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Glio Blast Off 5K

Posted in race recap, tagged Glio Blast Off 5K, race recap, running on September 23, 2010| 15 Comments »

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The training schedule I’ve been following for the Smuttynose Marathon called for an 8-10K race this past Saturday. The idea being that running a race this close to the actual goal race would help me work through any pre-race jitters. The problem was that local race directors didn’t get the memo that I was in a training cycle that called for an 8-10K and all that was available close by were a few 5K’s. I picked what I thought would be one of the flatter ones and away I went.

Now I have this friend, let’s call her Teri*, who I have been trying to get to come to one of these road races with me for over a year. There was always some excuse, but she kept telling me to ask her the next time. She hadn’t run a race in a decade, so when I came across this race, an inaugural one, I thought it was the perfect opportunity for her to re-enter the road race arena. The description of the Glio Blast Off 5K was fast and relatively flat. When I showed her the website, she was hooked. She’s been running around 6 miles lately as her regular runs, so she had no excuses with a 5K.

Still, as I drove by her apartment on Saturday morning to pick her up, I was half expecting her to tell me that something had come up. I was pleasantly surprised to find her waiting for me on the curb.

She was, to say the least, a bit nervous. She had no idea what to expect from herself. I reminded her that for a first race, she should push herself hard, but know that this was simply a bar-setter. Once she got through this one, she would know what she was capable of and be able to go on from there. She thought that she would be happy simply coming in under 30 minutes. I asked how fast she had run her fastest 3 miler – 25 -26 minutes.

I thought about that for a minute and told her that I wouldn’t be surprised if she could hit a 25-handle. She looked at me like I had a screw loose.

We arrived at the race, checked in, got our numbers and began to warm up. As the start time edged closer and closer, I could see Teri getting more and more nervous. I tried distracting her by trying to pick out who we thought the winner would be. An older gentleman, in his 50’s, flew by warming up.

“There goes your winner,” I said. She laughed. It was actually good for me that she was so nervous because it kept my mind off my own thoughts about the race. Though my plan was to try to improve off of last week’s time (20:27), I essentially had no idea what kind of giddy-up I would have, having raced a 5K race and run a VO2Max interval workout in the previous 7 days.

As the starter called the runners to the line, I left Teri in the middle of the pack – just run strong and slightly out of your comfort zone, I told her. I went to the front and instinctively checked out who else was there. There was the older gentleman, a 20-something year old, a larger guy in his 30’s and me. I found out in our short conversation before the start, that all of them had been long timecompetitive runners. The larger guy mentioned that he use to run 5 miles in about 27 minutes in college. Oh, boy! My strategy had been to go out with the leaders and see what happened. After our brief discussion I realized that I would be fighting for 4th place, even with a PR. The gun blared and we were off.

Right out of the gate the big guy pushed the pace, with 20-something right behind him, then me, then the older gentleman. Before the first turn I once again found myself running with the front pack of a race. After an initial flat 200 yards, the course went uphill for the next 300 yards or so. The big guy didn’t flinch and I tried to keep pace. 2 turns later and we started down a mild downhill. The big guy was about 10 yards ahead, 20-something was maybe 2 or 3 yards ahead and I could hear the older gentleman closing in.

Just before hitting the mile 1 marker, the older gentleman flew by me. I check my watch, 6:00. Phew! A little fast!

I watched as our group of 4 began to look more like 4 groups of 1. The big guy continued to pull away, with the other two hanging on. I had two choices at this point. Do I follow, push myself to the limit and possibly injure myself, or do I continue along at what I perceived as max effort? I know that sounds contradictory. Luau, if you’re already pushing at max effort, how can you push any harder? I’ve always felt that what may feel like a maximum effort isn’t always so. That said, despite my training program saying I needed to approach this race as an all out effort, to paraphrase old Obi-wan, this wasn’t the race that I was training for. I would have kicked myself if I had maxed out my legs and ended up pulling something with 2 weeks to go until Smuttynose. Having come to that conclusion, I pushed on at the effort I was putting forth.

As the other three began to pull away, I glanced over my shoulder. Nobody. I once again found myself in the position I did at Lex’s Run. Barring disaster, or a huge rally by the guys behind me, I was sitting in the spot I was going to finish. Mile 2 came and went uneventfully in 6:24. I did some quick math and realized I had 7 1/2 minutes to cover 1.1 miles and get in under 20 minutes (my stated goal). It was going to be close. I felt my legs slowing down and I began thinking of the uphill near the end of the race. I could still see the leaders.

At this point the older gentleman had passed the 20-something. I realized too late that I was closer to them than I had thought. With a little over 1/4 mile to go, I saw that I was only about 200 yard behind he big guy and a little over 100 yards behind 20-something. I had no shot, but I pressed on the gas anyway. As I hit the final hill, I could feel gravity slowing me down. I could only watch helplessly as 20-something crested over the hill and used gravity to his advantage. Once I hit the downhill, I did the same. It was too late to catch 20-something, but I still had a shot at my first sub-20. Two more turns and I saw the clock just under 200 yards away. It was just clicking over to a 19-handle. The finish line looked so far away. Physically I felt like I had left it all on the hill, but I knew, I knew, I had something left in the tank. I forced myself to sprint. I’m not sure how I looked, and I didn’t really care. I was getting that sub-20 dammit! As I closed in on the finish line, I realized that not only was I going to finish in under 20 minutes, but I had a shot at 19:30! I could hear the people gathered cheering me on as I flew through the chute. I pressed my watch and looked – 19:30. Official time: 19:27. I found the other 3 guys, congratulated them and nearly threw up.

After taking a moment, I jogged back to the last turn and cheered runners in, encouraging them to either hold off the person behind them or catch the person in front of them. A few minutes later my friend Teri came around the corner. She was struggling – holding her own, keeping pace, but definitely struggling. As she came around the final turn, I broke into a run with her. Let’s go Teri! There’s the finish line! She wanted to stop. I wasn’t about to let her do that with just 150 yards to go. Come on! Let’s go! Look at the clock! LOOK AT THE CLOCK! The clock read 25:–. She kept moving. I started running backward right in front of her. You’ve got this! You’ve got your 25, but you can hit 25:30 Teri! Let’s go. She would later tell me that at that particular moment, she hated me and wanted to hit me. Intuitively, I stayed just out of reach, mentally trying to pull her along. At about 10 yards to go, I peeled off so she could run through the chute. 25:27. For about a minute or so she was miserable. Then she realized what she had done. You could see the pride and excitement grow in her face. She had achieved her goal and she felt great. She called her trainer to share the news. About 10 minutes later, the timekeepers put out the premiminary results. Teri had finished 30th overall (out of 185 finishers!), 10th among women, and 1st in her age group. 1ST IN HER AGE GROUP?!? She was ecstatic! I have to admit, I was just as happy for her and I was for me when I found out that I too had won my age group, finishing 4th overall.

For an inaugural event, this race was extremely well run. My only two notes of criticism would be that they didn’t have any course maps to check out (something they said would be addressed next year) and the race directors chose very odd age groups (31-40/41-50?). The course was fast and fun but challenging. Hopefully Teri and I can go back next year and defend our age group wins!

Did I learn anything? I was reminded that as a running community, we take pride in the achievements of others. I truly got a huge thrill from Teri’s age group win, knowing that in a small way I had helped push her a little harder than she was going to push herself. Hopefully this is the first of many races for Teri.

*Named changed, though not arbitrarily.

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Lex’s Run (My First 5K)

Posted in race recap, tagged Lex's Run, My first 5k, race recap on September 14, 2010| 10 Comments »

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I’m looking around at the crowd of runners gathering at the start of Lex’s Run for MDA. Like any race, there is a wide variety of runners. Every shape, size and age is represented. There are about 75 of us milling about. I’m looking to see who I think the lead runners will be. There’s my buddy Chris from Run Run Live. He’s fast, strong and experienced. There’s another, younger guy who has a team shirt on that looks pretty fast. I eavesdrop on his conversation with another fast looking kid. I’m doing the numbers in my head. I’ve got myself in 4th. That is, until I hear their conversation. They are talking about a man named Sawyer. From what I can gather, he’s 48 and he’s fast…real fast. I see them look over and nod. I follow their gaze and there he is. All 5’4″, maybe 120lbs on a day the sun and the moon are on the other side of the planet.

“There’s your winner,” I thought.

“There goes your winner,” said my friend Adam. I laughed. We would later joke that Sawyer had negative body fat and that every time he walked by, we all lost a pound.

Hmmm, okay, 5th place looks about right.

Another slender runner walked by. I would later find out his name is Jonathan. Much like the Sawyer, Jonathan is built like a your stereo-typical runner – long, lean, slender.

6th…shooting for 6th!

