Race Recaps

by

Buffalo-Niagara YMCA Turkey Trot 2013

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends!  I hope you all had a fabulous day yesterday, filled with plenty of turkey and mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce (the Thanksgiving Trifecta, as I like to call it).  I did, and I’ll fill you in all about the whole weekend on Monday, but today I want to share how I started Thanksgiving Day: with 12,000 of my closest friends, running down Delaware Avenue in Buffalo.

Trot1

This was my third Turkey Trot, and it’s such a fun way to kick off the holiday season.  I ran the Buffalo Turkey Trot with my sister-in-law Grace back in 2010 and the Troy Turkey Trot with my dad and high school BFF in 2011.  (I didn’t trot in 2012, because I was still recovering from Hurricane Peanut.)  This year I had a big goal – I really, really wanted to PR (beat my personal record in the 8k distance).  I trained hard over the course of the fall and I was pretty confident that I’d get not only a PR, but a big one… until race day, when I woke up to this view:

Trot2

I’m all for a white Christmas, but a white Thanksgiving?  That’s real… unnatural.

Needless to say, I was pretty unhappy about the view out my window.  We live on a major, high-traffic road and the race was being run not too far from my neighborhood.  So I was just a leetle bit worried about the road conditions.  It looked as though the plough went through, but there was no salt on the road and there was an inch of slushy slop covering the entire surface.  If Delaware Avenue – on which 95% of the race is run – looked anything like this, I knew my PR was out the window.  I wanted to set a new record for myself, but not badly enough to break an ankle.  So I took a deep breath and tried to revise my goal to just have fun with my sisters-in-law and worry about a PR at the Shamrock 8k in March.

I grabbed an easy but filling breakfast (banana with pecan butter, Larabar and two cups of tea) and at 8:35 on the button, my father-in-law and sisters-in-law rang the doorbell.  I hopped in the car and my father-in-law dropped me, Emma and Grace off at the starting line.  We were almost late – thanks, snow and traffic – and had to run to the corrals, but we made it.

Trot3

Have I mentioned that it was COLD?  The temperature was in the high teens.  Brrrrrrrr.

I could tell immediately upon arriving at the start line that Delaware Avenue looked much better than my street.  Yay!  The city snow crews must have given my street a cursory effort because they were all busy getting Delaware into race shape.  (They obviously went back for a second pass at my street later, because it looks fine now.)  The road was a little wet, but otherwise perfectly fine.  I decided to go for my PR after all.  My A, B and C goals for the race were:

A – Beat my previous 8k PR of 56:19.
B – Run the entire race in under an hour.
C – Finish.  (This is always my C goal.  Heck, sometimes it’s my A goal!)

The loudspeakers played The Star-Spangled Banner, and we were off!

Trot4

(The start lines, viewed from the corrals just as we started to move.)

Miles 0-1

The first mile of the race was wall-to-wall people.  I tried to find some running room, but there wasn’t really much space to be had.  I waved to my father-in-law, who was cheering just past the start line and spent the rest of the mile fighting my way through the crowds.  The first mile does contain one of the most fun moments of the race – when you run under the “New York Central” bridge and everyone shouts “WOOOOOOO!” all at once.  Sorry for the crummy picture, but I was running:

Trot5

As expected, the first mile was my slowest – but I was so distracted by just trying to find an unoccupied patch of pavement to put my feet that it seemed like no time at all before I saw the flag marking Mile 1.

Trot6

Miles 1-2

Aside from the finish line, I was happiest and most excited during this stretch, because I knew that “my” spectators would be waiting for me.  Just as expected, right before the 1.5 mile mark, I saw my two favorite faces:

Trot8

Look how disgruntled Peanut is!  You can just see her thinking, “What new way have they come up with to torture me now?”  I took a quick detour to give her kisses all over her face, and she slapped me.  I laughed and headed back onto the road.

