Ten Junk Miles

The 10-miler has been a favorite race of mine for several years.  

• 1.) it’s a distance that suits me;
• 2.) it has a symmetry to it that I appreciate–out and back, even numbers, mile pace always equal to finishing time (i.e., if you run a 7.5 minute mile pace, you finish in 75 minutes);
• 3.) it has enough flat and enough hill to make it an honest but fun race; and
• 4.) the train is always a crapshoot, which I find humorous.

Today, I wasn’t expecting to race, because I was targeting a 10K in Irvine on May 3rd. Consequently, really racing this one was off the table if I wanted to perform all-out in two weeks. But the cold that snuck up on me before Carlsbad and hung on, an annoying petty tyrant, wouldn’t let go.  

I’ve been under the weather (What does that mean?  Beneath a cloud cover?  Suffocating in some netherland purgatory, below the real world with real weather, where normal people breath freely?) for too many days to count, and reluctantly made the decision to bail on the Irvine race.  I know many of you have had to make similar choices, and it’s hard.  You train for months, you have the hotel all lined up, you have visions of PR’s dancing in your head, you even dream about racing, for Pete’s sake…but to travel all that way for a sub-par performance just seems futile.  

Jenny the Marathoner

 

BUT…to travel all that way to boost a friend in a marathon?  Now that sounds feasible.  Jenny Mintz is running the OC Marathon, which falls on the same day as the Irvine 10K, so Kim and I might just tootle down and use that hotel room after all, to cheer for our teammate.

Back to the 10-miler.  The original plan was to run it as a tempo, warming up the first half with 8-8:30 minute miles, and bringing it down to 7’s by the end.  I figured that would bring me in somewhere between 1:16 and 1:17.  But I jettisoned that scheme.  Since I’m not going to race Irvine, I might as well give it what I’ve got, right? 

Goodbye, my friends

We line up, and I spend a few minutes admiring the abs of three studettes:  Sara Mandes, Laura Turner and Desa Mandarino.  I start out with Kim B. (aka Kmonkee) and Gary Maxwell.  We decide to shoot for 7:20’s.  We hit the 1st mile in 7:15, and they keep up the pace while I purposely slow a bit. Michelle Greer comes by for a little chat.  She’d planned to pace off me for 7:20’s, but I tell her not to count on it, and she moves ahead.  I don’t know why, the the 2nd mile in this race is always maddeningly slower than perceived effort, and I hit it in 7:29.  OK, still within range. 

During the next two miles everything catches up with me:  Carlsbad, Tough Enough, my lingering cold.  I learned a new word last week:  ”rales.”  I was out running with two doctors who told me that’s the name for the crackling noise in your lungs that sounds like Rice Krispies when you breathe.  (Lest you think I’m a glutton for punishment, they also told me it was OK to run through a chest cold, as long as I didn’t push too hard.)  Mile three,  7:36.  I clock mile 4, cemetery hill, at 7:39.  Mile 5 (no train!), which is a slight but steady uphill, 7:48, and 6, back down, in a mediocre 7:37.

Glug, chug, tug

 

This race is not going according to either Plan A or Plan B.  It is merely some vaguely fast “in between” running, faster than my easy pace but not really a tempo.  I think I read somewhere that it is exactly this kind of running that doesn’t really hit any systems for improvement.  What am I doing?  Mile seven I slow down to a walk up the Ty Warner hill.  A WALK, in the middle of a race!  A first for me.  The lovely and gracious Elda Rudd stops and walks a few beats with me, just to ascertain I am not going to pass out (she saw me weave a little before stopping).  No, I’m not hitting the floor, I’m just…well, I don’t know what I’m doing.  I’m certainly not racing.  I’m just out bumbling around on a beautiful day with a race number pinned to my shirt.  Amr El Abbadi, whose two wonderful children have been my students, passes me, shouting encouragement.  I pick it up…no miles over 8:00 for me!  I punch in mile 7 at 7:56, just under the wire.  

I feel a little better during the long cool segment by the wall across from the bird refuge, and I see abundant grey locks ahead, a strikingly beautiful woman in yellow whom I think is in my age group.  This gives me some focus, and I pick it up a little.  Mile 8, 7:40.  I catch and pass her on the long hard stretch of concrete in mile 9, and we exchange encouragement and names.  

Beautiful Marla

She is Marla, and now I know she IS in my age group.  She beat me at Pier to Peak a few years back, and she is one tuff runner.  I am galvanized, and hit the 9-mile mark in 7:27.  The last mile I’m hanging on, and Gary Miliken, who always seems to pass me in the last mile of every race, cheerfully obliges again this time.  Kent Harris jumps in just after the breakwater kiosk, urging me on.  I don’t have it, Kent, sorry.  ”But you can’t let that person behind you catch you!”  he teases.  OK, OK, I do have it, and I give it the old arm-swinging, air-sucking last-200-meter fight.  

