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.
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