On the late-in-life jogging track, consistency is the winning edge

“Nobody likes a braggart.” I mutter that under my breath and in jest whenever a younger and faster runner blows past me during the morning jog. They run. I jog.

One thing the younger and faster crowd has in common, however, is that I don’t see them every day. Some are on the trail sporadically. Others never reappear. None are out there with me most every workday.

To be fair, the serious runners who smoke me might well be traversing the city for miles and miles and only briefly merging onto my same old route. Such cross-city running requires huffing and puffing in or alongside automobile traffic, which I have never understood.

I started jogging at 22. Five miles is the farthest distance I’ve covered in one outing. It’s been two-mile jogs since about 2010. All of my routine routes over the years have one thing in common: I jogged each one, in the same way and in the same direction, for years.

The first route started from our farmhouse in Gray, Tennessee, a mile and a half down Hales Chapel Road and back again. That one might appear to have qualified as jogging in or alongside automobile traffic. Back then I could jog that route and never see a single car. When one did come, I could hear it long before it was near.

During college, I lived on West Maple Street in Johnson City. My sidewalk route was down West Maple to University Parkway and back on West Pine. It was wonderful.

At my first house, in Elizabethton, it was exactly one mile around my neighborhood. That was my route there until the city constructed a paved trail along the Watauga River in front of my house. The river trail might be the best jogging path that I ever frequented.

For the 15 years that I lived with my wife and kids in Winterville, I jogged our neighborhood there. The streets were wide, quiet and mostly flat. Three blocks in a figure 8 was a mile. When the girls were small, I would jog with a triplet stroller and a dog on a leash. Fun times.

After we moved back to Tennessee, in 2016, I took a communications job at Walters State Community College in Morristown. I developed the habit of arriving to work an hour early to get my jog in before the day began — and to claim my favorite parking spot. Twice around the campus was two miles.

Since November, I’ve worked at East Tennessee State University. I still arrive an hour early and park in a prime spot. The new jogging route takes me across campus to a walking trail that circles the soccer complex. Twice around the soccer fields and back again is two miles.

I had the idea for this column after a fast pair of sneakers approached from behind on the ETSU trail. The dude was younger, mid-30s perhaps. Tall, rock-strong, head up, steady pace, legs kicking. I’m tall as well. The rest of the comparison does not apply.

I stop about every half mile now and walk a bit. My jogging feet barely clear the pavement — which I can examine in detail because my head tends to bow forward. I’m able to avoid hundreds of earthworms crossing the pavement this time of year. Slow and steady wins the race, for me and for most of the worms.

Rock-Strong Runner charged counter to my clockwise around the soccer fields and flashed a thumbs up as we met. “Nobody likes a braggart,” I thought.

Maybe that guy will be out there again tomorrow. Maybe not. Ask me and the worms if we care.