Adjusted Reality

As with Woodlands, I really wasn’t like super jazzed for this one.  I had been coming off some pretty solid run training in March with a pretty healthy body, so there was that, but this course is pretty hilly and April weather can be variable (so either 30 and rainy, or 75 and humid), so I had no idea what I’d be working with.  Add to that it’s a ~4-ish hour drive from Austin to Allen and we’d be doing it straight after work, after the week from hell, and I had zero expectations.

The plan was just this: show up, and run (and eat In-N-Out).  Nothing more.

If you asked me to predict my time, I’d say 2:10 on a great day, 2:15 on a decent day, and 2:20+ if shit went bad, due to all those factors above.

We got up there without much incident (a little traffic, but that’s to be expected on a Friday night).  This time, we brought sandwiches with instead of waiting to get there, which meant we ate earlier instead of trying to stuff dinner in our bellies late.  We got a little snack (I had a salad) right before bed, took a shower, relaxed in the room, and got off to sleep around 10:30pm.

Lucky us, our hotel was right across the street from the race, so we slept in until about 6am, did our normal pre-race stuff: poop, purple stuff, half a cliff bar, and then we walked across the street to get our shirts and bibs… and it was further than we thought.  So we hightailed it back to the hotel (warmup run), dropped our shirt, grabbed the rest of our gear, and actually took the car over since we were running super late.

Pictures care of me being silly…

We parked, and then realized the race was starting without us, so we picked it up to a jog, and then heard “are there any more half marathoners?” to which we screamed “yes” and broke into a sprint and were two of the last people across the line.  Not the finest start to a race ever, and very reminiscent of my first half marathon ever.  At least I got to see Libby and say hi as I booked it past the arch.

I looked down at my garmin, and 8’s were not what I wanted to be running, so I settled down, and soon Zliten did too.  We were in the back, so we spent the first half mile dodging walkers and slower runners (not that we’re fast, but slower than us).  We passed the 3 hour pacer, then the 2:50…

…and then my garmin died.  Yep, I have been talking all big lately about trying a race without mine, and joking that I didn’t care if my garmin was dead for the race, but when it actually happened without me planning for it, it bummed me out a little bit, being that I didn’t have a pacer to latch onto, or really, ANY IDEA of what pace I was running.

However, I know how to run a half marathon, it’s a distance I’m comfortable with, and I know the pacing strategy – hurt a little at first, hurt a little more in the middle miles, then hurt a lot in the last few miles.  I told Zliten about my garmin and ended up sticking with him because that’s what “hurt a little” felt like.  He tried to tell me splits a few times but I shushed him.  If I was going to sans-garmin this thing, I wanted to totally try “run by feels”.

The first half of this course was rolling hills, but generally downhill.  Not good for the last half, which meant rolling hills, mostly UPHILL, but I tried to keep myself in the moment.  We passed 2:45, and the next one I noticed was 2:30, then 2:25, then 2:20.  Nice.  Around mile 5, I finally got curious and asked Zliten if we were under 10s, and he nodded his head.  Solid.  I think that motivated me to push the flats in the middle hard to try and gain some time, and apparently, I dragged Zliten a lot through here and we were running in the low 9s.  We passed the 2:15 pacer around mile 6.5.  Cool.

Around 7-8, he pulled in beside me and said “how good do you feel?” and I said “pretty good”. He asked if I wanted to shoot for a PR, I asked mine or his (2:08 vs 2:11) and he said mine. I asked if we were close to on pace, he said yup, and I said, let’s give it a try. However, I knew the last 4 miles had some pretty decent hills, so I told him he’d probably have to drag me and I’d try and keep up.

I did my best, but he pulled away around mile 9-10, because he has this superhuman ability that hills don’t faze him (he actually prefers hills to flats or downhills – that JERK) and my glutes started cramping after really hammering up one hill, so I backed off ever so slightly on the inclines and with each one, he got further away. Once it flattened out, I tried to push it to catch up, but those friggin orange compression socks kept going further away because there was too much UP and not enough FLAT to gain ground.

I made a turn, and saw the road flatten out, and thought we had about half a mile left and was going to turn it on and kick, but then there was the mile 13 marker and the finish.

