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August 01, 2005
My First DNF and Brighter Things Ahead
I feel as if my running for the past couple of weeks, along perhaps with the rest of my life, has been somewhat listless. I hit a new low in my running "career" yesterday morning. Weeks ago, my friend H. and I decided we were going to run this 10K yesterday. At the time I had been toying with the idea of training for shorter races and not running a marathon this fall, but then I decided to go with the marathon thing. So the race turned into part of a longer workout -- a TLT (Tempo, Long, Tempo). My plan was to run the 10K as a tempo, then run home: an hour easy followed by a 15 minute tempo.
As it happened, we ended up leaving for the race about 20 mins. later than planned. Then, when we got there, we had to drive around for a while to find parking and hike a ways to the staging area. So, by the time we had managed to reach the staging area, we had just 20 mins. to get our race chips, warm up, and stand on line for the (remarkably tiny number of) port-a-potties. There clearly wasn't enough time to complete all three tasks, and seeing as the chip and the port-a-potty were absolutely necessary, we scrapped the warm-up.
This didn't end up working out so well for either of us. H. has been having some trouble with her hip, so a good warm-up was pretty essential to keep it from tightening up on her during the race. And as for myself, well, to put it somewhat delicately, a good warm-up was somewhat essential to making my pre-race trip to the port-a-potty effective. About a mile into the race, my body decided it needed to do what it couldn't before the race. By the two-mile mark it was apparent that it needed to do this immediately, not four miles from then. After a brief conversation, my intestines and I came to an agreement: they could hold off long enough for me to finish the 5K (being run at the same time as the 10K) if I slowed down and altered my stride some.
A mile or so later I did something really stupid: I unthinkingly crossed the chip mat at the end of the 5K instead of pulling off to the side at the finish. This would have been fine had it been a situation where the 10K runners crossed the chip mat their first time through, but the race was routed so that the 10K people turned off and didn't cross the chip mat after the first loop; the chips for the two races were just differently programmed. So, I think I also managed to screw up the scoring of the 10K, which I realized as soon as I had crossed the mat. I instantly felt terrible about that, as well as ashamed of not finishing the 10K AND running the slowest 5K I've run since high school (21-something -- in my rush to get through the finishing shoot and across the field to the port-a-potties I neglected to stop my watch).
After taking care of business, I of course felt pretty good, so I decided to run back along the course until I found H. then run the rest of her race with her (this time making sure to pull off before crossing the mat). As I got farther from the finish and encountered slower and slower runners without finding H., I began to become concerned. I finally found her, hobbling along with a little more than a mile and a half to go. She was in obvious pain from her hip and said she had had to stop and stretch for a couple of minutes (which explained her being so far back from where I expected to find her). But she's such a COMPETITOR that she was going to finish. I ran along with her at the pace her hip would let her keep -- a pace that was clearly frustrating for her -- and hoped that I wasn't annoying her.
By the time I had collected our gear from baggage check, I was feeling so low that commiserating with H. in her car on the way home seemed like a much better idea than trying to cobble together pieces of my exploded workout into some form that would approximate what I was supposed to get out of it.
Having such a terrible race experience made me realize how much I truly do want to be fit and fast and serious about my running again. It also made me realize that I'm not going to get to where I want to be with the half-hearted, going-through-the-motions effort I've been putting into my training. So, I've decided to declare a do-over. I'm going to pretend that last week never happened and re-do it this week with renewed enthusiasm and desire, and in doing so hopefully re-set my entire outlook and attitude toward my training.
Posted by alweiss at August 1, 2005 10:30 AM
Comments
I'm sorry your workout didn't go well. I've had experiences like that - where I've tried to do a workout in a race setting, but various factors weren't working in my favor - and they can be very discouraging. However, given the events of your race morning, I highly doubt that your performance is at all indicative of what you're capable of. I ran a horribly-discouraging 41:xx 10K in May (I think) and I know now that I wasn't really out of shape, I was just having a bad day.
At the same time, I do think experiences like this can help us to _really_ get determined to focus in on training, so use it to help you in any way you can, and good luck!
Posted by: Alison at August 2, 2005 11:03 AM
Sorry the race didn't go well but your attitude and new plan are very encouraging! Good luck! :)
Posted by: Nanda at August 2, 2005 11:43 AM