Here it Comes...

I'm just now realizing that I haven't posted anything here since Boston. Shame on me, I guess.

The New York City Marathon is just around the corner... by which I mean it starts in like 15 or 16 hours, depending on whether daylight savings  time decides to change tonight (I have it on good authority that it might)

I'm feeling... nervous and uncertain. More than I have for any race in a very long time.

My training has not gone as well as I would have hoped... I've been kind of on the semi-injured list for most of the summer, with only the last month or so really starting to feel better. And I'm not sure how tomorrow is going to go.

Jean, one if my teammates, pointed out that the nerves are probably because I've been waiting for this race for a long time. And she's probably right. I have been.

I first applied to the NYC Marathon in 2009, through their drawing/lottery system. That's one of the ways to get here. I didn't get chosen that year. Or the next. Not in 2011 either...

But in 2011 at least I knew I'd get to run this race... In 2012. They used to have a "fourth time's a charm" rule, which has since been removed. But in 2012, I got in!

And I trained and got excited all that summer (my first training in the summer months in Austin... It was kind of an eye opener, or at least a pore opener). Then a week before the race, a storm came and trashed the place, and there was no marathon that year.

I made a decision then, that the next time I was going to try to do this race, I'd have to qualify for it. That's another way of getting here. No more lottery attempts. I'd just have to run fast enough somewhere else to get my entry. At that time, it wasn't a foregone conclusion that I sacristy could do it. But it happened! I qualified for last year's race! ...and it was going to be the day after Halloween, and my kiddos are still young enough that I wanted to be with them. So it was a no go for 2015.

You probably already guessed the punchline - none of the previous roadblocks stopped me this year. And so here I am, swiping out some long winded drivel on my phone about how long it's taken me to get here, and how nervous I am, and how excited I am too.

Heck yeah I'm excited! Eight years is a long time to build all that stuff up.

So what if the training wasn't optimal. My coach has a saying about that. She also told me halfway through the summer to not get frustrated... Get determined.

And so I'll go into tomorrow with all the determination I can muster, and whatever happens, I'm here in New York and I'm finally going to run this freaking race!

Boston Marathon 2016

Firstly - apologies for leaving some of you hanging with my ambiguous Facebook comment on race day. I forgot about that until people started asking questions this week. I'm afraid this race report will be a bit of the let down after the wait :)

I have a process (vaguely) for how I write up a race report. It starts with a bunch of notes of things I remember or might want to say about the race, most of them taken the same day. I'll add any other tidbits I think of to that list for a couple days. Then, I just let it sit for a while. And after some random period of time, I look through my notes and write something. Or try to write something.

That random period ended earlier this week. I read through my collection of little phrases and unformed sentences. It felt a lot like a giant haiku poem (without the picky rules). And now you know why there are haiku sprinkled throughout this thing. Like this first one...

Wake an hour early
Try to sleep just a bit more
Resistance: futile

The morning started off just about the way you'd expect one of my race mornings to go, at least if you've read any of my race reports before. Eyelids suddenly flying open at 3:30 AM in a brief, but intense panic that I'd somehow slept through the alarm.

The alarm was not set to blare for another hour still. So I put my head back down and feigned sleep, opening one eye to check every now and then that I hadn't missed it. The usual paranoia.

Coffee essential
For moving the mind, and uhh...
Flushing the system

When I finally tired of playing peek-a-boo with the alarm clock, I rolled out of bed and set myself to the second most important task of that first hour - making coffee. Which led (predictably) to the most important task of the first hour. That gave me a chance to marvel once again at the old-school-state-of-the-art feeling of my hotel room.

Really?

I sit and ponder
Why is there a phone in here?
And who would use it?




Seriously. Whose idea was that first throne phone? And who saw that and thought "This is a great idea!" and allowed the concept to spread to so many other hotels? I guess it doesn't really matter. What mattered at this point was to eat and get dressed and ready to go.

Weather looks warm-ish
No snowman pants today :(
Save them, for New York!


For those who are keeping count and about to tell me I just cheated there (and I know there's at least three of you), the frownie counts as a single syllable. It is pronounced "hrm".

Never mind. Let's go!
Cab to bus and bus to school
Walk to the start line

Ok, so that part actually covered a lot more time than those seventeen syllables would imply. Something like three and a half hours passed between hopping in a cab and ending up in the corrals. There was food and water, nervous pre-race chatter with my teammates, wandering around the athlete's village hoping to find... who knows what. However, it felt like five minutes. It all rushed by so quickly.

A shady spot. Sit.
Visualize one last time
How the day will go

I got to my assigned corral about 30 minutes before the race was to start. It was warm in the sun, but a big tree provided shade over a good portion of the road. A lot of other runners were sitting down there in the shade. I joined them, went through the race in my head. I don't think I've ever done that before - just sit down in the road and semi-meditate. It was nice and cool in the shade, and it calmed me down to just not be fidgeting. Some of that nervous energy came flooding back shortly though...

