Food on the Run 2013

Food on the Run is an annual 5k/10k put on by a local Cincinnati organization known as The Nutrition Council. The Nutrition Council's stated mission is to advance child health through nutrition education. I'm always hoping this will mean there will be plenty of good stuff to eat after the race but I'm always a little disappointed!

This year they had added on Chipotle as a sponsor, which isn't especially healthy if you are thinking about chips and guacamole and flour torillas. But I would not have minded if there was some Chipotle at the finish line. Instead, they had coupons for buy one, get one free. That's nice, but I'll just shove it in some corner of the car and forget about it. I'd rather have something I could have eaten immediately after the race.

They did have food after, just nothing terribly exciting. But more about that later.

So, last Saturday morning I did this race for the second year in a row. Both times I had hoped it would give me good news about how my training was progressing, and be a confidence builder for the upcoming marathon. It didn't work out that way last year. In retrospect, last year's goal was too ambitious and the training wasn't there.

This year my goal time for the marathon is slower, and I'm telling myself the training is better (well, I did compare the training logs this afternoon and I really think it is true---at least the mileage is higher).

My goal for this particular race was around 53 minutes or about 8:30 pace. That's about where I should be if I want to be able to run the marathon under 4:10. But I told myself that since I was not tapering for this race, just training through it, and even ran 6 miles the day before which I don't usually do the day before a race, it wouldn't be the end of the world if I ran slower than 53 minutes. I was trying to take the pressure off.

Arguably, I shouldn't even have been doing this race, at least, according to the Hanson's training program. But I like to race. I adjusted the schedule by skipping my tempo run last week.

The race started at 9 so I left the house around 8 am. The start and finish of the race are in Sawyer Point Park. The parking lot was fuller than last year, and this year they were charging $4. That's ridiculous, so I guess I won't be doing this race next year, unless they move it to a venue where we don't have to pay to park.

I jogged to the registration table, picked up my bib and shirt, and jogged back to the car, where I hung out  for ten minutes or so. It was colder downtown along the river than it was at my house. And it had started snowing. I started looking forward to the race being over.

I headed out for my warmup jog, which I did at a faster pace than usual because it was so cold. But by the time I finished, I didn't feel too uncomfortable. Seemed like my attire was going to work. I was wearing my technical top from State-to-State, thick black tights, white hat from Fargo, and the blue plastic pullover top from the 2000 FCR Nationals. And a pair of gloves.

Now that I've seen myself in this photo, I am wondering what happened to my resolution never again to appear in public unless I was wearing a turtleneck. I am hideous.

The first mile of the race takes you away from the river and out of downtown and up Gilbert Ave. (hill!). My watch said 8:35. Okay, just about right and felt okay. The course continues up Gilbert to a turnaround on Eden Park Drive. There was an aid station just past the turnaround on the downhill side of Gilbert, but I didn't want to stop on the downhill so I skipped it.

Mile 2 was another 8:35.We continued downhill and turned back onto the trail in the park. Mile 3 was an 8:28. So far, so good. I started trying to do math in my head to figure out what I needed to run in order to meet my goal.

You run out east along the river, then turn around and head back west towards the start and past it, before you turn around again and finally head back to the finish. So the last 3 miles are a fairly flat loop.

I took my gloves off and carried them in my hands. I remembered how last year I had tucked my gloves into the waistband of my fanny pack and ended up losing one. It was colder this year, so I took them on and off a couple of times.

Mile 4 was 8:07. Things were looking pretty good. There was another aid station around mile 4, and this time I grabbed a cup of water and drank a little.

I missed the mile 5 marker, but miles 5 and 6 were 16:46. We turned down towards the finish and I realized what had made me go off course last year. There was a woman standing in the middle of the path telling people to turn left for the 5k and right for the 10k. Last year I got confused and turned the wrong way before figuring out my mistake and getting back on the course.

Approaching the finish, I managed to kick past a bunch of people. Final .2 was a 1:32, for a final time of 52:16, about 8:26 average pace. So, I went a little faster last year, and well under my goal, which is a great confidence builder for the marathon to come.

After crossing the finish line, I started looking for the food. There was a slow moving line for the following items:

• Very hard assorted half-bagels
• Little packets of Cabot cheese, some kind of white cheddar?
• Boxes and boxes of KIND bars in various flavors (grabbed a bunch of these)
• Scary looking processed cookie snack of graham crackers and grape jelly
• Frozen bananas
• Very cold orange slices

There was another line, actually shorter, with hot (well, lukewarm) soup. They had two kinds: black bean and tomato basil. I didn't realize it was tomato basil for awhile because I swear the volunteers kept calling it "tomato base," which sounded gross, so I went with the black bean. Tomato base soup, what is that? Tomato is just the base for something else? What is it the base for?

So it was better than after most small local races but not by that much. I think they could do a little better. Why not some chips and guacamole? Huh? How about some little mini or cut up burritos? How about that, Chipotle?

