Steamtown Race Report

I owe you all a race report.

This should read something like, OMG I just ran SteamTOWN!  The course is AMAZING.  Downhill for 23 miles, up for 3... sort of.  It's more like "mostly" down for 23, and 3 solid climbs in the last 3 miles.  I should be screaming in joy about running a sensible and thoughtful marathon.

But instead my life is a little dim right now and I am having trouble celebrating the moment.  I can't seem to embrace that I just accomplished a marathon sized race.  I DID EPIC SH*T.  and yeah.  It's not there.

We did have a great weekend.  Me and The Pixie Chix arrived in Scranton on Friday afternoon.  ROADTRIPPIN'

I did run 26.2 miles.

I did not run a PR, but I am not mortified by my finish time either.

What instead comes back to me is that I finally had a great race.  I started out at a controlled pace.  I ran the first 16 miles with TMB.  It was great.  We were so smart to hang together.  Neither of us got crazy, we both maintained our sanity.  We had decided at mile 16 we would run our own races.

I laugh as I look back because I realize TMB has never run a marathon with me.  She maybe didn't know how I get through a marathon is by cheering for the spectators.

"YOU ROCK #765!!!" They yell.... and I yell back, "YOU ROCK SPECTATOR!!!"
or
"Go NIKKI's SPECTATORS!"
or
"Hey - CUTE HAT!"
or
"I need a HIGH FIVE FROM SUPERMAN" at the little kid dressed in his halloween costume holding out a hand for the runners.

AND that is how I've been doing it for years.  It's way more fun that just running by people quietly holding signs for Nikki or Jeff.

At mile 16 I just let my legs pick it up a little.

At mile 17 I let them hold the pace and settled in... and I was running alone.

Miles 18 - 23 were a blur of FREAKING AWESOME.

I was running well at mile 23.  What went through my head was something like "but, this is insane, I'm never running well at mile 23"...

I took this after the tears stopped.

I stopped, tied my shoe at mile 23, started running again and STILL ran a 9:25.

I picked up a runner who was racing for a PR and ran her to the end.  Every time we would roll into a crowd I'd yell, "HEY, THIS IS MY FRIEND ERIN!" and the crowd would cheer for her.  She got a nice 6+ minute PR by the way.

Between mile 16 and 23 I lived big.  I felt like a runner.  I embraced the suck and ran through it.  I thought, if I can hold race pace for these miles I will run Richmond for a goal time.

I pushed Erin from 23-26.  I walked a little with her.  I walked a little with me when my legs fatigued on a hill.  I could *maybe* have taken a few seconds off my run if I'd kept going hard but WHY?  I wasn't getting a PR, but Erin might... so why not push her down the road?

So.

The answer to the big question:  I will not run Richmond for a goal.  I did hold race pace, and I did it really well, but I don't want to run 26.2 miles again right now.  Right now, I can't imagine wanting to run anything.

Post Race

My heart isn't in it.  And if I've learned anything about the marathon in the last 5 years it's that you better really WANT IT when you toe the line.  There's not room for wishy-washy.

Steamtown is a great race.  If I ever do another out of town marathon in October, I would go back in a hot minute.  It's small, organized, and simple.  Don't go looking for fancy swag or big rock bands.  Go run Steamtown for the personal touch, for the race director's handshake, for the quiet trails canopied by gold, orange and red leaves, for the smiles of the volunteers, for every single person on the mile 24 hill who spoke to me - and there were a lot of people on mile 24 to run for...  It was a race worth running.

~savor~

Things To Remember: There is NO Charge

Please tell me why the car is in the front yard and I’m sleeping with my clothes on...

It’s funny.  I remember when this song came on my iPod as I started the Rehoboth Marathon.  It was my last marathon for a while, but I didn’t know that.  I’ve trained for a few.  Got darned close to Shamrock in 2013 before that whole emergency breathing thing put a damper on all things running for a long a** time.

