Race Report - Richmond Marathon

Thanks

First off, thanks to everyone who supported me and followed along on this blog. Your well wished and encouragement meant a lot. Special thanks to David & Ben who came to the race to cheer me on and make sure I was alright afterwards.

Pre race
It was an early start to the day since we chose to drive down there in the morning. David & Ben met at my place at 6 to start the journey. The drive was uneventful but felt rather long since I was starting to get anxious about just wanting to get there on time and get on with the run. We got there slightly before 7:30 so we were able to see the beginning of the half marathon. For about 20 minutes we just milled around the starting corrals. I was in the last corral since I knew I was going to be slow. Around 7:50 I said my goodbyes to them and they headed up to a little past the start line and I lined up with the other slow folks.

First half
The race officially started at 8 and at that time I heard a great round of cheers. Since there were about 3800 runners for the marathon, it took me 4 minutes to even get to the starting line. I managed to stay true to my pace for the first few miles which is especially important since it is so easy to start out too fast and pay for it later. Along the course of the first few miles there were clothes just strewn along the edge. It was a chilly morning and drizzling so many people kept jackets or sweaters on then discarded them along the way. I also started with my jacket but since I really like it I instead tied it around my waist after about two miles. One (pretty large & organized) training group had a clothing drop spot where they filled up a couple of laundry hampers full of jackets/sweaters/etc of their members.

At mile 4 I realized I had not yet had any fluid intake on the race because I skipped getting any at mile 2 water stop and hadn't had any from my fuel belt. Typically on long training runs I'd have some around mile 3, but I think that was largely because there was always a hill there. I partook of the powerade at that stop and all future ones until about mile 21 (but that story will come later). Until mile 20, the water stops were every two miles so it kept me pretty well hydrated. Outside of those, I used gels at 5, 10, 14, 17, and 21 to keep me going.

The first half of the course was a bit through downtown then through beautiful historic neighborhoods which I enjoyed looking at the architecture. Around mile 7 we were on a road right next to the James river. The foliage was gorgeous and the river was a nice difference from running around the city. The water level on the river was a bit unnerving at times since it was as close as about 5 feet from the road and not that much of an elevation distance.

Second Half
Around mile 15, the place where my hamstrings and butt meet started to hurt a fair bit. It actually hurt more to walk than to run, so that was great encouragement to keep running even when I mentally wanted to walk. Especially because the transition between walk & run hurt the most. Amazingly, my calves and quads never hurt during the race. Clearly I did a good job building them up during the training and resting them ahead of time. I think my hamstrings would've been fine except a week ago I went on the company hike and that is what was the most sore then too.

The second half was much more mentally challenging because I was starting to ache, get tired, and when the wind hit me just right - cold as well. Thankfully, many wonderful supporters know this is the case for most racers and there were amusing support signs along the way as well as some folks shouting encouragement. Some of my favorite signs (and the ones I can remember):

• Your legs will forgive you...eventually
• That's not sweat, it's your fat cells crying.
• Remember the reasons you are doing this.
• Don't stop -- people are watching.
• Your feet hurt because you are kicking so much butt!

The verbal encouragement that was great was a couple times late in the race (mile 18+) someone would remind us "This is farther than most people will ever reach."

The best encouragement of all was knowing that Ben & David would be at the mile 19 "party zone" waiting for me. Sure enough, when I got there they were all smiles with signs to cheer me on. Clearly I was rather slow because they even had time to draw pretty pictures on them. Ben's had a picture of me crossing the finish line and David's had a cow on it (long story). I stopped for just a minute to chat with them (not going to really affect my time that much) and drop off my jacket. It was wonderful having them out there and knowing that they would once again be waiting for me at the finish line.

Beginning of the End
The end portion really began at mile 20 for me at which point is was only 10K left. At that point they started having water/powerade stations every mile. Ignoring my training, at mile 20 I took two cups of powerade instead of one. I knew better... I really did... but I was so thirsty that I told myself that it wouldn't slosh around in my stomach and make me feel sick. Nope. That's exactly what happened. I skipped powerade again until mile 23 when I was feeling better. I may have introduced liquids again earlier but the beer station at mile 22 only had beer and I much prefer hard cider.

