Year 2, Week 4 Wrapup

This week was Thanksgiving, and although I ate my share of the feasts, I still managed to bring my average weight down a pound for the week. On top of that, every weigh-in this week was under 180 pounds for the first time.

Turkey Trot

I switched up the running schedule a little bit this week because I was running the Mesa Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day. That's a 10k, so I threw that in in place of this week's tempo run. I was doing the Turkey Trot for a couple of reasons. 1: I had several family members also taking part, so I wanted to go up in solidarity. 2: Steven had heard that I might do the Turkey Trot and renewed his trash talking about how much younger and thinner he was and how he could still beat me even though he hadn't run since our last race. His main rationale was that he's twice as good at the tuba as he was the last time we raced. I challenged him to back up his talk and come up and run with me. It was really important for me to have a rematch since I was so humiliated last time.

It had rained all night the night before, so everything was really nice and cool on the morning of the race. Steven and I had stayed up late playing Lego Indiana Jones the night before, so we only had about 3 hours of sleep when we woke up. We left the house about 6 AM. There was very little traffic between Tucson and Phoenix, which is very rare, but most welcome indeed. When we got closer to the park in Mesa, I got an idea of just how big this was. Streets were blocked off for quite a ways out, so it took like twenty minute to drive the last mile to the parking lot. Once we parked, we still had to walk 1/3 of a mile to the park where the race started. We got our bibs and T-shirts, walked 1/3 mile back to car to dump the shirts, then met up with our cousins.

We had 20 minutes until the race started, so we got in line for the 4 porta-potties they had there at the start. I later found out that they had about 400 porta-potties at the finish, but since the finish is in a different place, that wasn't helping me. So, first suggestion for improvement: either more porta-potties at the start, or put a sign near the ones at the start giving directions to find more. After 10 minutes, we had only moved through 1/4 of the line, so it seemed mathematically unlikely we would get there before the start. Since I didn't have to pee too bad, I gave up and went back into the crowd while Steven went to climb a fence and find some other solution. He eventually found some not very secluded area of the park to pee, which was only a little bit of a help to him since going #1 wasn't his main reason for trying to visit the porta-potty.

The "gun" went off, and it was probably a couple of minutes before we crossed the start line. We weren't in too much of a hurry to get to the start since it's all chip time in this race, so our thinking was that the crowd would thin out a bit if we waited. That may be true, but we discovered quickly that the only slightly thinner crowd was now made up of walkers, stroller pushers, people with canes, kids, etc. Bad move on our part.

For a couple of days before, I struggled with trying to come up with a good strategy to beat Steven. I figured I had two choices. Option 1 was to just go at any easy pace, then pick the pace up significantly for the last couple of miles hoping to leave him in the dust. This was the plan I used last time, and it failed miserably because I was injured/hot/needing to pee. Sure, I'm a better runner this time, but I would be in a lot of trouble if anything started hurting, Even if I didn't hurt, I ran the risk of Steven hanging with me during the easy pace, then overtaking me by sheer force of will when I tried to kick.

So, I decided to go with option 2, which was to just go out as fast as I can, and hope the fast pace just destroyed him early enough for him to either give up or drop out. I figured that I might not be left with anything with which to kick, and I would probably not negative split for sure, but that my second half time wouldn't matter because Steven would be dead at that point. So, I tried to take off fast, but because of the density of the crowd, I couldn't do any better than 8:20 for the first mile. It was still enough that Steven was really struggling. It was really no more than a couple of hundred feet past the start before he was noticeably breathing heavy. He was trying to say something to me right after the start, but was having to pause between every 2 syllables to catch his breath. By the second mile, things had opened up enough that I was able to speed up a little bit. Steven still said he was feeling great, and that the pace was fine, and he'd have no problem hanging on until the end. We finished the second mile in 7:49

At about the 2.4 mile mark, there was a water station. I moved a couple of feet away from Steven to grab water, and then when I turned my head to look back, he was gone. Just vanished. I looked ahead to see if he had made a break for it, but didn't see him there. I stopped for a few seconds to look back around the water stop, but didn't see him there either. I thought about starting up again more slowly, to let him catch up, but I was still worried that he might have passed me. So, I turned it on again, and finished the third mile in 8:07.

The fourth mile was 7:55, still on a great pace. Near the beginning of the fifth mile, I started to feel a little bit funny down in the bowels. I had needed to pee a little bit, but was ignoring that, so my body replaced that feeling with a different feeling that was sort of a cross between needing to poop and having my bladder explode. It was not at all pleasant and I was afraid I was going to have to detour over to someone's house and offer my watch in exchange for a bathroom trip. I tried to decide what would be worse: Stopping and ending what was already a pretty good race, or soiling myself. I decided that while the discomfort was great, the risk of actually sharting was low, and I soldiered on, finishing mile 5 in 7:55.

By mile 6, I felt normal again, so I sped up a little bit, doing that mile in 7:38. I sped up just a little bit more at the end, doing a 7:36 pace for that last little stretch, finishing in 49:05.

Results here. This works out to a 7:54/mile pace, which is the fastest race I've ever run, pace-wise. I finished 425th overall out of 2303 total finishers, and was 339th out of 1231 men. I got 51st out of 150 in the Male 35-39 division.

In the last 5k, I did 24:45, so I figured that doubling that time and adding some to make up for the fade over distance would get me a goal time of 50:00 on a perfect day. I thought that more realistically I would just be happy to do under 55:00. So, I'm terrifically pleased.