I finish in 1:15:51, nine seconds under my projected time, and 5+ minutes over what I usually run for this race.  I think I’d have been better off with Plan A (lesson:  stick to the plan!), but I won a very cool Nike bag, a pair of great trail socks, some Tri-Berry Gu, and a pretty turqoise hat.  

Irvine is definitely out, but I might try to regroup in time for the Mother’s Day 10K.  See y’all out there!

The Red Badge of Toughness

Jim Kornell, Tough Director

“There are only two rules for this race that are non-negotiable,” announces Jim Kornell, race director, “be safe, and have fun.”

He shouts, “Go!” and we’re off!  Travis Bower, our secret weapon, runs the first leg of our trek up and over the mountains.  Destination:  Nojoqui Falls Park in Solvang, 100K (65 miles) of agony and ecstasy away.  Our team is comprised of an eclectic group of Dos Pueblos High School teachers:  Leslie Wiggins-Roth, math teacher, X-country and track coach extraordinaire; the right-and-left brain Gleason brothers, Kevin (art) and Ryan (science); Travis, math; and moi, English teacher.

The Peregrinating Pedagogists

Leslie has unearthed some ancient DP singlets for us, no matter that they’re all-girl apparel…we’re blue and gold and unafraid to commit fashion crimes for our cause!  Our name, the “Peregrinating Pedagogists,” was our first team building effort, and one might consider this a linguistic crime as well, IF one didn’t already know the definition of “peregrinate,” which means “to travel by foot,” or “pedagogist,” which means “one practiced in the art of teaching.”

I filled my purse!

Travis runs the first leg , from Toro Canyon Park up to the Cold Springs trailhead, in a very respectable third place, right on pace according to the logistical flow chart that I, a left-brain-challenged person, created for our team.  I’ve driven the Travismobile up to the handoff with Ryan, and as we  peregrinate up to the creek, we encounter serendipity in the form of Marguerite Bianchi, a much-loved retired colleague, who boosts us with hugs and encouragement.   I’m targeting a race in three weeks, so I’m not supposed to race Tough Enough all out.  When Travis tags me and I take off, though, the 7:20’s I’m running FEEL all out.  I’m convinced that paces are like purses:  you fill up what you have, no more, no less.  If Mike had told me to run 7’s, I’d have felt that was all I had.  I’m passed by a man in a hula skirt, the “Thrash Polka” team.  For the first time, I understand what it’s like to be “chicked” on a run.

"I prefer mountains with my breakfast, thanks"

Ryan zooms off on leg 3, from El Cielito six miles straight up Gibraltar to the sky, East Camino Cielo.  This was supposed to be my leg, but in a planning meeting, Ryan had been so sad to lose the uphill portion of leg 2, I felt obliged to trade.  Hmmm….I can run 5 miles across Mountain Drive instead of 6 miles straight uphill?  Let me ponder it for a nanosecond:  OKAY!  Ryan throws it into overdrive, passing the hula polka thrashers, and the race is on!

"I eat mountains as an appetizer"

 

 

 

 

On our way up in Leslie’s Forerunner, we pass Drea, who may appear a diminutive, elegant little deer, but is in reality the mountain lion everyone keeps siting throughout our California foothills…watch out, because she’s carnivorous!

Coach Wiggins on a roll!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ryan hands off to Leslie with panache, considering he’s just covered an elevation gain of about 2500 feet.  Our lovely coach takes off, hair and feet flying.  We pass her and she’s hauling. Downhill is her thang!  So much so, that 20 minutes into her run, she becomes one with gravity and the pavement.

The red badge

 

 

 

Undaunted, this toughest of teachers picks herself up, shakes out her legs (leaving some artistry on the ashphalt, indeed), and tears down to the handoff, where she cheerfully self-administers first aid, cleaning wounds and icing her ankle.

Helios on Leg 5, in Chrome Yellow

Kevin picks up the torch, descending the two miles from Painted Cave to 154 and across, dropping down Kinevan Road and climbing up to the gun club, where pavement ends, and I begin leg 6,  the long grind up to Broadcast Peak, “Third hill, Maggie!”

My second leg is deceitful, beginning with a precipitous drop of over a mile, lulling me into thinking I am fast.  I am not fast, as my trail shoes remind me as we begin the gradual, relentless, and inevitably slow climb up to the peak.  I initially curse my clodhoppers, but am ultimately grateful for them, as the road becomes more technical.  I am passed by a very fit looking Lee Carter, then the mountain-eater Drea, who slaps my heinie on her maddeningly limber lope up the mountainside, and finally by another hula man!  I slow from 8 minute miles to 11 minute slogs, stopping to walk as my psoas muscles tighten.  Stupidly, I didn’t carry water (”I don’t think I’ll need it…it’s cool enough”), and I gratefully accept bottles from Joe Hilton, Polka Thrashers, and Argentinians, who assure me I look better than they did last year:  ”I was crawling at this point, and you are still on your feet!”  Still, I am humbled, not only by the elevation but the beauty.  This is the most glorious leg, with the Pacific sparkling on one side of the saddle, Cachuma gleaming on the other.  I think I am delusional, because I see a mirage of Ryan up ahead, when I still have over a mile to go.  But…no, I had mistakenly hit a lap button, and I’m finished!  I throw myself up the final few feet, slap his hand weakly, and collapse into a water bottle full of chocolate Endurox.

