The things I am telling myself in the week before the marathon:
1) It is not unusual for me to catch a cold a week or two before a race. I had a cold two weeks before my first marathon and two weeks before my best marathon.
2) I did an 18 miler and a 20 miler. I haven't run that far in training since my best marathon.
3) The weather is unseasonably warm this week but it will be great on race day.
4) I run better in the heat, anyway.
5) I have never completed so many quality sessions. Not ever. Not nearly.
6) I am not having any foot problems. I love my shoes.
7) If I don't make it this time, I will have another opportunity this fall. Plus I will be able to run ten minutes slower in the fall, because I will be moving into a new age group where Boston & Gansett are concerned. So there's no pressure. I do better when there's no pressure. So it helps me a lot to know that.
I'm feeling pretty optimistic, despite the fact that I skipped that tune up race last weekend because I thought I was catching a cold, and then I skipped the Heart Mini yesterday because I actually have a cold. Instead, I slept in because my body needed that more. Then I went for a little run in the afternoon. Was going to do as much as ten miles, but stopped after five. Five felt pretty good, and I didn't want to push it while I am still recovering from the cold.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Food on the Run 10k (or another race with no food)
This is about the Food on the Run 10k, which I ran on Saturday, March 3.
I entered this race as a test to see if all the effort I have been putting into my training over the past four months will have the intended effect of making me faster. On that score, it was a disappointment. It was a decent workout and a solid effort and not a total disaster, but it wasn’t nearly as fast as I had in mind. Realistically, this probably means that I have to scale back my goal of qualifying for Boston at the upcoming ORRRC Marathon. And that completely bums me out, because the whole point of doing the ORRRC Marathon instead of some destination race in some interesting location was to maximize my chances of qualifying for Boston. I guess I’m still going to give it a shot, but things are not looking good right now.
Ok, about the race. It is an event put on by The Nutrition Council, a non-profit organization in Cincinnati whose mission is to advance child health through nutrition education. I had done this race once before with my daughter, a couple of years ago. At that time, the race course was at the Lunken bike trail, but now it is in downtown Cincinnati. This year was the 11th annual race. There is both a 5k and 10k. They give awards to the age group winners, but not any deeper, which is a bummer for obsessive age groupers like me.
My goal (and honestly, my absolute assumption about how I would do) was to be significantly faster than at my last 10k race, which was back in December. I ran 51:23 at that one. And I wanted to be closer to 50 minutes. Seriously, I wanted to break 50 minutes. I pulled out my old training logs and saw that my 10k PR was 48:55---shortly before the last time I qualified for Boston. I really thought that I might even have a shot at that. I’ve been training so hard. Hard for me, that is. Might not be what most people consider hard. But I’ve been doing consistently more than I have in a long, long time. I definitely expected that I would be at least a bit faster than I was in December.
I knew this course had some hills along the way, and the course in the December race was flat. But still, after all the training, I thought I would be faster.
The race starts and finishes at Sawyer Point in downtown Cincinnati. A quick look at the hand drawn map posted on the web site told me that the start would be uphill (away from downtown), then downhill coming back, and then what I thought was a flat out and back along the river.
But, I’m not very good at reading maps.
This was not a topographical map (just as well, because I really suck at interpreting those!), but, in fairness to myself, let’s admit that I didn’t look at it that closely.
Unnecessary Stress
After two cups of coffee, I drove downtown around 8 am for the 9 am start. Was stressed about the parking situation, which was unnecessary as there was plenty of free parking in the lot right next to the park. Lots of signs saying unauthorized vehicles would be towed but everybody was parking there and I didn’t see any tow trucks, so I assumed it was okay. I do think the race organizers could have put some info on their flyer about where to park, however, for those of us who don’t go down to that area very often.
I had a vague memory from my previous experience with this race that there was some sort of hot soup at the finish. And they were promising us that there would be plenty of good food. So I did not toss anything in my bag. Brought a water bottle but that was it. When will I ever learn? My idea of post-race food is just not the same as most of the people who put on these races. I should have brought along a Picky Bar or something.