***

Before long, Doug called the runner to the starting line. I don’t necessarily like starting at the front of the pack, but Chris urged me to join him on the line. Sawyer and Jonathan positioned themselves to my left. As Doug blared the foghorn you could hear our four stopwatches beep just slightly out of sync with each other. We were off! Within about 400 yards, the four of us had created a gap with the pack. I had run this part of the course with Doug earlier so I acted as the navigator. Chris took the lead with the three of us following close behind.

I had no real strategy for this race. My friend Sheila had suggested running like my hair was on fire. Chris kept the pace hard as we worked our way through the first several turns. The first half mile, on a park trail, was relatively narrow, not allowing for a lot of movement, but then the course opened up a bit. It was at this point that Sawyer made his move and took the lead. Almost immediately he began to push the pace. The three of us held on for another quarter mile or so, but I got the sense that had he wanted, Sawyer could have left us completely in the dust 10 yards into the race.

Coming out of the park at 3/4 of a mile we hit “the hill”. The hill was a 154 foot climb over a quarter mile stretch. Sawyer pushed the accelerator down. Jonathan stayed closed behind him. I heard Chris yell, “Good luck boys” or something to that affect. I decided to try to run with the big boys. I was only about 3 or 4 yards behind them, but I couldn’t close the gap. 2/3 of the way of the hill, I yelled that I didn’t think I was gonna be able to keep pace. Jonathan yelled back words of encouragement, but it was no use. These two guys were simply much faster than I was. Little by little they began to pull away. As we hit the top of the hill, an EMT cheered us on. With my lungs and leg on fire, I remember thinking, I may need this guy soon!

Legs burning, lungs on fire...

As we made the turn I looked down at a glorious downhill. Nearly a mile of downhill grade. I thought maybe I could use gravity to close the gap a little with the two leaders, but they must have been thinking the same thing. Part way down the hill I glanced over my shoulder to see if Chris or anybody else was closing in on me.

Nobody.

I was sitting comfortably in third, and this is when my head started to play games with me. Barring a stumble, there really was no way I was catching Jonathan or Sawyer. Looking back, I had created about a 200 yard gap between me and the next runner.

What are you running so hard for? Ease up on the gas. You don’t need to be going this fast. You can’t catch those guys. That guy can’t catch you. These were the thoughts that drifted through my mind as I tried to push through. I got so lost in thought that I almost missed the water station. I had no intention on grabbing a drink, but I yelled at one of the kids there to throw the water in my face. She missed and hit my chest, but it was the refreshing jolt that I needed. I heard the girl and the mother laugh as I flew by.

Re-focused, I concentrated simply on finishing strong. As I hit 2 miles, the course flattened out and took a turn back toward the start. I could see both Sawyer and Jonathan in the distance and decided that I would try to, at the very least, keep them in sight. With a little over 1/2 mile to go, I glanced over my shoulder. I had stretched my lead on the next runner to about 300 hundred yards. As I went into the final turns of the race, I was aware of people cheering but could not hear them. My hair was on fire and the only way to put it out was to cross the finish line. At the final turn I saw the clock. My goal had been to run a 19-handle, but the clock had already rolled over to 20. I sprinted through the chute at 20:27. 3rd overall out of over 70 runners. Not bad for a first 5K. Initially I was disappointed with my time, but after some reflection, I realized that the course was not considered an easy one. The climb on the hill probably took more out of me than I was willing to admit, especially since most of my training this summer has been on flat roads.

After crossing the finish line, I found Jonathan. Sawyer had gone out for a cool down, but I wanted to cheer everybody in (easy to do when it’s 70+ people). Over the next 30 minute Jonathan & I (joined a few minutes later by my dailymile and twitter bud Adam) chatted and cheered everybody in. Jonathan, it turns out, had started running only recently. A few years ago, pushing 250 lbs, he had decided to change his life. He went out the door and ran 5 minutes from his house, stopped and then turned around and ran back. He slowly built up to 10 minutes, then 15. After being able to run consistently for 30 minutes, he started running for distance. The miles added up, the pounds dropped off, and now he’s running 5K’s in 19 minutes, along with running marathons and competing in triathlons. Adam actually has a similarly inspirational story you can find here.

As the rest of the racers came in, I got to meet several other runners, a lot of them with neat, interesting stories of their own. One woman, Mary McManus, had run Boston 2009 after being diagnosed with post-polio syndrome in 2006. You can find her on the web here.

So what did I learn from this race? I’m not sure yet. That a 150 foot climb over a quarter mile is hard? I don’t think I needed this race to learn that. What WAS reaffirmed was that the running community is vast and varied, and that running brings us the peace of solitude and the joys of community.

I hope that if you are relatively local, you’ll consider running Lex’s Run in 2011. Doug’s wife Lex, suffers from adult onset muscular dystrophy, and they have created this race to give back to the association that has done so much for them. You can find their homepage here.

Jonathan, Me and Adam post-race courtesy of Chris

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The 35th Annual Marathon Sports 5 Miler

Posted in race recap, racing, Vibram Five Fingers, tagged Marathon Sports 5 Miler, race recap, running on July 23, 2010| 7 Comments »

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Last night night I ran the Marathon Sports 5 Miler. It was, to say the least, a very new experience for me. I had never raced anything shorter than a 10K, so I wasn’t sure how I was going to approach this. I was running on two teams last night. One was the RaceMenu/mix1 team that I have been running with since April, the other was an informal coming together of friends to form a coed foursome to compete in the team competition of the race. We had no actual chance of winning the competition outright, but we did have a friendly wager with some friends who had formed a team of their own. It was Team We Run This Shizzle (with Doug, Jamie, Nina and myself) versus Team Runners Through The Jungle (with Hugh, Michael, Alett and Lizette). The winning team was to buy the losing team a beer.

When Jamie and I arrived at the high school where the race was starting, I looked around and knew placing high was going to be tough. I have never seen so many high school and just out of high school runners at a race since, well, high school. And these kids looked serious. There are some races that bring out the more hard core runners, and I think that the Marathon Sports 5 Miler is one of them. We finally managed to find both Team Shizzle and Team Jungle, and the smack talk began. At one point I asked Hugh what the strategy was for running a 5 Miler, and he looked at me deadpan and said, “run faster than a 10K.”

Soon we were called to the start. The race started at a local high school on one of its fields. As the Marathon Sports website describes the course:

The course is a moderately difficult certified 5-mile combination of hilly roads, grass, and trails, starts like a shoulder-to-shoulder cross country classic, and finishes with a flourish on the High School track.

RaceMenu leader, Alain, called me up to the starting line.

“How fast you running this,” he asked.

“I’m hoping around 32:30”

“Ok, I’m running with you. Stay up here.”

I put my toe on the line and looked around. I remember thinking to myself, “I do NOT belong with these guys.” All around me were “real” runners. Next to me were a pack of BAA (Boston Athletic Association) runners. It was intimidating. I looked back to wave at Teams Shizzle and Jungle but couldn’t find them in the sea of runners. As I scanned the crowd I realized more and more that this was a serious crowd of hard core runners. More doubt began to creep in.

The starter raised the bullhorn…

Now, this was the first race since the Manchester Marathon in November that I ran naked. No, for you non-runners, that doesn’t mean without my clothes. No, naked means running without music or your GPS enabled phone or watch. I did cheat a little by wearing my stopwatch, but running without music and more importantly Runkeeper, meant that I wasn’t going to have my normal half-mile splits to tell me just how fast I was going.

…and we were off!

Alain and I took off like jackrabbits across the large field. As we made the first turn off the hill, the course dipped drastically and it was all I could do not to slide down the grass. Within 90 seconds were back on road and looking around I knew I was in trouble. I was huffing and puffing already while getting passed by scores of high school runners. I thought to myself, “man, it sucks to be old!”

3 minutes in I asked Alain if his garmin said how far we were. He looked but couldn’t tell. I was hoping to hear we were on a 6:00 – 6:15 pace. A couple of minutes later I saw the 1st mile marker. From a distance I could make out the first number. A “5”. Crap! Alain and I passed the marker at 5:35 – way too fast for me! Alain tried to pull me along, but I had to ease up and recover. I waved him on and watched him slowly pull away.

Mentally I was in crisis mode. I realized that I had truly screwed up my race plan by going out so fast. To be nearly 45 seconds faster than my planned pace was too much. Part of me wanted to stop, but I knew I couldn’t let Team Shizzle down. As I approached the 2nd mile marker I heard Hugh yell from behind me.

“Hey Luau!

“Yeah?”

“When I told you to run faster than your 10K pace, I didn’t mean twice as fast!”

I tried to laugh but I was still recovering. My whole body was aching, but I was determined to just get to mile 3. As long as I could get to mile 3 I knew I could finish. Hugh paused for a beat and then moved on.

