tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28194191321444017682024-03-12T22:21:18.864-04:00Run Bert Run!My online running [b]log.Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.comBlogger387125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-80079836692734955762022-12-13T12:57:00.010-05:002022-12-13T13:00:08.954-05:00Guest Post: Natalie Anstey, Cal International Marathon<p style="text-align: left;">As previously mentioned, and with little additional fanfare, here is the CIM race report from former William & Mary Math Club President Natalie Anstey!</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Training</h4><p style="text-align: left;">After PR-ing at the Brooklyn Half (1:45:xx) on a warm and muggy May ‘22 day, I let myself dream big, and picked a goal I once thought would never be remotely achievable. I decided to shoot for a BQ time, which for females 40-44 (yay, aging/leveling up!) is 3:40. This would be a BIG jump, as my time in Philadelphia in November 2021 was 3:54:xx, which was a ~26 minute PR from my previous marathon in Charlotte. Nonetheless, I felt confident in my fitness gained over the pandemic, with consistent base miles, cross training on my spin bike, and weekly strength training (including daily core since February 2021). I was committed to putting in the work to take a good shot at a BQ race. I had actually registered for the 2022 California International Marathon in late April (gotta take advantage of early-bird pricing!). The race has a great reputation for PR/BQ/OTQ chasers, and I was now one of those runners. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVkjsmwMzArVE3OypxsXK_h8D-nR45t_paqQj4JuHuZkweQshRfiaD-tyI6Glj5WkA8y4RMPfPJdyXVLSzN_0kYYpXLgTV19kn-VOWwtQhqZM3yPaY-316V7km7j0P1Kp2vlN0xdkASGA1W7SC8z5ZMKg2-c6MRZtph2hWHthVq6yJGQQuRN-14wSghQ/s828/IMG_1934.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="686" data-original-width="828" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVkjsmwMzArVE3OypxsXK_h8D-nR45t_paqQj4JuHuZkweQshRfiaD-tyI6Glj5WkA8y4RMPfPJdyXVLSzN_0kYYpXLgTV19kn-VOWwtQhqZM3yPaY-316V7km7j0P1Kp2vlN0xdkASGA1W7SC8z5ZMKg2-c6MRZtph2hWHthVq6yJGQQuRN-14wSghQ/w200-h166/IMG_1934.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>My summer running plan was to build up my base miles, do a weekly track workout, and complete a weekly long run. Then, plot twist! On May 31st, I started experiencing sharp pain on the right side of my core. For some reason, I attributed it to my track workout that morning, when a friend suggested I change my arm swing. I was like, oh, I’ve pulled an ab muscle because of messing with my arm swing. After a few days of intermittent intense pain, a light bulb went off in my head- this was not from a pulled muscle. It reminded me of the pain I experienced when I had a kidney stone a few years ago. A few trips to various doctors confirmed that something was wrong with my gallbladder (30 gallstones!) and it had to come out.<br /><br />Surgery was on June 18th. Recovery time was supposed to be 4-6 weeks of no running, no core work, and no lifting anything heavy. I tried to follow that, though I convinced a nurse to clear me to start running lightly after a couple of weeks if I promised not to do anything intense. I didn’t want to do any damage internally and my incision site wounds were still healing, so I took it easy. I was getting antsy and feeling like my BQ goal for CIM was out of the question, and maybe my body wouldn’t be up for marathon training after surgery/time off from running. It was at this point that I asked Bert to help make me a training plan. Because he’s a nice guy (<i>Editor's note: I really am.</i>) and isn’t busy enough with four kids and a full-time job, Bert agreed. A 16 week plan was to begin in mid-August. The plan until then was to not get hurt. <br /><br />I made it to the start of the training plan not-hurt, so that was my first success. Bert had a Google spreadsheet semi-filled in with some workouts and long runs for the 16 weeks. My mind was a little blown when I saw the number of 18+ runs and the pace work within some of those runs. For reference, my previous marathon training plan had three 18 milers and a single 20 miler. Bert’s plan had three 18ers, two 20ers, and a 22 miler. I just couldn’t imagine getting to the point where I could go 18-20-18 (with pace)-20 (with pace)-22-18 on consecutive weekends. Not to mention the workouts that Bert started filling in. I was very intimidated, and a little worried about getting injured with the increase in volume and intensity. However, for the most part, I was able to stick to the plan, only needing to shorten a long run and miss the next day’s run when I rolled my foot during a hurricane-aftermath run. I was feeling good about how I was absorbing the training, and actually started feeling on track for my A goal.<div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnyz9wG7Pz8YPBMUeR8w-Pefwfju_Zmvkgf9pLQXbScvskF46SfwY6FqSDHuKz1vFPLZkIDPc0KTx-Ka0fYHeHTss6UPiOHLZjV3u7tWXqcp4tl_ly6-04wsPa417VQyJ64CTd8pvB6HgTczDsIaZ7LJmyh3XQBkiRAbXBLSBOgY31EG5TqLeogJC4gg/s1170/IMG_6731.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="260" data-original-width="1170" height="89" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnyz9wG7Pz8YPBMUeR8w-Pefwfju_Zmvkgf9pLQXbScvskF46SfwY6FqSDHuKz1vFPLZkIDPc0KTx-Ka0fYHeHTss6UPiOHLZjV3u7tWXqcp4tl_ly6-04wsPa417VQyJ64CTd8pvB6HgTczDsIaZ7LJmyh3XQBkiRAbXBLSBOgY31EG5TqLeogJC4gg/w400-h89/IMG_6731.jpg" width="400" /></a></div> <br /><br /></div><div>Then, the week of Thanksgiving, came a cold that lingered for far too long. I knew it was kinda bad when I had to take afternoon naps a couple of days the weekend after Thanksgiving (one week before the race). I tried not to worry when it was the day before we were flying out to Sacramento and I had a coughing fit on my run with Lori and Chad that led to dry-heaving. Encouragement from friends, Bert, and Mitch helped to ease nerves about my cold, and I tried to remember that this was just a race. With that in mind, we flew out to Sacramento late on Friday, with our friends, Anthony and Chas, also on our flight for the race. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglCKUR6L3kh93iSApC06EMBXqlrKzlElxGkvLFJxBUFDxP5W4Mpcn2_lnvsRVOB1fkJVGGVg-28AC3fczDKB1Q1gpD-udXGTbs8KjFTo6Itfw6pLPPTQKUyxmh89DOqhBiVcICx1JhEpdU5f7tB3mArBnjo2jXVmE_qEMuBvQKxyqWj1oEn25jOeo5Fw/s3390/IMG_1644.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3390" data-original-width="2542" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglCKUR6L3kh93iSApC06EMBXqlrKzlElxGkvLFJxBUFDxP5W4Mpcn2_lnvsRVOB1fkJVGGVg-28AC3fczDKB1Q1gpD-udXGTbs8KjFTo6Itfw6pLPPTQKUyxmh89DOqhBiVcICx1JhEpdU5f7tB3mArBnjo2jXVmE_qEMuBvQKxyqWj1oEn25jOeo5Fw/w150-h200/IMG_1644.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>There was a short shakeout run on the next morning, put on by CIM. It was raining a bunch and cold, and no one was in a hurry to leave our hotel to head a block over for the meetup. I met a nice Canadian lady, Carmela, while waiting in the lobby to leave, and we grabbed free Run in Rabbit t-shirts from the RiR shakeout group that was starting from the hotel. We chatted during the 2 mile shake-out, and exchanged numbers so we could meet up later and make plans for race morning. A trip to the Expo and a pep talk from Bert later, and things were starting to feel REAL. We grabbed pizza with Anthony, and then turned in for the night.<div><br /><div><h4 style="text-align: left;">The Race</h4><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi9MEe5ILTvwJVs2vmGWyfvKlAZaaE87Qux1ikVDLRbc1Ug3sV7S6ZjQ2mc9RPlbhBMgGFKCtEshcw4o1K-ciCtegWQWcFmwe5GFXJV4WRVTRBUfOCMJm7qq2pKqMizmNEEsWPfiJg0IIaWIbeUvY4rQaRucUoF0aQ75kqpJvymTKZxW9x3C-T-mY33g/s4032/FullSizeRender.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi9MEe5ILTvwJVs2vmGWyfvKlAZaaE87Qux1ikVDLRbc1Ug3sV7S6ZjQ2mc9RPlbhBMgGFKCtEshcw4o1K-ciCtegWQWcFmwe5GFXJV4WRVTRBUfOCMJm7qq2pKqMizmNEEsWPfiJg0IIaWIbeUvY4rQaRucUoF0aQ75kqpJvymTKZxW9x3C-T-mY33g/w200-h150/FullSizeRender.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>I woke up at 2:45 AM, before my 3:30 AM alarm, but had gotten at least 6.5 hours of sleep and felt pretty rested. (<i>Editor's note: I LOVE being on the East Coast and racing on the West Coast. Time zone changes for the win!</i>) Carmela and I met in the lobby at 4:35 AM to walk to the bus pick-up spot. It was lightly raining and the rain poncho that I bought for $5 at the expo came in handy. I also had on throwaway shoes, socks, pants, and jacket. I ate stuff I can’t remember anymore before I left the hotel (maybe half of a Picky Bar and banana?), and brought graham crackers to munch on since there was a long time before the race started at 7 am. Unfortunately, I forgot my water bottle at the hotel. (<i>Editor's note: WHAT?!?!?</i>)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJrA3mexaLKZfeK1x0P-fSphq_ZWf43vPSa-kqGu6We_DT9N2up_PYNICgfmnhgHbJ6IW_UajyUdgpDGo4FH4Cw6wrokYg1AzWY4rbjmLdrC52OAGhgDHJDPIx5mvBsrYYOlBxfgxTJtOOvq11XUj1dPX_7HJw4KDWmegU_NHU7XccYlz6cfHQLKvBeg/s4032/IMG_1669.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJrA3mexaLKZfeK1x0P-fSphq_ZWf43vPSa-kqGu6We_DT9N2up_PYNICgfmnhgHbJ6IW_UajyUdgpDGo4FH4Cw6wrokYg1AzWY4rbjmLdrC52OAGhgDHJDPIx5mvBsrYYOlBxfgxTJtOOvq11XUj1dPX_7HJw4KDWmegU_NHU7XccYlz6cfHQLKvBeg/w200-h150/IMG_1669.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>The bus ride was not my favorite- warm, crowded, with a loud annoying guy sitting catty-corner from me. I sat next to a nice guy who was running his first marathon and asked for tips. Hope he did well. I got very antsy toward the end of the bus ride as motion sickness was kicking in a little, and was happy to get off the bus to get fresh air. My legs were feeling a little wobbly from the beginnings of motion sickness. Carmela and I hit up the wall of porta potties, and then hung out at a nearby gas station where a bunch of runners were waiting out of the rain. I changed out of wet throwaway socks and shoes into dry socks and racing shoes. (<i>Editor's note: carbon fiber?</i>) Then I tossed donation pants and poncho, but kept on my throwaway jacket until I warmed up. We headed to corral area and I lined up with 3:40 pacer. Carmela and I exchanged one last good luck hug as she headed to the 3:30 pacer. <span style="text-align: center;">While waiting at the start, a nice lady named Amy standing next to me asked me about my plans. So I told her I would start with the 3:40 group and hopefully, I’d feel good toward the end and get ahead of them. She was hoping for the same and asked if she could stick with me. So, I now had a race buddy (new thing for me).</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjW9ZuRyQtl4nDAH8cQ8lh-Ux7d9xS1OJrFDibd2kUiwMxaXIsFDf76JEvaOBDwEPxsLhyjo4PJEcY0-bnpkLdeE_EVjMDxQ0zdtMIvbXPXrlEF34j-7oFN6tYS4JoLvsgo35xbt91lYwFJgTJvnEDWC6Q6FsJYWRMAumzOKXk-I5dkhnuVH3lu7kssQ/s4032/IMG_1672.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjW9ZuRyQtl4nDAH8cQ8lh-Ux7d9xS1OJrFDibd2kUiwMxaXIsFDf76JEvaOBDwEPxsLhyjo4PJEcY0-bnpkLdeE_EVjMDxQ0zdtMIvbXPXrlEF34j-7oFN6tYS4JoLvsgo35xbt91lYwFJgTJvnEDWC6Q6FsJYWRMAumzOKXk-I5dkhnuVH3lu7kssQ/w150-h200/IMG_1672.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>At 7 am, the race got off to a start. (<i>Editor's note: Only 1258 words before the race even starts? Amateur race report.