Cheery Blossom

Hey, all! Sorry I didn't post last week: between Passover and getting ready for Cherry Blossom, last week was nuts. So, here is a brief description of my last 2 weeks of training:

Monday: Off, traveling and the first night of Passover
Tuesday: 1200s at ~4:20-4:25 (7 of them)
Wednesday: 7.2 easy AM, 9.7 easy PM
Thursday: 6 miles easy
Friday: 10 mile progression run. 2 mile warmup, 6 miles starting at 6:45, cutting 5 seconds/mile. 2 mile cooldown
Saturday: 7 miles easy
Sunday: 17 miles with 5x800 at roughly Cherry Blossom Pace (~3:10 or so?)
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Monday: Massage AM, 3 miles PM
Tuesday: 6x600 at ~1:58, with full (like 3:30 or so) rest
Wednesday: 7 miles easy
Thursday: 3 mile warmup, 3x2 at MP, 3 mile cooldown
Friday: 4 miles easy
Saturday: 4 miles easy with 6 easy strides (20")
Sunday: 4 mile warmup with 4x1:00 hard, 10 mile Cherry Blossom!

So my running has been pretty good; mileage is coming down (67 miles and then 53), which is good, given I now have 3 weeks to marathon. My 1200s were fast, the slowest was 4:21. I was pretty tired the next day, but by Friday, I was ready to go again. Steph and I went out and did the progression run in beautiful weather on the river trails. Each of my miles was a few seconds fast for that run, too. Sunday was a miserable run: between rain, shoes causing my heels to crack and bleed, dehydration and general fatigue, I was very happy to be done with that run. I guess the Hounds seder at my house Saturday night didn't really help that. The whole week was somewhat weird for nutrition: Passover means I eat nothing but dairy, produce, and matzot (no grains or legumes). Surprisingly, I didn't have much of a problem digestively despite these restrictions. I ate a bunch of sweet potatoes and matzot to supplement my carbohydrate reserves.

The next day, I had a nice sports massage to try and work out some of the tightness in my calves and glutes. I don't usually have massages that involve my legs, because (a) my legs are  quite ticklish, (b) I don't like the idea of my legs being messed up by massage, and (c) buying new shoes seems like a better investment of the money for my general leg health. But I'd been feeling like my muscles were rather bound up so I gave it a go. I'm really happy I did! While I felt a little weird for a couple of days, a week out, my legs definitely feel better than they did before. I have all these tight spots in my calves and hamstrings and glutes, and I've noticed an increased range of motion and a smoother stride since last week. I've decided that I'm going to get another massage this Sunday upcoming, to try and have this effect last until Eugene (which, as I just mentioned is only 3 weeks away now!)

L and I had 600s to do the next day, which we did with K and N. It was really fun to run fast... we were doing not too much slower than our mile pace, which meant we were passing the men (who were doing their 5k pace), when we were all synced up for start times. My legs really didn't remember how to run that fast, but I managed to be quite on pace each time we ran those, even on the first 200. Our splits were, roughly 78 or 79 at the 400. After doing 6 of them, I decided I didn't need to do any more, given my race coming up that weekend. We broke Passover at Stack'd, which was a lot of fun! I ate a veggie bean burger, on bread, with fried mac and cheese and a beer. Nothing like going off a dietary restriction by stuffing yourself with all that you couldn't eat before... my stomach was not happy with me later that night.

I woke up to do Thursday's workout, only to find it was about 20 degrees colder than I'd expected (it was 18 when I went out... brrr!) I ran down to the river trails from my place to do the 3x2. Unfortunately for me, I ran the miles a bit faster than I was supposed to... the slowest was 6:40 or so (and that was supposed to be the fastest I was to run). I promise, the remaining of my marathon paced workouts will be more consistently 6:40, because I need to know how that pace feels.

L and I made it out to DC by the evening of Friday, and had quite a good time staying with her friends L and T. Friday night, we went to a delicious and unassuming Ethiopian restaurant. On Saturday, we went through the Portrait Gallery, which was having a portrait competition, and wandered around the part of the city which was inundated with tourists and cherry trees about to bloom. We then went to the elite technical meeting and realized just how crazy our decision to start with the elites in the USATF National 10 mile championships really was. There were virtually no other sub-elite athletes who chose to start with the elite wave: everyone else seemed to know one another, and everyone looked like they were sponsored by various athletic companies (Adidas was well-represented, as was Nike and Mizuno; there were also people who were wearing shirts from some of the well-known distance teams from around the country, from Flagstaff, Boulder, and the like). This group of women were going to start 12 minutes before the elite men or the rest of the seeded runners. After the meeting, L and I stalked the list of competitors to try and figure out if any of the other early start women were going to be anywhere near our pace. We found 3 or 4 women who definitely were going to run 60 or slower, so we relaxed a little bit but were definitely nervous about running 10 miles alone, without watches or competition (Tim told us we should race, and not care about pacing). After some whole wheat pasta and delicious homemade sauce, we watched the first half of Without Limits to get Pumped UP. Any movie that has an actor depicting Steve Prefontaine being a total douche (but racing with serious guts) is enough to make me want to run hard. After all, "The best pace is a suicide pace, and today is a good day to die."