National anthem,
Choppers above, pistol fires
Yes! This is Boston!

Everybody runs
Before they cross the start line
There's no other choice

On a narrow road
A massive wave of people
Flowing down the hill

Mile two, runner down
The only choice, go over
Stumble, but survive

Here's where things began to diverge from the plan, though I didn't fully appreciate that until later. We were all moving along quickly, but packed in pretty tight even in the second mile. I don't really know what happened exactly - the first part went so fast. What I perceived was a runner in a white shirt dropping and rolling on the ground just ahead of me, and then there was a second guy in the air in front of me, going from right to left (presumably jumping over / trying to avoid the first guy, but really just cutting me off). My left leg caught on one or the other of them as I tried to make it through the spontaneous obstacle course. All that happened in real time, kind of blurry and out of focus.

Then the memory gets all Matrix bullet-timey on me, and I can see all the details. The road was coming up to meet my face, and my brain was hinting at the idea that I didn't have any other appendage in a position where it could meet the ground first. Somehow I managed to get my left toe down, which bought me enough time to get my right foot on the ground, and so on. I flailed my arms around a bit for comic effect before returning upright. I think that if we hadn't been going down a hill at the time, this would have turned out differently.

Adrenaline surge
Leg feels weird... relax, calm down
Find the groove again

I could feel a bit of a nag in my left leg for just a little bit, but it went away really quickly and I was back to normal. Normal, except that I was all hopped up on "please no, not in the face!" fumes, which is not really my ideal mental state this early in the race. All was going pretty well for several miles after this.

Eight miles, there's the pain
Change stride and push it aside
Try to maintain pace

I developed a sharp pain down my left leg when pushing off (or, more likely this is when the adrenaline from my near soul-kiss with the pavement wore off and I started noticing the pain). I shifted the way I was running so that it became more of a nagging background issue.

Halfway to the end
Can't keep favoring one leg
No way this can last

It was pretty clear to me at this point that my solution to the leg problem wasn't going to get me through the race. My right leg was doing more than its fair share of the running, and I could feel the muscles in both legs starting to get tense. My efforts to loosen things back up and relax seemed to just make it worse.

>>Hindsight - fyi this is more a "note to self" portion of the report. You can probably skip this part and not miss anything. I can see from my splits that I slowed down a little once the pain started, but not that much (about 5-10 seconds/mile). I felt I was still running nice and efficient. As far as my internal fuel gauge was concerned, I hadn't even started to make a dent. But my legs were becoming an issue. It is clear to me now that the things I use to gauge my effort level are based more on internal factors - probably related to cardiovascular cues - than to how my muscles are holding up. I don't think I have a real good awareness of what's going on in my legs. Something to think about. And now back to the regularly scheduled program...<<

Timing mats go by
Periodic reminders
People are watching

Sixteen - legs fatigued
Seventeen - painful uphills
Eighteen, nineteen - ouch

Over the next six miles or so, I really started having trouble. Going uphill was hard because I couldn't really avoid the sharper pains in my left leg on the hills.  My right leg was starting to have its own share of painful stuff. I've described this to many people as muscle cramps, but I don't think that "cramps" is really the right word for it. I only had one real cramp the entire day, and that was not even during the race. It was after the race, while walking back to the hotel. One of those nasty bottom-of-the-foot ones that wake you up randomly in the middle of the night.

Anyway, my muscles weren't locking up. They were just going batshit crazy on me. They weren't firing at the right times or with the requested amount of force. For example, I'd go for a few steps pretty much fine and then suddenly my buttcheek would decide not to work as my foot hit the ground. My calf would try to make up for it by firing extra super duper hard, but way earlier than it needed to. It was really painful... but not really cramps.

The third hill breaks me.
My legs are failing. I walk.
First time in eight years.

I was in a pretty bad place when this happened. According to my watch data, I was on the 3rd of the Newton hills, though I could have sworn it happened 2 miles earlier. My left leg was killing me and my right leg wasn't being predictable at all, and then I was walking. It wasn't really a conscious decision. And I found that walking didn't hurt. As soon as I started walking, I wanted to keep doing it.

Seven miles to go
Them... the crowd will not abide
No, this is Boston.

The crowd at the Boston Marathon is amazing. They are loud. They are enthusiastic. There are thousands (and thousands!) of them in those last miles of the race. And they do not want to see you walking. It didn't take long before they got me going again. I had mixed feelings about that. I was both grateful for the mental boost and full of spite for the resulting pain. I did not want to run any longer.

