It's official. I've decided it's official. The mercury hit 60 degrees, the water fountains have been turned back on, I ran in shorts...Spring is here.
Today was my last 20 miler and I really meant to run it progressively faster, starting from the halfway point. I don't really have much of an excuse for why I didn't do that except for maybe..."I was tired"? And I was sweaty, that's a good thing. Not having any idea what the temperature conditions are going to be like a month from now down near the Mason-Dixon line, I'm hoping I'll be able to get in at least a little training that really makes me sweat to help acclimate.
I guess this is really where the taper starts. This week will still wear me out, especially if I put in a strong effort in the half on Sunday, but it all gets easier from here. The next three weeks are all about stretching and foam rolling and eating and sleeping enough. I've just gotten a couple of offers for teaching assistant positions, so grad school tuition will be taken care of and I get to see my beloved in just a few days. Life is good. And as I mentioned above, the breezes have turned balmy and gentle. I may not believe in god, but I know enough to count my blessings.
The goal is to at least get one race report up before the next one happens and I'm cutting it close on that. I can't help it though. I had company this week and thanks to American Airlines, he stayed in town a few days longer than planned.
This will probably be pretty brief since I seem to have come down with a cold and I'm trying to sleep as much as possible in hopes that this thing will be short-lived.
Okay, the half marathon. Since this race is all women, I knew it would make sense to start close to the front, but I didn't expect the race marshall to point at me and make me stand right ON the starting line. It's a tad unsettling when the runner next to you is Kenyan, but I just kept telling myself "don't start too fast, don't start too fast..."
I started too fast.
Everything just felt so effortless for that first half mile, I almost couldn't understand why I was out in front of other runners who I expected to be running next to. I did finally force myself to relax and chill out and a big pack of women caught up to me by the half mile point. The local masters runner who has motivated me in some other races was there, so I really focused on just trying to stay near her. First mile: 6:35
I really need to get a new running watch and the one I borrowed for this race died even before the gun went off, so I only have a foggy memory of splits, but I think I ended up running the whole race really evenly and my average pace ended up exactly the same as my first mile. The first half felt as if it took more effort than it should have and the the second half (supplemented with two gu packets) seemed easier than I would have expected.
I felt very strong for the last few miles and gained a lot of ground on the woman in front of me, but as in the 10K, I didn't have anything left for a real kick at the end. But again, it's like in the 10K, when you can see you're going to be happy with your time no matter what, it's easier to just cruise in with a smile.
This race has some particular challenges to it in that you overtake a significant number of walkers and joggers on the second lap of the park and it gets very crowded. I didn't mind running outside the tangent a bit because the crowd support was very motivating, but it sucked to try and weave in through all those people to try and get water. I'm sure that added some seconds to my time, but there's really no point in guessing how many.
The half was scored based on how we finished as two-person teams, with at least one of the team members being over 40, and my partner was Yvonne's mom, visiting from Scotland. Our combined ages put us securely in the middle of the most competitive age group, but we still finished sixth in that and 11th out of all the two person teams.
Or maybe "blame it on the pollen". I feel like crap.
I was gifted with another encouraging race performance today and I'd like to be floating around on cloud nine about how shockingly effortless it was, but instead, I'm flat on my back with a throbbing head, dripping nose and a hamstring that twinges painfully whenever I move my leg.
Almost two full weeks to the 26th though, plenty of time for everything to work itself out. I hope.
Today's race was just a four miler. It's not really part of any marathon plan, but it counts towards points for our local club competition, so I didn't think it would hurt to give it a decent effort.
I always forget how incredibly crowded these short races are, since so many people come out to rack up nine races for the year to earn their way in to the NYC marathon. I left myself 10 minutes before the start when I showed up after my warm up, but that still left me wedging myself into a crowded corral pretty far back from the starting mat. I rationalization, fairly I think, that that's actually better for me since it forces me to modulate my pace over that first mile when I'm most prone to going too fast.
It took 20 seconds to get to the line after the gun, but I just stayed relaxed and wove around people as efficiently as I could. The first mile went by in 6:15 and felt pretty comfortable, so I just stuck with that effort level. Mile two was 12:20 and the normally challenging, hilly mile three was 18:40. What a difference a week of lower mileage makes...everything felt SO much easier that those 6:35s from the half last Sunday.
Shortly before the two mile mark, I felt a sharp pain down the back of my right leg, mostly localized in the hamstring, but shooting a little bit down into my calf. I could feel all the diagnostic systems go into action: analyzing the pain, targeting the source, evaluating what the proper response should be.
The little engineers in my brain took about a quarter of a mile to switch the flashing red light over to a flashing orange light and the supervisor sent a message saying that the system was good to go for two more miles as long as we didn't push it any harder, but that he couldn't guarantee there wouldn't be any residual damage to clean up afterwards. I told him that we could probably take a day or two to shut down the plant for repairs after the race and he agreed that would probably be okay.
