Increasingly Reasonable
Transitioning this newsletter from NIRCA to a 9-5
Hello again, friends. It’s been a while.
As you may have surmised, my graduation, move back to Richmond, and transition from double-part-time employment to full-time employment to laid-off (aka no employment) to full-time employment again… well, it put newsletter writing on the backburner.
Actually, that’s not true. My day job, believe it or not, is newsletter writing, and has been for nearly a year now. I work for a local email news service here in RVA, and Reasonably Speedy was a big part of what got me this job. So, as always, thank you to everyone who’s ever subscribed or shared this newsletter — in a roundabout way, you now keep the lights on in my apartment.
It’s a good job and it allows me the time and fiduciary resources to do things like run and adopt a cat and be in a regularly-gigging band. But it also means that sitting down to write a newsletter, no matter how fun the subject matter, now registers somewhere in my brain as an “on-the-clock activity.”
In my absence, some other publications have cropped up to fill the void for NIRCA coverage. I was really happy to see this — the hardest part of covering club running as a guy no longer competing in the league is just keeping up with everything. The meets, the times, the athletes — it’s a lot for a random guy in Richmond, Virginia to keep straight. Luckily, newsletters like the NIRCA coaches poll and club-specific blogs like Notre Dame’s are doing it for me now.
I also took an extended break from running itself. After an inconsistent Spring ‘23 and an off-period early in the summer, I (who had never run more than 50 miles in a week here and there, and had certainly never regularly run twice a day) jumped from 0 mpw to nearly 60, doubling roughly 4-5x and doing two hard workouts per week. And I have the “Dumbass Award” Strava graph to prove it.
By some miracle, I didn’t hurt myself1, but to say I burnt myself out would be an understatement. My body felt great2, but my mind was toast and I was ready to shut things down for a little while.
Between October 2023 and April 2024, I undertook three ~20’ runs. None were within 30 days of each other. But (eventually) I missed it. And I missed this newsletter, too.
In the last six weeks, I have run 11, 16, 20, 22, 31, and 30 miles, respectively. I’m back to running basically every day, and I’m back to loving it. Several of those runs (most of the solo ones) have been spent scheming on my Substack return.
The scheming isn’t over — I’m still not sure exactly what Reasonably Speedy is going to look like moving forward. It will almost certainly not be every week. I have a full time job, my band’s gig schedule will be picking back up soon, I’m back to running… it’s just not going to happen.
I will also likely leave much of the result aggregation work to Ben Darden and Jonathan Karr and the other Coaches Poll folks — they do a better job with the stat-heavy stuff than I ever did, and the number-heavy aspects of this blog were always done more out of necessity than any skill or enjoyment.
What I always enjoyed most about writing this newsletter — and what y’all seemed to most enjoy reading — was the more commentary-focused side of things. The interviews, the analysis, the stories. I started Reasonably Speedy because NIRCA has some of my favorite people in sports, and they weren’t getting attention from anywhere else.
That’s my job, and it’s about time I got back to work. See y’all again soon.
— David
As a toddler I’m told I drank ~1/2 gallon of whole milk a day; to this I credit my durability.
Amazing, actually. In retrospect almost frustratingly good.