It was a cool morning, and chillier down by the river. The sky was overcast and there was a fair amount of wind. Not my ideal race conditions. I wore my CW-X capri tights, my warmest technical top, my light-blue hat from the Lady Distance Classic, and my nicest, most expensive running gloves. I should have worn a pair of cheap, throw away gloves but I think I was just doomed to make bad decisions at this race. I didn’t have any pockets, so I wore a small fanny pack around my waist to hold my car key.
Trying Not to Make a Scene
I went to the registration to pick up my number and found out that they did not have a record of me ordering a shirt. I wasn’t 100 percent sure about it but I thought that I had ordered a shirt. After some consultation with the race director, they were going to give me one anyway. But since I couldn’t really remember, and I didn’t have my confirmation email with me, and the shirt was ugly anyway and not something I needed, I told them not to bother. I was glad later that I did not take the shirt because it turns out that I didn’t order one after all. I don’t usually order them anymore unless it is a really special race or a nice technical shirt, but for some reason I thought I had, or that it was included if you registered by a certain date.
I went for a warmup jog along the river. It took me awhile to get comfortable, and I felt some tightness in my right glute. Both my knees had been twingey while I walked to the registration table, but I chalked that up to nerves.
I heard Don Connolly telling people to line up behind the start line. I tried not to get too far back. There seemed to be a lot of people running who were part of the training groups sponsored by the Running Spot. They had special pace teams and everything. For a 5k and a 10k. Really? They need pace teams? I thought about how this is probably why I would not make a good coach for their new “Sit to Fit” program. Because I think if you want to run you should just go out and do it, and if you don’t want to run, well, then go do something else. The concept of needing someone to teach you how to run a 5k is a little weird to me.
So all these people were kind of happily bustling about in their little groups, and I was standing there by myself, same as always. Still, I’ll admit I did take advantage of the signs to position myself right in between the 8:00 and the 8:30 groups.
The race began, and although it took me a few seconds to cross the start line, it seemed like I was in the right spot, with a bunch of other people all running about my pace. We ran away from the river, up Eggleston Ave., and then all of a sudden I realized that we were on Gilbert Ave. (a big hill) and it appeared that we were going to be running all the way up the hill. WTF? I did not catch that part when I looked at the map.
I just took another look at that map and it is quite clear about where we were going. I guess I just see what I want to see sometimes!
So we ran up the hill. Hit the first mile marker in 8:36. I had expected to be a bunch faster, but I had not expected the first mile to be entirely uphill. The turnaround point was not until Eden Park Drive, where they had a water stop, so I picked up a cup. Hit mile two in 8:46, but a good portion of this mile was uphill as well, and I lost a few seconds grabbing and drinking that cup of water. I now realized, however, that my time goal was way out of reach. I didn’t feel that bad. But this was just all I apparently had in me for a 10k. So I tried to just think of it as a good, hard workout.
We came back to the park, where the 5k runners were to peel off toward the finish line. Typically in these type of events there are more people running the 5k than the 10k. I don’t know what is up with this, but I guess those Running Spot training groups are really having a big effect on people, because almost nobody who was right in front of me (and it was a huge pack of people at that point) was going to the 5k finish line. Bummer. I didn’t even think I was going to get a decent age group placement at that point.
I tucked my running gloves into the waist band of my fanny pack.
Mile 3 was an 8:20. That one was mostly downhill, but it was still nice to see a little faster number on my watch. It still wasn’t as fast as the goal pace I had assumed I would easily accomplish!
The rest of the race course made a narrow loop northeast along the river and back for a mile or so, and then another mile out-and-back to the southwest. Mile 4 was an 8:32, mile 5 was an 8:28. Somewhere in here I lost one of my expensive running gloves. Why is it that when I wear the cheapo gloves I can never lose them (same thing for my old chewed up nylon anorak that isn’t even nice enough for a bag lady to wear) but when I wear something nice, it disappears?
Around this point I fell in with the 8:30 pace group, as I was, in fact, on 8:30 pace. The leader of the group was telling the others how after the race she was headed to Arnold’s for Bockfest. Seemed a little early in the day to me for beer. And it irritated me how she could chat so cavalierly while the rest of us huffed and puffed along, but I guess that is why she was the leader of the pace team. She could probably run 8:30 pace backwards. I decided that I hated her.