While I finished my soup I stood around with a bunch of other obsessives staring at a couple of big video monitors that were scrolling the finish times. One monitor just had finish times. We were not interested in that one. The other had the age group placements. Unfortunately, at that point they only had the 5k results, so we had to wait a little while. Standing there in my wet and now cold running clothes, the only thing that kept me from feeling completely ridiculous was that I was not the only one doing it.

Finally we got the 10k results and I found out that I had indeed finished 3rd in my age group, so I went over to the awards table to pick up my award. Later on I wondered if they had given me the wrong thing, since it says 5k on it, and they did have some nicer looking items that maybe were intended for people who had placed in the 10k. Oh well. This was just a very generic medal that looks like something recycled from last year, with a new sticker on the front for this year. It truly was not worth waiting around in the cold for. The placement was important to me in itself but this piece of crap award was not.

I was 3 of 30 (compared to 4 of 45 last year) and 222 of 966 runners overall, but this is not especially impressive because it is a slow person's race. I did not recognize the names of any of the 27 women who finished in my age group behind me. Did recognize the first two as people I have never beaten!

Something unusual was that there was another race going on downtown on the same morning, a new event called the Bock Fest 5k.  This is part of a three race series that also includes a one mile race on Flying Pig weekend, and the old 14k race that was revived a couple of years ago. I wondered if some of the fast women in my age group had gone there instead since I didn't see them in the Food on the Run results. Turns out they did not, because I didn't recognize many of those names either.

There was one woman who did both the 5k at Food on the Run and then the Bock Fest 5k (10 am start). There was definitely enough time to finish Food on the Run and then jog over to Bock Fest. She won the 55-59 age group at Food on the Run, and then she also won the 50-55 group (not sure why they didn't use standard age groups except maybe they just didn't know any better) at Bock Fest.

Anyway, if it turns out that next year there is free parking at Bock Fest or if it is less than Food on the Run, I might do that one instead.

Little Miami 10k

It's day 7 of week 5 in the training program. I asked the good people at McMillan Running if I could substitute a 10k race this morning for the fartlek workout on the schedule for tomorrow, and they said it was okay.

This race is in its third year but I had never heard of it before. There's a 10k and a half-marathon. I believe the half-marathon is actually the larger event. The start and finish is at Phegley Park in Morrow, on the Little Miami bike trail. The race is run entirely on the bike trail. This is one time where the promised flat course actually was completely flat.

Since I'm training for a flat, fall marathon, I thought this would be a good test of my progress.;

Some little hitches in my plan: 1) got home a little late from dinner last night; 2) drank a good bit of red wine with dinner; 3) Morrow is farther away than I thought, which I did not find out until I decided to check on this yesterday afternoon, and the race starts at 7:30 am.

But there were some good things, too: 1) fabulous weather, considering it is the middle of August!; did not get a hangover from the wine (what was that stuff, organic? did it actually have alcohol in it?) ; 3) did not get lost on the way to Phegley Park, although neither my GPS nor Google Maps knew how to find it---it is just a little park along the bike trail where you can park your car, with some picnic tables, playground equipment and restrooms; 4) arrived at the park just in time to get one of the last parking spots---this race cannot get much bigger than it is or they are going to have to do something about the parking situation; 5) technical shirt and one of those little nylon shoe bags (or at least that is what I use them for)---got the last one of the bags.

It's about a 40 minute drive to the race. I got there around 7 am, found that parking spot about a tenth of a mile from the packet pickup, got my stuff, put the chip on my shoe, dropped the stuff in my car, waited on line for the portapotty, and did not have quite enough time to do the 1 mile warmup that I had hoped for. Got a little bit over a half-mile in before it was time to head down to the start.

We ran south (I think) on the trail. It's not the most interesting race in the world. Most of the bike trail, and this section is no exception, is just a narrow stretch of flat pavement with woods on either side. Maybe there is a little more variety along the way in the half-marathon, but I doubt it.

My goal time, which I based on a range between where I really want to be and where I was in the Hyde Park Blast in late June, was between 53:11 (8:34 pace) and 54:34 (8:47 pace). I also wanted to win one of the coffee mugs they were giving for age group placements. Although they were using ten year age groups (which we hate!) at least they were going three deep in the groups, and based on the previous years' results I thought I had a good shot.

I did not wear my new GPS watch for this race. I wore it on our dog walk yesterday morning and I think I know how it works, but I didn't want to be messing with anything new this morning. Would have been interesting to see what it said about the mile markers, though, because based on my splits they were way off. I don't understand why it is so hard to get them in the right place on a totally flat course, but somebody apparently got a bit confused when they were putting them out.

Took 10-15 seconds to cross the start line, and I was happy to have the chip. It was a little congested but not too bad. Seemed like I had started in the right place. I steadily passed people, not knowing if they were in the 10k or the half. Might be nice for the people doing the half if they gave the 10k runners tags to wear on their backs.

