As I've posted previously, I've signed up for the Monument Avenue 10k at the end of March. As a "practice race" I decided to run this 8k to test the waters at a newer, longer distance. I was really nervous given my recent dips in performance but decided to give it my best shot anyway. I mean, hey; I had already registered, and you can't in good conscience wear a race t-shirt for a race you didn't run!
Sunday, Feb. 12th dawned dark and cold. And I mean cold. The temperature was about 21 degrees with a wind chill of about 10 degrees. I actually thought for a split second that I might get an email saying the race was canceled due to the extreme cold. But I should have known better - we runners are pretty extreme ourselves.
I bundled up in a thermal shirt with a fleece on top, my fancy new CW-X tights and a Nike headband/earwarmer type thing. I packed my iPod too, as I had just downloaded a bunch of Ke$ha remixes to get myself all hyped up. I was gonna need some seriously motivating tunes to get through 5 miles of this.
I drove the 20 minutes to the race location, which was in a nice, scenic neighborhood. I was running a bit late so I didn't have time for too intense of a warm-up, but it did the trick. About 250-280 runners lined up at the start in varying degrees of clothing; there was one hardcore guy probably 70+ years old in shorts and a tank top. I heard he finished in about a half hour! That's a hardcore, life-long runner.
Me (L) and Karen (R), post-warm up
I put myself in the back of the pack at the start, not really knowing how I would do. I went to turn on my iPod and was met with a squiggly screen. It was so cold it wouldn't even turn on! The crystals in the display were frozen and wouldn't move. Great -- 5 miles with no music.
All of a sudden we were off -- and everyone seemed to move forward with way too much speed. We came around the first bend and we were met with a huge hill. I mean, one of the steepest hills I've ever seen. A lot of people sped right up it like it was nothing, but I hadn't been doing hill repeats so this was a bit of a hiccup for me. I tried jogging up it but ended up powerwalking it with just as much speed, without expending as much energy. I knew that if I used up all my gas on the first hill within the first quarter mile, I would be exhausted and it would set a bad tone for the rest of the race. The "powerwalk the hills" strategy ended up being one I used for the remainder of the race.
After that first huge hill I started feeling better. Then I realized that I had some "latchers" -- two guys who were doing the run/walk method and would catch up to me, pass me, and then walk -- only to have me pass them and have the cycle continue. If you've had this happen to you, you know how distracting and annoying it is -- so at the first big downhill, I used the downhill advantage to gain speed and put some distance between us. Thank goodness!
The course was very hard, at least for me. I'd only been running around my neighborhood which are low-traffic roads with few hills. This neighborhood had trails with bridges (that were icy) so the terrain had a lot of variation. There were so. many. hills. I was totally unprepared for the hills. During the entire race I kept looking at my splits thinking "I'm doing so terribly. I'm going so slow. I can't believe I'm blowing this. I can't breathe." But I kept going, motivated by the other runners -- one of which was a very pregnant mother-to-be just ahead of me with her husband. Seeing her bouncing along so steadily in her delicate condition was good for me. If she could do it, I could do it!
Coming out of the trails at mile 2
I finally reached the mile 4 marker and wound my way around even more cul-de-sacs and hills, wondering when the torture would be over. I came around a corner and realized I was back where my car was parked -- and saw the finish line ticker! I saw a volunteer waving to me, and realized she was pointing me towards the left -- not in the direction of the ticker, but around the lake. Damn! I still wasn't done! My running buddy Karen, who had already finished, caught up to me and ran the last lake portion with me. She tried her best to motivate and push me, but by this point I was so broken down I was just trying to keep moving. We finally got to the point where we had wound around and could see the yellow finish line cones, and I could hear our coach screaming "59:34! Hustle, come on, break an hour!" Well, that did it. I had been feeling so horrible that I had seriously thought my time was already about 1:05, 1:10 so the prospect of being sub-1 hour was amazing to me. (I had stopped looking at my Garmin out of sheer exhaustion.) My legs went into overdrive and I blew through the finish at 59:54. My finish time put my pace at under 12 minutes per mile, which I was super pleased with considering that a) I power walked the hills; b) felt terrible and c) had done my training runs of 5+ miles at about a 12:30 pace. Success!!
Almost at the finish line!
After the race we all went out for breakfast and coffee at a local diner. You should have heard us, we were all coughing like crazy for about an hour after the race due to the trauma our poor lungs had been through with the extreme cold. But it was really nice to have had this experience with my coach and teammates and we all felt a sense of accomplishment. Now I have a new distance under my belt and feel great heading into the 10k in March! That course is a dead flat out and back course in (what should be) lovely spring weather, so if I can handle this I can certainly handle that. Right? (Right....)
So far I've done/have scheduled one race per month for 2012 -- the First Day 5k in January, this Sweetheart 8k for February, and the Monument Avenue 10k in March. The goal is to do a race per month this year, so now I just have to choose a race for April. What race is next up on your calendar?
Happy running!