By the three mile mark I'd gotten used to the flashing lights and industrial warning horns, so I revved up the engines just a tiny bit more and finished up with a 6:04 for the last mile.
I jogged the two+ miles home at a really slow, easy pace, took a hot bath and put myself back to bed. I prodded the sore muscle a little bit, just to try and figure out what's going on back there, but I'm going to try and leave it alone now and let it do its healing thing. I'm headed off to Richmond tomorrow any way so I'll take the day off completely and then plan on an easy jog Tuesday to see what's what.
I guess it's really part of the ritual, this watching and waiting to see what the weather will be. At this point, it could still turn out to be almost anything, but at least this gives me something to focus my mind on.
Other than my hamstring anyway. That problem hasn't disappeared, though it does seem to be improving. I'm actually sitting on a bag of frozen mixed vegetables as I type, having just run 8 relatively pain free miles at an excruciatingly slow pace. It's ungodly beautiful out today, so despite my still lingering cold, it was just really nice to be outside, whatever pace I was running. My big fear is that everything is going to feel all healed up and then 20 miles into a fantastic PR setting race, the back of my leg is going to explode in pain and I'm going to have to face a terrible decision. That's the worst case scenario, but I really, really hope that's not going to happen.
Okey doke, I better go get my act together here. Adeel is in town with his pal Riyaad and I've promised to show them around the news studios before they head up to Boston.
It seems to change slightly every time I look, but all in all, I can't complain too much about what it looks like now. In a way, it's been good that the cold and the hamstring have kept me from hardly thinking about the weather at all!
So the cold is almost gone now and, knock on anything that might be conceivably considered lucky, it stayed securely in my sinuses and away from my lungs. The hamstring is still a worry, but it definitely is improving. Last week was a pretty severe taper week considering I covered less distance than I will in the actual race, but hopefully all that rest will do me more good than harm in the end. I'm limiting any stretching, so I don't just make it worse, but I'm feeling a little more optimistic about it than I did even just yesterday.
I'm tracking Adeel, Chad, blogless Paul and my speedy hometown/facebook friend Amanda as they run Boston today. I feel a little wistful that I'm not there, but I'm definitely grateful now for the extra five days of rest. I had a dream last night that I finished my race in 3:03, which isn't what I'd like at all. But in the dream I also forgot to ask anyone what my time was until about four hours after I finished and I hadn't kept track of my splits during the race at all, so both of those scenarios are pretty unlikely.
Conditions seemed pretty ideal up there, but for some reason, it seemed as if everyone I know who ran it had a wretched day out there. Two fellow bloggers dropped out just past the halfway point and a bunch of others ran 10 - 20 minutes slower than they'd been planning on. It makes me wonder what I'd do at this point in my running "career" if I hit the half and know it's just not my day. This particular course that I'm running goes right by the finish around that time, so I can see it being terribly tempting to just say fuck it and call the whole trip a vacation focused around mint juleps and horse racing instead of this torturous hobby that we like to call fun.
Lest you think I'm throwing in the towel quite yet, I'm in full blown carbo-loading, hydration mode right now, noshing on gluten-free pasta (seemed to work well in Columbus) and sipping a strawberry-banana chocolate soy milk smoothie. I'll head off to bed early tonight and catch my plane to Kentucky early tomorrow morning. I can't figure out how the runner tracking works on the race website (it insists that I'm not registered) so you'll just have to wait until I find an internet connection afterwards to see what happened.
The weather looks to be about the same as it was for Boston, only damper, which is much better than the 82 degree high they're getting tomorrow. I've been getting all sweaty running in a jacket this week, so I hope that counts as acclimatization.
Saturday April 26
AM showers
68° 51°
30% chance precipitation
I guess that's all there is to say for now. I think I'm just about as nervous as I ever am before these things, but there's not really anything else I can do to prepare. At this point it's just a matter of picking whether to watch G.I. Jane before the race or my old standard, Bloodsport. Decisions, decisions...
We're off to stuff our faces with Cincinnati's famous Skyline Chili (yes, I know we're in Louisville, but it's a franchise you don't get in New York or St. Louis) and then on to Churchill Down to blow some of my race winnings on the ponies. I'll do up a race report later on tonight, but I'll say briefly that the weather was shockingly perfect, the course was shockingly hilly and my hamstring never even gave me the faintest of twitches.
After an easy flight into Louisville, my sweetie met me at the airport and we got ourselves situated at the hotel. There was plenty of time to pick up my race number and check out the small Expo at a leisurely pace. A woman selling acai juice informed us that you now have to eat 54 peaches to get the nutritional value of one 1950's era peach and I discovered that the Columbus marathon promotional photo book features a few neat photos of me in the race two years ago. Oddly, the photo book featuring images from the 2007 race was opened to a page showing a woman Jack knew in the finish chute, the wife of an old colleague of his. Weird coincidence.
