This one was last Sunday, July 17. It's another race in the Dirt Days series. For many years, this was the only trail race held in the Cincinnati area. I have done it a couple of times before but it was like 10 years ago, maybe longer.
East Fork State Park lies between St. Rt. 32 and 125, east of Cincinnati. The lake is a popular site for triathlons. The Backpack Trail is a well-established route, supposedly about 14 miles long in its entirety. This race used to be about 4 miles or a little over. Now it is a 5.6 mile and a 10.8 mile. You can use either race to count towards Dirt Days series points and Dirty Dozen standings, but the formats of the race are slightly different. The longer race is just a "normal" race with everybody starting at the same time. The shorter race has a handicapped start. Back in the day, they used to give out special shirts to the top 25 finishers in the handicapped race, but I think they've stopped that.now. I wasn't 100% sure about that so I still wanted to try to finish in the top 25.
I was doing the shorter race. I was just not up for 10 miles in the woods in this heat and humidity. The shorter race was going to be hard enough for me. I had spent the previous two days running the dogs in agility, and I was tired. And I really wasn't much in the mood for this race, but I had to go and get a finish time if I wanted to get those Dirt Days series points.
One of the things about it that I really wasn't looking forward to was getting passed by all those younger and faster people, due to the handicapped start. I had some unpleasant memories from the previous races of getting passed by almost everybody who started behind me, and only passing a couple of people myself. And now I would be starting earlier since I am much older, so maybe even more people were going to pass me, and there really weren't many people starting ahead of me that I could pass. I would have preferred a traditional mass start, like they were having in the longer race.
But East Fork Lake is so pretty that it immediately put me in a better mood. So even though it was muggy and miserable, once I got there I was ready to race. I picked up my numbers (front and back for this thing!), and the volunteers helped me pin the one on my back. I did a little 10 minute warm-up jog around the parking lot. I visited the portapotties, twice. I asked Bob Roncker why the race was so much longer than it used to be. He said that over the years people have cleared out more area for the trails, so it has just gradually gotten longer.
I debated wearing a fanny pack with a GU and a bottle of water. I wouldn't need that for a 5 mile road race but I was anticipating being out there for well over an hour on the trails. Bob said that there was just one water stop, in a parking lot in the middle of the race. Or maybe it was a little before the middle. Or a little after. I decided to wear the fanny pack.
The first runner went off at 8 am with a 30-minute handicap. So, the "open" runners started at 8:30. The rest of us were distributed across that 30 minute period based on age, sex, and "previous performances" (whatever that means, as Bob was doing the handicapping). I had a 24 minute handicap, so I started at 8:06. The first runner was an older guy (he ultimately wins the race), and then there were a few women after him, so there were about 6 people ahead of me. Two of the women I thought I might be able to pass, but probably not the others.
What is Up with This?
I thought I was to start by myself based on the pre-race info I had seen, but to my surprise there was another woman lined up next to me at the start. She had apparently been a late registrant, which wasn't supposed to be allowed but I guess Bob let her in anyway.
No big deal, except I looked at this woman and there was just no way she was 52 years old. She looked like maybe somewhere in her late 20s, early 30s and certainly no older than 35. I'm a poor judge of age, but this woman was way younger than I am!
Even 52-year-old movie stars do not look as good as this chick. Fit, tan, long blond hair, no wrinkles. I hated her immediately.
So, I can't help myself, I have to say to her that I think she should be starting at least 10 minutes behind me, maybe 15. I do mean it as a compliment, sort of, and that is how she takes it.
I was interested to see how fast she would take off. If Bob had done the handicapping properly, this much younger woman has to be very slow. Otherwise, he really should have put her further back.
Well, off we go and guess what, she takes off up the hill---you have to run up a steep hill for a couple tenths of a mile or so before you hit the trail---and it is obvious that either she does not know what she is doing or she is much faster than I am. I catch up a little when we first hit the trail but that does not last long, and soon she is out of sight, and I am alone. For awhile. Ultimately, she beats me by 9 minutes. So much for Bob's handicapping. Now if she had started ten minutes behind me where she should have been, maybe I could have held her off. But mostly, it wasn't fair to the other women her age, who had to start far behind her.
Alone in the Woods, for Awhile
I did not have much memory of what the trails were like at East Fork. Basically, they are less technical than at some of the other races, but fairly narrow. Although it had been dry for awhile in the days leading up to the race, there was a bit of rain the day before, so there were a few slippery spots. The problem was, it was hard to tell where the slippery spots were. When it's all slippery, it's somewhat easier because you just know it and deal with it. When you never know where you might fall, it's a little more dangerous. That's my opinion, anyway.
I found the first part of the race to be the most difficult. That part of the trail was very narrow, and on the edge of a hill. I was glad the whole thing wasn't like that. In this early section of the race, I also heard a tree fall down somewhere close to me, which was a bit unsettling. The tree cover was very dense, so the woods were very shady. Despite the shade, it was still plenty hot and humid. Worse, I was wearing sunglasses. Even worse, they kept fogging up. But since I wear prescription lenses, I couldn't take them off. I am almost blind without my glasses.
It took me about 15 minutes or so to catch the two women that I thought I would pass. We discussed how much faster the other woman who started with me was. They said she was really flying, and I said there was no way she was 52 years old.
(I have been obsessing about this since the race. From the results, it looks like she was actually 43. An extremely well-preserved 43. Bob says he put her where he did based on her previous performances. I still think he made a calculation error.)
About 24 minutes into the race, I was passed by an older (well, he's also in his 50s) guy, somebody I knew was going to pass me at some point, even though he started 9 minutes after me. He went on to finish second overall.
I don't remember it all too clearly anymore and it's only been a week and a half.
I was really glad I had that water bottle. I took a sip from it every ten minutes or so. After about 30 minutes, I was wondering where the little parking lot area with the water stop was. It used to be the middle of the race and now was supposed to be two miles in, or two and a half miles in. I heard a guy fall down somewhere behind me, and then there was some cursing.
Finally we hit the parking lot, and the guy who had fallen came up behind me and he was whining about how awful the race was. I didn't understand what his problem was because it really wasn't that bad, as trail races go. Well-marked course, trails in reasonable shape. And here was an aid station with water. What was he whining about? We passed a volunteer and she radioed in to Bob that # 709 (me) had just come through and was "looking strong." I thanked her for that because it gave me a little lift.
And on and on and on. I think it was flatter after this point. Mostly. More people were passing me now. Lots of guys and a few women. I had thought about counting them but gave up on that. Just wanted to finish and not be last. One of the guys who went by was really fast and I wondered if he was the last to start.
Since I didn't really know where I was and how much was left to run, it was all a bit disconcerting. Around 47 minutes into the race I had the GU. What the heck. At least I was managing to stay on course, which is always a challenge for me in these things. The race was for me a weird mix of lonely stretches, punctuated by having to step off the trail to let faster runners go by. It was hard to stay motivated. I walked a few times, then woke up and started running again. The trail was narrower and the tree cover denser than the trails I run on at home. I found it a little spooky and claustrophobic when nobody else was around. I would not like to run those trails all by myself for very long.
I started to feel a blister forming on my big left bunion. Or maybe it was when it popped that I started to feel it. I was wearing my Salomon trail shoes, that are light and breatheable, but I had pulled the laces a little too tight in the toes.
Bob had said that when we passed by the clearing with the little backpack huts, there was around a mile to go. Maybe. The details are always a bit vague. Finally we hit something that looked like that description. And then there was some uphill. I thought I remembered the uphill from the race years ago. On the last hill, I got passed by a twelve year old boy. And then, just coming out of the woods and back to the road that led to the parking lot, I got passed by a 35 yr. old guy. Later I was wishing I had tried harder to stay ahead of them both. But who am I kidding? They started long after me and they caught me, so it is unlikely I could have stayed ahead once they caught up to me.
I did run fairly hard down that last hill towards the beach, anyway.
Official time was 1:07:43, or just a little slower than I had expected. I was thinking 1:06, so I was close. Maybe if I hadn't walked in a few spots. For Dirty Dozen scoring purposes, I was 13th of 25 women. In terms of my actual finish spot, however, I was 26 of 61 runners (and was thinking that wow, if they still gave out those shirts to the top 25 I would have just missed one!) and 9 of 25 women. My age-graded time was also not so hot, 31 of 61. At least I did not get lapped by any of the 10 milers, the first of whom finished just behind me.
I stayed around for a little bit after the race, anyway, and had a cinnamon crunch bagel and a banana. Took off my wet, nasty shoes and socks, and found the first aid kit in my car to treat the blister.
I am going to miss the next two races in this series, one for a dog show and one for the Leading Ladies marathon. My next race, however, is the Lady Distance Classic 10k on August 6.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Hyde Park Blast 2011
Saturday June 25 was the 10th anniversary running of the Hyde Park Blast four-mile road race. Although it has never been one of my favorites, I have nevertheless shown up to run it for nine of those ten years.
Why is it not one of my favorites, even though it takes place in my neighborhood? One reason is that from the outset it seemed to be organized by people who did not really understand what runners wanted in an ideal race. For example, the first few years when we had to wear those ridiculous ankle straps with the gigantic timing chips. And the screw ups with the results, and the aid stations, and the start time, that they had the first couple of years. But things have gradually improved, and there isn't so much for me to find fault with any more---which will not stop me from dissing it!
Why Don't I Like This Race?
So now, mostly, the problem I have with it is just that even though it takes place in my neighborhood, it is not the kind of friendly neighborhood race that I love. It's too big and there is too much hoopla surrounding it. In addition to the race, there is the block party, the cycling race, the 5k “elite” race.
And when there is hoopla, I have higher standards of perfection. If you are going to make me big promises, you have to deliver. And this race consistently fails on that score.
But I am probably being too harsh. Anyway, this year it was mostly okay.
The event is a fundraiser for various charities involved with cancer, and they say they have donated over $220k since 2001. I am surprised that the figure isn't a lot higher, considering the number of participants in all the events and the level of corporate sponsorship. Seriously, I would be less critical if I thought they were giving more money to charity. Do the math: 3000 entrants in the 4-mile race this year at $30 a head? And all they've been able to donate in ten years is $220k? There are single individuals who have raised more than that running for charity (I think the TNT record is close to $650k by one man over 20 years). I know there are a lot of costs associated with putting on a race, but isn't that what the sponsors are for?
Anyway, I picked up my race shirt, number and chip at The Running Spot on Friday afternoon. One nice thing this year is that we got our chips at packet pickup. In previous years, we had to pick them up at the start, which made for a lot of chaos on race morning. One not so nice thing is that they wanted us to pick up our goodie bags (which have always been quite well-stocked at this race) AFTER the race. For me, the issue is that I am jogging to and from the race, so if I have to lug a bag home I probably won't be jogging.
A Bit of Shopping and More Whining
Used the opportunity to take a little look around the store merchandise to see if there was anything I wanted to buy. After all, I had to pay $1 to park in the lot across the street, and my hour wasn't up yet. They had a sale on Merrill sandals, and I picked up a pair. They were all out on a table so I was able to try them on myself without any assistance. Which was a good thing because all the clerks were occupied with other customers.
After I found my sandals, I stood for a few minutes at the cash register and waited for someone to come check me out. After a bit of waiting, I began to ask myself whether or not I really wanted these sandals. I looked down at my watch and decided I would give them one more minute before I left empty handed.
This is a great store. A couple of years ago it was named the #1 Specialty Running Store in America, or some such thing. The owner and founder of the store does a tremendous job supporting running in our community. But I don't shop there as much as I used to, since the universe created Zappos and Amazon and Road Runner Sports. I don't want to shop online, necessarily. I would prefer to give my business to local merchants. But if I have to pay to park across the street from the store, and then wait around for someone to notice that I am ready to make a purchase (after I have already waited on myself by selecting and trying on the item without any assistance), well, sorry brick and mortar store, but you are going to lose me.
Perhaps I am not really their target market? This is, after all, one of the first places that someone said to me that I didn't look like a runner. This is the place where the sales clerk asked me if I was going to wear the shoes I was trying on "for running." (Yes, it has been years now and I am still not over it.)
Anyway, before the minute was up, someone did come to wait on me. She said they were extra busy because of all the traffic from the race. I thought that was probably the point of having packet pickup in the store, but whatever. The good thing is that she let me use the coupon for an extra $10 off that I had picked up with my race number. But I am whining here on the Internet about it anyway. That is just how it goes.
But I digress.
What's Good About this Race
There are some things that I do like about this race. As I mentioned, they usually provide pretty good swag. Over the years, they have handed out assorted and occasionally useful small tote bags, various hot and cold beverage containers, little covered canisters that I still use to store dog treats and nuts, a key chain (I still use that, too), and socks. Lots of good stuff.
This year there was to be a cold beverage container and an insulated tote bag. But we weren't getting them until after the race.
They also have better race t-shirts than average. The last couple of years, we've gotten technical tops. This year, the women's shirts are hot pink.
And, for me, oh yeah, the start and finish is about a mile and a half from my house.
The Race
On Saturday morning, I left the house around 7:30 am. The race was to start at 8, so that would give me plenty of time to jog down there, and I wouldn't have to hang out for too long waiting. It was a pleasant morning, a bit cooler than usual, but sunny.
I got to the start just as they were beginning to encourage people to line up. There was a good crowd---about 3000 people registered, and ultimately, 2517 finishers. And as is often the case at the bigger local races, I didn't see anybody I recognized! It is kind of funny how at a 200-person 5k I can look around and recognize almost everybody there, but at a 2500 person race I don't see anybody who looks familiar.
There were a lot of people wearing the race shirt. What is up with that? Don't they know it's bad luck to wear it before the race?
Found a good spot on the left side of the street, not too far back. There is chip timing but I didn't want to get stuck behind a bunch of walkers.
Still, it takes me 30 seconds to reach the start line. Good thing we are using the chip!
My goal is 35 minutes, or about an 8:45 pace. That will be a few minutes faster than last year, and is a little slower than predicted by my recent 5k. I am a little lighter than last year and in a little better shape. OTOH, this race is hilly and that 5k a few weeks ago was flat. So 35 minutes sounds just about right.
The race starts with a gradual climb, followed by a shorter, steeper hill but you also get to go down the other side. The second mile is a long uphill. The third mile is mostly downhill. And the last mile starts with about a quarter mile up hill, and then it is mostly downhill to the finish.
So my race strategy based on my experience at this race is to run comfortably hard for the first two miles---but not to flip out if I am over my goal pace, especially in the second mile. Then I make up time in the third mile, try not to push too hard on the last hill, and run hard to the finish.
And that is about how it goes. Mile one takes me 9:12, which still manages to get me worried until I remember the 30 seconds at the start. So it's more like 8:42, or right on pace. In the second mile, we pass by my old house. The new residents are maintaining it well but I do wish they would paint the tool shed. Mile 2 is 8:57. No worries, this is the uphill mile.
In mile 3, I come upon someone I recognize for the first time in this race. It is Judy Harmony, whom I know from dog agility. She used to run a Miniature Poodle. She put a MACH on it. I have not seen her at a dog event in several years, but I still see her at the occasional road race. She used to be faster than me but she is slowing down. But she is still fast for her age---she will win her age group. On an age-graded basis, she is still faster than me.
Later, I will see in the results that my friend David Jones was also at the race, and will win his age group, but I did not see him at the start. Also a couple of other dog training friends were there, but I didn't see them either. That makes just four people I knew in a crowd of over 2500 runners and assorted hangers-on. At a race that takes place a mile and a half from my house. Amazing.
I think about saying hello to Judy but I don't have that much energy. I pass Judy somewhere near the three mile mark. Mile 3 took me 8:38.
Now we're climbing the hill. There is always a lot of whining about this hill, but it is really no big deal. It is steeper than the hill in mile two, but not that long. I decide to time myself going up the hill. It takes me just about two minutes. I'm not even that fast, and I get up it in two minutes. Everybody quit the whining!
Now I am starting to regret the feta stuffed olives I had the night before, however.