 I am my own worst enemy.

And here I am.

Sitting here listening to that same song from mile 1 as I type this.  It’s funny, it came on as the WORD program opened, and I thought, “It’s a sign....” and then I thought, “You can’t read too much into signs if you’re listening to the same play list...”

But I digress.

Every time I run a marathon I dedicate miles to the people in my life that I love, who love me.  Only, this time I am really struggling to write that dedication.  See, I knew exactly who all the miles would go to for this run.  And well...  

So yeah.

This marathon dedication will not be done for one person.  Nor will it be done mile by mile.

The headline goes to TMB, my wife of many years. 

And IronJoan, who has been in our harem for a while now. 

Of course, I can’t forget SpeeDee... oh where would I be without her? 

Pixie who flirts the miles away... 

Zickie Zickie who knows exactly when to make her entrance onto the scene.

My WonderTwin and Shanz who are just there for me, though I’ve not run with either lately. 

Bobbi, who is freaking FAR away but gets it.

Harry Potter who always sneaks in solid words that make sense to me. 

And then there’s Coach Black... ah, yes.  I have a full life.  Full of good people to coach, encourage, run with, be there with me.  I could keep listing to 100, but this isn’t an ultra...

Not to mention, some of the miles have to be for my kids.  My kids.  They are being groomed into AWESOMENESS by my friends, family, and, truthfully, by each other.  My daughter the runner and my son the tennis kid are watching NFL football, shouting out updates, as I type this.  “It’s pitiful!” they say, “oh Mom, those poor Texans”.  God I love those kids.  "They went 4 and out."

Recently they reminded me that this race needs to be about remembering “The Awesomeness”.

I had to chuckle at that.  

"Why?  Kids, this isn’t going to be about awesome, this is going to be about Not Sucking."

“NOOOOOOoooo, don’t you remember Mom? ‘There is no charge for awesomeness or attractiveness...’”

Oh. Apparently I forgot.  Thanks kids.  So this run is also going to be dedicated to remembering that there is NO CHARGE FOR AWESOMENESS.... OR ATTRACTIVENESS.

Yes, I’m blessed with a full life.  And I guess that’s all this run is about.   It’s about 26.2 miles dedicated to being blessed with AWESOMENESS and a full life.... and attractiveness doesn’t hurt.

~savor the run~

Off the Cuff

We were silent at that particular moment.  Rare for us.  Usually when we run there is a stream of conversation that accompanies the steady cadence of our feet.  Maybe we were quiet because we were climbing, or maybe it was because we were enjoying the breathtaking views.  Riverside drive, just south of the James River, is one of the more beautiful and hilly runs you will find in RVA.  Tree limbs stretch over the road in a green canopy as it twists and curves and climbs and rolls like the river it parallels.

I guess we both realized we were listening to the runners ahead of us at the same time, because we both chuckled at something that was said, and I turned to T and said, "We've had that exact conversation."  She agreed.  The runners were stressing about pre-run fueling and recovery fueling and listening to them I'd have to say the one girl is probably starving herself unnecessarily.

What made me chuckle wasn't that she was starving herself, but instead it was that the topic these girls were obsessing over was a topic I have obsessed on, chewed on, rolled around, and rehashed.  I worried over it the way a child pulls the thread dangling from the hem of a sweater, picking and playing until the cuff is opened.  In this case, I finally concluded that running requires calories to prevent injury.  High protein calories are better than cake, but regardless, in my opinion if you run a pile of miles, you better be eating something.

photo credit - TMB

And we were running a pile of miles on Saturday.  T & I had overlapped our twenty miles this past week with Sportsbackers Marathon Training Team's Novice 10 miler.  It wasn't entirely planned, actually.  We just ran a few miles before MTT, and then followed "a route" until we met back up on the MTT route.  And when we got back to the stadium, we refilled our water bottles at the car, and kept running a completely on the fly route.  In fact, the entire run was constructed off the cuff, because we knew about how far certain roads would take us.

