When a Mid-life (Running) Crisis is Simply Coming of Age
This is will be too long for most to read but thanks for coming. If you do read the whole thing, thanks. You’re a legend.
A few Sundays back I went for a run between Minneapolis and St. Paul, that is known in some circles as the Twin Cities 10 mile road race. Sunday long runs are quite a beloved institution among those that circle road races on the calendar months in advance and pursue finish lines that are hundreds of miles down the road, literally and figuratively. This particular Sunday the pursuit of merely covering the distance was exchanged for exhausting physical, mental and spiritual energy to complete the task in as few seconds as possible.
These longer efforts are often scheduled on weekends that allow, in our modernly inconvenient world, a bit of excess leisure time to spend out on our preferred running surface. In that time, if on a solo effort, the mind explores lots of topics, both conscious and unconscious. When asked what I think about on these runs, very often I wouldn’t really be able to recall much except the banal experiences of covering distance on foot. Not tripping on sidewalks. managing traffic crossings safely or minimizing stoppage time, location of bathroom facilities along the planned route, how a shoe may be fitting, et. al. Any long time member of “the church of the long run” will tell you that “not thinking” is part of their spiritual experience on these long hauls.
Yet there are times where we do have mental acuity to wrestle with the conundrums of life during our longest effort of the week. When that long effort requires a bib number fastened to our person in some form, the mind will be forced upon much different topics. As one accumulates these “bib pinning” experiences over the years, the thought process can become as familiar as the route of the race one may have run dozens of times. This particular Sunday I went to the familiar places both in area code and emotional commitment and found new questions for an old mind and body.
Runners acclimated to the Twin Cities 10 miler recognize the challenge of a race that is ascending at various incline percentages for three quarters of the distance, sometimes very sharply. True veterans of this race will be quick, and also very willing to share the knowledge of experience, that the hidden challenge is found in the late, middle miles where the incline is less challenging but the duration is seemingly endless for those that have not properly portioned their efforts. My bones, cinues, aerobic and glycolytic energy systems have covered this course about two dozen times as part of a race and likely a hundred times more in training preparations. The course itself was not my main competitor on this day. On a cool, mostly sunny morning in Middle America, with leaves turning the colors associated with autumn and “the most beautiful urban marathon in America” the known cost of admission* to a finish line well earned was between me and Minnesota’s state capitol.
Counting the cost of a job has been a proverb of wisdom literature for thousands of years. Every veteran runner knows this is true about a race. At this stage of my life I am fully immersed in the wisdom literature of running. Somewhere just before mile four where the TC ten starts to climb for the next three miles, some times precipitously, always grindingly, some strange thought threw down the landing gear and came to a full and complete stop in my mind.
You never stop coming of age.
My mid-life was not in crisis but the question of why I sign up for these things becomes greater each year when so many more seconds and minutes were required by my physiology to me get between the Twin Cities downtowns via the river road and Summit Avenue than they did the first time I tried in 2001. As the sands of time fill the bottom of the hour glass, could it be, I was still growing in spirit and body as much as I had 25 years earlier as a less than mediocre college runner traversing these same roads?
Could it be that the midlife reckoning is more of a coming of age than a crisis? Of course there are instances of crisis as one ages. The implications of aging are real and anyone that’s not 30 anymore will acknowledge that experience. I have injuries that make it very difficult to accumulate the fitness required for me to run faster than I did in my late 20s or early 30s. I am realist if not a sleep deprived, preschool parent, dreamer. This is not a lesson in overcoming self-doubt or breaking through the illusion that age is just a number.
During my teenage years as a new runner coming of age occured when I surrendered to the anguish of running with the pedal down beyond 1000 meters of a 1600 meter race on a track in Union City, Michigan. Less than five minutes of time to cover a metric mile cost something and after a season of intention, I paid the price and earned a time that began with four minutes on the stop watch.
While toiling away, often as the slowest runner in the slowest heet in low level division III track meets across the upper midwest it could be felt that coming into my age occurred at a conference championship meet. Coach asked me to run four events in 36 hours as a path to an all conference award via being the slowest leg on two relays if I could just get the batton around the track and be mildly competent in the 1500 and steeplechase. Sixth, seventh, fourth, third. Three points, two points, two points, three points. Ten points. All-conference. The 400m leg of that 4x4 was the most lactate my legs have ever generated. Counted the cost, wrote and cashed the check.
Tbose younger legs and soul grew up on those days. Up into a more realized version of self. A self that was willing to go to those painful places where things get torn apart for the sake of being rebuilt, but built back better.
Jim Atkins, the front man to a band that my generation of middle-class white kids grew up with, sang that “there's still some living left when your prime comes and goes.” Since “the late 1900’s” running has provided me the opportunity to answer a lot of existential questions.
On a Sunday in earnly autumn 2026 a version of those legs and soul five decades in the making came of age on Summit avenue in St. Paul. It was not a crisis. It was just a hobby jogger buring calories. But make no mistake, it was also a runner finding themselves while still learning that his heart and soul have a lot more to give when the time for a personal bests may have come and gone.
See you at church of the long run next Sunday.
*not the same as race entry fees which is a subject of discussion for a different diatribe
