National Running Day and Race Recap: 4theWounded 5k

Yep, it's National Running Day. Yep, I celebrated by sleeping in and skipping my run this morning. Yep, I'll be making up for that by running extra tonight. Yep, I'm kind of dreading it. Yep, my legs have been hurting a lot (again) lately. Nope, I don't want to talk about it.

So instead, I'm celebrating the holiday by recapping this weekend's race, one that I'm rather glad is behind me. It was pretty brutal from start to finish, so I don't feel like reliving it in too much detail. Let's make this short and sweet, shall we?

The Good Things:

 -- The weather. Perfection: cool and cloudy with just enough of a breeze to keep you from overheating.

 -- The company. Dan ran this one too and most of his family walked as well. It was nice to have my hubby right there at the starting line!

 -- The race details. As per usual with this racing company, everything from packet pick-up to the finish line was super well-organized, and the volunteers were excellent. I never stop at water stations during a race this short, but at mile 2 the lady holding a big cup of water towards me might as well have been an angel straight from race heaven. 

 -- The end. I have never been so glad to see that timing mat fly under my feet.

 -- The result. Despite all the negative, I still managed to PR and hit a goal time that I am super-pleased with -- 21:37.5 also meant a sub-7:00 average pace, which makes me very happy. My 5k PR last fall was a 23:xx, about a month ago I ran a 22:xx, and I was more than ready to shave it down to a 21:xx. Although I have a feeling that from here it gets much harder to cut...

 -- The post-run... run. After a little time to cool down, I had recovered enough to continue my mileage for the day. I headed over to my favorite spot and cranked out another 6 miles, which were glorious compared to those first 3.14.

The Bad Things:

 -- The start. This time, I wanted to be right up front -- I got stuck battling through a huge crowd during my last 5k, and that first half-mile killed my finishing time. The first part of this race was a great downhill and I lined up 2-3 people back to take full advantage. As soon as we took off, I knew that I was pushing way too hard and if I continued to keep up with the people around me, I'd end up serving as a very dead speedbump for the 900 runners behind me. I reeled it in fairly quickly, but my first half mile still clocked in at a frightening sub 6:00 pace. 

 -- The hills. After that "lovely" first downhill, the next mile was basically a long, slow UPhill. By the end of mile 1, my legs were absolutely done and I was honestly unsure that I could finish the race. When the course finally leveled off around 1.5, I pulled myself together, but then hit a series of short, steep hills (run UP the hill dying, go around the cone, come flying down the other side while already looking ahead to the next steep climb). By the time I got to the blissfully flat quarter mile stretch leading back to the finish line, I was so overwhelmed that I couldn't even enjoy it. I had just a tiny kick left in me, and I certainly gave that all I had, but I was pretty focused on just staying upright long enough to stop the damn clock.

 -- The mental game. Or, more specifically, the lack thereof... I think maybe it had stayed home in bed that morning. I have honestly never been so miserable during a race... I hadn't even finished the first mile before I seriously considered throwing my hands up and walking off the course. If I hadn't known so many people who were also running, I might have actually done that. I can run three miles in my sleep, but these particular three were some of the most awful miles I've ever covered... ever. 

The Best Thing:

 -- On the way back to my car, one of the volunteers stopped me to tell me she had seen me running. "You really have great form, you looked good out there," she told me twice during our short conversation, which was enough to keep me smiling for the rest of the day. Definitely what I needed to hear after such a tough race.

Happy National Running Day! I think we should all be greeted with cupcakes at the end of our runs today, right??

   Love,

    Meg

Weekend Happenings + Race Recap: Run for Autism 5K

This weekend struck the perfect balance between work and play, accomplishment and laziness, friend-time and me-time, excitement and calm. If only it could have stuck around a bit longer, I would have been thrilled.

Friday night, the hubs and I headed out to pick up my race packet for Saturday's race, run a few quick errands, and grab what has apparently become a tradition: pre-race milkshakes. Not exactly carbo-loading, but you won't hear me complaining. Back at home, I got through several loads of laundry and cleaned the kitchen, spent entirely too much time fighting with various pieces of technology in a failed effort to make a racing playlist, and eventually passed out on the couch just minutes before Dan's brother and his girlfriend came over. I rallied for a few minutes but then shuffled off to bed like any good Saturday-morning-racer-on-a-Friday-night.