I hit mile 2 at 12:26 (a 6:51 second mile). At this point I knew I was on my own for the rest of the race. I had originally hoped to run with either Alain or Hugh, but had burned through too much fuel in the first mile. I was just going to have to hang on for dear life. At the next water stop I grabbed one cup and downed it and then a second cup and poured it over my head. As I left the water stop I heard a little boy say, “Dad? Why did that man pour it on his head?” I laughed.

Mile 3 came quickly in 6:02, though I wonder if that mile marker was misplaced. 18:28 through 3 miles. Despite having killed myself in that first mile, I still had a shot at a 32-handle if I could just maintain a 7:00 minute pace. Normally, that’s a pace I can manage, but man, I was hurting. I focused on just staying steady, keeping the feet moving.

Mile 4 arrived in 7:04. I was fading and fading fast. At 25:32, I knew I just needed to maintain to reach my goal time, but it was a struggle. I was getting passed and I wasn’t passing anyone; psychologically that can be a game crusher. But with about 3/4 of a mile to go, something happened. Up ahead I could see I was actually gaining on some people. I wasn’t the only one struggling this late in the game. I found new energy and kicked it up just a bit. I wasn’t going to try to catch them in one fell swoop. I knew I had a little bit of time to reel them in.

My engine was sputtering but I was determined. My legs and lungs were yelling, screaming at me, but I mentally plugged my ears and yelled “lalalalalalalala!” as loud as I could in my head. A young blond girl passed my on my right. I latched on and stayed with her. With a half mile to go, the course returned to grass for a little over a quarter mile before finishing on the local high school’s track. The girl started to pull away (I’d find out later that she is a nationally ranked high school miler) as we hit the track.

The moment my feet hit the track, a flood of memories came back. I had not run competitively on a track in over 22 years, but it all came back. The crowds, the pain, the adrenaline.

The adrenaline!!! Thank God for adrenaline. As we rounded the turn to head for the final straightaway, I heard Alain cheer me on. It was time for the kick, and man did I kick! I passed the girl and three other runners as I stretched out my stride and just went. The last guy in my sights got away by 2 seconds. I patted him on the back and we shook hands.

You want to know what those 2 seconds cost me? A top 100 finish overall and a top 20 finish in my age group. I finished with a 32:14 (16 seconds faster than my goal), 101st of 915 overall and 21st of 156 in my age group. By far not my best finish, but to accomplish that in this field felt pretty good. I found both Alain and Hugh. In the end they had each finished about a minute ahead of me, so I didn’t feel too bad.

I went back out on to the field to cheer on the rest of the runner. In came Mike, then Jamie, Doug, Alett, Lizette and Nina. Team Shizzle initially thought we had lost, but when I checked the scoreboard later that evening, Surprise!, we had actually beaten Team Jungle by 98 seconds.

After taking a few photo-op shots with the RaceMenu/mix1 team and O-Water, Teams Jungle and Shizzle made their way to my car where we cracked open a few beers to celebrate the competition.

Jamie, Doug, Me, Nina, Alett, Hugh and Lizette

Despite having run for RaceMenu for several months now, this was my first race where I was running in a team competition. I absolutely loved the extra motivation it gave me to run hard. Before the race, Jamie was telling me that she was concerned about how she was going to run and that she didn’t want to let her teammates down. This despite the fact that she was a last minute addition and didn’t actually know the runners. It is great motivation to run your best, and she did! She ran a 36:20, coming in over a minute faster than what she was hoping for. I know that when I wanted to give up at mile 2, knowing that I’d be letting the team down was a huge motivator to keep going.

So now it’s back to training for the Smuttynose Marathon, but I already have my eye on next year’s Marathon Sports 5 Miler, and I’m hoping we can have the same friendly bet again, because next time Hugh, I’m taking you down…I’m taking you down to Chinatown. Let the smack talk begin!

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Boston 13.1 Marathon Series

Posted in race recap, racing, tagged 13.1 Marathon Series, Boston, Half-Marathon, race, race recap, Recap, running on June 29, 2010| 11 Comments »

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On Sunday I ran Boston 13.1.

When the alarm went off at 4AM, I thought, this is NOT going to go well. In fact, I had had that exact same thought as I finally drifted off to sleep just a little over 3 hours earlier. Despite having plans to run on Sunday, the wife and I had gone out to dinner with cousins and stayed out relatively late. 4AM arrived way too quickly.

After a shower and a quick bite to eat, I was off. Despite having to wake up at 4AM, I was thankful for the 6:15 race start. With temperatures quickly rising to 80° by 10AM, anything later would have made the race simply unbearable.

Turns out that the 13.1 Marathon Series Boston Edition didn’t actually take place in Boston. Instead, it was in the rolling hills of Milton and Canton. Rolling hills is putting it lightly, but more on that later. After failing to find my teammate Chris (the one who came in 4th last week) and my buddy Erin (in from Georgia), I made my way to the starting line. The starting corral was organized into pace sections (6:00 mile, 7:00 mile, etc). I wasn’t sure what my game plan was yet, nor did I have any clue as to how I was going to run. 3 hours of sleep and already rising temperatures made me a little nervous about going out too fast. I essentially wanted to beat 1:40, with my secret “time to beat” for the day a 1:35. With summer in full effect I knew there was no way I was going to challenge my Half-Mary PR of 1:33:14. So I placed myself at the front of the 8:00/mile pack, figuring I’d run somewhere in the 7:30 – 7:45 range for the race.

After a few minutes we were off. Unlike last week where I got sucked out by the Kenyan leaders, this week I was careful to go out with a little patience – or so I thought. I looked around for someone to latch onto but much like the Boston Run To Remember, nobody seemed to fit a pace that was comfortable for me. After a few minutes of bobbing and weaving, I found a couple that was running together and seemed to be moving along at a decent clip. I settled in behind them and focused on form. When we hit the first mile marker I was a bit surprised – 7:18. Huh! I was feeling pretty good, so I figured why not keep it up. As we hit the second mile in 7:19, I heard the guy say to his girlfriend that he thought they should pick up the pace. Again, I figured I was still feeling pretty good so why not keep up?

Just before mile 2 the hills started to kick in. They weren’t nasty – not yet anyway – but definitely provided a bit of a challenge this early in the morning. The course had several out and back branches, the first one starting at mile 3. This first branch was only about 2 1/2 miles altogether and was uneventful except that I was able to get a glimpse of the leader as he ran past in the other direction. This early in the race, it appeared that he already had a good 3 – 4 minute lead. I was happy to see my RaceMenu teammate Chris sitting comfortably in 2nd. We’ve exchanged hello’s as we passed each other. As I made it back to the start of this first branch, I realized that I was running steadily in the low 7’s. Much faster than I had planned, but feeling good nonetheless. Visions of a PR started to dance in my head – that is until I turned the corner onto out and back branch number 2 at mile 5. I took a deep breath as I stared at a hill that simply went up and appeared to continue up as the path turned around another corner. I found out over 7 1/2 minutes later that the hill went up for a full mile. For the non-runner, a 30 second drop in pace may not seem much, but add it up over 13 miles and you’re talking about a 6 1/2 minutes swing in your time.

While tackling this hill I was struck with doubt. I seriously wondered if I had been unwise to run the first 5 miles at the pace I had with as little sleep as I had had the night before. I tried to employ my falling uphill technique with mixed results. I could only do it in spurts, but it was carrying me past dozens of people, and even when I had to straighten up, momentum continued to carry me. I must have passed 30 people on the way up the hill. When I realized this, my attitude began to change for a second time.

As we approached the turnaround just past mile 7 I began counting the runners coming the other way. The leader had come and gone minutes earlier. Chris was in a battle for 2nd place some 5 – 6 minutes behind. We slapped 5 as we passed each in a neat moment I will not forget. A minute or so after that came the rest of the pack. 4, 5, 6…10, 15, 20…25, 26, 30…35, 40…45, 50, 60…69, 70, 72…77, 78, 79… I was sitting in the 80th spot. Okay, I can deal with that. 80th. That’s not bad. But then I started thinking about the previous week’s race. I didn’t want to get passed. My goal had been to finish in the top 100 in this race, and yes, I was sitting at 80th, but there was another 6.1 miles to go.

After the turnaround, there was a slight uphill, where my falling uphill technique helped my catch 4 or 5 runners, and then it was downhill for the next 2 1/2 miles. It sounds great, but it is tough on the quads! As I hit mile 8 I heard a woman yell “LUAU!!!”. I turned just in time to see my Twitter/Dailymile buddy Erin go running by in the other direction. I waved as best I could and kept going.

