Monday, April 22, 2013

Horsetooth Half Marathon

Eight days after running rim to rim to rim in the Grand Canyon (about a 50 or so mile run), I toed the line for the Horsetooth Half Marathon. This was the third year in a row that I've run this race, and I was especially stoked to race this year since I've spent a lot of my miles in the last 6 months training on the race route. But after deciding to go to the Grand Canyon to run the week before this race, I pretty much scrapped any hopes for a PR half, and decided to use it as a test of how well and how long it takes me to recover from a 50 miler. I've been toying with the idea of running Grandma's Marathon in Duluth, MN in June. But the race comes one week after the Big Horn 100, where I'll be pacing a friend for 50 miles. Since I'm no TNC, I have less confidence in my ability to tick off a marathon that rapidly after a 50 mile run. So I decided I'd use this race as a test to see if I could run a BQ time at Grandma's.

I felt great for the first nine miles. I cruised up monster mountain in a comfortable rhythm,not pushing too hard and averaging 9:30 pace for the first 2 miles, knowing that the following would all be net downhill and I could work down that time by quite a bit. The next four miles flew by in 7:45, 7:57 (hill), 7:51 and 7:51. I felt comfortable and easy running those miles, and my legs were holding together surprisingly well. I was feeling a bit dehydrated, but my legs didn't feel sore and weren't feeling fatigued as I turned onto Bingham Hill Rd. I slowed a bit on the Bingham Hill miles, clocking in 8:09, 8:26, and 8:19, and as I turned onto the Poudre Trail, I could feel my legs tiring significantly. At mile 8, I downed a Vi fuel, but feeling kind of dehydrated and not getting enough water, it hit my stomach harder than it should have and I cramped up a bit.

Mile 10 through the end were definitely rough. My legs were fatigued, and I could've used a gallon of water and each mile showed it. Miles 10-12 dragged by in 8:33, 8:49, and 8:34. I was working hard and not much was happening. Early on in mile 13, I came across Pete, running with Aero, at the side of the trail. I almost didn't recognize Aero since he was running so calmly and well, as compared to the last time I'd seen him. Pete jumped in a few paces ahead of me and I kicked it up to try and keep up with him. There was a group of runners ahead of me, and I picked up to pass them by with his encouragement. I clocked in the last mile at 8:07 and the last .15 miles at 7:41 pace - fairly pedestrian but about all I could muster on fatigued legs and hugely thanks to Pete.

I finished in 1:50:26, which I felt pretty good about. It's certainly slower than I could run on fresh legs, but I'm nonetheless stoked that my legs hung on for as long as they did. After my last 50 mile effort at Quad Rock last year, it took me months before I was running solidly again. So I'm really starting to feel like my training over the last months has been paying, and I'm hugely excited about that! I'm not convinced that I can race Grandma's at my time goal a week after Big Horn, though. I just don't know that two more months of training will get me through 26.2 miles at BQ or faster pace. I'm thinking I might have to bench my marathon goals until the early December marathon dates, once I've recovered a bit from the summer ultra trail running season.

I was also thrilled to see how much Aero has improved, his patience and calmness in the huge crowds on Sunday was huge. I hope he gets adopted out to a great family, because he is rapidly turning into a truly great dog (he's at Animal House). 

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Thoughts on Runners and Boston

Us runners, we're a pretty quirky and weird and awesome bunch. We like to joke that our sport is other sports' punishment. And it kind of is. Where others whine and complain about having to run a mile or two, we wake up at 4AM to fit in a run before our families start waking up and our classes and jobs start.

We run in the early morning pre-dawn hours, at lunch time, as the day wanes to night and the sun drops low on the horizon, and at all other hours in between. Sometimes we spend an hour or two, or 24 or 48, trotting circles around an oval that could be 1/8 mile or a 1/4 mile around. We bound across open fields, up mountains, down canyons, and along roads. We wear shorts and sports bra tan lines with an overt pride that is viewed as just plain ridiculous by many outsiders. But it's a point of pride for us. As are the scrapes and scars and twinging muscles from biffing on trails and hard workouts.

Running is our compulsion and our love and our sanity. For some, running is a never-forgot first love, derived from preschool days of sprinting around the playground for the sheer joy of moving so fast that our legs almost feel as though they will fall off. For others, running is a passion found in the deep dark depths of adulthood - a more enduring and positively life-changing form of the oft-cited "buy a ferrari and find a younger girlfriend mid-life crisis." Some of us are heavier, others are thinner. We run fast, slow, medium, long, short and everything in between. Long runs are spent with our closest running pals discussing running, upcoming races, relationships, work, family, and any number of unsavory topics related to bodily functions. We can be a little bit gross a lot of the time, and a lot gross a little bit of the time. And unless you want to see something truly disturbing, you should never attend a buffet with a group of ultrarunners or marathoners or even most collegiate athletes - it's treated as the ultimate gauntlet, and we deeply desire to win.

Runners are found in the real world as police officers, teachers, college students, investment bankers, stay-at-home moms and anything in between and beyond. They take many shapes, sizes, ages, and occupations. But the one thing that runners are not is violent or vindictive. We are tough, determined, and bad-ass. But we are also peaceful - we want only to be left to determinedly persevere through our training schedules and cycles and go about our days as we wish.

We endure a lot as runners. There is the heat and cold, snow and rain that we run through. The drivers who strive to run us off the road and shout ridiculous epithets of misunderstanding at us. But we should never have to endure what happened at the Boston Marathon on Monday April 15, 2013 - Patriot's Day, Marathon Day.

This person, whomever they are, that planted those bombs, clearly had no idea who they were dealing with. That person tried to break our spirit, but the thing that I know about runners is that an attack on our kind just makes us more determined to come back even stronger. You just don't mess with a group of people who run 26.2 miles for fun, and run it fast.

Oh and messing with Bostonians was also pretty stupid. I mean, we're talking about a group of people who founded this country, helped to incite the Revolutionary War, and cheered on the Red Sox with heartbreaking conviction through their 86-year Curse of the Bambino. If ever a city and its people were as determined, enduring, and hard-headedly stubborn as runners, then that city would be Boston.

I might be from New York, and live in Colorado, but today I stand united with Boston. Because no one fucks with my people. And runners of all sizes and speeds - those are my people. If this person intended to scare us and turn us on each other and create terror - well they picked the wrong group. Because I have not heard a single response about never running Boston again, nor have I heard one single story about looting or trampling or any negative reactions. Instead, what I witnessed was a beautiful response to a terrible thing. Spectators sharing their cell phones with runners to help them find family and friends. Water being handed out. Blankets shared and medals given to those not allowed to finish. Runners finishing a marathon and running extra to donate blood. The man in the cowboy hat helping to save a life. And a flurry of runners across the country vowing to run Boston in 2014, if there is any possible way they can make it there. My heart goes out to those injured and killed in this terrible attack. And it also wells with pride and love at the response of my fellow runners, and my fellow man, to this terrible and tragic attack.