Luckily Saturday's race didn't start until 8:00, so I was able to sleep until almost 6:30 before dragging myself out of bed, throwing on compression shorts, and fumbling my way to the car. It was chillier than I expected, but a quick warm-up lap helped a bit, even though the gun didn't actually go off until closer to 8:15. Otherwise, this race (in its 13th year) was very well organized, especially for a relatively small hometown 5k -- they had tons of volunteers, a great kid's run before the actual race, and a very efficient system at the finish line, even without chip timing. The beginning of the race was brutal -- almost a full lap around a very crowded track, weaving and getting hit and trying desperately to get past a pack of high school boys who were clearly not there to compete. In retrospect, I should have been a lot more concerned than I was about starting as close to the front as possible: I have a feeling it was this mistake (and the ensuing track chaos) that cost me the goal time I was chasing. But the rest of the race felt good, despite a ton of hills and the fact that for the last mile or so, I was racing less for the finish line and more for a bathroom. Whatever it takes, right? I haven't seen an official time yet, but the clock was somewhere in the 22's when I sprinted past, which still means a PR even if it wasn't quite the 21:something I was hoping.

After a quick shower and some foam rolling, Dan and I were back in the car and headed to our friends T and N's house to help with some birthday festivities for a certain special one-year-old:

clearly thrilled about the birthday hat, which lasted for all of 15 seconds

We had such a great time helping them cook/set up/decorate for the party, meeting their families, and celebrating the sweetest little girl you can imagine. The party turned out wonderfully despite some last minute changes thanks to the weather forecast, and the birthday girl seemed to enjoy her cake and got some seriously adorable gifts. After the party and all the clean-up, we got to relax and enjoy some leftovers and a glass of wine with our friends before heading back home. Although I wish like crazy that somehow we could all live in the same town, for now we are so lucky that these wonderful friends are just an hour away.

Yesterday was grey and rainy, which thwarted my plans for a long run and some time by the pool, but turned out ok after all. It was wonderful to be able to sleep late for the first time in weeks, and my legs were feeling pretty worn out so I hit the treadmill for a few miles and then called it a day. I spent the rest of the afternoon baking, cleaning, eating, cuddling with the cat, and being lazy with my hubby... ie the perfect way to end a lovely weekend.

Thankfully, today marks my last Monday in my old job -- next week I will head upstairs to a new (temporary) cubicle, a new (wonderful) boss, and my new (exciting) responsibilities. Especially after the past week of training a less-than-friendly new employee to do my job, I am so very ready to get out of here. This week is going to be long and stressful, but that light at the end of the tunnel gets a little brighter each day.
Happy Monday, all!

   Love,

    Meg

Race Recap: The [Hometown] 8K That Almost Wasn't

For a week leading up to this race, I fought with myself over whether I really wanted to run it. There were a couple attractive details: a hometown race, run largely on roads where I train weekly, a short course, an historically small-ish field of runners, and a race organizer whose events I've run before and found to be very organized and well-staged. Despite all this, though, the doubts were going strong all week: is the course too hilly? Will the lack of music (headphones weren't allowed) make me miserable? Am I capable of finishing with a pace that won't embarrass me? Did I really train hard enough this winter? Can my shins handle it? Have the six months (ouch) since my last race left me incapable of ever doing it again? What if I get to the halfway point and just can't keep going? Am I mentally prepared for a race? The various voices in my head were rather loud as I rolled the decision around in my brain for 6 days. I knew deep down that I was fully capable of 5 miles at a decent pace, and I ran the distance a few times early in the week in an attempt to convince myself of that -- once with satisfying results, but once with a time that didn't exactly inspire confidence. I also knew that the guilt that would plague me if I decided not to run was likely be much worse than any potential disappointment in my finishing time. I think ultimately this was the biggest motivating factor: after contemplating it for so long, I knew waking up Saturday for anything less than that race would have left me feeling like such a failure.

Still, it took me until Thursday night to make a final decision, and I arrived at work Friday morning comfortable in my choice and ready to register and at least get it over with. I clicked onto the website for the race, which I had been stalking all week, only to be greeted with two awful words... "registration closed." If I could have kicked myself without pulling a muscle, I would have. I was so mad at myself -- if I hadn't been so hesitant, if I hadn't been so unsure of myself, if I hadn't been such a wimp. After a week of indecision, in a split second I wanted to run that race like I've never wanted to run in my life.