By this time, the runners had spread out pretty thinly. There were two runner about 30 yards ahead of me. I set my sights on reeling them in. At about mile 9 I caught them. As I contemplated whether to run with them or try to pass them, one of them looked at me and said, “Hey! Are you that guy with that blog on dailymile?” I did a double take. Well, uh, yeah, actually I am. He told me that he had just stumbled onto my blog not 4 or 5 days before. In fact, he had sent me an email asking me a question about running in Vibrams (Eric, I promise I’m getting around to answering that email very shortly!). We chatted over the next mile about running marathons (I found out he had run a 3:09 marathon and qualified for Boston) and running in general. At about mile 10 he backed off and I looked ahead to the next group of runners in front of me. Our pace had closed the gap significantly on the next group. As we rounded a corner at 10.5 I realized that I was probably sitting now somewhere around 60th. I chugged along to mile 11, blissfully clipping along.

Then came mile 12. Ever since mile 6, the hills had been relatively mild. But mile 12 made mile 6 look like a wannabe. It just went and went at a much steeper incline. Again I took a deep breath, but this time I was determined to take the battle to the hill. I shortened my stride, controlled my breathing and went. Leaning into the hill, I passed 5 runners just as the hill started. I felt like I was either moving at a decent clip or the runners in front of me were losing their fight with the hill (turns out it was a little of both – I wasn’t going as nearly as fast as I would have hoped, but it was fast enough to pass these runners). I passed another group of 4 or 5 runners. Now there were no more pods in front of me, just lone islands of single runners struggling to make it to 12. One by one I picked them off. I tried to control my breathing, softening it as I went by those that were struggling. I didn’t want them to know that I was feeling the pain too. I kept running and I slowing kept passing runners. As I approached the top of the hill I came upon the last water station.

1.1 miles to go.

I saw 3 or 4 runners slowing down to grab a drink. Did I have a strong enough 1.1 left in me to pass up this last water station? I decided to gamble and blew right through.

1.1 miles to go. I knew I was less than 8 minutes from the finish. I could suffer through 8 minutes.

I caught a few more runners. There in the distance was one more runner in blue. He had to be at least 50 – 60 yards ahead of me. At this point, there was about a quarter mile to go. There was simply no way to catch him. It couldn’t be done. But I again flashed to the Father’s Day 10K from the previous week. I remembered how I had been passed in the final mile. I remembered how I gave up trying to catch him with about 200 yards to go. I remembered how that guy cost me a 2nd place finish in my age group.

NOT. THIS. FRAKKING. TIME!

I turned the engine into overdrive. I had already kicked it up a notch at the start of the hill, but I was able to find another gear and then another after that. I kept looking at him and then at the finish line and then back at him again. He was in cruise mode, settled into his place.

I was closing, but running out of real estate.

I kept pushing. My legs were screaming, my lungs were burning.

I heard the crowd pick up the volume. They knew what I was trying to do.

With 70 yards to go, he was still a good 20 yards in front of me.

Suddenly he sensed something was wrong. Maybe someone in the crowd tipped him off. His head turned slightly as he pick up his pace. I covered 20 yards in the time it took him to cover 10. We were now 10 yards apart, with 50 yards to go. He tried to turn on the gas but it was too late. I was flying and his engine was in cruise control. I passed him with 1 yard to go. It was close enough that both of our guntimes read 1:33:58. But I know I beat him to the finish.

He came over and patted me on the back. I chatted with a few of the runners that came in right after me, exchanging congratulations. As I left the finishing chute, I ran into Chris. He had finished in second, pulling away late in the race from his rival. I waited and cheered Erin in. We exchanged big sweaty hugs. She PR’d by 10 minutes!

In the end, I didn’t PR. Officially my time was 1:33:47, a half minute off my PR, but I managed to finish 41st overall out 2681 finishers and 4th in my age group (out of 106 men ages 40 – 44, and out of 188 men in their 40’s). Yes, another 4th place finish in my age group and unfortunately, this time there were no 40 year olds in the top three overall finishers. That said, I felt pretty damned good about my result, especially considering that when I woke up Sunday morning, I was pretty convinced that this race was not going to end well for me.

The race itself, though great for me, was somewhat of a disaster organizationally speaking. The finishing chute was too crowded with no easy exit. The medals, usually handed out to runners as they finish, were only available across a large field in an unmarked location. The usual amenities one expects at a half or full marathon (i.e. massage tents, food and beer) were only available to runners who ran with Team Challenge. But the very worst mistake that I heard about later was that the organizers ran out of cups at the water stations midway through the race. Though I wasn’t carrying my own hydration, I was lucky to be ahead enough to have missed that, but many of the runners were forced to take swigs out of gallon jugs as they went through the water stations. I can’t imagine having to drink from a bottle that the sweaty stranger in front of you just slobbered all over. And from what I understand, a couple of the stations actually ran out of water all together. A definite liability in the hot and humid weather.

That said, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I was able to run much faster than I expected and the hills that I was so worried about turned out to help me in the end.

Here’s the elevation chart:

Miles 6 & 12 were killers

With this race out of the way, it’s time to concentrate on my five miler coming up at the end of July. I’ve never run a race that short, and I realize that I have to work on speed – a topic for another post.

Erin & I right after she PR'd by 10 minutes. You gotta love a girl who's willing to give you a big, sweaty hug and not care!

I also ran into Eric post-race. I promise that email reply is coming!

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Heat – Fathers’ Day 10K

Posted in race recap, tagged Father's Day 10K, race recap, RaceMenu, running on June 21, 2010| 8 Comments »

[tweetmeme source=”luau” only_single=false http://www.URL.com]

As I walked along the sidewalk I could feel the right side of my body heat up under the rays of the rising sun. Just on the other side of a small wall was the beach, the ocean’s wave splashing invitingly.

A bead of sweat ran from my temple and down my cheek. I looked at my watch.

9AM.

The race wasn’t starting for another hour, and that was only if it was starting on time. One more hour for the sun to rise higher in the sky and give off its intense heat. I puttered up and down the sidewalk, stretching a little, jogging a little, trying to work out the crick in my neck I had woken up with 2 days earlier. I wasn’t feeling great about this race.

4 months earlier I had run a 10K in sub-freezing weather. Initially I had worried about the cold, but I discovered that at that temperature, I was actually kind of fast. I finished in a flashy 39:29. I toyed with the idea of going sub-40 this past Sunday, but with the temperature as it was at 9AM, I re-evaluated and thought maybe a sub-45 was a smarter goal. Normally I enjoy the hour before a race, but the heat was so intense that I was afraid to sit still for too long, and so I wandered like a lost soul.

Finally, at 10, we were called to the starting line. The announcement came over the PA that if you were planning on running 17-minute 5K splits, you should step to the front of the line, otherwise step back. I took several steps back, along with everyone else. Two Kenyans joined us where we stood. My teammate Lisa* leaned over and told me that they were the heavy favorites. I took another step back. The two Kenyans kept shuffling backwards and everybody else followed suit. I looked over at another teammate, Chris, and said, “I wish they’d stop shuffling back. Aren’t they supposed to be right on the starting line?” He nodded and laughed.

Finally the starter asked everyone to step to the line. The crowd pushed me forward and I found myself lined up alongside the Kenyans. “This is not good,” I thought. Chris asked me what I was shooting for. “40 if it were 30° cooler, you?” He said 36.

That's me between one of the Kenyans and the guy in the blue shirt...Chris is to my left, Lisa is to my right

Hmmm. 36. Maybe I won’t be hanging with you too long.

The starter raised the horn, counted down and we were off! I followed my teammate as we shot off the starting line. Initially it didn’t feel so fast, but I knew I had started too quickly when my breathing became heavy almost immediately. A quarter of a mile in a photographer took a shot of the lead pack. It was the Kenyans, Chris, another runner and me. I very quickly realized that this could end poorly for me. I had no business being in this lead pack. As we hit mile marker 1, with the Kenyans already 20 yards ahead, I looked at my watch.

5:55

5:55?!? What the heck was I thinking? I had a moment of panic as I tried to keep up. I made a very quick decision to slow it down drastically. As I watched my friend pull away, I focused on getting to the turn around. The race had been set up as a 3.1 mile out and back loop. I knew the turn around was less than 3 minutes away. With the heat pounding down on us the way it was, I was going to have to break this race down into 4 1.5 mile races to get through it. By the time we hit the first turnaround, a few runner had caught and passed me.

There is no worse feeling in a road race than getting passed, but again, I also knew that I had no business being this far ahead of the pack.

We hit the turn, I grabbed some water, took a sip, poured the rest down my back and headed back.

BAM! The wind hit me hard. In retrospect, I don’t think that the wind was actually that strong, but when combined with the heat and humidity, it felt like I was running into a wall of jello-pudding.