I run down the hill and back out to Erie Ave. I decide I will not start to "kick" until I can actually see the finish line. When you turn the corner onto Erie, there is just a little rise for a block or so until you start downhill.
I accelerate and start passing people. I do not understand these people who slow down when they are approaching the finish line. It is a race, people! So at the finish, I do have to slow down because there are all these people around me just coming to a dead stop and I don't want to run them over.
Fourth mile time was 8:31. I let them cut my chip off my shoe, and I grab some water and Powerade. I am thinking about picking up the promised swag---the drink bottle and the little lunch bag---but then I see a big long line for them, same deal with the food. I just can't stand this waiting on line thing after a race. So I just start walking home with my water and Powerade. I don't really need another plastic drink bottle and I certainly don't need another tote bag of any kind.
I was not sure of my official time because I didn't know exactly how long I took to cross the start, and I did not stop my watch as soon as I crossed the finish line. But later in the afternoon I saw in the results that my chip time was 34:49, or just about what I expected as a reasonable goal, 8:43 pace.
My time put me 4 of 98 in my age group (sounds better than it is), 252 of 1501 women, and 686 of 2517 finishers. My age group placement sounds better than it is because a lot of those 98 women were walkers, and it looks like most of the fast women in my age group weren't there. Remember, I didn't see anybody I recognized at the start line. Where they went, I am not sure. I checked the results of a 5k that was happening the same day, and I didn't recognize the names of anybody who ran that one either. And, get this, I would have been the FIRST overall female in that race. Seriously. So are all the fast old ladies on vacation?
Fourth out of 98 would surely win you some sort of prize in most road races. But not in this one. They don't do age group awards. They give prizes to the top 50 men and top 50 women. This unfairly penalizes us older folk. Unfair! I guess that is another reason I don't like this race. I would feel better about it if they actually gave more money to charity, instead of promoting themselves as a charitable event and yet spending most of the money, on what, I am not entirely sure. I would hope that most of the swag and all of the food was donated by the many corporate sponsors.
But I will show up and run it again next year anyway if I do not have anyplace else to be that day!
Why is it not one of my favorites, even though it takes place in my neighborhood? One reason is that from the outset it seemed to be organized by people who did not really understand what runners wanted in an ideal race. For example, the first few years when we had to wear those ridiculous ankle straps with the gigantic timing chips. And the screw ups with the results, and the aid stations, and the start time, that they had the first couple of years. But things have gradually improved, and there isn't so much for me to find fault with any more---which will not stop me from dissing it!
Why Don't I Like This Race?
So now, mostly, the problem I have with it is just that even though it takes place in my neighborhood, it is not the kind of friendly neighborhood race that I love. It's too big and there is too much hoopla surrounding it. In addition to the race, there is the block party, the cycling race, the 5k “elite” race.
And when there is hoopla, I have higher standards of perfection. If you are going to make me big promises, you have to deliver. And this race consistently fails on that score.
But I am probably being too harsh. Anyway, this year it was mostly okay.
The event is a fundraiser for various charities involved with cancer, and they say they have donated over $220k since 2001. I am surprised that the figure isn't a lot higher, considering the number of participants in all the events and the level of corporate sponsorship. Seriously, I would be less critical if I thought they were giving more money to charity. Do the math: 3000 entrants in the 4-mile race this year at $30 a head? And all they've been able to donate in ten years is $220k? There are single individuals who have raised more than that running for charity (I think the TNT record is close to $650k by one man over 20 years). I know there are a lot of costs associated with putting on a race, but isn't that what the sponsors are for?
Anyway, I picked up my race shirt, number and chip at The Running Spot on Friday afternoon. One nice thing this year is that we got our chips at packet pickup. In previous years, we had to pick them up at the start, which made for a lot of chaos on race morning. One not so nice thing is that they wanted us to pick up our goodie bags (which have always been quite well-stocked at this race) AFTER the race. For me, the issue is that I am jogging to and from the race, so if I have to lug a bag home I probably won't be jogging.
A Bit of Shopping and More Whining
Used the opportunity to take a little look around the store merchandise to see if there was anything I wanted to buy. After all, I had to pay $1 to park in the lot across the street, and my hour wasn't up yet. They had a sale on Merrill sandals, and I picked up a pair. They were all out on a table so I was able to try them on myself without any assistance. Which was a good thing because all the clerks were occupied with other customers.
After I found my sandals, I stood for a few minutes at the cash register and waited for someone to come check me out. After a bit of waiting, I began to ask myself whether or not I really wanted these sandals. I looked down at my watch and decided I would give them one more minute before I left empty handed.
This is a great store. A couple of years ago it was named the #1 Specialty Running Store in America, or some such thing. The owner and founder of the store does a tremendous job supporting running in our community. But I don't shop there as much as I used to, since the universe created Zappos and Amazon and Road Runner Sports. I don't want to shop online, necessarily. I would prefer to give my business to local merchants. But if I have to pay to park across the street from the store, and then wait around for someone to notice that I am ready to make a purchase (after I have already waited on myself by selecting and trying on the item without any assistance), well, sorry brick and mortar store, but you are going to lose me.
Perhaps I am not really their target market? This is, after all, one of the first places that someone said to me that I didn't look like a runner. This is the place where the sales clerk asked me if I was going to wear the shoes I was trying on "for running." (Yes, it has been years now and I am still not over it.)
Anyway, before the minute was up, someone did come to wait on me. She said they were extra busy because of all the traffic from the race. I thought that was probably the point of having packet pickup in the store, but whatever. The good thing is that she let me use the coupon for an extra $10 off that I had picked up with my race number. But I am whining here on the Internet about it anyway. That is just how it goes.
But I digress.
What's Good About this Race
There are some things that I do like about this race. As I mentioned, they usually provide pretty good swag. Over the years, they have handed out assorted and occasionally useful small tote bags, various hot and cold beverage containers, little covered canisters that I still use to store dog treats and nuts, a key chain (I still use that, too), and socks. Lots of good stuff.
This year there was to be a cold beverage container and an insulated tote bag. But we weren't getting them until after the race.
They also have better race t-shirts than average. The last couple of years, we've gotten technical tops. This year, the women's shirts are hot pink.
And, for me, oh yeah, the start and finish is about a mile and a half from my house.
The Race
On Saturday morning, I left the house around 7:30 am. The race was to start at 8, so that would give me plenty of time to jog down there, and I wouldn't have to hang out for too long waiting. It was a pleasant morning, a bit cooler than usual, but sunny.
I got to the start just as they were beginning to encourage people to line up. There was a good crowd---about 3000 people registered, and ultimately, 2517 finishers. And as is often the case at the bigger local races, I didn't see anybody I recognized! It is kind of funny how at a 200-person 5k I can look around and recognize almost everybody there, but at a 2500 person race I don't see anybody who looks familiar.
There were a lot of people wearing the race shirt. What is up with that? Don't they know it's bad luck to wear it before the race?
Found a good spot on the left side of the street, not too far back. There is chip timing but I didn't want to get stuck behind a bunch of walkers.
Still, it takes me 30 seconds to reach the start line. Good thing we are using the chip!
My goal is 35 minutes, or about an 8:45 pace. That will be a few minutes faster than last year, and is a little slower than predicted by my recent 5k. I am a little lighter than last year and in a little better shape. OTOH, this race is hilly and that 5k a few weeks ago was flat. So 35 minutes sounds just about right.
The race starts with a gradual climb, followed by a shorter, steeper hill but you also get to go down the other side. The second mile is a long uphill. The third mile is mostly downhill. And the last mile starts with about a quarter mile up hill, and then it is mostly downhill to the finish.
So my race strategy based on my experience at this race is to run comfortably hard for the first two miles---but not to flip out if I am over my goal pace, especially in the second mile. Then I make up time in the third mile, try not to push too hard on the last hill, and run hard to the finish.
And that is about how it goes. Mile one takes me 9:12, which still manages to get me worried until I remember the 30 seconds at the start. So it's more like 8:42, or right on pace. In the second mile, we pass by my old house. The new residents are maintaining it well but I do wish they would paint the tool shed. Mile 2 is 8:57. No worries, this is the uphill mile.
In mile 3, I come upon someone I recognize for the first time in this race. It is Judy Harmony, whom I know from dog agility. She used to run a Miniature Poodle. She put a MACH on it. I have not seen her at a dog event in several years, but I still see her at the occasional road race. She used to be faster than me but she is slowing down. But she is still fast for her age---she will win her age group. On an age-graded basis, she is still faster than me.
Later, I will see in the results that my friend David Jones was also at the race, and will win his age group, but I did not see him at the start. Also a couple of other dog training friends were there, but I didn't see them either. That makes just four people I knew in a crowd of over 2500 runners and assorted hangers-on. At a race that takes place a mile and a half from my house. Amazing.
I think about saying hello to Judy but I don't have that much energy. I pass Judy somewhere near the three mile mark. Mile 3 took me 8:38.
Now we're climbing the hill. There is always a lot of whining about this hill, but it is really no big deal. It is steeper than the hill in mile two, but not that long. I decide to time myself going up the hill. It takes me just about two minutes. I'm not even that fast, and I get up it in two minutes. Everybody quit the whining!
Now I am starting to regret the feta stuffed olives I had the night before, however.
I run down the hill and back out to Erie Ave. I decide I will not start to "kick" until I can actually see the finish line. When you turn the corner onto Erie, there is just a little rise for a block or so until you start downhill.
I accelerate and start passing people. I do not understand these people who slow down when they are approaching the finish line. It is a race, people! So at the finish, I do have to slow down because there are all these people around me just coming to a dead stop and I don't want to run them over.
Fourth mile time was 8:31. I let them cut my chip off my shoe, and I grab some water and Powerade. I am thinking about picking up the promised swag---the drink bottle and the little lunch bag---but then I see a big long line for them, same deal with the food. I just can't stand this waiting on line thing after a race. So I just start walking home with my water and Powerade. I don't really need another plastic drink bottle and I certainly don't need another tote bag of any kind.
I was not sure of my official time because I didn't know exactly how long I took to cross the start, and I did not stop my watch as soon as I crossed the finish line. But later in the afternoon I saw in the results that my chip time was 34:49, or just about what I expected as a reasonable goal, 8:43 pace.
My time put me 4 of 98 in my age group (sounds better than it is), 252 of 1501 women, and 686 of 2517 finishers. My age group placement sounds better than it is because a lot of those 98 women were walkers, and it looks like most of the fast women in my age group weren't there. Remember, I didn't see anybody I recognized at the start line. Where they went, I am not sure. I checked the results of a 5k that was happening the same day, and I didn't recognize the names of anybody who ran that one either. And, get this, I would have been the FIRST overall female in that race. Seriously. So are all the fast old ladies on vacation?
Fourth out of 98 would surely win you some sort of prize in most road races. But not in this one. They don't do age group awards. They give prizes to the top 50 men and top 50 women. This unfairly penalizes us older folk. Unfair! I guess that is another reason I don't like this race. I would feel better about it if they actually gave more money to charity, instead of promoting themselves as a charitable event and yet spending most of the money, on what, I am not entirely sure. I would hope that most of the swag and all of the food was donated by the many corporate sponsors.
But I will show up and run it again next year anyway if I do not have anyplace else to be that day!
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
A Tale of Two Races
Time to write about the two races I did recently, one on the road and one on the trails:
Racing to Read 5k
June 4, Covington, KY
When I figured out that I wasn't leaving for the FCR Specialty until Sunday morning, I realized I could fit a 5k race in that weekend. Of the half-dozen or so races scheduled in the Greater Cincinnati area for that day, this one sounded like the best combination of close-to-home and good amenities. The web site promised a relatively flat course, technical race shirt, and a pancake breakfast---all for $20. What a deal!
Only negative I saw was that the age-group awards went just to the winners---not the top 3 or top 5 or top 15 %. Kinda stingy.
The race is a benefit for the Kenton County Library to promote early childhood literacy efforts. The start and finish was outside Gateway Community College in Covington, across the street from the Covington library. There was free parking in the garage next to Gateway.
My GPS led me astray enroute to the race, but I still arrived in plenty of time to pick up my shirt, get a good warm up in, and scope out the competition. I recognized one woman who used to be fast but whom I haven't seen racing in awhile. There was a pretty good crowd, but it seemed like most of the people doing it were not the regular 5k race crowd. Well, with the number of other races taking place at the same time, I guess that was not too surprising. Maybe they were all at some other race that was more generous with the hardware.
The race shirt was nothing too exciting: white with a blue logo on the front in a tech fabric. Still, it's nice to get a technical shirt. Lots of people were wearing them for the race :-). They were also selling shirts from last year's race for $3.
Finished my warm up and took a spot in the middle of the pack, ahead of two guys who said their goal was to beat the Two Men and a Truck mascot. Those black tights did look hot!
It was a warm morning but the streets of Covington are pleasantly shady. I liked the course. It WAS fairly flat. Some slight changes in elevation along the way, but not bad at all.
Who Are These People and Can I Beat Them?
For the first half of the race, I found myself "competing" with a woman in gray, and another woman who was running with a German Shorthaired Pointer. The woman in gray looked like she might be in my age group, or a bit younger. GSP woman was definitely younger. Woman in Gray would pull ahead on the "uphills" but fall behind on the "downhills." I was going to let her go, when she inexplicably faded.
My goal was something in the low 26s, or about an 8:30 pace. Hit the first mile in 8:28. Normally I like the first mile to be significantly under my goal pace, so this could have been a little disheartening, but I just told myself, "right on pace," which is a very positive thought to have.
The GSP and his "handler" looked strong. I would not have minded running this race with Ed, but it was much too warm for him. The GSP seemed to be handling it okay, though. That is, until we got to about the halfway mark, down a slight hill towards the river. Here I noticed that the GSP was walking down the hill, so the woman attached to his leash had to do the same. I don't know if the heat got him or if it was her, or what, but that was the point where I left them behind. And that is why I was not running this race with my dog!
There was a water station at the bottom of this "hill" and I would have liked a cup, but the volunteers were not moving fast enough and there was actually nothing set out. I did not want to wait for them to pour me some, so I just kept running. It was getting hot, and the river looked tempting also, but I resisted the urge to bail on the race and jump in.
Mile 2 took me 8:35. That was a little over my goal pace, but close enough that I did not feel bad about it. I tried to focus. I started my countdown: 9 more minutes, 8 more minutes, 7 more minutes...
I got a little over-excited in here somewhere and almost puked, but managed to recover.
And before too long we were back on the road that led to the finish line. I kicked and passed a couple of people. Mile 3 was 8:27 and it was 48 seconds for the last .1. I did not kick hard enough to throw up. Official time was 26:13, which is 8:27 pace. Yay!
Too Late for Pancakes
I was not ready for pancakes. I walked around, got some water, went to my car to get my change of clothes, decided to go into the bathroom to change rather than the car, etc. By the time I came back out, I was hungry for the pancakes but now there a huge long line stretching around the block. I needed to get home to walk the dogs, so no pancakes for me. Bummer. There were some cool door prizes from the sponsors too, but oh well. I might have stayed if I really thought I had a chance at an age group award, but with the number of people entered it was hard to tell.
In the results, I was 4 of 10 in my age group, 17 of 145 women (not too shabby) and 72 of 279 runners. There were also 123 walkers, and a stroller division with awards to the top 3 men and top 3 women who competed pushing strollers.
Overall, this was a nice community event. I loved the course, and the atmosphere. I will return to this one again. Hopefully with time to stay for pancakes.
French Park Creek Crossings, 3.4 mile trail race
June 12, 9 am
This is another race in the Dirt Days trail series. I did this one last year and I think it was my favorite in the series. French Park is only a couple of miles from my house, but I had never been there before I did this race last year. It is a lovely park, and the trails are less challenging than those in some of the other races.
Sunday morning was a little cooler than the previous few days and a bit overcast. For me, having just returned from 100 degree heat in Maryland, it felt wonderful. I left the house a little after 8 am, and got a good parking spot in the lot near the start/finish area. Picked up my number and sat in the car for a few minutes reading a book.
