Redemption! - Masters 3k at USAs

This past weekend I ran the masters exhibition 3000m race that was part of the USATF Nationals in Eugene. It was a pretty darn cool experience.
There was a lot to it, too much for my usual blow-by blow accounting, so I'm going to try and summarize the highlights:

• I was chilling in the shade of one of the athlete tents before my race, and I glanced up and saw David Oliver walking by. Oh, hello there, fastest hurdler in the world! You know, no big deal. 
• Once your race has had its final call, you are then escorted everywhere you go. Escort to the call room. Escort to the start line. Escort off the track. Escort to the awards stand. Escort back on to the track for a group victory lap. Escort off the track again. And finally, escort to the media tent, where you are finally released on your own recognizance. 
• There were start line introductions. This was so foreign to me that I didn't even hear my own. I assume it went something like this: "Wearing hip number one, running for Oiselle out of Portland, Oregon, Andi Camp. She's a runner too!"
• There were beautiful, gigantic digital clocks at both the finish line and the 200 meter mark. They were mesmerizing enough to be distracting. You could also read them from very far away. When I looked over for my mile split, I saw some numbers that were very impressive until I realized that I was still about 75 meters away! 
• Having fans at a track meet is pretty great. My TRL friend Tim was in the stands on the home stretch, and I could distinctly hear his voice every lap. A group of Oiselle ladies down from the nest in Seattle were clustered at the fence on the far side of the first curve, and they were banging on the fence and chanting my name every single time I came by. It's hard to not be inspired by that kind of enthusiasm. There was even an unidentified cheer-er on the back stretch. It all helps.
• The USATF officials and volunteers are just plain good people. With all the controversy and shady doings at the top of the USATF food chain over the last couple of years, it can be easy to forget that the vast majority of the organization is made up of really cool people that just plain love track and field. A significant number of these people do not get paid, yet they're friendly, patient, and happy to be out there. They rock. 
• Watching a track meet in real life rules. I was only able to hang around for a few hours afterwards, but it's so much more impressive seeing the athletes right up close than it is watching them on a tv or computer screen. Being at Hayward Field is magic.

And the race itself? 

You know, it felt very redemptive for me. After a pretty grueling 3k a couple of weeks ago at PTF, I made some dietary changes that had an immediate positive effect. I had a couple of great workouts and was feeling much more positive going into this race. Maybe I didn't run a pr or blow people out of the water, but I showed up and ran smart in difficult conditions (80+ degrees and humid!). I had a plan and I executed. And that felt pretty darn good. 

Everyone else went out too fast (with the exception of the eventual winner, Sonja Friend-Uhl, who was in a class by herself), so I hung off the back in dead last (9th place) and waited. By 600m I had moved up to 4th place, settled in to a rhythm, and was feeling confortable, and so I started to ratchet my pace down little by little. At around 1400m, I moved into 3rd place, and with 1st and 2nd way out in front, I ran the rest of the way all by myself. Each lap was progressively faster until the dreaded 6th lap, where I faltered a bit and lost a few seconds, but I pulled myself back together for a respectable last lap and secured a spot on the podium. 

Lap splits (courtesy of fancy modern technology!): 44.1 (200m), 88.1, 89.5, 87.6, 86.1, 85.99, 87.8, and 83. something.

Oh, and one other thing: masters events are the best. Even when the masters race is held in conjunction with a major pro meet, the masters athletes are friendly and welcoming (without losing any of their competitive drive once the gun goes off). I don't know why more women don't show up for masters track events. I don't know if they're not interested or if they're intimidated about getting back out on the track, but if you're at all interested, just show up. It's fun and there's nothing to be intimidated about. You'll meet people who have been doing their events their whole lives, and others who learned to hurdle at the age of 60. 

Everyone is welcome.

PTF 3k Race Report - Out of the gate with a whimper

Having a bad race sucks. Beyond just the actual end result of not getting the time/place that you wanted, bad races are physically and mentally harder than good races. Putting out a race effort when your body is not up for it is about the hardest thing that we runners do.

So I'll say it again.

Bad races suck.

I had a bad race last night at the Portland Track Festival Masters 3k, and true to form, it sucked.

The masters womens 3k was run at the same time as the "open" 3k (open in this case meaning high school girls). The start list had been released prior to the meet, and they included seed times. There were to be 8 ladies total in the race, 4 open and 4 masters. The four high schoolers and one of the masters ladies had seed times in the 10:10-10:20 range. Mine was 10:52, and then there was an 11:00 (Jen Seibel), and another a little slower than that. The woman with the last seed time was a DNS.

In other words, there was going to be a race up front, then a gap, then the last couple of us well behind. 

Also, knowing that these were high school girls, my assumption was that they would go out fast. 

Off the line, they did just that. I was well in last place by 50 meters in. I took a split at 100m just to make sure I wasn't crazy, and it was about 18 seconds, or 72 second quarter pace. A 10:00 3k is 80 second quarter pace, just for reference. I backed off another notch and settled in to wait.

But let me back up just a second. I have very little experience at this distance, so I actually wrote out splits on a piece of paper for four different lap times, 84-87. I wasn't expecting to memorize any of them, I just wanted to have a range in my mind of where I might be. I'd also been thinking about strategy in a more general way, trying to figure out how best to run this distance, how to break it up in my mind, pacing, all that stuff. I decided that laps 5 and 6 were the key. It seems like the best thing to do is get through the first mile at just the slow end of goal pace, dig in and press for laps 5 and 6, and then hang on for all you've got for the last 600 meters. 

