Turkeython Race Report

Prior to yesterday, I had never run a turkey trot. Never ever...   which seems a little odd, given that I've been a runner since 1986. Maybe it's because turkey trots seems to go out of their way to be un-serious races, or maybe the timing was just never right, or maybe I'm just too lazy to run a race on a holiday. This year, however, my training schedule demanded a race this week. Enter the turkey trot.

The turkey trot in question was the Beaverton Turkeython. Given my snobbish disdain for such a foolish race name, it was only fitting that I was repeatedly asked (and thus forced to repeat out loud) the name of the race by people out and about in the neighborhood. Each time I enunciated as clearly as possible, to the delight of the karma gods somewhere, I'm sure.

Racing on a Thursday is weird. I knew it would be weird, so I tried to treat it like a normal Sunday race  by treating the previous Friday like Monday of a race week. It didn't really work, and I found myself having to remind myself Wednesday night that I had a race the next day. I was not excited. Training had gone well in the 5 weeks since my last race, and this was supposed to be my chance to knock it out of the park, but I was just not feeling it. It'll be better when I get there, I told myself.

Thursday morning I was feeling just as bland about racing, in fact, now I wasn't just un-excited, but I actively wanted to get it over with so I could start enjoying my 4-day holiday weekend. This turkey trot business was a bad idea, I thought.

The Beaverton Turkeython had its start/finish area in a strip mall. A strip mall. Perfect. Now, I know people who talk smack about typical downtown Portland races, but I LOVE them. Love love love. Downtown in a good-sized city is where all road races should be.

But I digress.

I ran the course as my warmup so that I'd know what to expect. The course was flat, the turns were well-marked, and there were mile markers. Thumbs up.

The start was a bit of a cluster. I'm not sure why, but the organizers deemed it a good idea to start the 10k, then the 5k walkers, followed immediately by the 5k runners. The walkers, then the runners. Yes, that makes perfect sense. I took a breath and let it roll off my shoulders. Whatever. It was a small race, it wouldn't be that hard to get by the walkers.

We finally got going, and it was surprisingly easy to get by the walkers. As we made the first few quick turns and then settled in to a bit of a straight, I looked up in front of me to see only one woman and quite a few school kids going out too fast. The woman came back to me quickly, and I slid into the lead. Weird to be leading this early, I thought, I hope I'm not going out too fast.

I settled in and started picking people off. My legs did not feel great, but it could have been worse. Relax, I told myself, there's nothing you can do about your legs now, so just relax and run. 

But then something odd happened. I heard some breathing just off my right shoulder. I had just a few moments earlier settled in to a kind of a zone, so it actually startled me a bit. I don't get passed very often in races. Lest you think me egotistical, I should explain that I'm a conservative starter, so most people that beat me do so from the front. And to make things even more surprising, this person coming up on my shoulder was a woman, and not the one I had just passed!

I'm pretty sure I did an actual double take. Had I gone out too fast or was someone actually beating me at my own game? This was not good news. On a day where my body and mind were decidedly dis-interested in racing, I was not going to have the option to coast, not even a bit. The day was going from bad to worse.

She pulled slightly ahead of me. She looked good. She looked like she was perfectly in control. I was pretty sure she was not all in her head and feeling sorry for herself like I was at that instant. We were about 3/4 of a mile in to the race, and I was already breathing hard. I was practically giving her the race at that point.

But sometimes, sometimes your instincts kick in without you even noticing. Because like it or not, intentional or not, I was going with her. I didn't want to go with her, I wanted to slow down and stop and walk back to my car, go home and lie on my couch reading a book. But there I was, going with her. Autopilot had kicked in. I had let her get 5-10 meters in front of me and then sped up to match her pace.

My 1 mile split was 5:45. That was the speed I had wanted to run for this 5k. Unfortunately, it didn't feel very good, and I was doubtful I'd be maintaining that pace. I didn't have much time to think about that, though, because I was busy being dragged through the race by this woman I didn't even particularly care about beating.

We hit the turnaround on the out and back course, and then my little hide and seek game was over, because she could see that I was still with her. Who cares, I thought disinterestedly, maybe she'll put on a big surge and lose me and then I can slow down for real. 

Instead, she pretty much maintained the same pace, and I pretty much maintained my little gap. In fact, at about 1.75 miles, I actually caught up to her, pulled up next to her, and without even thinking about it, started to pass her. What am I doing? Is she just going to let me pass her? I wondered.

