It went kind of like this:
Susan mentioned in an email that she had signed up for a half marathon that was taking place in Whitefish, Montana, the weekend we were going to be there for our trip to Glacier.
I thought, well that sounds awful. Maybe they have a companion road mile? Or 5k?
But no, it was a marathon/half-marathon combo race. And the course was described as "challenging", which is a synonym for "not Andi-friendly".
I hemmed and I hawed. I missed the normal price registration deadline. I hemmed and hawed some more. Finally I gave in and signed up. I reasoned that it would take care of my long run for the weekend. Really, it was just an expensive training run, right? It's like I told Susan up at the start, "hey, I may be wearing a singlet (point to chest), but, (point to feet) it's nothing but trainers down there at the feet level."
The course was point to point. The altitude was about 3600 feet. (I classify that altitude as just high enough to make you wonder why you're running so slowly.) There was a net downhill, but there was also over 1000' of elevation gain.
I had a plan. It was pretty simple because it was just a training run. I would start conservatively, run a couple of 7:30s, ease down into the low 7s for a while, and then, around mile 8, when the nasty uphills would all be in the rearview mirror, if I was feeling good, I'd drop down and run some 6:50s, maybe 6:45s if things were going really well. I figured realistically I'd be happy to run under 95 minutes, if things go really well, I might run in the 93s.
The race goes off. Did I mention that the first 3.5 miles were down hill? I might have forgotten that part. The first 3.5 miles were downhill. They were also on a dusty, rutted, gravel road. But that was some nice downhill. Other than having to watch your footing, it was the perfect grade to run fast without effort. Still, I let the front part of the race go. About a mile in, there were 4 women in front of me. My first mile was 7:04. Whoops. Don't be an idiot, Andi, I told myself, just relax. So I relaxed. I relaxed so much that my next mile was 6:50-something. Now I was irritated. What the heck? No one was coming back to me, my pulse felt like it was about 80, I was completely relaxed. I found myself running next to this guy, and I thought, "I need to let this guy go, he's dragging me along too fast." So I let him get a couple of steps on me, and then without even turning his head, he waved his arm to tell me to come back up and run with him! My brow furrowed, I refused to give in. I was not going to get caught up in this fool's game of starting too fast! He finally moves enough ahead that the contact is broken. I run another 6:50-something. I hear footsteps and 2 more women come by me. What the.... am I already paying for starting too fast? But no, I'm still running the same pace, no women are coming back to me, and two more have just gone ahead. Now I'm in 7th. But that's ok. I'm not racing. So I shrug it off and just think about myself.
At about 3.5 miles, the gravel road ends and real road begins. This is where the half marathon course joins up with the marathon course. And also where the downhill ends and the uphill begins.
I feel fine. It's kind of like I just got the first 3.5 miles of the race for free as far as the effort is concerned, which is good, because almost all of the climbing in the course is between miles 4 and 7. All I have to do is get through the next few miles in one piece and then I can do whatever I want. Woman #6 stops off to pee in the woods, never to reappear in my sights. Woman #5 thinks I am her friend, woman #6, rejoining her when I pass her on an uphill a few minutes later, but I'm not. I just glide by. (I'm passing people uphills.... what am I doing?) Woman #4 grabs her water at the mile 4 aid station and walks to drink it, as I pass her. The waving guy from earlier appears, and as I roll up next to him, he says, "hey, you're back!" I smile, shrug, and say, "well, I already totally messed up my race plan, so...." I elaborate further by saying, "it's hard to start conservatively when you have 3 miles of downhill at the start." He laughs and says, "I think you have to just grab it, just go for it." I wonder if that's what I'm doing as I move past him and on to the next person.
Another mile split: 7:15. "That's more like it," I think. "See, I'm being smart! I know what I'm doing. Sure it was almost all uphill, but I feel ok. Everything's fine."
A few minutes later woman #3 goes by the wayside. I'm passing assorted men too, but it's easier to count the women, because there are fewer of them. Now I'm in 3rd place. "Probably where I belong," I think. I'd lost sight of the first two women very early on, and didn't think I'd be seeing them again anytime soon, if at all.
But now here's something entertaining... the guy who was the race starter is out on the course in his pickup truck. He drove by me down the dirt road in the beginning, gave me a bit of a curious look out the window (obviously not a local) and a "good job" and moved on. He comes back by in the other direction, just checking on things, and at some point I notice there are a couple of cars doing this. Again with the look hanging out the window. I start to wonder if I look like I'm super in control or something, and maybe he's wondering if I'm going to catch the local ladies in front of me. Then I think I'm probably making that up. But soon the road straightens out a bit and I start getting glimpses of the front two ladies. Which means I'm reeling them in on the hills. That thought gives me pause. That's either really bad news for them (if I can catch them on the ups, they must be hurting) or really bad news for me (I'm running too hard now and will die later). But whatever. I'm just running.