I spent another 30 minutes on the website, clicking every link in a sincere effort to sneak into the registration form a back way, to get into the race no matter how illicit my tactics. Finally I remembered an email I had received a week before, the one that had kicked off this week of stressful flip-flopping in the first place. I dug through gmail and unearthed it from the archives, reading it twice through before I noticed the tiny print in the expo section: "onsite registration will be available." Bingo.

Immediately after work, I dragged poor hubby down to the expo, pulled him past booth after booth of cool stuff, and finally made it to a woman who would accept my ridiculously high registration fee in return for:

 

 I was so excited to clutch this baby in my hand that for a minute I totally forgot to be nervous. Unfortunately, that adrenaline only lasted until hubby asked what I wanted for dinner, at which point I realized that my stomach was in knots and oh-my-goodness-did-I-really-just-pay-money-to-wake-up-at-the-crack-of-dawn-and-try-to-run-fast? Have I lost my mind??

My carb-loading that night may or may not have included a milkshake (isn't protein important too?) and I was in bed by 10, thankfully too exhausted from the stress of the day to lie awake and worry. I slept surprisingly well and woke up in plenty of time the next morning to get ready... and to get very nervous. Despite 70-80 degree days all week, it was still in the mid-30's when we left the house, so I opted to wear long sleeves for the first time in a race (a decision which I regretted less than a mile in, when my hands were numb from cold but my arms were already overheating). I grabbed my trusty Garmin (no headphones = no phone = no Nike+) and crossed my fingers that it would hang in there with me for 4.96.

My mom met us at the start and I had just enough time for a quick warmup, bathroom stop, and a super attractive picture:

Yikes. Good thing I'm holding tight to that handsome guy next to me, otherwise he'd probably have been running as well... in the other direction.

I kept warm and shook off the nervous energy bouncing up and down for a bit before the gun went off, and luckily found myself pretty far forward in the pack so I didn't have to waste too much time weaving in the first mile. We got a nice preview of how awfully hilly the course really was within the first .25 as we booked it up a steep incline to the first major road, which boasted some pretty serious rolling hills itself. My first mile clocked in at a 7:40 pace, which I was happy with but honestly a bit skeptical I could keep up for 4 more miles. Mile 2 was mostly uphill but not too steep, and ended with a glorious, beautiful, well-earned downhill stretch, which certainly contributed to the 7:15 pace that flashed at the end and kept me smiling. Mile 3 into the turnaround was again mostly uphill, a struggle but possible because I knew I just had to make it a little further and then I'd get to come back down the road I was climbing. What I didn't count on was that after that, I'd get back to the aforementioned "glorious, beautiful, well-earned downhill stretch," that had now become a "terrible, interminable, practically-impossible uphill stretch." It took every ounce of strength I had to get up that hill without just dropping and rolling back down to the bottom. At this point, I stopped paying attention to my splits and just willed myself to keep running, so I was pretty shocked that I hung onto a 7:20 through 3 and 4. Thankfully, the end of the course made up for the preceding brutality with a flat stretch and a downhill .5 into the finish. In another exciting race first, my final mile (which according to Garmin was actually a full mile, I'm not sure where that extra .04 snuck in there) came in sub-7:00, a fact of which I am especially proud considering that by this point the field had completely spread out and I had no one in sight ahead or behind to push me at the end.

I crossed the mat with an official time of 36:05 (an automatic PR for my first 8k race), which was good enough for this:

21st overall, 5th female, and 2nd in my division! Not bad for my first race in six months, and hopefully a nice bit of foreshadowing for this summer/fall. It really surprised me a bit to find out that the speed I had last October is still sticking around, despite the fact that I haven't felt especially fast so far this spring. Now, I'm inspired to get out to the track for some speedwork, get a few more interval runs on the calendar, and really focus on my pace, because even though this run felt good, I know that I have quite a bit of room for improvement. With several shorter races coming up in the next few months, I'm excited to spend some time working on my speed before building mileage for at least one half in the fall.

This weekend's race was just part of an annual marathon/half/8k series, with a longer course that is similarly hilly but also famously scenic and relatively fast. Perhaps next year I'll be out for 13.1, or even (dare I say it?) 26.2? Either way, one thing is for sure: I'll be deciding -- and registering -- early.