Official time: 2:08:50. Zliten’s official time: 2:07:02.  Yep, he now owns the official house record for the half marathon (besting my 2:08:07).  He totally earned it though, he ran a GREAT race.

I am pretty dang happy with mine too.  This is 43 seconds slower than my PR from 4 years ago.  This is on a much harder course than the pancake flat RnR San Antonio where that happened.  I’m 15 lbs heavier now.  I didn’t taper.  I had no garmin.  I also placed in the top 1/3rd of my new age group and top 1/3rd of my gender.  Can’t sneeze at that.

I actually loved running without the garmin – I think the faster paces I was pushing in the middle of the race would have scared me, and I don’t think I would have been able to fight the slowing on the hills even by being more conservative.  That’s just how I run. I know how to run a race effort, and I think it may pay dividends to run how I’m feeling right then at a certain effort, rather than trying to hit a pace.

I do think it might have made *some* difference in the later miles knowing how close I was to PR, but maybe it wouldn’t have.  Maybe I would have been disheartened about being so close but not making it I would have let off the gas and been more like 2:10-2:12.  Who knows?

I race this weekend (Austin 10/20) and that’s the one I really want to hammer, so bring it on! This pace will PR me easily, and the run is shorter (10 miles) and significantly flatter, though the weather is looking to be hotter.  I am a little sludgy in the legs right now, but the order of the week is recovery work, so hopefully I’ll have another great tale of awesomeness to tell next week!

Big shoutout to Libby, aka The Active Joe, who puts on amazing races where I always have a good day.  She does this one, Showdown (which I did 1.5 years ago), and The New Years Double.  If you ever get a chance to participate in one of her races, you ABSOLUTELY should. I mean, look at that sweet medal – the windmill spins (I verified that by spinning it about eleventy billion times that day)!  Good times.

I almost don’t feel like writing this, because it really just felt like a nice long run to engage my metabolism to make the first couple days of cruise eating a little less damaging to the waistline.  But, a race is a race, and a recap we will have.  Same with goofy pictures.  It’s tradition.  This is why you’re all here, right? 🙂

Typically, I try to baby myself with rest, recovery, all the right foods at all the right times, but this day just didn’t work out so well.  The night before the night before saw us packing and up until about 2 am when we had to be up at 6:30, and we had some wine.  Like, a decent amount.  Typically this is a huge NONO for us race week, but we were stressed, we broke down, and even if not the best physical decision it was a good mental one.

Then, we ended up driving and picking up packets and getting to dinner around 8pm and I was STARRRRRVED.  I had so much bread, all the pasta, salad, and I KNEW it was a gamble being so late, but I also knew going to bed starving was a gamble so I indulged.  Then, we had a hotel snafu – we were booked in the SOUTH location, not the north, so the nice 1.7 mile walk to the start line?  Not so much.  Oh well.

The good news was being so tired, I slept well in spite of eating late, hotel stress, and everything else, and woke up feeling fairly decent.   My hair, however, was a different story.

I did the normal morning things (poop, half a starbux mocha, half a bar, etc etc) and got to the start line feeling… there.  Earlier in the week, it had called for about 45 and I was thinking “ok, more PR weather, I’ll give it a go”, but I showed up to high 60s/low 70s, and 100% humidity (which is a weird state of weather where it’s not raining, but you can see water in the air – bizaaaaare).  Between where I was at and where the weather was at, I decided that “go out fast, hang on” was not going to be a good strategy today.

I decided to institute two goals:

1. Stay in the moment.  Often I sabotage a race by focusing on how far I have left to go, so I wanted to just think about the mile, the song, the moment I was in.

2. Negative split.  I didn’t feel like I had the juice to rock the whole race, but I wanted to try and put the hurt on the back half of the course.

Zliten and I started together, and I just attempted to run a smidge beyond comfortable.  I also rocked out to my tunes and had karaoke party, and was having way too much fun.  I think Zliten thought I was a little nuts (I was galloping to Dark Horse and dancing to What the Fox Say?).  We ping ponged back and forth a bit, and he took off like a bullet up a hill around mile 3 and I lost him.