</i>) The 3:40 pacers started a little hot and we tried not to get too wrapped up in their pace. They seemed to settle in after a bit, but would sometimes surge and then slow again. I shed my jacket in mile two, and she shed hers a mile later. Amy and I stuck together, and chatted a little here and there. She remarked that is was warmer than she expected and also hillier (she was not wrong, but I was feeling okay on the uphills. Little did I know that it was probably the downhills doing more damage). Miles ticked by and so did 5k markers. I like having both on course to have more landmarks to count down. I looked for Mitch at mile 6 and didn’t see him, but apparently he was there and also couldn’t see me tucked in the 3:40 pack. I did see him a little after mile 7, which was exciting. Anyway, miles ticked by and we kept on trucking. I did my best at water stations to pinch the cups and drink the water, but sometimes got water up my nose or started coughing. I lost Amy on a hill somewhere, and every so often I’d look back to try to spot her. No dice after a while, so I concluded she had dropped back (she ended up dropping at the half, but has Tokyo Marathon coming up in March). <br /><br />The 3:40 pace group crossed the halfway mat in 1:49, and that confirmed the slightly fast pace for the 3:40 group. I didn’t feel too concerned at that point. I spotted Mitch again around mile 14, and was again very excited to see him. Big smile on my face, etc. However, the feet started feeling heavy a few miles later and I started needing to play mental games. I was also starting to feel a bit nauseous, especially by the smell of increasingly stronger Runner BO (one lady’s smelly hydration pack caused me to choke back my gag reflex). I backed off the pace group a little to get some breathing room and fresher air. Spoiler alert: I never caught up with them again. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPcA-ZTIRq-u1CZiQZu8aXRnbkp9X2raXpIeucy1So8mL9KfU_dyjiP8QufT243-O3OHaSJtFuhw11ZgDqvqVt_VpGKbqHTY_cu4ptlN8R37wZzbwo-8CCSWB0XKs23XBECr7CTRnE2uPhFdNcnWLQ9dtgb2EhqBdNxqK3bFcLfTk9GMXAzTiGSKZZ6A/s1302/IMG_1951.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1302" data-original-width="821" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPcA-ZTIRq-u1CZiQZu8aXRnbkp9X2raXpIeucy1So8mL9KfU_dyjiP8QufT243-O3OHaSJtFuhw11ZgDqvqVt_VpGKbqHTY_cu4ptlN8R37wZzbwo-8CCSWB0XKs23XBECr7CTRnE2uPhFdNcnWLQ9dtgb2EhqBdNxqK3bFcLfTk9GMXAzTiGSKZZ6A/w126-h200/IMG_1951.jpg" width="126" /></a></div>By mile 18, I noticed I just couldn’t move my feet faster though it felt like I was trying. Pace slowed a few seconds, so nothing super dramatic, but it was still concerning. The nausea was not helping me feel any better. In mile 19, I made a bargain to get to mile 20, at which point I could stop running and drop out of the race. Once I hit the mile 20 marker, I pulled off to the right and basically started to cry and cough and dry-heave, which led to barfing up some gel and water. In my mind, I was dropping out and had failed big time and was generally feeling terrible. I texted Mitch, but he didn’t text back so I called him and let him know what was going on. He encouraged me to not give up and to finish the race, since I was so close (10k feels like a long way after you’ve hit the wall). So, off I went again, trying to <span style="text-align: center;">regroup my mind and legs. Around this point, I think the 3:45 pace group ran by and I was with them for a little. At mile 21, I stopped on bridge and thought again about quitting. From here, it was a series of mental games with myself. Bargained to get to the next 5k mat, knowing I had friends tracking me. Then bargained to get to mile 22, where I said it was only 4 miles and I could do that even if it was super hard. I let myself walk through the water stations in the last 10k, and just trudged on to the finish. Finally, it was the last mile, and I saw Mitch one last time outside of our hotel, which was close to the finish. At this point, I had no idea what my time was because I had stopped my watch when I thought I was dropping, and also because I never programmed my new-to-me watch to show total elapsed time on any of the screens. Instead, it said 26.32/26.32. I just knew I didn’t accomplish my A goal or B goal. I got my medal and post-race disposable jacket (better than a mylar blanket!), snapped an obligatory pic, and then started crying when I saw Mitch walking to meet me. A friend texted me congrats with my time, which I still didn’t know. 3:48:47, a 6 minute PR that beat my C goal.</span><br /><br />This was my fifth marathon and I had just run a time I wouldn’t have dreamed about a year ago, and here I was feeling crushed. Luckily, Mitch and my running friends understood how I was feeling, and let me be a little dramatic and sad about it (which I am still doing by writing this guest blog post) (<i>Editor's note: Alec Lorenzoni would hardly call this dramatic</i>). Anyway, now that I am a week removed from CIM, I am feeling better about how the race turned out. Now that CIM is done, I’m ready to enjoy family time and holiday festivities, as well as more spinning and strength again. I’m sure it won’t be too long until the race itch comes back though. A huge thanks to Bert for putting together my training plan, offering advice and support, and making sure I was still having fun. He’s definitely the best free coach I’ve ever had! 10/10 would recommend (<i>Editor's note: If you'd run faster, I'd probably start charging people. Ouch! Too soon?</i>).</div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJrA3mexaLKZfeK1x0P-fSphq_ZWf43vPSa-kqGu6We_DT9N2up_PYNICgfmnhgHbJ6IW_UajyUdgpDGo4FH4Cw6wrokYg1AzWY4rbjmLdrC52OAGhgDHJDPIx5mvBsrYYOlBxfgxTJtOOvq11XUj1dPX_7HJw4KDWmegU_NHU7XccYlz6cfHQLKvBeg/s4032/IMG_1669.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJrA3mexaLKZfeK1x0P-fSphq_ZWf43vPSa-kqGu6We_DT9N2up_PYNICgfmnhgHbJ6IW_UajyUdgpDGo4FH4Cw6wrokYg1AzWY4rbjmLdrC52OAGhgDHJDPIx5mvBsrYYOlBxfgxTJtOOvq11XUj1dPX_7HJw4KDWmegU_NHU7XccYlz6cfHQLKvBeg/s4032/IMG_1669.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipPINtOBpTmcIIMzZ11qzodlaIEU3p396yL2iV-8zFcaKC1ms1oMLsshoZucta0QAAJBocCmfIfbrVMEp87RQIKY1V01Hz2eNanfykgOR6HByLq8Lt1EeT7EaS8t7cuOP4xzULPIjXIDdhlv5OkgW0zrdjYNy6dKixQoJtg0IMa5-ElnRF2kfkvUWxEg/s603/Screenshot%202022-12-13%20112508.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="315" data-original-width="603" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipPINtOBpTmcIIMzZ11qzodlaIEU3p396yL2iV-8zFcaKC1ms1oMLsshoZucta0QAAJBocCmfIfbrVMEp87RQIKY1V01Hz2eNanfykgOR6HByLq8Lt1EeT7EaS8t7cuOP4xzULPIjXIDdhlv5OkgW0zrdjYNy6dKixQoJtg0IMa5-ElnRF2kfkvUWxEg/s16000/Screenshot%202022-12-13%20112508.jpg" /></a></div></div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">www.bertthoughts.gov.www/bertthoughts</h4></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0aXaFBgTw-wEVh5VI0uzz02kZ21i3YvhAMQgo1GEsRIfYJG7O-SpERSOvFTuqZO-V6t5lktpCDe2DviaQ3k1T3IW1SzuxXfUTChzeoJmRGrUrnWnvTFl70qjuVv5dCqg0NKkTXkbS1jBZbg7-l8WeEdzF7Kh5C3VkyyTYwDoowe11Rvwe3qTWpHgFGA/s4032/69160142147__7FD6778E-1C6B-4445-851E-86E31EC40B70.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0aXaFBgTw-wEVh5VI0uzz02kZ21i3YvhAMQgo1GEsRIfYJG7O-SpERSOvFTuqZO-V6t5lktpCDe2DviaQ3k1T3IW1SzuxXfUTChzeoJmRGrUrnWnvTFl70qjuVv5dCqg0NKkTXkbS1jBZbg7-l8WeEdzF7Kh5C3VkyyTYwDoowe11Rvwe3qTWpHgFGA/w150-h200/69160142147__7FD6778E-1C6B-4445-851E-86E31EC40B70.JPG" width="150" /></a></div>I'm very proud of Natalie. When we started this phase of our relationship, she admitted to me that she had no idea that when we were all off running in college that we weren't just jogging easy. Workouts were a new concept to her. Then she went to Orange Theory or something and learned that you can try harder at exercising (an oversimplification of her epiphany). To say that she was green is an understatement... and she's turned herself into quite the little runner. And she just jumped right into whatever I threw at her. Her workouts were all going so well this fall, I was overly confident that she was very fit. And I still believe that. But you have to run the race on that day, and sometimes that is hard. I was fitter than I'd ever been in April 2015, but then </span><a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2015/04/2015-bostonmarathon.html" style="text-align: left;" target="_blank">ran poorly</a><span style="text-align: left;">. I believe that if CIM had been a week later, Natalie would have run a lot faster. She's a different runner now than she was a year ago, and three years ago, when she was first foolish enough to engage in coaching with me. All those miles in her legs and all those workouts don't go away. She just has to keep it up, as it all cumulatively builds into muscle memory (which is very real).</span></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKImiHXtxm_t_UMow424raNwU_2UNseKuBrJa8Zpz3e_Y74CSUZw3i0p4EvuOscpHl1lKgNLKtnb4QVwfLGgWJ7sUyUx-LXQ08U5EC-oIEx7TMPN445zq4EJBwHfCN-n2X0DpEOQM8z05Hjc4gfYYl0y8gV3cd5Vf9R_EtJBki5UJ-dHAXIzy7VkjEhg/s4032/69186528927__D4F70DFA-EB75-42E1-A953-3D4F6BA5B05D.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKImiHXtxm_t_UMow424raNwU_2UNseKuBrJa8Zpz3e_Y74CSUZw3i0p4EvuOscpHl1lKgNLKtnb4QVwfLGgWJ7sUyUx-LXQ08U5EC-oIEx7TMPN445zq4EJBwHfCN-n2X0DpEOQM8z05Hjc4gfYYl0y8gV3cd5Vf9R_EtJBki5UJ-dHAXIzy7VkjEhg/w200-h150/69186528927__D4F70DFA-EB75-42E1-A953-3D4F6BA5B05D.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>As I mentioned before, this race was on Sam's birthday. KC and I were busy building him a new loft bed while she was running, and I had my phone sitting in the room with the tracking up for her and Thomas Adam. I was anxious watching her splits clipping off consistently under 8:20 pace for the first two hours, worried that she might be going out too fast in less than ideal conditions. We were crestfallen when she went AWOL at the 35K for a while. After she finally hit that timing mat, I got a text from Mitch letting me know she was still alive and was going to make it to the finish. She got back after it and dropped her pace back down, but the damage was already done. She was short of her A and B goals. We tier our goals for a reason though, and for her to walk away with a PR and ahead of her C goal (which I think was <i>her realistic</i> goal back in the spring) is cause for celebration. Which I'm glad to say that she did. But geez, look at that Nuun water bottle in the background <i>after the race</i>! Runner nerd.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxnJzwjO3KRmbO1LI2o3-ewkzaYYGCLC8AgzYEznUg_j4k7R09BTkkT_8EnZuELICPCjmHeW2Xj1j1E9ifkXtuHOGOyGd2AhrbIEASGipmGiA3mKd7vT_iAIZPEr4HR0GAUc0iydRdXnvSVajuOSHVda9JAFdRXn0snYSAIwiNI8OD0jdtTUS8qGQm1A/s3088/IMG_6324.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2316" data-original-width="3088" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxnJzwjO3KRmbO1LI2o3-ewkzaYYGCLC8AgzYEznUg_j4k7R09BTkkT_8EnZuELICPCjmHeW2Xj1j1E9ifkXtuHOGOyGd2AhrbIEASGipmGiA3mKd7vT_iAIZPEr4HR0GAUc0iydRdXnvSVajuOSHVda9JAFdRXn0snYSAIwiNI8OD0jdtTUS8qGQm1A/w200-h150/IMG_6324.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBo8NfmINutTmEYKMhAjljcCrvNGJX-xb2jbeSAOmw3T0gVcGf3IalFC658FZ204pvpubagPiMlIvy3gbXh7OcL4O4ZgLzhnT3kUP0TDK7h0W4ltrZZCnco4M36u8HiOaIuSAXz1c5-q7GDE8mIge-ZzkQsULt1byBgEtlsrzLPQyPlrlXhVclvro7wg/s1691/IMG_6734.