People talk a lot about goals. About how necessary they are and about how to set them:
Be very specific!
Write them down!
Make them public!
Have A, B, and C goals!
Dream big!
But have definable, smaller goals along the way!
I'm not here to say any of that is bad advice, or that I never use any of those techniques, but as it is the time of year for goal/resolution-oriented posts, I've been doing some reflecting on my own goal-setting techniques.
The thing is, my best running results have come when I threw the specific time goals and race goals out the window and focused only on process. That is a 100% truth in all of my seasons of racing, in every running era of my life. The vaguest goal of all - To Train Well and Hopefully Run Faster - has been the one that has worked best for me.
There was one spring season where I really wanted to break 18 minutes in the 5k. I felt like then my life would be complete. I thought about it a lot, I knew the splits, I visualized, I wanted it very much. I ran some good races, and some prs, but in the end I came up about 5 seconds short. In the ensuing off season, I focused on working on some weaknesses, and early the following season, with no specific time expectations, just wanting to see where I was, I hopped in a 5k and ran about 17:45. I blew through that 18 minute barrier without even thinking about it.
One fall I was training for a marathon. Every amateur marathoner wants to break that 3 hour barrier, but I thought I probably wouldn't be ready for another year or two. Instead of training for a specific marathon pace, I focused on doing my long runs by feel and letting my body figure things out. By the end of the segment, it was apparent that I was in killer shape, and that running under 3 hours shouldn't be a problem. But instead of going out at sub 3 pace, I ran by feel, starting well slow of that and easing into it, just like I did on all my long runs. I ran by feel and crushed it, running 2:56 on a big negative split and feeling like a million bucks.
After that race (a 14 minute pr), all of a sudden the Trials standard (which at the time was "only" 2:46) seemed, well, if not reasonable, at least a possibility.
Naturally I thought that I just needed to do a little bit more in my next segment. I am not one of those people who has to be held back all the time, but I still managed to get myself in just enough of a hole to cause a hormone imbalance and overtraining, which sidelined me from serious training for 6 months.
My next segment after that, armed with new knowledge about what I needed for recovery and nutrition, and eager to get back on my Trials quest, I attempted to run through this little nagging pain in my arch. The nagging little pain turned into full blown Plantar Fasciitis, and my foolish attempt to run through it sidelined me for another 6 months after the marathon (that I had to drop out of anyway).
Yes, I was learning my limits, but the point is that I had been blinded by that "dream big" goal. I wasn't being smart. I wasn't focusing on staying healthy. Distance running is a long term endeavor. The single biggest thing that helps you improve is consistent training. I knew all that and still I was blinded by how awesome it would be to qualify for the Olympic Trials! Holy cow, what an awesome goal, right?
Having goals like:
doing my stretches after every run
remembering to stand up more at work so I don't get desk-job hamstrings
going to bed by 10 pm on weeknights
is not very exciting.
Process goals generally aren't very exciting. And maybe I'm just getting old, but over the last few years I've finally learned that process really is almost everything good about running. Races are fun and are a nice reward for hard work, but you have to love the process to love running. And you have to work on improving your process if you want to improve.
So, with a new year upon us, I'd like to give a big shout-out to the often under-appreciated small, boring, process goals. Because 95% of running is the process.
And to vague, fuzzy goals. Because "Run Faster" can handle modifiers (than last season, than last race, than ever, etc), and because in the big scheme of things, that's all any of us really wants, right? We just want to run faster.
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Sunday, December 7, 2014
Closing out the season on a low note - Jingle Bell Run race recap
This morning I finished up my racing season at the Jingle Bell Run 5k in downtown Portland.
Here's where I would normally give you the blow by blow race account, but there's just not that much to say about it. It was boringly not good. Pretty disappointing, actually, but there wasn't much I could do about it today. I didn't do anything stupid, no major meltdowns. I went out like I planned to, at just under six minute pace for the first mile, which was supposed to allow me to be relaxed and ready to step on the gas, but I just didn't have anything after that. I slowed a bit over the next two miles and came home in a crappy 19:05.
It was kind of confusing.
Just before my last race, I'd started to feel a little more like myself in workouts, and that last race felt like a turning point as well.
And since that race, I've had some drastic improvements in training, most notably in recent long runs. I'd closed out a couple of 15 milers comfortably at 6:45 pace, and last weekend I included a 7 mile progression run in my long run where I just set the effort level and ran, and every single mile split was considerably faster than I expected.
At the same time, it hasn't all been roses. I had some workouts that felt harder than they should be, and one week I had a single travel day for work that totally messed me up. A single travel day should not be that hard to recover from.
It finally occurred to me that I'm still in what I like to call "the grey area" as far as iron goes. I've been in this place before at least once a year, but this is the first time I've ever experienced it on the way up, so it feels a little different.
You see, with my previous method of obtaining iron (by IV), my iron would go way way up, and then it would start dropping as I used it. So I went from a bad place to an awesome place very quickly. At some point on the way down, I would start to feel less good. There's a range there, which for me I have estimated to be a ferritin level between 60 and maybe 75, when things are not awesome, but not yet awful.
The grey area.
When you hit it on the way down, it first manifests as the occasional "off" workout, or maybe just not quite feeling as recovered as you normally do. The occurrence of "off" days gradually increases until you realize what's going on, but it really does take a while for things to get all the way bad. And since you were fit and doing well before, you can sometimes ride it out for a little while.
Now, for the first time, I'm experiencing the grey area as my iron is on the way up.
I got my ferritin checked about six weeks ago, and it was 60. That was great news. It meant that my iron had stopped plummeting, leveled off, and then started to rise again, all without getting the ol' IV iron. It had taken a couple of months for that to happen, but hey, the TCM was working, so I was pretty stoked.
And when I started seeing those recent improvements in my long runs, I thought, ok, now we're talking. Based on the workouts that had gone well, I felt like I was going to finish off my season with a 5k around 18:15, and then I'd reset and hit the ground running next season.
But, you know, there's that pesky grey area. The reality is I'm still kind of rolling the dice whenever I set out to do a hard effort. I never know how it's going to go. Today I rolled the dice and lost. I think in another month or two I'll be solidly in the "go" zone, but for now I'm just going to have to accept that there will be off days.
So yes, I'm disappointed not to end my season on a good race, but I'm pretty excited to put this last running year behind me. While there were many other good things in 2014, the running part fucking sucked. Until just these past few weeks, almost all of it was hard. HARD. And not the challenging, good kind of hard, but the banging-your-head-against-the-wall kind of hard.
I am ready for a fresh start. I am ready for a nice, iron-filled running year that includes real training and real racing. Time to get back to setting PRs.
Bring it, 2015.
Here's where I would normally give you the blow by blow race account, but there's just not that much to say about it. It was boringly not good. Pretty disappointing, actually, but there wasn't much I could do about it today. I didn't do anything stupid, no major meltdowns. I went out like I planned to, at just under six minute pace for the first mile, which was supposed to allow me to be relaxed and ready to step on the gas, but I just didn't have anything after that. I slowed a bit over the next two miles and came home in a crappy 19:05.
It was kind of confusing.
Just before my last race, I'd started to feel a little more like myself in workouts, and that last race felt like a turning point as well.
And since that race, I've had some drastic improvements in training, most notably in recent long runs. I'd closed out a couple of 15 milers comfortably at 6:45 pace, and last weekend I included a 7 mile progression run in my long run where I just set the effort level and ran, and every single mile split was considerably faster than I expected.
At the same time, it hasn't all been roses. I had some workouts that felt harder than they should be, and one week I had a single travel day for work that totally messed me up. A single travel day should not be that hard to recover from.
It finally occurred to me that I'm still in what I like to call "the grey area" as far as iron goes. I've been in this place before at least once a year, but this is the first time I've ever experienced it on the way up, so it feels a little different.
You see, with my previous method of obtaining iron (by IV), my iron would go way way up, and then it would start dropping as I used it. So I went from a bad place to an awesome place very quickly. At some point on the way down, I would start to feel less good. There's a range there, which for me I have estimated to be a ferritin level between 60 and maybe 75, when things are not awesome, but not yet awful.
The grey area.
When you hit it on the way down, it first manifests as the occasional "off" workout, or maybe just not quite feeling as recovered as you normally do. The occurrence of "off" days gradually increases until you realize what's going on, but it really does take a while for things to get all the way bad. And since you were fit and doing well before, you can sometimes ride it out for a little while.
Now, for the first time, I'm experiencing the grey area as my iron is on the way up.
I got my ferritin checked about six weeks ago, and it was 60. That was great news. It meant that my iron had stopped plummeting, leveled off, and then started to rise again, all without getting the ol' IV iron. It had taken a couple of months for that to happen, but hey, the TCM was working, so I was pretty stoked.
And when I started seeing those recent improvements in my long runs, I thought, ok, now we're talking. Based on the workouts that had gone well, I felt like I was going to finish off my season with a 5k around 18:15, and then I'd reset and hit the ground running next season.
But, you know, there's that pesky grey area. The reality is I'm still kind of rolling the dice whenever I set out to do a hard effort. I never know how it's going to go. Today I rolled the dice and lost. I think in another month or two I'll be solidly in the "go" zone, but for now I'm just going to have to accept that there will be off days.
So yes, I'm disappointed not to end my season on a good race, but I'm pretty excited to put this last running year behind me. While there were many other good things in 2014, the running part fucking sucked. Until just these past few weeks, almost all of it was hard. HARD. And not the challenging, good kind of hard, but the banging-your-head-against-the-wall kind of hard.
I am ready for a fresh start. I am ready for a nice, iron-filled running year that includes real training and real racing. Time to get back to setting PRs.
Bring it, 2015.
Sunday, November 9, 2014
Earning it - Veteran's Day 5k Race Report
On my comeback trail this fall, I've been doing a series of 5ks. The idea was that even though I'm a ways off from PR fitness, running some races would keep things a little more fun and help me see my progress. Progress is important.
The truth is, with the exception of the road 800m, the races haven't been that great. Sure, winning races looks good on paper, but sometimes something is missing. It's tough trying to get into 5k racing headspace when you're grappling your way back to fitness. When you're fit and racing, and you see a 1 mile or 2 mile split that is the fastest you've ever run, it's exciting. All of a sudden you have something to lose. All of a sudden you have a very positive motivation to test yourself, to dare yourself to put it all out there.
Conversely, when you're not race-fit, it's easy to fall into negative places in your brain. It's hard to get excited when your splits are 20-30 seconds per mile slower than your PR pace. It's hard to feel like you're even racing.
This week, though, I felt like something might have finally shifted for me. I've been seeing regular, small improvements over the past couple of months, but something about my mid-week workout this past week was different. It was nothing earth-shattering, just 5x1k with short rests. Cruise intervals. But they felt less ragged, less forced, than the rest of my workouts have been this fall. I might stop short of calling those cruise intervals smooth, but they were definitely headed in that direction.
After that workout, I opened up my training paces spreadsheet to see where my workout times were putting me, and I came up with 18:25-18:35. I let that sit in my brain for a minute, and I thought, yeah, that feels about right.
The past couple of days I noticed something else: I was actually a little excited about the race. It felt so strange it made me realize that I haven't been excited at all for the other 5ks. Nervous, yes. Anxious, yes. But actually excited to race? Not so much.
This particular race is a brand new event this year. It's a two loop 5k held out at Camp Withycombe in Clackamas. The course is pancake flat, but it has (12) 90-degree and (1) 180-degree turns. Each Lap. The longest straightaway on the course might not even be 400 meters.
The downside of that is the obvious slowing at turns, but the upside is that you're always doing something, which is a lot easier on your brain than having a 1.55 mile long straightaway to contend with.
I was curious to see how I'd like it.
The race was small, but I was not expecting it to be an easy win. The registration page allowed runners to see the predicted times of everyone in the race, so I knew there were a couple of other women there who could easily beat me on any given day. It was going to be interesting.