I run... (mostly run)
I'm not the only "mostly"
Carnage everywhere

I ran most of the rest of the race, alternately cursing and thanking the crowds in my head. I took a few more walk breaks under similar circumstances. Both my legs eventually got in on the cramps-that-aren't-cramps insanity. Several times, one or both quads went on strike and I thought I might fall down. I had to stop a few times and just let my legs shake for a bit. But each time I managed to start putting one foot in front of the other again.

I was kind of between two worlds. One was full of people flying by me. The other was full of people dropping like flies. Even in my state I was passing a lot of other runners. Walking, cramping up, puking - there were lots of obvious heat-related issues. I've never seen that many people struggling in a race before.

I don't really think that much of what I was experiencing was due to the warm weather, but its possible that it made things worse. I don't know. I certainly wasn't overheated in the same way that many other people were. The sun in my face sucked, and I really wish I'd thought to wear a pair of sunglasses. But other than that, it was nice weather for a good stumble across Massachusetts. The predominant theory is that  I simply wasn't going fast enough for my body temperature to get up in the bad zone.

I have already gone into way more detail than I really wanted to about the suffering part, and I'm going to stop there. The only other thing I want to really write about "in the race" is the weird (only in hindsight) moment when Cam passed me. Cam and I ran something like 90% of our training runs together for this race. 6 or 7 runs a week, every week. We've easily run a thousand miles together since November. He passed me somewhere in the last two miles of the race (neither of us can remember exactly where we were). He described the scene as something out of a war movie, where one soldier is trying to drag his dying buddy off the battlefield, and the other one is saying "No! Leave me! Save yourself!"

(what's so weird about that?)

That's just background. It's not the weird part. The weird part is that in all of those 26.2 miles, amidst 26,000+ runners, there was a stretch of maybe five to ten seconds where the two of us happened to be close enough to be seen together. And some official photographer just happened to be there too.

Weird. Maybe not as weird as the funny-shaped snowflakes in the picture (I don't remember it snowing), but weird nonetheless.

Eventually...
Done with my final Boston...
Until the next one.

Finish line photo: It's a long way from Hereford to there.

So that's it. Needless to say, but the day did not go according to plan.

The plan, for the record, was to run solidly in the 2-fortysomething range. 2:48 to be specific. It was a challenging goal but one I thought (still think) I can get to.

Instead, I ended up running 3:13:07. A good 25 minutes slower than my goal, and nearly 20 minutes slower than I ran this race last year.

Am I disappointed? I'd be lying if I said no. I have been on a pretty good streak of Marathon PRs over the past two years, and I did not want that to end. And I've been focused on this one day - this one race - for the better part of the last six months. That's what you do when you train for these things. Gather up all the eggs, stick 'em in that basket.

But I'm also... not disappointed. I still went out and did the best I could under the circumstances. I'm still chalking this one up in the success column. Maybe I've got my bar for success set too low.

It's easy (natural, even) to start playing "whatif" after a race that didn't go as planned. I really don't like that game very much. The whatif's are usually about something that I didn't have any control over in the first place. And the answers are just pure speculation. It doesn't do much for me, though I do admit to playing the game anyway. On the other hand, I do like to break things down, figure out what I did well and what I can do better next time. But that's completely different. It takes place in an imaginary future instead of an imaginary past.

When it comes down to it, race day is what it is. Sometimes things go splendiferously according to plan. Other times, shit happens. You toss the plan out the window and you just have to improvise. And I'm sure a lot can go on - there's endless variations, leading to endless whatif's. But as long as I don't leave a race asking "What if I tried harder?" (I'm looking at you, 2009 Cap 10k!) then I'm pretty good with it. And I'm definitely not asking that question about this race.


---
I normally post some splits right about here after the race report is all done, but this time I think a pace graph tells the story better.

Last, but not least, special thanks to Ashish, without whom this blog post would have fewer pictures.

New Flavor

A couple weeks ago I bought a bunch of new gel flavors to try out on my longer runs.

Tomorrow's flavor...

... is sponsored by today's news.

Toronto Waterfront Marathon 2015

Sometime in the past month (a couple weeks ago as I start writing this.. maybe three or four by the time I finish), I ran the Toronto Waterfront Marathon. I wrote down my thoughts and notes for a couple days following the race, and I've been putting off turning those into a race report ever since. Seems like I can't start writing until I start running again. It's becoming "a thing". Maybe I should start writing my reports before the races so they're all ready to go when I am done, and I can relax!

In any case, it's Halloween and I'm all hopped up on candy and adult beverages. Seems like as good a time as any to start this thing. We'll see if I can finish within a week. (It's now a week later, and I am finishing this if it takes all night!)

On with it... I'll start off by giving "ye of scant attention" - if any of ye are actually left - the nutshell version:

My goal for this race was 2:50. I didn't quite get there, but I came pretty close (2:51:22), which is a PR by two minutes, 83rd place overall, and 11th place in my age group (missed it by that much!). I'm happy. I ran a solid race and I doubt I could have done much different to run faster that day. The only regret I have from my time on the other side of the border is that there were so many Canadian runners out there, and I didn't ask a single one of them what word they use to describe their weekly "mileage".