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1691" data-original-width="1170" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBo8NfmINutTmEYKMhAjljcCrvNGJX-xb2jbeSAOmw3T0gVcGf3IalFC658FZ204pvpubagPiMlIvy3gbXh7OcL4O4ZgLzhnT3kUP0TDK7h0W4ltrZZCnco4M36u8HiOaIuSAXz1c5-q7GDE8mIge-ZzkQsULt1byBgEtlsrzLPQyPlrlXhVclvro7wg/w138-h200/IMG_6734.jpg" width="138" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">As with most of my blog posts, I will end this abruptly just to press publish.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAstOVE7KtVl_hkmS-SHO7uyy3jtTGVatmHZNmpVjaR1ETBhAKW7Txmm2_p6Gr99qWilPeHM3MqTtJBDApsFe8JWj1Hy-sF33ZwT9AbZLCGMcs6donQ5E7itPwzSbxG_ab1E3sF_d4or_M3YXSRp0tdEzAUgGmKVJoo65gihAIb0jVsSb73KZkIz2J6g/s2532/IMG_6632.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2532" data-original-width="1170" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAstOVE7KtVl_hkmS-SHO7uyy3jtTGVatmHZNmpVjaR1ETBhAKW7Txmm2_p6Gr99qWilPeHM3MqTtJBDApsFe8JWj1Hy-sF33ZwT9AbZLCGMcs6donQ5E7itPwzSbxG_ab1E3sF_d4or_M3YXSRp0tdEzAUgGmKVJoo65gihAIb0jVsSb73KZkIz2J6g/w185-h400/IMG_6632.PNG" width="185" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><div><br /></div></div></div>Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-69411370954417468952022-12-13T10:36:00.005-05:002022-12-13T11:07:59.835-05:00Fools who engage in coaching with Bert<p>Hey Internet, it's me! With Elon Musk taking over Twitter, I felt it was time to reassert my dominance over your newsfeed before the trolls start paying a monthly fee to bump me down further than you're willing to scroll.</p><h4>The first fool</h4><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgOGb56C7p-r3NJhpmqPiyT8baO_Pu-uUBPh_JK9E9zrrM_beXlz_UiwbHtvos8cJrc92QCMiiVKMrxXIv-n9WLouic-Ag0DSKC4UDv0HsAzxXim1EGPNW8wE70Vh0499J4L86zsfUdU0to15e2rc1XCsZLbL99jR46-3Wb1vzrDlpnF9eENUhTF_L/s1186/Blowout%2003%20Natalie.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="786" data-original-width="1186" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgOGb56C7p-r3NJhpmqPiyT8baO_Pu-uUBPh_JK9E9zrrM_beXlz_UiwbHtvos8cJrc92QCMiiVKMrxXIv-n9WLouic-Ag0DSKC4UDv0HsAzxXim1EGPNW8wE70Vh0499J4L86zsfUdU0to15e2rc1XCsZLbL99jR46-3Wb1vzrDlpnF9eENUhTF_L/w200-h133/Blowout%2003%20Natalie.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Sometime prior to the last post I made (December 2019), Natalie Anstey, nee Yip, asked me if I'd be willing to give her a training plan for the 2020 Shamrock Half Marathon. She knew that we'd be having twins shortly before that, and offered to compensate me with diapers and hand-me-downs. I happily agreed and embarked in my first non-KC experience of formally telling someone what to do for running. She was pretty green, and I was pretty conservative. I drew from my own history in half-marathon buildups, some training plans I saved out of Runner's World (circa May - July, 2004), and a lot of input from her about her limitations. She was incredulous about some of the things that I asked her to do, and her runner friends in Davidson told her that I was crazy. Training was going pretty well until a few weeks before the race when there was a global pandemic and the race was cancelled.<p></p><p>For a while after that, she kept running. She did weird running group things and revisited my workouts, running races in Savannah (faster than my brother) and Brooklyn. Sometimes she would text me and ask "what should I do tomorrow at the track?" and I would just make up something at random to see if I could break her. But she was hooked on my wackadoo training. Partially because her husband paid an undisclosed amount of money to someone on Instagram to coach him and then got ghosted for the last few weeks before his race, and I've never managed to ghost someone for more than a day. I love the attention too much!!!!!!!!!</p><p>Anyway, Natalie ended up signing up for the cheat code known as the California International Marathon (CIM for short) in Sacramento. The race was held on December 4, 2022, and I was her coach. I made a spreadsheet that we shared and threw workouts into it, and we also used the <a href="https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/739176" target="_blank">Garmin Clipboard</a> app so that I could program workouts for her (which I sometimes did) and she could upload them for me to view all the data easily (which she always did). This app was better than looking at her runs through Strava, and I didn't have to scroll around to find it. I got a notification every time she uploaded a run.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcRvLXtSMW5qHKsPsuRNWrDHW6s3-e3yKkwTZSWwfWKhBR2M2NmmqDqaO0pasYqFqsJ4jX08zS46JRTRXyvT3tr5phNdSd5IpCY7BuA1GBPGaDd5tiNHNXrkSIWZ96X5GFcVXwBP10qqu0dow_tm3ZDYtIOU2us6BktBKiAR84l0dg7yTnsgNs3lIV/s1170/IMG_6723.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="793" data-original-width="1170" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcRvLXtSMW5qHKsPsuRNWrDHW6s3-e3yKkwTZSWwfWKhBR2M2NmmqDqaO0pasYqFqsJ4jX08zS46JRTRXyvT3tr5phNdSd5IpCY7BuA1GBPGaDd5tiNHNXrkSIWZ96X5GFcVXwBP10qqu0dow_tm3ZDYtIOU2us6BktBKiAR84l0dg7yTnsgNs3lIV/w200-h136/IMG_6723.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Right before the race, I told her that she needed to do a guest blog post, which she has, and I am going to share here (in another post, of course. Gotta get those clicks!) It's a little shorter than some of my posts, but like I said, she's pretty green. We still haven't even actually talked on the phone much about the race after-the-fact (we're more text-based coaching), so I'm looking forward to reading this myself to find out what happened! That's not me throwing shade-- we're both busy. Her race was on Sam's birthday, so I was pretty busy, and then she had a nice leisure trip in California visiting friends.<div><br /><h4 style="text-align: left;">Another fool</h4><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZB81ARJfLnLRYGalV1C4PSlPXuezt3kjr2F80n-eeQvq_G8V3ZuqvtC17OpcaQttMvk_3m6Drgj09TeG3sx8mVcNK9KTQGSs2niSU99NWJjTdVHtvChDCTyrzVE-DCHt5KIGdDph9JqAdqAPOBnb_upsghpeByp0gYHX0i8pgPF88yVbTi3v5Hse3Pg/s3264/IMG_1402.2015-04-19_225508.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZB81ARJfLnLRYGalV1C4PSlPXuezt3kjr2F80n-eeQvq_G8V3ZuqvtC17OpcaQttMvk_3m6Drgj09TeG3sx8mVcNK9KTQGSs2niSU99NWJjTdVHtvChDCTyrzVE-DCHt5KIGdDph9JqAdqAPOBnb_upsghpeByp0gYHX0i8pgPF88yVbTi3v5Hse3Pg/w200-h150/IMG_1402.2015-04-19_225508.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>Not to be forgotten in this introductory post, a few weeks after Natalie started her training cycle, my brother-in-law, Chip, reached out to ask if I could coach him to run the Houston Marathon! I agreed, thinking I could give them similar training, albeit six weeks later. Then he changed his mind and said he was going to do the Mississippi Gulf Coast Marathon a week after CIM, so I had to get my butt in gear for both of them. Coaching the two of them was different. Chip has run a few marathons before, but largely was not new to running. He caught the bug sometime in college when KC and I were dating, after an admittedly non-serious attempt at track in high school. He successfully coaches a high school team in Mississippi, so he has a lot more experience coaching than I do. Both Natalie and Chip have limitations to the time that they can commit to running. Natalie does a lot of cross training on her Pelotons (I feel like that term is synonymous with the bike-- what do you say for a treadmill?) and really tried to do exactly what I told her, while Chip probably took more liberties in making discretionary changes. It's important for both of them to be able to do that, because I really only told them the workouts and long runs... they filled in the blanks between to set their own mileage and recovery. And they both did a great job in their buildups. It was exciting to watch them do the work, run their long runs, race along the way, and I thought that they were both going to crush their respective races.</div><p></p><p></p><p>Check back in a little bit after I wiggle around with the formatting on Natalie's post. Chip's race report is TBD. He says he only does guest podcasts, and I'm yet to break into that medium successfully.</p></div>Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-89074032836762279282019-12-29T17:37:00.000-05:002019-12-30T08:24:04.812-05:00Check out my first blog post 785 days!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Time for the year-end review; and this time, bonus years! 2017-2019, all rolled into one. Now I don’t have to listen to any more comments around the dinner table at holidays about how I don’t write any more. To be honest, I spent plenty of time writing since my last post on November 5, 2017. If you’d like to read some of it, <a href="https://doi.org/10.18130/v3-aj94-g658" target="_blank">head over here.</a> <br />
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<b>2017 </b><br />
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Not a whole lot to say about 2017 that wasn’t said then. I ended the year by dropping out of the Marine Corps Marathon—my first DNF. I took time off for the rest of the year, running less than two dozen times before the year ended. The end. <br />
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<b>2018 </b><br />
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We moved to Earlysville in March. I thought I’d be able to run out here, but it turns out I need to be physically fit in order to be mentally fit enough to run repeats in cult de sacs. I messed around for a while, never gaining fitness, until the summer when I finally started to run with some regularity. I participated in the <a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/1641977613" target="_blank">United Ways Relay</a> at Albemarle High School, a 4x800 meter relay carnival. Without looking it up, I recall that the warm-up was my longest run in a while, followed immediately by the cool down, which was much longer. I was gassed afterwards. <br />
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I started a new job in July (still with Albemarle County Public Schools) and successfully proposed for my capstone in September, which slowed my running back down again. The fall and winter were spent writing and researching, and I kept on not running. Right before Thanksgiving, I joined a cult, F3. On Monday mornings for a while, I was going to Hollymead Elementary school at 5:30 AM to do push-ups, bear crawls, and carry around cinder blocks. It was nice to have some “fellowship” when I was at the low point of my fitness, especially considering the stuff we were working on wasn’t stuff that I was particularly good at even when I was in good running shape. <br />
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In December, I participated in the <a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/2018268122" target="_blank">Bill Steers Men’s 4 Miler</a>. It was rock bottom for me, a real wake-up call. I was barely able to break 24-minutes for the four miles, lost to Matt, Shawn and Stew, and almost lost to John and Mateo. It was a lot of fun and reminded me of how much I love running races, but man, it was a disaster. Nonetheless, it got me motivated for 2019.<br />
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<b>2019</b><br />