I am an idiot
Mile 6 was another 8:20. At this point, I decided to ditch the pace team and take off in my finishing kick, which should have ordinarily have gotten me across the line in another 1:35 or so. But somehow, I missed the left turn to the finish line---just totally missed it---and ended up back on the earlier section of the course.
What a rookie mistake! And here I was, making fun of the training groups and their little pace teams. Serves me right. When I figured out what had happened, I stopped for a few seconds and considered just walking back to the car. And then I decided that I really should finish the race, after all. My time was going to be so much slower than I expected anyway, what difference did it make? So I jogged back on to the course and picked it up a little toward the finish line.
My mistake cost me about 1:30 or so, because what normally would take 1:35 took over 3 minutes.
I decided to jog back along the race course to see if I could find my glove. After a couple of minutes, I gave up and headed back to the finish area. Now, of course, it was jampacked with people and there was a long line for the “food.” I am putting that in quotes because it was a rather paltry buffet.
They had a big video display set up where you could view the finish times on a scrolling list, but every time I got close enough to the display to see it, it was scrolling through some category far from mine, and I did not have the patience to stare at it long enough to see how I had done. They said that if you won an award, you could pick it up at the announcer’s table, but I didn’t want to go up there and then find out that I hadn’t won anything. That is always embarrassing.
No Food for the Hungry
I fought my way to the front of a crowd and got a cup of water. I got on line to see if I could get some food. There appeared to be a lot of non-runners on the line. Like the guy right in front of me, who was wearing blue jeans. The line moved very slowly. I should have just gone home but I really wanted something to nibble on and I didn’t have anything in the car. Finally I got up there, and all they had were Panera bagels (not my favorite), orange slices, and some spicy soup from Qdoba. They didn’t even have any bananas, or at least, I didn’t see any. It was ridiculous.
So I grabbed half a cinnamon bagel. I took a cup of the tortilla soup but wound up dumping it. Big disappointment on the food. When will I learn? Just because the race is supposed to be about food and is named “Food on the Run” and they promise there will be food at the finish, it doesn’t mean there will actually be food. Because apparently my idea of what constitutes “food” is very different from the average runner. You know what would really be surprising at one of these events? If they actually had some food!
Later in the afternoon, I looked up the race results online and it turns out that even if I had run the time I had hoped for, I would not have finished much higher in the race results than I did. My slow time and my little off-course mishap may have cost me a spot in the quarterly rankings, but if I couldn’t go any faster than that I don’t really deserve to be ranked, anyway. Still, I’m glad I decided to jump back in and finish. I was 4 of 45 in the age group, and 251 of 942 runners overall.
Looking at last year’s results, I thought I had a shot at the age group win if I had run as well as I expected. But it does seem that relatively soft times one year do bring out the fast age groupers the following year. And so it was that the woman who won my age group this year is one of the fastest woman in the state in our age group. Can’t expect to compete with that!
I entered this race as a test to see if all the effort I have been putting into my training over the past four months will have the intended effect of making me faster. On that score, it was a disappointment. It was a decent workout and a solid effort and not a total disaster, but it wasn’t nearly as fast as I had in mind. Realistically, this probably means that I have to scale back my goal of qualifying for Boston at the upcoming ORRRC Marathon. And that completely bums me out, because the whole point of doing the ORRRC Marathon instead of some destination race in some interesting location was to maximize my chances of qualifying for Boston. I guess I’m still going to give it a shot, but things are not looking good right now.
Ok, about the race. It is an event put on by The Nutrition Council, a non-profit organization in Cincinnati whose mission is to advance child health through nutrition education. I had done this race once before with my daughter, a couple of years ago. At that time, the race course was at the Lunken bike trail, but now it is in downtown Cincinnati. This year was the 11th annual race. There is both a 5k and 10k. They give awards to the age group winners, but not any deeper, which is a bummer for obsessive age groupers like me.
My goal (and honestly, my absolute assumption about how I would do) was to be significantly faster than at my last 10k race, which was back in December. I ran 51:23 at that one. And I wanted to be closer to 50 minutes. Seriously, I wanted to break 50 minutes. I pulled out my old training logs and saw that my 10k PR was 48:55---shortly before the last time I qualified for Boston. I really thought that I might even have a shot at that. I’ve been training so hard. Hard for me, that is. Might not be what most people consider hard. But I’ve been doing consistently more than I have in a long, long time. I definitely expected that I would be at least a bit faster than I was in December.