The one thing I definitely did not want to do was repeat my mistake from the last race of getting caught up in someone else's pace and going out too fast. Going out too fast sucks. I need to respect the fact that my fitness is really uneven right now and be a little cautious in the beginning.
So when the race went off, I let the two other fast ladies go in front of me, but kept contact. As we settled in to the race, I couldn't figure out how I felt. My legs were a little stiff and un-awesome, but it didn't feel like we were going super fast either. I decided to just hang there for a few minutes and wait til I got a better read on things.
By about a half mile in, there were four of us running in a group: the three of us ladies, and the father of one of said ladies (she was only 15 years old and he was pacing her). I was still on my wait-here-and-see approach, but I should clarify that it did not feel like we were running easy.
As we were nearing the 1 mile marker, my watch beeped at me, and when I looked at it, I saw that I had not started it! Ahhh!!! It was beeping because it was about to turn itself off. Crap. I readied myself to start it at the 1 mile marker (so I would at least get splits for the rest of the course), and when we got there I asked if anybody had the split.
The father of the young lady said, "yeah, I got it, 6:10". I was like, 6:10?! What the...? And I started speeding up immediately. I didn't feel that awesome, but I didn't get up early and drive all the way out there to run 6:10 pace, for pete's sake. The young girl and her dad came along with me, and off we went.
The young girl seemed to handle the pace change pretty well, and by the time we came alongside the finish to start the second lap, they had passed back in front of me. I tucked right in behind them, feeling a little fatigued, but not ready to concede yet.
The next minute or two, though, I did kind of feel like conceding. In fact, I thought I might be giving up the win a little, but I maintained contact just long enough to ride that out. We hit the 2 mile mark and I got a 5:54 split. That was good to see. Quite a bit faster than mile 1. Good news.
And then an odd thing happened: I sped up again. I'm not sure I consciously decided to, but some kind of racing instinct took over. Maybe I sensed that the young girl was tiring, maybe I was just starting to feel the finish, who knows? I made the move, though, and she wasn't able cover it.
Her dad was doing a damn good job as a pacer. I heard him move into the gap that was forming behind me. If she keeps contact with him and he keeps contact with me, she's still right there. It was a good strategy. I also heard him encouraging her, telling her that if she could just ride out that little bad spot, she would feel better in a couple of minutes. That is also very sound advice, although damn hard to act on sometimes. I also briefly wondered if she was finding him helpful or annoying.
I didn't totally drop them, but I kept inching away. I'm not going to say that I was super confident that I could hold my surge the rest of the race, but I went anyway. And it felt good. It felt hard and tiring and I wanted the finish line to come faster, but it felt good. I was racing! Not just running hard in a race, but RACING. Man, it felt good.
I kept right on digging in and digging in and soon enough my watch beeped my 3 mile split. I usually don't hear that one because I'm too focused on getting the hell to the finish line, but I looked and it said 5:47. Yes! 5:47! Faster still! Haha!
And as I made the second to last 90-degree turn, I said to myself, out loud, "Come on, Andi!"
Yeah! Talking to myself out loud in a race! That's what I'm talking about. That is when you know you're racing. I'm still missing that super awesome finishing kick, but I did bring it home strong.
Unfortunately, the finish clock said 18:50-something as I was finishing, and that was very confusing to my fatigue addled brain, but I knew I had run well. I could feel it in my body.
I looked down at my watch and it said that I'd run 2.20 miles since the 1 mile mark. Huh, I thought. Was it long? Or was the 1 mile marker in the wrong place? I waited for the next women to come in to congratulate them. The third place woman, Deanna, said to me, I don't know, the course felt like it was long. I asked her what she had on her Garmin, and she said she wasn't wearing one, the course just felt long. I also asked my friend Joe, who had come in 2nd overall, and his watch came in at 3.09.
On my cool down I looped around the course again with my Garmin on to check it out. I got 1.6 miles per lap, or 3.2 total. In fairness to the race directors, there's a good possibility that, given how turny the course was, if they measured the course the way you're supposed to (taking the absolute shortest possible route), the course may have come out just right. And that's fine. That's what you're supposed to do.
But what matters to me the most right now is how long it took me to run however long I actually ran. I want to know how fast I was running. I want to know what my fitness is right now. So when you do the math, my "corrected" 5k time is 18:21, and that's great for me at this point. Maybe the 18:21 is not perfectly accurate either, but the race definitely felt more like an 18:30 than a 19:00. I ran just over 19 minutes at the race in Longview a couple of months ago, and there's no doubt in my mind that this one was significantly faster.
And here's the thing: no matter what place I came in, no matter what my official time was, I earned that race.
And it felt fucking terrific.
The truth is, with the exception of the road 800m, the races haven't been that great. Sure, winning races looks good on paper, but sometimes something is missing. It's tough trying to get into 5k racing headspace when you're grappling your way back to fitness. When you're fit and racing, and you see a 1 mile or 2 mile split that is the fastest you've ever run, it's exciting. All of a sudden you have something to lose. All of a sudden you have a very positive motivation to test yourself, to dare yourself to put it all out there.
Conversely, when you're not race-fit, it's easy to fall into negative places in your brain. It's hard to get excited when your splits are 20-30 seconds per mile slower than your PR pace. It's hard to feel like you're even racing.
This week, though, I felt like something might have finally shifted for me. I've been seeing regular, small improvements over the past couple of months, but something about my mid-week workout this past week was different. It was nothing earth-shattering, just 5x1k with short rests. Cruise intervals. But they felt less ragged, less forced, than the rest of my workouts have been this fall. I might stop short of calling those cruise intervals smooth, but they were definitely headed in that direction.
After that workout, I opened up my training paces spreadsheet to see where my workout times were putting me, and I came up with 18:25-18:35. I let that sit in my brain for a minute, and I thought, yeah, that feels about right.
The past couple of days I noticed something else: I was actually a little excited about the race. It felt so strange it made me realize that I haven't been excited at all for the other 5ks. Nervous, yes. Anxious, yes. But actually excited to race? Not so much.
This particular race is a brand new event this year. It's a two loop 5k held out at Camp Withycombe in Clackamas. The course is pancake flat, but it has (12) 90-degree and (1) 180-degree turns. Each Lap. The longest straightaway on the course might not even be 400 meters.
The downside of that is the obvious slowing at turns, but the upside is that you're always doing something, which is a lot easier on your brain than having a 1.55 mile long straightaway to contend with.
I was curious to see how I'd like it.
The race was small, but I was not expecting it to be an easy win. The registration page allowed runners to see the predicted times of everyone in the race, so I knew there were a couple of other women there who could easily beat me on any given day. It was going to be interesting.
The one thing I definitely did not want to do was repeat my mistake from the last race of getting caught up in someone else's pace and going out too fast. Going out too fast sucks. I need to respect the fact that my fitness is really uneven right now and be a little cautious in the beginning.
So when the race went off, I let the two other fast ladies go in front of me, but kept contact. As we settled in to the race, I couldn't figure out how I felt. My legs were a little stiff and un-awesome, but it didn't feel like we were going super fast either. I decided to just hang there for a few minutes and wait til I got a better read on things.
By about a half mile in, there were four of us running in a group: the three of us ladies, and the father of one of said ladies (she was only 15 years old and he was pacing her). I was still on my wait-here-and-see approach, but I should clarify that it did not feel like we were running easy.
As we were nearing the 1 mile marker, my watch beeped at me, and when I looked at it, I saw that I had not started it! Ahhh!!! It was beeping because it was about to turn itself off. Crap. I readied myself to start it at the 1 mile marker (so I would at least get splits for the rest of the course), and when we got there I asked if anybody had the split.
The father of the young lady said, "yeah, I got it, 6:10". I was like, 6:10?! What the...? And I started speeding up immediately. I didn't feel that awesome, but I didn't get up early and drive all the way out there to run 6:10 pace, for pete's sake. The young girl and her dad came along with me, and off we went.
The young girl seemed to handle the pace change pretty well, and by the time we came alongside the finish to start the second lap, they had passed back in front of me. I tucked right in behind them, feeling a little fatigued, but not ready to concede yet.
The next minute or two, though, I did kind of feel like conceding. In fact, I thought I might be giving up the win a little, but I maintained contact just long enough to ride that out. We hit the 2 mile mark and I got a 5:54 split. That was good to see. Quite a bit faster than mile 1. Good news.
And then an odd thing happened: I sped up again. I'm not sure I consciously decided to, but some kind of racing instinct took over. Maybe I sensed that the young girl was tiring, maybe I was just starting to feel the finish, who knows? I made the move, though, and she wasn't able cover it.
Her dad was doing a damn good job as a pacer. I heard him move into the gap that was forming behind me. If she keeps contact with him and he keeps contact with me, she's still right there. It was a good strategy. I also heard him encouraging her, telling her that if she could just ride out that little bad spot, she would feel better in a couple of minutes. That is also very sound advice, although damn hard to act on sometimes. I also briefly wondered if she was finding him helpful or annoying.
I didn't totally drop them, but I kept inching away. I'm not going to say that I was super confident that I could hold my surge the rest of the race, but I went anyway. And it felt good. It felt hard and tiring and I wanted the finish line to come faster, but it felt good. I was racing! Not just running hard in a race, but RACING. Man, it felt good.
I kept right on digging in and digging in and soon enough my watch beeped my 3 mile split. I usually don't hear that one because I'm too focused on getting the hell to the finish line, but I looked and it said 5:47. Yes! 5:47! Faster still! Haha!
And as I made the second to last 90-degree turn, I said to myself, out loud, "Come on, Andi!"
Yeah! Talking to myself out loud in a race! That's what I'm talking about. That is when you know you're racing. I'm still missing that super awesome finishing kick, but I did bring it home strong.
Unfortunately, the finish clock said 18:50-something as I was finishing, and that was very confusing to my fatigue addled brain, but I knew I had run well. I could feel it in my body.
I looked down at my watch and it said that I'd run 2.20 miles since the 1 mile mark. Huh, I thought. Was it long? Or was the 1 mile marker in the wrong place? I waited for the next women to come in to congratulate them. The third place woman, Deanna, said to me, I don't know, the course felt like it was long. I asked her what she had on her Garmin, and she said she wasn't wearing one, the course just felt long. I also asked my friend Joe, who had come in 2nd overall, and his watch came in at 3.09.
On my cool down I looped around the course again with my Garmin on to check it out. I got 1.6 miles per lap, or 3.2 total. In fairness to the race directors, there's a good possibility that, given how turny the course was, if they measured the course the way you're supposed to (taking the absolute shortest possible route), the course may have come out just right. And that's fine. That's what you're supposed to do.
But what matters to me the most right now is how long it took me to run however long I actually ran. I want to know how fast I was running. I want to know what my fitness is right now. So when you do the math, my "corrected" 5k time is 18:21, and that's great for me at this point. Maybe the 18:21 is not perfectly accurate either, but the race definitely felt more like an 18:30 than a 19:00. I ran just over 19 minutes at the race in Longview a couple of months ago, and there's no doubt in my mind that this one was significantly faster.
And here's the thing: no matter what place I came in, no matter what my official time was, I earned that race.
And it felt fucking terrific.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Race Report: the ups and downs of the weekend double
Round 1: An 800m road race down in Springfield, Oregon on Friday night. A straight line drag race, aka the most fun ever.
Is driving 4.5 hours to race for ~2.5 minutes worth it? Hell yeah it is.
It's only been 3 or 4 years since my last 1500, but it's been 22 years since my last 800. Wait, 22 years?! Yes, 22 years. Wow.
And, to make things worse, I'm not fit right now. I'm not even remotely race fit.
But I couldn't resist signing up for this race. How many chances do you get to run a road 800? One a year. That's it.
I had a good long warmup (the shorter the race, the longer the warm up), during all of which I felt awful. This is common for me, but it is still unnerving. Once I was hanging out in the start area and doing strides, though, my legs started to wake up. They actually felt kind of light and springy. It's been a while since I've had that feeling.