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The thing about being at rock bottom is that you have no where to go but up. Barely able to make it four miles in six-minute pace, I decided that I needed to run ten miles faster. The plan was to run the New Year’s Day race in Free Union, the Haven 8K, and then the Charlottesville 10 Miler. Each race would be faster. I was going to go to cult meetings on Mondays and Thursdays (a new running-focused cult meeting), run on Wednesdays with the Dad Running Club (we reunited), and do a longer run on either Saturday or Sunday, but run both days. Tuesday and Friday I’d take off. <br />
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January 1 started off right at the <a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/2048887574" target="_blank">Free Union Footrace</a>. Barely under 18 minutes but a solid effort. I finished third after going through the mile in maybe 5th? 1st place was a very talented D3 runner visiting his girlfriend and Peyton got 2nd. I went out too fast but held on without dying too hard. <br />
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I got my long runs up to 15-17 miles leading up to the <a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/2201429164" target="_blank">Haven 8k</a>, where I improved my place to 2nd behind Thomas. I was running behind Ann for the first mile, and honestly worried that Laura was going to beat me during the last mile. She was closing on me, partially because I was dying and partially because a car almost hit me as I went into an intersection that was poorly guarded by a volunteer. <br />
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The week between the Haven and the <a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/2234803977" target="_blank">Charlottesville 10 Miler</a>, I went out to Green Springs and threw down a 19+ mile long run. It was the most fun I’d had all year long. I wish that I could do it each week. I don’t think it had much of an impact one me as I went to the 10 Miler and accomplished my goal of breaking 60 minutes. I got 20th place and ran 58:41. It’s probably the slowest I’ve ever run for 10 miles (except for Hartwood days). It was tough, but I was happy to accomplish my goal. After that, the spring racing season was over and it was back to low miles and writing like a machine. I had a deadline to make. <br />
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I finished writing in the spring and successfully defended in May, less than two weeks shy of the deadline to graduate that month, but that didn’t matter. The degree was conferred at the defense, according to my committee. I spent the day celebrating and went to the beach for Memorial Day weekend carefree for the first time in years! <br />
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<b>Summer Racing Season</b><br />
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I started off the summer running the <a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/2451928546" target="_blank">Bruce Barnes Mile</a>. I’d heard it was fast but had no clue how fast it would be. Sean ran like 3:52 there before, and Alec has run 4:03, each of which is insane. The week of, I went to the track to attempt some 400s at five-minute pace and felt optimistic about my chances. The race was faster than I could have thought. I wanted to go out in 72 with the pack, but instead hit a 67 and was in 5th place! Thomas was way ahead and I just decided to stay in the game as long as I could since I’d already gone in head first. I ended up going 67, 2:16, 3:23, 4:31 to get passed at the line by a kid half my age. But again, so much fun.<br />
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Two weeks later, I was back at the <a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/2493920448" target="_blank">United Ways Relay</a>. I thought I’d do better than last time, but it didn’t go much better. We had a rag-tag group after several people were injured or had to stay with their dog because it bit another dog, but in the end, <a href="https://youtu.be/dnM0DankcUE" target="_blank">the ladies ran faster than I did</a>. And one of those ladies was pregnant! Stew crushed it though, running something like a 58 for his first lap.</div>
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I spent the end of June trying to decide what to do on July 4, whether to race in Fredericksburg or Charlottesville. I think I made the right choice not going after the white whale, as Tim ran very fast there and I ran very slowly here. I got 2nd at the <a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/2503234944" target="_blank">Kiwanis 5K</a> at Hollymead after going out way too hard behind a dude in compression shorts and no shirt. He was on the track team at Penn and looked much younger and fitter. But I ran much faster than I had in January, so that was a win. If I’d gone out more slowly, I might have been able to get under seventeen minutes, but I didn’t and it was hot. <br />
<br />
Things were going pretty well though. I decided that I was going to run the half-marathon in Richmond, and was using the summer months to get fit. I also committed to running with the Charlottesville F3 team for the Colonial 200, a relay race from Preddy Creek Park in Albemarle to Jamestown Beach in Williamsburg. But one morning at the track, I pulled my hamstring and then pulled the plug on Richmond. Then, at the beginning of September, a week before the relay, I hurt myself again at F3, doing mountain climbers of all things. It was sore that day, but really manifested the next morning in the midst of a nineteen mile long run that I quit after ten miles. <br />
<br />
<b>Gloom Horn Explosion</b><br />
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I ran two times between that and the relay, and thought I’d be able to make it through. My first leg was <a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/2705618476" target="_blank">8 miles in Fluvanna</a>. Fifteen minutes in, I heard a pop in my calf. I hobbled the rest of the way through (in 6:32 pace) and then put my leg on ice for as long as I could. I was supposed to run a longer leg for my second turn, but my van made some accommodations for me and I bumped down to <a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/2706221453" target="_blank">3.8 miles in Hanover</a>. That run was even more painful than the one where my leg popped, as my form was a mess and I hobbled around in the dark for a half-hour. But I went as hard as I could, running 9:07, 7:49, 6:59 and 7:22 pace starting at 10:23 PM. Spooky.<br />
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Back on the ice, we went to a hotel near the Diamond and slept for about 15 minutes before we had to head off to start the last round of legs for Van #2. I was first up. We’d been studying the rules and my plan to was to start, and if I needed to drop out, someone from Van #1 (Wolverine) would finish for me since no one in my van would be able to without cheating. I took it out in what felt like a very slow pace, and tried to focus on getting my form as close to normal as possible. I ended up finish the whole leg, as I never felt like it was going to get worse than it already was. That <a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/2707203097" target="_blank">nine-mile leg through Charles City</a> started in the dark but finished in day-light. I found a cell phone which I later recycled for like $20 at a kiosk at the mall. <br />
<br />
We ended up winning the whole race by something close to two hours, I think. They stagger it so that the fastest team starts last, which was us, and we passed our first team on the 10th leg (I ran leg #9). There was a team that was running fast and started earlier than us, but despite how much we worried about it, we were never really in danger. I had grand aspirations of live blogging during the race or taking a GoPro and recording all our wacky hijinks, but the injury a week out really put a damper on my mood. Matt asked me last week if I looked back on the experience fondly, which I do, and I’d like to do it again next year if I can. <br />
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When it was over, I took off two weeks completely. Then I ran one mile and felt pain, took off two more days, ran another mile, and called the doctor. I was diagnosed with “<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5310238/" target="_blank">Tennis Leg</a>,” which is apparently a real thing. Bob Wilder told me to take another two weeks off but that I could cross train. One day I went to aqua jog, but that hurt too, and another day, I rode my bike while the DRC ran, which was just a nuisance. I started my return with a week of walk-jogs, and then after 2 weeks, ran 4 miles and was told by my watch to take 3 days recovery for 7:19 pace. Pathetic! <br />
<br />
<b>Fall racing season</b><br />
<br />
I stuck to running for a while after F3 seemed to keep me in the injury cycle (no way I can pretend that it is F3’s fault). Since I wasn’t going to run Richmond, I signed up for the inaugural County/City <a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/2868798306" target="_blank">Connecting Communities 5K</a> at Hollymead, a race for which I served on the organizing committee. It was free and I knew that Stew wasn’t able to run, so I thought I had a chance to win. Van #2 swept the top two spots, as I wore a t-shirt to hide my fat from the cold (it was REALLY cold and windy). I ran much slower than I did on July 4, but that makes a lot of sense when you consider how little I’d been running again. <br />
<br />
One week later I went to my favorite race of the year, <a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/2885517160" target="_blank">the Wattey</a>. This is a two-mile cross-country race at Panorama Farms, running the same loop as the kids run for the Ragged Mountain Cup. It’s the one time a year that I put on spikes and really make myself suffer. It was cold again, and there was some humidity in the air as they were calling for rain, but the weather was all-in-all more pleasant than it was the week before. I saw Andy before the race, so I knew that I had no shot of winning like I had last week. Honestly, the fact that I even though I could win real races this fall just shows how delusional I am. I ended up running pretty well, despite how slow it was. Andy went out hard running away from a recent WAHS grad, Tommy. An older guy and two other kids also went out ahead of me. It was only two miles, but there was a lot of time to think. The older guy came back after 800, and I was sitting behind these two kids at the mile. Going through in 5:45, I laughed and said out loud to them, “didn’t it seem faster than that?” <br />
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I moved past them quickly and saw Tommy coming back hard on the long hill that is the regular course’s starting straight. I gave it everything that I had to catch him over that last mile, but coming down the finish straight, I knew I didn’t have it and shut it down, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taV7flX8Eng&t=0m37s" target="_blank">as you can see</a>. <br />