Mile 2 arrived quickly, 6:36, But I could already feel myself fading. The heat was getting to me. A few more runners passed me, but I kept plugging along. I spotted the building that we had started at and looked at my watch. Oh! Just under 6:00! Maybe I’m doing better than I thought. That gave me a little energy boost as I honed in on the turnaround…except it wasn’t the building and the turnaround wasn’t there. I looked up to see an identical building a couple hundred yards down. There was the building we had started at. My small boost of energy quickly deflated. Mile 3 still arrived at a respectable 7:12.

As I hit the turn, there were my girls. I shifted right to give my Katie a high five.

You can just make out Katie behind the garbage can with her "Go Dad" hat

She was wearing the same “Go Dad!” hat she had worn for Boston. I shot out of the turnaround at 20:18 – striking distance of a sub-40 – and sitting in 15th place.

Katie had given me a small energy boost that carried me over mile 4 in 7:05 (my first and only negative split of the day!). I struggled to make to the turn, but kept telling myself that once I was out of this turn it was only 1.7 to go. I took a gulp of water, poured the rest down my back and prepared to be hit by the wind. It didn’t hit me quite as hard this time, but in looking back I realize that it was because I wasn’t going nearly as fast. I pushed on, knowing that I essentially only had to keep this up for another 12 minutes or so.

The mile 5 marker came and went. I looked at my watch. 7:20. I was slowing down. Shortly after passing the marker I got passed one more time. I tried to hang with the guy, but every time I tried to hit the accelerator I got nothing. It was like cranking an engine with a dying battery, and my legs were dying!!! Mile 6 came in a relatively slow 7:37. Chris was standing there and yelled, “300 meters! Kick it in!”

As I passed the last water stop I yelled, “Throw it in my face!!!” The kid holding the water cup looked confused. “Throw the water in my face!” I yelled again. One of the other volunteers told the kid to throw in my face. Finally he got. As I went through the water stop, I got hit three time. It woke me up! The legs came somewhat alive and I pushed it for all I had.

One last push

Unfortunately, the guy who had just passed me did the exact same thing. I closed on him but in the end I ran out of real estate.

Coming around the final turn, I high fived Katie again and went through the finishing chute. 43:11. I had covered the last 0.2 in a 7:00/mile pace. I leaned on my knees, breathing hard. As miserable as it was, I have to admit it was fun. One of the things I love about out and back races is that you get to see everybody. Throughout the race I was able to shoot hello’s to teammates and various runners who I had met before the race, plus I really got to see the two Kenyan runners in action, up close. They ran with a fluidity I can only dream of.

When the results sheet went up I almost tore out my hair. 4 months earlier I had missed the podium by 2 seconds, finishing 4th in my age group. When I first saw the initial results, there I was, 43:11, 16th place out of 169 finishers, 4th in my age group. 4th?!? Again? This time by 9 seconds. Remember that guy who passed me just after mile 5? Yeah, that was him. I couldn’t believe it. What I forgot however, was that in the final posting of the results, most race directors remove the overall podium finishers from the age group category, so surprise, surprise, I found myself on the podium at the awards ceremony. 3rd place in my age group! I’ll take it!

So what did I learn from this race? Lesson #1: unless you are Kenyan, don’t try to run with them. As thrilling as it was to run next to poetry in motion for a 1/2 mile, I paid for it dearly over the next 5.7 miles. Lesson #2: no matter how tired you are, dig deeper at the end to get that final kick and start it before the final 0.2 miles. The last guy that passes you could be the difference between a podium finish or not. Lesson #3: racing on a team can help your motivation. I managed to finish 2nd on the RaceMenu/mix1 team, but part of what kept me motivated was seeing my teammates out on the course. A simple wave or a nod was an acknowlegement of a shared effort to get through a race under brutally hot conditions.

Up next is the Boston13.1 half-marathon this coming Sunday. I’m praying that the 6:15 AM start means much lower temperatures.

*Back in March I was asked to join the RaceMenu/mix1 racing team. I have now run the Boston Marathon, the Providence Marathon, the Boston Run to Remember Half-Marathon and the Father’s Day 10K with them, and it has been a pleasure meeting the teammates I have. Check out RaceMenu at www.RaceMenu.com.

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So Maybe the Wife Isn’t So Crazy After All

Posted in race recap, racing, Vibram Five Fingers, tagged Boston Run To Remember, Half-Marathon, race recap, running on June 3, 2010| 8 Comments »

[tweetmeme source=”luau” only_single=false http://www.URL.com]

Somewhere around mile 8:

What the Hell am I doing?

Why am I running this?

This is so pointless.

Maybe I’ll take the summer off from running.

God, I wish I could stop.

Maybe I should just quit running altogether.

***

I have been struggling with this race recap, in large part I think because this race was a struggle for me. I haven’t had the mental lethargy I had in this race ever before. Even at Manchester when my quads froze up at mile 20 and I had to hobble like Frankenstein’s Monster for the last 6.2 miles I at least had the mental drive to finish. In this last race on Sunday, it was my body NOT my head that carried me through to the end.

***

As I headed downtown early Sunday morning to the Run To Remember Half-Marathon with my friend Liz, I kept thinking about 2 things. My awful training runs during the week and the weather. After taking two weeks off from running to let my right knee mend, I had run on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Each run was physically miserable. Despite being happy to be running again, by Friday it was starting to get to me mentally.

The temperature at start time was supposed to be 68° in the shade, but was predicted to rise rapidly over the following 2 hours. I kept thinking, “if that’s not incentive to hurry my ass up, I don’t know what is.” My worries about the weather heightened when I ran into my friend Yigal (one of the people who first encouraged me to run long distances). He looked at me and smiled, “It’s gonna be a hot one today…and there’s no place to hide.”

After stretching and warming up, I found my way to the 7:30 pace section. I kept trying to tell myself, “it’s only a half marathon. It’s only a half-marathon”, but there was another part of me that was screaming back, “it’s a half-marathon! It’s a half-frakking-marathon!!!” Mentally I was going in two different directions. Even as the starter said “ready” I had no idea what kind of race I was going to run.

I moved forward on the gun, broke into a small jog but then had to stop as the crowd couldn’t figure out what it was doing. Finally, as I approached the starting line I was able to break into stride. The moment I saw daylight the feet went. It was a gut move, not based at all on how I was feeling physically (which was tired). Without thinking I almost immediately kicked it into race speed. That first mile involved an incredible amount of weaving. I looked at my watch. 6:54. Whoa! I thought about slowing down but didn’t. The first four miles would all be under 7 minutes, but for that I would pay later in the race.

As we made our way through downtown Boston I scanned the crowd, looking for any pod to latch onto. I tried this group and that one, but unlike the Eastern States 20 where I found my group early, nobody was running at a pace that I was comfortable with. I felt like Goldilocks looking for that perfect bowl of porridge. Everybody’s bowl was either too hot or too cold. I continued to work my way through the crowd. As we left downtown and headed over the Charles River, the crowd thinned. As we crested the bridge, a long-legged blond started to slowly pass me. She pulled ahead just slowly enough for me to latch on. Perfect! Over the next few miles we ran in silence until we saw the lead runner on his way back from the turnaround. We both cheered him on and then continued in silence.

It was about this time that I really started to feel the heat. The strange thing is that it never really got that hot on Sunday. I don’t think the thermometer reached 80°, but the combination of my fast start, the humidity and my general malaise towards the race added up to just knock me on my butt. My pacing dropped 30 – 40 second per mile. Long-legged blond left me in the dust. Suddenly I wasn’t passing people anymore, they were passing me. And they weren’t passing me in a trickle, they were passing me in droves. I kept trying to pick up the pace, eying runners here and there to slide in behind, but every time I’d watch as they pulled away.

Doubt began to set in. I seriously questioned why I was doing this.

Mentally I was just not in the race and mile 9 showed it. 8:13. Over a minute slower than each of my first 4 miles. The moment I saw that number however, something kicked in. I was NOT finishing this race mentally defeated. I told myself, “4 miles to go”, leaned in and picked up the pace. I would cover the last 4.1 miles in a respectable 30:46, about a 7:30 pace. As we came back into the city, another young woman pulled up next to me. I looked at her.

“I’m gonna try to hang with you as long as I can,” I said.

“Let’s go!” she said.

As we made our way toward the Commons I felt a surge of energy. The crowd thickened, their cheers grew louder. I picked up speed and I was again passing people and not being passed. We weaved our way through downtown Boston and headed for the final bridge to the finish line at the Boston World Trade Center. I looked at my watch – 1:33 with 0.62 miles to go. A PR was out of the question, but I could still put in a good showing.

I drew on what I thought was every last bit of energy and went for it. This was going to be ugly.