I was nervous at the start. Super nervous. Probably the most nervous I've been for a race in the last couple of years. The only thing I felt certain of was that I would go out at the wrong pace (whether it was too fast or too slow), since I no longer have any feel for this race distance. The race director was nice enough to put signs up at 200, 400, and 600, but I had doubts about the accuracy of the placement (well founded doubts, as it turned out).
They had merged the mens and womens masters heats into one heat, which I was pretty stoked about. Now I would definitely not be leading. Also, a couple of the fast men lining up in front of me were friends I hadn't seen in a while. It's fun to chase your friends.
We finally lined up to go. I reminded myself to breathe, since if I forgot, it would be too late before I realized it. A guy next to me inquired as to my goal. I told him 2:30 was probably optimistic. He said he would love to run a 2:30. (By the way, people at master's events/races are just as competitive as anyone else, but they are often about 10 times friendlier than anyone else. It's a fact. Google it.)
TK turned around and gave me a fist bump and then off we went. Pack of 4 dudes instantly in front, followed by me and a few guys on either side of me. I had no idea how fast I was running, but it wasn't so fast that I was worried about it. I was instantly breathing hard, though. We passed the 200 sign, I glanced at my watch and saw 43. What? Well, that sign was obviously wrong, but it was still a little disconcerting to see. I stepped on it a little, and the guy next to me said something about us being on 5 minute pace. I assumed he was reading that off his GPS, but I wasn't buying it. I thought we were probably slower. At any rate, I was speeding up and people next to me began to slip back.
Right about this time, I was overwhelmed with this weird wave of muscle fatigue. It rolled over me like some sort of shock wave to the body, and for about 3 seconds I thought I was going to tie up 1/4 of the way through the race. But then it passed, somewhere something in my body said, man up, legs!, and off we went, actually feeling ok.
At the 400 sign, my watch read 83 or something like that. Again, definitely wrong, and this time I felt more confident that they were just all going to be wrong so to hell with the signs.
And this is where I went a little wrong. Even though I surged a little bit at the 400 sign, I also felt myself hesitate. I had no muscle memory of this kind of effort anymore. I doubted myself.
I didn't slow down. I just didn't go for it.
And I know this because when I passed the 600 sign, I stepped on it again. I asked my body to go go go!, and it actually responded. I found the next set of gears so easily that I knew I had been too cautious. There is no time for hesitation in a race that short. If you have it at halfway, you'd better damn well start using it.
It made for a fun finish, though. One guy ahead had fallen off the front pack and I briefly entertained visions of catching him as I dug for the finish (he was actually still well ahead, but it always helps to put a target on the back of the next person in front of you). As the clock came into focus, I saw the 2:30 mark slip by, but not by too much.
It's hard to explain how fun that race was. Here's the best I can do:
I walked out the chute, spent a minute or so catching my breath, and then I turned to the guys and said: ok, let's give ourselves about 20 minutes or so to rest, and then let's go do that AGAIN!!
It was that fun. I can't think of another race ever where I've crossed the line and wanted immediately to jog back down to the start line and do it again. And this was a race where I'd technically run pretty poorly (my all out 800 time was almost exactly the pace I ran for my mile pr a few years back).
But even though the downer part of my brain could point to the numbers as proof of sucking, I didn't care. It was the fastest I've run in the shitstorm of a running year I've had since the great norovirus incident of October 2013. And it was FUN.
The whole event was fun. Right after our heat, I got to watch the open heat, where my Oiselle teammate Liz Anjos kicked some serious ass, looking totally relaxed while running a big PR and grabbing the win. Then there was the elite mens race, where we got to watch some Olympians tearing down the middle of the street in front of their friends, teammates, and the locals.
Despite the fact that the race is located in a town full of elite runners, for the second year in a row there was no elite womens race (because no one signed up). I find this interesting and unfortunate, but I guess not too surprising. There were quite a few elite women at the race, but they chose to run with their teammates as a centipede and not race individually.
Round 2: Small 5k in downtown Portland Sunday morning. The course was flat, and an out-and-back.
It's only been two weeks since I ran my starting point 5k, so I wasn't expecting a big drop in my time. I figured I would probably run maybe 10-20 seconds faster, mostly because I'm feeling physically more comfortable running at higher speeds, not because I've made any great fitness gains in the past two weeks.
But on race morning, my mindset was not that great. I wanted to be going in to the race relaxed and just looking for a little improvement. No big deal.
Instead I was a little tense and grumpy.
The race went off. It was indeed a small race, and right away there was only one woman near me, and maybe 7 or 8 dudes ahead. I tried to settle in and relax, but the one woman was running just a couple of steps ahead of me, and I found it hard to let her go. (Not having the confidence to run your own pace is the first sign of impending race fail for me, by the way. When I'm feeling good and confident, I'll let everyone go at the start because I know most of them are coming back. When you try too hard too early, you're only making things worse for yourself.)
I kept trying to ease back, but the woman and the guy she was running with were just a teeny tiny bit faster and I let it mess with my system. My watch beeped one mile at 5:52 (there were no mile markers), which was about 10 seconds faster than I'd been planning to start. Not good. My legs have started to feel better recently and thus they're trying to get back to the 5:35-5:40 5k pace I was running a year ago, but my fitness is way out in nowheresville and cannot even begin to keep up with them.
Plus, it was not a comfortable 5:52. I was not even remotely relaxed.
Trying not to panic at the thought of how awful the next 2 miles were going to be, I said to myself, "ok, what's done is done. Just relax. If we just back off a little, we can still keep it around 6 min/mile, and that will be just fine."
I labored along for a few more minutes, and then the turnaround was up ahead.
The course was an out-and-back of the most literal nature. The start and finish were right next to each other, and you stayed on the same road the whole time. When you hit the turnaround, therefore, you could look at your watch, multiply by 2, and see what total time you're on.
I'd been thinking about that as I approached the turnaround, because I was already struggling and I wanted to look at my watch and see some positive feedback. I wanted to look and see something like 9:15, or 9:20, so I could remind myself that I was still on track. Instead I saw 9:37. I was like, wait... what?!? How am I at 9:37 if my first mile was 5:52? I went out too fast and I'm only on pace for a 19:14? Sure, I backed off a little after that first mile.. but... my head was spinning trying to do the math on how much I must have slowed down. But the people in front of me weren't really pulling away either, and I hadn't been passed.. it just didn't make sense.
Now normally, I would have jumped to the most obvious conclusion right away, but as I alluded to earlier, I was not on my mental game this morning. So within minutes of the turnaround, my brain plunged into negativity of the most deleterious sort. I felt awful, I hated racing, I hated my low iron, I hated my body for not being able to absorb iron from food, I hated it all. (This might be a good place to point out that I also got my period the night before this race. So, you know. I was ripe for hating.)
So deep in this useless negativity was I that when my watch beeped my second mile split of 6:07, I still was unable to jump to the obvious conclusion. 5:52 + 6:07 = sub 6 pace. NOT 19:14 for 5k, in other words.
Then my running really started to suck. The third mile was most definitely slower, on the order of 20 seconds slower. It was gruesome. Sure, some of this was physical, but at least 10 or 15 seconds of it was mental. The last mile of a 5k is all about staying focused. I had no focus.
The one thing that finally snapped me back to reality was watching the woman in front of me. She was still running with the guy, but she kept veering slightly off the course: outside the cones at an intersection, up onto the sidewalk, and then finally, she pulled off and stopped. She wasn't registered for the race. She was helping the guy with his race, and she did the right thing and stepped off the course a couple hundred meters before the finish.
So all that time I was feeling sorry for myself, I was technically winning the race. Yeah. That made me feel like a jerk. But it also allowed me to wake up and make a little push for the finish.
The clock came into focus with appalling numbers ticking away, 19:30 something, and then 40 something, and then I finally finished. I was too discouraged to even bother stopping my watch, but I did look down at it. And what did I see? 3.26 miles. Duh. The course was long. Of course it was long. Any other day, when things like mile markers and turnaround cones are placed at locations that don't make sense with what I see on my watch, I assume that the mile markers and turnaround cones are in the wrong place. (See Round 1 above!) Garmins are not accurate to the .01, of course, but when you run a short, relatively straight race, they're going to be pretty close. Plus, you know when a course is long or short. You just know.
So, while it's difficult to understand how you can mess up measuring such a simple course, I put most of the blame for my crappy attitude on myself. When I hit the turnaround, my confusion should have quickly turned to irritation that the course was long, and then I should have re-focused myself and charged home as best as I could. I've done that before. You can always do the math and figure out your real 5k time later.
The good news is that even with the too fast start and the mental disaster of the second half, my adjusted time was about 18:49. That's fifteen seconds faster than I ran two weeks ago. Yes, it's still well over a minute slower than a year ago, but all I'm looking for right now is a little sign that I'm moving in the right direction, however slowly.
Saturday, October 4, 2014
Harvest Classic 5k Race Report - Getting a Starting Point. And winning a bucket!
I'd had this race on my radar for a couple of months, but after the recent ferritin nose dive and its attendant fatigue issues (see most recent post), I was on the fence about running it. Since my doctor adjusted my herbs a couple of weeks ago, I have seen marked improvement in how I feel, but I haven't been able to tell if I'm feeling genuinely better or just less bad. I definitely can't tell if I'm going to keep improving indefinitely, nor can I tell what will happen if and when I start training "for real" again. And even though I'm finally able to do something resembling workouts, there's been nothing that screams "hey, get yourself in a race so you can kick some ass!!!"
But then this past Monday I was out on an easy run, just a typical 6 mile recovery run, and somewhere in the second half, as I was jogging along letting my mind wander and looking out over downtown Portland, it occurred to me that I was running effortlessly. !!! Hey, wait, is this true?, I thought, Am I really running completely comfortable and easy? Yes. Yes, I was. And in that moment I was flooded with bodily memories of how fun running can be when your body is healthy. I also realized that I genuinely cannot remember the last time running felt truly effortless. It's possible it was late October of 2013, almost a year ago.
That run made me decide to stop stalling and sign up for the race. It's hard to explain why, but I just wanted to. I'm usually content to wait to race until I have some semblance of fitness, but this time I didn't want to wait. I wanted to get out there. I wanted a starting point for my comeback.
This race is not a large or super competitive event, but it is a pancake flat 5k. No hills, no trails, and it's not some race distance that I never run. This is a fast course at my best, most often raced distance. There would be no hiding from or excusing the slow time that I was bound to run.
I decided I was ok with that. The comeback that I'm on right now, provided it keeps going, may take quite a while. Now is not the time to be too proud to race.
The race was up in Longview and was very small. It had that great small town race feel to it.
As we lined up, the race director made sure to tell us that the roads that we'd be running on were not going to be closed to traffic, and that even though they would have volunteers holding up traffic at intersections, it was our job to be careful and not get ourselves killed.
Off we went. Within half a mile or so, I had moved my way into a position about 20 meters behind a pack of 5 or 6 dudes, with one considerably faster guy well out in front of them. I settled in there, expecting at least a few of those guys to come back to me later on.
I also discovered that in Longview, just because the roads are not closed during the race doesn't mean you don't run right down the middle of them. Seriously. Right smack down the middle of these huge wide streets is where we ran. There weren't very many cars out, and no one seemed to be pissed off or anything, but still, it was pretty strange. At one point, we were running down a two lane street, with a left turn coming up and a car coming up behind us, and we all edged over and ran right on the yellow line so that the car could pass us on the right. Weird.
Before the race, I thought that my absolute best case scenario would be 18:30, but that 18:45 was probably more realistic. I was hoping to run low 6's and maybe get a negative split off that pace.
There were no mile markers on the course, but my Garmin gave me a 6:10 first mile. That was a little disappointing to see, because the effort felt about right if not the pace, but that mile was in the past so I just tried to relax and push a little more.
At about 1.25 miles, there was a very short out and back, and to my surprise I saw that there was another woman not that far behind me. And to me she didn't look very tired. She looked a lot less tired than I felt. Great, I thought, now I really have to get my shit together or I'm going to get passed in the last mile.
