It's now been 2.5 weeks, though, and I figure it's worth writing down how I felt about my race for posterity's sake. I also know there are people who have been following the blog that I haven't talked to since I ran, so they might want to know a bit more about how exactly my A race of the season unfolded. In short, in case you're in a hurry to get back to work, my A race was much more of a B- race in terms of my satisfaction with the run.
If you're trying to spend a bit more time, though, here's a slightly lengthier version of my race recap.
I headed out to Eugene via train/bus from Seattle, where I'd been to celebrate my two-year anniversary with B. We had a great time for the one day I was in Seattle, as a sidenote: B came up with an awesome Italian restaurant for us to eat at, after we wandered around the city on a bit of a sight-seeing tour.
Anyway, I had an early-morning train leaving Seattle on Friday: the weather was beautiful and the train station was gorgeous. I read "Once a Runner" in its totality on the train on the ride down and ate 3 Powerbars for food. When I arrived in Eugene, my awesome roommate (from GRC) came and picked me up at the bus station. We checked into the hotel, had some food with another GRC runner and her mom, and went to bed quite early.
The next day, we went for a quick jog, we grabbed some water bottles for B from Target, had some nice lunch and went to a local brewery before heading to the elite meeting. The elite meeting was really nice and low-key: Ken, the man in charge of the race, was really nice and responsible and laid-back. He encapsulated the Pacific Northwest attitude in a single personage. We left the meeting, headed to dinner, and back to the hotel. I managed to open my pre-bedtime beer on the door fixture, drank a few swigs, and laid down to go to bed. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, my mind was racing for awhile which was making it tough to go to sleep. Even after I'd calmed down a bit, though, some muscles in my back started to spasm which again added difficulty to falling asleep. I did eventually fall asleep, but I slept fitfully and for less time than I had hoped.
I woke up the next morning feeling surprisingly good. I ate a piece of bagel, drank some gatorade, and we made our way to the race start. The elite tent was awesome: there were a number of port-a-johns we got to use and no other runners had discovered. About 10 minutes to the race, we walked over to the starting line. As we stood on the line, I realized I had to pee, and there were no port-a-potties nearby. So, I jogged 20 yards over to some bushes and joined a few others who found their natural restroom there. I met two CNW runners, who Tom told me would be good to work with during the run.
After the gun went off, I quickly fell in with these two girls. We were hitting our miles at between 6:30 and 6:35, which felt quite comfortable, almost like jogging, in the first 5k. Mile 4 had a bit of a hill, and while I didn't feel our group pushed a lot up the hill, I was breathing just a bit more than I was at the top of the hill than at the bottom, which worried me very slightly. When we came upon that mile marker, it turned out we'd run more like a 6:25 that mile: definitely too fast. We chilled out again for a few miles and hit more 6:30-6:35 miles. Our 10k time was 40:10. There was another bit of a hill at mile 8, and again, I felt like I was breathing a little harder at the top than the bottom. I felt like I was doing well working with the other women, though, so I decided to continue with them. Our group of 3 became a group of 4 before we made the 9 mile elite fluid station (right by Hayward Field, where we started). I flawlessly grabbed my bottle of maltodextrin, chugged slightly more than half of it (which equated to about a Gu in terms of calories), and tossed the bottle. This whole time, Tom was biking around and cheering us on, which was hugely helpful.
Around mile 11, I decided to chill the pace a little from the rest of the group. They were really pushing at more like 6:30 than I felt I could hold, so I settled back into 6:40 or so. I hit the half in 1:25:50something. I was in 8th place. At this point, I felt like I was working, but I expected that by the halfway mark. Shortly after the 14 mile mark, however, trouble set in. My quads began to cramp, and hard, with almost no warning. I'd never felt this before, and it was pretty scary to know I was 12 miles away from the finish line and already a pretty serious problem was setting in. I gritted my teeth and kept moving, albeit somewhat slower.
I kept glancing at my watch for the next couple of mile markers, noticing my 6:30-6:40 pace was becoming 6:50-7:00. The cramping had started to spread up to my abs and down to my calf muscles. Everything hurt. A lot. I am used to fatigue and the burn of lactic acid and muscle breakdown that I've felt during other races, but this was different. I saw another mile go by in 7:15. I thought I was going to break down and cry right then. At this point, I decide to stop looking at my watch, because I'm unable to speed up even for a mile, let alone for another 10, and seeing the numbers my watch showed was only breaking my heart. A few times, my legs began to buckle and I had to walk a few strides to let my legs hold me up again. I decided to not take my fuel after this point (which, admittedly was stupid), but my stomach was upset from the cramping and I didn't want to make that any worse. Each mile marker begot another 7something minute piece of torture, where all I could think about was how much I needed the next mile marker to show up soon. A number of times between 16 and 20 miles I considered dropping out, walking back to the start. I'd never been in more pain. Not when I was 7 and fell down the stairs. Not when I was 8 and needed stitches for cutting my chin on my side of a pool after attempting to jump across a narrow part of the pool and missing the other side, nor the even more painful shot of painkillers they gave me before administering the stitches. Not when I was stuck under a heavy canoe for a couple of minutes with my face pinned underwater. Not when I fell over B and almost blinded myself and cut my eyelid pretty badly on the corner of his filing cabinet. None of these things came to mind at the time because the pain was so much worse that it didn't feel like the same sensation. I noticed women passing me, lots of them, but there was nothing I had to fight with whatsoever. It was disheartening but there was no response I had.