My father ran track when he was in junior high school. His specialty was the half-mile, for which he set a long-standing county record for back in the late 50’s. He used to tell me that as good as he was at the half-mile, he absolutely hated it because it was too long to be a sprint, but too short not to be. He would tell me how in the last 100 yards of his races he would feel like his butt was going to fall off and it would be all he could do to finish.

I broke into the best sprint I could muster. Over the bridge the young woman and I went. She was desperately trying to hang on. Down the other side we came.

0.42 miles to go. I didn’t bother looking at my watch. My legs and arms were pumping away. THIS is what I was missing midway through this race. The young woman had fallen behind.

0.25 miles to go and I suddenly realized I was running on empty. There was nothing but fumes in the tank. I could feel my legs fighting me. I distinctly remember thinking, “Uh Oh!”

Out of the crowd came a “LUAU!!!” I turned to look. It was my buddy Mike (of The Battle With the Cat in the Hat fame). I shot him a wave and bore down with renewed energy, but I seriously thought I was going to have to ride momentum to get across the finish line.

With 50 – 60 yards to go, a guy in a bright orange shirt with his name (Cooper) written on the back blew past me.

Now, I generally don’t run angry. I find it counter-productive, but at that moment I found my inner Hulk. I had passed this guy in the first 200 yards of the race and now he was passing me?

NO!

FRAKKIN’!

WAY!

I channeled Usain Bolt and discovered something I hadn’t seen in a long time. A kick. A real, honest to goodness kick. I blew by him with just yards to go, finishing ahead of him by 1 second. I stumbled to a guard rail to hold myself up. Cooper came over and high-fived me. The young woman came over and did the same. We exchanged pleasantries and I wobbled off to cheer on the friends who were behind me.

I looked at my watch. 1:37:00. Not a PR, but I had to admit, considering the way I felt going into and mid-way through the race, I was pretty happy with the result. I had covered that last 0.62 miles at a 6:27/mile pace. Not bad after 12.5 miles. The final official stats would finally read 1:37:00, 212th out of 4955 finishers, 35th out of 426 men in my age group. I was even more elated with my time when I heard the winner had run 4 minutes slower than his usual time. It seems that everybody in this race that I knew came in 5 – 15 minutes slower than they had hoped or expected. So to be almost 4 minutes over my own PR made me feel pretty good about my performance.

So, you may be wondering about the title. I started running in November of 2008 because my crazy wife had decided in a moment of insanity to sign up for the Hyannis Half Marathon, which takes place on the Cape in the middle of February. I wasn’t a runner. I started doing it because I didn’t want this crazy woman running in the dead of winter all by herself.

All I could think of last Sunday as the sun beat down on my shoulders and sweat poured from every pore of my body was “So maybe the Wife isn’t so crazy after all.” I’ve determined that I am definitely NOT a warm weather runner. That said, I think I’m running Boston 13.1 at the end of the month. Who’s the crazy one now, huh?

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Pain

Posted in race recap, Vibram Five Fingers, tagged Knee Pain, PR, Providence marathon, race recap, VFF, Vibrams on May 4, 2010| 15 Comments »

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This past Sunday I ran the Providence Marathon. This was the marathon I had been training for all winter in hopes of qualifying for Boston 2011. Instead, plans changed, I ran Boston 2010 two weeks ago and was forced to change my approach to this marathon. Running 2 marathons in 2 weeks, especially when you haven’t specifically trained for it, is just a tad nuts. Many of you let me know that two weeks ago when I announced that I would indeed run Providence. I did manage to give Sunday’s run some purpose with my $22 for your favorite charity post (and the 22 of you that participated truly helped me through the last few miles), but in retrospect, I don’t think it made it any less crazy.

As crazy as it was though, I came into Providence with a plan – start slooooooowly.

Which I did.

Kinda.

The thought of running Providence as a Boston qualifier did in fact cross my mind in the past week, but if I was going to be honest with myself, I knew that my body was still not fully recovered from my run at Boston. It didn’t help that I was still in the midst of fighting a nagging chest cold.

So the plan on Sunday was to run a steady, strong race. Start slow, pick up speed if I felt like I could, but not push myself to the point of serious injury. I figured a 3:35 – 3:40 was not out of the question.

As I drove down to Providence I heard a weather report on the radio state that the temperature for the marathon was going to start around 60° (Yes!) and climb to over 85° (NO!!!).

85°? Really? 85 frakkin’ degrees?

Any and all thoughts of a possible BQ vanished completely.

Sunday was going to be a test of survival.

I played with some numbers in my head as I pulled into the hotel to park the car and check my bag. 3:32 in Boston, under almost perfect weather conditions meant, what? a 3:40 in Providence? Maybe a 3:50 with the soaring temperatures? I shut the brain down as I went in.

I started looking for people I knew through my online running community and almost immediately ran into twitter friend @IronmanLongRunr. I had actually met him at the Manchester Marathon back in November and I was pleased to see that he was attempting to run his first marathon in Vibrams. We chatted on our way to the start, getting funny looks from people looking at our funny shoes. It was great to have a fellow Vibrams runner along for the ride.

What a different perspective from Boston. I wish I had the foresight to take a picture, but suffice it to say I started near the front on Sunday as opposed to the absolute rear. While waiting for the starting gun, two more dailymile friends tapped me on the shoulder to introduce themselves (Melissa C. and Martin A., both of whom were running the half – I also met Ryan D. after the race). It is such a neat moment to be able to put voices and body language with the faces and names of the people you have been following online.

Although I had placed myself in the 7-8 minute/mile pace area, I was determined to start slow. As the gun went off I could hear myself say out loud, “Go slow”.

IronmanLongRunr laughed. His approach was actually going to be similar. Despite having run nearly 1000 races and several marathons, this was his first in Vibrams.

We hit the first mile marker at about 8:00. Perfect. My goal was to hit 10 miles at about 80 minutes and see how I felt. Unfortunately, not much past the first mile marker I hit my first speed bump. The course took a right turn down a hill and the moment I hit it, my right knee buckled, I mean seriously buckled.

Sharp pain! Sharp pain! Sharp pain!

Frak! No Frakking Way!!!

I didn’t change my pace. Two strides and I was upright. I tried to ignore it. I looked over at IronmanLongRunr and forced a smile. We were pretty much maintaining the same pace so I decided to distract myself with a little conversation. We made small talk while we waited for the course to split and send the half-marathoners in another direction (on a complete side note, I loved that the organizers of this marathon split the course in two different directions early. This way I knew that anyone who was running with or around me was running the entire race and not peeling off at 13.1 – see my Manchester experience to see why this mattered).

The pain was not going away. It wasn’t getting worse, but it definitely was NOT going away. I gritted my teeth as we approached the first real hill at mile 5. Going up was fine. In fact, I incorporated a little of my falling uphill move with very nice results. But every step coming down sent a sharp pain through my knee. I tried to adjust my stride, but didn’t want to do anything too dramatic and cause something else to give. Fortunately, the marathon course overall was the flattest I’ve run so far. About two miles later we hit another hill with the same results. Going uphill I gained some ground on some runners, going down I whimpered with every other step.

As we approached a turn around at about mile 9, I got a peek at some of the leaders. I saw my buddy Brad (the runner who patted me on the back at Eastern States). He would tell me after the race he crashed and burned and had to walk the last few miles…he finished with a 3:27…right, a 3:27 walking the last few miles. Anyway, after I made the turn around I spotted one of the runners who had encouraged me to run Providence, my dailymile/Twitter friend, and fellow blogger, Robyn. At that point, IronmanLongRunr dropped back, I shortened my stride and picked up my pace.

At that point I latched on to two runners who I would find out are both Ironman competitors as well. John was pacing Steve for a 3:30 race. I followed them for several miles, chatting about my shoes and their training. They tried to convince me that doing triathlons actually hurt less than doing marathons – that the recovery time was much shorter for triathlons.

Yeah, right.

Turns out that I wasn’t the only crazy one in the group. John had run Boston just two weeks before as well. At around 16 or 17 I picked up my pace for no good reason and left them behind. I was happy to see that my fear of the 16th mile seemed to now be completely obliterated.

I picked up a young woman named Steph. Steph was running her 4th or 5th marathon in hopes of running a sub 3:30. At this point we were on pace for about that so we chatted for a while. Turns out she had qualified for Boston this year, but had been unable to run it. She was hoping to run a qualifying time again. I told her I’d hang with her as long as I could to push her along, but I knew that there was really no way I was going to keep up. About 2 miles later she dropped back. I probably should have followed her lead.