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Last but not least was the <a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/2897402082" target="_blank">Earlysville Turkey Trot</a>. I was again delusional in thinking that I might win this race, even though I caught a cold from running around in the wet grass at Panorama a few days before. Spoiler alert, I didn’t win, I got 4th and ran slower than I had at Hollymead two weeks before. But I think the course at Hollymead is short and the course in Earlysville is long. My pace was faster on Turkey Day. They had a race within the race, where Ann Dunn got a head start while dressed as a turkey, and you’d get a special prize if you beat her. I didn’t know about this beforehand, thus I didn’t warn KC and the boys. So I needed to make sure that I was ahead of her before I got to my street so they didn’t think I was losing to a turkey (Henry has never let it go that I lost to a monkey chasing a banana at Marine Corps.) I ran the tangents and tried to be smart about it, but I was still toast for the last mile. <br />
<br />
<b>Wrapping up </b><br />
<br />
I managed to write all of this about a year where I didn’t even run 1600 miles. Even though the training wasn’t there, I still participated in 10 races and had a lot of run at each one. I’ve gotten injured a hand full of times from pushing when I shouldn’t have or doing something stupid (like falling down the stairs). Eight months ago, I was planning to run a half marathon in the fall and then a marathon this coming spring. I didn’t run the half and I’m definitely not running a full any time soon. 2020 is going to be a down year for running, as we’re expecting two additional members of the family in January, and I’m not talking about puppies. I'm running the January 1 5K in Free Union again, but beyond that, you will have to check back in a year to see if I go running again.<br />
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Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-38741033695075794212017-11-05T20:59:00.000-05:002017-11-05T20:59:17.904-05:00Four wordsI’d been saying four words to myself for a week. Four words, over and over again. <i>It’s just a marathon</i>. And it’s not as though the weeks prior had gone exceptionally well either. I went to NYC and got sick. When I came back, I got an antibiotic that proved unsuccessful. While on that, I had to take some days off (including a day off of work) and I had a <a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/1210464954" target="_blank">glorious bonk</a> in the last four miles of a my last 23 mile long run. Several days later, I was still sick and got another antibiotic. That one really took it out of me. Two pills a day, ten days. Those pills were awful. I had to take the second pill before 5pm if I wanted any hope of falling asleep at a reasonable time or waking up in time to go running. If I had the strength to run at all. But I was going to finish up that medication nine days before the race, so I knew I’d have time to bounce back.<br />
<br />
I made the mistake of not doing a workout one day when I couldn’t the next, so it got pushed to that Friday. When I started my warmup, my right hamstring was really tight. I thought nothing of it and went about my run. But after <a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/1227951675" target="_blank">two of my intended eight intervals</a>, it was getting worse, so I stopped the workout. I wish I could have stopped the run, it was hurting that badly. The next two days, the pain did not go away and I was limited to about 30 minutes before it got to be too much. I decided I’d take the next few days off of running and instead get in the pool So Monday - Wednesday, I was at the YMCA—first one in the water at 5am. I swam and I aqua jogged, and told myself those same four words. Wednesday afternoon I had my leg worked on. Thursday, I would run.<br />
<br />
23 minutes, after school, at the warmest part of the day, with full tights on. It didn’t feel good. I went slowly, but picked it up at some point to see if running 6:30 pace felt better than running 8:00 pace. It did not. Four words. Same thing on Friday. No better. Four words. I knew I was going to make my final decision about participation as late as possible, so Saturday morning, I got up early and went for the same 5k jog. It hurt less. I was all in. I was going to run this race.<br />
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Sunday morning, I left my hotel in a Lyft and got to the Metro Station to ride to the Pentagon. The station opened two hours early for the race and the place was packed already. Being with these other runners who were hoping to finish, ready to tackle the grueling effort, made me realize that the four words I’d been saying all week were relative, and did not apply to these folks. For the first time in years, I felt like I was the least serious runner around me. They had trained, they were ready! They were running with a purpose, to prove something, to honor someone. What was I doing this for? I was very emotional in realizing that this event, today, was about so much more to so many people than I’d ever realized. I'd been really selfish getting here, trivializing the event and not considering how big of a deal it is to so many people. I just haven’t been in this situation before, with these masses of runners, all working to finish. It wasn’t about the clock for them, or if it was, they weren’t’ showing it. It was about the challenge, the course, the commitment. I didn’t know what it was about for me. Those four words were coming back to haunt me. It was a tough pill to swallow.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdH6jXIPoUX3z6EQFSiUSgVl6O3LycCn5cLXPzTj0l1_i-XoOztJDTrQzS9Z7p-5ZrwgxMdtSvzgWBLHsFngV6_ArHN3pQyiYtgLSlNu6VKaA4ZhtW6GedZRxIE-RhKwZqo6v-SbL0RIQL/s1600/IMG_5574.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdH6jXIPoUX3z6EQFSiUSgVl6O3LycCn5cLXPzTj0l1_i-XoOztJDTrQzS9Z7p-5ZrwgxMdtSvzgWBLHsFngV6_ArHN3pQyiYtgLSlNu6VKaA4ZhtW6GedZRxIE-RhKwZqo6v-SbL0RIQL/s200/IMG_5574.JPG" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Early risers</td></tr>
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Fast forward to the race. Justin Neibauer was running too, still chasing sub-3. I asked him if it would be OK if I ran with him for at least the first 10K, to keep myself under control and warm up into it slowly. He was happy to have the company. We met up in the athlete’s village, I warmed up for a little bit, stretched, and applied some KT tape to my hamstring. I’d been wearing a hamstring sleeve that I borrowed from Charlie, and in hindsight I should have kept it on. We dropped our gear and made our way up to the starting line—which itself was an incredible experience. Thinking back to the races I’ve run, it’s most similar to Boston. The numbers of people around are incredible—more so than in Hopkinton, because they stagger the start times there. In Chicago, I’ve always been ahead and in the sub-elite Olympic developmental group (or whatever it’s called these days) so I haven’t seen these crowds. But this was incredible. Having the helicopters and jets and stuff fly overhead was cool too. I thought of my kids and hoped that they were getting to see it all. They left the hotel early that morning to make it to the course to spectate.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQxx5o9iK3lfDbyaGdM2eHV38JtUsAEvM8yWooW8uuX2hhr1h2hlJqbK6kUQY06Zq2-yk-ZfHIl-sWdpo68j198TWswhweYlXL8gtOOrT4I3tL8T3yNNUcLmRji-dDjJvz0tXFavEgum39/s1600/IMG_5756.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="336" data-original-width="750" height="88" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQxx5o9iK3lfDbyaGdM2eHV38JtUsAEvM8yWooW8uuX2hhr1h2hlJqbK6kUQY06Zq2-yk-ZfHIl-sWdpo68j198TWswhweYlXL8gtOOrT4I3tL8T3yNNUcLmRji-dDjJvz0tXFavEgum39/s200/IMG_5756.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Computational thinking on my mind?</td></tr>
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There was a delay in the race because of something on the course, during which I convinced Justin we needed to move up closer to the start. We weren’t going to finish behind 500 people so we shouldn’t start behind them either. I borrowed a strangers phone (first of three times today—spoiler alert) and texted KC so she wouldn’t think I was dead already when I was 5 minutes behind where she expected me to be.<br />
<br />
<br />
The gun went off and I was in trouble. My hamstring wasted no time in reminding me that it wasn’t 100%. But the adrenaline got me off the line and Justin and I began our race. I encouraged him not to look at his watch a few times in the first half mile. We saw a runner running the wrong way on a road next to the course and then pass us. I hoped he wasn’t cheating. <a href="http://www.runwashington.com/2017/10/22/mcm17men/" target="_blank">Turns out he and a bunch of other runners took a wrong turn almost immediately and had to backtrack</a>. I looked for my family as we went through Rosslyn. I was completely lost in that effort and was unaware of where I was on the course until my watch vibrated to alert me of the first mile—I’d forgotten to turn off autolap and did not even know where the mile marker was relative to that split. It gave me a 6:56 and we’d already passed the mark, so we were going too fast. We’d agreed that he should run over 7:00 for the first few miles BEFORE I got hurt, and here I was ruining his race plan. But then I saw my family with the Crafts, cheering at me in the crowd, and I forgot all about being off pace.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4giTOwaTd4UD0dH7V95chTJQphMQJPMuq59Hn-jG3D9_DsPv0-s3e0MYNfO65dNNOdhuFW9d83ZBMqPJft2wIlHcumh_zVvEnvys3I_c9U_W7tcdsGpnmSFRl4516ZJ9xvqOwP1UqZyBI/s1600/snip_20171105202948.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="299" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4giTOwaTd4UD0dH7V95chTJQphMQJPMuq59Hn-jG3D9_DsPv0-s3e0MYNfO65dNNOdhuFW9d83ZBMqPJft2wIlHcumh_zVvEnvys3I_c9U_W7tcdsGpnmSFRl4516ZJ9xvqOwP1UqZyBI/s200/snip_20171105202948.jpg" width="132" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">©MarathonFoto</td></tr>
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We started up the only significant hill of the race and were passing a lot of people, but getting passed by a lot of people too. I tried to slow down as the pain started to creep up, but we split a 6:44 second mile up the hill (again, GPS, not mile markers). And then things just sort of started to settle. Justin would run next to me or right behind me, we’d chat a little every once in a while, but we just kept running. I was hurting, but honestly it was less than it had hurt at all in the past week. I was bored to death with how slow we were going (no offense, rest of the world) and we just plugged along. I was looking around, taking in the sights of DC as Justin regaled me with tales of Marine Corps Marathons he’d spectated when his dad ran them, and I thought of my dad running this same race before I was born.<br />
<br />
