The Signs of My Decline

      The running app on my phone is a record of my decline.

      I’ve had the app for the last decade or so, and every time I press that little button on the bevel of my watch that is synced with the app, it records every run I’ve taken. The app tells me not just the distance and duration of my run but the route I’ve covered, the miles per minute, how many calories expended, what pace, what my mile splits were, how this particular run ranked with all the others and probably a lot of other things, too.

      It not only has a record of every one of my nearly 1,700 runs since 2013, it also compares this week to last week and this month to last month and this year to last year. And so it tells me how much worse I’m getting.

      By worse, I mean slower times, shorter runs, fewer miles.

      A dozen years ago, when I was a sprightly 67-year-old, I’d easily run three or four miles at a 10-or-so-minute per mile clip. For a couple of years there, I ran 600 or so miles during the entire 12 month period.

      No longer, none of it.

      Each year, the pace has gotten 15 or 20 seconds per mile slower. Each year the total miles are fewer than the year before. Each year has been harder.

      Now when I go out for a run, it’s for a couple of miles, if I’m feeling good, got a reasonable night’s sleep and it’s not too cold or too hot. I’m happy if my pace is under 13 miles per minute.

     After the run, I look at the results on the app, I review the comparisons to previous weeks, months and years and I can’t help but see the stark reminders that I am no longer the person I used to be, no longer the athlete I had been, no longer the person I thought I was.

      It’s depressing.

      But then, the other week, when I had an appointment with the cardiologist, when I whined about not being able to run as far or as fast as I used to run, he stopped me.

      “You’re running,” he said. “You’re 79 years old and you almost had a fatal heart attack a little more than a year ago and you’re running. There aren’t a lot of people in that situation who are still running.”

      My wife, as is her wont, put it more bluntly.

      “Schmuck,” she said, “you’re still running.”

      I gotta stop looking at the app.