Over the next mile, I picked off a couple of guys that had fallen off of the little pack in front of me. My second mile was a little faster by my Garmin (6:04), but nothing spectacular, and I was starting to do the 5k struggle. As we entered the last mile, we turned on to a main street that actually had traffic on it, and were relegated to the thin space between oncoming traffic and parked cars.
This stretch was 3/4 of a mile long. The only time that 3/4 of a mile seems like a long distance is when it starts at 2.25 miles into a 5k. I caught myself slacking off a couple of times, but managed both times to regain my focus pretty quickly. The pack of dudes was still in striking distance and one more guy had fallen off the back. With less than half a mile to go, I passed the one guy, but I did not seem to have it in me to make a final push to those last 3 guys.
I dug in as the final turn appeared, and tried to will myself to sprint the last couple hundred meters. It wasn't much of a sprint, I'll admit that. It was a slight increase in speed, at best. The announcer started saying something about me being the first female or something and then when I was about 10-15 meters from the finish, he said, "You've got some heat coming down on you", which meant that the last guy I had passed was running me down. Only then did the next gear kick in and I found a little speed to prevent myself from getting nipped at the line. I give that guy full credit for the sneak attack. He was quiet. If the announcer hadn't said something, I probably wouldn't have heard him until he was already passing me.
But then this happened:
I crossed the line about half a step in front of the guy, and since the race was chipped, our names and times popped up on the screen and the announcer read them off. He called out the dude's name and said he ran 19:04, and then he called out my name and said I ran 19:21. Um, what? I hadn't stopped my watch right at the line, but I had taken about three steps past it, put my hands on my knees and then looked down at my wrist to see 19:08 turning to 19:09. I figured they must have read off my time wrong or something.
After I cooled down I went over to look at the official results screens, and it said 19:21 for me. I printed it out and took my slip over to the timing guys and explained to them that my result was wrong. They were very nice and said they'd look into it, but I checked the results later and they hadn't fixed it.
Now, just to be clear, this is not something I'm furious about, and it's not something I'm losing sleep over. I know what time I ran, and it's not like I need the official result for anything. But being the person I am, I can't help but wonder about it, because I have no idea what the mechanism could possibly be that would cause only me to magically lose 17-18 seconds on my chip. Both the start and finish were chipped, but it was the system where they don't use mats on the ground. They use some kind of wireless signal I guess, I'm not really certain what the exact technology is. I was standing right behind the first row of dudes, so at most there would have been a second or two lag between gun time and chip time, except these guys (Uberthons) don't even use gun time. They only have chip time. And I was not doing strides off the front of the line before the start (and even if I was, I wouldn't have been doing them 17 seconds before the gun went off). Even if I started my watch a little late, it would only be a second or two. It's just weird. And how could they not notice when they called out our times as we crossed the line together that they were calling out times 17 seconds apart? There was a 20+ second gap both in front of us and behind us, so it's not like it was hectic.
But anyway, it was a nice race. They didn't really have "prizes" for the winners (other than plaques), which is understandable given the size of the race and the fact that it was a benefit, but they did do this thing where they let the winners pick out one of the unclaimed raffle prizes to take home. I thought that was a clever way for a small race to be able to offer a little something to the race winners without dipping into their race budget. The leftover raffle prizes were all set up on display on a table, and it was a little overwhelming trying to assess which was the most awesome. I felt like I was on a game show. Ultimately I chose the prize with the biggest volume: a bucket (!) filled with... things. Yes, a bucket! Filled with things! We had much fun in the car afterwards sifting through the prizes in my new bucket. There was a giant mug filled with chocolates, a Starbucks card, a candle, a travel mug, a gold styrofoam pumpkin (yes!), a giant bottle of water, a dishcloth... it was great. (I hope it doesn't sound like I'm being sarcastic about the bucket, because I'm not. The bucket is the bomb. I love the bucket.)
Buckets and timing issues aside, I'm glad I raced. Trying to get back to healthy without the use of IV iron could end up being a long, slow road instead of the quick jump I've gotten used to. I may need to settle for baby steps along the way, and there's a good chance I won't be seeing 17:xx on the clock anytime this season. But that's ok. If I end up with stable iron for the long term, it'll be worth it.
But then this past Monday I was out on an easy run, just a typical 6 mile recovery run, and somewhere in the second half, as I was jogging along letting my mind wander and looking out over downtown Portland, it occurred to me that I was running effortlessly. !!! Hey, wait, is this true?, I thought, Am I really running completely comfortable and easy? Yes. Yes, I was. And in that moment I was flooded with bodily memories of how fun running can be when your body is healthy. I also realized that I genuinely cannot remember the last time running felt truly effortless. It's possible it was late October of 2013, almost a year ago.
That run made me decide to stop stalling and sign up for the race. It's hard to explain why, but I just wanted to. I'm usually content to wait to race until I have some semblance of fitness, but this time I didn't want to wait. I wanted to get out there. I wanted a starting point for my comeback.
This race is not a large or super competitive event, but it is a pancake flat 5k. No hills, no trails, and it's not some race distance that I never run. This is a fast course at my best, most often raced distance. There would be no hiding from or excusing the slow time that I was bound to run.
I decided I was ok with that. The comeback that I'm on right now, provided it keeps going, may take quite a while. Now is not the time to be too proud to race.
The race was up in Longview and was very small. It had that great small town race feel to it.
As we lined up, the race director made sure to tell us that the roads that we'd be running on were not going to be closed to traffic, and that even though they would have volunteers holding up traffic at intersections, it was our job to be careful and not get ourselves killed.
Off we went. Within half a mile or so, I had moved my way into a position about 20 meters behind a pack of 5 or 6 dudes, with one considerably faster guy well out in front of them. I settled in there, expecting at least a few of those guys to come back to me later on.
I also discovered that in Longview, just because the roads are not closed during the race doesn't mean you don't run right down the middle of them. Seriously. Right smack down the middle of these huge wide streets is where we ran. There weren't very many cars out, and no one seemed to be pissed off or anything, but still, it was pretty strange. At one point, we were running down a two lane street, with a left turn coming up and a car coming up behind us, and we all edged over and ran right on the yellow line so that the car could pass us on the right. Weird.
Before the race, I thought that my absolute best case scenario would be 18:30, but that 18:45 was probably more realistic. I was hoping to run low 6's and maybe get a negative split off that pace.
There were no mile markers on the course, but my Garmin gave me a 6:10 first mile. That was a little disappointing to see, because the effort felt about right if not the pace, but that mile was in the past so I just tried to relax and push a little more.
At about 1.25 miles, there was a very short out and back, and to my surprise I saw that there was another woman not that far behind me. And to me she didn't look very tired. She looked a lot less tired than I felt. Great, I thought, now I really have to get my shit together or I'm going to get passed in the last mile.
Over the next mile, I picked off a couple of guys that had fallen off of the little pack in front of me. My second mile was a little faster by my Garmin (6:04), but nothing spectacular, and I was starting to do the 5k struggle. As we entered the last mile, we turned on to a main street that actually had traffic on it, and were relegated to the thin space between oncoming traffic and parked cars.
This stretch was 3/4 of a mile long. The only time that 3/4 of a mile seems like a long distance is when it starts at 2.25 miles into a 5k. I caught myself slacking off a couple of times, but managed both times to regain my focus pretty quickly. The pack of dudes was still in striking distance and one more guy had fallen off the back. With less than half a mile to go, I passed the one guy, but I did not seem to have it in me to make a final push to those last 3 guys.
I dug in as the final turn appeared, and tried to will myself to sprint the last couple hundred meters. It wasn't much of a sprint, I'll admit that. It was a slight increase in speed, at best. The announcer started saying something about me being the first female or something and then when I was about 10-15 meters from the finish, he said, "You've got some heat coming down on you", which meant that the last guy I had passed was running me down. Only then did the next gear kick in and I found a little speed to prevent myself from getting nipped at the line. I give that guy full credit for the sneak attack. He was quiet. If the announcer hadn't said something, I probably wouldn't have heard him until he was already passing me.
But then this happened:
I crossed the line about half a step in front of the guy, and since the race was chipped, our names and times popped up on the screen and the announcer read them off. He called out the dude's name and said he ran 19:04, and then he called out my name and said I ran 19:21. Um, what? I hadn't stopped my watch right at the line, but I had taken about three steps past it, put my hands on my knees and then looked down at my wrist to see 19:08 turning to 19:09. I figured they must have read off my time wrong or something.
After I cooled down I went over to look at the official results screens, and it said 19:21 for me. I printed it out and took my slip over to the timing guys and explained to them that my result was wrong. They were very nice and said they'd look into it, but I checked the results later and they hadn't fixed it.
Now, just to be clear, this is not something I'm furious about, and it's not something I'm losing sleep over. I know what time I ran, and it's not like I need the official result for anything. But being the person I am, I can't help but wonder about it, because I have no idea what the mechanism could possibly be that would cause only me to magically lose 17-18 seconds on my chip. Both the start and finish were chipped, but it was the system where they don't use mats on the ground. They use some kind of wireless signal I guess, I'm not really certain what the exact technology is. I was standing right behind the first row of dudes, so at most there would have been a second or two lag between gun time and chip time, except these guys (Uberthons) don't even use gun time. They only have chip time. And I was not doing strides off the front of the line before the start (and even if I was, I wouldn't have been doing them 17 seconds before the gun went off). Even if I started my watch a little late, it would only be a second or two. It's just weird. And how could they not notice when they called out our times as we crossed the line together that they were calling out times 17 seconds apart? There was a 20+ second gap both in front of us and behind us, so it's not like it was hectic.
But anyway, it was a nice race. They didn't really have "prizes" for the winners (other than plaques), which is understandable given the size of the race and the fact that it was a benefit, but they did do this thing where they let the winners pick out one of the unclaimed raffle prizes to take home. I thought that was a clever way for a small race to be able to offer a little something to the race winners without dipping into their race budget. The leftover raffle prizes were all set up on display on a table, and it was a little overwhelming trying to assess which was the most awesome. I felt like I was on a game show. Ultimately I chose the prize with the biggest volume: a bucket (!) filled with... things. Yes, a bucket! Filled with things! We had much fun in the car afterwards sifting through the prizes in my new bucket. There was a giant mug filled with chocolates, a Starbucks card, a candle, a travel mug, a gold styrofoam pumpkin (yes!), a giant bottle of water, a dishcloth... it was great. (I hope it doesn't sound like I'm being sarcastic about the bucket, because I'm not. The bucket is the bomb. I love the bucket.)
Buckets and timing issues aside, I'm glad I raced. Trying to get back to healthy without the use of IV iron could end up being a long, slow road instead of the quick jump I've gotten used to. I may need to settle for baby steps along the way, and there's a good chance I won't be seeing 17:xx on the clock anytime this season. But that's ok. If I end up with stable iron for the long term, it'll be worth it.
Monday, September 22, 2014
The IRON wars, part 11326
The original intent of this blog was to talk about celiac
and iron-related issues, but up until now I've only written about that stuff in passing. Why? The truth is, that stuff is BORING. It’s boring to
write about, it’s boring to think about, and unless you’re suffering from the
same thing, it’s boring to read about.
And it's depressing. I don't want to read about it anymore, much less write about it. I just want it to go away.
And it's depressing. I don't want to read about it anymore, much less write about it. I just want it to go away.
And beyond the general downer-ness, I’ve come to realize
that the iron situation for me is very specific to my own issues, and thus
probably not particularly relevant to most people. I've gotten to the point where whenever I
see an article about iron and running, I try to keep myself from reading it. I
find them to either be inaccurate (and sometimes frighteningly misleading,
despite being written by people with impressive credentials behind their name)
or insulting to my experiences. Seriously, if I see one more thing telling me I
just need to drink orange juice with my iron supplements…
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure those articles are helpful for a lot of people (since everyone has to start with the basic stuff first), they're just not particularly relevant for me. My body is like, "Orange juice?! Hahahahah, yeah, that'll totally change everything." My body does not give a
shit what I chase iron supplements with. We’re not absorbing.
