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May 07, 2006
Close, But No Cigar
The first thing that I want to do is to thank every single person who left comments wishing me luck and giving me confidence. It's really amazing how people who I've never met in person can be so incredibly supportive. It is a really cool thing that the Internet has brought together so many people with common interests and goals.
This morning had an early start. Part of this was the concern about oversleeping since getting to the race required getting up earlier than usual. In reality, this wasn't a problem due to drinking so much water yesterday that I woke up four times in the middle of the night to pee. No question, I was well hydrated. I had to pack my bag this morning since I got home later than I wanted yesterday and didn't feel like doing it before bed. It was surprisingly chilly when I left to meet up with the group of us who were carpooling to the stadium together. In fact, it was so nippy that I decided that I needed two long sleeve shirts. Although it isn't as long of wait as Boston is, waiting outside in a football field is part of the deal. We got up there with time to spare and took the subway ride to the start. Most years I have been able to sit down on the subway, but today I had to stand for the ride.
The football stadium was chaotic as always. In fact, it was worse this year because we've become an Ipod nation. Everyone was walking around with their headphones on and completely oblivious to their surroundings. The race information clearly states that there are no headphones allowed, but there isn't any kind of enforcement to that rule. OK, big pet peeve of mine. I managed to do a mile on the dirt track. About 300 meters of it weren't too bad, but the curve along the gate was a battle of dodging people walking in and out.
We timed it so that we really didn't have much time hanging out at the school, fine by me. As long as I have time to get my bearings it's OK. I retrieved my bag, fought my way out of the stadium and headed to the baggage buses. I changed my shoes, put on my number and shoved all my extra clothes into the bag. Once again, I had to fight my way against the masses to get to the starting area. Well, I was in the starting area, but needed to get up to the front area. I know from experience that you need to line up well in front of the pace you expect to run or else you're stuck way in the back. I accidentally went up too far and ended up in the front line, so I moved a few rows back and lined up towards the back of the seeded runner area.
My plan was to run aggressively because that is something that I need to do to race well. My main goal was to simply run a PR, with a certain time in mind but not necessarily the goal. The first few miles were on pace but the effort felt harder, my legs didn't feel great. I was on pace to run low/mid 61 through at least seven miles, maybe even eight miles. I kept stumbling over my own feet, something that I'm beginning to realize is a sign of something being wrong. There are lots of signals that I have that things aren't right, my shoulders get really tight and high and I make awful faces. This is one that might not be as obvious to people watching me run, but I know because it leads to almost falling.
Around 8 miles I completely fell apart. There isn't another race that I can remember falling apart this badly. I kept thinking about stopping and walking for a minute, but it's too hard to start to run again after walking. Then I jogged very, very slowly for a little bit and then yelled at myself to get back into it. I fought for a while longer and then had another jogging episode followed by yelling at myself some more. There are some dirty liars who put up a sign that says there is a quarter mile to go, if it is 400 meters, it is the longest 400 meters in the world. Some guy passed me with about 150 to go and told me to go with him, but there was nothing there to go. My chip time was 62:05. It was pretty devastating to see the clock change over from 61 to 62. The last two miles were an utter death march. The one thing I can say is that I went down fighting.
I can think of a few things that were against me today. My first thought, and fear, is that I'm on the wrong side of peaking right now. We have learned in the past that I can get in great shape very quickly, not nearly as long as the average person. I think some of it could also be nutritional since I didn't get to eat as well as I would have liked last night due to getting in later than expected. My theory to salvage the next month is to basically cut out all long runs and everything except track workouts are truly easy. Also, to race, race, race. J and I are going to talk about this later on, we only had a few minutes to talk immediately after the race because we passed the phone around.
Otherwise, the rest of my day was spent working. The beginning of every month is extremely stressful for me because of one of the duties of my job. This responsibillity is always stressful and this month has some major problems. My dad and I spent two hours working on it and have realized the problem is not our fault and we need to address it with the other institution. My personal life might not like working on weekends, but my bank account certainly does!
Posted by Blondie at May 7, 2006 07:07 PM
Comments
Hey Blondie. It sounds like you DID put up quite a fight. It really sounds like you did!!! Way to put your heart into it-and congratulations on a quick race.
Posted by: Audrey at May 7, 2006 08:29 PM
Congratulations, Blondie! I sounds like you gave it everything you had today . . . and a 1:02 10 mile is SOOOOOOOOOOO fast! Isn't that your second fastest time? Way to fight through those final 2 miles - those internal dialogues we have with ourselves in moments like that can be pretty fierce and intense. I can't even repeat what I was saying to myself the final 3 miles of Boston!
Awesome job :)
Posted by: bridget at May 7, 2006 08:43 PM
Why did the headphones bother you? Were they racing with them on?
Posted by: at May 8, 2006 08:08 AM
"...went down fighting..." Nice fast run! Good job. Thought: I have often wondered if there are any studies which document the effect of selective recovery slow-downs during a race, which ultimately yield a faster race time (not constant pace but average pace) than trying to race all out and maintain, without any "recovery" of sorts. I say this because I have done some fartlek-like workouts with a buddy running at an even pace while I Yo-Yoed between speed and recovery in front and behind him. At the end, when we finished together, I always seemed less tired even though we ran the same distance in the same overall time. Could it be applied to racing? Sort of like learning to be your own rabbit?
And thanks for the descriptive account. Agree with you on the headphones. Beyond the rules, enforced or not, it conjures up this image of people in their own world, seemingly out of tune with the aggregative forces of running and racing... bests corrado
Posted by: corrado giambalvo at May 8, 2006 11:24 AM