I knew this course had some hills along the way, and the course in the December race was flat. But still, after all the training, I thought I would be faster.
The race starts and finishes at Sawyer Point in downtown Cincinnati. A quick look at the hand drawn map posted on the web site told me that the start would be uphill (away from downtown), then downhill coming back, and then what I thought was a flat out and back along the river.
But, I’m not very good at reading maps.
This was not a topographical map (just as well, because I really suck at interpreting those!), but, in fairness to myself, let’s admit that I didn’t look at it that closely.
Unnecessary Stress
After two cups of coffee, I drove downtown around 8 am for the 9 am start. Was stressed about the parking situation, which was unnecessary as there was plenty of free parking in the lot right next to the park. Lots of signs saying unauthorized vehicles would be towed but everybody was parking there and I didn’t see any tow trucks, so I assumed it was okay. I do think the race organizers could have put some info on their flyer about where to park, however, for those of us who don’t go down to that area very often.
I had a vague memory from my previous experience with this race that there was some sort of hot soup at the finish. And they were promising us that there would be plenty of good food. So I did not toss anything in my bag. Brought a water bottle but that was it. When will I ever learn? My idea of post-race food is just not the same as most of the people who put on these races. I should have brought along a Picky Bar or something.
It was a cool morning, and chillier down by the river. The sky was overcast and there was a fair amount of wind. Not my ideal race conditions. I wore my CW-X capri tights, my warmest technical top, my light-blue hat from the Lady Distance Classic, and my nicest, most expensive running gloves. I should have worn a pair of cheap, throw away gloves but I think I was just doomed to make bad decisions at this race. I didn’t have any pockets, so I wore a small fanny pack around my waist to hold my car key.
Trying Not to Make a Scene
I went to the registration to pick up my number and found out that they did not have a record of me ordering a shirt. I wasn’t 100 percent sure about it but I thought that I had ordered a shirt. After some consultation with the race director, they were going to give me one anyway. But since I couldn’t really remember, and I didn’t have my confirmation email with me, and the shirt was ugly anyway and not something I needed, I told them not to bother. I was glad later that I did not take the shirt because it turns out that I didn’t order one after all. I don’t usually order them anymore unless it is a really special race or a nice technical shirt, but for some reason I thought I had, or that it was included if you registered by a certain date.
I went for a warmup jog along the river. It took me awhile to get comfortable, and I felt some tightness in my right glute. Both my knees had been twingey while I walked to the registration table, but I chalked that up to nerves.
I heard Don Connolly telling people to line up behind the start line. I tried not to get too far back. There seemed to be a lot of people running who were part of the training groups sponsored by the Running Spot. They had special pace teams and everything. For a 5k and a 10k. Really? They need pace teams? I thought about how this is probably why I would not make a good coach for their new “Sit to Fit” program. Because I think if you want to run you should just go out and do it, and if you don’t want to run, well, then go do something else. The concept of needing someone to teach you how to run a 5k is a little weird to me.
So all these people were kind of happily bustling about in their little groups, and I was standing there by myself, same as always. Still, I’ll admit I did take advantage of the signs to position myself right in between the 8:00 and the 8:30 groups.
The race began, and although it took me a few seconds to cross the start line, it seemed like I was in the right spot, with a bunch of other people all running about my pace. We ran away from the river, up Eggleston Ave., and then all of a sudden I realized that we were on Gilbert Ave. (a big hill) and it appeared that we were going to be running all the way up the hill. WTF? I did not catch that part when I looked at the map.
I just took another look at that map and it is quite clear about where we were going. I guess I just see what I want to see sometimes!
So we ran up the hill. Hit the first mile marker in 8:36. I had expected to be a bunch faster, but I had not expected the first mile to be entirely uphill. The turnaround point was not until Eden Park Drive, where they had a water stop, so I picked up a cup. Hit mile two in 8:46, but a good portion of this mile was uphill as well, and I lost a few seconds grabbing and drinking that cup of water. I now realized, however, that my time goal was way out of reach. I didn’t feel that bad. But this was just all I apparently had in me for a 10k. So I tried to just think of it as a good, hard workout.