We returned to the convention center for the pasta dinner and chatted with three Kenyans before a dorky marathon pace leader took the stage to give obvious race advice for first-time marathoners and our three quiet, serious tablemates quickly departed. One of these guys ended up finishing second, but the others must have dropped out. It's an interesting alternate culture behind the marathon scene, these runners who make a living off of winning and placing in second (or third) tier races. I guess it makes sense for these athletes, if they feel they are unlikely to place, they simply drop out and hold out for another race on another day. In the men's race these anonymous professionals are usually Africans, but in the women's competitions, they are more likely to be Russian. I kept my fingers crossed at this point that I wouldn't be seeing any Russians at the start line.
The morning started off as marathon mornings often do...very, very early. Stumbling in the dark, fumbling with the coffee maker, trying to collect all the essentials with one eye on the clock, scarfing down oatmeal, bodygliding the essential sensitive bits, pinning on the number, grabbing gels, banana, gross carbo-drink concoction, donning a plastic bag poncho and jogging through the dark, wet streets to the long line of groggy, half-awake runners waiting for shuttle buses to the start.
The rain stopped by the time we arrive and the damp chill felt like a weight off my shoulders as the worry of hot weather got checked off my list of race day paranoias. A hot tip from my seatmate on the bus led me to the back door of an elementary school near the start where in-the-know runners gathered to chat and doze on cushioned mats in the small, cozy gymnasium. I sat quietly gathering my thoughts for about half an hour before one of my teammates from New York came up to say hello and I followed her and her friend back outside towards the start.
Most of the runners were participating in the half marathon, so I tried to spot the women with the red full marathon numbers who were most likely to be near me during the race. The elites were assembling up in the front, so I couldn't really see them very well, but I was disappointed to see a few red bibs up there. Last year there wasn't a lot of competition, but I'm not sure if there was money on the line then. This year they were giving out $3K for 1st, $2K for 2nd, $1K for 3rd and $500 for 4th. Win, place, show and "in the money" they called it, appropriately for the Derby Festival Marathon.
I hit up Meghan for some Swahili tips in case I saw our friends from the night before at the starting line, but they never got close enough for me to call out "Mambo Vipi!" and wish them "Bahati njema!". So that's actually one of my gripes with the race, in addition to it being tough to tell who was running the half vs. the full. They also kept us so far back from the "elites" that it was tough for me to tell whether I should be trying to run with them, or to just let them go and focus on my own race.
The smart, rational answer to that last question is of course, that I should never even be considering running anything but my own race and I really did convince myself that I took off at the gun at a nice, sensible, 6:50ish sort of pace. When the first mile clicked by at 6:10, I knew I was up to my old rabbit tricks again and if I had any intentions of going under 3 again, I had better start controlling my pace.
I really did consciously back off after that first mile, but soon after that we entered a hilly park and it became increasingly difficult to gauge what pace I was running. There had been a course elevation map on the website, but I guess the ups and downs of that little red line just didn't look that bad when I studied it at home. While I wouldn't go so far as to say the hills were "brutal", they were decidedly challenging and I did my best to just stay focused on the uphills and relaxed on the downs and ignore whatever the other women around me were doing. I was passed by two women early in these hills and though I could see them in the distance, I managed to remind myself that it's a long race and there would be plenty of time for anyone ahead of me to blow up later.
While I still wasn't running an intelligent 6:40 split race, my own good advice came to fruition not too much farther along. One of the coolest aspects of this course was getting to run around the infield of Churchill Downs. We entered the track just after the 8 mile mark and it was under the twin white spires of that fabled shrine to horse racing that I caught up to my first competitor. Again, I reminded myself, it was SO early in the race, but I felt good, so rather than try and work with this women, I just passed her by and kept on going.
Jack had his bike out on the course and gave me regular updates on what was going on up ahead of me. Sure enough, two speedy Russian women were way out in front, but other than that there were only two other women less than a minute ahead.
The half marathoners split off towards the finish line at mile 12, but there'd only been one woman racing that anywhere near me, so I didn't notice much of a difference in terms of competition. I turned the corner towards the full marathon's halfway point just as I caught up to the third and fourth place women in my race.
Jack got an awesome video shot of the three of us running in a tight pack and never have I so much felt like an elite. Woman #3 was a petite, sturdy Latino chick and #4 was a black women who I don't think was actually African, but for the purposes of my little professional running fantasy, I made her one.
1
6:10
2
6:29
3
6:36
4
6:44
5
6:30
6
6:20
7
6:34
8
6:29
9
6:34
10
6:30
11
6:23
12
6:43
13
6:22
14
--
15
13:34
16
6:47
17
6:41
18
7:04
19
6:57
20
6:48
21
6:51
22
7:12
23
7:13
24
7:19
25
6:54
26.2
8:43
Apparently the woman I passed in Churchill Downs was right behind us at this point too, so for about a mile or two, we had an intense little race going on there.