Bonding and bounding to the finish line

Ryan flies down leg 7 to Refugio, Leslie, with leg taped and looking amazingly strong, continues the downhill train to the bridge, and Kevin takes off, ready for a fast 10K through Solvang to Alisal Ranch, where Travis, back from his NAP, SHOWER and LEISURELY MIDDAY MEAL, meets us for the final leg.  We’re no match for the Muffins, who will go on to set a course record, but we do catch the final hula Polka Thrasher and turn in a respectable 7th overall out of 27 teams, 3rd mixed, at 8 hours and 23 minutes.

While dining on animal crackers, pretzels and beer, we pat ourselves on the back for a day well-spent, and cheer for our other DP team, the Tuff Chargin’ Teachers (Scott, Lori, Roland, Dan, Joe, Larry, Estella and Todd G.).  We toast our heroine of the day, Wiggins, who showed her mettle in the mountains.  Thanks to Jim Kornell and Cooper Atkinson, for another successful grassroots, genuinely fun event.

PereGRINating!

Almost No-Go

I’m writing this from home today.  I took the day off.  You see, while Tamara, Drea and I were having a fabulous time on our pilgrimage to Carlsbad (lots of girlfr’en talk on the way down, delighted with our plushy hotel room, great meal with a wry waiter at a nice Italian joint), the evil viruses were having their own road trip down my bronchial tubes.  By Saturday night, the others were exchanging knowing, pitying glances behind my back, eyes saying, “She’s really getting sick.”  It turns out the running gods weren’t pawing me, they were pounding me.

I hardly slept, because I took the fold-out bed, and if you can find one fold-out in existence that isn’t lumpy, I want to know exactly where and when you slept on it, and under what influences.  Tamara and Drea, bless their hearts, insisted I share their comfy kings, but no way in hell was I going to keep them up all night or risk infecting them.  Besides, my race was dog’s meat anyway, so what did it matter if my cat-nap was kidnapped? 

On the warmup, I knew it wouldn’t be pretty, and was on the verge of not toeing the line until I ran into the Brennands about 20 minutes before the gun.  John had a cold, too, and HE raced.  He did really well, too, taking 3rd in his AG at 22:30. Taking my cue from the Godfather of the SBAA, I went for it.  

First mile, mostly downhill, 6:47.  Not good.  At the turnaround I see my nemesis, the woman who beat me by 3 seconds for 3rd place last time I ran.  She’s way ahead, uncatchable in my condition.  Dang.  Goodbye, delusions of grandeur.  I decide if I can’t run under 7:00 the next mile (which is a long, relentless incline), I’m jogging to the finish.  7:03.  Heck, it’s only one more mile, let’s see what I can do.

Warning:  mixed metaphors ahead.

The last mile is tricky:  it’s mostly downhill, but there’s a short, brutish quarter-mile mountain at the halfway point, the Carlsbad “heartbeak hill,” then it’s a slide to the finish.  On our course cruise the day before we had picked out a bright blue building, just at the zenith, as the focal point for pain–get to the blue house, just get to the blinkin’ blue house–and I locked it into my race brain, which is always pea-sized by this point, and charged.  If I couldn’t run the race I had trained for and was capable of, I could bloody well take no prisoners along the way.  I passed one, then two women on the way up.  Blue house, blue house.  Then, the final turn!  I hear “GO MAGGIE GO GIRL!!!!!!” and can’t look but know it’s Drea and Tamara, and energized, get hungry for another body, I’ve tasted blood and must kill again (said in Bela Lugosi voice), and I take down another victim on the home stretch!  Yessss!!!

 

 

I don’t care what my time is because I blew this race before the gun went off, but it turns out not so bad considering, 21:43, a minute over what I wanted and my slowest 5K in 4 years, but good for 10th in my AG, I’ll take it.  

 

 

Drea and Tamara, who woke up early and drove with me to the old-lady early start, greet me at the finish, and then have to stand around in the increasingly hot sun until their own race starts two hours later.  I feel for them as the pavement starts heating up.  We watch Ricky run a very strong 17:15, and then it’s time for the prime-time girls, 30-39.  Drea guts out a difficult race in 18:36 and still manages 10th overall, Tamara rockets to the finish with a fat PR (damn, can she kick) of 23:54, both of these girls have grit and I’m proud to be on their team.  (Visuals and more detail on Drea’s race here.)  