So, if you need to get back to putting out a grease fire or watching a cat video or something, there you go.


If you're still interested, feel free to move on to the unabridged version. And I do mean unabridged. I'm gonna mention poop at some point before too long. Fair warning.

Right. So the goal = 2:50. Secretly, this really means 2:49:xx because the xx's almost always get cut off. And seriously, how cool would it be to nonchalantly say "oh, I ran a two..fortysomething" in response to the post-race howdja-do's? It would be pretty cool. That's how cool it would be.

As is customary, in the weeks leading up to the race I expressed little confidence of getting anywhere near my stated goal. And (also according to custom), Coach Amy talked me down off the ledge. Then of course came the scrabbling back up onto the ledge and the second round of negotiations. I never leave those talks with a different goal than I entered with. She's either an excellent negotiator or a very poor one, I haven't decided. But she's certainly very good at convincing me to remain cautiously confident (a.k.a. terrified), and so I did.


Fast-forward to race morning:

The alarm on my watch went off at 5:30. I rolled out of bed and stumbled over to the little "sink room outside the toilet/shower room" place where I'd set up the coffee maker, and tried to get the thing to brew a cup. It took a while. Stephanie was the resident Keurig expert, having successfully produced coffee from it on two prior mornings. She and the kids were still sleeping though, and I was trying to keep it that way. As it turns out there is a very specific launch sequence for this machine. Why they decided to require the nuclear gold codes to get things running is beyond me, but I eventually figured it out.

Then I drank my coffee, ate a fig bar, and proceeded to poop. A lot. Why do I poop so much before Marathons? It's frightening. Actually, I suppose that could be the answer - perhaps they quite literally scare the crap out of me (pssst.. or maybe it's the FIG bars and the COFFEE?) Don't get me wrong, I poop a lot on a normal day too. I am a very prodigious pooper. But on race day, it's just too...much...information.

It was shortly after 6 AM when I finished with round one of the breakfast-ingestion-and-pooping routine, and it was about this time I realized that between the bathroom and the sink-outside-bathroom-room, there was only one place to actually sit down.

Ok... so what in the world is that room called, anyhow? I just tried to look it up online, but failed. All I got were a bunch of pictures of the sink-outside-bathroom-room's of hotels around the world, which doesn't help with the question.

I didn't want to stand. I could not envision sitting or lying on the outer bathroom room floor for 90 minutes, and I wasn't about to break the seal to the inner bathroom after what had just happened in there. So... I set my watch alarm for 6:45 and crept back into bed.

Now, either I fell right back asleep and had this crazy nightmare about how I slept through the race, or I stared at the ceiling and consulted my watch every 3 minutes to make sure I hadn't slept through it. Or maybe both those things happened. Regardless, at 6:45 a much sweatier version of myself went back into the bathroom complex and started on round two, which involved significantly less of the pooping and significantly more of the getting all my running gear on.

When I finally finished the prep work and left the powder room(?? hmm maybe?), two of the three remaining family members were awake. I said goodbye to them, blew a kiss to the sleepy one and headed out.

Side note - having my family here for the race was pretty cool. This is the first marathon in almost 4 years that they've all been able to go. We made a little mini family vacation out of the trip. I got custom arm warmers out if the deal, which I wore the entire race, and there were guaranteed high fives (side-fives, really) and lifted spirits at two different places in the course! It was awesome.

Hand-tailored and custom-painted!

Fast-forward again, to the start of the race:

The weather was no-excuses awesome. It was quite a departure from living in a giant sweat gland all summer. It was actually cold enough to spit a little snow at us before the race started, though it stayed dry for the race itself. I met up with the usual suspects and headed to the start corrals. After a brief photo op, of course.

Me, Cam, Don, Kris, Brent, Ashish

As race time approached, the national anthem of Greece was sung. This seemed kind of bizarre, but also somewhat logical given the roots of this particular distance. I didn't understand a word of it. Then they sang "Oh, Canada!", which is exactly like "The Star-Spangled Banner", right up to the point where you sing the first "Oh". It diverges a bit from there.

We passed around shoulder pats and wishes for a good race, Brent headed up to the black corral, and Ashish went over to the special chute for people who registered on the Canadian site (apparently when you do this not only is it a couple bucks cheaper, you get to automatically take 6 seconds off your finish time).

It was time to go.

This was my eleventh Marathon. I am supposedly a "veteran" who has my Shinola together. I had a decent plan, which looked suspiciously like many of my previous race plans, and I went out and ran the plan. There was that agonizing semi-last-minute change with the shoes from the white ones to the bright ones (I know you've been in suspense ever since my last post), but whatever.

