My friend Beth brought to my attention this Wall Street Journal article  about the decline of competitiveness in younger runners (20s and 30s) these days. In the article, titled "The Slowest Generation" (ouch), author Kevin Helliker touches on the popularity of races such as the Color Run , which embrace the ideologies of running for fun and running to finish, and which therefore do not even time their participants. I can think immediately of several runs that have followed in the footsteps of the Color Run--the Flavor Run , the Glow Run , the Color Vibe 5K , Color Me Rad , and the list goes on. I've never attended these "races," for a number of reasons: I don't like distractions during a race (such as color being thrown at me).  Races are a healthy environment in which to express competitiveness; in fact, that's what they're made for. I already feel a great sense of camaraderie when I run a timed race; while there is competition among runners, ...

Last night, I raced for the first time since July . A month or so ago, Tim said he was signing up for this 10k race put on by local race director Chris Lauber , and asked if I wanted him to sign me up, too. Sure, I said. (Some six-mile race over a month away? No problem.) The race was the HOT Run 5K and 10K , sponsored by the radio station HOT 101.5. It was out at Pass-A-Grille Beach, on a Thursday evening. This made it rather stressful to get to after work, but even in the hours leading up to the race, I was thinking, I'm just going to treat this as a training run. No pressure for time. But that never works. I even left my watch in my car, so I wouldn't be obsessed with looking at my pace--but also because it was raining lightly. The course was a 1.55-mile loop; 5k racers would run it twice, and 10k-racers would run it FOUR times (I love running in circles!). The 5k group had a four minute lead on our group. This further meant that the time clock would display the time based...