Drea and Ricky take off on their cool-down, and I’m in charge of managing Tamara’s well-earned post-race giddies, which threaten to lift Carlsbad off the map with pure, glowing elation.  She can’t stop smiling and it’s infectious, and I bask in her high-beams.  We find Kim’s “beau” Rick, and together we give Kim a proper send-off.  The young-uns mixed-gender race is delayed, though, and with every minute the temp goes up a degree, it seems.  Finally they’re off, and we scream for Micah, who is around 7th or 8th.  Kim passes the railroad tracks (quarter mile) right on pace, and we navigate the crowd for a good viewing spot.  As races go, this one is a premier spectating event, because you can view your racer three times from roughly the same spot.  

Here comes the motorcade and hurrah!  The leader is Micah!  We scream ourselves silly then, and again when Kim goes by—she’s slowed a little on the second mile, but still looks strong—and again when Michah charges up the hill with a huge lead, and again when we hear his finish time announced, 14:42, and again when Kim makes her final turn.   Her mouth is contorted with purposeful pain and she knows she’ll come in close to her goal and she does, at 20:40.  More giddy-ups float us for a while, and watching the beautiful elites blister by is well worth standing around in the by-now blistering sun, but by 1 p.m. we’re crashing, and it’s time to journey home.

Highlights of the weekend:

• Watching lovely Drea perform her pre-race ritual in her pj’s
• Glimpsing a flash of Sylvia Mosqueda, tough woman, on the first leg, as she led our race (and won)
• Hearing Tamara’s colorful account of how she was NOT going to let that F*ing girl catch her, oh NO
• Watching this 14-year-old kid kicking heinie while the older male runners around him urge him on
• Hearing Rick ask, “Does this look OK?”, referring to the “girly bag” Kim made him mule around for her
• Seeing Rusty’s beautiful SBIM postcards adorn cars all over Carlsbad
• Watching the elite men and women fight to the finish…zoweeee!
• Analyzing our races in detail on the drive home, which seemed like it took one instead of four hours 

 Next up:  Tough Enough, where the Carlsbad 5 (Me, Drea, Tamara, Kim & Ricky) will meet again, this time as competitors!

Mojo, or Slo-Mo?

“You grab Mo, and I’ll grab Jo,” quipped Patty to Paulette and Gail on the “girlfriend run” Sunday.   I had just been accused of pushing the pace a tad too much, and responded by gleefully proclaiming that I had finally got my mojo back.  

Girlfriend runs are not supposed to be fast.  They are to be run at a pace leisurely enough to facilitate easy chatter, so we can all catch up with each other’s triumphs, disappointments, new shopping finds, and shhh….gossip.  Not the bad kind, the harmless fun kind.  Were your ears burning on Sunday?

But this day, I was energized.  I was back, and I felt like a penned filly just given free rein.  Two weeks prior, Rusty had us run a 1.5 mile time trial.  There’s no polite way to say this:  I sucked.  After a good strong period of building for the upcoming Carlsbad 5000 and a target 10K in May (Irvine…anyone want to come with?) and one of my best-ever track workouts, I’d fallen into a hole.  A nasty hole.  The work-stress, not-sleeping-well, I’m-tired-all-the-time, crabby-sucky-run kind of hole.  Plus, I caught a cold.  Duh.

I was supposed to run all out the first mile and try to hold it another 440 yards, and all I could manage was a pedestrian 6:55 pace.  True, it was on the dreaded “Rusty’s Loop,” our moniker for a rather tough little course he’s marked out that can whoop you when you’re down and hook you when you’re up.  But 6:55? For a measly 1.5 miles? Pah!  Even slower than my 10K in-shape pace.  Bleah.  Yuck.  Grrrr.  Drea’s TT did not go well, either, and Rusty spent the next 10 minutes exhorting us not to beat ourselves up.  ”Work stress always does this to you,” he reminded me.  ”You’ll come back.”

It always seems like a miracle, but I did.  After  a few more disappointing workouts, things started to pick up.  On Saturday, I had a much more successful 2-mile time trial on Mountain Drive.  After she ran her own very impressive 2-miler, Drea ran two beats behind me (one person’s cooldown is another’s time trial), a perfect shadow rocket-booster.  It’s odd, but I loathe having someone run right next to me when I feel like squat, trying to be helpful by urging me on:  ”Come on!  You can do it!”  I always have to stifle the urge to scream obscenities at them, sort of like what I’ve heard women in labor do to their feckless, well-meaning husbands.  Somehow, Drea intuited this, and ran smoothly just behind me, whooshing me along silently, with just a few well-chosen nudges:  ”You’re gaining on Kim, see if you can catch her,” and “Just one more little uphill, then down all the way.”  I punched in at 6:40 the first mile, and 6:45 at the finish.  Not my best ever, but Atalanta compared to the last one.  And no, I didn’t kill any suitors on Mountain Drive.