Knowing that I wasn't in the best racing form yet, I was really only looking to run an 86-87 pace, but I was hoping to finish strong off that pace. Or at least not die off that pace.

My lap splits did not all stick in my memory, but the first was a little fast, the second a little slow, and the 3rd about 86. At 1200 meters in, my total time was in a good place, but I was not. The pace did not feel sustainable and I was "concerned". (That's the nice way to put it.)

I went from last to second-to-last when I passed Jen about 600 meters into the race, but she was only behind me a couple of seconds. I know she's a good runner, so I wasn't expecting her to just drop off the back. The big gap to the front group had materialized, as expected, so it was just the two of us bringing up the rear. It had occurred to me that if some of those girls in the front group had gotten in over their heads with the fast start, they might come back to us later in the race and give us something to chase down, but I could already tell I wasn't having the kind of day to make that a possibility. 

The 4th lap dropped to 89. As we crossed the mile, Rick (TRL/Jen's coach) yelled out, "ok, now's when the race starts". He was right about that. Unfortunately, at that point I was sapped. I was tired, I felt flat, no spring in my legs, no joy in the running, no nothing. But there I was, running in this stupid race anyway! And it's really hard to justify dropping out of a 3k, so I pretty much had no choice but to soldier on the best I could. 

I pictured getting passed and falling even further behind. Negative brain was definitely winning at that point. But when you tell negative brain that whatever happens you're still finishing the stupid race, he pipes down for a while. 

Either lap 5 or lap 6 was a 91 (!!! Really?! what the fuck, Andi??). Jen had moved up close behind me during lap 5, but was apparently not interested in passing. I guess I neglected to mention that there was a pretty good headwind on the back stretch. Also I'm taller and wider than she is, so I imagine I made a pretty good wind break. In fact, she was so close to me that she clipped my heels 3 or 4 times in laps 5 and 6. She apologized each time, and I know she meant no harm, but I was pretty irritated. I was struggling mightily, having a painful off day, fighting the good fight, all while also doing the work for a freeloader behind me, so I felt like the least she could do is not fucking touch my feet while I'm trying to run with them! (It's possible I was also a little grumpy.) In the 6th lap, I briefly considered slowing down a bit to force her to lead and then outkicking her at the end, but that's not really how I roll. This was not some big championship race where finishing place was everything. I needed to see where I was fitness-wise and get more of a feel for the race distance, and to me that meant grinding it out as fast as I could until the bitter end. 

With 600 to go, Rick told Jen to pass me. I believe he said, "she's dying, go around her" or something to that effect. As a small aside, I find that kind of during-race coaching to be kind of funny. First of all, let me say that it's accurate that I was dying. I was sucking big time. So I certainly don't fault him for saying that. But at the same time, he knows I'm also right there, right? I can hear him just as clearly as she can. So does she really need him to tell her to pass me? And is it the best idea to announce that move to me before it happens? I don't know, I just find stuff like that amusing. He's a great coach, by the way. And it's something that a lot of coaches do. And maybe it works well for a lot of people. What do I know?

Anyway. 

She clipped my feet again as we rounded the turn into 500 meters to go. But now I could almost feel the end of the race. She was probably not feeling that terrific either, but feeling like she should make a move. As we hit the bell lap, I felt her start to move up on my shoulder. I let her run out there around the turn, increasing my pace just a teeny tiny bit to keep her out there, and she followed that up with sidling up next to me on the backstretch. Another tiny pace increase held her out there in lane 2, and then, finally, we only had 200 meters to go, and my brain woke up. I'm not going to claim I put on some beautiful, awe-inspiring kick, when it was really just increasing from a terribly slow race pace to the pace I probably should have been running the whole race, but I think I put 2 or 3 seconds on her in the last 200 meters. 

My finish time was 11:0-something, and I was spent. It was a good 20 seconds slower than I'd been aiming for, and it had been a struggle most of the way. Not a good day at the office. But in my brain I was able to walk a little taller for not giving up. I probably should have found Jen and made sure she understood that I had no hard feelings for her drafting off me and clipping my feet, (the former is just the smart thing to do, and the latter was not intentional), but I was hot and tired and yes, a little grumpy, and I needed to get a jog in and be across town for a show in 30 minutes.

So what happened exactly? Why the crappy result?

That's what we always wonder after a bad race, right? If you can resist beating yourself up too much about it, figuring out what might have gone wrong is very useful. A lot of it is conjecture, of course, but it's a good chance to get positive things out of a negative experience. 

In my case, it could have been any or all of a number of things: 

• I'm only a few weeks into my season, and the reality is that I'm just not very fit yet. 
• I've had some digestive issues the last couple of weeks which culminated in gut pain throughout my race warmup. 
• It was too warm for me. Low 70s is probably considered to be "not too bad" for a lot of runners, but I am someone who typically doesn't even race in the summer because the heat is so awful for me and who would choose 45 degrees as the perfect race temperature. 
• Low iron. I hope this isn't a contributing factor, because I am ridiculously tired of it being an issue, but that is my lifelong weight to bear. Last time I was checked (~6 weeks ago), my ferritin had dropped to 37. I expect it may have dropped further since, but we'll see.

In the immediate aftermath of this race, I found myself wondering if maybe the 3k is just not a good race distance for me. I haven't run it much, but each time has been a significant under-performance. I wondered if I should skip the upcoming exhibition 3k at USATF Nationals. 

I don't know. I'm usually pretty good at sticking with things long enough to learn how to do them. I'll keep following my plan, get my iron checked, and take it from there.

Oh, and one other thing..
Playing a super fun show is probably the best antidote ever to post-race malaise. Seriously. So cathartic.