One might think it a wee bit imprudent to bring down your half PR by more than a minute during the middle of a marathon, but since the actual half point wasn't marked, I guess I can argue that I didn't technically commit this little racing faux pas.
By the time we entered the second hilly park section of the race around mile 15, the little pack had dissolved and the I found myself in a Texan sandwich with the Latino girl (Debbie, I gathered, from her supporters) and the non-African, Patricia, about 10 seconds ahead and behind me.
The park hills kicked my tired ass pretty thoroughly at this point as this is when my splits really started to degrade, but I must not have been alone in this boat as by the time we exited the park Patricia was no where to be seen and Debbie was smack dab in front of me.
Although I was unaware of it, there was another little drama going on at the same time amidst the runner support crews. I started the race with two energy gels in hand, but somewhere around the 10 mile point, Jack had handed me another one. I saw a van stop up ahead of us when we were back in the woods and a man ran out and set out a bottle of red gatorade looking stuff on the curb for Debbie to pick up. Apparently it was NOT what she was looking for at that point and I heard her ask him, where's the Gu?"
Feeling charitable and flush with the camaraderie of competition, I told her that I'd packed an extra and she could have it the next time Jack rode by. She thanked me and said that would be really cool.
When Jack DID come by next to hand me my little packet, I asked for the last one as well and he stopped to get that. It seemed like forever before he finally pulled up next to me again and told me that he'd been told that he couldn't give me any more energy gels or else I might be disqualified. No biggie, I told him, since it was for Debbie (now about 5-10 seconds ahead of me) anyway, so he took off and gave it to her.
We're really not sure who complained about me getting help on the course, but we figured that if it was Debbie's person, this ought to keep him happy. Jack only cheered from that point on, so I think that issue isn't likely to come up again. If they'd actually had energy gels on the course, I wouldn't have asked him to have them ready for me and if I'd thought it was illegal for him to give them to me, I would have just carried four of them from the beginning.
It was around mile 20 that I started hearing spectators telling me that I was the fifth woman, which surprised me since Jack's reports had me thinking that it was the two Russians, Debbie, then me. I remembered seeing a very stocky, masculine woman go by me early in the race, but I thought at the time that she was in the half. Now I started to wonder if she actually was up ahead of me and perhaps Jack had just mistaken her for a man. I was a little bummed to hear it, but it gave me the juice to go after Debbie one more time in hopes of scoring that fourth place moolah.
The last section of the race took us over the Ohio River for a quick loop in Indiana and it gave me a chance to check out my competition on their return trip into Kentucky. I was hurting pretty badly at this point (maybe should have held on to that extra energy gel...?), but the wind on the bridge was refreshing and the riverboats below were playing music that echoed across the water in a way that was both uplifting and soothing. I saw the masculine woman fly by with her long, curly hair and earrings and a couple of minutes later the two Russians followed. Damn, I WAS fifth, and Debbie was starting to gain some ground.
By the time I started back up the slope of the bridge towards the finish, I was really ready to be done. My legs were feeling terribly beat up and I'd just run out of steam. Debbie had a good half a minute lead and I resigned myself to just concentrating on my form and finding satisfaction in an almost guaranteed PR. The 25 mile mark was just beyond the Louisville foot of the bridge and I kept telling myself, "one mile. one mile is NOTHING."
I underestimated the challenge of running that last mile while trying to weave in and out of the crowds completing their 3-hour HALF marathon races, but I can't imagine that really slowed me down that much. It just seemed like poor planning on the race organizers part and they really should be embarrassed that the men's marathon winner didn't even get to break the finish tape because they didn't see him coming amidst all the finishing half marathoners!
As soon as I crossed the line, I saw Debbie up ahead of me, puking her poor heart out. I gave her a second to compose herself and then teased her about THIS being the way she showed her appreciation for that Gu I gave her. She laughed, sort of, and then gave me a quick hug before getting back to her puking. Hey, if someone's got to beat you, at least you can take some comfort in knowing they had to HURT to do it!
And finally, to finish up, although I was totally happy finishing out of the money and getting a PR, it turns out that Jack actually KNEW the "masculine looking woman" out in front and HE is from St. Louis. No wonder she was so masculine looking! He just happens to have longish, curly hair and an earring, and chose to wear a snug fitting triathlon-looking top that managed to confuse me and apparently a bunch of the spectators. So I DID finish fourth after all and while the winnings don't actually cover my race expenses, it's still a hugely gratifying thing to be recognized in such a tangible way.
And not only that....after getting ice-bathed and cleaned up, Jack and I went BACK to Churchill Downs and bet on the winner of the featured opening day race, so good job Macho Again!
