River Trail 15k

I decided somewhat last minute to do a race on the Arkansas River Trail where I regularly do long runs. I have gotten to where I am fairly familiar with every little bump in the road over these parts. And sometimes that works to a runner's advantage; I am not sure it helps me.

Race week started last Saturday with a 12-miler that included some moderate pickups, which left my calves sore the next day. My calves are very rarely sore. But they were challenged again on my Sunday birthday climb of Pinnacle mountain. "Run" does not really describe what you do for at least half of it. I even used my hands climbing over some boulders. The downhill is probably what added to my soreness. Despite the steepness of my neighborhood streets (Garmin says our street right in front of the driveway is a 20.5% incline), they do not prepare me for boulder scaling. 

Anyway, I did my track workout of 8x800s on Wednesday. It hurt and left me super tired, despite being significantly slower than last time I did a similar workout. I ran easy Thursday, sat on the couch (just kidding, not with this toddler) took off from training for a whole day, Friday, and raced Saturday. Have I laid out enough excuses yet? Well here is another: Friday night I got chills and felt feverish for a while before going to bed. I was actually afraid I was developing mastitis since I had some plugged duct pain as well. But by the middle of the night I was over it and fine.

Sometimes it is frustrating to listen to people always have their excuses in order before a race even starts. Sandbagging, anyone? Other times, especially when it's -- ahem -- yourself, you realize that not all races are going to come with perfect circumstances. Particularly when you only put it on the calendar a few days before. So you have all these reasons in your head about why it could suck so that when you do well, or even just ok, you come away happy. Right?

My race plan was to go out at a 7 min pace, then try to pick it up slowly. After a 6:50, 7:00, 7:10, then 7:19, I kind of gave up. I did manage to pick it up from there instead of continuing the 10 second trend, but I finished the 9.3 miles with a 7:09 average. I let go of the 3rd place female and even let 4th place pass me in the last mile. Way to race, Joy.

Now I know I'm not the only one who has these bad race or even training days. Sometimes it seems  (thanks again, social media) that nobody else has this happen. It is tough to put out there that you are disappointed. Does that mean that your training plan was not ideal? Are you just lazy? Not naturally talented? Can't take a little discomfort or pain? Going out too fast? I don't think any of those are necessarily true. As much as we research in exercise science to get averages and trends, there is such a huge variability on race or test day. Take it from me, record holder in the Biggest Time Difference in Ironman Marathons category (yep, 2 hours and 52 minutes between best and worst -- but I am just going to blame weather for that).

 You can never quite replicate that perfect prerace ritual, however hard you try. And I have come to realize that maybe with a little age (I have been running for about 22 years now, triathloning for 17), but also maybe with the unpredictability of having a toddler who may wake up between 3 and 6 times a night, I just have to do the best I can do on race day.

Even with all my excuses built up, that I repeated to myself over and over during the race (not good internal dialogue, by the way -- the ipod would've been a better distraction), I still didn't come away feeling happy about the race. But I am happy about the 13.5 mile total workout I got in, so that when next race day comes in 4 weeks, maybe I can feel good about it.

And now, the toddler this week :)

Playing in the bed, which is the most fun thing ever

Is it just me, or does he look about 5 years old here?