Tuesday track, we were to run a mile all out.  I was nervous.  Kim was doing a 2K, so I was on my own.  My best track mile ever was 6:24, run shortly before my PR marathon.  Rusty told me not to look at my watch, just run as hard as I could for a mile and he would call my splits.  He wouldn’t give me a target time.  I was thinking, 6:30 would be nice, and Kim later told me that’s what Rusty wanted to see.  ”OK, ready?”  Breathe.  ”Ready.”  My first lap felt conservative, but 93?  No way to hold that pace.  ”3:10!” he shouts the second lap.  Third lap, third lap, always the one that gets me…4:49, dang.  Turn it on, it’s only a quarter, don’t worry about the wheezing, remember the woman you passed at Carlsbad  who caught you and you let her go, legs are burning but that’s good, cheat and peek at my watch 6:02 with 100 meters to go, I can get under 6:30 for sure…6:25!

Rusty said 6:40’s were a realistic goal for Carlsbad on Sunday.  I was stoked.  Probably a little too stoked for the running gods, who don’t like it when you get too hubrissy, so they smote me with another cold that very evening.  I think they’re just pawing me, though, because it doesn’t seem very serious.  

I guess I’ll find out Sunday what it’ll be:  mojo or slo-mo?  Don’t tell the running gods, but if I can better my time of two years ago—20:44—I’m going to call it Flo-Jo.

New Year’s Resolution Renewal: Stay Trim and Fit

Although I’d had a few times in my adult life when I gained an uncomfortable amount of weight–perhaps 10 to 15 pounds, which I quickly lost—I was never even close to being grossly overweight until I reached my late thirties. 

For about five years, from age 35 to 40, I underwent extensive infertility treatment.  I never got a baby, but I did get fat.  The combination of strong drugs, lack of exercise, and depression resulted in a weight gain of over 45 pounds, from a trim 120 to a peak of 168!  I hated my body, because it had let me down in so many ways.  I ate for comfort; food was almost my sole form of physical pleasure.   I had been a casual runner for years, for fitness and health, but my doctor advised me to stop all strenuous aerobic exercise during my treatment period, for fear I would jar any tenuous development of a blastocyst or an embryo. 

When I reached 40, we decided to stop treatments.  My then-husband threw me a surprise birthday party, and the photos of that milestone were shocking.  “Who is that fat woman?” I asked myself, with the horrifying realization that it was ME.

I set up an appointment with my doctor to discuss weight-loss strategies.  Knowing how motivated I was, he suggested I bike to work every day.  EVERY DAY?  OK, I’m game.  Whatever it takes.   

During the first four months, I lost over 30 pounds.  I was obsessive.  I commuted to work by bicycle every day, riding 10 hours and over 125 miles a week and limiting my calorie intake to 1300 a day.  I refused to take a day off, even when we were besieged by two weeks of Santa Ana winds and 90+ degree temperatures.  As a result, I severely strained my knees and couldn’t even walk.  My doctor suggested I change my activity to give my knees a break from the repetitive circular motion that had injured them.  He suggested running.

I wasn’t savvy enough then to realize that running burns more calories than biking.  I thought I had to run the same number of hours I’d cycled. So, in order to sustain the same aerobic and calorie-burning volume as I had while biking, I thought I had to run far.  I mean, very far. Like, 8-10 miles a day, five times a week, at least.  So I did. 

I LOVED it.  I had finally found my sport.  After a few months of doing what I thought then was an insane amount of mileage (40-50 miles per week), I said to myself, “I bet I could run a marathon.”  So I did. 

That was ten years ago.  Since then, I’ve run 15 marathons and countless shorter races.  Last year, at age 50, I ran my personal best marathon time of 3 hours, 16 minutes.  This year I was 22 seconds shy of my PR, and a year older.  I love being strong and fit as an “older” woman.  If this is cronedom, bring it on.

My relationship with food has changed dramatically since the old, sad days of eating two Egg McMuffins (with hash browns!) to fill a void in my spirit and soul.  Now, I see food as pleasure AND fuel.  I never eat for consolation; instead, I’ll run, bike or take a walk as a stress reliever.  I’ve managed to keep my weight off for over 10 years, mostly through strenuous exercise and monitoring my calorie intake.  People think I can eat anything I want because I run 50-60 miles a week.  Not true.  As my mileage increases, so does my appetite, (and genuine need for calories), and I still have to watch my intake.  If I’m not careful, I’ll gain a few pounds over a holiday break or vacation.  I’m very disciplined about taking it off, because extra weight can obliterate a competitive edge.