During this portion, I started looking at the miles left to do rather than the ones I had already done. For instance, at mile 21 I reminded myself that it was only 5 miles left and recently my short runs had been 5 miles. During those short runs I had been tired from work and it was often dark out, so this was an improvement because I may be tired but at least it was light out. Same happened with 4 miles - it was just like the Cville womens 4 miler which was where this all began a few years ago. 3 miles was just a nice little 5K race.

The hardest mile of the entire race was mile 25 to 26. I was hurting and my energy level was low. I should've had another gel, but I don't think I wanted to admit it was my energy. We were back into downtown Richmond at this point so there was a stoplight every block. My strategy for this mile was to walk to one light, run to the next light, walk to the following one, then run, etc, etc. It worked great. Kept me going at a decent pace and made the distance I had to run into small achievable chunks.

Most folks say that the last 0.2 miles are the hardest. I actually found them the be among the easiest but mostly due to the course and the spirit of the race. Just before mile 26 the course peaks a hill and by the time you reach mile 26 one can see the finish line. It is literally all down hill to the finish. The closer one gets to the finish, the more folks are there cheering you on. I looked around for David & Ben and spotted them slightly before I crossed the finish line. They had their signs proudly displayed. Since there weren't that many folks crossing the line around the same time the announcer was able to read my name and city as I crossed. It felt great.

Post race
After the race I continued down the chute where I got my medallion, foil blanket, and food. I really wasn't that hungry but I nibbled on some pizza so that my stomach would not hurt as much when I took advil. I desperately wanted to sit and thus found some stairs to relax on. Thankfully the guys made me get up and moving again after 10 minutes (I think, I really don't know) since I had stiffened up incredibly by then. I could barely walk and needed to brace myself against one of them when stepping up or down off the curb. They were also wonderful to me by making sure I stayed warm by getting out my jacket and also loaning me one of theirs to wear so I could wear the foil blanket as a skirt. Yes, Ben has a picture of this so once I get it from him I will post it.

We walked very slowly back to the car and by the time I was there I was significantly less stiff. I changed into a dry top and sweater, then bundled up with another jacket and a real blanket for the ride home. David was kind enough to drive my Prius so that I could rest in the back.

When home I did some stretching, took a shower, and took a nap. Unfortunately, the shower was upstairs and food was downstairs. Despite the advil and a hard cider, getting down the stairs took a lot. I can't even describe the ache because unlike other times it wasn't just one muscle. It was everything. Today I am much less sore and was able to make it down the stairs like a normal person. I even took a walk to the grocery store to keep my muscles from stiffening today.

Stats
As a reminder, my only goal was to finish so I'm happy with my time and placement. For most runners this is rather slow, but slow or not, I finished.
Time: 5:39:23
Pace: 12:57/mile
Overall placement: 3543/3785
Gender placement: 1372/1506
Age group & gender (women 25-29): 267/294

Other - QA style
Q1) Will you run another marathon?
A1) Maybe. This was one of the most difficult things I have ever done in my life, so I'm not jumping at the chance to do it again right away. On the other hand, I completed it and it wasn't so bad that I will swear it off forever. As many folks say, I've got to forget about the pain of the first one before attempting another.

Q2) What was a humorous moment you didn't tell earlier in the post?
A2) The mile 16 water/powerade stop was also a junk food stop, but I had forgotten this. They had trained us from the earlier stops that water was the first table and powerade was the second table. Thus I started to pass a group of volunteers holding out cups because I thought they were water. Then one of them said it was coke. I immediately perked up and went for a cup. The great change in my expression was evidently amusing because we all had a good laugh about it.

Q3) Do you have any pictures?
A3) Yes and no. Ben took some and evidently some video, but I do not have these yet. Once I do I will post them.

Q4) Any advice for those of us considering running a marathon, half marathon, or triathlon?
A4) Train hard, race easy. More importantly - know what works for you. I learned which type of gels I liked and could stomach, when & how much I should drink, and what clothing would be comfortable for long distances.

Cville Int'l Tri Race Report

Today was the Cville International Triathlon. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I was on a relay team with two of my coworkers. I was doing the swim part.

