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.
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