I’ve gone the other way, too—losing too much weight during the emotional stress of my divorce.  I got faster for a while when my solar plexus was sticking out and my face was gaunt, but had I sustained those unhealthy eating patterns—skipping breakfast and lunch, cramming down thin ham slices wrapped around cheese for dinner, just to get some food in me—I knew I’d crash.  Happily, the starvation period was temporary, I regained my emotional and physical balance, and I’m fitter and faster then ever.  Interestingly, at 121, I’m faster than I was at 116, which is what I (even still) consider my” ideal” weight.  Once you’ve been fat, the fear of corpulence never, ever leaves.

I hated the way the world treated me as a fat, middle-aged woman; it just doesn’t SEE you.  I loathed my fashionable but flowing clothes.  I detested feeling weak and unattractive instead of strong and sexy. Over ten years later, I am still driven by the memory of how awful it was—a powerful tool.   

Perhaps my case isn’t representative as a learning tool for most people, because my weight gain was anomalous.  I was a fit and healthy eater for most of my life, and then had a five-year diversion into sedentary habits and dysfunctional eating.  When I lost the weight, it was like a homecoming, and as such, probably much easier to achieve and maintain than for those who have never been fit.   But probably like most people who have lost significant body weight and maintained it, for me, the cost/benefit factor is paramount as a motivator.  Being fat was painfully dispiriting, physically uncomfortable.  Being fit and strong is empowering, inspiring, joyful.

I’ll never go back.

Sacramento: Deja Vu All Over Again

I can be an infuriatingly consistent runner.  In 2004, I ran two marathons within five months, and my finishing times were 22 seconds apart: 3:22:45 and 3:22:23.  If my husband Jeff is planning to watch me race, he always asks me what time—down to the second—I’m going to cross the line.  He’s only partially joking.  

On Sunday, I finished the California International Marathon in 3:17:15, crossing the mat 23 seconds slower than last year’s 3:16:52.  Essentially, I ran the same race, with one major difference:  this year, I toed the starting line with residual effects of two colds during training.  They piggybacked, and then hitchhiked for 26 miles.   The nerve.  

I came down with the first one in mid-October, and the cough “hung on like death” (apologies to Theodore Roethke) for six weeks.  I’ve had exercise-induced asthma since last season’s fires, and the condition was exacerbated by the cough.  When it finally resolved, I had a week of great running, and then Wham!  Another cold, 10 days before the marathon. This time it was minor, and as I wrote in a previous post, I nuked the hell out of it with a gazillion remedies.   By Saturday night, I hardly felt it. But ten miles into the marathon, it was clear I wasn’t running with a full tank.

On Sunday morning, Jill, Kim and I met in the lobby of the host hotel at 5:35.  We’d thought we’d have plenty of wiggle room, since the busses ran from 5 to 6 a.m., but apparently everyone else had the same idea:  The line snaked around the block, and barely shuffled along.  We didn’t board until well after 6, and arrived at the start with under 15 minutes to the gun.  We shoved into the crowd to get to the baggage trucks, and the sight was surreal.  Desperate runners were hurling bags into the trucks, sometimes missing, sometimes nailing the overwhelmed teenaged volunteers. One exuberant runner lobbed his bag on top of the truck.  It was chaos, and I urgently had to pee.  I peeled off my sweats, tucked into the crowd, said a mental goodbye and good luck to Jill and Kim, knowing I’d lose them, deposited my bag, and headed for the bushes.  No time for a warmup today, and the temp was 39 degrees.

Somehow, with seconds to spare, I managed to position myself near the start, crammed so tightly into the crowd I was warmed from the body heat. And then BANG!  We’re off.  It’s dark, and cold, and silent but for the sound of footfalls; strangely comforting, as Kim later pointed out.  It always amazes me no one gets trampled. Runners are so polite.

I hit the first mile in 7:32, a little fast considering the crowds.  Mile two is 7:26, still a little on the slow side, which is perfect.  Jill catches and passes me, looking very strong and smooth. By mile three at 7:19, I have cast off my throwaway top and hunkered down for the long haul.  (I never missed it, though the temps stayed in the 40’s the entire race.) Whoops!  Mile four is too fast at 7:15, and I purposely slow the next mile; 7:27.  I run a fairly even pace until the half, which I hit at exactly 1:37:30, according to my watch:  perfectly on pace for my goal time of 3:15:00.  

But as I cross the halfway mat, I know it isn’t going to happen.  I’m working too hard, and I know I can’t sustain it for another half marathon.  In reality, I knew by mile six I wasn’t going to make my goal, but I also knew I could come close.  In fact (cross my heart and hope to die; honest to god), at that point I knew I was going to come in around 3:17.  It’s amazing how specifically your body tells you what you’re capable of that day, if you’re fully tuned in.  