I looked along the route at the spectators to see if I knew people, always looking for my family. There was one girl who I saw three times in the first nine miles. I told her that, too. I chatted with other racers as we grouped together. I did math in my head as we passed mile markers to get actual splits, but never touched my watch. I was actually starting to feel better—noticing my hamstring less, feeling more confident. KC and the kids had a great view of the course on some bridge (Rt-66) right around mile 10, and I waved up at them, smiling. I told Justin our gun time for 10-miles (I don’t remember what it was). He told me that his brain didn’t work anymore and asked me the pace. We were somewhere under 6:50 probably, but I felt ready to keep up the pace and he did not. So I consciously let go of him (from ahead of him) and just started to run. My GPS was more closely mirroring the clock splits, and I was running in the mid-sixes. My 11th mile was a 6:21. I thought that I could conservatively keep that up, and then maybe in the second half of the race get closer to six-flat or faster.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyM-4skpHb8R27bj0iIElnHpwlX99gzUvVX5DGdhtlfiYgspbtOFtUYEmRQxNgOpahk-pbB5y1dgt7beUdfzuxLp3yG7jaqRFtzuMRYw_9q1pEAHr6c-MlkiD5FGvBy7pv8KinQ68saOLE/s1600/snip_20171105203030.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="451" data-original-width="298" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyM-4skpHb8R27bj0iIElnHpwlX99gzUvVX5DGdhtlfiYgspbtOFtUYEmRQxNgOpahk-pbB5y1dgt7beUdfzuxLp3yG7jaqRFtzuMRYw_9q1pEAHr6c-MlkiD5FGvBy7pv8KinQ68saOLE/s200/snip_20171105203030.jpg" width="131" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">©<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">MarathonFoto</span></td></tr>
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<br />
I was wrong. 77 minutes in, I felt a pull. OK, too soon, I thought. Let’s back it down to 6:30-6:40, maybe group back up with Justin. Nope. For the next four minutes, I slowed down until I was running over 7-minute pace until I just had to stop. I came to a complete stop. Let’s review other times I’ve come to complete stops during a marathon:<br />
<div>
<ul>
<li>Boston 2004 – Had to go into a bathroom</li>
<li>Shamrock 2006 – Had to tie my shoe</li>
<li>Chicago 2009 – Had to stretch (twice)</li>
</ul>
Not a track records of success during those races. Tying my shoe wasn’t that big of a deal, but this didn’t bode well. I stretched, then got back on my way, briefly. Somehow, I managed to split 6:30 for the 12th mile, with walking. I did not stop my watch. I approached the Blue Mile, which the course website describes as “the emotional blue Mile of the course where fallen service members are commemorated in photographs along the roadway decorated with American Flags." What a place to have to walk through. Looking at those pictures, passing people standing every two feet holding up flags. There was nowhere for me to go but in the grass. I couldn’t walk on the road past all of those people. It was embarrassing. <br />
<br />
Justin had already passed me and I walked across the 20K mat. I was still in this race. Over the next nine minutes, I continued to attempt running, but it would only last for a few meters. I could not continue to run. But I knew I had to be looping back at some point, I just didn’t know the course well enough to know how far. It was over. I stopped my watch at 12.82 miles, after 90:43 of running.<br />
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I started my watch over for the walk that I was about to do in order to get back to my family. I walked for a few minutes until I got to the half way mark… somewhere around 96 minutes gun time. There were two spectators there—one kind enough to let me use his phone. I sent KC a text to let her know I was no longer running the race. For the next 55 minutes, I walked along the course. I took a gel, I took water, I almost took some Halloween candy, I almost took a mimosa, but I didn’t want to stand around drinking with their actual glass champagne glasses, nor did I want to take that with me. I was passed by thousands of people. People offered words of encouragement, trying to get me to continue. I saw other people stop to walk/stretch and jump back in. I tried to do the same, just to get this nightmare over with. But I couldn’t even jog two strides. Running was not an option. <br />
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Once I got off of the Hains Point area, I was excitedly looking for KC everywhere, but also growing more and more embarrassed as I walked along the course. Sometimes I popped up onto the sidewalk to get out of the way of the actual runners. I made sure to cross the timing mat at the 25K so that she’d get a text message to let her know I was still alive, but she didn’t—they only went out at the 10K and 20K. She’d planned to see me at 16, so I thought there was a chance that maybe they were walking towards me, but I also just thought that’s where I would find her. 16 was right around a 180-degree turn, and she was nowhere to be found. I borrowed my third and final cell phone, but this time to call her. She was at mile 16 too, we’d just missed each other. So, I kept walking.<br />
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We reunited somewhere after 16. She said I looked great, considering. I offered to keep walking the course (I only had 10 miles to go!) if they wanted to wait and I told her I was in high spirits, mostly because I’d already had an hour to be depressed and sad, now I just wanted to go home. I made a tough phone call to my mom, who was at the finish, to let her know that I wouldn’t be arriving by foot and apologize for wasting her day. We continued to walk along the course until past mile 17, where I officially dropped out of the race and we headed for the metro. Four words.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My GPS splits</td></tr>
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The metro station was a tough place to be. There were people walking around with their medals on from the 10K, and even a few people who had already finished the marathon. I was standing around in my racing kit, looking like an idiot. I came out and went to get my bag, and who should pop up but Justin! He was going to get his bag too, and said he’d had some watch issues so he wasn’t sure whether he was under three hours or not. I pulled my phone out of my bag, and the last text that I’d received was his finishing result, 2:59:53! We celebrated briefly before he announced his retirement from marathoning. His result made my day a whole lot better, and I felt less sad for myself.<br />
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We loaded up into the car, went to the hotel to pack, get lunch, and hit the road. While I was in the hotel room packing up, KC was in the car with the kids, who had fallen asleep. I came down to the lobby to find them all inside, because the car had started smoking and she had to get them out and shut it off. The day continued to get worse. Who gives a shit about dropping out of a marathon now? My mom called to tell me that my grandmother had taken a turn for the worse and probably wouldn’t make it much longer. Who gives a shit about dropping out of a marathon now?<br />
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Long story short, we got the car “fixed” after a brief wait ($$)—<a href="https://vatire.com/stores/virginia-tire-auto-of-springfield/" target="_blank">thank goodness there was a place open on a Sunday</a>! We had a stressful lunch, got to Fredericksburg to see my grandmother one last time (she passed away the following Wednesday morning at 92 years old), and I haven’t run in two weeks. I talked to a few people while I was waiting for the car to get fixed and KC was entertaining the kids in the hotel lobby/an ice cream place, and it’s all about perspective.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Internet is still waiting<br />for me to finish the race.</td></tr>
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Those four words though. It’s just a marathon. Well, now that it was over, I had new four words I was thinking about. <i>I’ll never drop out</i>. I’d given a lot of shit to people who dropped out of marathons. Sean. Alec. Rachel. Chris. Sean. I always said I wouldn’t. I told Charlie before that I wouldn’t line up if I didn’t think I could finish. If I started the race, I was going to finish it. Well you know what, I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I could NOT finish that race. I tried! And it wouldn’t have been worth it to walk from mile 11 to mile 26.2. What would that prove? That I’m a stubborn ass, probably. KC said she was proud of me for dropping out. That sounds silly, but it was the smart thing to do. The only thing to do, really. Am I eating crow? Absolutely. But there’s nothing I could do about it. And none of those people who I’ve given so much crap to have said a word to me (granted I don’t talk to any of them much anyway). But if they did, I’d welcome it.<br />
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I had some really good training until the end of September. It doesn’t matter what I thought I could run, but I was feeling good about it. Then I got sick, and I got injured. I did the absolute best I could to rehab and make it to the race healthy, but it wasn’t meant to be. Now I can say that I’ve dropped out of a marathon. <a href="http://www.runwashington.com/2017/10/30/dnf-not-falter/http://www.runwashington.com/2017/10/30/dnf-not-falter/" target="_blank">I’m in that club</a>. I’m embarrassed about it, but at the same time, I’m not, because I tried. I didn’t drop out because I was slowing down or I wasn’t feeling well. I could not run. Period. I probably shouldn’t have even lined up, but I would have never known. This way, I knew for sure and I have little regret.<br />
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2018 is going to be the year of the 5K. Take that as you will. I’ll come back to the marathon in 2019, somewhere. I have unfinished business at Marine Corps, but that may have to wait until another year.<br />
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I welcome any and all trash talk about me dropping out. I deserve it. Just say it to my face (or directly to me electronically)—that’s what I would do to you.</div>
Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-21347991465896378732016-11-20T16:31:00.002-05:002016-11-21T19:51:24.537-05:00All I do is winIt is the third weekend of November and I ran my third race of the month today, the Kelly Watt Memorial Race. My fall racing season has ended with a third place finish over the two mile cross country course. I'd consider the season a success. Today's race first:<br />
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The seriousness with which I approached this race was tremendously lacking compared to years past. Two years ago, the team was preparing for <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2014/12/losing-2014clubnats.html" target="_blank">Club Cross Country Nationals at Lehigh</a> and we did a 3 x mile workout prior to the race to get in a bunch of intervals on the grass. Last year, I probably arrived well in advance and warmed up adequately before hand, although I wasn't in the best of shape at the time as indicative of my adjusted racing schedule. This year, I didn't set an alarm, slept in (thank you, Sam & Henry), hung out with the family before realizing I needed to leave for the 9:00 AM race.</div>