I remembered that the race started with the long downhill on the grass, so I included that in my 10-minute warm up. I felt really good during the warm up. I was tired from my week at the FCR Specialty and all the driving, but physically it was shaping up to be a good day.
Back at the starting area, chatted for a few minutes with Andy Jones. Andy is (still) the world record holder for 100 miles on the roads. He is not as fast as he used to be but he's still fast.
I looked around at the other women and tried to count them up. For the Dirty Dozen placements, all that matters is how high up you place. So if there are not many women there, it might be okay even if I finish last. What's important is that there are not too many women ahead of me. In this case, it is better to finish last in a small race versus mid-pack in a large race.
My age group nemesis, Brenda W., did not seem to be in attendance.
Last year, I took it deliberately easy in this race. This time I was going to put more effort into it. And being familiar with the course sure didn't hurt, either. I did manage to get lost for a bit in the second half of the race last year, and that probably cost me a little time.
Basically, you run down the hill on the grass (a quarter mile or so, maybe more), then you hit the trails. It's a lot flatter than the Ault Park and Mt. Airy Forest races. The creek crossings don't come into play until the last mile or so. There's an uphill climb to the finish but nothing as bad as in the other races.
As we ran down the hill, it seemed to me like everybody passed me immediately. But looking at the results, that can't be true. Once we hit the trails, I may have passed a couple of people, and been passed by a couple of others, but mostly I just maintained the same position---which was a little further ahead than I thought.
While it was a relatively cool morning, it didn't take me long to heat up, and I was looking forward to splashing in the creek.
The trails were mostly dry, with just a couple of slick spots. This was a big improvement from last month in Mt. Airy!
No Mercy for the Young
During much of the race, I was exchanging places with a tall, young, skinny girl in red. She had a very heavy footstrike for someone who looked so lithe. In the second half of the race, we came out of the woods into a little clearing where there was a water station set up. Skinny Girl got there ahead of me and stopped to run in place at the spot where we returned to the woods. I guess she was waiting for someone. I found this to be just a little irritating.
I knew at this point we were more than half done with the race but I did not know how much there was to go. Kept trading places with Skinny Girl. I was wishing she would just take off, or give up, so it would be settled one way or the other because I was tired of listening to her feet slapping the ground.
And then we hit the first creek crossing. Seems like Skinny Girl did not want to get her feet wet. So I could pick up a few paces on her as she carefully stepped around the shallow edges and I just plowed right through the middle. And she was getting wet anyway, because I was making a big splash. Too bad, Skinny Girl, but we are racing!
So I would overtake her each time we crossed the creek, and then she would pass me again a little later.
Finally, we were running along the bank of the creek, and I remembered Bob Roncker saying that when we got to that point, we only had about 3/4s of a mile or so to go. So I knew when we crossed the creek for the last time and headed up the wooden steps on the other side, there wasn't a whole lot left. I think Skinny Girl was still ahead of me at that point. I heard a volunteer yelling to the woman behind me that "you can catch her" and I don't know if he meant catch me or catch Skinny Girl (who was maybe her daughter or sister?) but it made me mad and I thought, no way you are catching me, whomever you are.
When we came out of the woods, it was just a short run uphill on grass to the finish. I caught Skinny Girl at the top of the steps (where she again seemed to have stopped) and I kicked hard, finishing three seconds ahead of her. It's a race! And I had to stay ahead of every woman that I could. So what if it is a 13 year old girl? And her mother?
I was really happy with my finish time of 36:07, which was more than six minutes faster than last year. I drank some sports drink and water and ate a banana and hung around for the awards. In addition to the top three men and women, they also give out awards to the 10 fastest age-graded times. I couldn't remember if that was ten fastest men and ten fastest women or just ten fastest period. If they separated the women and the men, I thought I might have a shot. The prize was a pair of sports socks. Alas, they did not, so I went home empty handed.
In the results, I was 15 of 44 women and 71 of 119 runners, which was much better than last year. I was also 5th woman based on my age-graded time. This was probably my best performance yet in one of these trail races.
Next trail race is the East Fork Backpack run on July 17, but I'll probably manage to work a few other road races in before that.
Racing to Read 5k
June 4, Covington, KY
When I figured out that I wasn't leaving for the FCR Specialty until Sunday morning, I realized I could fit a 5k race in that weekend. Of the half-dozen or so races scheduled in the Greater Cincinnati area for that day, this one sounded like the best combination of close-to-home and good amenities. The web site promised a relatively flat course, technical race shirt, and a pancake breakfast---all for $20. What a deal!
Performance shirt from Brooks
The race is a benefit for the Kenton County Library to promote early childhood literacy efforts. The start and finish was outside Gateway Community College in Covington, across the street from the Covington library. There was free parking in the garage next to Gateway.
My GPS led me astray enroute to the race, but I still arrived in plenty of time to pick up my shirt, get a good warm up in, and scope out the competition. I recognized one woman who used to be fast but whom I haven't seen racing in awhile. There was a pretty good crowd, but it seemed like most of the people doing it were not the regular 5k race crowd. Well, with the number of other races taking place at the same time, I guess that was not too surprising. Maybe they were all at some other race that was more generous with the hardware.
The race shirt was nothing too exciting: white with a blue logo on the front in a tech fabric. Still, it's nice to get a technical shirt. Lots of people were wearing them for the race :-). They were also selling shirts from last year's race for $3.
Finished my warm up and took a spot in the middle of the pack, ahead of two guys who said their goal was to beat the Two Men and a Truck mascot. Those black tights did look hot!
It was a warm morning but the streets of Covington are pleasantly shady. I liked the course. It WAS fairly flat. Some slight changes in elevation along the way, but not bad at all.
Who Are These People and Can I Beat Them?
For the first half of the race, I found myself "competing" with a woman in gray, and another woman who was running with a German Shorthaired Pointer. The woman in gray looked like she might be in my age group, or a bit younger. GSP woman was definitely younger. Woman in Gray would pull ahead on the "uphills" but fall behind on the "downhills." I was going to let her go, when she inexplicably faded.
My goal was something in the low 26s, or about an 8:30 pace. Hit the first mile in 8:28. Normally I like the first mile to be significantly under my goal pace, so this could have been a little disheartening, but I just told myself, "right on pace," which is a very positive thought to have.
The GSP and his "handler" looked strong. I would not have minded running this race with Ed, but it was much too warm for him. The GSP seemed to be handling it okay, though. That is, until we got to about the halfway mark, down a slight hill towards the river. Here I noticed that the GSP was walking down the hill, so the woman attached to his leash had to do the same. I don't know if the heat got him or if it was her, or what, but that was the point where I left them behind. And that is why I was not running this race with my dog!
There was a water station at the bottom of this "hill" and I would have liked a cup, but the volunteers were not moving fast enough and there was actually nothing set out. I did not want to wait for them to pour me some, so I just kept running. It was getting hot, and the river looked tempting also, but I resisted the urge to bail on the race and jump in.
Mile 2 took me 8:35. That was a little over my goal pace, but close enough that I did not feel bad about it. I tried to focus. I started my countdown: 9 more minutes, 8 more minutes, 7 more minutes...
I got a little over-excited in here somewhere and almost puked, but managed to recover.
And before too long we were back on the road that led to the finish line. I kicked and passed a couple of people. Mile 3 was 8:27 and it was 48 seconds for the last .1. I did not kick hard enough to throw up. Official time was 26:13, which is 8:27 pace. Yay!
Too Late for Pancakes
I was not ready for pancakes. I walked around, got some water, went to my car to get my change of clothes, decided to go into the bathroom to change rather than the car, etc. By the time I came back out, I was hungry for the pancakes but now there a huge long line stretching around the block. I needed to get home to walk the dogs, so no pancakes for me. Bummer. There were some cool door prizes from the sponsors too, but oh well. I might have stayed if I really thought I had a chance at an age group award, but with the number of people entered it was hard to tell.
In the results, I was 4 of 10 in my age group, 17 of 145 women (not too shabby) and 72 of 279 runners. There were also 123 walkers, and a stroller division with awards to the top 3 men and top 3 women who competed pushing strollers.
Overall, this was a nice community event. I loved the course, and the atmosphere. I will return to this one again. Hopefully with time to stay for pancakes.
French Park Creek Crossings, 3.4 mile trail race
June 12, 9 am
This is another race in the Dirt Days trail series. I did this one last year and I think it was my favorite in the series. French Park is only a couple of miles from my house, but I had never been there before I did this race last year. It is a lovely park, and the trails are less challenging than those in some of the other races.
Sunday morning was a little cooler than the previous few days and a bit overcast. For me, having just returned from 100 degree heat in Maryland, it felt wonderful. I left the house a little after 8 am, and got a good parking spot in the lot near the start/finish area. Picked up my number and sat in the car for a few minutes reading a book.
I remembered that the race started with the long downhill on the grass, so I included that in my 10-minute warm up. I felt really good during the warm up. I was tired from my week at the FCR Specialty and all the driving, but physically it was shaping up to be a good day.
Back at the starting area, chatted for a few minutes with Andy Jones. Andy is (still) the world record holder for 100 miles on the roads. He is not as fast as he used to be but he's still fast.
I looked around at the other women and tried to count them up. For the Dirty Dozen placements, all that matters is how high up you place. So if there are not many women there, it might be okay even if I finish last. What's important is that there are not too many women ahead of me. In this case, it is better to finish last in a small race versus mid-pack in a large race.
My age group nemesis, Brenda W., did not seem to be in attendance.
Last year, I took it deliberately easy in this race. This time I was going to put more effort into it. And being familiar with the course sure didn't hurt, either. I did manage to get lost for a bit in the second half of the race last year, and that probably cost me a little time.
Basically, you run down the hill on the grass (a quarter mile or so, maybe more), then you hit the trails. It's a lot flatter than the Ault Park and Mt. Airy Forest races. The creek crossings don't come into play until the last mile or so. There's an uphill climb to the finish but nothing as bad as in the other races.
As we ran down the hill, it seemed to me like everybody passed me immediately. But looking at the results, that can't be true. Once we hit the trails, I may have passed a couple of people, and been passed by a couple of others, but mostly I just maintained the same position---which was a little further ahead than I thought.
While it was a relatively cool morning, it didn't take me long to heat up, and I was looking forward to splashing in the creek.
The trails were mostly dry, with just a couple of slick spots. This was a big improvement from last month in Mt. Airy!
Dry trails + creek crossings = clean trail shoes!
No Mercy for the Young
During much of the race, I was exchanging places with a tall, young, skinny girl in red. She had a very heavy footstrike for someone who looked so lithe. In the second half of the race, we came out of the woods into a little clearing where there was a water station set up. Skinny Girl got there ahead of me and stopped to run in place at the spot where we returned to the woods. I guess she was waiting for someone. I found this to be just a little irritating.
I knew at this point we were more than half done with the race but I did not know how much there was to go. Kept trading places with Skinny Girl. I was wishing she would just take off, or give up, so it would be settled one way or the other because I was tired of listening to her feet slapping the ground.
And then we hit the first creek crossing. Seems like Skinny Girl did not want to get her feet wet. So I could pick up a few paces on her as she carefully stepped around the shallow edges and I just plowed right through the middle. And she was getting wet anyway, because I was making a big splash. Too bad, Skinny Girl, but we are racing!
So I would overtake her each time we crossed the creek, and then she would pass me again a little later.
Finally, we were running along the bank of the creek, and I remembered Bob Roncker saying that when we got to that point, we only had about 3/4s of a mile or so to go. So I knew when we crossed the creek for the last time and headed up the wooden steps on the other side, there wasn't a whole lot left. I think Skinny Girl was still ahead of me at that point. I heard a volunteer yelling to the woman behind me that "you can catch her" and I don't know if he meant catch me or catch Skinny Girl (who was maybe her daughter or sister?) but it made me mad and I thought, no way you are catching me, whomever you are.
When we came out of the woods, it was just a short run uphill on grass to the finish. I caught Skinny Girl at the top of the steps (where she again seemed to have stopped) and I kicked hard, finishing three seconds ahead of her. It's a race! And I had to stay ahead of every woman that I could. So what if it is a 13 year old girl? And her mother?
I was really happy with my finish time of 36:07, which was more than six minutes faster than last year. I drank some sports drink and water and ate a banana and hung around for the awards. In addition to the top three men and women, they also give out awards to the 10 fastest age-graded times. I couldn't remember if that was ten fastest men and ten fastest women or just ten fastest period. If they separated the women and the men, I thought I might have a shot. The prize was a pair of sports socks. Alas, they did not, so I went home empty handed.
In the results, I was 15 of 44 women and 71 of 119 runners, which was much better than last year. I was also 5th woman based on my age-graded time. This was probably my best performance yet in one of these trail races.
Next trail race is the East Fork Backpack run on July 17, but I'll probably manage to work a few other road races in before that.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
2011 Mt. Airy Trail Race
This was my race from Sunday morning. It is the third race in the Dirt Days trail series. They have a 5.4 and a 10.8 mile (2 loops) option. The race takes place in Mt. Airy Forest, which is the largest park entirely within a city limits in the country. Mt. Airy is also the site of the Stone Steps 27k and 50k trail runs that take place in October.
So, to refresh, the deal is if you do 6 of the 9 trail races you get a participation award, and they take your top 5 times and use the rankings to give "Dirty Dozen" awards to the top 12 men and top 12 women. Last year I was # 7.
It was a dreary day and a bit on the chilly side. With all the rain we've had, I knew the trails were going to be a mess. It didn't rain much during the race but it did rain off and on the day before.
I'm not a serious trail runner, obviously. I like trail running, on a nice, sunny and mild fall or spring day, with dry trails and good footing. The slippery mud is not my idea of a good time.
Last year I finished the 5.4 mile race in a little over an hour, and was the 23rd woman. I was hoping to improve on that a bit this year. Of course, if I wanted a better place in the standings, I should have done the 10.8 mile race, since not as many women run that (this year, just 18 women) and even if I finished last I would get a better ranking than I could in the 5.4 mile race. But I just wasn't up for 10.8 miles of slogging around in the mud. This race course is relatively easier than the Ault Park trail race. The hills are not as steep. But it's a lot muddier this year than it was last year. So my biggest goal was as usual just to finish without doing any damage to myself.
Wore my CW-X capri tights and my shirt from Friday's Kilgour 5k, and my hat from Milwaukee. Added a long-sleeved shirt (from Chickamauga Memorial marathon) which I removed after my warmup and tied around my waist. On my feet, went with the Salomon trail shoes. No more indoor agility going to take place in these babies.
Got to the park about 30 minutes before the race start. Picked up my number and went for a jog around the oval. Watched the 10.8 mile race go off (they start 15 minutes early) while I waited on line for the bathroom. Soon it was time. Brenda W., my age group competitor from last year, was off on the other side of the field. We were pretending not to see each other. I think. At least, I was.
My quads were a little tight from the Friday night race, and my knee felt a little swollen.
The race starts with a little out and back on the grass, to spread us out a bit before we hit the singletrack. I felt good once I got moving, stronger than I remembered from last year. As we hit the first section of the trail, a slight downhill that was relatively wide and dry, it seemed like I was running better than last year, and not getting quickly overtaken by faster runners as usual. Or maybe I just lined up in the right place for a change. Brenda was behind me as we headed into the woods.
I don't know the trails in Mt. Airy very well. I only go over there when we have these races, and I haven't been doing that for very long. So I have only a vague idea of where we were in the park. I think we pretty much stayed just in one section of the park, whereas in the much longer Stone Steps race you cross over into another area. I think that we enter the woods and come back out the same way, but I'm not even entirely sure about that. But the course was well marked and I did not get lost the way I always seem to in the Stone Steps.
It didn't take too long until we hit the shoe-sucking mud. Most of the race for me was just a careful trudge through patches of ankle deep mud. Downhill was the worst. I began to just assume that it was slippery everywhere, and had to really take it easy. I wasn't even breathing hard, except when I got scared that I was going to fall down!
