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!