only really got as high as 7:00 either in the dead winter or for the morning portion of a two-a-day). The lower bound for what I could still call a casual, easy pace would have been probably 6:00. 6:00 was a kinda quick pace, even for somewhat shorter runs, and even for my fellow college runners, but my body was pretty well suited for hitting a higher-tempo at a minimum effort, and I only sometimes clipped along at that pace for easy runs. (I gave this advantage back by being both an inconsistent racer and not having quite the distance threshhold of others.) Anyway, you could safely call anything between 6:15 and 6:40 my "effortless" pace.
The curious thing that I noticed in the first couple years post-competitive was that my effortless pace didn't really slow down any. Instead, all of my fitness seemed to be disappearing on the distance side of the equation. In fact, this continuance of ability to hold a quick easy pace stuck with me at least for a few years into my NYC residence. I noticed that after I'd have a little lay-off, or several weeks of very low volume, I would be able to come back and produce a 6ish mile run at my old easy pace of 6:40. I would struggle with slightly longer runs, and my "effortless" pace didn't dip much if at all below 6:40 like the good old days, but I could still roll.
So then as time passed and I continued to run with lots of inconsistency and little volume, my easy pace started to become 6:40-6:50, and then 6:40-7:00, and my ability to crank out 6 milers at that speed started to become inconsistent. Sure I could still do it often enough, but not every time, at least not with minimum effort.
Here we are now then, in 2009, almost exactly eight years since my last track race, and 7.5 years since my last competitive race, period. Now my easy pace is more like 7:00, with the random dip into the 6:40 range. I still have the uncanny ability to produce 6 mile runs in 6:40 pace with almost no effort, but those days are becoming less and less likely. A standard run for me now is 5 miles at just under 7:00 pace with some fatigue hitting after 3.5 miles or so. Half the time I run farther or faster or with less fatigue, half the time not. And every once in a while I get passed by a random guy.

What I'm saying after all that lead-up is that, at 28.5 years old, I think my inconsistent ways have finally started to chip away at all the wonderful foundation I built up through my college years. It's not just running, either. If I work out a little too vigorously, there is a chance I might aggravate a mild shoulder strain. I can't just roll out of bed and workout either; I need a little while to loosen up, especially my back. Most egregiously, though, I can't just take for granted a flat, ab-rippling stomach anymore. I'm not talking about just losing that youthful metabolic level either. I'm talking about paunchiness or spare-tireness. Even when I work out for a good stretch, I find it somewhat hard to make the mini-bulge go away from just above my belt line. I've turned into one of those dime-a-dozen guys from college who look great in a wife beater but only kinda good with a shirt off.
Maybe I'm nitpicking with myself and I should just be fortunate in my natural physical gifts. I can still get back on the workout wagon after some time off, and after just a couple weeks see real results. That's nice. But I've always held myself to pretty high standards, and I always want to continue to do so. I'm getting married in 2.5 months. I know it's almost cliche to get in good shape in the run-up to your wedding, but I want this to be more than that. It's not enough that I was once a pretty nice specimen. Sara never knew that me, so I want to get back as much of that as I can. And while I know I won't ever be able to race as fast as I did in college, I can at least look like I did when I was running like that.
Fitness has always been my goal. I never cared about stupid exercises that were more for vanity than for actual strength. Same with running: I haven't run an interval in years. But, at least until I get back to a great level of being, I'm going to let myself work just as much for appearance as for ability. I think it will take two more months of consistent work. Then, hopefully I can start rampin up the running. It's a little early, but with any luck I could be running genuinely fast again by next spring or even winter. And that gangly son of a bitch will be back to being something for me to toy with.