Race Report: 2010 Women's 4 Miler

I had a truly awful night's sleep. I got to bed late, and woke up several times during the night. Once when the Supportive Husband came to bed, once when my bug bites were itching me, and I had to get up in search of itch relief, once when the baby monitor battery ran out and started beeping, and once when Sami woke up screaming "Mama, Mamaaaaaaa" not long before my alarm was due to go off. In between, I had plenty of nightmares. None race-specific, but enough in both quantity and quality that when I rolled out of bed for the last time just before 6, that I felt satisfied with my mental state.

Coffee, cereal, socks, shoes, and off I went. I listened to my new "getting in the zone" playlist, which included old favorites Ryan Adams, and Liz Phair, and new favorites Gogol Bordello and Sharon Jones 'cause I'm a bona-fide cap-i-tan. Yeah.

Coming in from the west, I was parked just two cars away from the fence, so I had basically no walk to get to the staging area. I sat in my car and jammed out to my iPod a little while longer.

Just before 7:15, I got out to visit the porta-johns, and then met up with my crew from work, so we could have a picture in our team shirts. Dorky, I know, but hey, they're great women, and it was a really nice shirt.

Finally, the big circus of corralling and walking out onto Garth Road. I ran into and old running friend in the corral, and it was great to catch up for a while. And then we were off!

I have finally learned my lesson about the corrals at this race - most entrants wildly overestimate their pace. It's probably true for most races, but when you've got 3500 bodies, most of them racing novices, crammed onto a two-lane country road, whoever you start with, you're stuck with for a very, very long time. So I put myself in the 10 minute mile corral, even though realistically I'm more of an 11. And it seemed to work nicely this year. Other than getting stepped on once, I didn't feel too crowded. There were times when I was not able to pass slower runners, and I had to dodge plenty of weavers, but I didn't have the claustrophobia that I usually do for the first, oh, four miles.

I purposefully allowed myself to be slowed by the crowd, and my first mile was about 10:45. I really wanted to go out slow, and I had to hold myself back to achieve that 10:45. Having the Nike+ sportband was really useful - it's not super accurate, but it gave me a rough idea of how fast I was really going, as my perception of those things is way off, especially during races.

Mile 2, as the crowd started to thin out, and with the big downhill after the turnaround, was in the neighborhood of 10:30. Who, me? Seriously, I was barely even breathing hard at this point.

Not long after passing mile 2 is when we pass by the finish line, going the opposite direction. Lo and behold, the first two finishers were just crossing the line, one right after the other, in what must have been a pretty spectacular footrace! Yeah! That amped me up and I kept on trucking.

I walked through the second water stop, so that I could actually hydrate, and hit mile 3 at in about 10:40. I chugged uphill to the turnaround. I flew downhill, though I could feel my body really starting to fatigue. Once we exited the shade with about a half mile to go, it was full sun all the way in. Luckily, the weather was gorgeous. Cool and dry.

I walked briefly on another uphill, but quickly picked it up to a run again when I realized how close I was to the finish. I shifted gears, and started booking it.

During my freak out last night, I committed my goals to my mind. Safety goal: 45 minutes. Attainable goal: 43 minutes, just shy of my 42:55 PR for the course. Stretch goal: 40 minutes. Pretty much impossible.

I crossed the finish with 41:something showing on the clock, and realized that not only had I set a PR, I'd smashed it. And stomped on it. Cuz I'm a bona-fide cap-i-tan, thank you Ms. Jones. I knew I was very close to my stretch goal. And some quick mental math made me realize exactly how fast I'd been on that last mile - a CRAZY negative split, if ever there was one - less than a 10 minute mile!! At mile 4!

I made a beeline for the porta potties, since I'd had to pee since the corrals, then grabbed some food and water, and headed for the official times - sure enough, 40:39. I went back twice to read it, just to be sure I hadn't read someone else's number. A 10:10 average? Me?? The only other time I've been that close is the 10:12's I pulled in the Turkey Trot a couple weeks after I ran the marathon.

Having PR'ed so definitively is such a boost. This winter was beyond difficult for me, and this summer, the hottest on record here, has been just as hard. It's tough to stay motivated when I've spent the last year squeezing in runs between snowstorms, illnesses, ER trips, 100 degree days, business trips, and PT sessions. I've had to force myself to run when every bit of my life is conspiring against it. It had crossed my mind more than once that maybe distance running isn't my thing, that maybe I should just do games on the Wii Fit and call it a day.

But today, I realized that I'm in charge. I can't control everything, but I'm in charge of setting the alarm to get up early to run. I'm in charge of packing my lunch so that I can go to the gym on my lunch break. I'm in charge of doing speedwork. I'm in charge of putting one foot in front of the other for one mile or four or 26.2. I'm in charge of pushing hard that last mile. I can't let my life push me around. I ain't nobody's baby, I ain't nobody's soldier, I'm a bonafide cap-i-tan.

Ahhhhh, freak out!

Well, no race would be complete without a freaky freakout the day before. Why hello, Women's Four Miler, it's been too long.

I maintained a sane and sensible easy training/activity program, incorporating my new Nikes (still loving them), plenty of cross training, disciplined midweek runs, and lots of core work. I've run some pretty fast miles recently, though my overall times for any distances longer than 3 miles are still hovering around the 11min/mile mark, which is fine. I'm sure the excitement of race day will give me that extra push that I need to keep it under 44 minutes.

So now I'm freaking out because a)PMS caused me to b)eat too many sweets and not enough real food the past two days and c)now I feel guilty about not running today, even though I *know* I should just take it easy the night before a race. I am seriously in a small panic about not having run today, and the sun is already setting, and it's 12 hours to race time and really too late for a run, especially one that I shouldn't even be going on.

So I've got a low-level freak out going, which is awesome, and very comforting in a sick way.

The rest of me is staying positive. Packet pickup was its usual circus, though as well-ordered as it could possibly be, and I've gone through my obligatory round of bitching about how I should quit running this race because it's a circus and a huge pain in the ass. But, I actually managed to raise some money for the cause this year, which is nice, and motivation for me to run again next year. And the shirts are rad.

Wish me luck tomorrow! Hopefully there will be a non-disastrous race report here soon! And to the rest of you running tomorrow: Run like you stole something!!