The pain in my right knee continued to bother me. There was just no way around it. IronmanLongRunr had said to me early on around mile 3 or 4 when I mentioned it, that the body and the marathon were strange things and that pain that was bothering me at mile 3 or 4 could suddenly disappear by mile 10 or 15. I had kept that thought in mind the entire time but to no avail. Although the pain wasn’t getting worse, it was still not getting any better.

Although the pain never caused me to think about quitting (aside from that first mile or two), it was definitely starting to get to me at this point. The mental fatigue of fighting the pain was wearing me down. I looked at my arms and shoulders and saw all those who were riding with me and picked up my pace.

As we hit the 20 mile marker, I said to myself, “Just a 10K at this point. You can do a 10 K.” And despite the constant knee pain, the rest of me felt pretty good. The next two miles went along quite pleasantly for having just run 20 miles.

But then the sun and heat came out in full force.

At 22 it was almost like someone had decided to turn the thermostat WAY up. I was convinced that my pace was slowing.

With maybe 3 to go, John and Steven passed me by like I wasn’t moving. I was still catching people myself, but they were in a groove. John paused and asked if I wanted to come along. I shook my head. The combination of heat and pain was too much for me to try and pour it on for the final 5K. Shortly thereafter Steph pulled up next to me. She had picked up another young woman and they were cruising along. She too paused momentarily to see if I wanted to latch on and again I shook my head. They were just going a little too fast for me at that point – 2 marathons in 2 weeks was finally, truly taking its toll. I felt like I had enough fuel to hold steady, but any sudden acceleration would have taken me down to empty.

It was around this time that my phone died on me again. It may have had something to do with trying to pour water on my head and missing completely and hitting my left arm instead. My phone was soaked and the automatic tracking stopped. I tried to guess my distance based in time and perceived pace, but everytime I thought 2 minutes must have gone by, I’d look at my watch to discover that only 60 seconds had passed.

Somehow I missed the marker for 24 and was convinced I had also missed the marker for 25. Imagine my dismay when 4 minutes later I came across mile marker 25.

The sun decided to turn it up even more for the final mile. There was no place to hide. I felt like I was dragging my feet for the final stretch. The air was thick, my body was tired, and at this point my knee had had just about enough thank you. Every small downward slope shot a sharp pain along the outside of the knee. I looked at my watch. 3:20 and change with just 1.2 to go. I knew I had a shot at a second PR in as many weeks and maybe even a sub-3:30. I dug deep and thought of all of you who had donated $22 to your charities to come along for the ride.

“COME ON!” I yelled to myself, scaring the crap out of a poor half-marathoner I was passing. I pushed along, hoping to run close to an 8 or 9 minute mile.

As I came around a bend, I looked for the finish.

Nothing. Just a few runners ahead of me. Around the next bend I went, looking for the finish.

Nothing.

I looked at my watch. Closing in fast on 3:29.

“How far?” I yelled.

“Around that bend,” someone yelled back. I looked. It was so far away, but this was it. I ran as hard as I thought my knee would let me. As I made the turn a kid in a green shirt started to pass me. I looked up – 50, maybe 75 yards to the finish. Green shirt passed me. The finish line was coming up fast now. I hadn’t seen this kid all race. He had been behind me the entire time. I wasn’t going to let this happen.

A sudden burst of adrenalin and the pain in my knee was gone. I broke into an all out sprint, the crowd cheering the two of us on in our mini-duel. I pulled away and finished a few yards ahead of him and proceeded to collapse into the arms of an awaiting volunteer.

I came to a dead stop. I couldn’t breath for a moment but caught my breath just in time to feel the pain return to my knee.

As I hobbled my way to food and drink area, I found John, Steven and Steph. They all had done well, Steph achieving her goal with a 3:28. She thanked me for pacing her along the way and I did the same.

As I sat there drinking my bottles of Mix1 and trying to eat a banana and some pizza, maybe a half dozen runners came over to thank me for pacing them along at certain points during the race. All of them had finished behind me, but each and everyone of them had kind words about silently following me at some point. I couldn’t help but think of “Ilsa”. I recognized some of them, but there were a few I hadn’t been aware of.

In the end I didn’t run a sub-3:30, but boy did I come close.

3:30:11. A PR by nearly 2 minutes. 114th overall out of nearly 1000 marathoners and 26th out 150 men in their 40’s. Not bad for a race that was the second in two weeks.

A couple of things I learned – never do 2 marathons in 2 weeks. I am mentally spent! I’m glad I did it though. I learned that my body can take the pounding of 26.2 miles better than a chest cold can. As of yesterday? No more chest cold. I also learned that maybe there’s more gas in the tank at the end of a race than we think. Looking back, I wonder if I should have latched on to either John and Steven or Steph. If I had, could I have held on to run the last 5K with them? My sprint at the end tells me just maybe I could have. Only one way to find out, right? Yeah, I think the next marathon isn’t for at least 5 months. Of course, that means if I’m going to follow a 16 week program, training starts in a month. I’m tired just thinking about it. Finally, I learned that, in the words of Dalton (RIP), Pain don’t hurt. As bad as my knee was killing me, I was able to run through it, using it almost as a tool to keep me from going out too fast.

I think a week off is going to be necessary, but then it’s right back to road. Next race – Boston Run to Remember at the end of the month…at least this one is just a half-marathon.

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Boston 2010

Posted in boston marathon, race recap, tagged boston marathon, race recap on April 22, 2010| 37 Comments »

[tweetmeme source=”luau” only_single=false http://www.URL.com]

So on Monday I ran the 114th Boston Marathon. It was like no other race I have ever run before – one that may not have ended as I had hoped but was a fantastic adventure nonetheless.

I could start with my 5:15 wake up, my hurried breakfast and shower, my nervous drive to the Boston Commons, my ride to Hopkinton with my RaceMenu Teammates (a story for another post), my wait in the Village, hooking up briefly with my buddy Mike, but I am eager to get right to the race.

The start of the Boston Marathon is broken into 2 waves, with the faster qualifiers in Wave 1 and the rest of us in Wave 2. The second Wave starts 30 minutes after the first. Each wave is further broken down into Corrals of 1000 runners each. Wave 1 had 13 corrals, wave 2 had 14. For those of you not wanting to do the math, that’s roughly 27,000 runners.

In part because I was not a qualifier and in part because my application was sent in last minute, I was assigned bib number 27709 in the 27th and final corral.

This was my view as I looked ahead to the starting line.

No, you can’t actually see the starting line in this picture because it’s over that hill in the distance.

This was the view behind me as I lined up.

Yeah, those people don’t even have bib numbers. They’re bandits. I was literally one of the last people to cross the starting line on Monday. In fact, once the gun went off, it took me well over 15 minutes or so to get there! The trip to the starting line was a marathon in and of itself, filled with false jogging starts and full stops.

From the start I was struck by the crowds. As soon as you cross the line (even before it) there are countless people, young and old, holding out there hands wanting nothing more than a high five. In the few races I have run, I have never seen such support.

Once I got over the starting line, I followed the advice of a dailymile/twitter friend Chris (@cyktrussel) and hugged the left shoulder. He had said that as a runner starting in the back, one of my biggest hurdles to a BQ was going to be the slow moving mass in front of me. On the shoulder I found room to move at a comfortable pace. Most people seemed to be sticking to the middle.

I took a deep breath and tried to find my inner calm. Despite the 15 minute walk up, or maybe because of it, I was completely amped up and ready to run hard. Not the way one should start such a challenging course. As I began to meditate on my pace I was distracted by the sudden flood of runners cutting across my field of vision from right to left. Dozens and dozens of runners were running into the woods. For a moment I couldn’t figure out what they were doing. Was this some weird mass run suicide thing? Had they become possessed by lemmings? It only took a moment to realize that these were all of the people who hadn’t thought to relieve themselves BEFORE the start of the race. I wish I had had the wherewithall to snap a shot of the wall of runners standing in the trees, all lined up.

After a chuckle, I settled into a groove. A half-mile in, Runkeeper beeped. I looked at my watch. 3:50. A little faster than I had planned, but right on the pace I was hoping to run for the whole race. I should have been a little more conservative, but as many Boston first-timers do, I let the pull of gravity pull me. I had planned on trying to run 8:00 miles through the first 10 and then slowly drop it down, but I was so happy cruising along at 7:40 – 7:45, and I felt so good, I thought, that maybe this was where I was supposed to be.

It would come back to haunt me. It’s amazing what 15 – 20 seconds per mile can do to or for you. I should have been running 8’s.

Around the 3 mile mark I heard my name called.

“LUAU!”

I turned to find my lovely new friend Alett, also known as @petfxr on twitter. Although she has been a relatively new addition to my online community of runner friends, she has very quickly become one of my favorites. Anyone who read my race recap of the Eastern States 20 will recognize her as the angel who brought me water when I had forgotten mine in my car. We hugged as best we could while maintaining stride and I was off.