Except for the time on the clock when I finished, I pretty much nailed my plan. Even if the plan was a little flawed (cue suspenseful dun-dun-duuuuuuhhhh! sound).

The race started as they normally do - one person following a car, and thousands of other people following the person in front of them. Not a whole lot happened early on. But I'll cram a few things into this paragraph anyhow. The first cup of water I took was so unexpectedly cold that I couldn't breathe for a couple seconds. Some of the early streets (and some later ones) had concrete down the middle where the streetcars go. I enjoyed running on that part because it was flat and level - until I stumbled a couple times on the streetcar tracks and decided that I should just run on the asphalt instead. I enjoyed some of the sights - the giant CN Tower, a giant modern windmill, and a giant, not-so-modern archway/column combo thingy with a statue of an angel and some other things on top. Unlike the "bathroom foyer", the internet didn't fail me here - it is called the "Princes' Gates".

Anyway, it really was pretty uneventful for that first 10k or so - at least until the first turnaround. Heading back towards the city and the now-not-so-giant CN Tower, I gradually became more and more aware of my effort level. I was feeling on the verge of crossing the line between being efficient and, well.. not being so efficient. I usually get into this mode around the 18-20 mile range (somewhere in the low 30's if you're counting Canadian miles), but I was starting to feel this way at about half that distance, which concerned me a bit.

This is where the flaw in my race plan - as well as a flaw in race-brain logic - begins to show up. I wrote that I wanted to "check in" every 5k with my pace to see how I was doing.

I could do enough math at the 10k sign to know that I was only about a minute behind, and so everything seemed cool. At this point in the race, being slower than pace was great! Everything according to plan.

But math is hard. And it gets even tougher when you're running for a while. Knowing my 5k split target (20:08), I had set my watch to take splits at 5k intervals. I knew that the GPS wouldn't be giving me real numbers - they almost always look a little faster than reality. But it would be close enough. It's only been about 2-3 seconds per mile off in the past. I just needed to know I was in the right ballpark...

Moving back into the moment - As the 15k mark was approaching, I glanced down at my watch. It had just taken another lap and I saw, through a fog of poor math, that I was pretty close to my goal pace. The watch said 20:09 was my split for that leg, which my brain interpreted as "close enough to be on pace". This kicked off the most mentally challenging part of the race for me, which I will illustrate by pretending there were two voices arguing in my head:

Carmen Sense:   "This is too hard right now! We need to back off!"

Will Power:     "But we're right on pace! We must reach the goal!"

Carmen: "Relax! There's plenty of time! We'll make it up at the end!"

Will:   "If we slow down, we're going to have to make up even more at the end! You think it's getting tough now! Just wait!"

Carmen: "Why are we using so many exclamation points?!?!"

Will:   "Because! This is supposed to be an argument!! And having it in ALL CAPS would be annoying!!!"

Carmen: "Ok! But back to the point! We can't do this!"

Will:   "Yes, we CAN do this!"

Carmen: "WE CAN'T DO THIS FOR A WHOLE MARATHON!!!"

Will:   "See, right there. The uppercase thing makes you look all late-70's. Same with the monospace font. What, are you typing this out on an Apple II or something?"

Carmen: "Fine. Can we just get back to the argument already?"

Will:   "Sure. We don't have a whole Marathon left! Just... some fraction of a Marathon!"

Carmen: "Some fraction?"

Will:   "Yeah, its... ok. So 42 minus 15 is uhhh.. 27? And then divide that by 42... goes in once... carry the zero... Wait, what was the question?"

Carmen: "Dude, c'mon. We can't do this for the whole whatever's left of the race."

Will:   "We can do it for another 5k, though."

Carmen: "Well yeah of course, but..."

Will:   "It was nice chatting with you, but I have a race to run. See you in 5k."

Carmen: "But... but..."

They did that a couple more times. Carmen started getting her point across in the long, lonely stretch after the half Marathoners disappeared, and the sense of expending too much effort would ebb and flow. But Will kept finding things to keep me going at a fairly decent clip. The first high-five installment from my kids. The faces of friends on that second out-and-back. A small group of three runners who passed me just after the halfway mark - those I latched onto, and kept them in sight for many miles (counted as "many" in either version of the mile you choose to read this in).

High Five #1

It was really tough. I wasn't expecting to have that kind of struggle anywhere near that early in the race. And there really wasn't much out there to take my mind off it except long, straight roads.

But then a funny thing happened when I saw the sign for 30k. Suddenly it all changed from "I don't know..." to "I can do this!" I'd been taking stock of my 5k GPS splits as I went, seeing them hover in my goal range - 20:00, then 20:15, then 20:11...

In my mind, I was on target. I had some catch-up work to do for sure, but I was getting excited. I waited patiently until the final turnaround (about the 33k mark, or somewhere between 20 and 21 miles), then I started to push. I had already almost caught up to that group of three who had unknowingly kept me afloat through the more desolate stretches of the course. When I pulled up alongside them, one said "Good! Keep it up!"