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I briefly allowed myself to entertain the idea of winning today on my drive there. I didn't think that Sean was going to be there. Matt, Charlie and Thomas are all in Philadelphia getting ready to run the marathon tomorrow morning. Adrian and Alec had tried to psych me out earlier in the week about the fitness of the Albemarle boys XC team, but I'm not about to start worrying about what high school kids can do. But then I remembered that there were several other RMR guys who could show up-- namely Dave, Andy or Steve, and the moment was lost. Arriving at Panorama Farms though, Lee pulled in next to me and I knew for sure that I wouldn't be breaking the tape-- his miler kick had been my undoing many times before. With a marathon in my legs from a week ago and only one run since then, I knew that today was likely to have a similar result.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Saturdays are for cross country</td></tr>
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Lee and I had a very short warmup with Lindsey Graybill that was a few minutes too early for my liking. We finished and I had way too much time before the race was going to start. During that way too much period of time, Nick Ward came over to our pile of stuff and asked me what I was planning to go out in. I laughed a little and told him that I had no idea, but that I'd just run a marathon the week before so it might not be too fast. He said he'd heard about the marathon, but was hoping that someone would be going out fast, as in, 5:10 pace, so that he could go out with them but not have to lead. I definitely laughed in his face. Go out in 5:10? Me? Not today, my friend. I suggested that he talk to Lee, or see if maybe Sean was around and running, because I would be doing no such thing today. Nick meant business though, as the Western boys had run their annual post-season mile time trial and Nick went 4:34. Today's race was going to be the longest race of his life and the tipping point on whether he tried his hand at the 5K at Foot Locker South in a weeks time.<br />
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Everyone was trying to psych me out before this race, as even Lindsey was doing strides and drills getting ready to go to the line. I was just not in the mood for such seriousness. The weather was warming up and it was a perfect morning for a short little jaunt around Panorama.<br />
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After Kelly's best friend and mom gave their memorial speeches, we were off. As is typically the case, there were some eager beavers going hard out of the gate, and one of them actually started throwing some elbows at me as the path narrowed 200 meters in before the first turn. Nick was doing exactly what he wanted to do/didn't want to do and got out hard and built a sizable lead immediately. I made my way around the turn and found myself running in 6th place behind Nick, three children, and Lee. I decided to hug the rail on the left side and try to run the shortest path possible, and found myself breathing easier than I did on the warm up, so I thought I'd make a go of it. Just like two weeks before in the <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2016/11/mens-4-miler-5-days-to-go.html" target="_blank">Men's 4 Miler</a>, I found myself running on the left side of a crowd with Lee running on the right, the two of us working off of each other, striding along effortlessly.<br />
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I saw Cass on the course taking pictures (two out of three photo credits go to him) and a couple of other folks cheering, including Beth Keith, librarian TA at Cale and mother of Monticello runner Eli. I'd talked a lot of trash over the last year and a half to Eli and the other Mustang Harriers, so a trio of them came today to try and take down this old man. I gather that Eli must've been close to me somewhere in the first 800 meters as I heard Beth cheer his name while I was approaching her. He was not one of the three who went out in front of me though.<br />
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It look a little longer to pass all those kids than I thought it would, but then it was just me and Lee, chasing down Nick. As we continued to head away from the start/finish area, I mentioned to him that it looked like we were gaining on him. Lee agreed, and we focused on trying to reel him in. I knew in my heart of hearts that I wasn't going to be beating either of these guys today, but I might as well hold on for the wild ride for as long as I could. Lee and I kept moving up and back on each other... not necessarily surging, just doing a better job on different parts of the terrain than the other one. There was no mark for the mile on the course. I had an idea about where it was, but not enough confidence to bother looking at my watch ever. We just kept pressing on.<br />
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Around a mile and half in (maybe), we take two 90 degree turns to the left. This is when Nick had the opportunity to see how much ground he had on us, and when Lee decided he wanted to cut the course. He was right behind me as I took the first left, but then he was right on top of me because he was treating it like a cone instead of two turns. (I filled an official protest after the race to Adrian Lorenzoni but I think it fell on deaf ears. Not really.) This part of the course is fast and downhill, so Lee started to separate in his effort to catch Nick. I didn't have a whole lot to give at that point so I just leaned in and tried not to fall as I rolled down the hills. We hit the bottom of the course and the stream that's probably a quarter mile to go and then headed straight uphill to the finishing stretch.<br />
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Nick and Lee were clear 1-2 at that point, and I'm sorry to say that I looked back going up the hill to see that I had a lot of ground on #4. The question as just about who was going to break the tape first. I entered the gate to the last 200 (thousand) meters and watched the race unfold like a freakin' spectator. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Lee couldn't quite catch Nick and I just strolled on in, losing so much ground on Lee that Alec was shocked to hear that I'd even been with him at the mile. I finished in like, 10:46 or something like that, only a few seconds slower than I was last year.<br />
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Maybe I had the wrong attitude in thinking that I wasn't going to beat either of those guys, but I know my body right now isn't going to let me do those sorts of things. This was my second run post-marathon and I was just happy to get it in. I had a lot of fun, got to see some friends I don't see as often as I would like (Lee, Lindsey, Nick, Cass), and got my heart rate up for about 10 minutes. My (sanctioned) racing season is officially over for 2016. As I've mentioned before, I'll run the Turkey Trot with KC (CASE RACE AGAINST TEAM RESNICK!) and then I think I'll celebrate Boxing Day three days early with my friends.<br />
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Somber reflections of the year to come in about 6-8 weeks.</div>
Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-84719809888951276962016-11-15T21:53:00.004-05:002016-11-16T07:15:08.054-05:00RVA AFTERMATHmaticsI got a little fatigued in that last blog post, wrapping up the Richmond Marathon. I'd written up to mile 21 in one day and the last 5 miles the next, so I apologize if there was a lack of <i>continuity</i>. I just wanted to get it done, honestly. The race and the write-up. So I'll wrap up some of the minutiae here: I finished in 19th place, 5th in my age group. I averaged 6:05 pace. I've run 9 marathons faster than I did on Saturday, and placed higher than 19th in 7 marathons. Richmond was the 15th marathon that I've run. It is the third marathon I've run since becoming a father, and the first one since becoming a father of two.<br />
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<b>Up</b><br />
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I said I had mixed feelings about the race, and maybe I didn't go into enough detail about that. I am generally happy with the way that I ran. I was patient during the first 17 miles, got after it during the last 10K to pass just about everyone, almost running with reckless abandon. It felt like racing, which is not a feeling I've had before at the end of a marathon... strength. I enjoyed it. I ran a decent negative split, which hopefully will net me a new pair of <a href="http://blog.strava.com/back-half-challenge/" target="_blank">New Balance shoes courtesy of Strava</a>. I was smart and was able to finish strong (<i>ish</i>) at the end because of it. I got under my time goal of 2:39:59 with several seconds to spare.<br />
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Additionally, Matt ran great. He was a little banged up coming into the race, skipping the Men's 4 Miler and a couple of other workouts around it. Alec and I were really worried that Matt killed his chances with our 12 mile tempo at Riverview, because things were looking really bad for him for a while after that. But he took care of himself, listened to his legs, and showed up on race day. Maybe he was a little over his time goal (I'm disappointed to say I'm not 100% on what it was), but he ran a massive PR. His wife said afterwards that it was a great success because they weren't going to the emergency room (which has happened in the past.) That's certainly one way of looking at it, but either way he did a good job and I'm proud of him.<br />
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<b>Down</b><br />
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But then there is Alec. All jokes about not finish the race aside, I'm just sad that my friend had a tough day and walked away disappointed. I've run marathons with guys who had a bad run before. Hell, I've been that guy a bunch of times (Chicago 2009, Outer Banks 2009, Twin Cities 2010, Boston 2015) and it sucks. But usually those guys finished the race and just ran slowly. It's another beast when you can't get to the finish line. And it's not like he ran like an idiot like some people I know who consistently drop out of marathons for going out too fast. We were doing what we were supposed to do-- running controlled and hitting the paces. It just wasn't in the cards that day for him.<br />
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<b>Up</b><br />
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Back on the positive side of things (wait for it, it's coming), I ran a few seconds slower than the Three Bridges Marathon. The point of that race was to run under 2:45 and I ended up going faster than necessary and running 2:39:44. When I realized that on Saturday or Sunday (re: looked it up), I was pissed. How did I not run faster this time? I only trained to run 2:45 then, and this time I was shooting for a faster time! Well today I realized a couple of those reasons but the number #1 difference to look at is this: During the 3BM, I broke my foot at mile 17. I FELT IT BREAK during the race! I couldn't walk for a week and was in a boot for months after that. It was awful. Thinking about Richmond, I walked away sore but pain free. I was ready to go running Sunday (didn't) and actually ran this morning. No boot. No break. Just tight and sore. So who cares about 7 seconds? I can run tomorrow morning if I want to.<br />