   Love,

    Meg

Race Recap: Virginia Beach Rock 'N' Roll Half Marathon

Let's make a deal: You refrain from pointing out the glaring fact that this race took place on Sunday and it is, in fact, Wednesday... and I will spare you the gory details of how, in just the past two days, I've picked up several hours of overtime thanks to a mini-crisis at work. Sounds like a fair trade, yes? Clearly, a large percentage of the three (or so) of you who may happen to read this are only here to find out whether or not I'm still alive after my first attempt at a half-marathon. It would be a shame to give everything away too early, so first you'll have to endure a few terrible pictures and some very fuzzy memories of 13.1 slightly torturous miles.

We made it to the expo on Saturday afternoon, just in time to be reminded that I had only a few short hours left before hitting the road. I've never run a race with a real expo, so it was fun to roam around, drool over all the amazing running gear, and generally soak in the excitement. I picked up some GU, a tube of Nuun, a 13.1 tumbler, and a few great stickers:

These cracked me up, and I'm dying for it to stop raining so that I can finally put the 13.1 on my car. 
After the expo, we went to scope out the next morning's parking situation, and then headed to check into the hotel, grab some dinner, and go to bed super early. Unfortunately, even though I turned off the light around 9:30, I only managed about 2 or 3 hours of sleep. The rest of the night I spent tossing and turning and dozing off just enough to have nightmares about the race. 
Honestly, the 4am drive to the parking area and the shuttle to the start passed in kind of a haze of exhaustion and nerves. I woke up enough to warm up a little bit, stand in line for the bathroom (twice), and then squeeze my way into the corral a few minutes before the start.

the view from corral 12

They ran the wave start quickly and I crossed the starting line right around 7:16. Finally, after months of training and anticipation, we were off...
Miles 1-6 were surprisingly wonderful. The course started off through downtown and then headed out a flat stretch of road lined with trees and dotted with neighborhoods. I felt incredible, my splits were fast (too fast), and I allowed myself to stick to the outside, working my way past crowd after crowd, gaining adrenaline with each group I overtook. There was a voice in the back of my head urging me to slow down and conserve some energy, but I ignored it like an idiot pro.
For miles 6-9, we took a turn down a rural road, enjoyed a bit of shade, and I started to get a little concerned. My pace leveled out to around 9 minute miles, and my body started to give the first hints of fatigue. I started to regret my choice to carry a water bottle with me, as it all of a sudden weighed about 25 pounds in my hand, but I was generally able to keep it together mentally and fight through the stress.
Miles 9-12 were rough -- my legs got tired, my stomach started to feel unhappy, and, worst of all, my mental game began to fall apart. I struggled to keep putting one food in front of the other, and questioned whether I was going to be able to make it to the end. My uncle was running the race with me, and luckily he caught up with me right around mile 10, talking me through the last couple miles and to the boardwalk.
The last mile was probably the worst, stretching along the boardwalk with the sun beating down and a gazillion people shouting "You're almost there... you're almost there..." As hard as I tried to hang in there and   push all the way to the end, I kept looking towards the finish line and deciding that it. wasn't. getting. any. closer. I considered how embarrassing it would be to collapse, in front of all those people, just half a mile from the end. I wondered whether there was any graceful way to sit down right there in the middle of the course. I wanted so badly to stop and walk, but everyone around me was running and even if my pride would have allowed it, I was pretty sure I'd get trampled. But just when I didn't think I could take another step without falling apart, I looked up to see the finish line looming, and finally my legs kicked in, carrying me towards the end as if my life depended on it. I'm honestly not sure how I got there, but the next thing I knew, my foot hit that pad, someone shoved a bottle of water at me, and I was suddenly floating on the knowledge that I'd just run 13.1 miles... and finished.

My official time was 2:00:36, almost 15 whole minutes faster than my goal time. I was elated, even though part of me wishes that I had dug in during those last few miles and come in under 2 hours. Honestly, though, I'm. thrilled that not only did I get a pretty awesome pr for my first half, but also a built-in and readily-achievable sub-2:00 goal. (More on goals another day, but this is going to be on the top of my list for the next few months)
Overall, despite the major psychological struggles, the race was fantastic -- a wonderfully flat course with awesome volunteers and practically ideal weather. Not only am I proud of my time, I'm extremely excited to have just finished this race: until just a few months ago, I would never have guessed that I could get through 13 miles on my own two feet. It was an incredible experience and I'm so thankful that my months of training paid off so well. I can't wait to keep training and start thinking about the next few races on my calendar!

   Love,

    Meg