October 16, 2010 The Baltimore Running Festival. A whole bunch of runners gathered in Charm City, ready to sweat it out for their cool Under Armour race shirts & 10th Anniversary crab-themed finisher's medal. I'm signed up for the half marathon today. I have to admit, I'm feeling a little crabby heading into this race. Yep, you could pretty much sprinkle Old Bay on my head and serve me up for lunch at Phillips. This race is my 7th and final half marathon of my fundraising year. After this, it's marathon city. I have a vague uneasiness lingering in the back of my head about the upcoming Marine Corps Marathon in two weeks, the first marathon of my life. I'm also feeling a little unimpressed with myself for not being a part of the full marathon in Baltimore. I mean, why don't they call this distance a double 10K plus? Calling it a half marathon makes it sound like the wimpy version of a real race, like something you sign up for when you aren't fit enough to finish the real deal. People are now referring to me as a marathoner, but I've still never even run one. I guess you could now call me a Half Fanatic, since I did actually qualify for that club this year. http://www.halffanatics.com In their defense, I will concur that 13.1 is actually a really fun distance to run, now that I have a few races under my hydration belt. I've heard many runners say they prefer the half, because you get all of the hype and excitement of a distance race, without the grueling exertion and soreness of 26.2. Plus, you still get a medal and have energy left to party in the race village afterward.
I still wonder if I'm starting to fall into a running rut and bore people with all the half marathons, but no worries. I deliberately planned this race 9 months ago. It would be the perfect distance to taper for my first marathon two weeks away. I would be in glorious shape, after my year of hard training, and I would breeze through this race at the peak of my lifetime fitness, ready to conquer the racing world as I move into my marathon madness. That was how I had planned it in my head.
Here's how I actually felt on race day: more like a half-slacker than a half fanatic. I was actually coming off some of the worst training weeks of my entire year. It all started when I decided to jump start my decade-long career hiatus by taking on the bookkeeping and finance duties at our family sign business. That sounds nifty, except when you are Quickbooks illiterate and desperately trying to make the Oct. 15th deadline for submitting financials to corporate. Lots of sleepless nights there. Not to mention the fact that I was simultaneously coaching cross country, volunteering as room mom, traveling across the country to an autism conference, for which I had volunteered to help make signs, organizing a fundraising raffle, and sponsoring a business expo for our other family business, whose financials I was blatantly ignoring at this point due to lack of interest.
Now granted, I am a compulsive volunteer, and I like it that way. However, there comes a point in a volunteer's life when you are doing 10 things halfway instead of 1 thing right. And here I was, stuck in the land of multi-tasking mania. I set myself up for race failure by leaving zero hours in the day for exercise. Coach Jenny's workout notes, the secret weapon of my last race, were gathering dust in my office, mocking me from a distance as I sat at my computer pouring through mountains of overdue financial data. My previous week's 3 hr. planned long run fizzled into a 27 minute quitter's session, followed by a week of skipping all my workouts, and now it was race day.
The other problem confronting me, besides the gusty wind and lack of obvious port-a-johns at the race start, was the prospect of running hills (or mountains, as people had been warning me). That was the first thing everyone mentioned to me when I said I was running Baltimore. "Ooooh, hilly." "They kill you with the hills." "You know, that's a really hilly race." I don't remember seeing any hills in Baltimore. I'm thinking flat as a pancake, Inner Harbor, Camden Yards. There aren't any hills near Eutaw street, are there?!
Well, soon after the race start, I was proven wrong. Here I was climbing up a giant hill. Where am I, anyway? My last race strategy was to run on HR, gradually increasing my pace/HR as the race went on. Well, I'm in mile 1 and my heartrate is already up past 165 trying to conquer these hills. It was pretty much non-stop, rollercoaster-esque terrain for the first 7 miles. After one blissfully flat mile around a lake at mile 8, it was back to the hills again. I gave up looking at my Garmin for any type of feedback, since my pace & effort level were as up & down as the course itself. I just decided to run steady and enjoy the sights, since my race time was obviously going to be a disaster. After I gave up on any expectations, the race became kind of fun. There was the Tiger Guy, who was blaring music from his boomin' truck system, and the gummy bear people, who passed out their squishy treats to anyone who needed a sugar fix. Remember the closing credits of Ferris Bueller, when the girl offers the principal a warmed-up gummy bear on the school bus? These were all warm and squishy, too. Mmmmmm. Nothing like a little sugar to make me smile.
The rest of the race went a little something like this: hills, wind, GU, water, hills, wind, GU, water, but at least now I was enjoying myself. Finally, I crossed the finish line & looked down at my watch. Holy Cow! I ran Baltimore in 1:50:21, a new PR. I couldn't believe I had run my fastest time ever on that hilly course! I had to early-text my coach, an act I save for special occasions, since she lives in Hawaii and is 6 hrs. behind East Coast time. My finish time is still taped to the back of my iPhone to remind me to have confidence in myself, even when I don't believe I'm doing a good job. Suddenly, I was feeling like Miss I-Can-Do-It again. I had conquered the urban mountains: race hills & mountains of paperwork from work. They didn't seem so big after all. I knew I could move on to my marathon and begin to balance my life in the meantime. Good thing I've been taking my Yoga classes this year. It is time to prioritize balance. My next Yoga pose will be raising my hand up to say "No thanks" the next time I tell myself I can take on just one more project!
No comments:
Post a Comment