Category Archives: races

Tough

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“You still running without shoes?” called out a neighbor as I ran by. “You sure are tough!”

“Not tough,” I replied, trying to surpress my gasps of exertion up the hill. “Just very gentle.”

I wish I was tough. Tougher, at least.

Between miles five and six of the Umstead Marathon, I was in fifth place when I was left in the dust by the eventual overall female winner (and new course record holder for the ladies). She finished in 3:03:59. If my abilities matched my secret aspirations, I should have been able to hang with her the whole way. I wasn’t even close.

By mile twenty-three, I had slipped to eighth overall. Another runner caught me going up Cedar Ridge, but he was running at a pace I could match. Physically, anyway. Mentally, I quit. A plaque was a plaque, who cares if it says “8th Place Male” instead of “7th Place Male?” Then another runner caught me. Who cares if the plaque says “9th Place Male” instead of “8th Place Male?”

Whatever mojo I had to finish strong in Ridge to Bridge a year and a half before was nowhere to be found. It seems like many runners train to make their bodies capable of performing the ambitious goals of their strong wills. I train to make my body able to compensate for my lack of will. Sure, there were other obstacles that impeded my efforts, and maybe I’ll write about what I think those were at some point if I think anyone is interested, but the brain is the big one.

The silver lining to this cloud of self-pity is that I’m feeling pretty much recovered from Umstead, so I think I will be able to give a strong effort at the Martinsville Half in a little over a week from now. I haven’t PRd in anything since the beginning of June last year (5K on the Runway, 17:38), and I think I might be able to shave a few seconds off of my fastest half (Mistletoe Half 2011, 1:25:52). That would certainly be a nice way to kick off training for the next marathon, which will be the North Olympic Discovery Marathon in June.

My training plan for NODM will pick up where I left off, with a few adjustments. I will have two goals for that trip out to Port Angeles, WA. Only one of them has to do with the race:

1. New PR. The course is flat. 2:55:00.
2. Find a place to live.

No, we haven’t sold our house. Not yet, and of course we’re hoping we will before the trip. Even if we don’t, so long as our finances accomodate, we’re going to try to sell an empty house from far away. It’s time for us to move, and I’d kind of like to miss another summer of getting eaten by NC bugs. So after the race, we’re going to spend a week looking for a dog-friendly house to rent in Port Angeles. Then we’ll come back, pack a few things (very, very few things), and move on out.

Back to the NODM, it looks like this race will most likely be run with the Vapors. There are long stretches of chip seal and this stuff:

When I ran on this stuff barefoot, Iris was telling me to hurry up.

When I ran on this stuff barefoot, Iris was telling me to hurry up.

Someday, maybe. Maybe I’ll be able to more happily handle that stuff without shoes. Hopefully, we’ll be living there soon.

Run at the Rock: Splash Through My Stream of Consciousness

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This is how my my year will end: not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a somersault.

I want to like trail races. I really do. Don’t get me wrong, I totally see the appeal. I love the whole being in nature schtick, as well as the adventure of figuring out the zig-zaggyness of a zig-zaggy singletrack. Unfortunately, I’m a klutz and I don’t like kicking things. One or the other I’d be fine.

I start off really enjoying myself. I can run a technical trail pretty fast, feeling all spritely like some kind of androgynous elf, forgetting, briefly, that I’m in reality I’m more of a manly dwarf with a braided beard and a huge axe. OK, I lie. I’m more of an androgynous dwarf who plays the guitar. Odin Stardust, if you will. Or maybe Ziggy Oakenshield. And when I say “plays the guitar,” I don’t mean plays well. In fact, guitar-playing and trail-running are both things I imagine myself doing well at, but reality begs to differ like a leper messiah. I don’t know what I mean, I just have that song stuck in my head.

Run at the Rock was no different. I started off pretty well, keeping up with ac. That achievement should be modified for the fact that he was racing twice the distance I was, but I don’t care. After the first mile he sped off, but I was still plugging away at a good pace, feeling proud of myself. “Hey, I’m pretty good at this!” I start to think. That’s when I somersaulted and bruised my arm. “Hey, no I’m not!”

The course was not only replete with the usual sundry of obstacles, I struggled mightily with my own anxiety and trepidation. Maybe I need to spend less time in the thesaurus and more time on the trails. My brain couldn’t move fast enough to take in everything the ground was throwing at me, but that wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was all the invisible stuff on what my eyes told me was a clear path. I swear the forest floor has hands that only grab my ankles, no one else’s. I’m special, I guess. Anyway, many kicks and trips and ankle twists later, I finished in 10th place thankful to be in one piece.