I replied with "You too - let's go!"

Same Guy - "Now?"

Different Guy - "Now!"

And so they came along. We stuck together as a small pack running side-by-side in silence for a short while. Mostly silence, anyhow. Every so often, another Rogue would pop up coming the other direction, and some shouts of encouragement would fly between us.

We had such a big group there, from the Team Rogue PM crew as well as the greater Rogue family. Not that there hasn't been a big Rogue presence for the last couple races, but this time there were a lot of us from Amy's group. It was a like Philly two years ago in that respect (it's really only been two years since Philly?) Out-and-back sections of any course can be kind of blah, but with all those familiar faces that becomes an opportunity to cheer my friends on, and vice-versa. That isn't something you normally get to do when you're all in the same race together.

Most of the Toronto runners from TRPM

The encouragement motivated me to push a little more. I pulled slightly ahead of the small pack, but I could hear the footfalls and breathing of my three new friends just behind. By the time we hit the 35k mark, only one set of footfalls remained.

I was pretty amped up at this point. I felt like was gradually getting faster and faster, feeling good. When I reached the 37k sign, I thought to glance at my watch to see where I was at. It said 2:30:4x.

I don't remember what the "x" was, but I did a quick (and remarkably accurate) math problem. I had 5k left, and when I added my 20:08 minute-per-5k goal pace to 2:30:40-ish, I came up with a number that was "around 2:50:50-ish". And I was definitely going faster than goal pace. If I could hold this pace, I'd get there in a 2:50:xx time at least! Maybe even two..fortysomething! I was super excited. I ran harder.

The last lingering set of footfalls had faded behind me and for a while, I was all alone. I got a few more boosts of energy from other Rogues, including Amy who said "Bill! It's your day!" or maybe "Bill! Wrong Way!". Pretty sure it was the former.

There was a little overpass, which on the way out seemed like nothing. On the way back though, it didn't feel anything like nothing, and I realized how tired my legs were getting. But I was so close to the end, and I just kept going, trying to catch up to the few runners I could see up ahead.

And then, from quite a distance I could see my family. Penelope in her purple coat and Ben in his red hat were easy to spot. I must have been too, since I look like just another traffic cone in the first picture below.

High Five #2

That gave me a final boost that lasted me all the way to the end of the race. From the point when I spotted them to the finish line, I ran the rest of the way as hard as I could (almost a mile). My legs were on the verge of mutiny by the end, but they held it together.

Rounding the last little corner, I saw the clock at the finish. My first thought was a bit of a shocked "What the hell?" Because I was fully expecting to see a number that started with 2:50, or maybe, just maybe even two-fortysomething. Instead I saw a number that started with 2:51 and was closing in on 2:52. That moment passed in an instant - I wasn't quite finished yet, but I knew I'd just run a pretty decent PR. I threw my hands up in the air as I crossed the finish line (video evidence suggests that my hands went more "out" instead of "up", but that's all I had left).

I stopped running, stopped my watch, and tried to catch my breath.  This quickly lead to a violent coughing fit reminiscent of my high school track days. It was bad enough that I thought I might knock myself over. One of the medical personnel came running over to me, asking if I was ok. I gave him a thumb's up since I couldn't actually speak, then bent over, dry heaved a couple times in between coughs, and stuck both thumbs in the air to show that I was even better than before. He hovered around me until I got it under control by breathing through my hands to warm up the air. Thankfully, the whole thing only probably lasted 30 seconds or less.

And then, I was great! I started celebrating my new PR while also wondering how in the world I could have possibly run that last 5k so much slower than I thought. It really felt strong and fast. Everything from the turnaround onwards felt strong and fast. I probably passed at least 10 people, despite there being almost nobody to pass. Was I just totally falling apart out there and hallucinating speed? Those thoughts left my brain when Different Guy (we met him earlier in the story) came over to me.

He put his hand on my shoulder and started thanking me in a Frenchly-tilted accent. "Oh man! That was great! Thank you! When you started to go, I said 'Yes, I'm going too!', I could for a while, even when the other guys fell back. But then I couldn't stay with you, but I could still see you, your hat and your shirt. You kept getting smaller, but you were pulling me! I just got a 13 minute PR! Thank you!"

That was really cool. To know that in some small way I helped to make Different Guy's day (in reality, his name is Olivier). And the gratitude was mutual. I told him that he had helped me just as much, since I spent a large portion of the race being pulled along by him and his friends.

Then we parted ways when the rest of the crew started showing up. The Brent-Ashish combo, Cam and I stood in the line to get our picture taken for what felt like forever. Mainly because I was rapidly turning into a popsicle and I just wanted to get some warm clothes on. But we got our little group picture, and I even paid for part of it. I never buy these things, but it's paid for, so might as well do something with it.