So why am I writing about this now, when I can’t even talk
to my own family about it without their eyes glazing over?
A couple of reasons:
- While I’ve never found much of anything that speaks to my specifics, it would be pretty egotistical of me to think that there isn’t a single other person out there having similar problems, so maybe there is someone who could benefit from reading about my travails.
- I realized recently that my first iron issues were diagnosed in late 2006, and despite many efforts, many doctors of many different types, and many approaches, it's been 8 YEARS and I still don’t have the answer.
I will now attempt to summarize my iron
history of the past 8 years in 5 sentences or less.
In late 2006, after suffering from fatigue for practically
forever, I finally went to a doctor and found out I was ridiculously anemic.
Vast amounts of every kind of oral supplement known to man, combined with a celiac
diagnosis and corresponding removal of gluten from my diet, only pushed my iron up a little
bit. In 2009, I finally convinced a (different) doctor to give me IV iron and it was like I
was born again. Awesomeness followed, but only in cycles, because the thing
about IV iron is that you get it, then you use it, and then you need to get it again.
And because I’m me, I have a chart to back this up.
What you see here is 8 years of ferritin test results. The vertical lines indicate when I got IV iron. There's a little glitch in the chart just to the left of center, where I'm missing some data points, but I think you get the picture, right?
IV iron causes my ferritin to go through the roof, and then it starts dropping. That's not particularly surprising. The thing that's important to note is the slope of the line when ferritin starts dropping. As we move along the chart to the right, the line is getting steeper, meaning ferritin is dropping faster. I used to get my iron and be good for a year, but this last time I went from 141 to 55 in less than 6 months. And part of that time I was on a break followed by a slow build (not running 85 miles a week, in other words).
Here's the other thing: it used to be that getting my IV iron was like uppers for running. I'd go from struggling to being able to train hard again within a few weeks. It was like night and day. This last time, however, the change was barely significant.
Oh, and I guess there's one other thing: I seem to be hitting the fatigue zone at higher and higher ferritin levels. I start feeling it when my ferritin is in the 60s now, which a lot of people would tell you is plenty high.
My theory on this is that the body/brain feels the rate of change just as much, if not more, than the actual ferritin level. I believe the central governor model would back me up on this.
Of course, I'm not a doctor, nor a physiologist, nor any other kind of expert other than an expert (well, kind of) on my own self, so I am not going to try to say that I know exactly what kind of mechanism is at work here. All I'm really saying is this: IV iron is not working anymore.
It has always bothered me that we haven't been able to fix (or properly identify the cause of) the exact nature of the real problem (aka: why can't I get iron from food like a normal person?), but as long as I had a solution for the symptoms, I could live with it.
Now I no longer have a solution.
So what next?
Well, I'm back to trying to fix the problem from the inside out, but I'm using TCM instead of western medicine. Actually, western medicine never even really tried to fix me from the inside out. None of the western medicine doctors I saw wanted to jump in and try to figure out what was actually going on. Maybe that's partly my fault for not insisting on it more, but I've done quite a bit of insisting along the way as it is. Yes, that's right, I am the obnoxious patient who thinks they know more than the doctor. But, in my defense, I wasn't that person in the beginning, and I have become that way for a reason!
Anyway, I feel more hopeful about this approach than I have in a while. When I have an appointment, my TCM doctor listens to me closely about what seems to be getting better or worse and makes adjustments accordingly. She asks pertinent questions, we discuss things, and she doesn't have 8 patients scheduled every hour. But I also recognize that things might get worse before they get better. And that the things we're doing might not work, or might not work enough. I may find myself, three months from now, begging my OHSU doctor for venofer again. We'll see. I hope not. Besides the fact that venofer no longer seems to be working, it just doesn't seem like a good long term solution. (And I really do have to beg for it.)
Finally, because I've kind of glossed over the last 8 years of iron ups and downs, I'd like to at least point out a couple of the things I've learned along the way.
- You are the boss of your own body. Sure, doctors know lots of things that you and I don't, and they can obviously be very helpful, but they're just human beings like us. Don't be afraid to speak up, to question, to suggest, and to get yourself a new damn doctor if you aren't satisfied that the one you have is hearing what you tell them.
- Ferritin is just a marker of stored iron. It is not your actual stored iron, and iron is not the only thing that changes the number. Ferritin testing can be very helpful (and some of us love the numbers!!), but it has to go hand in hand with your own history, and more importantly, how you actually feel. A ferritin of 60 might be totally kick ass for one person, or, perhaps more importantly, if a person is at 60 without taking supplements, but it happens to suck ass for this person. It's not quite as simple as reading a gas gauge, in other words.
If there's one good thing about the low points of running, it's how awesome it feels when they end.
I'm looking forward to the end of this particular valley.
I'm looking forward to the end of this particular valley.
Saturday, September 13, 2014
Here you go, have yourself a race - Bridge of the Goddess race report
Sometimes life hands you what you need even when you don't know what that is.
I certainly didn't think the race this morning was going to be one of those times when I found myself needing to switch race distances at packet pickup (from the half down to the 10k). I was wondering if I should just skip the race entirely. Hood to Coast was a blast, but it beat me up pretty badly, and it's been a few pretty rough running weeks since then. I've been fighting off an injury, I just found out my iron has been plummeting again, and frankly my race fitness is laughable. Despite my best efforts, it just hasn't been a good running year.
But dang it, I paid $90 to register for this race, and they were being ridiculously kind in offering the option to change race distances at the last minute, so in the end I decided to cut the distance, suck it up and just show up. I get humbled all the time in running, after all, and I'm not too proud to show up and get my ass handed to me (take note Mo Farah). I guess it just seemed important to my psyche to be out in the racing world this morning.
The race I'm talking about is a new one: the Bridge of the Goddess Half marathon and 10k. For those not from around here, the Bridge of the Gods is a bridge across the Columbia River. This race starts up on the bridge and then does an out and back on the Old Historic Columbia River Highway, which is a paved bike path that used to be a road in olden times, before finishing up down in Marine Park in Cascade Locks.
There is not a single flat spot on the entire course. The half marathon even has a couple of flights of stairs! Definitely not a PR course, and therefore not typically on the Andi Camp-approved race list. Usually I avoid "challenging" courses like the plague-on-prs that they are. But apparently a few months ago it seemed like a good idea to sign up for this race, and so there I was.
It was a first year race, but it was run by people with tons of experience, so in general, it went pretty smoothly. There were a few hiccups, specifics coming up, but they were handled very promptly and professionally, with no attitude (ahem, certain other race companies in town...).
There was another new race earlier this year, on almost the exact same course, called the Bridge of the Gods half marathon. It started on the Washington side of the bridge, and ran all the way across it. Apparently they supplied shuttle buses to get across the bridge before the start. (Really? The bridge isn't that long. Do people about to run 13.1 miles really need vehicular transport across a bridge?) The Goddess race, however, started at the front of the Oregon side of the bridge. They traded the scenery of getting to run across the bridge for not having to run across the steel grating of the bridge deck. I think it was a good swap, as the grating under race flats felt pretty awful. I walked up there thinking I might finish my warmup on the bridge itself, but after about three steps I turned around and went back to the pavement.
The other down side of the start location was that you have to walk across the start line to get behind it. And, people being people, there were still quite a few of them walking up to the start when the start time rolled around. They delayed the start a few minutes to get the bulk of them up there, but eventually they had to get going and just asked the remaining people to get out of the way of the oncoming runners. Not a big deal, and not much you can do about it.
Both races started together and followed the same course until the 10k turnaround. Very old school.
Since I was running the shorter distance, and the race was almost entirely women, I found myself near to the front right off the bat. There was a long downhill to start, so I focused on not getting carried away. One woman went to the lead at a pretty good clip, and I found myself running with another woman not too far behind. A quick check on my watch and I thought I might be out a little quick, so I relaxed a little and let the woman I was with go on into second place.
The downhill turned to uphill and the lead woman backed off a bit. I watched as the second place woman comfortably passed into the lead. I stayed calm in third and watched things play out, knowing that if I was going to do anything notable in this race, I would need to wait until the second half.
That first uphill was tiring, but tolerable. When we crested it and started down, I made a note of the fact that the 4 mile marker for the return trip was there on the crest. That note was me preparing to be positive on the way back: downhill starts at mile 4.
But here, at mile 2, we had started descending the outgoing side. We descended for a long time. A long ass time. The gap to the two women in front of me was holding steady, but all I could think was that I was going to have to turn around and run back up this hill that kept going and going and going.
Eventually the downhill lessened and it flattened just long enough to turn a corner and start climbing again. I knew we had to be nearing the turnaround, and sure enough, a couple of minutes later I saw the leader coming back at me. At that point I was probably only 10 or 15 seconds behind her, and the turnaround sign was there in an instant. It was located directly at the bottom of the aforementioned stairs, and as I saw it I realized I had never seen the second place woman coming back at me. I glanced upwards just in time to see the back of her shoes disappearing up the stairs and out of view.
Uh, wow. Either she was crazy fit or she was going to have a pretty awful second half of the race. I had to wonder... surely she knew what the course was like, right?
I didn't ponder it for too long, though, because now I was in second place instead of third! Hooray for me!
I didn't know the woman leading the race, but we had exchanged a couple of sentences in the first few minutes of the race, and I was pretty sure she was not going to come back to me. I was also pretty sure that if I did get closer to her, she had another level she could summon without too much trouble. That was just a hunch, but you get a feel for these kinds of things when you've been racing a while.
Still, though, a race is a race, so I tried to keep my eyes on her back where the course allowed, to maintain and/or shrink the gap, just in case.
We were passing the runners heading out and they were cheering very enthusiastically. I also got a couple of high fives and some "she's not that far ahead, go get her!". On the short downhill from the turnaround, I was able to smile back and say thanks a few times, but all too quickly we started ascending that nasty long hill up to the 4 mile mark. My small smiles quickly turned to grimaces, although the cheering continued and was still very helpful. I tried to smile back with my eyes because my mouth couldn't get there.
That hill went on forever, and I could feel myself slowing and struggling, and hear my breathing getting to freight-train status. Things were bad. Life was instantly awful. What in tarnation was I doing out here anyway? Racing is stupid!
The bulk of the race was now going by in the other direction and they were a welcome distraction. I try never to look behind myself in a race, but as the hill wore on, I did listen to see if I could hear another round of cheers going up for someone close behind me. I heard nothing, and then got irritated with myself and tried to re-focus my brain on what was going on in front of me. The race is always in front of you. Even if you're in first place, the race is in front of you.
Finally that blessed 4 mile marker appeared, and a few seconds later we were descending again. I knew there was at least one more small to medium uphill coming up, but it was nothing compared to what we'd just run up.
Running downhill felt so good. A couple of minutes later I was no longer sounding like a freight train. All of a sudden life didn't seem so bad. In fact it seemed good! Racing is actually pretty great, huh? I mean, yes, technically I was now starting to feel my injured areas kicking up a fuss, but I knew they would hold. I was mostly being limited by my fitness (as opposed to injury) and that's all you can really ask for.
Mile 5 came up and with it some more uphill. Rounding a bend, a straightaway unfurled itself in front of me and I got a quick glance of the race leader up ahead. I wasn't going to catch her, but it helped to know that she hadn't put another half mile on me going up that long hill.
I struggled up the last hill as the bike path ended and tossed us onto the sidewalk near where we'd come down off the bridge at the start, and then... and then... well, no one was there to tell me where to go so I just kept running straight through town on the sidewalk. Right away I saw a race photographer, so I figured I was going the right way, but I could no longer see the woman in front of me. And I was running down the hill into town on a sidewalk with no race markings, startling the handful of pedestrians that was out and about. I asked one of them if another runner had come through here. He had to ponder it, but then he said he had seen someone else on the other side of the street. I looked over there and didn't see anyone, but I also didn't know where else to go, so I kept running on the sidewalk.
Now I was getting irritated. I was in the last half mile of a 10k and I didn't know if I was going the right way. I thought to myself, if I'm off course and I have to turn around and run back up this blasted hill, I'm going to punch someone in the face.