We arrived on site this morning at a little before 6. First thing I did was check in and pick up my packet since I had not done it on Saturday. Normally I do pick these up early so I can make sure I have everything prepped with my race number, but for swimming they only write the number on you so all I could've picked up was my race cap.

For the next hourish I just hung around and chatted with folks. At 7:15 they held the prerace meeting down on the beach. They announced that the water temperature was 80 degrees so wetsuits could be worn but would disqualify the person from any prizes. I was just happy that the water was that warm since the air temperature was only about 65 degrees.

Due to the relatively few participants, there was only 3 starting waves for the swimmers, 4 minutes apart. The first wave was men 34 and under, Clydsedales, and relay teams. Second wave was all the women, and third wave was men 35 and over. A couple minutes before 7:30 my wave entered the water and walked/swam out to the starting point. Even though some of us weren't quite there yet they started promptly at 7:30.

During the initial rush I was kicked and run into a few times, but after that I was mostly out of the pack. I tried to keep a balance between pushing hard and not fighting the water (which happens when I push too hard). The swimming itself wasn't a huge strain, it was spotting the buoys that got me. As often as possible I tried to keep another swimmer within a few feet so I could either see them when my head was in the water or I could see the bubbles from their kick. This helped me feel like I was somewhat more on track.

When I got out of the water I gave the run up the hill all of my power. I dashed past an older man who was jogging and clearly saving strength for later. Since I had nothing else to do after handing off the chip I pushed as fast as possible. Midway up the hill I looked for David to make sure he was ready. He wasn't by his bike since I had told him it would take me about 35 minutes and it was only 27 minutes. I called out to him and he headed to his bike to grab the rest of his stuff. We swapped the chip and he was off.

After talking with other folks and getting a sense of average times, we concluded that the course was probably only ~1200m long. Thus everyone was coming out faster than expected. Open water lake courses like these are just hard to get consistent since the buoys can drift some despite being on anchors. Also some estimation is used as to where to place them.

The bike portion was 24ish miles and David gave an estimate of 90 minutes for him to complete it. After I handed off the chip I started my stop watch so we had an idea of when to expect him back. In the mean time, I changed, wandered around, chatted with folks, and cheered on the people who returned sooner than he did (both because they were better bikers but also were out of the swim well before me). Right on time he came in at 89 minutes and handed the chip off to Will.

We once again played the waiting game and timed when he left. Since the run is two loops we could get a sense when he would finish based on when he came around the first time. He passed by the first time at 28 minutes so we expected him to finish right around 56. His running was very consistent and he passed the finished line after 56 minutes.

Overall we completed the triathlon in just under 3 hours. I'm happy with how we did. We had no prayer of winning it since the first two relay teams had their bikers come back about an hour after David went out. They were much quicker out of the water and on the bike. That being said, we weren't last. I may have been the last relay swimmer out of the water, but David was able to pass one of them on the road. Will kept that advantage through the run.

All said, it was a pleasant morning.

Sprint Triathlon Analysis

I like numbers. So here are the fun comparisons to last year's race stats.

Swim
This year - 11:10. 63rd out of 108.
Last year - 13:18. 81st out of 109.
This is the area I did the most consistent work on through out the year. I focused on getting more power out of my strokes.

Transition 1
This year - 1:56. 46th out of 108.
Last year - 2:50. 85th out of 109.
Being in the mentality of wanting to win instead of just finish I pushed harder to get through transitions quickly.

Bike
This year - 1:13:20. 78th out of 108.
Last year - 1:13:52. 88th out of 109.
I practiced on the course a lot more and got a professional bike fit to make it possible to get more power out. While the time did not increase, my relative placement improved so that is the equalizer of the course having extra gravel.

Transition 2
This year - 1:32. 73rd out of 108.
Last year - 2:09. 93rd out of 108.
Like T1, I knowingly tried to speed this up.

Run
This year - 40:14. 93rd out of 108.
Last year - 32:17. 77th out of 109.
Last year I routinely ran multiple times a week but this year I just didn't have that same commitment to the run. I clearly paid for it.

Overall
This year - 2:08:14. 86th out of 108.
Last year - 2:04:26. 87th out of 109.
So despite the longer time, I was in the same relative position as last year. I am happy with decreasing my swim, bike, and transition times.