I knew the 3:15 pace group was near me, because I kept hearing people shout out for them.  ”Go, three-fifteen!”  and “Looking strong, three-fifteen!”  I once made the mistake of running with my name on my bib (courtesy of the L.A. Marathon), and let me tell you, it’s annoying on a good day to have the crowd focus on you, and hell if you’re not feeling good.  I didn’t want to know where the 3:15 pace group was, so I purposely ran a little ahead of them  during the first half.  But after the half, I joined them for a few miles, because I needed the pull of the group.  Unfortunately, the pacer was uneven, mostly too slow, and so he had to pick it up the last 10K to finish under the wire.  I was running my own race so I didn’t care, but he dropped lots of folks when he pushed the pace to make up time.  I’m wary of pace groups, precisely because they tend to run unevenly.  I let them go, and ended up passing most of the women from the group in the last miles.

I held on to a 7:30-ish pace until mile 22.  (Better than last time, when I started bonking at 20!)  When I kicked over into 7:40+ territory, I brought it back down for a mile, but understood by mile 24 that a PR was beyond my capacity.  I was the “clown suit in slo-mo,” if you know what I mean.  When a young, fresh looking, bouncy blonde gazelled by me, I wanted to kill her.  ”Relay,” quipped Jill, during our post-marathon blow-by-blow at lunch.  Of course.  

I found out a few days before the race that somebody within a few degrees of separation has an aggressive cancer that has metastasized.  I thought about him and his family during the last few miles, admiring their toughness and courage, understanding what a great gift we runners have, to be able to push our bodies and feel the discomfort of extreme physical effort.  

I’m thrilled with my finish time.  I essentially ran the same race one year later and one year older, with a training buildup that had more downs than ups.  I may not have had an optimal racing experience, but in terms of tenacity and focus, I think it was my best race to date.  As Rusty said in an email to us all before the race, “you are lucky to be as fit as you are and lucky to feel the pain…enjoy it, embrace it.”

So true.

“Yes, We Have No Bananas” (or potatoes, or rice, or pasta)…

How many of you recognize the title to this song?  I confess my own exposure is limited to the charming Hepburn/Bogart duet on the boat in Sabrina. 

As promised, I’m going to describe the carb depletion/load regimen, as I understand it.  It’s torture, and evidence shows that loading without depletion is almost as effective as the classic depletion routine, but having done both, I can report anecdotally that it seems to provide an edge, especially in the last famously challenging six miles.

A week before the marathon, you run a “depletion run” at about 30-45 seconds slower than marathon pace.  The purpose of this run is, counter-intuitively, to deplete your body of glycogen.  For the next three days, you eat as few carbs as humanly possible, starving your runner’s-diet-accustomed-glycogen-saturated cells of what they crave and need most.  That means you eat almost exclusively:  eggs, cheese, meat, nuts, beans, etc.  It sounds all right until about half a day into it, when you instinctively grab the pita and hummus, but force yourself to set them down, and reluctantly dish out a bowl of cottage cheese.  By dinnertime, just about the time you’d normally be getting the water going for brown rice or pasta, you’ve overdosed on protein and your pork chop looks positively insurmountable.

Multiply this by three days, add a couple of concrete-leg runs, and you understand this is not for the faint of heart, or palate.  

Tomorrow, I reverse the process, feeding the glycogen-deprived cells that are presumably almost on strike at this point:  run a few fast miles on the track, guzzle six scoops of Cytomax, and begin a grueling regimen of downing 100 grams of carbohydrate per hour, for eight hours. Rice, fruit, bagels, energy bars, sweet potatoes, couscous.  Counting the Cytomax, that’s almost 4000 calories in eight hours.  I’ve never made it past five or six hours, and by that time, I never want to eat again in my entire life.

Is it worth it?  Ask me at mile 25, and if I’m grinning with thumbs up, you’ll know.

Update: 5 Days and Counting…

Well, that ridiculous amount of homeopathic and traditional medicine I’ve been using seems to have done the trick.  I can barely tell I have a cold, and I’m sure it’ll be history by Sunday.  Of course, I can’t know for sure which of the remedies worked, or even whether my own body just took care of it, but I feel about 95% recovered.  By the way, in case anyone is wondering, I checked it all out with my doc before bombing myself like that, to make sure all was compatible and nothing was going to cause sleeplessness or an elevated heart rate/blood pressure, and she gave me the green light.

Luckily, this is the taper week, so I have a chance to rest up really well.  And in my experience, sometimes when I come back from an illness, I’m even stronger than beforehand.  Has anyone else shared this sensation?  Is there any physiological reason for it?  Like, good immunity warriors of some kind circulating like crazy in your bloodstream after a cold?