After dodging a few more sidewalk pedestrians, I looked up and saw the race leader making a left down a street. I saw some orange cones. Surely that had to be it. A guy was standing in the intersection, looking at me. Just standing there, looking at me as I approached. Is this the course? I yelled out. Then he raised his arm and pointed me down the road to the left.
The next 100 meters or so was clearly marked by a rope line, and then as I rounded the last corner, a volunteer said: through those cones and then finish under the arch. I ran through the cones (why were there three cones in a line across the path??), looked up and saw the arch across a grass field and made a beeline for it. There was some sort of playground thing in my path, which seemed odd. Why am I running this weird line across a field? I thought to myself.
About halfway to the arch, some people started yelling at me and pointing to my left. I looked over and there was one of those temporary blue mesh fence lines leading to the finish chute. (By the way, this line of fencing had no geometrical relation to the line you were on when running through the aforementioned three cones.)
I started angling towards the fence as I was running towards the arch and then it dawned on me that I was supposed to be on the other side of it. Maybe because I could finally understand what they were yelling to me (the wind was hella loud so it was hard to hear anything else) or maybe it was the fact that I was now close enough to see that there was a fence blocking the finish line. I yelled out to them, "Seriously?!?!?", backtracked a few strides and leaped over one of the low spots in the fence before hanging a hard right to charge down those last few meters.
I crossed the finish line and the announcer was not able to identify me (because I had changed races the day before and they'd given me a new bib). As soon as he stopped talking, I yelled over to him that there was no one up at the end of the bike path telling people where to go. I'm sure my tone of voice made me sound like an asshole, but I was pretty pissed off right in that moment. Sure, I wasn't going to set a PR on that course, but the last half mile of a race you should be leaving your guts on the course, not trying to figure out where to go. Tired and confused = angry. Of course, it wasn't really that big of a deal, and these folks are pros, so they started trying to get a volunteer up there immediately. And within five or ten minutes they had removed the three ineffective orange cones near the finish straight and set up a whole line of them leading people right along the magic blue fencing.
I'm not generally that big into finish area amenities, but Marine Park is a pretty terrific place to hang around in after a race. Right on the Columbia river, lots of grass space, and just plain pretty to look at.
Normally that would be it for my race report, but this time I have to mention the awards ceremony.
When they announced the top 3 for the overall 10k, they didn't call my name. They called out the 4th place woman (saying she was in third), then the 3rd place woman (saying she was in 2nd), skipped me, and then announced the winner (also not me, since I obviously didn't win). I was like, uh... what? is this some weird thing where they take me out of the overall results because I'm over 40 now? Sometimes they take the overall winners out of the masters but I've never heard of them doing it the other way around. Why would you? It doesn't make any sense. So I went up to the people doing the awards and politely (no really, I was super polite) told them that I had gotten 2nd overall and had been missed in the results. The race director was standing right there and she recognized me because she had talked to the winner and me right after we finished, and she said, oh, we couldn't find you. Your information wasn't linked to your chip in the computer. We paged you from the finish line, but we couldn't find you.
To my credit, I did not point out how ridiculous this sounds. Yes, you didn't know my name, but you knew that I was the second finisher, and you knew that you didn't have my name in your computer, so when you couldn't find me to get my name, you just decided to move the people below me up? Why not just announce my bib number at the awards and say hey, there was a mixup and we don't have your name, please come up and fill us in.
Again to their credit, they fixed it up right quick, with all niceness and no attitude towards me. They were really very nice. Mixups happen, you let people know, and things get fixed. And I can understand that allowing people to switch race distances, which they were generous about doing, creates considerably more work for them. I'd hate for my experience to deter them from offering that feature in the future.
And speaking of awards, now that I'm officially a master, I decided to form an opinion about the whole "double dipping" thing that people talk about in regards to overall awards coinciding with masters awards. I've never cared that much either way. While I appreciate a nice award as much as the next person, I don't choose races based on the awards. And we all know that what place you get is largely a function of who shows up to any given race. There's always someone faster than you out there somewhere.
But it is kind of an interesting question. If you don't allow double dipping, what's "better", 1st place masters, or 2nd overall?
So while I was driving the 45 minutes back to Portland, I gave it some thought. I put myself on both sides of the coin and I've come to the conclusion that I'm in favor of double dipping for overall and masters overall (but definitely not for regular age group awards). It's easy to suggest that I came to this conclusion because it would sometimes benefit me (like possibly today, because if my chip had been in the computer they would have seen that I was 40, and thus the first master), but that's not what swayed me. It was actually the opposite thing that swayed me. If I came in 4th place overall, but got beat by someone else over 40, and was then announced as the masters winner, I would feel like it was a sham. The first place master is the first person over 40 who crosses the line. Period. If they also happen to be one of the overall winners, then hell yes, more power to them. Give them their two awards! Because if I was that 2nd place master picking up the masters "win" due to a technicality, I would feel like I was cheating. I would know that I was NOT the first place master.
Oh, I almost forgot: what was it that I unknowingly needed that life handed to me today?
It turns out that I needed to race. I didn't need to win, I didn't need to run a pr, I just needed to get out there and RACE. I needed to put on my shiny new Oiselle singlet, lace up my no-fooling-around racing flats, and fucking race. Despite any course and results hassles, I was wearing a big, fat smile inside my chest all morning. It was still there when I left and still there when I got home.
Sometimes you just need to race.
I certainly didn't think the race this morning was going to be one of those times when I found myself needing to switch race distances at packet pickup (from the half down to the 10k). I was wondering if I should just skip the race entirely. Hood to Coast was a blast, but it beat me up pretty badly, and it's been a few pretty rough running weeks since then. I've been fighting off an injury, I just found out my iron has been plummeting again, and frankly my race fitness is laughable. Despite my best efforts, it just hasn't been a good running year.
But dang it, I paid $90 to register for this race, and they were being ridiculously kind in offering the option to change race distances at the last minute, so in the end I decided to cut the distance, suck it up and just show up. I get humbled all the time in running, after all, and I'm not too proud to show up and get my ass handed to me (take note Mo Farah). I guess it just seemed important to my psyche to be out in the racing world this morning.
The race I'm talking about is a new one: the Bridge of the Goddess Half marathon and 10k. For those not from around here, the Bridge of the Gods is a bridge across the Columbia River. This race starts up on the bridge and then does an out and back on the Old Historic Columbia River Highway, which is a paved bike path that used to be a road in olden times, before finishing up down in Marine Park in Cascade Locks.
There is not a single flat spot on the entire course. The half marathon even has a couple of flights of stairs! Definitely not a PR course, and therefore not typically on the Andi Camp-approved race list. Usually I avoid "challenging" courses like the plague-on-prs that they are. But apparently a few months ago it seemed like a good idea to sign up for this race, and so there I was.
It was a first year race, but it was run by people with tons of experience, so in general, it went pretty smoothly. There were a few hiccups, specifics coming up, but they were handled very promptly and professionally, with no attitude (ahem, certain other race companies in town...).
There was another new race earlier this year, on almost the exact same course, called the Bridge of the Gods half marathon. It started on the Washington side of the bridge, and ran all the way across it. Apparently they supplied shuttle buses to get across the bridge before the start. (Really? The bridge isn't that long. Do people about to run 13.1 miles really need vehicular transport across a bridge?) The Goddess race, however, started at the front of the Oregon side of the bridge. They traded the scenery of getting to run across the bridge for not having to run across the steel grating of the bridge deck. I think it was a good swap, as the grating under race flats felt pretty awful. I walked up there thinking I might finish my warmup on the bridge itself, but after about three steps I turned around and went back to the pavement.
The other down side of the start location was that you have to walk across the start line to get behind it. And, people being people, there were still quite a few of them walking up to the start when the start time rolled around. They delayed the start a few minutes to get the bulk of them up there, but eventually they had to get going and just asked the remaining people to get out of the way of the oncoming runners. Not a big deal, and not much you can do about it.
Both races started together and followed the same course until the 10k turnaround. Very old school.
Since I was running the shorter distance, and the race was almost entirely women, I found myself near to the front right off the bat. There was a long downhill to start, so I focused on not getting carried away. One woman went to the lead at a pretty good clip, and I found myself running with another woman not too far behind. A quick check on my watch and I thought I might be out a little quick, so I relaxed a little and let the woman I was with go on into second place.
The downhill turned to uphill and the lead woman backed off a bit. I watched as the second place woman comfortably passed into the lead. I stayed calm in third and watched things play out, knowing that if I was going to do anything notable in this race, I would need to wait until the second half.
That first uphill was tiring, but tolerable. When we crested it and started down, I made a note of the fact that the 4 mile marker for the return trip was there on the crest. That note was me preparing to be positive on the way back: downhill starts at mile 4.
But here, at mile 2, we had started descending the outgoing side. We descended for a long time. A long ass time. The gap to the two women in front of me was holding steady, but all I could think was that I was going to have to turn around and run back up this hill that kept going and going and going.
Eventually the downhill lessened and it flattened just long enough to turn a corner and start climbing again. I knew we had to be nearing the turnaround, and sure enough, a couple of minutes later I saw the leader coming back at me. At that point I was probably only 10 or 15 seconds behind her, and the turnaround sign was there in an instant. It was located directly at the bottom of the aforementioned stairs, and as I saw it I realized I had never seen the second place woman coming back at me. I glanced upwards just in time to see the back of her shoes disappearing up the stairs and out of view.
Uh, wow. Either she was crazy fit or she was going to have a pretty awful second half of the race. I had to wonder... surely she knew what the course was like, right?
I didn't ponder it for too long, though, because now I was in second place instead of third! Hooray for me!
I didn't know the woman leading the race, but we had exchanged a couple of sentences in the first few minutes of the race, and I was pretty sure she was not going to come back to me. I was also pretty sure that if I did get closer to her, she had another level she could summon without too much trouble. That was just a hunch, but you get a feel for these kinds of things when you've been racing a while.
Still, though, a race is a race, so I tried to keep my eyes on her back where the course allowed, to maintain and/or shrink the gap, just in case.
We were passing the runners heading out and they were cheering very enthusiastically. I also got a couple of high fives and some "she's not that far ahead, go get her!". On the short downhill from the turnaround, I was able to smile back and say thanks a few times, but all too quickly we started ascending that nasty long hill up to the 4 mile mark. My small smiles quickly turned to grimaces, although the cheering continued and was still very helpful. I tried to smile back with my eyes because my mouth couldn't get there.
That hill went on forever, and I could feel myself slowing and struggling, and hear my breathing getting to freight-train status. Things were bad. Life was instantly awful. What in tarnation was I doing out here anyway? Racing is stupid!
The bulk of the race was now going by in the other direction and they were a welcome distraction. I try never to look behind myself in a race, but as the hill wore on, I did listen to see if I could hear another round of cheers going up for someone close behind me. I heard nothing, and then got irritated with myself and tried to re-focus my brain on what was going on in front of me. The race is always in front of you. Even if you're in first place, the race is in front of you.
Finally that blessed 4 mile marker appeared, and a few seconds later we were descending again. I knew there was at least one more small to medium uphill coming up, but it was nothing compared to what we'd just run up.
Running downhill felt so good. A couple of minutes later I was no longer sounding like a freight train. All of a sudden life didn't seem so bad. In fact it seemed good! Racing is actually pretty great, huh? I mean, yes, technically I was now starting to feel my injured areas kicking up a fuss, but I knew they would hold. I was mostly being limited by my fitness (as opposed to injury) and that's all you can really ask for.
Mile 5 came up and with it some more uphill. Rounding a bend, a straightaway unfurled itself in front of me and I got a quick glance of the race leader up ahead. I wasn't going to catch her, but it helped to know that she hadn't put another half mile on me going up that long hill.