A couple of miles later I recognized another runner. Not someone I had ever met, but I knew the costume. It was Jason Jacobs (@runkeeper), the creator of my most used iPhone App, Runkeeper, running in a Runkeeper costume. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t be the runner I am today without Runkeeper, but Runkeeper has made it a whole lot easier to get here. We had never met, but I introduced myself and he recognized my name. He quickly snapped a shot on his phone.

I wish I had thought to do the same. As we passed 5 miles, I looked at my watch. 38:40. A little too fast, I thought. I tried to slow down. I actually put my hands out in front of me with a slow down motion, willing myself to ease ease up on the downhill.

About a mile later I came up behind my buddy Mike. We chatted for a few moments before I rolled on. As I did, he yelled “Looking good. Now throw it down!” I wasn’t ready to do that quite yet, but his enthusiasm was impossible to resist. I could feel myself pick up the pace just a little.

As I passed mile 7 or 8, I heard another yell of my name. I turned just in time to see the Inclusion Facilitator Extraordinaire from my younger daughters Summer Camp, Ms. T. As she yelled “Run Luau Run!!!” at the top of her lungs, I was filled a burst of energy. I was brought back to my wait in the corral.

***

When I went to put on my running clothes early in the morning, I had found a little note the wife had left me, folded over and held shut by an Autism Speaks pin. It read, Read in the Corral. I did. I must have read it 5 times while waiting for the gun to go off.

If you can’t make out the picture (it got a little sweaty in my pocket), it says:

You’ve prepared for this.

You’ve got this.

Know yourself.

Listen to your body.

Trust yourself.

Have faith.

We’re with you at every step.

Game on, baby.

Run!

I placed the pin on my singlet and stuck the note in the small pocket of my running shorts, the pin representing my younger daughter for whom the loud cheering crowds would just be too much too handle. Thanks for the note, Honey!

To have Ms. T yelling, “Run Luau Run” (loud enough to be heard in Boston) was awesome. Thank you Ms. T!

***

The next few miles were a blur, but as I approached 13, I prepared for what I thought Wellesley would be like. Every veteran Boston Marathoner I have spoken to gets a glazed look in their eyes when they talk about the halfway point of the race. Actually, I take that back. Every male veteran of the Boston Marathon gets that look. It’s not that you are halfway and it’s not the beauty that is the town of Wellesley. No, it the women of the college. Every year they line up and form a scream tunnel and they cheer. They cheer and offer kisses to any runners willing to stop.

Though I wasn’t quite willing to stop for kisses, I did remember reading an article last year in which Kara Goucher said she had been told to run as close to the crowd as possible to draw on their energy, so I ran as close to the women of Wellesley as I could. Each and every one of them had their hand out. I’m pretty sure I hit every one over the course of about 100 yards. As we came out of the gauntlet, I shouted to a guy who had been right in front of me,

“That was awesome!”

“Yeah it was,” he yelled back.

“I wanna go back and do that again!” We both laughed, but carried on.

I looked at my watch. 1:42. Pretty much where I wanted to be. As we shot through the center of the Town of Wellesley, I remember thinking, “Ok, you’ve got this. Less than 13 to go.” I ran a self-diagnostic and came to the conclusion that I was pushing the engine hard, but was not quite red-lining it.

Again, the next few miles fell into a blur. I focused on hitting every water stop and staying close to the crowds. As we entered Newton just past 16 miles, I realized something wasn’t quite right. The cheering as you enter Newton is tremendous, especially if you happen to be trailing one of the charity runners because the hospital is right on the Newton-Wellesley border. As loud as the crowd was, I didn’t have the energy to high five every hand that was sticking out of the sea of spectators. I briefly thought about my fears of the 16 mile barrier but I took a deep breath, re-focused and found new energy as we approached the firehouse at the start of the Newton Hills.

“This is it People!” I yelled to no one in particular. I received several enthusiastic “Yeah”s as we made the turn.

I buckled down and pushed ahead. I had been warned that there would be evil psychology at play the moment I hit the Hills. Most people at some point walk them and when everyone else is walking them, your brain starts asking YOU why you aren’t walking them. I wasn’t going to let that happen and in fact, came pretty close to maintaining pace all the way through them.

Somewhere on the Hills

But I paid a price.

Right before Heartbreak Hill I found my wife and older daughter on the right. My daughter was wearing a fantastic hat she and the wife had made.

I had asked my wife to have a bottle of Nuun water and Clif blocks ready for me. I shouted that I didn’t want the water.

Unexpectedly, she began running with me. She kept pace for about two or three blocks. I looked at her and said, “I’m close, but I think I’m gonna be on the wrong side of 3:20”. She looked at me in surprise. “You got this baby”. But I knew. I thought back to the note she had left me. Know yourself. Listen to your body. I knew the hurt was coming. The wife peeled away and I pressed on . I thought of my little one and the Autism Speaks pin on my shirt. I stared up at Heartbreak Hill. My body ached just looking at it.

Don’t stop on the Hill, I could the voices telling me. Were they from the spectators or in my head? I wasn’t sure. Lost in thought I almost missed a group of spectators called the Boston Hash House Harriers. I had been told by Alett that they handed out beer to whoever asked for it, but more importantly had the motto, “On On!” I yelled it to them at the top of my lung three or four time and received more than I gave. The responding cheer was huge, but the energy only lasted a few moments.

I looked at my watch. 2:35 at 20 miles. That was a full 10 minutes slower than the 20.2 I had run just 3 weeks earlier at Eastern States, yet I didn’t feel nearly as good. The wheels were coming off the bus. The gas tank was running on vapors and I was only part way up Heartbreak. A few moments later, I heard, “Hey Luau”. I turned in surprise to find Josh (aka @bostoncardiovet). He wasn’t running Boston, but as a thank you for running the last 1/4 mile of the Eastern States 20 with him 3 weeks earlier, he ran me up the rest of Heartbreak Hill. I’ve told Josh several times that his run with me probrably saved me 2 or 3 minutes off my total time. Thank you Josh!

Soon after I crested Heartbreak and started the downhill I hit 35K. I looked at my watch. 2:50:43. So close yet so far. The quads cramped up. I suddenly had visions of Manchester running through my head. Oh Lord, please don’t let me seize up! As much as my quads hurt though, I was determined not to stop. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. The rest of the race was a complete blur. I actually maintained pace for another mile, but then the pain became too much. A little past 23, try as I might, I couldn’t maintain a 7:45 pace anymore. This was where I was supposed to drop the hammer and sprint home for a BQ. It was not meant to be that day. Mile 23 had shot up to mid 8’s; Mile 24 mid 9’s; Mile 25 mid 10’s. I took comfort in knowing I pushed the wall back by 6 miles from my earlier marathon, but it did little to alleviate the disappointment.

I sighed as my watch passed 3:20.

As I hit the Citgo sign,

Photo by @Milesandtrials

I heard people yelling there was only one more mile to go.

I usually laugh at 1 mile. 1 mile is something I could do in my sleep. 1 mile doesn’t even count.

NOT TODAY!!! 1 mile sounded like an eternity. Really? We still have a mile to go? Well, no Luau, actually it was 1.2 more miles. When I realized this there was part of me that just wanted to give up, but I pressed on. With a half mile to go, the crowds thickened, their cheers deafening. As we took the two turns into the final stretch I flashed back to last year’s marathon and watching Kara Goucher and Ryan Hall come through these very streets. I picked up my pace.

As I turned onto Boylston I broke into a dead run. This finish line looked so far away. I pushed harder as the crowd cheered all of us on.

I pumped my fist as I crossed the finish line and almost came to a dead stop, not because I wanted to but because my body was refusing to continue. I had managed to run the last mile in 9:01. I limped along, and ran into yet another online community friend, Audrey. The two of us limped along in pain, wishing we could laugh at the pain we were in,happy to be done, satisfied that we had left it all on the course.

I eventually found a spot to sit down. Big mistake! I was unable to get up for 20 minutes.

I sat and mulled over my failed attempt to qualify for Boston in this race. I had been pretty confident that I was going to pull it off. It was just not meant to be this day. I ended up running a 3:32:05 (22 minute PR), and up until about 22 miles I was well within striking distance. That I could keep pace 6 miles longer than I had in Manchester on a harder course was encouraging. Had this been Bay State or Providence, maybe I would have had the juice to pull it off, but the Boston course is a tough one.

Next year I run smarter. I thought I had run smart in this one, but looking back I know I should have held back even more at the beginning.

Now the question is, are my legs going to be recovered enough by May 2nd for a run at 3:20 in the Providence Marathon or does that become a fun run? That’s only 10 day away. Ouch!