Race Report

Woohoo! I took first in my category!

Now to the full face report.

Prerace
I arrived at 5:50am to Walnut Creek Park. Took my bike, a towel, and my race number down. Saved my rack spot with my bike and towel, then went to get body marked. After that I went to get the rest of my stuff. Got all of that done by 6:10. Transition didn't close until 7:10 which meant I had a lot of time to kill. Took a short run, did a short bike ride (which was good because I was in the wrong gear initially).

Swim
I was in the 6th swim wave since I was racing in the Athena Category. The prerace camaraderie was great. We were just joking around, supporting each other with Q/A, and cheering for each other. It was great.

Once we got in the water I placed myself in the middle of the pack figuring I wasn't a terrible swimmer but definitely not great. It seemed longer than 500m, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. I actually felt better about it this year than last and I came out of the water with still quite a few women behind me so that felt good.

Bike
Coming out of the swim I was more tired than I expected which I attribute mostly from running through the shallow part of the water to get out. So by the time I got out on the bike I was already breathing hard which is just a great place to start when the first mile is 90% uphill and a rather steep one at that. Thankfully I had trained on it and new I was getting a nice downhill once I got to the top.

The first major downhill I just blew down. I was in my top gear possible and still felt like I could've pushed more. I've really learned to enjoy the speed I can get from that and how far it'll carry me up the next one. Once I got to the first turn on major roads I had to slow down more than I wanted for two reasons. First as I stated yesterday, they had just laid fresh gravel down so it was a bit more treacherous and that means the road isn't as smooth to just crank it. Second, I had managed to catch up to a whole group of people ahead of me and just didn't have the speed to pass. Since we can't draft I had to stay 3 bike lengths behind the person in front of me. I did eventually pass a whole group of them but it was still not as quick as I would've liked.

When I got to the halfway point it is the only relatively flat road and I normally crank hard on it. I pushed hard, but I felt like I could've given it a little more but my energy was starting to drag. I did make sure I pushed hard enough so that if the notorious dogs came after me that I could get out fast since at that point I was pretty much all alone (as far as seeing folks ahead of me, not sure about behind me).

The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful. I did use a powergel on the ride back so I could hope that I had enough energy for the run.

Run
I got back from the bike and had promised myself Gatoraid so I guzzled (mistake #1) more than I should have especially since I had not had positive experiences in the past while running with fluids sloshing in my stomach.

This year we did a slightly modified start to the run so that we wouldn't have to run over wet, slippery, uneven rocks and instead extend the path a bit to use a new bike path they had put in to address the issue of bikers trying to go over those same rocks.

The run time will not be good this year. The gatoraid caused my stomach to cramp and lack of enough trail running caused me to walk a large portion of it. I ran off and on passing Lance who I met on Thursday at a tri-club meeting. Eventually I was only walking and he caught up with me and said "come run with me." So I did. It was great to have someone to run with and he had the same opinions about up-hills that I did... they should be walked. Probably around mile 2.5 my stomach was just getting worse so I told him to go ahead and I would catch up. I finished probably about 20 seconds afterwards.

Overall
I crossed the mat at clock time of 2:27ish. Given that I was in wave six that put me 20 minutes behind the clock time, so I did it in 2:07-2:08ish depending on how the chip time comes out. Which means this year I was slower than last year. It could depend on many things... was the swim course actually longer this year (it felt it), did the gravel roads slow everyone down and thus my relative placement isn't as bad, just how much worse was my run since I think my bike was better. In the end, I'll look at all the pieces and see how I did and compare my relative ranking to the other women.

Placing
This year I competed in the Athena category (women over 150 pounds and opt-in to this category). In the past 3 years there have been 6-8 women who have finished each year. I figured I stood a much better chance placing in that then in my age group which had almost 30 women. As of race day there were only two of us. I raced the entire thing not being sure where the other woman was so I needed to either catch her or not let her catch me. In the end, she didn't end up racing. Thus I took first place by default! I still raced hard and given that when I signed up I did expect 6-8 other women, it's still a victory.