I struggled up the last hill as the bike path ended and tossed us onto the sidewalk near where we'd come down off the bridge at the start, and then... and then... well, no one was there to tell me where to go so I just kept running straight through town on the sidewalk. Right away I saw a race photographer, so I figured I was going the right way, but I could no longer see the woman in front of me. And I was running down the hill into town on a sidewalk with no race markings, startling the handful of pedestrians that was out and about. I asked one of them if another runner had come through here. He had to ponder it, but then he said he had seen someone else on the other side of the street. I looked over there and didn't see anyone, but I also didn't know where else to go, so I kept running on the sidewalk.
Now I was getting irritated. I was in the last half mile of a 10k and I didn't know if I was going the right way. I thought to myself, if I'm off course and I have to turn around and run back up this blasted hill, I'm going to punch someone in the face.
After dodging a few more sidewalk pedestrians, I looked up and saw the race leader making a left down a street. I saw some orange cones. Surely that had to be it. A guy was standing in the intersection, looking at me. Just standing there, looking at me as I approached. Is this the course? I yelled out. Then he raised his arm and pointed me down the road to the left.
The next 100 meters or so was clearly marked by a rope line, and then as I rounded the last corner, a volunteer said: through those cones and then finish under the arch. I ran through the cones (why were there three cones in a line across the path??), looked up and saw the arch across a grass field and made a beeline for it. There was some sort of playground thing in my path, which seemed odd. Why am I running this weird line across a field? I thought to myself.
About halfway to the arch, some people started yelling at me and pointing to my left. I looked over and there was one of those temporary blue mesh fence lines leading to the finish chute. (By the way, this line of fencing had no geometrical relation to the line you were on when running through the aforementioned three cones.)
I started angling towards the fence as I was running towards the arch and then it dawned on me that I was supposed to be on the other side of it. Maybe because I could finally understand what they were yelling to me (the wind was hella loud so it was hard to hear anything else) or maybe it was the fact that I was now close enough to see that there was a fence blocking the finish line. I yelled out to them, "Seriously?!?!?", backtracked a few strides and leaped over one of the low spots in the fence before hanging a hard right to charge down those last few meters.
I crossed the finish line and the announcer was not able to identify me (because I had changed races the day before and they'd given me a new bib). As soon as he stopped talking, I yelled over to him that there was no one up at the end of the bike path telling people where to go. I'm sure my tone of voice made me sound like an asshole, but I was pretty pissed off right in that moment. Sure, I wasn't going to set a PR on that course, but the last half mile of a race you should be leaving your guts on the course, not trying to figure out where to go. Tired and confused = angry. Of course, it wasn't really that big of a deal, and these folks are pros, so they started trying to get a volunteer up there immediately. And within five or ten minutes they had removed the three ineffective orange cones near the finish straight and set up a whole line of them leading people right along the magic blue fencing.
I'm not generally that big into finish area amenities, but Marine Park is a pretty terrific place to hang around in after a race. Right on the Columbia river, lots of grass space, and just plain pretty to look at.
Normally that would be it for my race report, but this time I have to mention the awards ceremony.
When they announced the top 3 for the overall 10k, they didn't call my name. They called out the 4th place woman (saying she was in third), then the 3rd place woman (saying she was in 2nd), skipped me, and then announced the winner (also not me, since I obviously didn't win). I was like, uh... what? is this some weird thing where they take me out of the overall results because I'm over 40 now? Sometimes they take the overall winners out of the masters but I've never heard of them doing it the other way around. Why would you? It doesn't make any sense. So I went up to the people doing the awards and politely (no really, I was super polite) told them that I had gotten 2nd overall and had been missed in the results. The race director was standing right there and she recognized me because she had talked to the winner and me right after we finished, and she said, oh, we couldn't find you. Your information wasn't linked to your chip in the computer. We paged you from the finish line, but we couldn't find you.
To my credit, I did not point out how ridiculous this sounds. Yes, you didn't know my name, but you knew that I was the second finisher, and you knew that you didn't have my name in your computer, so when you couldn't find me to get my name, you just decided to move the people below me up? Why not just announce my bib number at the awards and say hey, there was a mixup and we don't have your name, please come up and fill us in.
Again to their credit, they fixed it up right quick, with all niceness and no attitude towards me. They were really very nice. Mixups happen, you let people know, and things get fixed. And I can understand that allowing people to switch race distances, which they were generous about doing, creates considerably more work for them. I'd hate for my experience to deter them from offering that feature in the future.
And speaking of awards, now that I'm officially a master, I decided to form an opinion about the whole "double dipping" thing that people talk about in regards to overall awards coinciding with masters awards. I've never cared that much either way. While I appreciate a nice award as much as the next person, I don't choose races based on the awards. And we all know that what place you get is largely a function of who shows up to any given race. There's always someone faster than you out there somewhere.
But it is kind of an interesting question. If you don't allow double dipping, what's "better", 1st place masters, or 2nd overall?
So while I was driving the 45 minutes back to Portland, I gave it some thought. I put myself on both sides of the coin and I've come to the conclusion that I'm in favor of double dipping for overall and masters overall (but definitely not for regular age group awards). It's easy to suggest that I came to this conclusion because it would sometimes benefit me (like possibly today, because if my chip had been in the computer they would have seen that I was 40, and thus the first master), but that's not what swayed me. It was actually the opposite thing that swayed me. If I came in 4th place overall, but got beat by someone else over 40, and was then announced as the masters winner, I would feel like it was a sham. The first place master is the first person over 40 who crosses the line. Period. If they also happen to be one of the overall winners, then hell yes, more power to them. Give them their two awards! Because if I was that 2nd place master picking up the masters "win" due to a technicality, I would feel like I was cheating. I would know that I was NOT the first place master.
Oh, I almost forgot: what was it that I unknowingly needed that life handed to me today?
It turns out that I needed to race. I didn't need to win, I didn't need to run a pr, I just needed to get out there and RACE. I needed to put on my shiny new Oiselle singlet, lace up my no-fooling-around racing flats, and fucking race. Despite any course and results hassles, I was wearing a big, fat smile inside my chest all morning. It was still there when I left and still there when I got home.
Sometimes you just need to race.
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Newport marathon un-race report, the unfortunate sequel to the pre-race report
Sometimes you go into a marathon expecting great things. Your training went great, you feel awesome, the weather is perfect, and you can feel it in your toes that you are going to kick some ass.
Sometimes you're cautiously optimistic.
Sometimes you get sick or injured and you throw in the towel during training and don't even show up for the race.
And sometimes you show up just needing to run the damn race, even when you know that the best possible outcome will still be slightly disappointing.
Yesterday's Newport marathon unfortunately fell into the last category for me.
Even more unfortunately, my race ended like this:
DNF.
Ugh. Are there any uglier letters to a runner?
No one likes a DNS either, but once you physically step across that start line, there's an implied contract between you and yourself that you will also cross the corresponding finish line. That's a tough contract to break.
Tough enough that between the wheels falling off at 18 miles and finally dropping out at 22 miles, I let two shuttle buses pass me by, while I doggedly tried to pull myself back together. I mean, who drops out of a marathon at 22 miles?? It''s only 4 more miles, just finish the damn thing!! And I came very close to letting that third shuttle bus pass me by. Very very close.
But let me back up.
As I left the hotel on race morning to jog down to the start, the only specific thing wrong was that I was hungry. I had just eaten a big bowl of oatmeal about an hour earlier, so that was weird, but it's just nerves, right? And the start was less than an hour away, so what was I going to do, eat another bowl of oatmeal? Just nerves, I thought. Everything's fine. Relax.
The first few miles (not flat, by the way, Newport marathon race director) went by. The hills and the 837 turns made it a little tricky to relax, but I knew things would settle down. Miles 4 through the turnaround (at 15.5) and back to the finish were on one road along the bay. That's where I planned to settle in. I wanted to stay conservative on the way out and try to negative split the way back.
There's a small uphill as you pass by the finish line, and then a long downhill on the other side. For those following along at home, yes, that means a long uphill on the return trip, conveniently located at mile 25 of a marathon. (Again, note to race director: hills are not flat.)
I didn't know exactly how many total women were in front of me as we crested that hill passing by the finish line, but there were 3 that I could see: 2 directly in front of me and one maybe 1/4 mile up the road. There was also a handful of guys and the 3:05 pace group a little ways beyond. Ok, I thought. I will get comfortable, run steady low 7 pace, and everyone that I'm seeing right now will come back to me.
That is actually how things went for a while. I ran steady, I passed two women and some of the guys, and gained a little bit on the next woman. I fell into about a 7:05 pace, so the gap to the pace group remained pretty constant.
Miles 4 through 13 should have been fine but they weren't. I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong with me, but something was off. Breathing was fine, legs were not awesome but were ok... hmmm... was it just the annoyance factor?
Wait, annoyance? where is that coming from?, you might be wondering.
I've run lots of small road races, but I've never run a small marathon before. Newport only allows 1000 people in the marathon. There are some great things about small marathons, like no corrals, less money, small town friendliness, etc etc. If there's a drawback, it should be small spectator crowds and fewer people to run with, right? Well, I do 99% of my training alone, so I was not at all concerned about running alone, in fact, I expected it. I have no problem running alone.
Unfortunately I was not running alone. I found myself trapped in a small group of dudes whose main purpose in life seemed to be to annoy me. In hindsight, it may have been mostly just one of the dudes, but I was trying to exist in my own little world as much as possible, and the annoyances were relentless, so it seemed like a small army of dudes.
While I wouldn't want to tell anyone else how they should run their race, here are some things that I'd like to think would be universally agreed upon as bad:
Breathing heavily 4 miles into a marathon. And I mean heavily heavily. Like I said, far be it from me to question your fitness in a race I didn't even finish, but if you sound like you're running a 1500 when there's still over 20 miles left to run, it might be a good idea to back off a wee bit. There's plenty of time for heavy breathing later.
Surging like you're doing a fartlek workout. I suppose an occasional surge can be a good thing for some people, like maybe you want to catch up to a group and tuck in with them, or maybe you're trying to get yourself out of an uncomfortable pace rut, but if you're needing to charge forward every 5 minutes to catch back up with the same people, it's possible you shouldn't be running that fast early in a marathon.
Drafting behind someone like it's a bike race. Tucking in with a group is one thing. Veering dramatically around the road to run directly on someone's heels is not only rude, it's a waste of energy. And in our case it was stupid: if anything, there was a tailwind in the direction we were running.
Now, combine those things into one person, and you have the annoying dude running near me while I was trying to find my rhythm. I actually wanted to slow down just a teeny tiny bit until I felt a little more relaxed, but there was no way I was going to relax with that guy around me. In fact, when I was watching him tail this other guy around the road right in front of me, it was all I could do not to yell at him to run his own race. Anyone reading this who knows me is probably quite surprised that I did not yell at him. But I was trying to find my zen place. Let it go, Andi, I thought, it's not important.
I ran through all of the aid stations, and that finally helped me put some space on the guy. I don't usually take any food or drink the first half of the race anyway, so I wasn't worried about it.
But back to that feeling of unease: it hadn't gone away. Annoying guy might have distracted me from it for a little while, but in between distractions, I was fighting some serious negativity. Contemplating dropping out of a 26 mile race when you're less than 10 miles in is not a good thing. Thus began the bargaining.
Every runner knows about bargaining with yourself. It's a very effective tool sometimes. It's where you tell yourself: just make it to (insert artificial finish line here), and then you can stop. And then once you get there, you replace it with a new artificial finish line. And so on until the finish.
I started out with: just get to the half marathon turn around (mile 8.7), so you can see how many people in front of you were only running the half (very few, as it turned out). Then it was: just get past the 13 mile mark, because then you'll start to see the leaders (hopefully my friend Kevin) coming back at you and that will be inspiring, plus then you can count the women in front of you and know what place you're in (Kevin was in second place, looking good, the lead women were looking good, and I was in 6th place). When that started to wear off, it was: just get to the turnaround, everything will seem better when you're on the way back (uh, no it won't).
By the way, my pace had not slowed dramatically prior to the turnaround. I had been been steady in the low 7s through 10 or 11 miles, and then had only slight slowing (~10s per mile) over the next few miles. That might have been a bummer on a day when I was really going for it, but to me on this day, it wasn't that bad. I wasn't crashing, I told myself, I was just going to be finishing a little slower than planned. Or maybe it was just a bad patch and I'd pick it up again later.