Camelbak Guy & Wheezy Girl
I had to let a few people go past me in the first few miles, but not many. The mud was slowing everybody down. There was supposed to be a water stop about halfway through, but it came a little sooner than that. I really wasn't thirsty but I grabbed a cup and took a sip. At this point, I was right behind a guy wearing a Camelbak (really overhill for a 5.4 mile race on a 50 degree day!) and a young woman who was wheezing really hard. He stopped to let the volunteer refill his Camelbak. I'm not kidding. Overkill.
Camelbak guy and wheezy girl seemed to be a couple, since he kept turning around and trying to offer her encouragement. I had the impression that the race was something he had talked her into doing without her really understanding what was involved.
Camelbak guy pulled away, and wheezy girl and I continued through the woods, with her right behind me. At one point, I asked her if she wanted to go around me---not because she was faster, but just because the wheezing was driving me crazy---but she declined. At that point I managed to pick it up a bit and before too long I couldn't hear her.
About halfway through the race, some other women came up behind me, and on the scary (to me) downhills I let them pass. One of them was Brenda W. After that I stayed right behind her. Aerobically I felt fine, I just was too afraid to really open it up in all the mud. So I hung out right behind Brenda, figuring that when we came out of the woods at the end I could outkick her if I had to.
One of my other goals for this race was that I was not going to quit at the end like I did last year, when I let a bunch of people pass me after we came out of the woods. I was going to finish strong.
The problem with running right behind Brenda was that I couldn't see the trail all that well with her just in front of me, and I couldn't judge it well by following her footing, because she was making some choices that were not the best for me and my knees. So after a bit I tried to put a little more space between us, without letting any other women pass me.
There was one section where the trail was quite narrow on the side of the hill, and there was just a string of 2 x 4s serving as a ledge to keep us from sliding down the hill. That was the worst.
At some point, a guy on the side of the trail told us that there was about a mile and a quarter to go, which was not good news if true because it meant I was not going to break an hour this year.
I Try to Finish Strong & Pass Some People
The last stretch coming out of the woods is uphill, and I swear that was the muddiest part of the race. We were getting tired, and the pace was pretty much reduced to a crawl. But just before we left the woods, the trail dried out again (which makes sense if we were going back out the same way we came in), and I wanted to pick it up, so I went around Brenda (who sounded like she was pretty cooked at this point).
I caught up with Camelbak guy. I'm not sure if I passed him or not. I pushed myself a little harder on the last stretch uphill through the grass. This is where I gave up last year. I felt like I was running through sand, but I kept running. I passed a couple of women who had stopped to walk. It seemed like it was taking forever. Where was the damn finish line? And then I could see it up ahead in the same area where we started.
I crossed the line in 1:04:36, almost 4 minutes slower than last year, which disappointed me but I guess I will blame it on the mud, which seemed to slow down everybody's times. More disappointing is that I finished 25 of 53 women, whereas last year I was 23rd. There were more women entered this year, and it was my bad luck that a few more of them were faster than I am. I was 77 of 120 runners overall, and my age-graded time was 55:37 (42 of 120 and 11th woman by age-graded time but that doesn't get me anything).
I walked up the hill to the shelter area and had about 3 cups of Gatorade while I walked around. I skipped the bagels and had just a banana. Brenda finished about a minute behind me. She reintroduced herself and we exchanged pleasantries. She asked me if I was going to do the next one (June 12 in French Park, right after I get back from the FCR National) and I guess I will see her there. That one includes a couple of stream crossings, so my shoes will get cleaned off.
So, to refresh, the deal is if you do 6 of the 9 trail races you get a participation award, and they take your top 5 times and use the rankings to give "Dirty Dozen" awards to the top 12 men and top 12 women. Last year I was # 7.
It was a dreary day and a bit on the chilly side. With all the rain we've had, I knew the trails were going to be a mess. It didn't rain much during the race but it did rain off and on the day before.
I'm not a serious trail runner, obviously. I like trail running, on a nice, sunny and mild fall or spring day, with dry trails and good footing. The slippery mud is not my idea of a good time.
Last year I finished the 5.4 mile race in a little over an hour, and was the 23rd woman. I was hoping to improve on that a bit this year. Of course, if I wanted a better place in the standings, I should have done the 10.8 mile race, since not as many women run that (this year, just 18 women) and even if I finished last I would get a better ranking than I could in the 5.4 mile race. But I just wasn't up for 10.8 miles of slogging around in the mud. This race course is relatively easier than the Ault Park trail race. The hills are not as steep. But it's a lot muddier this year than it was last year. So my biggest goal was as usual just to finish without doing any damage to myself.
Wore my CW-X capri tights and my shirt from Friday's Kilgour 5k, and my hat from Milwaukee. Added a long-sleeved shirt (from Chickamauga Memorial marathon) which I removed after my warmup and tied around my waist. On my feet, went with the Salomon trail shoes. No more indoor agility going to take place in these babies.
Got to the park about 30 minutes before the race start. Picked up my number and went for a jog around the oval. Watched the 10.8 mile race go off (they start 15 minutes early) while I waited on line for the bathroom. Soon it was time. Brenda W., my age group competitor from last year, was off on the other side of the field. We were pretending not to see each other. I think. At least, I was.
My quads were a little tight from the Friday night race, and my knee felt a little swollen.
The race starts with a little out and back on the grass, to spread us out a bit before we hit the singletrack. I felt good once I got moving, stronger than I remembered from last year. As we hit the first section of the trail, a slight downhill that was relatively wide and dry, it seemed like I was running better than last year, and not getting quickly overtaken by faster runners as usual. Or maybe I just lined up in the right place for a change. Brenda was behind me as we headed into the woods.
I don't know the trails in Mt. Airy very well. I only go over there when we have these races, and I haven't been doing that for very long. So I have only a vague idea of where we were in the park. I think we pretty much stayed just in one section of the park, whereas in the much longer Stone Steps race you cross over into another area. I think that we enter the woods and come back out the same way, but I'm not even entirely sure about that. But the course was well marked and I did not get lost the way I always seem to in the Stone Steps.
It didn't take too long until we hit the shoe-sucking mud. Most of the race for me was just a careful trudge through patches of ankle deep mud. Downhill was the worst. I began to just assume that it was slippery everywhere, and had to really take it easy. I wasn't even breathing hard, except when I got scared that I was going to fall down!
Camelbak Guy & Wheezy Girl
I had to let a few people go past me in the first few miles, but not many. The mud was slowing everybody down. There was supposed to be a water stop about halfway through, but it came a little sooner than that. I really wasn't thirsty but I grabbed a cup and took a sip. At this point, I was right behind a guy wearing a Camelbak (really overhill for a 5.4 mile race on a 50 degree day!) and a young woman who was wheezing really hard. He stopped to let the volunteer refill his Camelbak. I'm not kidding. Overkill.
Camelbak guy and wheezy girl seemed to be a couple, since he kept turning around and trying to offer her encouragement. I had the impression that the race was something he had talked her into doing without her really understanding what was involved.
Camelbak guy pulled away, and wheezy girl and I continued through the woods, with her right behind me. At one point, I asked her if she wanted to go around me---not because she was faster, but just because the wheezing was driving me crazy---but she declined. At that point I managed to pick it up a bit and before too long I couldn't hear her.
About halfway through the race, some other women came up behind me, and on the scary (to me) downhills I let them pass. One of them was Brenda W. After that I stayed right behind her. Aerobically I felt fine, I just was too afraid to really open it up in all the mud. So I hung out right behind Brenda, figuring that when we came out of the woods at the end I could outkick her if I had to.
One of my other goals for this race was that I was not going to quit at the end like I did last year, when I let a bunch of people pass me after we came out of the woods. I was going to finish strong.
The problem with running right behind Brenda was that I couldn't see the trail all that well with her just in front of me, and I couldn't judge it well by following her footing, because she was making some choices that were not the best for me and my knees. So after a bit I tried to put a little more space between us, without letting any other women pass me.
There was one section where the trail was quite narrow on the side of the hill, and there was just a string of 2 x 4s serving as a ledge to keep us from sliding down the hill. That was the worst.
At some point, a guy on the side of the trail told us that there was about a mile and a quarter to go, which was not good news if true because it meant I was not going to break an hour this year.
I Try to Finish Strong & Pass Some People
The last stretch coming out of the woods is uphill, and I swear that was the muddiest part of the race. We were getting tired, and the pace was pretty much reduced to a crawl. But just before we left the woods, the trail dried out again (which makes sense if we were going back out the same way we came in), and I wanted to pick it up, so I went around Brenda (who sounded like she was pretty cooked at this point).
I caught up with Camelbak guy. I'm not sure if I passed him or not. I pushed myself a little harder on the last stretch uphill through the grass. This is where I gave up last year. I felt like I was running through sand, but I kept running. I passed a couple of women who had stopped to walk. It seemed like it was taking forever. Where was the damn finish line? And then I could see it up ahead in the same area where we started.
I crossed the line in 1:04:36, almost 4 minutes slower than last year, which disappointed me but I guess I will blame it on the mud, which seemed to slow down everybody's times. More disappointing is that I finished 25 of 53 women, whereas last year I was 23rd. There were more women entered this year, and it was my bad luck that a few more of them were faster than I am. I was 77 of 120 runners overall, and my age-graded time was 55:37 (42 of 120 and 11th woman by age-graded time but that doesn't get me anything).
I walked up the hill to the shelter area and had about 3 cups of Gatorade while I walked around. I skipped the bagels and had just a banana. Brenda finished about a minute behind me. She reintroduced herself and we exchanged pleasantries. She asked me if I was going to do the next one (June 12 in French Park, right after I get back from the FCR National) and I guess I will see her there. That one includes a couple of stream crossings, so my shoes will get cleaned off.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
2011 Kilgour 5k
Friday night I did this little neighborhood 5k, which is a benefit for our local elementary school's sports program. I've done it for the past seven years now, and maybe even before that but I don't have a record of it. This year I forgot to pre-register in time so I had to hustle up there when registration opened to make sure I got a t-shirt, since this year they were going to have technical tops for the first time. They even used timing chips this year, which I think it pretty funny for this little race. So high-tech.
Some years I have had to rush home from an agility trial to make this race, and my legs have felt pretty flat after a long day of agility, but that was not the case this year.
Well, it's less than 3/4s of a mile from my house, so I jogged up there and got my shirt, jogged home again, hung out for awhile, and jogged back to the start. Glad I got the shirt. It's in a woman's cut in black with the race logo in white.
It had been a hot and humid afternoon, but some showers before the race made for a slight dip in the temperature and all in all it wasn't a bad night for a run.
The course follows residential streets in Mt. Lookout before heading into Ault Park, then back out down a nice, long hill before making the turn back to the street in front of the school. Post-race, there is a little party in back of the school, where they usually serve hot dogs and chocolate chip cookies, and some band composed of parents whose kids attend the schools usually plays classic rock. I haven't hung around post-race the last few years so these details may have changed. The day after the race is the annual school carnival. This was all a big deal for us back when my daughter went to school there, but now I am old enough to be a grandparent of the Kilgour kids and I've lost my connection to the place.
You Have to Know Your Place
Saw my old friend David warming up pre-race but no chance to say hello. Finished my warmup and took a spot in the crowd near other people who looked like they are going to run. Positioning myself is tough in a race like this. I am not fast enough to start in the front, but I also don't want to get stuck behind a bunch of walkers (even though the official walker start was supposed to be after the runners, some people get confused or think it doesn't matter). And you have to watch out for the little kids, many of whom go out too fast with arms and legs flying about erratically, and whom are prone to sudden stops and/or changes of direction. You don't want to trip over or step on a kid.
There was a somewhat less-tha-fit woman just behind me with a stroller---maybe not even a running stroller---and I wondered if I was really in the right place. But everybody else nearby looked right. A very fit young woman standing next to me turned around and looked disdainfully at the stroller and said "that shouldn't be here," which was what I was of course also thinking but I didn't want to say it. The stroller was pushing right up against the back of the fit-looking woman's legs. I'd be pissed, too.
They changed the course this year. We started a little farther downhill from the school (for a slightly more uphill start) but then later, instead of running behind the Ault Park Pavillion, we made an early right turn to take us out of the park. This took out some of the uphill in mile 2-3. But then at the end we had to run past the finish line in front of the school (about where the mile 3 mark was now) a little way up the street before turning around and heading back to the finish. I'm not sure I liked that part, but at least the last .05 miles was slightly downhill.
Around 7 pm, we were off. My goal was about a 27:30, or about an 8:50 pace. Turned out to pretty realistic. At a minimum, I wanted to be faster than last year, which was probably the slowest 5k I've ever run. I'm a couple pounds lighter and I've been doing a little bit of speedwork. I've never broken 26 minutes in this race, even when I was a bit more fit. It's not as hard as the Reggae Run but it's plenty hard enough.
For once I was in the right place at the start, and I didn't have to do too much running around people or worrying about being tripped by a kid. What I did need to worry about were potholes. Turns out the street in front of the school really needs to be repaved. I don't drive on it very often so didn't know. It's a mess.
The Competition: Little Kids and People with Dogs
Mile 1 took me 8:25. It is the easiest mile of the race---closest to "flat"---and it is always my fastest mile but I was still happy to be so far ahead of last year (9:00 for first mile).
Around this time I noticed a woman running with a Standard Poodle, and I was thinking about how it would have been fun to run this with Ed, but it was a little too warm and he is a little too out of condition, plus he had the agility trial on Saturday so it was no time to take him for a 3 mile run that he was not trained for. On the long uphill heading into the park, the woman and the Poodle pulled away, and I thought more about agility and Cork Sterling with his dog Max, and now Casey. Beaten by a Standard Poodle, story of my life.
In the second mile, I exchange snippets of conversation with a young boy who was complaining about the hill and wondering if there are any flat 5ks in Cincinnati. He said he thought he would like something flat and straight. I told him there were are few flat races but not many. Maybe he would enjoy the Jim Sauls 5k, basically an out and back along a flat stretch of road in Batavia. Too bad they stopped having that one. It was a great time trial course.
One nice thing I've noticed in this race over the years is that the kids are getting more fit, and also better educated about racing. There is far less cutting of the course and cheating than there used to be. I think this is a sign that the race has become a tradition for the neighborhood, and we are building a culture of fitness here. When some of those little kids look like they are going out too fast, it isn't always a given anymore, and some them can really kick your butt. Little tiny kids totally kicking my butt, I love it!
Mile 2 took me 9:12. It is the hardest mile of the race, more uphill than down.
And finally we are flying down Principio, my favorite part of the course. I am hurting but I spend the time and energy to high five a few little kids. I know when we reach the bottom there will just be a couple minutes more uphill, just a few more minutes of torture and it will be over. But since we have to run past the finish line before turning around to come back, it's a little bit more torturous than previous years. Mile 3 takes me 8:53. I don't like having to run past the finish line. I see the finish line, I want to stop.
I push and finish the last .1 in 49.5 seconds, for a finish time of 27:19. And I don't throw up, which means I had something left in the tank. But there were no women I could catch in the last stretch so I didn't have to absolutely kill myself.
Grabbed a cup of water and started walking up the street. Decided not to stay for the awards because I didn't want to stiffen up while standing around in the cold. It's a Steve Prescott race and generally his awards processing is more chaotic than some of the other race directors in town. I don't know why but that is the way it always is. Ran into David walking to his car. He said that this had been his slowest 5k ever (even slower than last year for him) but he considered it a triumph just to be out there at all because he had been very ill this past winter and was even in the hospital for a while with pneumonia/flu/etc. David used to be one of those sub-20 minute guys back when I first met him, and I realize that I have known David for close to 25 years now. We used to work for the same company and I met him when we did one of those corporate challenge races, which was one of my very first 5ks.
We are getting old, but as Tommy says, it beats the alternative. I have slowed down a bit since that race years ago, but not as much as David has. Anyway, slower though we may be, we are still fast enough to win our respective geezer age groups. The results show me 1 of 4 in the age group, 19 of 162 women, and 80 of 250 runners. There were also 87 walkers and I beat all of them (which is not always a given).
