Saturday, March 26, 2011

Race report - Cville 10 Miler

Record breaking freakout this week. Clearly, that works for me.

The 10 Miler started extra early this year, due to conflicts with baseball, softball, and lacrosse games that take place in the same area as the start/finish and whose spectators need the roads and parking lots. So it was pretty disorienting to arrive and warm up in the pitch black. I met up with my crew, used the ladies room (it was actually the men's room, but the ladies had taken it over, and only the most courageous of men braved the urinals in there), and fiddled with my layers. It had been forecast to be in the low-mid 30's, but the thermometer on my car read 40 when I pulled in, so I took my chances and went with a short sleeve shirt over long sleeves, ear warmer, and no gloves.

We lined up waaaaaay in the back. And finally, the crowd started to move. My nervous energy was peaking, and it was good to be lined up in the back where I couldn't go out too fast if I tried. I crossed the first half mile in 6 minutes. I picked up the pace a little, and did the first mile in 11:00 flat. I'll admit, it freaked me out to be 45 seconds off my goal pace, but I knew that I could leverage the downhills to make it up.

And leverage I did! I know the course so well now, I know where every turn, every pothole, every downhill is. I can anticipate them, and get ready to turn on the speed. My first chance was around the back side of the stadium, and I surprised myself how fast I was going downhill. I surprised myself even more on the uphill, where I was passing every single person I came to. I didn't even feel like I was working that hard - I was taking Coach Mark's advice and not pushing myself uphill.

About this time, I came across one of the women I ran with occasionally during training. We ran together for a bit, and then I asked her what her goal for today was. She hemmed and hawed about just running to feel good, and then said that when she ran a marathon a few years ago, it was at a 9min/mile pace. I told her about my 10:15 goal, and, as well she should, she pretty well ditched me after that.

Around the stadium, past the AFC, and then the right on McCormick for a long, relatively flat stretch. I knew that I could conserve some energy on this portion, because The Downhill was coming. The biggest, screamingest downhill comes at the end of mile 4/beginning of mile 5. I took full advantage of it. As full as I could, anyway. The crowd was pretty thick, and I had to bob and weave to pass people. I bobbed and weaved so much that I picked up an extra tenth of a mile, per my GPS.

Coming to the uphill at the downtown mall, approaching mile 5, I took a quick look at my watch and my pace chart and realized that I had picked up a lot of time on the downhill. I was well ahead of my 10:15 pace, crossing the halfway point at just a hair over 50 minutes! This was pretty exciting, but I knew the toughest parts of the course were yet to come.

There's great crowd support in the Lexington Ave neighborhood, and there was music and two unofficial but highly organized water stops, and even donut holes if you wanted them. I was in such a great mood that I just floated over the hills. Even knowing the tough hill by the graveyard was ahead didn't dampen my spirits. And then I floated up that hill, too.

Next thing I knew, I was on Water Street, starting the first in a series of tough, late race uphills. Mile 8 and the beginning of mile 9 are grueling. But I hardly felt it. I just put my head down, and up I went, passing people the whole way. Knowing that mile 10 was now a downhill, I knew the pain of 8 and 9 was only temporary.

One last gulp of water before the mile 9 turnaround on McCormick and I was home free. The new finish is spectacular. A long downhill, steep enough to let you open it up and make friends with gravity, but not so steep that you'll wreck your knees. Before I knew it, I was crossing Ivy, and I could see the finish ahead. I broke into a sprint. I did the last tenth of a mile at a 7:32 pace. I don't know where I found it, but it felt great.

Proof: me, just before the finish, sprinting like I've never sprinted before. I don't know what was up with the Comcast van. This is the only picture ever of me running that actually looks like I'm fast! (Thanks, Pete, for the great pic.)


Then in to the chute, hit my watch, and I was done! Coach Mark was taking pictures at the finish and I damn near knocked him over while deafening him with my screeching "I SET A TWELVE MINUTE PR!!"

You heard me, readers. I SET A TWELVE MINUTE PR.

Final chip time: 1:38:30, 9:51 pace. Just one second off my 8K pace, can you believe it?