We finished 20 miles exactly where we started, without any intentional planning at all.  Certainly our on the run routing system included "There's water along here at X point if we need it", so we weren't running without attention to detail.  We were just enjoying a stress free - route free run.  I would guess that the less seasoned "me" would have never done that.  I would have planned until I was blue in the face, needlessly fretting around trivial details.

This week we were worry free.  The twenty miles vanished under our feet.  We ran negative splits, even with the hills of Bryant Park tossed in for the last miles.

Today I reflected that I am so glad that I am a more seasoned runner, and I know when, and when not, to stress about a training run.  The 20 we finished this weekend was completely relaxed, and color me not surprised, faster than I was anticipating running.  It goes to show that when you listen to your body instead of your worries, amazing things can happen.

~savor the run~

Learning Curves

If Life is our Greatest Teacher... then Running in the Summer is the nasty teacher that no one EVER likes even though there is a lot of learning going on...

We ran our first 20 of the training cycle this weekend.  There were some lessons learned.

Be Impulsive & Listen to your Gut.  If you check the weather the night before and see it's going to be hotter than it's been for a few weeks, call everyone and move the run 30 minutes earlier.  I didn't do that, even though it crossed my mind the night before the run.  What a huge game changer 30 minutes would have been.  It was 74 degrees with 93% humidity at the start, and 86 degrees with 61% humidity when we finished... that's "Feels Like 90" when we finished.  No wonder I felt so craptastic.

Respect the Distance.  20 miles is a long way, even if you break it into 2 x 10 mile loops.  Even if you break them down into 2 x 5.  While breaking down the run into smaller bites is a good idea, it's important to remember that 20 miles is still 20 miles.

Stage Right.  If you're running "unsupported" staging Gatorade/Powerade/Perform/NUUN will seem like a GENIUS idea.  My take home from this run was don't forget that GU (that's G.U.) will taste better and sit better with water, and water in the middle of the country-side can be a bit hard to find.  By the end of the run my stomach was rolling.  Next 20 there will be at least 8 oz of water at every stop.

Routing is crucial.  I wasn't terribly displeased with my routes, but I would have run the two loops in reverse order if I had thought about the position of the sun when we hit mile 15.  Hot and Shady is not the same experience as Hot and NO SHADE TO BE FOUND FOR MILES.  See above note about a 30 minute earlier start time.

Routing is crucial part deux.  I routed us past a Fire Station.  That was not an accident.  I will always do that in the future.  Thankful for Henrico's finest who kindly gave us some ice water when we were nothing but hot sweaty dehydrated messes at mile 17.

Bring your Exit Buddy.  The biggest thing I can say about running 20 miles is to rally as many runners as you possibly can to form a posse.  Even if some of the runners can only join for part of the joy and some of the misery.  We started as 5 this morning, and that shared energy carried us through the run even when it was hot and we wanted to quit.  If one is having an off day, in our group there will always be someone who hangs back and nurses the person along, or loops back to pick her up, or who runs the last mile + much faster than she thought she could because she was encouraged by her peers.

Every run is a lesson, and this week I brought home a lot of 'Needs Improvement'.  That's OK.  There's always next time.

~savor the run~

A Letter from September

Dear GBA GF & TMB,

It's July huh?

Freakishly hot? 
Humid? 
Hazy? 
Hell-oh! No wonder the running is so hard!  

This isn't hard because you suck at running. This is hard because it's stupid hot out and running in heat is difficult.

 You always seem to imagine you lose your mojo in July. And you know what? That's absurd. I think it's quite obvious...

Mojo is not lost. Mojo goes on vacay in July... 

Who knows where it goes... Maybe Mojo prefers Upstate NY or Canada, or MN or OR....?

No biggy. The worst is over. In the next month the weather will break, and you'll be right on track for the marathon you're running in October.

~savor the run~

GBA GF

(written Sept 20, 2013)