Coming back from the turnaround, however, did not give me the boost I'd hoped for. Sure, it was great in some ways. Sharing encouragement with the runners coming the other way is always good for a lift. Seeing my friend Carin and high-fiving my Oiselle teammates Laurel and Anne was easily the best part of the run. As my slow down continued, I kept smiling at the oncoming runners as long as I could. I was still running, at least, right?
But then I wasn't running. At first, it was just a few steps walking through an aid station. Sometimes it's worth a few walking steps just to get a decent amount of water in your mouth and actually down your throat.
That was around 17 miles.
I'm a realist, and I knew the ship was sinking fast. But I'm not too proud to finish a disappointing marathon, I've done it many times before, and I knew I wanted to finish this one. I pictured myself crossing the finish line and I knew it would feel better to finish, no matter what the clock said.
So I told myself I'd just run from aid station to aid station. They're two miles apart. Run two miles to the next one, walk through it, and repeat. Next thing you know, you'll be done.
I didn't make it to the next aid station before I was walking again. My attention was mainly focused on moving forward, and admittedly a person's brain gets a little scrambled when in distress, but I couldn't really make heads or tails of what was going on with my body. I had been mentally prepared to be hampered by my injuries, but that wasn't the problem. I felt completely empty inside, like I had no internal organs and my torso was a big empty vacuum of space.
I'd walk for a few minutes, and then I'd say to myself, just start running. Don't think, just run.
I'd start running, and for a few minutes, I'd think, see? this isn't so bad. We can do this.
A few minutes later I'd find myself fighting to keep going. And then I'd be walking again.
I might have kept on with this cycle for longer, but weird "other" pains had started cropping up. Pains that had nothing to do with my real injuries, but were more likely a result of the weird form that accompanies slow, forced running. Right plantar, left knee, right plantar again.... sigh.
As I walked on, I struggled with the decision of whether to keep at it or call it a day. No one wants to be a quitter. We all want to be the person that sucks it up and finishes no matter what.
And it's hard not to feel guilty. A woman ran by just after 20 miles and she was working hard. She still had 6 miles to go, and she was working really hard, but she was doing it. She wasn't giving up. I knew that she would finish the race. And I looked at myself. I didn't look or sound like that. I wasn't working as hard as that woman was. I was just walking. Maybe I was just being a baby and feeling sorry for myself.
Maybe.
But pride is a tricky thing. It can keep you working at something when things get tough, and it can also keep you working at something past the point where you should just let it go.
So when I heard that third shuttle coming up behind me, I looked back at it once, twice, and then finally, at the very last possible second, I flagged the driver. He pulled over instantly and I got on. The spectators on the bus were ridiculously nice to me. One lady kept offering me stuff (food, water). Another said, well, honey, 22 miles is pretty darn good.
I smiled as best I could, shook them off, and watched as the shuttle bus drove by the people still running their marathons. They were going to cross the finish line and I was not. Not this time, anyway. I let a few tears roll down my face, but only a few. Dropping out was not an easy decision to make, but I'd made it. It was done.
Now I just had to walk around behind (not across) the finish line to collect Paul, who I spotted standing there, peering anxiously at the clock as it spilled over into the 3:06's and out the finish chute and up the hill, trying not to look worried, wondering where the hell I was, but I could do that.
The day was young, I realized, and it was time to put the race behind us and go put our feet in the ocean.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Newport marathon, the pre-race report
This is what happens when training is going well:
The closer I get to race day, the more I hunker down. I put on my calm face. When someone asks, "how fast do you think you'll run?", I shrug, make non-committal noises. Because you never know what will happen on race day. The best training in the world can't make up for running like an idiot the first half, or 95 degree temperatures, or catching a bug from some jerk in your office who thinks they're too important to miss a day of work when they're sick, your cat dying the week before the race, food poisoning, whatever, you name it. I don't take anything for granted. The swagger I might possibly have been walking around with earlier in the season after nailing certain workouts and running prs in my tune up races slowly disappears. When it comes to marathons, I like my training to be blanketed with a healthy dose of fear and humility.
But, alas, that's not where I am right now.
This time, training has decidedly not been going well. In fact, this training cycle feels like it has been SIX YEARS long (please god, let it end!).
I have no awesome workouts to look back on for confidence building, just mediocre piled on top of barely passable piled on top of geez-am-I-in-the-wrong-sport??
My only tuneup race was a half marathon during which I tried and tried and tried and almost managed to run my full marathon pr pace. Almost.
In what was supposed to be the heart of my training cycle, I had a string of weeks containing at least one day where I came home from work and simply did not go running. What?!? Yes, you read that right. That thing I always do every day after work, that thing I like to do every day after work? I just didn't do it.
Why? you might be wondering.
Well, it's a long, uninteresting story that lucky for you I don't feel like telling.
You know the drill: injury taking forever to heal, low iron, blah blah blah. The whys are many and not that important anymore.... things just never clicked.
And, to add insult to injury: last week, when I finally had a string of several halfway decent workouts and was getting into a good headspace for the last few weeks of training... I picked up a cold.
A freaking cold. Better than the norovirus, no doubt, but still, can a girl catch a break??
It probably goes without saying, but I'm not needing to cast a very wide net to get that healthy dose of fear and humility I was talking about earlier. Nope, my cup runneth over with fear and humility.
So, instead of my usual playing-it-down mental exercise, I find myself grasping for positives.
As my friend LT put it, it's time to talk myself up.
Ok, I may not have had 95 mile weeks, holy-cow-did-I-just-run-that? workouts and yawn-another pr-yawn races, but here is what did go well:
The closer I get to race day, the more I hunker down. I put on my calm face. When someone asks, "how fast do you think you'll run?", I shrug, make non-committal noises. Because you never know what will happen on race day. The best training in the world can't make up for running like an idiot the first half, or 95 degree temperatures, or catching a bug from some jerk in your office who thinks they're too important to miss a day of work when they're sick, your cat dying the week before the race, food poisoning, whatever, you name it. I don't take anything for granted. The swagger I might possibly have been walking around with earlier in the season after nailing certain workouts and running prs in my tune up races slowly disappears. When it comes to marathons, I like my training to be blanketed with a healthy dose of fear and humility.
But, alas, that's not where I am right now.
This time, training has decidedly not been going well. In fact, this training cycle feels like it has been SIX YEARS long (please god, let it end!).
I have no awesome workouts to look back on for confidence building, just mediocre piled on top of barely passable piled on top of geez-am-I-in-the-wrong-sport??
My only tuneup race was a half marathon during which I tried and tried and tried and almost managed to run my full marathon pr pace. Almost.
In what was supposed to be the heart of my training cycle, I had a string of weeks containing at least one day where I came home from work and simply did not go running. What?!? Yes, you read that right. That thing I always do every day after work, that thing I like to do every day after work? I just didn't do it.
Why? you might be wondering.
Well, it's a long, uninteresting story that lucky for you I don't feel like telling.
You know the drill: injury taking forever to heal, low iron, blah blah blah. The whys are many and not that important anymore.... things just never clicked.
And, to add insult to injury: last week, when I finally had a string of several halfway decent workouts and was getting into a good headspace for the last few weeks of training... I picked up a cold.
A freaking cold. Better than the norovirus, no doubt, but still, can a girl catch a break??
It probably goes without saying, but I'm not needing to cast a very wide net to get that healthy dose of fear and humility I was talking about earlier. Nope, my cup runneth over with fear and humility.
So, instead of my usual playing-it-down mental exercise, I find myself grasping for positives.
As my friend LT put it, it's time to talk myself up.
Ok, I may not have had 95 mile weeks, holy-cow-did-I-just-run-that? workouts and yawn-another pr-yawn races, but here is what did go well:
- I had the highest total mileage for a marathon training cycle I've ever had (almost 1500 miles)
- I ran long runs of at least 2 hours for 15 of the last 17 weeks
- the other two weekends? one I ran a half marathon, and the other was about an hour and 40 minutes running in 3-6 inches of snow (we don't own shovels in Portland because it only snows once every five years)
- just when I was ready to throw in the towel, I had 3 workouts in a row that said to me: hey, it's at least possible you can run within five minutes of your pr, and that's really not that bad is it?
- yesterday I ran my last real workout, and... I ran it too fast. Wait, what?! There has not been a single incident of me running too fast in the past six months (not even to cross the street!), but today, there it was.
- and last but not least, these last few weeks I have had deep tissue massage. Definitely a splurge for me, but it seems like there is now at least a chance that my hamstrings and glutes won't be all tied up by mile 9.
There you have it. That's the best I can muster.
This pep talk will probably not go down in history as inspiring armies off to war, but hey, I'm a realist. I don't believe in race day miracles, just running your fitness.
This pep talk will probably not go down in history as inspiring armies off to war, but hey, I'm a realist. I don't believe in race day miracles, just running your fitness.
And the most important thing?
Today, for just a few minutes, I caught myself looking forward to the race.
Today, for just a few minutes, I caught myself looking forward to the race.
I'd almost forgotten what that felt like.
Friday, January 17, 2014
On Entering the Dreaded Holding Pattern
Racing.
It's why we run, right? The carrot at the end of the stick? The big goal race at the end of a hard training cycle?
Well... yes and no.
It certainly seems that way sometimes, like when getting up at 5 am to run doubles, or squeezing in a 12 mile weekday workout during "lunch", or when shelling out big bucks for entry fees, airfare, and hotel rooms. It's all for that one day at the end of the training cycle, the big payoff of one perfectly executed race and a new PR.
But what happens when you don't have that big race coming up? Or when you have that big race coming up but you know you won't be ready? Or when you want to have a big race to shoot for but can't realistically say when that will be possible?
I've been pondering these questions recently because I'm finding myself in an unfortunately familiar spot, where it looks increasingly like I'm going to have to bail on my next big goal race (Boston).
After illness derailed my fall Plan A (CIM) and injury derailed my fall Plan B (Holiday Half), I was looking forward to having a little downtime to get healthy and back on track for my spring Plan A. In fact, it never even occurred to me that it was a Plan A. It was just The Plan.
But it's not really happening. Yes, I am back running everyday and yes, my injury is almost gone, but it has taken way longer to get here than I'd hoped. I'm running almost 60 miles a week now, but I feel like I'm running 90 miles a week. And not in a good, look-at-how-fit-I'm-getting, kind of a way, but in a holy-cow-I'm-tired-and-I-feel-awful kind of a way. I feel like I'm about a hundred years away from doing a real workout. I've been through this before, and I know that when the time comes, things can turn around right quick. But the arrival of that time is hard to predict and apparently it's not here yet.
So, as Boston email confirmations show up in my inbox, I get philosophical.
What if I just went anyway, even if I'm not in my best shape? I mean, I'll be able to finish, right? And sure, usually the point of racing is to run as fast as possible, but isn't it sometimes enough just to show up and do what you can? What about going and enjoying the experience?
Or, what if I ran a late spring marathon instead? It's not my usual thing to show up at a small town marathon and hope to run well, but couldn't this be a chance to broaden my horizons and run some new (to me) races?
Or, what if I enter a holding pattern at my current level and (gasp) don't plan anything at all until I'm actually healthy? The thing I miss most is enjoying the run, so shouldn't I get back to that first and foremost and let everything else fall where it may?
Anyway.
I can philosophize about these things while the miles tick by on my ridiculously slow "long" runs, as if I have some big choice to make, but the reality is that my body is telling me in no uncertain terms that we will be entering a holding pattern right about now. Until I can run some semblance of a workout or even enjoy an easy run, it would be phenomenally stupid to try to force myself to train like a healthy marathoner.
You never know, maybe that magical turning point will arrive this week or next, and then I will have a real decision to make, but for now I'll just keep on keeping on, and try not to do anything stupid. And ok, maybe I'll make some plans about making future plans... just to pass the miles, of course.
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