The shoe of choice for this in-this-instance non-barefooting barefoot blogger were the Merrell Trail Gloves. Seemed appropriate, what with the trail and all.

So that’s that. All of my running from here on out is completely Umstead focused. I’m on week seven of the Higdon training plan and feeling pretty good. “Pretty good” as in I think I might be able to pull off a sub-3:10. That would be cool. Gawdaful painful and miserable, but cool.

But not as cool as…

Benson Brawl 5K Report: Out-Barefooted, but Not Out-Run

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It cannot be denied: I beat ac. With a strategy of psychological warfare and guts, I was the faster man on this day. But before I tell the tale of my competitive trickery, a hearty congratulations to my rival is in order: although he fell victim to my brain power (he is, after all, only human), he out-barefooted me. I will happily accept defeat in this category, because the guy is the real deal and ran very well on some pretty nasty surfaces. Kudos to you, rival.

My security blanket when I have to run fast in the rain. Which it didn’t. Rain, that is.

I shall relinquish my 1st place barefooter medal next time we meet. However, the race victory is mine all mine. The tape had no performance enhancing qualities, and actually disrupted my very important groundfeel (as pointed out by Maple Grove Barefoot Guy) and added weight to only one toe, throwing me wildly off-balance. But I persevered, and won. In fact, by being entirely barefoot, ac was the one with the advantage, making my victory that much more inspirational, I think. With that matter cleared up, on with the show.

I’m nowhere near racing shape or fighting weight, so I needed a plan. Ideally, if I could get him to hold his breath for a few seconds in the middle of the race, he would suffer a bout of intestinal distress when he starts the finish-line kick. This is a little-known scientific fact, but it’s true. Unfortunately I couldn’t think of how to get him to do this, so I let that tidbit sit in the back of my brain.

My completely true statements of unpreparedness were having no effect on ac. He remained convinced that I was faster then I was letting on, which worked against the plan I had in mind: to psychologically manipulate ac to run slow enough for me to hopefully out-kick him at the end. “Hey, if we’re in first and second, I’m cool with holding back a bit and go for the win at the three-mile beep. We’re both in training, after all, no need to kill ourselves, right?” I said. “How many seconds per pound is it for a 5K? I still have a lot of weight to lose,” I confessed. “I usually eat five pancakes and a western omelet before a 5K,” I lied. “What? You eat nothing? Hm, I’ll give that a try!” In fact I run on empty all the time.

Still, he seemed skeptical. If I was going to get him to let his guard down, I had only one option left: Operation Wheeze.

It is said that the wheeze can suck the life out of an otherwise faster runner. Something about reminding them of the inevitability of death. So as the race starts, I start breathing heavily. It wasn’t entirely an act, but I added a little sense of desperation to it. AC, running nearby, probably noticed it only on a deep, subconscious level. “Boy, this is feeling kind of hard,” said ac.

“It’s…nguh… the wind…”

“The wind? Oh, right, I suppose it is,” said a struggling ac.

There was no wind. AC is highly susceptible to the powers of suggestion.

“Oh, look ahead – chipseal!” I suggested, powerfully.

“Seriously?!?” exclaimed ac as his cadenced sped up, face grimacing.

I ran up right behind him, and pumped up the volume of my strangled gasping.

“You’re breathing really hard. Try taking a deep breath. In, hhhnnnnn, out, whooooooo.”

I couldn’t believe my luck. On a gold platter, he presented me with the Breath-Holding Kick-Killer card! I leaped into action. “That sounds… nguh… very zen. Hungh. Hungh.”

“Ha, it is! Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…”

He fell for it! Excellent! Now all I had to do was hang on. No easy task, be he was now convinced that I wasn’t a threat so I was able to handle the pace. Whenever he started to speed up, I would say “goodness, more chipseal!” and he would slow down to something more manageable.

And then, there it was. The finish-line. It was time for me to gut it out. If I didn’t kick hard enough, ac would could still manage to beat me. No more mind games. Just kick, and kick hard. Not looking back, I finished the last .1 at a 4:45 pace. I won.

After the race, ac congratulated me. “Man, I don’t know what happened. I tried to go with you, but my stomach just seized up.” I felt a brief twinge of guilt.

So there it is. If you haven’t yet, go read ac’s account of the events. You’ll see his perspective confirms my account.