Some years I have had to rush home from an agility trial to make this race, and my legs have felt pretty flat after a long day of agility, but that was not the case this year.
Well, it's less than 3/4s of a mile from my house, so I jogged up there and got my shirt, jogged home again, hung out for awhile, and jogged back to the start. Glad I got the shirt. It's in a woman's cut in black with the race logo in white.
It had been a hot and humid afternoon, but some showers before the race made for a slight dip in the temperature and all in all it wasn't a bad night for a run.
The course follows residential streets in Mt. Lookout before heading into Ault Park, then back out down a nice, long hill before making the turn back to the street in front of the school. Post-race, there is a little party in back of the school, where they usually serve hot dogs and chocolate chip cookies, and some band composed of parents whose kids attend the schools usually plays classic rock. I haven't hung around post-race the last few years so these details may have changed. The day after the race is the annual school carnival. This was all a big deal for us back when my daughter went to school there, but now I am old enough to be a grandparent of the Kilgour kids and I've lost my connection to the place.
You Have to Know Your Place
Saw my old friend David warming up pre-race but no chance to say hello. Finished my warmup and took a spot in the crowd near other people who looked like they are going to run. Positioning myself is tough in a race like this. I am not fast enough to start in the front, but I also don't want to get stuck behind a bunch of walkers (even though the official walker start was supposed to be after the runners, some people get confused or think it doesn't matter). And you have to watch out for the little kids, many of whom go out too fast with arms and legs flying about erratically, and whom are prone to sudden stops and/or changes of direction. You don't want to trip over or step on a kid.
There was a somewhat less-tha-fit woman just behind me with a stroller---maybe not even a running stroller---and I wondered if I was really in the right place. But everybody else nearby looked right. A very fit young woman standing next to me turned around and looked disdainfully at the stroller and said "that shouldn't be here," which was what I was of course also thinking but I didn't want to say it. The stroller was pushing right up against the back of the fit-looking woman's legs. I'd be pissed, too.
They changed the course this year. We started a little farther downhill from the school (for a slightly more uphill start) but then later, instead of running behind the Ault Park Pavillion, we made an early right turn to take us out of the park. This took out some of the uphill in mile 2-3. But then at the end we had to run past the finish line in front of the school (about where the mile 3 mark was now) a little way up the street before turning around and heading back to the finish. I'm not sure I liked that part, but at least the last .05 miles was slightly downhill.
Around 7 pm, we were off. My goal was about a 27:30, or about an 8:50 pace. Turned out to pretty realistic. At a minimum, I wanted to be faster than last year, which was probably the slowest 5k I've ever run. I'm a couple pounds lighter and I've been doing a little bit of speedwork. I've never broken 26 minutes in this race, even when I was a bit more fit. It's not as hard as the Reggae Run but it's plenty hard enough.
For once I was in the right place at the start, and I didn't have to do too much running around people or worrying about being tripped by a kid. What I did need to worry about were potholes. Turns out the street in front of the school really needs to be repaved. I don't drive on it very often so didn't know. It's a mess.
The Competition: Little Kids and People with Dogs
Mile 1 took me 8:25. It is the easiest mile of the race---closest to "flat"---and it is always my fastest mile but I was still happy to be so far ahead of last year (9:00 for first mile).
Around this time I noticed a woman running with a Standard Poodle, and I was thinking about how it would have been fun to run this with Ed, but it was a little too warm and he is a little too out of condition, plus he had the agility trial on Saturday so it was no time to take him for a 3 mile run that he was not trained for. On the long uphill heading into the park, the woman and the Poodle pulled away, and I thought more about agility and Cork Sterling with his dog Max, and now Casey. Beaten by a Standard Poodle, story of my life.
In the second mile, I exchange snippets of conversation with a young boy who was complaining about the hill and wondering if there are any flat 5ks in Cincinnati. He said he thought he would like something flat and straight. I told him there were are few flat races but not many. Maybe he would enjoy the Jim Sauls 5k, basically an out and back along a flat stretch of road in Batavia. Too bad they stopped having that one. It was a great time trial course.
One nice thing I've noticed in this race over the years is that the kids are getting more fit, and also better educated about racing. There is far less cutting of the course and cheating than there used to be. I think this is a sign that the race has become a tradition for the neighborhood, and we are building a culture of fitness here. When some of those little kids look like they are going out too fast, it isn't always a given anymore, and some them can really kick your butt. Little tiny kids totally kicking my butt, I love it!
Mile 2 took me 9:12. It is the hardest mile of the race, more uphill than down.
And finally we are flying down Principio, my favorite part of the course. I am hurting but I spend the time and energy to high five a few little kids. I know when we reach the bottom there will just be a couple minutes more uphill, just a few more minutes of torture and it will be over. But since we have to run past the finish line before turning around to come back, it's a little bit more torturous than previous years. Mile 3 takes me 8:53. I don't like having to run past the finish line. I see the finish line, I want to stop.
I push and finish the last .1 in 49.5 seconds, for a finish time of 27:19. And I don't throw up, which means I had something left in the tank. But there were no women I could catch in the last stretch so I didn't have to absolutely kill myself.
Grabbed a cup of water and started walking up the street. Decided not to stay for the awards because I didn't want to stiffen up while standing around in the cold. It's a Steve Prescott race and generally his awards processing is more chaotic than some of the other race directors in town. I don't know why but that is the way it always is. Ran into David walking to his car. He said that this had been his slowest 5k ever (even slower than last year for him) but he considered it a triumph just to be out there at all because he had been very ill this past winter and was even in the hospital for a while with pneumonia/flu/etc. David used to be one of those sub-20 minute guys back when I first met him, and I realize that I have known David for close to 25 years now. We used to work for the same company and I met him when we did one of those corporate challenge races, which was one of my very first 5ks.
We are getting old, but as Tommy says, it beats the alternative. I have slowed down a bit since that race years ago, but not as much as David has. Anyway, slower though we may be, we are still fast enough to win our respective geezer age groups. The results show me 1 of 4 in the age group, 19 of 162 women, and 80 of 250 runners. There were also 87 walkers and I beat all of them (which is not always a given).
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Ault Park Switchback Trail Race
This is the second race in the local Dirt Days trail series.This year was my second time doing it. The race is mostly on the trails in the park right next to my house---in fact, you can see my house at one point about a half-mile into the race, less than a tenth of a mile off the course. But I skipped it the first few years. Probably had a dog show.
But this morning it did occur to me that I actually like racing better than dog shows.
Anyway, I'm four pounds fatter than I was a year ago, but I'm actually in a little better shape running-wise. The past few weeks, since the chiropractor fixed me up, I've even been able to get a few sessions of speedwork in, and I haven't done that kind of thing in years. I don't know what I'm really capable of since I skipped that 5k last weekend, but I've been doing some hard running and maybe it will pay off.
Well, it should pay off eventually but it is still a bit soon for that.
We've had a lot of rain the past few days, so I knew the trails were going to be a muddy mess. The sun was out this morning but the temperature was in the low 40s with windchills in the 30s.
When You Know Where You're Going You Know What to Wear
I thought the biggest decision was what shoes to wear. Tommy thought this was ridiculous. He said that muddy shoes were the point of trail running, and I should just wear my designated trail running shoes and I could certainly clean them off later, no big deal. I said that my favorite and best trail running shoes have lately become my favorite agility shoes, and I did not want to risk trashing them in this race, especially when I have a trial next weekend. And I pointed out that I really did not think he understood, since although he occasionally runs on the trails he probably would not go out on them if he knew there was going to be a lot of mud. He responded with some story about hiking through the mud when he was in the army. My comeback to this was that I have a vast number of old running shoes in various states of decay, and there was no reason to ruin a good pair of shoes in this race when I could wear some old pair and just throw them away when I was done.
He did not understand the concept of "throw them away" but we had to agree to disagree.
The race started at 9 am. I got up around 6 am to make coffee and check the weather and feed the dogs. Hung out for awhile until it was time to get dressed. Went with my CW-X capris (so good for my knees), a thin, longsleeved technical top (race shirt from Disney half) and a longish jacket that covered my butt. Also, cotton gloves and of course, I never run without a hat.
I waited until the last minute to decide about the shoes. I was thinking of wearing an old pair of Nike Pegasus all-weather shoes that had pretty good tread on them. I am not sure if I ever actually wore these shoes for running. I wore them mostly for walking the dogs and it has over a year since I last wore them. (Why do I still have these things? Will I appear soon on one of those TV shows about the hoarders? A special show about people who hoard old sporting equipment?).
These shoes did not feel great. I decided there was a reason I had never run in these shoes.
So next, I put on my old pair of Brooks Adrenaline trail shoes. I have worn these for trail running, but it has been awhile. In fact, I think I wore them last year for this race, after which (or maybe even during the race) I vowed to get a new pair of trail running shoes with better traction. They then did some time as dog walking shoes, until the weather got cold and wet---they are not water repellant, and there is a big hole in the upper over the area of my left bunion.
They felt very broken in!
I considered some other options, including my old pair of New Balance 1063s that have over 500 miles on them and almost no tread (and are not actually trail shoes but in a short race like this it doesn't matter). The Adrenalines did have a little more tread on them, still.
So that is what I wore out the door. As I walked up the trail to the race start and felt myself slipping around in the mud, I wondered if I should turn around and put on my good trail shoes.
Getting in the Zone
Got up to the race start, picked up my number, and was still thinking about going home and switching shoes. But by then we were probably talking 20 minutes if I hustled, and it was getting a little too close to the start time. But I was looking around at other people's shoes, and for once it seemed like most of the people there were actually in serious trail shoes. There were even people in gaiters! (I think that is kind of overkill for a 3.6 mile race. Not too likely you are going to get a rock in your shoe when the trails are as wet as this. If you get one, you can just suck it up. Seriously. Gaiters?)
Went for a little warmup jog around the pavilion, mostly on pavement, but did a little on the grass to see what it felt like. Went okay. Back at the start, took a stroll through the a grove of Japanese cherry trees with a little woodchip trail winding through them, and a Japanese-style wooden arch of the Centennial Garden. The garden and the new picnic shelter were dedicated last weekend. I thought about Japan, how lucky I was to be able to run this race and to live next to this lovely park, and generally tried to get in a peaceful frame of mind. Zen, zen, zen.
Which is not to say that I was not focused on doing well in the race. Last year I finished in 40:49 and was 32 of 51 women--which was my worst placement in the series. For the Dirty Dozen calculations, the finish time doesn't matter but the placement does. I was hoping to improve some on that placement and see if I could move up from last year's 7th place in the Dirty Dozen. After finishing 70th in the trail race last month, I have some work to do. It was my bad luck that a race with a large number of women entrants happened to be also the race where I was going to run a sucky time.
I knew I was capable of a faster run today than last month, but it would still help me in the standings if it was a smaller crowd. So I stood in the start area and counted the number of women. I counted about 35. That was the good news. They also looked to be in a lot better shape overall than the women at last month's race. That was the bad news. But even if I finished last, it would still be better than 70th.
There was a woman who might have been Brenda W. but I wasn't sure, and if so, she has had been the victim of a really bad perm and dye job. She was not at the first race either and I wonder what is up with that.
Just before the start, I took my jacket off and tied it around my waist. It was pretty long, and I wondered if that was going to bother me. I took my house key out of my jacket pocket and put it in the pocket of my tights, just in case.
Although I am extremely familiar with these trails, last year I didn't know the route we were going to take on them. This year I knew exactly where we would be when, but I also was worried about slipping on the mud. So I wasn't going to be able to attack the downhills as I might have liked. I decided that as far as strategy, 1) I would go out aggressively to get a good position at the bottleneck heading into the woods; 2) I would push a little more on the uphills than usual; and 3) I would not let anybody pass me at the end when we looped back around the soccer field. By doing those three things, I would correct all the mistakes I made last year when I was inexperienced at trail racing.
Run and Don't Look Back
The first loop around the soccer field went well. I did feel like I was going faster with less effort than last year. I was passing people. I was passing guys! My jacket started to bother me and I threw it under a cherry tree as we finished the first loop of the soccer field.
I knew I had succeeded in getting a good position heading into the woods, because I did not have to stop and wait for the backup to clear. Unfortunately, we were soon into a steep downhill that was very muddy, so I had to let a bunch of people go by me anyway. Better safe than sorry.
Every time I got to a flat stretch or someplace dry I tried to open it up.
There is a sharp turn right at the spot where you can see my house. I have fallen down there on training runs, so I slowed down to take it easy.
About one mile in, we had to go up a long hill (the "Ridge Trail") that I never run up when I am just out training. I marveled at the fact that in this race I was able to run up the whole thing.
Then there was some deep mud and a short, steep descent out to the street, before we turned back in to go down a gravel path that is called the "Valley Trail". I passed a few people on this section.
Things were going well. I seemed to be in with a fitter and faster group of runners than I remembered from last year, and nobody was passing me.
We crossed the creek, and headed uphill to the section (the "Tree Trail") that is always muddy even when the weather is dry. The advantage I had compared to most of the other runners was that I knew where the mud was and even what tree branches it might help me to hang on to going around certain bends.
A couple of women passed me but they didn't get too far ahead.
We swung back across the last stretch of trail, just above the Tree Trail, and I noticed that there was no sign designating one mile to go, which they had posted last year.
Finally, we reached the very steep climb that puts you out behind the pavilion. The two women who had passed me on the Tree Trail were still ahead of me but I was catching up to them as we climbed the hill. At the very top, I took off running and left them behind. At first, I worried that they would catch me but then I remembered to focus instead on the next woman in front of me. Rather than worrying about being passed, it is better to work on passing people!
So now we just had to make a loop of the soccer field and that would be it. There was a woman ahead of me and I didn't think I could catch her, but every time I looked up, the gap was getting smaller. I hadn't looked at my watch in awhile but I knew I wasn't going to be much slower than last year, if at all. I tried to work on catching the woman in front of me. It wasn't going to happen. I needed another quarter mile or so. Still, I really tried to push through the finish. I could see the clock and it looked like I might break 40 minutes.
Which I did. My official time was 39:59. That, as it turns out, was 50 seconds faster than last year. I was pretty happy with that, considering my weight gain, being another year older, and also that the trails were in worse shape.
I picked up my jacket from under the tree, drank some Gatorade, grabbed a chocolate chip bagel (in case there is any question about why I can't lose weight, this is the answer), and ambled about for 10 minutes or so. I wasn't sure if I wanted to stay for the awards. They don't have age group awards at this race, just something for the top ten age-graded runners, and even with a better time than last year I knew that was not going to be happening. I did see a printout of the results just before I left so I know that I was the 18th woman to finish. It really doesn't matter how many women I beat, what matters is that there were only 17 in front of me.
Later when I checked the results I found out that woman just ahead of me was in my age group, and she beat me by 6 or 7 seconds. This bums me out greatly and I wonder if I could have caught her if I had just pushed a little harder, a little sooner. I didn't throw up when I finished so I must have had something left. Oh well. I guess I will have to let it go.
Things I learned this time around:
1) When it's muddy, run straight through the deepest part of the mud. Don't bother trying to go around it. You will be more stable if you just run straight through.
2) Don't stop forward motion. Well, I already knew this but I thought some more about it as I passed people on the uphills. Even if you have to go slow, you can maintain your position in the pack if you just keep moving forward. Don't stop, and pick up the pace again as you recover.
3) Don't look back. I wanted to make sure those two women behind me weren't going to pass me, but it was better to focus on the woman in front of me.
Back home, a bit tired but uninjured, I took the dogs for a nice long walk around the neighborhood.
My next race will probably be the Kilgour 5k on May 13. The next trail race is two days later, in Mt. Airy forest. I will skip the Pig this year and instead be a good girl and just go for an 8-miler that day, in keeping with my training schedule.