And that's pretty much the end of the story. Except...

In the back of my mind, I was still trying to understand what happened there in that last 5k. After a shower and some food, I was still pondering it. I looked through the splits on my watch, and saw that the speed was no illusion. I really did find some other gear at the end:

5k      20:21, 10k     20:10, 
15k     20:09, 20k     20:00,
25k     20:15, 30k     20:11, 
35k     20:12, 40k     19:43,
42.76k  10:21

Then it dawned on me. Or at least I thought it dawned on me. I must have read my watch wrong at 37k. That had to be it. It must have said something more like 2:32. That seemed plausible. But it still didn't sit right.

The next day, I decided that I would figure it all out by having SportTracks split the race into single kilometers and look at my time at 37k. Computers have magick in them, don'cha know?

It said I reached 37k at 2:28:59. Which is... completely the wrong direction for my theory to pan out. I had a sudden forehead-slapping moment. The watch was counting things in GPS watch distance! Which - for the purposes of a race - doesn't count.

That's a subject I keep threatening to write a whole tirade about, but never do. And now's not the time, either.

Anyway, what *must* have happened is that they had a race clock at the 37k sign for some reason, and... no, wait. That doesn't work, either. Thus, my intense need to know turned into "Dammit, I don't care." I stopped thinking about it.

But I did care. It was in there somewhere, gnawing at me. Some of you already know the punchline in all this, but I'll get to it anyhow.

Two days later I was driving to work behind one of the ubiquitous Subarus with a 26.2 sticker in the back window. I thought about that 42.2 sticker I saw at the expo. I had considered buying it just to be a dork, but I settled for taking a picture instead (to be an even bigger dork).

42.2.  42 point 2... minus 37... Not equal to 5.  I didn't drive off the road or anything. Just sort of shook my head.

There is one main takeaway here, for my future-self who is reading and planning for the next race. -- If you want to know where you're at on the course, do the math before the race! I really should have had some waypoints with expected times written down in the plan, but I didn't. Would it have changed anything in Toronto? I don't believe so. I left it all out there, just the way I planned.

Next up: Boston 2016. Two-fortysomething?

The Day is Nigh

The Toronto Marathon is only a couple days away.

Yikes! I mean.. Wahoo!

The last week has been full of the usual pre-race rituals:

* Calm confidence in my race plan and my ability to hit my goal.

* Indifference to the race day weather forecast.

*Absolute faith that I've packed everything I need.

...and so on.

I have even answered the most important question of all: "What shoes should I wear?"

On the one hand, we have the trusty, dusty white ones. They've been in the plan from the beginning. Or at least the last couple weeks.

On the other hand, there's the new hotness with their bright colors and low... kilometrage?

How do you say "mileage" in Canadian, anyway? That question has been plaguing me all season. I finally got relatively good at the math problem of converting miles into kilomet(er/re)s and back (while running!), but I still have no idea how Canadian runners spell their unit of distance, or how they refer to the distance run in a week. I *do* know that compared to counting normal miles, counting Canadian miles rocks! I averaged more than a hundred Canadian miles a week, even with the down weeks included!

But back to the shoes... These new ones arrived on the scene just about the time I had written the white ones into the plan. They looked nice. They felt nice. They even smelled nice (when I first took them out of the box).

But the white ones... I specifically wrote them into the plan! I can't just go changing the plan, can I?

Then again, bright colored shoes have been my super-secret secret to success in the past few races. After all, it's all about the shoes, right?

...but the white ones have bright laces! And some orange parts!

When it came time to pack my shoes (that time being the last minute) I was still on the fence. I thought about packing them both. But no. I decided. There can be only one. Well.. one pair.  Both shoes in that pair, of course.

And so it is done. One pair in Toronto, the other in Austin. It can't be undone now.

...

Oh my goodness... I've made a terrible mistake.

My New Favorite Recipe

Remember eight weeks ago, how I wrote a post bitching about my stinky running gear?

I didn't think so. Well, if you want a refresher - here's a link. This post is a follow-on to that, since I finally found some time to write it out.

Since that time, I've done some research and experimentation on the whole "My clean running clothes smell like that Tupperware full of Thanksgiving turkey that I found in the fridge on Christmas" thing. Everyone seems to have a different way of getting their stuff smelling nice again. There's tons of advice to be had. But different things work or don't work for different people. Why would that be? Shouldn't there just be that one true way that rules them all?

I dug through the bowels of the internet long enough to educate myself on why this stuff smells so bad to begin with, and I also stumbled upon a way that actually removes the stink! Well, one that works for me anyhow. I have theories on why different things work for different people. But not in this post.

