Running

Closing Day

/ bperica / 2 Comments

How do you sum up a year? I have in the past, written blog posts under the title “The Year in Review,” or something along those lines. I started writing such a thing a couple days ago and I finished today, but it’s too long. I post the whole review and not many people are going to make it to the end. I’ll boil that down to the bones and post that later. But for now, I’ll leave you with my thoughts on May 2025. It was a big year for my family and May was the hardest, busiest, and most emotional month in a year of busy and emotional months.

May 2025 In Review

We sold our house on 5th Avenue this month. The buyers, inexplicably, wanted us to take apart a floating deck we built in between our house and our neighbor’s house to the west. My parents and Kate’s dad were there to help dismantle the deck. We enjoyed our small, but perfect backyard on that wonderful spring evening. We found a home to live in for a few weeks until the kids finish school. It’s in the same neighborhood, within walking distance of our beloved 5th Ave house.

The PODS arrived May 13th, 3 of them. They’re filled on the 14th, to the ceiling. The next day they are taken away and the house is cleaned for eleven hours, luckily, not by me. I take videos of the empty house and record voice memos of what I remember from every room, hallway, closet, and door, crying or fighting back tears in each one.

My last moment in the house is the morning we close. The kids are at school. Kate is at work. I touch the walls in the living room. I pat them. I run my hands across their textured surface. I hug them. I say goodbye to the house like an old friend, a friend of eleven years, eleven of the toughest, eleven of the best. I laugh at myself as I speak to the house and whisper into its walls, telling it to be as nice to the next family as it was to ours, telling it to be a good friend to them.

From the front door, I take one last look about ten times. The house is open concept and has a relatively small first floor so with a glance I see the dining room, kitchen, and living room. I could have stood there for the rest of the day cycling through memories from every corner of those rooms, but it was time to close that door one last time.

At the bottom of the stairs, standing on the sidewalk, I felt so lonely, like I had truly lost a friend. I called Kate and let all the emotions out. I had a mix of feelings: gratitude for this structure I just stepped out of for the last time, a sense of mourning our Denver lives, and a greater sense of fear, not knowing where we would live next, and second-guessing our decision to move at all.

But the day did not allow for much contemplation. I had to unpack and continue our sort of move-in at the temporary house. I had elementary field days to attend. I had a half marathon to run in Steamboat Springs. (Note to self: never train for a race and move at the same time ever again.)

I am grateful for the busyness of the days following our 5th Ave close. They did not allow for me to further mourn or worry about what was next. We just had to continue life as usual in Denver, just with a different place to come back to at the end of those hectic days.

To Suzi

/ bperica / 2 Comments

 

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Suzi, just last Christmas, with my family.

A couple of weeks ago, the family gathered for a reunion, one that my Grandma Suzi played a role in planning, but one that she did not make it to. She passed away in June after an amazing 91 years on Earth. Naturally, part of the reunion weekend turned into a memorial for her, during which any family member was free to speak about Suzi. I chose to write something that day based on a conversation I had with Suzi the month before she died. This is what I said:

In May, after I went for a run in Fort Collins, I was sitting with Suzi in her kitchen. She asked me how far I ran. I told her. Then she said something that struck me as profound, but to her it was a simple recollection. She said, “I remember running. I loved that feeling.”

In that moment after she said that I tried to picture a time when I could no longer run. It made me sad, reflecting on the fragility of our bodies, and on the days that have already passed by, specifically the days I chose not to run. 

Upon further reflection, I started to think of other blessings in my life that have an expiration date, like being able to pick up my son and hold him with one arm. Or being at home with my kids. Or being able to outsmart my kids or being able to outrun them. At some point, if I live long enough, I will speak about many of the things I love now in the past tense. So I must do them now. We must do them now while we still can. 

That’s what Suzi taught me in her last weeks of life. Suzi did everything she could do until the very last moments she could do them. And she even did some things well past the point that she could actually do them…like driving. 

Stubborn to the very end, but Suzi just wanted to live life. She spoke about running in the past tense, but more often than not when speaking about the things she loved she spoke in the present tense. May we all be that lucky, that wise, and this loved. 

I’ll Be Back

/ bperica / 2 Comments

Since I threw it out there that I was going for a sub-40 10k time in this year’s IMG_9019BolderBoulder, it is with some disappointment and a lot of frustration that I now have to report there was no sub-40 time from me on Monday.

I am still thinking about all that went wrong early Monday morning and I have come up with a number of reasons (or excuses, if you like) that could have negatively effected my performance.

1. I had too much to drink before the race. I had to get up at 4:45 to make it to the start of the race that morning. I think all that time tricked me into thinking I could have a large coffee, 2 bananas, a big spoon of peanut butter, and a little water before my race. Although I was done eating and drinking by 6:10, 45 minutes before my wave started, this was way too much to consume before a race. I haven’t normally had that much to eat and drink before a race so I don’t know why I did something different on the day of the BolderBoulder. It’s a rookie mistake and I’m embarrassed by it. In previous running races–all 4 of them–I’ve had at most one banana, a little peanut butter, and maybe 10-12 ounces of water.

2. I took the first mile out too fast. 6:07 on my GPS watch. 6:11 on official results. Both are too fast for me, but it’s very hard at the start of a race to not let the energy get the best of you. You feel good. You are racing with the biggest group of fast runners you have seen. You stupidly think that you can maintain said pace because you still feel good. Of course I felt good. It was the first, damn mile. If I was running the race again right now I would slow down to a 6:30 for that first mile and try to maintain that through the first four miles, then try to pick it up for the last 2.2. In a 6-mile race a couple weeks ago my first mile was 6:36, then 6:37, and 6:34. I was hurting in mile 4 and 5, but still kept it under 7 minutes and then in mile 6 I had enough energy left for a 6:24. Mile 6 in Monday’s race was 8:02.67. Doh! I straight up walked 50 yards of that. It was gross.

3. I underestimated the Bolder Boulder course. There isn’t much of an incline in the first four miles, but it’s just enough to break you down if you underestimate it. I didn’t think it would prove to be that sapping to my legs, but it was. It’s certainly not an ideal course to set your PR on. That said, I haven’t been running long, so I set a PR (42:29), but was nowhere near my goal time.

4. I should have gone out for easy runs on Saturday and Sunday. This was the first time that I’ve tapered off a serious running regimen so instead of taking one day off my feet, I took two. I thought two might be necessary because I am a little more muscular than your avid runner. In hindsight, I think a 20-minute easy run on Saturday and a 10-minute easy run on Sunday would have been ideal.

5. My training program needs more interval work in it. I have already found good alternative programs to use for a sub-40 minute 10k. The regimens  are all about 10-14 weeks long and one of them has at least two, sometimes three rest or active rest days, which I certainly need.

6. Although my left foot did not bother me on Monday, something may be wrong with it. Since it was giving me substantial pain during the last two weeks of training, I did cut back on my interval training by turning fast 400s into fast sprints the length of a soccer field. That may have taken a slight edge off my fitness level, but I would not give this too much weight. That is why this is reason six, not one.

As far as the Bolder Boulder goes, I will compete next year and I have made some goals for that race. 1. Beat this year’s time. 2. Don’t vomit. 3. Don’t require medical attention. 4. Don’t take it out so fast. 5. Don’t drink a tumbler of coffee an hour before you run.

I will be happier and I will feel better after next year’s race if I obey these commands.