7 Days to Sacramento…Dodging the Bullet

As I sit here typing, I have 4 medications or supplements circulating in my body:

1. Zicam

2. Zinc

3. Claritin

4. Flovent (a corticosteroid inhaler)

Five, if you count the glass of red wine I allowed myself to take the edge off my freak-out. I’m running the Sacramento Marathon in a week, I’ve trained really hard for a PR, and I caught a #$@%&! cold two days ago.

The pre-marathon cold. It’s what every marathoner dreads.

You spend four months training rigorously, rising at ungodly hours to nudge your body towards capacity. You guzzle revolting concentrations of Cytomax or Endurox after hard runs. You explain to your spouse for the 90th time that “yes, you married an obsessive fiend” who must leave on weekend mornings, trading cozy comfort for punishing parameters out on the road. Your interval workouts, tempo runs, marathon pace runs and easy recovery runs leave you either exuberant and exhilarated, downcast and disappointed, or somewhere in between, depending on the day. You eat ridiculous quantities of food, scaring co-workers and casual acquaintances. If you’re lucky, you nap. Secretly, you love it all.

For me, it’s fun to have an aggressive goal, entertaining to metaphysically chuckle at my braggadocio, satisfying to watch my body adapt to increasingly rigorous demands. It makes me feel alive and connected.

But marathon training depends on a delicate balance: you push your body to extremes while trying to sustain a healthy immune system. Not surprisingly, sometimes the scales tip over, usually during the taper, when the body senses it is no longer in frantic defense mode. Scientific and medical evidence supports the theory behind the syndrome; it’s the same physiological mechanism that perversely strikes down teachers when they go on vacation: you let up, you’re screwed.

I knew something was wrong during the Thanksgiving 4-miler. My body said I was running a 6:50 pace, but the clock said 7:00’s. I’d set out, not unreasonably based on my recent training, to run a 27 minute race, but the last half mile, found myself clawing and grasping towards 28. I finished in 28:04, a heaving mess. I had felt so good in the week leading up to the race. What happened?

I cursed the answer, which became increasingly clear as Friday wore on with classic cold symptoms: scratchy throat, runny nose, congestion, mild fatigue. Yikes! I knew if it took hold, I’d be out of competition. I ran for my usual measures of defense: Zicam (a zinc nasal gel; I swear by it) and zinc lozenges (one of the only cold remedies clinically shown to reduce the duration and severity of a cold). The inhaler and Claritin were bigger guns, prescribed previously during a particularly nasty cold earlier in the season. I didn’t hesitate to reach for them.

Though I typically scorn what I consider excessive reliance on medications, I’ve been religiously using these four “interventions” for the last three days, and I must admit, they seem to be working. I ran my “depletion run” today, a 12-miler at 8 minute pace (I’ll describe the carb depletion/load regimen in tomorrow’s post), and actually felt energized after the run. Aside from a few sniffles, I’ve been practically symptom-free all day.

It feels like I’ll be home free in a few days. I’m hopeful I’ll be recovered enough to reach my goal of a sub-3:15 marathon in seven days.

And if it all goes south next weekend, well, I can go South with a backup marathon…the Mardi-Gras Marathon takes place in my former temporary hometown of New Orleans, on February 1st.

But first things first.

Silence and Chatter

Today I raced the McConnell’s 5K, and ran the McConnell’s 10K.  

Racing is all business, with the focus on pacing, form and breathing.  Remarks between runners, if any, are terse, purposeful…”Too fast that mile.”  ”Relax your arms.” “Good job.”  Race discourse is mostly inward: listening to body cues while feeling your way to the fastest pace you can run that particular day, talking down discomfort, directing arms/hands and legs to unclench or pick it up, ordering shoulders to relax, doing math (shudder).  

I had a fairly good race today, considering I haven’t done much speedwork lately.  I ran the first two miles with Fran, which was really fun.  We didn’t say much beyond the above-described curt dialogue, but it was a comfort and an impetus to share footfalls, drawing silent strength from the invisible cord that binds racers when they pace together.  The last mile is completely silent.  I am focusing on running under 21:15, which I almost-but-not-quite achieve, and my curses when Romi and Liz Groom pass me remain unverbalized (not only a civilized gesture, but practical–it takes too much energy to shout invective.)

Running, on the other hand, especially with talkative types like Travis and Kim, is social.  Kim and I used the 10K as a slow-side tempo, while Travis was basically jogging.  He floated us through the first three miles with genial banter.   With enough oomph left in him, I might add, after taking 2nd in the 5K, to roar “BIKE UP!!!” or “BIKE BACK” to runners fore and aft.  After he dropped us at the 5K mark, Kim and I were noticeably quieter, sort of straddling the line between serious/sociable, which is exactly how a tempo should feel.  Inevitably, we slipped into racing mode the last half mile, and zipped our lips while zipping along with our feet.

I thoroughly enjoyed both experiences, which don’t usually happen in tandem.  Normally, I’m either racing or tempo-ing, but rarely together in the same morning.  ’Nuff said.