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.
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