I got my medal, chatted with friends, grabbed a bagel and an orange slice, and headed home, where I spent the next several hours feeling like I was going to vomit, but not minding because I SET A TWELVE MINUTE PR.

Friday, March 25, 2011

High tech


I'm glad I got the Garmin, it's the perfect place to tape my pace chart.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Right on schedule

My pre-race freak week is proceeding swimmingly. Last night I had my pre-race nightmare, and it was a doozy. Not only was I late to the race, but it wasn't just a footrace, there were many Amazing Race style challenges along the course. One involved a maze through a Chinese restaurant kitchen. Since I had started so late, and I hadn't prepared for the challenges, I ended up with a DNF because I couldn't finish the course within the time limit. It was humiliating.

In real life, this has been a tough week to squeeze in the miles, so it's a good thing I'm officially tapering. I was able to run after work two days this week, one with Sami in the buggy. Today I had an all-day work thing, so I missed my usual Thursday run. I'm planning on doing an easy mile or so tomorrow to keep my legs moving. I'm very nervous about Saturday, but all that work over the winter is now hay in the barn, and truthfully not much I do this week could improve my performance.

And look! The weather forecast is amazing.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Freak week

My last long run before the 10 Miler was this Saturday. It went fine, 7 miles at a 10:40 pace. I felt pretty crappy the whole way, and did not feel like I was going that fast. I am just now getting over the chest cold that has given me a smoker's voice and deep, throaty cough for the past week or so. On my weekday runs, I was getting just warm enough to loosen everything up so that I felt pretty good by the end. On Saturday, I warmed up, felt good, but by the end was really, really feeling the congestion in my chest. I was good and whooped by the end.

Also, my foot was hurting. For a few miles, I was convinced that I was coming down with plantar fasciitis a week before the race. When I took off my shoe, I realized what the problem was. Thursday night, I got a number of mosquito bites on foot, three on my arch. I have an unusually strong reaction to mosquito bites, and by Saturday morning, they were so swollen that they looked like one giant welt, and of course every step was pounding on this welt. No wonder my foot hurt. Here's what they look like tonight:

(My foot doesn't realy look that weirdly elongated, it's the angle and the macro setting.)

Not so bad, but this is day five after the bites, when most normal humans wouldn't even have a mark. Saturday night, they were so itchy and painful that I actually took a Benadryl. I hate it - I only take Benadryl when I have no other options. The last one I took was when I had a bad case of hives about 7 years ago. I took a single child's meltaway, and spent 24 hours being groggy and sluggish. And my foot still itched.

So here I am, days away from the race, with an itchy, painful foot, the remnants of a cough and cold, and pumping my body full of performance-reducing drugs. Once the Benadryl wore off enough that I had a return of cognitive function, my pre-race freakout started. I think 5 days before race day is a new record for me.

I tried to silence the demons with a run after work tonight, but running in the heat freaked me out. I'm trying to embrace the anxiety, and harness it. I've got 10:15 on the brain, bad.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

tune up - MJ8K race report

I didn't really have my pre-race freakout, Sami took care of that for me, having her first ever (and hopefully last) night terror night before last. If you have never experienced this, it is truly unsettling. Your toddler screams and cries in her sleep, is unconsolable, and there's nothing you can do but wait it out. So I didn't come in to the race as rested as I would have liked. Add to that the cold that I've been fighting working its way down in to my chest, and I was basically treating this run like a training run.

But when I got there, I felt pretty good. I warmed up for a mile, and the congestion started clearing up. The weather was great, chilly, but not super cold. I saw lots of friends, and was in a great mood by the time the crowd finally started moving. I wasn't exactly sure where the start line was (I hit my watch at the balloon arch, but I was almost .1mi short at the end, so I'm pretty sure the start was farther back).

I started running with a friend, and we chatted and braced ourselves for the hills ahead. The hill in Lexington, near the 1 mi mark was pretty killer, and I was glad I had warmed up before the race. The course twists and turns, and I'm never exactly sure of the route ahead, but I did know that after a lazy downhill down the Mall, there was that killer hill up McIntire. I put my head down, shortened my stride, pumped my arms, and ran up that hill. I looked up at the top, and realized I'd left my friend behind.