Morning of the race, I woke up feeling much more refreshed by 6 hours of sleep than I expected to feel. I ate a few pieces of white bread with some jam, and a banana. I drank a little gatorade while listening to some Pump Up music on my nifty little iPod, and waited for L to wake up and get ready. I was mentally ready. I could tell, though, that I'd overeaten the night before: I was feeling kind of bloated and heavy in my stomach region. I used the bathroom before leaving for our warmup jog/transportation to the start of the race, but the feeling didn't really go away.

We jogged to the mall and down it towards the GW memorial. We went into the elite tent and sat, nervously, for about 20 minutes. All the women seemed nervous, probably at least as much as we were, because they depend on their results for financial wellbeing and their notoriety. They all stretched and sat and guzzled water and waited to use the elite port-a-potties, just like we mere sub-elites did. They made the occasional joke to one another, changed clothes, and went back and forth between doing warmups and sitting, conserving their energy for the race ahead. The number of 6+ packs in that tent was truly amazing, on women and men alike. In fact, I actually think the most impressive set of abs I saw were female.

Eventually, after another couple of strides, it was time for them to lead us to the start line. We all jogged along to the line, did a few strides, and lined up. Without a warning, the horn was blown and we were off. L and I tucked in to the second group, the one that looked like sub-60 was their goal, rather than the first group, who wanted to win money and set records. The weather was beautiful, 45 and sunny, but windy. We came through the first mile in 5:55, the second at 11:55, the third at about 17:55 or 18:00. I felt good. My legs felt pretty ok, but not perfect, as I'd done 2 hard workouts that week before the race. I hit the 5k at about 18:35.

Somewhere between the 5k and the 4 mile mark, my stomach started cramping up in a signal of imminent intenstinal distress. I dropped back from the group, fairly sure that slowing by a few seconds a mile would allow me to avoid some of my stomach problems. I kept them in eyesight for the next mile (hit 5 miles at 31:00 and the 10k around 38:40). I worried that, as is easy to do when something goes awry physically, I'd give up mentally. After I let the group go a bit, I was totally and completely alone, and around the 5 mile mark, I found myself running into a strong headwind. At this point, my legs started complaining in earnest, and my stomach was more unhappy rather than less. I decided that I still really wanted to keep in the race, though, so I kept my eyes on the group and tried to focus on not losing more ground to them.

The course, at this point, was totally gorgeous. There were all the cherry trees with their blossoms, and the river surrounding the peninsula that we ran along looked really nice in the early morning light. This was also the windiest part of the course. At about 7 miles, I heard footsteps from behind me, and I knew they were the footsteps of 2 people running substantially sub-5:00 miles, so the first 2 men had caught me, even with my 12 minute head start. As they passed, I noticed the ease with which they seemed to take each stride, even 70% into their race distance, into the wind, leaving their future battle to later. They ran side-by-side, in lock-step. Neither one was drafting off the other (I'm not sure if one would allow the other to draft).

As I watched them run along ahead of me, I realized both they and I had only 3 more miles to go, and while I'd lost a bunch of time in that mile (I think I ran a 6:40ish 7th mile), I didn't want to give up completely. I picked up my legs a bit and tried to see what they had left in them. I hit 8 miles in 50:30. 2 more men passed me. I knew that running under 63 (the time I had needed to qualify for running in the elite heat) was going to be difficult at best. But I decided to push anyway. I didn't see the 9th mile marker, but the first 3 American runners passed me roughly where it probably was. I saw the 800m to go sign, and tried to put my legs in top gear. It seemed as though they were more or less maxed out, and while I was pushing with all my might, I don't think my pace actually increased too much. L and T (our hosts for the weekend), were at the 500 meter mark, when I tried again to push my legs up a notch. They obliged, slightly, but my stomach screamed with the increased speed. I buckled a bit and pulled back, deciding 5 seconds wasn't worth the continual abdominal agony. I saw the clock just as it read 62:55, when I still had the better part of 100 meters left. I ran through the finish in 63:11, not as fast as I'd wanted, but not horrendously off, either.

Given the circumstances, I was quite happy with my time, and knew a number of things I'd do differently next year. First, I think it would have been better to start with the normal seeded runners, rather than having a 12 minute head start. That way, I'd have had a bunch of people to draft off of and run with for the duration of the course, which probably cost me a good minute in the second half. Next,  and this is made more clear each time I race with stomach problems, I need to figure out what is bothering my stomach for racing, because I'm sick of my stomach holding me back from running at my potential. Finally, next year, I'm going to tell my coach it's really important to me that I race this more recovered than I was this year. I guess it's hard to balance mid-cycle racing with marathon training, but I think that avoiding Thursday's workout would have left me much fresher for Sunday.