I also switched my handheld to the other side around there for a break and ca-thunk… my mid back (which usually gives me no issues) decided to erupt in a ball of pain.  I started thinking “OMG 10 miles of this?” and then remembered goal 1.  I changed my thinking “ok, mile 3-4, figure out what the back problem is and fix it”.  I switched my handheld back to my right hand, and stretched out a bit and it didn’t feel *fine* but it felt *better* and *tolerable*, aka, no permanent damage, I was just going to be a little sore for a day or 2 after.

Zliten was wearing a green top and for some reason half the race was, so I kept fishing for people wearing green and came up dry.  I was not yet at the point where I wanted to turn on the heat though, so I kept running that fast/comfortable pace, not worrying about my watch.  I kept setting goals each mile to focus on which kept me amused and not flailing, though it does seem like a mile in the Woodlands is longer than a mile in Austin.

I had decided that I was going to run the first half easy, and then at mile 6.5 hit it hard.  I hit 6.5, my power song came on, and I kicked it down to ~9:30 to see how it felt.  I held that for about half a mile until I realized I hadn’t had any gels/chews, and only some of my gatorade, so I did that… and then my stomach REVOLTED.  I almost had to find a tree.  The feeling came and went, so I never actually dropped the kids at the pool, but I really thought I might be in trouble at some points.  I never found porta potty without a line, and didn’t think that this late in the game relieving myself would equate to a time gain, so I dealt with it.

Considering I had half a gatorade and two 10 calorie chews, and I was pushing as hard as possible through some severe GI distress, there was no way anything else was going in there.  I even tried water around mile 9, and paid dearly.  So, I decided that I would just ride it out sans calories, and see where the bonk happened.

It happened at mile 11.  It felt like quicksand.  And instead of getting stressed about it, I just decided to have fun.  I got two strings of beads.  I high fived kids.  I hit the *POW* signs.  I saw my pace drop back into the 10s and 11s even at times, and that was fine.  I ran as hard as I could, but I didn’t stress.  Finally, the end of the race came, I hit the finish, and found Zliten.

He PR’d like a mofo – 2:11.  This race (hot, hills, humid) was his jam.  Not mine.  I immediately got my medal and two full waters (so dehydrated, and now I could shit my shorts if I had to), and did the stupid line shuffle for finisher shirts.  Dear race organizers – after a race I want my medal, WATER, GATORADE, and FOOD in that order, and then after that, I’ll take care of any other bullshit like lines for shirts.  Don’t make me wait 20 mins post race for my shirt before I can get calories in.  I seriously made Zliten wait in line and I curled up on the grass.

Got my shirt, and was a little disappointed that the guys were AWESOME BLUE and the women’s were WHITE.  Bleh.  We went to the beer tent and I forced down a beer curled up in a fetal position because the food line was so long and at least it was calories.  Then, I found some porta potties and it was a fine line between horrifying (me) and beautiful (the relief I felt).  I can NEVER poo right after a race, sometimes it’s a whole day, so something DEFINITELY was afoot at the circle P.

The result: 2:19:34 for 13.21 miles.  While I’m not overjoyed about the result, and I definitely didn’t have a good race, I’ll take 2:19 for not-a-good race.  I know I would have been capable of better on a different day where my stomach cooperated and I could have gotten in calories and it was just me vs the road and how much I could push myself.

This was also good fortitude training for tris – the run part is very hit or miss for me, especially with how I feel, and I was able to work through a good amount of distress without slowing too much or walking.  I definitely didn’t negative split, but I did keep myself in the moment, so one out of two isn’t bad.  Also, I got to go here immediately after – so I had zero complaints.

I have the Fairview Half Marathon in 3 weeks, and Austin 10/20 the week after, so I’ll have two more cracks at a really stellar double digit run pace.  The next three weeks will be pretty high run volume, so I’ll either come into those feeling awesome and capable, or burnt or tired.  Neither are my A race, so we’ll just see how the legs show up!

There are some race reports where I’m excited to tell you how I just flew and exceeded all expectations.  There are some where I am ashamed to come and tell you that I totally crashed and burned, or lost it. And the latter includes all the bets I lost after having carried out a pointsbet sign up.

This is not either of those reports.

