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.