Oh, and the shoes. I'm not sure about the shoes. I might be keeping them. If so, I guess it might mean that I need professional help or some sort of intervention. Anyway, right now they are parked on the side porch, drying out. I keep trying to upload a picture of them from after but Blogger doesn't want to let me do that. Oh well.
But this morning it did occur to me that I actually like racing better than dog shows.
Anyway, I'm four pounds fatter than I was a year ago, but I'm actually in a little better shape running-wise. The past few weeks, since the chiropractor fixed me up, I've even been able to get a few sessions of speedwork in, and I haven't done that kind of thing in years. I don't know what I'm really capable of since I skipped that 5k last weekend, but I've been doing some hard running and maybe it will pay off.
Well, it should pay off eventually but it is still a bit soon for that.
We've had a lot of rain the past few days, so I knew the trails were going to be a muddy mess. The sun was out this morning but the temperature was in the low 40s with windchills in the 30s.
When You Know Where You're Going You Know What to Wear
I thought the biggest decision was what shoes to wear. Tommy thought this was ridiculous. He said that muddy shoes were the point of trail running, and I should just wear my designated trail running shoes and I could certainly clean them off later, no big deal. I said that my favorite and best trail running shoes have lately become my favorite agility shoes, and I did not want to risk trashing them in this race, especially when I have a trial next weekend. And I pointed out that I really did not think he understood, since although he occasionally runs on the trails he probably would not go out on them if he knew there was going to be a lot of mud. He responded with some story about hiking through the mud when he was in the army. My comeback to this was that I have a vast number of old running shoes in various states of decay, and there was no reason to ruin a good pair of shoes in this race when I could wear some old pair and just throw them away when I was done.
He did not understand the concept of "throw them away" but we had to agree to disagree.
The race started at 9 am. I got up around 6 am to make coffee and check the weather and feed the dogs. Hung out for awhile until it was time to get dressed. Went with my CW-X capris (so good for my knees), a thin, longsleeved technical top (race shirt from Disney half) and a longish jacket that covered my butt. Also, cotton gloves and of course, I never run without a hat.
I waited until the last minute to decide about the shoes. I was thinking of wearing an old pair of Nike Pegasus all-weather shoes that had pretty good tread on them. I am not sure if I ever actually wore these shoes for running. I wore them mostly for walking the dogs and it has over a year since I last wore them. (Why do I still have these things? Will I appear soon on one of those TV shows about the hoarders? A special show about people who hoard old sporting equipment?).
These shoes did not feel great. I decided there was a reason I had never run in these shoes.
They felt very broken in!
I considered some other options, including my old pair of New Balance 1063s that have over 500 miles on them and almost no tread (and are not actually trail shoes but in a short race like this it doesn't matter). The Adrenalines did have a little more tread on them, still.
So that is what I wore out the door. As I walked up the trail to the race start and felt myself slipping around in the mud, I wondered if I should turn around and put on my good trail shoes.
Getting in the Zone
Got up to the race start, picked up my number, and was still thinking about going home and switching shoes. But by then we were probably talking 20 minutes if I hustled, and it was getting a little too close to the start time. But I was looking around at other people's shoes, and for once it seemed like most of the people there were actually in serious trail shoes. There were even people in gaiters! (I think that is kind of overkill for a 3.6 mile race. Not too likely you are going to get a rock in your shoe when the trails are as wet as this. If you get one, you can just suck it up. Seriously. Gaiters?)
Went for a little warmup jog around the pavilion, mostly on pavement, but did a little on the grass to see what it felt like. Went okay. Back at the start, took a stroll through the a grove of Japanese cherry trees with a little woodchip trail winding through them, and a Japanese-style wooden arch of the Centennial Garden. The garden and the new picnic shelter were dedicated last weekend. I thought about Japan, how lucky I was to be able to run this race and to live next to this lovely park, and generally tried to get in a peaceful frame of mind. Zen, zen, zen.
Which is not to say that I was not focused on doing well in the race. Last year I finished in 40:49 and was 32 of 51 women--which was my worst placement in the series. For the Dirty Dozen calculations, the finish time doesn't matter but the placement does. I was hoping to improve some on that placement and see if I could move up from last year's 7th place in the Dirty Dozen. After finishing 70th in the trail race last month, I have some work to do. It was my bad luck that a race with a large number of women entrants happened to be also the race where I was going to run a sucky time.
I knew I was capable of a faster run today than last month, but it would still help me in the standings if it was a smaller crowd. So I stood in the start area and counted the number of women. I counted about 35. That was the good news. They also looked to be in a lot better shape overall than the women at last month's race. That was the bad news. But even if I finished last, it would still be better than 70th.
There was a woman who might have been Brenda W. but I wasn't sure, and if so, she has had been the victim of a really bad perm and dye job. She was not at the first race either and I wonder what is up with that.
Just before the start, I took my jacket off and tied it around my waist. It was pretty long, and I wondered if that was going to bother me. I took my house key out of my jacket pocket and put it in the pocket of my tights, just in case.
Although I am extremely familiar with these trails, last year I didn't know the route we were going to take on them. This year I knew exactly where we would be when, but I also was worried about slipping on the mud. So I wasn't going to be able to attack the downhills as I might have liked. I decided that as far as strategy, 1) I would go out aggressively to get a good position at the bottleneck heading into the woods; 2) I would push a little more on the uphills than usual; and 3) I would not let anybody pass me at the end when we looped back around the soccer field. By doing those three things, I would correct all the mistakes I made last year when I was inexperienced at trail racing.
Run and Don't Look Back
The first loop around the soccer field went well. I did feel like I was going faster with less effort than last year. I was passing people. I was passing guys! My jacket started to bother me and I threw it under a cherry tree as we finished the first loop of the soccer field.
I knew I had succeeded in getting a good position heading into the woods, because I did not have to stop and wait for the backup to clear. Unfortunately, we were soon into a steep downhill that was very muddy, so I had to let a bunch of people go by me anyway. Better safe than sorry.
Every time I got to a flat stretch or someplace dry I tried to open it up.
There is a sharp turn right at the spot where you can see my house. I have fallen down there on training runs, so I slowed down to take it easy.
About one mile in, we had to go up a long hill (the "Ridge Trail") that I never run up when I am just out training. I marveled at the fact that in this race I was able to run up the whole thing.
Then there was some deep mud and a short, steep descent out to the street, before we turned back in to go down a gravel path that is called the "Valley Trail". I passed a few people on this section.
Things were going well. I seemed to be in with a fitter and faster group of runners than I remembered from last year, and nobody was passing me.
We crossed the creek, and headed uphill to the section (the "Tree Trail") that is always muddy even when the weather is dry. The advantage I had compared to most of the other runners was that I knew where the mud was and even what tree branches it might help me to hang on to going around certain bends.
A couple of women passed me but they didn't get too far ahead.
We swung back across the last stretch of trail, just above the Tree Trail, and I noticed that there was no sign designating one mile to go, which they had posted last year.
Finally, we reached the very steep climb that puts you out behind the pavilion. The two women who had passed me on the Tree Trail were still ahead of me but I was catching up to them as we climbed the hill. At the very top, I took off running and left them behind. At first, I worried that they would catch me but then I remembered to focus instead on the next woman in front of me. Rather than worrying about being passed, it is better to work on passing people!
So now we just had to make a loop of the soccer field and that would be it. There was a woman ahead of me and I didn't think I could catch her, but every time I looked up, the gap was getting smaller. I hadn't looked at my watch in awhile but I knew I wasn't going to be much slower than last year, if at all. I tried to work on catching the woman in front of me. It wasn't going to happen. I needed another quarter mile or so. Still, I really tried to push through the finish. I could see the clock and it looked like I might break 40 minutes.
Which I did. My official time was 39:59. That, as it turns out, was 50 seconds faster than last year. I was pretty happy with that, considering my weight gain, being another year older, and also that the trails were in worse shape.
I picked up my jacket from under the tree, drank some Gatorade, grabbed a chocolate chip bagel (in case there is any question about why I can't lose weight, this is the answer), and ambled about for 10 minutes or so. I wasn't sure if I wanted to stay for the awards. They don't have age group awards at this race, just something for the top ten age-graded runners, and even with a better time than last year I knew that was not going to be happening. I did see a printout of the results just before I left so I know that I was the 18th woman to finish. It really doesn't matter how many women I beat, what matters is that there were only 17 in front of me.
Later when I checked the results I found out that woman just ahead of me was in my age group, and she beat me by 6 or 7 seconds. This bums me out greatly and I wonder if I could have caught her if I had just pushed a little harder, a little sooner. I didn't throw up when I finished so I must have had something left. Oh well. I guess I will have to let it go.
Things I learned this time around:
1) When it's muddy, run straight through the deepest part of the mud. Don't bother trying to go around it. You will be more stable if you just run straight through.
2) Don't stop forward motion. Well, I already knew this but I thought some more about it as I passed people on the uphills. Even if you have to go slow, you can maintain your position in the pack if you just keep moving forward. Don't stop, and pick up the pace again as you recover.
3) Don't look back. I wanted to make sure those two women behind me weren't going to pass me, but it was better to focus on the woman in front of me.
Back home, a bit tired but uninjured, I took the dogs for a nice long walk around the neighborhood.
My next race will probably be the Kilgour 5k on May 13. The next trail race is two days later, in Mt. Airy forest. I will skip the Pig this year and instead be a good girl and just go for an 8-miler that day, in keeping with my training schedule.
Oh, and the shoes. I'm not sure about the shoes. I might be keeping them. If so, I guess it might mean that I need professional help or some sort of intervention. Anyway, right now they are parked on the side porch, drying out. I keep trying to upload a picture of them from after but Blogger doesn't want to let me do that. Oh well.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Sarann Mock reports that she is officially "old"
While walking the dogs in the park this morning, I "ran into" my "old" friend, Sarann Mock. In the manner of people who were formerly accustomed to traversing vast distances at sprightly paces, Sarann now always seems a bit apologetic at what she sees as her now "decrepit" condition.
Which you would probably think is ridiculous if you were just meeting her. Trim and fit and full of energy, Sarann looks like she is somewhere in upper 50s. Very healthy upper 50s. Which is pretty good, considering that in a few weeks Sarann will turn...80! Eighty!
Anyway, she says she now considers herself officially "old" and so she is giving herself permission to not do as much or go as fast as she used to be able to do. She is only doing the half-marathon this year at the Flying Pig. She is also planning to run a team relay race in the near future with her daughters and some other fast women (or formerly fast women) but she is worried about slowing the team down.
Sarann has done stuff like run a marathon on all 7 continents, and numerous ultras and long trail races. But every time I see her she seems to be making plans to scale it back. I guess we all have to eventually. But Sarann and I do agree that we need to keep moving forward, however slow, as long as we can.
So, someday I hope I can be old like Sarann.
Unfortunately, I am even now probably already older physically than Sarann! At least, I know that I am in worse shape than she was at my age.
In other news, I may have spoken too soon about those new Nikes. They were okay for a couple of days but when I tried to wear them for a long run on Sunday, I had to change out of them right away because I was getting a pain on the top of my left foot. Haven't had them back on since but will probably try again next week. I think I may have had them tied to tight to try to combat heel slippage on that foot---which is a little smaller than my right foot.
Sunday I am doing the Ault Park Switchback Trail race right here in the park next to my house. We're supposed to have heavy rain later today and all day tomorrow, I think, so the trails are going to be a mess. I am trying to decide which shoes I want to sacrifice to the cause. I am pretty sure whatever pair I wear will end up trashed, so I don't think I want to wear my "good" trail shoes.
Which you would probably think is ridiculous if you were just meeting her. Trim and fit and full of energy, Sarann looks like she is somewhere in upper 50s. Very healthy upper 50s. Which is pretty good, considering that in a few weeks Sarann will turn...80! Eighty!
Anyway, she says she now considers herself officially "old" and so she is giving herself permission to not do as much or go as fast as she used to be able to do. She is only doing the half-marathon this year at the Flying Pig. She is also planning to run a team relay race in the near future with her daughters and some other fast women (or formerly fast women) but she is worried about slowing the team down.
Sarann has done stuff like run a marathon on all 7 continents, and numerous ultras and long trail races. But every time I see her she seems to be making plans to scale it back. I guess we all have to eventually. But Sarann and I do agree that we need to keep moving forward, however slow, as long as we can.
So, someday I hope I can be old like Sarann.
Unfortunately, I am even now probably already older physically than Sarann! At least, I know that I am in worse shape than she was at my age.
In other news, I may have spoken too soon about those new Nikes. They were okay for a couple of days but when I tried to wear them for a long run on Sunday, I had to change out of them right away because I was getting a pain on the top of my left foot. Haven't had them back on since but will probably try again next week. I think I may have had them tied to tight to try to combat heel slippage on that foot---which is a little smaller than my right foot.
Sunday I am doing the Ault Park Switchback Trail race right here in the park next to my house. We're supposed to have heavy rain later today and all day tomorrow, I think, so the trails are going to be a mess. I am trying to decide which shoes I want to sacrifice to the cause. I am pretty sure whatever pair I wear will end up trashed, so I don't think I want to wear my "good" trail shoes.
Thursday, April 07, 2011
test run in the new shoes
They felt great! And how often does that ever happen? Hardly ever. Anyway, unlike the last time I tried a new pair (back in January), these are keepers.
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
New Shoes Came Today
Run for the Green
Before I totally forget everything about it I really should write about the trail race I did a few weeks ago. It was the week after the Little Rock Marathon, and before I had those sessions with the chiropractor, so I really wasn't feeling so hot but I wanted to do the race because it is part of the local trail running series, and unless you do six races you don't get a participation award.
This race, "Run for the Green," is held on trails in a park in Landen/Deerfield park. Like many of the other races, it is a little over three miles in distance. Landen is not an especially hilly area, but the trail sections of the race do have some hills and even a couple of knee-high creek crossings.
The weather was not bad, but the course was pretty muddy after all the rain we had been having and the melted snow. I guess they had rain last year and that would have been a lot worse. I got there about a half hour before the start to pick up my bib and shirt. The goody bag had more stuff in it than the bag at Little Rock. The shirt was white cotton, but longsleeved, and the race logo in green and black was not too bad.
A quick scan of the crowd told me that Brenda W., my old lady age-group trail running competition, was not around, and there weren't too many other old ladies.
Between my injuries and the marathon recovery, I had to take it really easy. I just wanted to finish, get a time, and not hurt myself, i.e, not slip in the mud and pull something else. I limped through a very slow warmup mile, wondering what people thought about the gimpy old fat lady in their midst.
I was wearing my old pair of Salomon trail shoes. They don't have any tread left on them, but they do drain water pretty well, and I figured once they were covered in mud it wouldn't matter about the lack of tread so much. The first part of the race is a little run around a grassy field, and it was soaked with water, so my feet were totally wet from the very first steps of the race. I knew then that I had made the right choice.
The course was pretty. There was a treacherous little section on the trails with a sharp drop off on the right overlooking the river (Little Miami? Miami Whitewater? which one, I am not sure, Little Miami I guess). Take one wrong step and you would be rolling down the hill into the river. Otherwise the trail was wide enough. There were some slick spots and it was hard to get any kind of speed up, which was just as well considering my condition.
We did cross the creek twice, and it was cold and deep. It would feel great on a hot day, but even on this mild morning in early spring it was not bad.
I did manage to pass a couple of people and remain upright. Almost slipped a couple of times but survived. At the end you come back out of the woods and have to run a circle around the grassy field again. I pushed hard then to stay ahead of the woman just behind me, who as it turns out is somebody I used to work with and I am glad that we did not recognize each other because it would just be too embarrassing.
Some skinny little fast runner type took my tag after I crossed the finish line and she congratulated me and I said something like, you have no idea, because really I am sure she had not idea that I had done a marathon the week before and I was doing this race even though I could hardly walk.
After the race I had some Starbucks (another great thing about this little race) and a decent cinnamon raisin bagel. I walked back to the car and took off my shoes and socks and decided they were not salvageable and I would be throwing them away. I had brought clean shoes and dry socks just for this reason. Shielded by my car and with a towel wrapped around me, I managed to quickly change into dry clothes without giving any residents of Warren County an eyeful. I was too tired to walk back to the bathrooms.