As you might imagine, there's a big downhill after this big uphill, and I took full advantage of it, and flew down. Some twists and turns, and then another massive, killer uphill. This hill is my nemesis, and I don't think I've ever run the whole thing. It is long and it is steep. And I RAN up that long and steep hill.

I took a well deserved gulp of water at mile 4, just on the other side of the hill, and set my sights on the finish. I ended up very close behind another runner as we made the final turn before the chute, and I was thankful that she kicked it in to high gear, too so that I didn't have to either awkwardly pass her or feel like I could be finishing harder.

And that was it! I was done, and my watch said 47:57. Truthfully, I was probably about 30 seconds slower than that, since I hit start after I crossed the actual start. But my overall pace on 9:47 and my freakin' awesome negative splits are right on the money. I can't believe with the two most killer hills in the second half of the race that each mile was faster than the next.

(UPDATE: Official gun time was 48:46, 9:50 pace; no chips at this race, but I figure it took about 30 sec to cross the start.)

I've been on a great streak of meeting goals and setting PR's, and I hope I can keep it up for the 10 miler in two weeks. Between now and then, I need to seriously consider my goals for the race. My goal of 10:30/mile might be too conservative. I've trained so hard, and had a magically wonderful snow- and illness-free winter that it would be a shame to not try for something a little faster. I have never had a streak of more consistent training, and with two little kids, I'm not likely to again any time soon. Based on my 5K's, my 2 mile time trial, and now today's race, I think that 10:15/mile is definitely within my reach.

To put it in perspective, my previous PR's in both the MJ8K and the 10 miler were in 2007. The 8K PR was 10:43/mi - almost a minute/mile slower than I ran today. My 10 miler PR a few weeks later was 11:10/mi.

It's terrifying to set a goal of 10:15, knowing that I might not reach it, especially knowing that I'd be really, really close. After meeting or beating all my major goals this season, I would be crestfallen not to meet the goal I'd been working for all this time. But what's the point of setting a safe goal? Would the woman who ran a marathon while still nursing a 10 month old set a safe goal?

Go big, or go home.

10:15, here I come.

Saturday, March 05, 2011

it's all downhill from here

12 mile run this morning. 11:13/mi, which is acceptable for a training run, but almost a minute slower than I hope to run the race. The good news is that I got to try out the new finish, and boy is it ever fast! The last mile of the usual course takes you through a series of rolling hills that are murder on every part of your body including your psyche after 9 prior hilly miles. The new last mile takes you down, down, down, down, and then down a little farther.

Today's run I had textbook negative splits for about the first half, and then my splits started creeping back up. Long story short, I took gatorade again (will I never learn?) and at mile 10, even though my legs, heart, and lungs felt fine, I had to screech to a halt and walk for about 5 minutes to avoid unpleasant consequences. Ida walked with me, and we were running again less than a half mile later, but I was not feeling my best. Still, we hit that last mile and without even trying, did it in 9:30.

9:30, people! If I can do that whilst trying not to vomit (or, um, anything else, ahem), at mile 12, then surely I can do that or better at mile 10, with no gatorade on board. Oooooh, I am so liking this. I'm really starting to think hard about my race strategy. I want to run 1:45, which is a 10:30 pace. I think I can actually do significantly faster than that, but I don't want to blow my whole race by going out too fast, and forgetting about the hills in miles 7 and 8 which are killer. But knowing that I've got a super fast last mile, that will allow me to comfortably keep it slow in the beginning, knowing that I can make up a minute or more at the end.

Only two more Saturday runs before the race! Both are 7 miles - the MJH8K plus warmup/cooldown next weekend, and just a straight 7 the week before the race. The past couple of weeks have not been good for me, training wise - I've traveled twice, I've been fighting a cold, and both The Supportive Husband and the kids have been sick. This coming week especially I really want to focus on getting those weekday miles so that I can feel confident that I've prepared as well as can be for the 10 miler.