Epilogue: Nutrition is the 4th Sport
As mentioned in the run portion mistake #1 happened when I guzzled gatoraid before going out on the run. This was compounded with mistake #2 that I drank an ice cold gatoraid as soon as I finished. I both chugged it and was not used to drink ice cold water or gatoraid. Mistake #3 was eating about a full orange in a rather ravenous manner. Mistake #4 for drinking another ice cold gatoraid. Can you see where this is leading?

If not, let me guide you. In my cube I have a photocopy of a shoe ad that has the slogon "In triathlons, victory and defeat often taste the same" and a picture of a female triathlete on the side of the road curled up and clearly looking like she lost breakfast. Yep, that was me. Expect instead of losing breakfast I lost all that lovely gatoraid and orange pieces. I ended up doing it twice in two separate locations since I was dumb and tried to eat part of banana and water to calm my nerves. Nope, that just came up too.

This left my body in an extreme sugar low (which I already have issues with) and unable to eat. Thankfully the triathlon community is very supportive and so I had many offers of help to either take me to a hospital for IV fluids, take me home so I could rest, or just get me anything I needed. I appreciated it all.

Lesson learned: be careful about both pre-race and post-race nutrition.

Quick results & video!

The MJ8K folks were amazingly on the ball this year, the results are already posted. My team finished 7th out of 8 teams. Much like the triathlon song says, "won't be first, won't be last, but I'm sure I'm going to have a blast." That definitely holds true for over 3 miles I ran with David and finished strong with him. Becky also ran about 2 miles with us, but we sprinted the final part. During the time we all were running together we were bantering, having fun, and keeping those around us entertained.

My personal time was not as high as I estimated earlier. The official time was 53:55 which is a 10:53 pace. Definitely my slowest pace of any race I've ever done (of all 4 run-only races). That put my 49th out of 56th. Once again... at least I wasn't last!

This year for those of us finishing 45 minutes through 63 minutes they posted video on youtube. I'm in the red pants, grey sweatshirt, and pink bandana.

Publish Post

Martha Jefferson 8K Results

This morning was the Martha Jefferson 8K run. As my last post states, I didn't really train for it this year and I knew my time was going to suffer. That being said, my time was around 53 minutes. That is about a 10:39 pace. This is all conjecture because I didn't stop my watch until 55 minutes at which point I was just out of the shoot (walking area to hand over our number).

The good:

• It wasn't raining this year!
  
• I spent most of the race chatting and running with a friend.
• I was part of the awesome PQA team.
• The t-shirt fits better than last year's.
  

The bad:

• I had to walk multiple times because I just wasn't in good enough shape.
• It was kinda chilly out (40ish degrees).

The ugly:

• My time last year was 45:41 thus I was about 8 minutes slower this year.
• Did I mention the walking thing?

Overall, I'm glad I did it. It really felt good to cross the finish line so I'm now again motivated to start training. I still don't think I'll do the 10 miler in 3 weeks, but definitely start working towards the triathlons again.

Race Report

I completed the Charlottesville Sprint Triathlon two days ago and from my perspective, I rocked it! My only true goal was to finish the race and not pass out afterwards. My dream goal was to be in the middle 80%. I accomplished both. I finished the race in 2:04:26 which was 87th out of 109 women. My other time splits were 13:19 for the 500m swim (81st), 1:13:52 for the 16.5 mile bike (88th), 32:17 for the 3 mile run (77th). The rest of the time was transitions.

The story of all the training begins way back in January (or possibly even before) but I'll start the recap from Saturday.

Saturday morning I went to the women's 4 miler training program since I felt I needed to wear my new race gear once before the race. In general this is a very bad idea to try anything new so close to the race, but I felt I didn't have a lot of options. I meant to only do the 1.5 mile intermediate run, but ended up doing the advanced group's 2.5 mile. Plus I had walked there and back so add approximately 2 miles of walking.

Later that day I helped with packet pickup. Since I knew parking would be an issue, I decided to walk there too, so another 3 miles of walking. Once there I did a variety of jobs but mostly on my feet. Thus I was certainly not resting like I should've been.

That night I had a good meal of pasta and a 32oz smoothie. I really think the smoothie helped because it had some additional protein and I know it doesn't tend to sit in my stomach too long. Ironically while reading a bicycling magazine and drinking the smoothie, I came across an article that listed smoothies as one of the top pre-race meals.