But after I got into the dry clothes I felt better and headed back up to the awards ceremony. I thought I might have placed in my age group, since there were not many old ladies there. And I was definitely the only one who bothered to stay for the awards. So I was really surprised when the got to my age group and then said there weren't any finishers! So in classic, cranky old lady fashion, I had to go up to the race director and his assistant (the skinny woman who had taken my tag when I crossed the finish line) and complain about why I wasn't in the results. They tried to shut me up by throwing a medal at me, as if that was all I cared about.
No, what I wanted, and the reason I had gone all the way up there to do this race, was an official finish time. So after some deliberation and their scanning of the results---they kept blaming it on the age-graded timing system, which didn't make sense---they did find me in there. I guess if you are really slow, it assumes you are dead and didn't finish? Aren't still breathing so don't deserve a time?
Officially, I was 1 of 1 in the age group, 70 of 87 women (this part does not bode well for my dirty dozen chances this year!) and 179 of 208 people. But I did get an official time. My time was 50:15, which was about what I had expected given my condition. Age-graded, this is a 43:49 or 33.76% (i.e., barely alive), which moves me up to 158 of 208. I would like to go back next year and try to do better.
This race, "Run for the Green," is held on trails in a park in Landen/Deerfield park. Like many of the other races, it is a little over three miles in distance. Landen is not an especially hilly area, but the trail sections of the race do have some hills and even a couple of knee-high creek crossings.
The weather was not bad, but the course was pretty muddy after all the rain we had been having and the melted snow. I guess they had rain last year and that would have been a lot worse. I got there about a half hour before the start to pick up my bib and shirt. The goody bag had more stuff in it than the bag at Little Rock. The shirt was white cotton, but longsleeved, and the race logo in green and black was not too bad.
A quick scan of the crowd told me that Brenda W., my old lady age-group trail running competition, was not around, and there weren't too many other old ladies.
Between my injuries and the marathon recovery, I had to take it really easy. I just wanted to finish, get a time, and not hurt myself, i.e, not slip in the mud and pull something else. I limped through a very slow warmup mile, wondering what people thought about the gimpy old fat lady in their midst.
I was wearing my old pair of Salomon trail shoes. They don't have any tread left on them, but they do drain water pretty well, and I figured once they were covered in mud it wouldn't matter about the lack of tread so much. The first part of the race is a little run around a grassy field, and it was soaked with water, so my feet were totally wet from the very first steps of the race. I knew then that I had made the right choice.
The course was pretty. There was a treacherous little section on the trails with a sharp drop off on the right overlooking the river (Little Miami? Miami Whitewater? which one, I am not sure, Little Miami I guess). Take one wrong step and you would be rolling down the hill into the river. Otherwise the trail was wide enough. There were some slick spots and it was hard to get any kind of speed up, which was just as well considering my condition.
We did cross the creek twice, and it was cold and deep. It would feel great on a hot day, but even on this mild morning in early spring it was not bad.
I did manage to pass a couple of people and remain upright. Almost slipped a couple of times but survived. At the end you come back out of the woods and have to run a circle around the grassy field again. I pushed hard then to stay ahead of the woman just behind me, who as it turns out is somebody I used to work with and I am glad that we did not recognize each other because it would just be too embarrassing.
Some skinny little fast runner type took my tag after I crossed the finish line and she congratulated me and I said something like, you have no idea, because really I am sure she had not idea that I had done a marathon the week before and I was doing this race even though I could hardly walk.
After the race I had some Starbucks (another great thing about this little race) and a decent cinnamon raisin bagel. I walked back to the car and took off my shoes and socks and decided they were not salvageable and I would be throwing them away. I had brought clean shoes and dry socks just for this reason. Shielded by my car and with a towel wrapped around me, I managed to quickly change into dry clothes without giving any residents of Warren County an eyeful. I was too tired to walk back to the bathrooms.
But after I got into the dry clothes I felt better and headed back up to the awards ceremony. I thought I might have placed in my age group, since there were not many old ladies there. And I was definitely the only one who bothered to stay for the awards. So I was really surprised when the got to my age group and then said there weren't any finishers! So in classic, cranky old lady fashion, I had to go up to the race director and his assistant (the skinny woman who had taken my tag when I crossed the finish line) and complain about why I wasn't in the results. They tried to shut me up by throwing a medal at me, as if that was all I cared about.
No, what I wanted, and the reason I had gone all the way up there to do this race, was an official finish time. So after some deliberation and their scanning of the results---they kept blaming it on the age-graded timing system, which didn't make sense---they did find me in there. I guess if you are really slow, it assumes you are dead and didn't finish? Aren't still breathing so don't deserve a time?
Officially, I was 1 of 1 in the age group, 70 of 87 women (this part does not bode well for my dirty dozen chances this year!) and 179 of 208 people. But I did get an official time. My time was 50:15, which was about what I had expected given my condition. Age-graded, this is a 43:49 or 33.76% (i.e., barely alive), which moves me up to 158 of 208. I would like to go back next year and try to do better.
Monday, April 04, 2011
Ramping Up
I am looking forward to the official start of my next marathon training program on April 18. Working on getting back on a regular schedule. The leg/thigh pain is pretty much gone. I felt a little twinge late in the day Saturday at an agility trial but it didn't stay around. Got a good five miler in yesterday. Going to do 6 next weekend, maybe 6 the following weekend, and then I'll be ready for 7 at the end of the first week of the schedule.
Just for kicks I tried a little bit of intervals at the end of my run today on the treadmill. The schedule I am going to be using calls for fartlek-style pickups at the end of the easy runs on Mondays. So today I did 6 at 7 mph, which is about an 8:35 pace, for 30 seconds. That's more like a 5k pace, or it used to be, so I guess I should have done them faster. They did feel pretty easy after the first one. But I didn't want to push the knee too hard. Have been icing after my runs and that is helping.
So maybe next week I'll do them faster. Or maybe I'll just keep it where it is. It's still faster than I've gone in awhile.
Thinking about a 5k next weekend since I don't have a dog show. Might be good to run a race now to get a gauge on appropriate training paces for all the speedwork I'm supposedly going to make myself do over the next few months.
Just for kicks I tried a little bit of intervals at the end of my run today on the treadmill. The schedule I am going to be using calls for fartlek-style pickups at the end of the easy runs on Mondays. So today I did 6 at 7 mph, which is about an 8:35 pace, for 30 seconds. That's more like a 5k pace, or it used to be, so I guess I should have done them faster. They did feel pretty easy after the first one. But I didn't want to push the knee too hard. Have been icing after my runs and that is helping.
So maybe next week I'll do them faster. Or maybe I'll just keep it where it is. It's still faster than I've gone in awhile.
Thinking about a 5k next weekend since I don't have a dog show. Might be good to run a race now to get a gauge on appropriate training paces for all the speedwork I'm supposedly going to make myself do over the next few months.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
My Sessions with the Chiropractor
As of a week or so ago, the sore muscle in my thigh was getting worse and worse, and it was taking longer and longer to get warmed up. On a painful 3 miler around the park, I ran into a friend from my dog training club who lives in my 'hood. In addition to dog training, she is a ski instructor, golfer and line dancer.
She suggested I visit her chiropractor. She said this particular chiropractor works on a lot of runners, including a locally famous Olympic marathoner.
I have been taking the dogs to a chiropractor for a couple of years now, and have been impressed with how much it seems to help them, but for some reason I had never considered this for myself.
I made an appointment for a few days later, and subsequently discovered that several other dog friends also went to this same human chiropractor for treatment, and all spoke highly of her.
Went last Thursday. Generally liked her, and had an overall positive impression. She spent a long time taking my history. The treatment consisted of some work on my spine and pelvis, and some deep tissue massage of the sore muscle. After she worked on me, I spent twelve minutes hooked up to one of those electrical stimulation devices with an ice pack on the area as well. She said she wanted to see me again the next day, and possibly three times the following week.
This seemed a little extreme to me but I figured it was worth a shot.
On the negative side, like so many medical practicioners, she quickly became obsessed with the idea that running was bad for my knee. It did not seem to matter how many times I explained that the knee surgery was back in 2003, and that the knee is really not the problem that brought me there---although the muscle pull did seem to be aggravating it---and that although I do FINISH marathons, I am not out there training excessively, blah, blah, blah. I get tired of having to explain it.
I thought the current medical research was all about how running was not bad for your knees at all. Anyway, this is an agility injury. Happened during agility and is aggravated by agility. Running in a straight line is not a problem. Kneeling, deep knee bends, skiing---those are the problems, and I don't do that stuff anymore.
The treatment had an immediate positive affect on the muscle soreness. In fact, the pain went away almost entirely. I was able to run agility in class Thursday night without pain for the first time in weeks. The knee, however, did not care for it much. In fact, the knee was slighly swollen and a little stiff when I returned for the next session the following day.
She did not want to believe me when I told her that my knee had not been this swollen in years. But we decided that she just needed to be extra careful in how she worked on me to avoid aggravating the knee, and I needed to tell her right away if something didn't feel right. And we iced the knee in addition to the thigh during the electro stimulation.
She still could not get that "running is bad for you" thing out of her head. Well, who has time to run when you are spending all this time in physical therapy? But, because the muscle pain was so much better, she said I probably only needed to come back twice the next week.
Later in the afternoon, bending slightly to assemble a dog crate, I felt a sharp pain in the knee at a level that I had not felt since before the 2003 surgery. This ticked me off. Fix one thing, screw up another?
But my knee is a funny thing, very susceptible to subtle psychological changes. Sometimes it hurts on the start line of a race, just because I am a little nervous. That's mostly why I still wear the knee brace for agility. It's my security blanket.
But I felt fabulous all weekend at the UKC conformation show with Eddy and Zen. I was able to run around the ring counterclockwise and move freely without pain, again for the first time in maybe six weeks. And the knee was fine, too.
Monday morning, as I prepared to return to the chiropractor for session # 3, my knee started talking to me. It seems my knee has developed a phobia of chiropractic care. As she worked on me, being even more careful than previously to avoid things that the knee disliked (hah! she is what the knee dislikes! the knee wants to avoid visiting the chiropractor entirely!), we discussed running shoes and orthotics. I told her about my latest theory of running in the cheapest shoes I can find, and switching them out whenever I feel a little pain. She told me about the new type of orthotics that are developed for the body in motion rather than based on a stationary cast of a foot. I told her about how I no longer stretch, and I find that I am less injured that way. I can tell she thinks I am crazy.
Anyway, after working on me briefly, she pronounced me released from treatment and said I did not need to return later in the week. We discussed ongoing care, and she said I might want to come in every six to eight weeks for an adjustment, and to call her right away if I start to feel anything going on. Which I will, unless it involves my knee!
Knee did not feel so hot on a 2 mile walk with the dogs right after the chiropractor visit. But after some ice and Aleve it was much improved. Going to maybe go for a run later today, first time in a week. My knee is happy that we are done with the chiropractor for the moment, and the rest of my body feels pretty good for a change.
So I guess I am sold on chiropractic, more or less---but don't tell that to my knee!
She suggested I visit her chiropractor. She said this particular chiropractor works on a lot of runners, including a locally famous Olympic marathoner.
I have been taking the dogs to a chiropractor for a couple of years now, and have been impressed with how much it seems to help them, but for some reason I had never considered this for myself.
I made an appointment for a few days later, and subsequently discovered that several other dog friends also went to this same human chiropractor for treatment, and all spoke highly of her.
Went last Thursday. Generally liked her, and had an overall positive impression. She spent a long time taking my history. The treatment consisted of some work on my spine and pelvis, and some deep tissue massage of the sore muscle. After she worked on me, I spent twelve minutes hooked up to one of those electrical stimulation devices with an ice pack on the area as well. She said she wanted to see me again the next day, and possibly three times the following week.
This seemed a little extreme to me but I figured it was worth a shot.
On the negative side, like so many medical practicioners, she quickly became obsessed with the idea that running was bad for my knee. It did not seem to matter how many times I explained that the knee surgery was back in 2003, and that the knee is really not the problem that brought me there---although the muscle pull did seem to be aggravating it---and that although I do FINISH marathons, I am not out there training excessively, blah, blah, blah. I get tired of having to explain it.
I thought the current medical research was all about how running was not bad for your knees at all. Anyway, this is an agility injury. Happened during agility and is aggravated by agility. Running in a straight line is not a problem. Kneeling, deep knee bends, skiing---those are the problems, and I don't do that stuff anymore.
The treatment had an immediate positive affect on the muscle soreness. In fact, the pain went away almost entirely. I was able to run agility in class Thursday night without pain for the first time in weeks. The knee, however, did not care for it much. In fact, the knee was slighly swollen and a little stiff when I returned for the next session the following day.
She did not want to believe me when I told her that my knee had not been this swollen in years. But we decided that she just needed to be extra careful in how she worked on me to avoid aggravating the knee, and I needed to tell her right away if something didn't feel right. And we iced the knee in addition to the thigh during the electro stimulation.
She still could not get that "running is bad for you" thing out of her head. Well, who has time to run when you are spending all this time in physical therapy? But, because the muscle pain was so much better, she said I probably only needed to come back twice the next week.
Later in the afternoon, bending slightly to assemble a dog crate, I felt a sharp pain in the knee at a level that I had not felt since before the 2003 surgery. This ticked me off. Fix one thing, screw up another?
But my knee is a funny thing, very susceptible to subtle psychological changes. Sometimes it hurts on the start line of a race, just because I am a little nervous. That's mostly why I still wear the knee brace for agility. It's my security blanket.
But I felt fabulous all weekend at the UKC conformation show with Eddy and Zen. I was able to run around the ring counterclockwise and move freely without pain, again for the first time in maybe six weeks. And the knee was fine, too.
Monday morning, as I prepared to return to the chiropractor for session # 3, my knee started talking to me. It seems my knee has developed a phobia of chiropractic care. As she worked on me, being even more careful than previously to avoid things that the knee disliked (hah! she is what the knee dislikes! the knee wants to avoid visiting the chiropractor entirely!), we discussed running shoes and orthotics. I told her about my latest theory of running in the cheapest shoes I can find, and switching them out whenever I feel a little pain. She told me about the new type of orthotics that are developed for the body in motion rather than based on a stationary cast of a foot. I told her about how I no longer stretch, and I find that I am less injured that way. I can tell she thinks I am crazy.
Anyway, after working on me briefly, she pronounced me released from treatment and said I did not need to return later in the week. We discussed ongoing care, and she said I might want to come in every six to eight weeks for an adjustment, and to call her right away if I start to feel anything going on. Which I will, unless it involves my knee!
Knee did not feel so hot on a 2 mile walk with the dogs right after the chiropractor visit. But after some ice and Aleve it was much improved. Going to maybe go for a run later today, first time in a week. My knee is happy that we are done with the chiropractor for the moment, and the rest of my body feels pretty good for a change.
So I guess I am sold on chiropractic, more or less---but don't tell that to my knee!
Thursday, March 10, 2011
It's not as big as I expected, but then is it ever?
Summary: nice mid-sized, well-organized race, reasonably scenic, urban course with good crowd support. Friendly and plentiful volunteers, aid stations where promised, hills also where promised, huge and ugly medal (that’s their thing). I am in horrible shape but the weather is good and I make it through. Oh yeah, and a shout out to my old training partner, Aleve, aka Vitamin A.
A Medal of Mythic Proportions (that’s their slogan this year)
For my 40th marathon and 35th state, I travelled to Little Rock, AR. I picked this one now because it was one of the few left within reasonably comfortable driving distance from Cincinnati (under 11 hours). I wasn’t too happy about the timing because it conflicted with an agility trial at my dog training club. Not for the first time, I really would have liked to have been in two places at once.