After finishing, I met up with cousins and waited for Steven to come in. Randy had already come in about four minutes ahead of me. That's a great time for him considering he rarely runs over 3 miles anymore because of a bum knee. Steven finally came in with a couple of other cousins at 1:07:18. This was a lot slower than his time last time, and over 18 minutes slower than my time. He said he ran into some poop trouble as well, and that's why he had to drop out. I sympathize, but a middle or long distance race isn't about who can put their legs in front of them the fastest. It's about who can manage their body the best. So, whether it's because he ran slower, or had to run with cheeks clenched, he still lost.

I believe he's sufficiently humbled now, but on the other hand, he's going around telling people we tied (since he won once and I won once). I believe he's angling for a rematch.

So, it was a great race for me, but overall I'm less than impressed with the Turkey Trot. The complaints I would direct to the race organizers are as follows:

1. The aforementioned porta-potty thing.

2. There's way too many people. Over 2300 for just the 10k, plus whoever was hanging out for the fun runs. If they were all serious runners, that might be one thing, but since it's more of a social thing, the course is too crowded with families jogging nine abreast, as well as the strollers and all the others oblivious to what's going on around them. A huge number of people is okay in a marathon where the field will thin out after the first few miles, but in a 10k the race is over by the time you get to that point.

3. There's no good food. There are banana pieces and orange quarters afterwards, but no muffins or bagels or cookies or anything. I think if they did have anything desirable, they'd have to come up with some sort of corral to keep the huge number of spectators from helping themselves. Still, it needs to be done.

4. The turkey. In the flyer and on the website, they say a special certificate is given if you beat the turkey (defined as running faster than 45:00). Well, the "certificate" is just half of a letter sized sheet of paper fed through a laser printer that says "I beat the Turkey". It's not even card stock or anything. I honestly can't believe that they even have the balls to tout that as if it's something to work for. See Shane's certificate in the picture on his blog. The goofy part is that I did beat a turkey. There's was someone running in a turkey suit, and I passed him in mile 4, finishing about 2 minutes ahead. I originally assumed this was an official turkey, running on pace to finish in 45:00, but when I passed him, I began to suspect he was just a chump in a turkey suit. (Note: it looks like the exact same turkey as the one in the aforementioned post from Shane's blog.) So, if the race is going to persist with this "Beat the Turkey" thing, give out something that's worth winning, even if you have to lower the threshold to 40:00 to justify it. And, if that's the official race turkey, drop the pretense of the 45:00 time and just give something to everyone that can beat him. Or, if you want to keep with the 45:00 threshold, make sure your turkey is fast enough and well-paced enough to actually do that time. If that's not your turkey, but rather just some dude, then I don't know what to tell you...

The one really good thing I can say about this race is that it's chip timed. It's really hard to find a race that short with chip timing. And, they use the new ChronoTrack system of disposal chip tags. It's a paper thing you loop on your shoelaces, then dispose of afterwards. It's easier to put on/take off then a normal shoe chip, and it's less irritating than an ankle band. Then when the race is done, you don't have to wait around for someone to collect your chip. Pretty cool.

So, if I lived in Mesa, and knew enough people that it was a good social event for me, I'd probably go back and do it each year. As it is, it's not worth the drive for me to do it again unless it's a big family event again or something.

Turkey Trot: The Aftermath

I went and redid my marathon training schedule using this new 10k time and got training paces that are about 10 seconds faster than what I was doing. That's fine. I'm tough.

What I'm learning from the race is this: I'm not a good racer. I'm getting faster at running, but there's still some things I need to do better to race well. For one, I'm not usually a good finisher. I go into a race with a mental idea of what time is acceptable to me, and I'm way too quick to revise that as I get more tired. I might have a "best case" goal, a "pretty good" goal", and a "at least I won't be too embarrassed" goal. I very quickly focus on the time that would be least good, and give up the faster goals. This is especially the case near the end of the race.

For example, after doing 4.2 miles in 34 minutes, I thought, "If I just do 10 minute miles from here, I've still made my goal of under 55". I'm doing these kinds of calculations the whole race, which is an unfortunate side effect of running with the Garmin. And this kind of thinking of deciding what to settle for has meant I've never had a negative split race until now. So, this time, I actively fought against that and kept myself going at pace, doing a very slight negative split.

I've thought about doing a race without the Garmin, but I feel like I'd either run too fast and fade too quick, or I'd think I'm struggling, only to find out later that my pace was 30 seconds slower that I expected. Still, even if either of those things happen, it might be helpful to know which one happens.

The other thing is that within 2 minutes after the race, my heart rate was back down to normal and I felt like I could go out and do the whole thing again. My legs were never sore, even for a second. I feel like if I were doing it right, I should have felt worse at the end. If I was really giving it my all, I should be struggling to walk afterwards and wanting to puke.

So, I'm just now getting a handle on the fact the distance running is more mental than physical. I will keep up the training to get faster, but I will also need to figure out how to get over the dual mental hurdles of rationalizing the abandonment of goals, and not putting all of my effort in.

Long Run

On Saturday, I did 16 miles @ 9:38. I was way ahead of pace, so I actually finished 1/4 mile short then walked the rest to let the average pace slow down to 9:38. I didn't feel bad about this since I actually bumped the stop button near the start of the run and ran about 1/4 mile "off the clock". I was more sore afterwards than on the last couple of long runs, probably because my legs were a little bit used up after the race. The plus is that I only had one 20 oz bottle of gatorade during the run (plus 1 after), plus a few drinks from the drinking fountain. This is way easier than the 2 liters I needed to drink (plus another liter after) when I last did 16 miles back in the summer.