Sunday morning came way too soon since I rustled myself out of bed at 4:30 to eat breakfast and finish any packing (most of it was done Saturday afternoon/night). I got to the site around 5:45 so that David could pick up his packet and get all of his stuff prepped before the 6am opening of transition. Since we knew we'd be coming out of the water at different times, we parked our bikes next to each other and set up our area. From there, we went and got our numbers written on with Sharpie.

When transition set-up closed at 7:15 we all went down to the beach to get pre-race instructions and get ready for it to start at 7:30.

For the swim we started in waves based on age and gender. As 20-29 year old woman, I started in the second wave with a neon pink swim cap (I hope there are pictures somewhere). The other groups were labeled with yellow, red, light blue, white, and neon green. So at 7:33 we entered the water and made our way out to the first marker. At 7:34, we were off. Myself and 40 of my closest swimming friends started swimming out to the first buoy. I got hit, kicked, and did the same to other swimmers. At first I was having a hard time breathing but then remembered that even in the pool my 500m swim time was 12-14 minutes, so I shouldn't be trying to keep up with the folks I knew would be finishing in about 8 minutes. After slowing down the area became less crowded and I was able to breath a lot better. I got passed by guys in the following wave (4 minutes behind us) but I was ok with that.

When I finally came out of the water we had to run up a grassy hill to the transition area with our bikes. They have volunteers at all transition entrances and exits to keep us excited and point us in the right direction. It was nice to have a few folks I knew volunteering with that because I felt there was an extra connection and they actually called out my name in encouragement.

In the transition area, I dried off a bit (mostly my feet), put on all my bike gear, and headed out. My coworker Courtney was in transition about the same time I was but I would not see her again until she passed me on the run.

Out I went on the bike and up the major hill. Having trained on this route a number of times I knew that first 4 miles were tough with a major uphill climb. So I paced myself because I didn't want to have to stop at the top to rest. It was a nice feeling as I actually passed a few folks. The rest of the ride I was pretty much brutally passed by everyone and their mother.

The bike ride went amazingly well for me. Part of it was that I was much more confident because I knew the route, and knew all the traffic had been warned about the 270(ish) cyclists on the roads. For the first time I seriously pushed on the biking, I pedaled on some downhills instead of breaking and really tried to ride hard when on the flats. Part of my encouragement was figuring David would be about ~8 minutes behind me (4 minutes for starting in a later wave, and ~4 minutes because I am a faster swimmer). I kept telling myself, all I have to do is get to the next landmark in the bike course before David passes me and I shall have a minor victory. As I got further and further along the more determined I was to get as far as possible before he caught up. He never did, instead he was cheering me on as I came into transition and out for the run.

During the transition into the run I grabbed some gatoraid, threw on my bandanna, and I was off for the 3 mile trail run.

The run was hard. I've done it before and been rather tired going into it, but this time that wasn't my issue - I felt I had plenty of energy. I though I might feel the typical brick in my legs, but I didn't get that either. Instead, as I was going up the first of the hills on the run a muscle in my butt started getting incredibly sore. It wasn't bad on downhills or flats, but it just burned going uphills. It started just on my right but by the end of the run both sides hurt like none other. So I ended up walking up a fair number of the hills.

With less than a mile less, the pain was starting to get unbearable and I was finally starting to feel the energy drain despite having taken in an energy gel (but probably far too late). I did a mix of jogging and walking. What really kept me going was a guy behind me kept yelling encouragement to me to not let him pass me and to at least walk faster. He did catch up to me, but when we hit the last level area he told me to get in front and keep going even though I hurt. It was just a great show of community support. (Somewhere in there Courtney just blew by me too).

As I came in the last little leg and saw the finish line, David & Karen were cheering me on as well as one of my friends was on the announcement system picking folks out to announce their names as they came in. Even though there were a few folks with me she knew me so gave me a grand announcement. It felt great to cross that finish line. As soon as we finished we were supposed to turn in our timing chips and another friend was there collecting them so I got a nice congrats from her. It's a really great thing to know so many folks that can be happy with you when you accomplish something like this.

In the end, it was a great experience and I'm glad I did it. Thanks to everyone who supported me through out the training and have actually managed to read this entire rambling post ;).