Training (or lack thereof)
Despite the long, cold winter, my training was going well until one morning in early February when I slipped on a patch of ice while walking the dogs. I had done 14 and 16 milers on the treadmill, and I even finished the 16 miles in less time than it took to do the 14. I was thinking I might even get an 18 or a 20 in. I haven’t gone further than 15 as a training run since probably 2002, so things were looking very good. I was definitely in shape to do a 4:30 comfortably, and maybe even go faster.
At first, the injury didn’t seem like such a big deal. I made note of it in my training log, but I continued training. The 18 miler wasn’t happening but I got some 5 and 6 milers in. What seemed to aggravate things the most was the sudden accelerations of agility class. It seemed to be a problem with the hip flexor that threw off my stride and created problems for my knee (the bad knee that I had surgery on in 2003) and my lower back. It was taking me longer and longer to warm up on my runs. After a few miles it got better, but I was starting to question what I was really doing out there and even considering a doctor visit. Really! Things were bad.
So I was thinking about cancelling the trip, and saving all the money on the hotel and the meals and the gasoline and the kennel reservation for the dogs. But I realized that if I stayed home I would be really depressed about it. Fortunately, Tommy realized that too. I managed an 8-miler the week before the race, and the hip really did feel better the longer I ran. So I decided we would make the trip, and I would start the race, and just drop out if I had to. It might not work for everyone, but for me that was better than staying home.
I had tried to get Tommy interested in doing the half-marathon, but he is not as much into running through injury as I am, and then it filled anyway so he didn’t have a choice about it.
Travel
We left Cincinnati on the Friday afternoon and stopped for the night in Jackson, TN. This is the home of Carl Perkins, and I am sure there are things to see in Jackson, but we did not have time for that. We stayed at a comfortable and very reasonable LaQuinta in a motel hell, and dined at a Logan’s Roadhouse.
While Tommy drove, I tried to familiarize myself with the upcoming race as best I could. I read a 2005 article from Marathon & Beyond, and also my friend Ken’s race report from 2008. I am not good at interpreting elevation maps, but Tommy helped me with that, and Ken’s report was especially enlightening. I don’t mind hills if I know where they are going to be. It’s when I am not expecting them and it turns out they are there that I get angry about it. So I knew to expect a fairly long climb in the middle of the race, followed by a short, steep downhill, and a couple of hills near the end. The hill in the mid-section was on a street named “Kavanaugh” and I learned there was a saying that “What’s said on Kavanaugh, stays on Kavanaugh.” I found this amusing, as my maiden name is “Cavanagh,” just another spelling of the same name.
Hotel, Expo & Pasta Dinner
We arrived in Little Rock midday on Saturday and checked into The Peabody (race hotel). The Peabody was the site of the pasta dinner and is connected to the convention center where the race expo was held. When I made the reservation, I didn’t know if I would be travelling alone, so not knowing the city very well, I thought this was the safest bet for me. Plus, there are the ducks. (But am I the only one bothered by the statement that when they retire from their “jobs,” they are returned to the wild? I am wondering if a working life as a Peabody duck prepares one adequately for life in the wild.)
The Peabody is nice enough but a little long in the tooth. Built (I am guessing) in the 1970s, it is in need of a bit of remodeling. I would suspect it began life as a Hyatt, based on the elevators. If I did this race again, I would go for The Capitol Hotel (directly across the street from The Peabody and a lot fancier looking from the outside) or the Marriott Courtyard (down the street, and closer to the start and finish of the race). You can still visit with the ducks before and after the pasta dinner!
Off to the expo we went. Based on statements in the race info booklet that I got in the mail a few weeks beforehand, I was expecting strict attention to detail, and perhaps a bit too regimented a check in process. Fortunately, it was not like that at all. They didn’t even ask me for photo ID at check in, and they looked at me funny when I handed them the confirmation email that we were supposed to sign and hand in to get our packets.
This led me to wonder about the possibility of taking the early start option, an idea I had been mulling over for a couple of weeks. The Little Rock Marathon offers an early start (two hours before the official start) for people who expect to take more than six hours to finish. The problem is the language in the race info book made it sound like there was no middle ground. If you wanted to do the early start, and it turned out that you went faster than a 14-minute pace, the race info booklet said that you would be held back at the first relay exchange station, and might be disqualified from the race. And possibly executed on the spot. Well, it didn’t say that last part but it was implied.
For me, the concern was that if I decided to walk the whole thing, or most of it, it was going to take me over six hours. And I might not know that until I’d covered a few miles. I don’t mind being left out of potential age group awards (as if, right?) and I understand the street closure and aid station operating dilemmas, but I didn’t want to have to crawl the whole way just because I took the early start.
Oh, and if you were going to do the early start, there was a mandatory pre-race meeting to attend at the expo, but you would only know what time that was taking place if you had signed up ahead of time for the early start. Which I hadn’t.
I still wasn’t sure if I would even be finishing period, so I decided to just go ahead and start at the official time and hope I made it.
The expo was not very exciting. I’ve seen worse, I’ve seen better. I bought a tee-shirt that has the names of the major running routes in Little Rock (including Kavanaugh) printed on the back. The race tee was a short sleeve technical top in light blue, also not very exciting. No swag in the race packet. Ipico timing chip (small piece of cardboard) with one twist tie to strap it to your shoelaces---not the best way.
We had no time to do any sightseeing in Little Rock. Before dinner, we caught the 5 pm duck parade---this is when the ducks march out and go back to their Royal Duck Palace for the night (their workday is 11 am – 5 pm). Then we had dinner in the ballroom of the hotel. Decent pasta feed, as one tends to find at race hotels. Self-serve buffet, all you could eat. Choice of bowties and whole wheat rotini, meat sauce and butter sauce, rolls and salad, ice tea and coffee. All the skinny women runners carefully measured themselves a half cup of pasta and a tiny bit of sauce. I filled my plate and went back for seconds. This is why I am 20 pounds overweight. For dessert, there was a choice of blueberry/apple and peach cobbler.
During dinner, we were entertained by a guy playing guitar and singing songs that were hits when we were in college---so of course we enjoyed that. He was accompanied by a background recording of other instruments and backup singers so it sounded like a full band. He would change costume and put on wigs depending on which artist he was impersonating at the time. He sounded so much like the actual vocalists that I wonder if he was even really singing or just playing air guitar and lip synching.
During a break in the music, there was a brief speech by Bart Yasso of Runner’s World and some other guy, but fortunately they did not talk for long and I do not remember what they said.
We finished dinner and after a brief return to the expo to pick up some more GU Chomps, went to bed early. Before turning out the lights, I read some inspirational stories from various running magazines, and the last thing I said to myself was that I was going to finish the race.
I Bet the Marriott has Coffee Makers in the Rooms
I didn’t sleep well. Besides my stress about the race itself, I was worried about the morning coffee situation. There was no coffee maker in the room. They hadn’t said anything about setting up a coffee bar in the lobby. Surely they would, though, right? Many of us marathoners need our coffee. Caffeine is my performance enhancing drug of choice! In addition to Aleve, that is. It occurred to me that maybe they had just forgotten to put the coffeemaker in the room. I have a travel coffeemaker but I have stopped bringing it because there is always one in the room (plus I am trying to be less high-maintenance).
I could have ordered room service coffee, but it was $8.50 a pot plus 20% gratuity plus $3.00 service charge plus outrageous hotel tax.
So when I got up at 5:30 am first thing I did was call the concierge and ask about the coffeemaker. He told me that if you want a coffeemaker, you have to make arrangements ahead of time! Seriously. But he said they did have coffee in the lobby. So I went downstairs, and I saw that they were serving coffee and breakfast items in the lobby bar. For which you had to pay. And you couldn’t just charge it to your room. So I had to go back upstairs to get some cash. And on the way back, tucked into a corner by the elevators, I saw they had set up a couple of coffee urns where you could get free coffee. They did not have this the next morning---I checked---so I guess free coffee is not a regular deal at the four-star Peabody. Huh. I guess I have just gotten to used to the conveniences of the Red Roofs and the LaQuintas I stay at for dog shows.
I got some coffee (no lids though!) and took it back up to the room. So, for breakfast I had this coffee, a banana I had brought from home, and some Chomps. And one Aleve. Should have had two.
Read an article in the local newspaper about Leah Thorvilson, a local runner who would win the women’s division of the race for the 3rd year in a row. Coincidentally, she was also the winner at Fargo when I was there last May.
The temperature outside was in the upper 30s, with a high of low 50s and a little sun predicted for the day. No rain, fortunately. After some debate about what to wear, I decided on my long CW-X tights instead of capris, because they were more supportive of my knee and I was going to be slow enough that I wouldn’t overheat. On top, I wore my thin technical long-sleeved top from the Flying Monkey race, and a thin nylon jacket that I like because it covers my butt. I also had my hat from Oklahoma City, and an old pair of running gloves. I wore a fanny pack to carry my Chomps, room key, chapstick and cellphone.
Over all of this, I threw on an old jacket with a broken zipper that I had tried to pitch in New Orleans last year, but somehow they mailed it back to me anyway. This time it was not coming home.
Perks Pavillion
I just want to say something about this. One of the race sponsors had arranged a special pavilion at the start/finish area where you could pay an extra $25 to take advantage of “perks” like “special” bathrooms and food. I find this to be a very disturbing trend. I dislike this way of scrounging extra money out of runners. I can understand that elite and invited runners should get some special treatment. But I don’t think they should establish a tiered pricing system for the rest of us. Anyway, I did not participate in the “perks.” I do wonder if they had coffee in there, though.
Off and “Running”
At around 7:30 I headed for the start line. I was in corral D, which was for people who expected to be under 4:30. Just behind corral D was the “open” section for people who didn’t designate a time or were even slower than 4:30 (as I fully expected to be). I was surrounded by half-marathoners and relay runners. Including walkers, there were over 3000 half-marathon finishers, 223 relay teams, and just under 2000 marathoners.
It took about five minutes to reach the start line, which is pretty slow for such a small race and considering I wasn’t really that far back. I actually walked the whole way until I crossed the start line.
I was immediately in a lot of pain. The first mile was horrible. I hoped that it would get better as I warmed up, just as it had on recent training runs. If I wasn’t feeling a whole lot better by mile 5, I was going to drop out there because that was close to the hotel. I would have another opportunity around mile 8. After that, the course went out away from the city and I would not have a graceful way to DNF.
I ditched my throwaway jacket before we even reached the first mile marker. But the rest of my attire would serve me well for the balance of the race. It never got that warm, and when the wind kicked up it was a bit chilly. The sun didn’t come out until I was on my last six miles or so, and it wasn’t very strong. Good marathon weather, actually.
I reached the first mile marker in 11:23. Too soon to quit.
The early section of the race reminded me very much of parts of Cincinnati’s Flying Pig Marathon. We ran through downtown, then crossed a bridge into North Little Rock---very much like crossing over into Newport, KY when you do the Pig, except the bridge was a bit smaller. We ran around a little over there and then it was back over the same bridge, retracing our steps a bit. Got to see the race leaders and eventual winners, already miles ahead of me.
I was holding an 11 minute pace, drinking mostly Gatorade every couple miles at the aid stations, and having my Chomps with water every 3-4 miles. Again, no wonder I can’t lose weight.
Not Dropping Out After All
Came through mile 5 feeling pretty good. Waved to Tommy and kept on going. One mile at a time, I told myself. I had my running watch set up so I was only seeing the elapsed time of the current mile. I didn’t want to focus on how long I had been out there or how far I still had to go---although I did peek occasionally.
One nice thing was how many of the spectators would read my name off my bib and call out to me. On one corner, a group of guys started chanting “Mon-ic-a! Mon-ic-a!” as I ran by. That really gave me a lift.
I don’t remember much about miles 5 through 10. Around ten, we were in the neighborhood of the Governor’s Mansion. I guess the current Governor was outside waving but I didn’t really know who he was. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee ran the race in 2005 after he lost over 100 pounds. He’s since put back on a lot of that weight, it seems to me when I see him on TV. Anyway, this is a neighborhood of large, old homes. Somewhere in here, we split off from the half-marathoners and I was happy to see them go. Unfortunately, we would rejoin them in a few miles for a short stretch, but I would be happy again when they were gone for good. I just find myself getting irritated with the half-marathoners who are back there slogging at my pace and complaining about how hard it is. Especially when I am not even half done yet with MY race. I know everybody has to start somewhere but stop whining about it, will ya? Suck it up and run.
What’s Said on Kavanaugh, Stays on Kavanaugh
At about the halfway mark, we ran by the State Capitol, and then we hit the hill. Since I was expecting it, it didn’t throw me. Plus, it had “my name” on it. How can you not enjoy a hill with your name on it? And I found the neighborhood quite pleasant. The cute little shops and small, interesting homes, as well as all the crowd support in this section reminded me of my neighborhood in Cincinnati, and I knew that if we lived in Little Rock this would be the place. This was my favorite part of the race.
My steady 11 minute pace gave way to 12s on the hill but otherwise I felt okay. Around mile 17 we hit the short but steep downhill. If I wasn’t so injured, and if it was a shorter race, I would love to fly down that hill. But at mile 17 of a marathon in my current state, I walked most of it.
On the River Trail
After the hill, we had a long, flat, out and back section along a paved bike trail. This is a really nice feature of Little Rock, the Arkansas River Trail. It will be 24 miles when it is completed. The sun had come out a bit but fortunately not too much because there was not much shade (too early in the season) along the trail. I hooked up with the five hour pace team, which had been behind me up to this point. I normally hate pace teams but this was a more pleasant bunch than usual. They were taking walk breaks roughly every 11 minutes. I also finally caught up to and passed the 8-hour pace team---that is, the slowest people among those who had taken the two hour early start. I was now really glad that I had not started with them!
On the way back (other side of the trail) there was a golf course on our left. I was struggling now to hold that 12 minute pace, and I had to bid farewell to the 5-hour pace team. I was not going to break five. I called Tommy when I passed mile 23 to let him know approximately when to expect me.
The Last of the Hills
And then there it was, that hill I had heard they threw in at the end. It looked worse from a distance. It wasn’t that long and it wasn’t that steep. I thought that was the last of the hills, but there was one more, shorter but steeper, in mile 25. That one surprised me. Really Little Rock? Isn’t there any other way to design this course? Why don’t you reverse it so we do the hills first? I guess because you want to get the ugly part over first? I had a few 13ers from 23-25.
Near the 26 mile mark, they had a lipstick stop, sponsored by L’Oreal. You are supposed to put lipstick on so you look good for your finish line photo. I did not stop. It hurt more when I stopped. Got back down to 12 for the last mile, and 2:25 for the last .2, for a final time of 5:06.12. Considering my horrendous physical condition, I am more than okay with that. I was actually even a bit proud of myself for about 30 seconds.
#35 in the Bag
Gave back the chip, got that hideous medal (really heavy around my neck!) space blanket, and then even stopped for one of those posed pics with the medal. Outside the finisher’s area, I found the promised chocolate milk. Otherwise, it was pretty slim pickings. Some fruit, and some Little Debbie snacks. As many other marathoners have complained, I would rather have better food at the finish and forget about the damn medal.
Found Tommy, who had purchased not one but two different turkey sandwiches for me to pick from. Unfortunately, I picked wrong, and ended up with a mild bout of food poisoning! But once that bad sandwich was out of my system, I was fine, and perfectly able to enjoy the barbeque at the post race party. But maybe he really is permanently barred from turkey sandwich duty.
Post race party was held at the Clinton Presidential Library. This is straight down the road from The Peabody, past the start line of the race. From the outside, it is a rather ugly building that reminded me of an airline terminal. But from the inside, there are great views of the river. The food at the party was decent, but there was no place to sit, so we ended up on the floor with our backs against the wall. That is not how you want to sit right after a marathon! Getting up was especially fun.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped in at the Flying Saucer bar. Fun place, with dozens of beers on tap. I had one of the 5-beer samplers. Back at the hotel, I indulged my craving for chocolate with a couple of truffles from the gift shop. And that was that.
It’s been a couple of days and I’m still limping around but not much worse than usual. Need to recover by Saturday for a trail race!
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