No. No she wasn't. Maybe she was spacing out a little, maybe she was feeling a bit lazy herself, but she seemed to wake up a little and began to speed up. As we hit the 2 mile mark, she pulled in front of me again, and the little gap opened up again.

I was remarkably unfazed by all of this until some nice, well-meaning guy who was running next to me, leaned over and said, Let's go get her, come on, I'll help you!

While I understood that this was intended to be motivational, it was absolutely the wrong thing to say to me right then. I had managed to keep myself in the race to that point by not caring, not thinking, and running on autopilot. Some days you need to associate, and some days you need to disassociate. This was one of the latter, and I was actually doing a pretty damn good job of it, all things considered.

So when this guy made his pronouncement, I wanted to punch him in the face. As if the only reason she was ahead of me was because I didn't have help! Genius! All of a sudden the task at hand seemed Herculean. I practically stopped running right there. I'm absolutely certain that I slowed down. The next 10-20 seconds were the worst I felt the entire race. But as I dodged to my right around some 10k runners (I guess I forgot to mention that we were running up the back of the 10k the whole time....  no comment needed), I got a little space between myself and the well-meaning guy, and I got myself back into my disassociative mental space.

And then I dropped him.

And while I'm sure it sounds just plain mean, I took a few inches of precious mental space to enjoy the sensation of him falling back behind me. What can I say? A good race brain morphs into whatever it needs to be on that day, and right then it apparently needed some meanness.

I got back into my autopilot zone as much as I could, trying to keep the gap close. My second mile had been slower, but was still a 5:52, so I knew I wasn't running an awful time. I just had to hang in there for a few more minutes and then kick. The last mile of a 5k always sucks. The sneaky parts of your brain will try every trick in the book to get you to slow down. Any doubt that is floating around in there will get magnified.

With about a half mile to go, I could feel myself starting to flail. Time to associate. Carefully. This is important. Associate your brain enough to think about keeping your form from totally falling apart, while staying disassociated from the fact that you're not done yet. The gap to the woman in front was starting to widen, but I kept at it doggedly. Just a little further...   now the brain was all in. Nothing but actively fighting gets you through the last 600 meters or so.

The course turns with about 200 meters to go. I'd say she had about 40 meters on me by then. She was close enough that I got to watch her look over her shoulder for me. I knew I wasn't going to catch her, but I gathered myself and started kicking it in as best as I could. She was waiting for me at the line with a friendly "nice job".  When people asked me afterwards how I did, I became fond of saying that the race winner had been toying with me, because it seemed apparent to me that she had been running to win only, and could have run much faster had she so desired, but the truth is that I wasn't bitter about that at all. In fact, I was grateful, because chasing her was the only reason I was able to give a good solid effort on a sub-par day. If she had taken off and blown me out of the water, I'm sure I would have run slower.

When I crossed the finish line, my watch read 18:16. What?! I was pissed. I didn't feel like it was a sub 18 effort, but I felt like it ought to be a very low 18.
I checked again for the distance: 3.14. Pi. A 5k is not PI!!!! A 5k is 3.106, not 3.14. And before you start rolling your eyes and wondering what the hell difference a few hundredths or a tenth makes, I'd like to point out that a tenth of a mile at my 5k pace is approximately 35 seconds. It matters.

Now here's where the math comes in. Despite my love of numbers, I hate this about road 5ks. They're never accurate. You're constantly having to adjust your times up and down, too short, too long, second-guessing everything. You ask around for other Garmin readings, you measure on gmap, all in the name of getting reliable information. And even a certified course is no guarantee. I've run certified courses that were set improperly on race day. Plus, a certified course, by definition, practically guarantees that the distance you actually run will be longer than the race distance.

This is an even bigger drag when it comes to PRs, but for my purposes, I'm just looking for a progression, for feedback on my fitness, and how near or far I am from being "back in shape".

I went home, sat down with my Garmin, and did some quick calculating. Sure, Garmins are not 100% accurate, but they are pretty consistent, and that's the data I had. So, for my purposes, I decided to assume that the Garmin readings for my last two races were exactly right, and adjust my race times accordingly. I did this mostly because I knew without a doubt that I had run faster at my turkey trot than at Run Like Hell. All of my mile splits were faster, after all.

The end result, according to Garmin, was that my RLH time slowed to 18:19, and my Turkeython time improved to 18:02. Is that exactly right? Probably not, but it's a lot more believable.

And you know what? I'm getting there.