Since 1985, I’ve been running with my pal, Ken, every Saturday, between eight and fifteen miles (when one of us isn’t injured or out of town). It’s like going to church each week, with Mt. Tam being our favorite sanctuary. Whether a 10K, half marathon, or marathon, the races we compete in are like different holidays that give us something to look forward to and offer extra motivation to run further and faster.

When I first moved to California from Chicago, it took a while to adapt to running the hills, but I became a gazelle out there before long. With a pace of eight minutes a mile, Ken and I would reel in ribbons of trails while chatting away.

That’s my reference point, frozen in time. Forget pedometers, GPS devices, or apps to track time and distance. We didn’t want to distract ourselves with data.

We preferred the religion of LSD: Long Slow Distance, promoted by Joe Henderson back in 1969, a training philosophy that held more appeal than the more traditional PTA: Pain, Torture and Agony.

As the decades passed, we maintained a profound joy when heading into the hills for a nice slow slog. After every run, we enjoy a leisurely breakfast, look at our old-school Casio watches, and calculate how far we’ve ambled. I assumed we were averaging nine-minute miles … much faster when blazing downhill!

After 35 years, Ken and I have probably run more than 24,901 miles together (equivalent to running the earth’s circumference). As the leaves of the calendar fell to the ground, racing lost its allure. This may have been correlated with my slowing times. For a while, I attributed the results to a poor night’s sleep, a sore Achilles, or a pre-cold, but eventually, I ran out of excuses.

I now find pleasure in discovering new trails and successfully avoiding the roots, ruts, and rocks that threaten to take me down. While Ken and I once had a need for speed, our goal has become more primal: We try not to get hurt! After completing my tenth marathon, battling rain and sleet in Redding, I shivered across the finish line, fell into my wife’s arms, and quoted Forrest Gump: “I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll go home now.” Then I added, “Don’t ever let me do this to myself again!”

Without races to provide official measures of time and distance, I’ve relied exclusively on my perception of how fast and how far I’ve been running. It’s like describing that fish that got away. It was a monster!

Unfortunately, I recently learned there might have been an error in my calculations. After breaking an ankle on a trail run, my wife convinced me to get one of those slick Apple watches … just in case (I refuse to lug around a cell phone).

It didn’t take long for me to dive into the data and discover something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

My wife must have gotten me a defective watch because it reported that my five-mile runs at nine minutes per mile were actually four-mile runs, registering a slug-like 11+ minutes a mile.

When did this happen? How could I have deceived myself for so long?

Sadly, there’s no way to deny this new reality. The maps plot my every step with a color-coded line: green when I’m flying; yellow when I’m going pretty fast; orange a little slower; and red when I stop to pee (Why so many times? Is it too much coffee or an enlarging prostate?).

Ken was so incredulous when I shared the data that he bought his own watch. Maybe his device would be more accurate. Nope. Same results. Same colors. Same story.

I became obsessed with the notion of bending of time and space, so I Googled Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. I learned that in 1905, Albert determined, “The laws of physics are the same for all non- accelerating observers.” I couldn’t get past the first sentence. Is this what I’ve become?

Admittedly, at 59 years of age, it’s been some time since my sinewy legs exploded with rocket-like acceleration to break the spirit of a competitor. But there’s nothing wrong with being a non-accelerating runner. I refuse to get demoralized when youngsters dart by me and shout, “Good for you!” Translation: Good on you, you old, slow man!

Over the years, Ken and I have taken LSD to a whole new level. We even stole a phrase uttered by the codgers in the Tamalpa Running Club: Start slowly before fizzling out altogether! But we’re still out there on the trails. Every Saturday. Logging our miles.

So what if it takes a little longer to circumnavigate the earth. Our breakfasts after each epic run become more and more satisfying each week.