And reeling them in and reeling them in, bit by bit. Another 7:15 uphill mile. And now the guys in truck thing becomes obvious. Because now I can see them drive past me, pause, drive up to the women in front of me, see the brake lights as they say out the window that I'm hot on their tails. Great, I think. Now they're going to want to race me. And I really don't want to race. I'm not fit, I'm not ready for that. I don't want to do anything stupid and ruin the run. I just want to RUN. I wish they would just get out of my way without me having to pass them. The last thing I want is for them to try and fend me off, or start throwing in surges. I tell myself not to pass them until the 8 mile mark, because I know that's the end of the major uphills.
I can't help it, though. We start getting some downhill mixed in with the uphill, and now, relatively speaking, I'm flying. Next split I see is 6:40. Oh. Ok. Uh.... well, ok. "You know what?," I think, "No more thinking." And with that, I came up behind woman #1 and woman #2, obviously friends and working together. Woman #1 turns to look at me barreling down on them, and as I come up next to them (and they start to speed up a bit), it becomes apparent that they aren't going to say anything to me. So I tell them nice job, and they respond in kind. I mention that it's possible they'll be seeing me again in a mile or so when I blow up, but they don't laugh.
And with that, my friends, it is on. This is no longer a training run. I am racing and I am loving it. I passed those ladies at the bottom of a very long, gradual uphill, and as the road started to climb, I hit the gas. It was almost like I was running scared, or making some expert tactical move to put a serious gap on them quickly and destroy their confidence, but it wasn't that at all. Running fast felt good. It felt awesome, and all of a sudden I wanted to see what I could do. Yeah, I'm out of shape, nowhere near race weight and still way too far from the finish line to be starting a finishing kick, but I just didn't care. I didn't care if I died at the end, if I ended up in 10th place... whatever. I just wanted to run as fast as I could for as long as I could.
That turned out to be until around mile 10. I knocked out 3 or 4 6:30ish miles before reality started to set in. The downhills were pretty much done, and all that was left was flat, slightly up, and many many turns. But on my side were the spectators. Obviously I was the first woman they'd seen come by, which gave them something specific to cheer at me, but also a number of people seemed to know that I was killing it. Maybe because I was starting to look like I might pass out right in front of their very eyes! Seriously, I started to look pretty damn awful. I was breathing like a freight train, everyone I passed could hear me coming 10 seconds before I got there, but there was nothing to be done about it anymore. Yes, I was slowing, and I was suffering mightily, but I was fighting it tooth and nail. Every time I came up behind someone I'd start to think, "just sit here with this guy for a second and get your ridiculous breathing under control! You sound like a crazy person!" But my desire to finish as soon as possible was at odds with this other mentality, and thus the battle raged on.
The last two miles of the course were just plain silly. We'd essentially been running in a straight line for 11 miles, and the finish line was right up the continuation of the aforementioned straight line. But first we had to take not one, but two detours off the straight line to make the course long enough. There were at least 8 turns from mile 11 to mile 12.5, along with 4 or 5 changes of turf. At one point, after struggling past a couple of guys around this weird S turn kind of thing, and then turning to run along a fence in someone's back yard, I said out loud, loudly, "where are we going??" and then I started laughing hysterically, but only for a second, because I had no air to spare. None of the guys laughed with me.
Finally we turned back on to the finish street. Now I was basically shuffling. There was one more guy in my reach, but really, who cares at that point, right? There were only a few hundred meters left.... oh wait, is that the actual finish line? Uh, yeah. I started running for that finish line like my pants were on fire and I blew by that guy about 10 meters from the line like he was standing still. It wasn't personal, I just wanted to finish. I was so happy to be finished, in fact, that I almost burst into tears. Stopping has never felt so good.
My time was 90:13, which was far faster than I expected, and made me pretty happy, but it wasn't until I used one of those converters and got a flat, sea-level equivalent of about 86 flat that I felt really good. I feel like I pulled that race out of thin air. I have no idea where it came from. And maybe they weren't trying that hard, but I put 3 and a half minutes on those ladies in the last 4-5 miles of that race. I don't know where that came from either. But it felt damn good to be racing.
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