Sunday was a good solid effort, that pretty typically represented my current fitness and how my training had gone.  And really, that’s all you can really ask for.  You can hope for some race day magic, but that’s what it is – magic.  Magic does not come when called.  Magic is elusive and wily and shows up when least expected.

Magic did not show up that day, but my brain did, so you’ll have that.  Below, as they say, is the rest of the story.

Day before/pre race:

I got all my errands done last week, so we pretty much got to relax all day Saturday.  It was nice!  I spent most of the day off my feet, we went to see Frozen (which was suuuuuper cute btw), and I climbed into bed early and fell asleep quickly.

Then, I woke up about an hour later with MAD allergy issues.  My nose was whistling, my eyes itched, and sleeping was not happening.  It was too late to really take anything without jeopardizing dragging ass at the race, so I stayed up and read my book for a while, and finally fell asleep a little before 1 in the guest room (so I wouldn’t wake Zliten).

The alarm came bright and early at 4:45, but I didn’t feel so bad.  The hours I got were pretty solid.  I did the normal half a starbucks and half a cliff bar.  I poo’d and tinkered and we got to the race with plenty of time to park, potty, go back and huddle in the car for a while, potty again, and then line up about 10 mins to race start.

I had some major wardrobe indecision, but I ended up:

a) wearing the Hokas – which was an incredible decision

b) wearing my thin windbreaker jacket and a tank top – which was not the best decision, more below on both…

I tucked in around the 2:05 pace group, and suddenly, we were off!

Mile 1-5 (9:34, 9:28, 9:35, 9:30, 9:33)

As soon as we started running, I had random heel pain on my left foot.  Uh, WTF?  This is not anything I’ve had to deal with lately.  I’m so over my body feeling different on race day than it does normally, that’s something I need to figure out.

I kept with the pace group, and noted that it was constant, but not debilitating, and my choices were to keep pace or drop out of the race, because going slower wasn’t making any difference, it’s the same amount of steps to the finish line.

Really, in this section, I was just enjoying the run.  Besides what could potentially be a ticking time bomb in my left shoe, I felt pretty good, so I just rolled with the pace group at that fast comfortable place where you feel like you’re working but not working hard.

Mile 6-8 (9:44, 9:44, 9:51)

I lost the pace group around here, they were running a little faster than 9:30s, and I started running a little slower.  The heel pain was starting to affect my stride and we (left this from the first revision, because obviously my mind and body started to separate around here…) worked through a lot of other weird niggles because of it.  Right knee, check.  Ankle, check.  Left knee, check.  All present and acc-owww-nted for.

Somewhere in here are usually my low miles in a half distance race or run, but looking back, I didn’t get too down.  I never gave up.  At one point my head started going south, and Bad Habit (Offspring) came on and I’m glad I loaded it in there, because it picked me up and I ate some chews and didn’t have too many other head issues.  I knew around mile 7 that I would have to fight even for just a PR, and I was prepared to keep my head in the game, and continue on in that proverbial boxing ring.  Marathon training really helped/warped me, as I kept ticking away surprisingly low amounts of time til I was done running (holy crap, only an hour left at 7 miles, etc).

As freezing as I was at the race start in what I was wearing, I had to peel my jacket off and run in just a tank top.  My jacket didn’t want to stay situated around my waist in the back, and I got sick of adjusting it so I just ran with it in front like a skirt.  It was not optimal.  In retrospect, a tee, sleeves, and a garbage bag or throw away clothes would have been a better option, though the jacket has been perfect for a sunny day in the high 40s – low 50s previously.  I guess running a little faster makes you hotter?  I haven’t run a cold race in a while so I’m out of practice here, I’m used to managing heatstroke, not windchill.

Mile 9-13.1 (10:08, 10:39, 10:18, 9:58, 9:46, 1:42 – last .24 at 9:50 PACE)

Mile 9-10 is where things start to go up a bit (pace and elevation).  Nothing crazy, mind you, but after the majority of the race being a nice gradual decline in elevation, it feels like a mountain.  I was no longer having fun.  My foot hurt.  My legs felt weird and stompy because my gait was so off.  I would blame my legs feeling so heavy on my hokas, but there is ZERO possibility I could have gotten through this race in another shoe with the heel pain, so I was thanking my lucky stars I went with them.