We came back to the park, where the 5k runners were to peel off toward the finish line. Typically in these type of events there are more people running the 5k than the 10k. I don’t know what is up with this, but I guess those Running Spot training groups are really having a big effect on people, because almost nobody who was right in front of me (and it was a huge pack of people at that point) was going to the 5k finish line. Bummer. I didn’t even think I was going to get a decent age group placement at that point.
I tucked my running gloves into the waist band of my fanny pack.
Mile 3 was an 8:20. That one was mostly downhill, but it was still nice to see a little faster number on my watch. It still wasn’t as fast as the goal pace I had assumed I would easily accomplish!
The rest of the race course made a narrow loop northeast along the river and back for a mile or so, and then another mile out-and-back to the southwest. Mile 4 was an 8:32, mile 5 was an 8:28. Somewhere in here I lost one of my expensive running gloves. Why is it that when I wear the cheapo gloves I can never lose them (same thing for my old chewed up nylon anorak that isn’t even nice enough for a bag lady to wear) but when I wear something nice, it disappears?
Around this point I fell in with the 8:30 pace group, as I was, in fact, on 8:30 pace. The leader of the group was telling the others how after the race she was headed to Arnold’s for Bockfest. Seemed a little early in the day to me for beer. And it irritated me how she could chat so cavalierly while the rest of us huffed and puffed along, but I guess that is why she was the leader of the pace team. She could probably run 8:30 pace backwards. I decided that I hated her.
I am an idiot
Mile 6 was another 8:20. At this point, I decided to ditch the pace team and take off in my finishing kick, which should have ordinarily have gotten me across the line in another 1:35 or so. But somehow, I missed the left turn to the finish line---just totally missed it---and ended up back on the earlier section of the course.
What a rookie mistake! And here I was, making fun of the training groups and their little pace teams. Serves me right. When I figured out what had happened, I stopped for a few seconds and considered just walking back to the car. And then I decided that I really should finish the race, after all. My time was going to be so much slower than I expected anyway, what difference did it make? So I jogged back on to the course and picked it up a little toward the finish line.
My mistake cost me about 1:30 or so, because what normally would take 1:35 took over 3 minutes.
I decided to jog back along the race course to see if I could find my glove. After a couple of minutes, I gave up and headed back to the finish area. Now, of course, it was jampacked with people and there was a long line for the “food.” I am putting that in quotes because it was a rather paltry buffet.
They had a big video display set up where you could view the finish times on a scrolling list, but every time I got close enough to the display to see it, it was scrolling through some category far from mine, and I did not have the patience to stare at it long enough to see how I had done. They said that if you won an award, you could pick it up at the announcer’s table, but I didn’t want to go up there and then find out that I hadn’t won anything. That is always embarrassing.
No Food for the Hungry
I fought my way to the front of a crowd and got a cup of water. I got on line to see if I could get some food. There appeared to be a lot of non-runners on the line. Like the guy right in front of me, who was wearing blue jeans. The line moved very slowly. I should have just gone home but I really wanted something to nibble on and I didn’t have anything in the car. Finally I got up there, and all they had were Panera bagels (not my favorite), orange slices, and some spicy soup from Qdoba. They didn’t even have any bananas, or at least, I didn’t see any. It was ridiculous.
So I grabbed half a cinnamon bagel. I took a cup of the tortilla soup but wound up dumping it. Big disappointment on the food. When will I learn? Just because the race is supposed to be about food and is named “Food on the Run” and they promise there will be food at the finish, it doesn’t mean there will actually be food. Because apparently my idea of what constitutes “food” is very different from the average runner. You know what would really be surprising at one of these events? If they actually had some food!
Later in the afternoon, I looked up the race results online and it turns out that even if I had run the time I had hoped for, I would not have finished much higher in the race results than I did. My slow time and my little off-course mishap may have cost me a spot in the quarterly rankings, but if I couldn’t go any faster than that I don’t really deserve to be ranked, anyway. Still, I’m glad I decided to jump back in and finish. I was 4 of 45 in the age group, and 251 of 942 runners overall.
Looking at last year’s results, I thought I had a shot at the age group win if I had run as well as I expected. But it does seem that relatively soft times one year do bring out the fast age groupers the following year. And so it was that the woman who won my age group this year is one of the fastest woman in the state in our age group. Can’t expect to compete with that!
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