Anyway, I came across a female member of the UofO distance squad who was also having a horrific time of things. She and I went back and forth jogging past one another, briefly taking absolutely necessary 10 second walk breaks, and croaking words of encouragement to one another. This weird interaction was hugely helpful, oddly enough. We managed to make it to 24 or so before I didn't see her again. I swore to myself I wouldn't walk again, and I was pretty sure I'd still break 3:05 unless I fell over before the finish line. My legs had no faster pace in them.
But I did focus every amount of mental energy I had on putting one foot in front of another until Hayward Field came into sight for the third time that day. When I saw it, that magnificent stadium where so many world-class athletes have trained and raced, I realized I was going to finish the race. Not until I was within two tenths of a mile of the finish line was I sure I'd manage to make the whole race. I shuffled in across the line in 3:02:50something. I almost fell over 2 steps afterwards. Ken came up to me and congratulated my teary and delirious self, and asked me to come back to race again next year. I was hungry and thirsty (I'd done a horrible job taking care of myself once i realized the race was going so poorly), but I didn't care and didn't want to fix that. I stumbled out of the shoot and ran smack into Tom and Mark, another CNW coach. They told me I'd done a great job. I shook my head and asked how the women I'd been running with had done: 2:52 and 2:53, respectively. I told them to tell them both congratulations, and fell into a chair, where I sat for a good 20 minutes before I got up and Mark helped me find my gear and my friends.
Needless to say, the physical recovery from this race has been pretty rough. I've never been more sore in the few days following a race. I didn't run at all until Friday of the following week, where I jogged a very slow and painful 3 miles and only because I was traveling did I do that rather than cross-train. I didn't get much sleep, eat enough or very well, for about a week after the race, because it felt good to be able to be reckless in my treatment of my body for a little while. I ran a beer mile and didn't puke and was proud of this.
All of this was somewhat symptomatic of the mental recovery I've been working through, too: I was hugely disappointed with my race. I wasn't sure if things would have gone much different if my first half had been a minute or so slower. I didn't know if I ever wanted to race a marathon again. I was strongly considering swearing a blood oath to not race another one. Even knowing how the race played out, I didn't know what I did wrong. I guess this is the way marathon running works: you train really hard, for a long time, and occasionally, you race. And even more infrequently, the stars align and you have a great race and see the fruits of your labor reflected in that. Unfortunately, the faster you get, the smaller the marginal gains you get from training, and the easier it is for small problems to overshadow big improvements in your fitness and cause a bad race. It's easier for your first few races in any distance to always PR: your fitness gets so much better so quickly when you're new to any sport. And I'm still used to seeing pretty huge improvements in my times between each race. I guess I'll have to get used to the marathon kicking my ass more seriously on a regular basis.
Now, though, I'm back to running a bit. I'm now doing mostly mafatone (MAF) training for a few weeks. Basically, keeping my heart rate relatively low (145-155, while marathon pace is more like 165), for all of my runs, allowing me to get my mileage back up fairly quickly without causing serious muscular damage when my body is still healing and building back. This week, I've got a 60ish mile week, all at a comfortable pace (nothing faster than 7:00 pace, and often slower if I'm tired, poorly recovered, or running up a hill). After a few weeks of this, the plan is to run 10 weeks of high intensity, focusing on 5k/10k and top-end speed leading into the Great Race 10k at the end of September. After the Great Race, another 10 mile cycle, this one focused on marathon-specific work, will lead into the California International Marathon in December (where a bunch of Hounds are racing! Yay! Hounds trip!) I'm excited about this plan: my lack of top-end speed will be improved, and should make 6:30something pace feel slow. Hopefully, I'll come back very fit and strong from a summer of a lot of running.
In the more short-term, I'll be racing my favorite-ever half marathon, Decker's Creek. This race is awesome: it's a half that is mostly on a gravel trail next to a river, which loses 800 feet gradually over the first 11 miles. It is, as you might imagine, my best half marathon time to date, and was one of the most fun things I did last summer (following it last year was last year's Beer Mile, and prior to it we camped out and drank beer). Anyway, I'm really looking forward to busting out a reasonable time and having fun with some Hounds in Morgantown, WV!
No comments:
Post a Comment