I lost my PR battle in miles 9, 10, and 11, where I retreated to 10+ minute miles.  I know this now, but it was close enough that I kept fighting.  Mile 12 I picked it back up to sub-10, and same with mile 13.  I’m pretty sure race directors cackle and smile evilly when planning courses, because so dang many of them finish UPHILL, and this was no exception.

I had no kick.  There was nothing left, and that’s not normal for me.  As you can see, my last mile was about 9:46 and my .24 (not a stellar running-the-tangents race) was 9:50 average.  My C goal was to give this race my all, and that proves I did.  I came through at 2:10:02.

Post race:

I shuffled along, picked up items to replenish my calories (gatorade, two clementines, bag of chips) and then waited for the rest of the gang.  And waited.  And waited.

Finally around 2:30, I started to walk over to the med tent to see if something happened.  On the way, they all found me.  Apparently they finished just a minute or two after me and I must have missed them in the shuffle.  We got a ride back to our car, got home, had some champagne, and enjoyed our sore muscle Sunday.

Thoughts:

I figure there are two ways I could look at this race….

a) I failed because I didn’t get a PR or beat 2:05 or sub 2 or even take 3 frakking seconds off and come in at 2:09:xx

b) I did good because I ran a similar level of effort (let’s face it, less than 2 minutes isn’t all that much in 13.1 miles, its roughly 8 seconds per mile) than the best I’ve ever done.

I’m going with option B.  Doesn’t mean I’m not hungry to improve and/or really nail a race, but it means that I’m on a path that’s got me within spitting distance.  The ultimate goal is to NOT choke on the half marathons that come after a long bike ride, and being able to 2:10 in a standalone half this early in the year means great things for that.

I’m really happy with how my head handled things through the race.  I kept fighting.  I never gave up.  I kept the effort as high as I could go without redlining.  I never took my foot off the gas (it may have eased up just a bit a few times, but not for long).

I am disappointed with my body.  I mean, seriously, I did NOTHING to my heel and it just started hurting at mile 1, and it’s fine now (pretty much, it was fine as soon as I stopped running).  The marathon happened just like that too (but with my ankle, a different annoying body part).  As I said before, I’m tired of my body seeming to fall apart on race day at the beginning.  I might have to look at my taper and do some experiments with doing MORE that week.  It’s no use feeling rested if random bad juju is going to explode all over me anyway.  I’m typically able to get through this distance with either gatorade OR one dose of sugar, so both is a treat.

I felt like my nutrition was fine.  I had ~200 calories before the race, 120 calories of gatorade during in my handheld, and 100 calories of chews (half at mile 6, half at mile 9).  I got a little boost from the chews, and perhaps next time I’ll experiment with a few more chews, but I always pay a small price with solid food = upset stomach (the chews are the mildest and tolerable, but still).  I usually take in a little more gatorade but the aid stations were SUPER crowded so I figured the momentum was worth more than the fuel.

Overall, I had a pretty rocky training block.  I got sick, the holidays happened, and if I’m being honest with myself, I think I lost a little motivation near the end.  I could not regularly hit my paces outside, and since I didn’t race on a treadmill, I did not hit them in the race.

It wasn’t all for naught.  I ran a sub-10 min mile pace in a double digit race, which I’ve only done two other times.  Of the 11 times I’ve run a half marathon in a race, this is the second fastest, and I’m doing it a month and a half out from a marathon and after a totally disastrous 2013 season of running.  I rekindled my love for speedwork in a major way (and learned to not totally hate and fear tempos), and I’m faster than I was a month ago, even if most of that speed really came from my head, rather than fitness improvements.

This week I’m taking a rest (my body is surprisingly wrecked from that short of a race), and not doing much structured training (easy swim/bike/run only as motivation dictates), and next week I’ll dive into the first block of my triathlon training – which is bike focused.  I’m ready for the shift.

I am planning on two more half marathons this spring.  I’m not specifically training for them, but it will be a fun experiment how adding swimming and biking (and really maintaining the same amount of run miles) will affect my half times.