Miles 2-4

Somehow I missed the mile marker for Mile 3, and this felt like the longest mile of my life, until I realized… duh.  This was the stretch where I dug deep and focused on running a smart race.  There was one traffic circle and I carefully ran the tangents in an attempt to get down closer to the shortest legal distance.  (A smart strategy during any race, but especially a race like this, where the crowd never thinned out and I spent the entire time weaving between other runners – I knew that I was running much longer than the 8k distance.)  I dug into my bag of motivational tricks to keep my feet going: picking a spot on the pavement to stare at until I ran over it, and then another and another, and repeating my favorite mantras: “go mama go” and “strong legs, strong mind.”  I pulled out that second mantra when the lazy part of my brain started suggesting that I take a walk break – even though I knew that I didn’t need one.  My legs weren’t tired at all and the rest of me felt great too, so it was only my mind that wanted to slow down and walk.  I instructed my mind to get on board with my legs, and we kept running.

Trot9

Miles 4-4.97

Just before Mile 4, the road starts sloping noticeably downhill.  Yay!  (It’s pretty much all flat or downhill anyway, but the last major stretch is really downhill, and so much fun.)  My overall plan for the race had been to run at a comfortable pace for the first four miles and conserve plenty of energy, and then turn on the burners in the last mile.  So when I saw the flag marking Mile 4, I started to gradually pick up the pace.  By the time we entered Niagara Square, with just under half a mile left, I was flying.  (Or, flying as best I could while weaving in and out of the crowds of other runners.)  I turned two corners and saw the finish line looming up ahead.  Hooray!  Or maybe not…

The Finish Line

This was where my race experience soured.  I ran all out in the last short stretch and I felt like I was floating two feet above the road… until about five feet before the finish line, when I came to a screeching halt.  There was a bottleneck inside the finishers’ chute, caused by people crossing the line and coming to a dead stop (exactly what the pre-race email warned people not to do), and the bottleneck had spilled out of the finishers’ chute and was making it impossible to cross the finish line at all, let alone at a run.

I just barely managed to stop without mowing down the people in front of me and immediately screamed with frustration.  Was I really standing here, completely still, not moving at all, five feet before the finish line?  This had to be a joke.  Alas… nope.  Those last five feet took almost a full minute to travel.  I was incredibly frustrated because up to that point, I had run exactly the race I wanted to, I was feeling great about my training and the effort I’d put in, and I knew I was very close to my hoped-for PR.  I finally crossed the line, but instead of the huge smile I had worn for 99% of the race, I had a huge scowl.

Final time: 55:40.

So, despite the snag at the finish line, I did end up hitting my “A” goal for the day.  I PRed by 39 seconds.  I was happy to get the PR I wanted, of course, and I was proud of the effort I put into training and on race day… but it stinks to know that you could have finished faster, were it not for a circumstance outside your control, like bottlenecking at the finish line.  If I had missed out on a PR because of the weather, I’d have been bummed, but I wouldn’t have been too upset, because no one can control that.  But losing out on the chance to sprint across the finish line because of other people’s inconsiderate behavior – stopping in the finishers’ chute – really left a bad taste in my mouth.  I tried to reframe the experience in my mind to make it more positive: after all, if I hadn’t trained well, run smart, and poured it on in the last mile, I wouldn’t have hit my PR at all.  So the good work I did earlier in the race made it possible for me to have a good day and meet my “A” goal – my first PR in over three years! – despite hitting a snag at the finish line.

Still, I’m looking ahead to another chance to PR, and this time the way I want to, at the Shamrock 8k in March.  I’ll be crossing that finish line at speed, even if I have to sprout wings and fly.

If you trotted on Thursday, I hope you had a great race!  I’ll be back on Monday with a recap of the rest of our Thanksgiving festivities.

by

Healthy Strides Community 5K

I didn’t write anything specifically in response to the terrible events of a few weeks ago in Boston, mostly because I didn’t think I really had anything meaningful to add to the discussion.  Most of the things I could think of to say had already been said, and said better, elsewhere.  But Boston has been in my thoughts.  It’s not a city where I’ve spent much time, although my brother went to college there (at Boston University) and I’ve loved every too-brief visit I’ve made there.  I have many, many friends in Boston – just how many, I didn’t know, until my Facebook feed filled up with the reassuring “We’re okay!” messages after the bombing.  And I later found out that the sister of a dear friend, who ran in the marathon that day, was at the finish line when the explosions occurred.  She was unharmed and I know everyone who is acquainted with my friend and his family is incredibly relieved about that.