"Wait... I want to hear more on what you learned about foul odors in technical fabrics!" scream the voices in my head. To which I respond with some paragraphs full of science-y semi-facts:

First off, my sweat doesn't stink (and, I suppose I have to admit that yours doesn't either). Apparently, we have bacteria to thank for that lovely runner's bouquet. The watery part of the sweat provides the bacteria with hydration and the fatty-proteiny parts give them something to eat. And when bacteria eat and hydrate well, they get all gassy. Horny too. You can probably guess what happens after that. That's right... binary fission, baby!

Nextly, the fabric used in most of the super-cheap (i.e. free - constituting at least 80% of my running wardrobe) running shirts is constructed of tiny polyester bacteria couches. It's an ideal place for them to just sit and eat and make bacteria babies. But they are kind of crappy couches where there are some springs missing in the middle and once the bacteria sit down, their butt is pretty much stuck there until some other partygoer comes by and helps them up. Except all their friends are also stuck on their own couches and all the couches are stuck together, so really, nobody is going anywhere.

Side note - Cotton is not made of bacteria couches. It also attracts a less pungent variety of bacteria. That was one of the most interesting things I learned in this process. The ones who get stuck in the polyester wicking material don't really care much for cotton, and vice-versa. The cotton-lovers go for that "international traveler on the last leg of a 36 hour itinerary" scent. The polyester freaks tend to produce the smell of something that would probably give a buzzard indigestion.

Back to the main narrative - Lots of other kinds of bacteria would get the message and leave (or die) if you stopped feeding them and giving them free drinks. But these particular freeloaders just pass out until another keg shows up. They'll lie there snoring forever if you don't find a way to kick them out. And if you water and feed them, they wake up and start farting again.

It may not seem like it, but this explains a lot. Buried in my feeble attempts at humor are the real reasons why you can wash a running shirt 50 times and still have it stink three minutes into a warm-weather run. Knowing this (which by the way, is half the battle), you must find a way to either flush those little guys out, or kill them.

Enter vinegar.

I'm not sure whether it dislodges them or kills them. And to be honest, I don't really care. But vinegar, used the right way, seems to do the trick. Here's a recipe that worked for me. Your results may vary.

1. Find a bucket or something that's large enough to hold all the gear you want to wash.

2. Put everything in the bucket, then fill the bucket with water.

3. Get some white vinegar, and add it to the mix.

4. Keep pouring until you think "I've put in way too much!"

5. Now, pour some more in, until the other person in your house who has to live with the stinky running gear stops saying "More! That's not nearly enough!"

6. Let it all soak for at least 30 minutes.

7. Pour the mixture into the washing machine (perhaps consider modifying this step if you have a front-loader).

8. Wash with cold water, minimal detergent, and zero fabric softener.

9. Hang to dry.


So, yeah. I've been pickling my running stuff. Contrary to what I expected, it all comes out of the wash smelling like nothing (though if you want your stuff to smell like pickles, you can use vinegar as a fabric softener). And it remains stink-free for several miles in the heat, too.

Oooo-eeew That Smell!

We've officially reached that time of year again. I'm considering alternatives to laundering my running clothes. Burial. Culinary torch. Rock + rope + deep water.  Just to name a few.

No matter what I do, I cannot seem to get them clean. They still smell, even before a run. Why? Looking for the answer to this question on the interweb is kind of futile. It's like asking why Applebee's is still in business. There's a lot of speculation, but we may never know the truth.

I don't think this is really a summer thing - I am sure that my running clothing is no field of daisies in the winter months either. But in the summer, the instant I step outside in the hot and/or humid air all the stink molecules seem to come out on deck for a party. They must hibernate in the winter.

Last summer I tried several of the commercial products out there. Sadly, none of them actually seem to work. Not Penguin, not Win. Not even 2Toms Stink Free Sports Detergent - and I had super high hopes for that one. I am under the impression that they maybe, sort of, kinda work.. a little bit. Its really hard to tell though.

The one thing that I have had some limited success with is my shoes - washing them outside with the garden hose and dishwashing liquid, then filling them with pages of the Austin Chronicle and leaving them out in the sun to dry. After they are dry, I put sneaker balls in them. That's right - balls for sneakers. For whatever reason, this little ritual helps a lot.

I need to replicate this success with the rest of my running gear, though. I am tired of getting blasted with the funk of forty thousand miles every time I head outside for a run. I really don't care what I end up smelling like after the run. I just want to start it off kind of fresh, you know?

So this year I will pull out all the stops. I'm compiling a list of internet home brew remedies and things that other people have suggested, and random thoughts that I think might help - things I haven't tried yet. And then, I am going to try them. When I show up to run club in late July all covered in baking soda or something, just kind of understand that this is all in the name of science.

If anything produces a miracle or goes horribly awry I'll be sure to let you all know about it. No news (a likely outcome) simply means my experiments were uneventful. That, or I got lazy and gave up on it.

Oh, and by all means, if there are things which work for you, or you have some outlandish suggestion for the list, please let me know!