At mile 1, my watch said 8:55 from the start line. This was, obviously, slower than I expected to be. I did not allow it to make me disheartened. Well, actually I had forgotten what my goal pace was supposed to be, all I really remembered was that I wanted to finish somewhere between 53-54 minutes, and I couldn't do the math in my head to know for sure how far off I was. I had expected to be faster, though. I felt fine and the pace felt right, so I thought maybe that mile marker was wrong.

I did not take a walking break. Just in case.

At mile 2, my watch said 9:07. I knew for sure that was wrong. C'mon, I didn't take a walking break and you're telling me I ran a 9:07? I was looking for a significant speed up in mile 3.

And sure enough, despite grabbing a cup of water at the aid station and taking a walking break, mile 3 was 8:13. On a totally flat course where I was not really changing pace except for that walk break!

A little before this point I started counting the women coming back on the other side. Another goal was to maybe be in the top ten women. I kinda lost track of it after 7 or 8 or so.

The 10k turnaround was just marked by some little orange cones in the middle of the path. They didn't have anybody standing there policing it, or a timing mat, or anything. I reflected on how this would not be a terribly difficult race to cheat at. All you would have to do is just drop off into the woods on the left side when you were running on the way out, as if you needed a sudden pit stop, and then some time later come out and just run back to the start, thus cutting some distance off the course. I did not see anybody ducking into the woods while I was out there, but I think that would be the way to do it if you were so inclined.

Not me. I had a nightmare the other night that Bob Roncker told me he was disqualifying me from the last two trail races because he thought I had cheated and cut the course, and I was trying to convince him that I would never knowingly do such a thing---because let's face it, I have gotten lost on trail races, although never resulting in a short cut!---but he did not believe me. It was awful.

Anyway, back to reality. Not too long after the turnaround, somebody who was going by on the way out told me that I was the 12th woman. Okay, that gave me some incentive to pick it up a little bit and see if I could make it into the top ten. I could see one woman a little ways ahead.

I missed the mile 4 marker but it was near the aid station, where I grabbed a cup of water and a cup of Gatorade, and probably drank more of the Gatorade than I should have but it was diluted so I thought it would be okay. I took a little walk break while I was drinking.

Miles 4 and 5 were 16:48. I wondered again about those mile markers. I was trying to pick it up a little but that still seemed a bit off. Passed the woman who was ahead of me. She said it was her first race back after an injury, and I told her good job. But this did not stop me from passing her!

There was one more woman ahead of me whom I could see, and I didn't know if I could catch her or not. She was coming back to me but I thought I might run out of real estate before I caught her.

I thought about the coffee mugs they were giving out as age group awards, and how unlikely it was that there were three women in my age group ahead of me if I was finishing in 11th place. And then I thought about how I shouldn't give up on trying to pass that woman.

Mile 6 was an 8:52. I think that one was long, whereas miles 4-5 were probably short.

I was getting closer to the woman in front, and I could see the finish line. I started to push harder. She was slowing down. I passed her. I didn't know if she was going to try to pass me right back. I heard somebody say, "finish it up." And so I finished, thinking that I was in tenth place if the person who told me I was in 12th earlier was correct. My last .2 was 1:54, and I think that was a bit long also. The course was probably measured accurately, but the mile markers were all positioned just a little bit off.

I tried not to throw up on the voluneer who removed my timing chip. I got a bottle of Gatorade and walked around the park until I caught my breath. I walked back to the car, and decided it would be nice to change my clothes while I waited for the awards, which I hoped would not be too long of a wait.

You could check your results online at a couple of laptops they had set up at a table in the park. I learned that I was 2nd in my age group (yay) but only 11th woman overall (boo).

Got changed in the restroom, and then grabbed a couple of chocolate chip cookies, a half a bagel and some water. Put my gear bag in the car and headed back over to the picnic area.

And when I got there, they were just about to start the 10k awards, and they were giving out the women first. So I got my coffee mug, and I hung around a couple of minutes while they gave out more awards (just to be polite), and then I walked back to the car and headed for home.

Not sure yet how many people were in the race or in my age group, but when I checked the results at the picnic table, there were at least 8 women in my age group. The woman who got third finished about 4-5 minutes behind me, and the woman who won the age group ran a 47 or something.

So, my chip time was 53:48, or 8:39 pace, which is right in the range I had set for my goal today. Of course, I would like to be a little bit faster, but it is what it is. I could say well maybe if I had gotten more sleep last night or not drank all that wine or was not so congested the last few days or hadn't had that debilitating headache from roughly 6 pm Friday night until yesterday at noon, maybe I would have gone faster. But I felt pretty good today and I think this race was probably honestly a good test of my actual fitness at the moment.

This result still is not fast enough to predict a BQ in Indianapolis in November. But it is a little faster than I have been running since last spring, and enables me to adjust my training paces, which should make me faster still, I hope. I am making progress. Just not as fast as I'd like, but it never is!

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