Kara of it’s a dog lick baby world, a running and parenting blog that I really enjoy, made a good point about the horror of the Boston marathon bombing, at least for anyone who runs: normally when you hear about these terrible tragedies, you think “I can’t imagine…” but what is truly horrifying about this bombing is that you can imagine it.

I’m a slow runner, and I will never, ever qualify for the Boston marathon – and I’m okay with that, because I just want to get out there, run, have a good time, and try to live a healthy lifestyle.  But even though I’ll almost certainly never complete this particular race, I’ve run in other races, including one major DC race that is popular and crowded enough to attract similar unwelcome attention.  I can honestly say that when I was running in that race (back in 2011), it never occurred to me that someone might attack the finish line.  I sort of thought I might faint at mile 8 and never actually see the finish line, but the idea of a tragedy of Boston marathon magnitude… nope, never entered my mind.  It sure will the next time I register for a big, popular race, though.

Last weekend, my sis-in-law and I lined up for the Healthy Strides Community 5K at Burke Lake Park in northern Virginia .  It was a tiny little community race – even tinier, probably, than it would otherwise have been because it was scheduled for the day before the Nike Women’s DC Half Marathon.  E’s goal was to run every step of the race.  My goal was to have fun and finish my first race as a mom with a smile on my face.  We both achieved our goals.

healthystrides1

The race started at one of the picnic shelters and continued on shady park roads.  The 5K course was a simple out-and-back – a little hilly, but fun nonetheless, and with pretty lake and woodland views to distract the runners from their burnin’ lungs.  As I covered the course, I thought about how much I’ve missed this running community.  My last race was a freezing cold trail 5K over Valentine’s Day weekend in 2012; I spent the 3.1 miles wondering why I felt sick to my stomach and nearly collapsed at the finish line.  (Unbeknownst to me at the time, there was a microscopic little Peanut who had taken up residence and was making my stomach churn and my head swim throughout the race.)  I stopped running early in my pregnancy because it felt wrong, and later realized that it must have been my “mother’s intuition” speaking – and I was glad I had listened to that inner mama, when I was put on activity restrictions and then bed rest for pregnancy complications.

healthystrides2

I’m not sorry I took that time off from running, because I needed to do it for Peanut, but I’m glad to be back now.  I missed the excited chatter at the start lines, the encouragement from fellow runners on the race courses, the volunteers who give up their weekend mornings to hand out water and shout things like “Good job, runners!” for hours, and especially, the burst of adrenaline and pride upon crossing the finish line (whether it’s a 3.1 or a 13.1).

healthystrides3

I thought about Boston while I was running in this relaxed, low-key 5K.  I thought about the people who worked so hard, and logged so many miles, to get to the start line – and the finish line – that day.  My slow, plodding “icebreaker” 5K was for them.  I also thought about the journey I’ve personally taken over the past year – from pregnancy to delivery at 31 weeks, parenting in the NICU, and then finally getting some of the normal life I craved back.  I thought about the kind of mom I want to be – an active mom, who teaches her kids that it’s fun to get outside and move – and how this slow 5K was just the beginning of what I hope will be many, many years of demonstrating a healthy lifestyle for Peanut and her potential future siblings.  And I remembered how, when I was stuck on the couch trying unsuccessfully to hold Peanut in last summer, I yearned for the ability to do just this very thing: to go outside and put one foot in front of the other.

Yes, I really missed these people and this sport.  And I love that we’re all still here, still getting out there, still toeing the start lines and sprinting across finish lines.  A little community 5K in a northern Virginia park is no Boston marathon – no one would claim that it is – but when you’re standing at a start line, you feel solidarity with runners everywhere.  Fast, slow, beginner, advanced, new mom, old pro, we’re all friends and we’re all still here.  We’re in this thing together and we won’t be scared off.

I’m already looking out for my next race.