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<b>Left Right A B A B Start</b><br />
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So what is next? People always ask that after a big race. I wonder if the 5K Weekend Warriors get that a lot too. I'm not signing up for another marathon this week, if that's what people are wondering. I'm going to run the <a href="http://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/the-dangers-of-running-in-the-heat" target="_blank">Kelly Watt</a> Memorial 2 Mile on Saturday morning at Panorama. I love racing on the grass and definitely plan to spike up, regardless of how embarrassing it will be. I'll probably still beat Alec though. Although this is his chance at redemption-- I've got an extra 9 miles in my legs that he doesn't have. I'm going to run the Turkey Trot in FXBG with KC on Thanksgiving. Then I just want to stay in some semblance of shape through the winter and keep the injury bug away. The Charlottesville 10 Miler will be in March and I'd like to run that without worrying about <a href="http://edge.raceresults360.com/rr360/race/pEHM3y/#/results::1479264253610" target="_blank">Rachel catching me at the line</a>. Then who knows? There's always the White Whale. Maybe I can train for that. I'll be 34 years old then, but that's still plenty young. I mean, geez, Matt Boyd is about to get second place overall in the FARC Grand Prix... anything is possible in this day and age. I'm definitely going back to Mekong to get some more crispy pork spring rolls.<br />
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For the first time in a while though, I definitely mean it when I say it: Onwards and upwards.Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-11283338978459657982016-11-14T22:28:00.000-05:002016-11-14T22:28:10.892-05:00New Spring Roll PRThe Richmond Marathon is over, and I have mixed emotions about it. I ran the time that I intended to run, but everything didn't go the way it was expected to go. When Matt, Alec and I started talking about this race a year ago, the goal was for the two of them to PR. I don't know what Alec's PR is. His first marathon was in San Francisco and I think he decided to do it on a whim, qualified for Boston, and then dropped out. I think there was a third attempt somewhere but I don't remember where. Matt's was well over three hours after several attempts, but after running with him for roughly a year and a half, it was clear he was capable of greater things. So we all agreed to run this race and train for it together, with me promising to hold Alec's hand all the way through the line to run sub 2:30, and Matt somewhere well back of that but far below the three hour barrier.<br />
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Then life happened. Multiple babies were born. Injuries, family complications, travel, work, etc. Life just happened all over the place for all three of us. So we reigned in our goals: Alec and I would run to break 2:40, Matt at 2:45. It was a conservative goal for the former, despite the fact that I was in awful shape entering the fall, and Matt's was probably spot on-- but still a very significant jump from what he'd done previously and one that would require a lot of mental preparation to do something that just seems so <i>fast</i> comparative to past performances.</div>
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Those guys got into great shape. Alec was pushing workouts that I conceded to prior to even starting them, and Matt was there every step of the way with him. Naturally, when some guys are doing well and others are not, trash talk ensues, and this situation was no different. But it was all in jest and I was happy that my friends were excited about the race and motivated to do well in it. But then life just kept happening. All three of us got sick the week of the race, mostly because our family members were sick (yes, I am blaming our children on getting us sick) and because the pneumonia weather (very cold in the AM, very warm in the PM) started with November. But it made no difference. I'd run sick before, running one of my better half-marathons with a fever, pumped full of antibiotics, and after an 18-mile long run the day before. I knew I could run long while under the weather.</div>
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<i>Fine Scott, I'll get on with it...</i></div>
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Race morning comes and we're in the car at 5:15 AM headed East (ECFU) to Richmond. It was only the second time I've slept in my own bed before a marathon, but I definitely liked it. We made a quick pit-stop at Aw Shucks for the bathroom, hit up my sister-in-law's house to grab our packets (thanks Kim, although I know you'll never read this!), another bathroom break at a WaWa for Princess Alec, and parked at my "secret" parking spot on Old 14th Street. Mark was supposed to be waiting for us in the lobby of the Marriott to take my GU and Alec's water bottles, so we headed off to the bag drop and to find some bathrooms. It was very cold and we were running a little behind schedule of where I wanted to be so I was trying to move fast. The lines for the portapotties were unreal, so we went into the Sheraton. I knew that they had a lot of bathrooms available after staying there a few times before, but I was unprepared for what it was like inside of that building. The line for the men's room on Floor 1 was insanely long, and they were using both the men's and women's restrooms on Floor 0 for women. I'd pretty much left Alec and Matt at this point (they weren't planning on warming up or going back to the car and I was) and I decided I'd just pee there (I couldn't wait) and then do whatever else I needed to do later on the warm up. The urinal line was nonexistent and I was relieved. But then no one was using the last three stalls for some reason so I just took the opportunity to hop on in.</div>
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I left the Sheraton with about 15 minutes to spare as they were starting the half marathon. I needed to get to the car, change into my racing gear, and get back up to 5th and Grace for the start of my own race. I got to the car and was able to leisurely prepare, but then hurried my way back to the line with just moments to spare before we started. I found my way through the crowd to the Renegades, where Alec was distraught because his dad never showed up at the Marriott. That means that I was going to be carrying 2 extra GUs, he was going to be carrying two extra bottles, and he had to leave his favorite vest on the ground and it would be gone and lost forever. On top of all of that, his watch had frozen and he wasn't going to be able to use it. Not exactly the way we wanted to be feeling when the gun was about to go off, but those were the cards we were dealt. He ended up carrying all those bottles while I stored my extra rations in my gloves (unpleasant but not the worst thing that could have happened.)</div>
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<b>The actual marathon</b><br />
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The gun went off, we wished Matt well, and went about our work. Because I'm an idiot and I love data, I decided that I wanted to wear my heart rate monitor in this race, which promptly fell off 200 meters into the race. Since I still had on two extra layers on top of an extra pair of gloves and a hat, it didn't fall to the ground, but I did have to spend a ridiculous moment trying to put it back on. We were looking for Alec's dad (never saw him) and also for Tim Young, very distracted and frustrated, while also trying not to run too fast. I checked the instantaneous pace for the first of two times in the race to see we were crawling along at 7-minute pace, so we picked it up as I shed all my extra stuff and we settled in for the long haul.</div>
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Tim texted me during the week to ask if I was running the full. He was coming down to watch his girlfriend run the marathon and his boyfriend (Stephen Harrison) run the half, and needed to get in a long run. So his plan was to find us somewhere after the start and run around 6-minute pace with us through 16 miles. Awesome. Except we never saw him! I assured Alec that he'd appear any minute, and that it would be easy for him to catch us. I sort of expected him to come at us from the front as he'd realize we weren't ahead of him and just wait for us, but that's not what happened. So Alec and I just focused on running straight and relaxing for the beginning of the race. It was super windy as we headed down Broad and then Monument, and there were tiny little pockets of runners all in front of us. The half marathon crowd next to us had started 15 minutes earlier and were still making their way to the 5K mark on the right side of the road. </div>
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We talked a lot in the past few weeks, and this last week in particular, about what paces we were going to run to start. I'm always a big fan of a uber-conservative race strategy and originally pleaded the case to run 6:30 for the first three miles. Nothing comes without controversy, however, and we finally settled on more of a 6:30-6:15-6:10 approach. Alec looked at the elevation profile for the course and mapped out the times for every mile and three-mile segment along the way. I joked about him carrying the piece of paper with him in the race, when in reality he could have just <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2016/11/pace-bands.html" target="_blank">written it on his arm</a>. But our first 3 miles were perfect. We ran 6:29, 6:16, 6:10 down Broad and Monument. But then I got a little aggressive. Moving onto some side streets and just getting tired of the wind blowing in face, I pushed us too fast and too early to a 6:03 and a 6:05. Alec expressed his disappointment and I deliberately and drastically slowed to a 6:17 on a solid "uphill" mile. Not quite the 18:30 he wanted to do, but life is all about compromise. We went through the 10K in 38:44, just ahead of the 39 minutes he'd told his wife, Lawren.</div>
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We saw a few people on the side of the road cheering each of our names, and I remarked to Alec that we were each getting a pretty even spread of names. We realized that our bibs actually had names on them (but Alec's said "Zoni,"), so anyone who called his name actually knew him, and mine may have just been relying on the name tag. I told him we should have been keeping track along the way.</div>
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<b>Just a regular run</b><br />
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I don't know what prompted me to turn around on the 7th mile, which was our first real big downhill, but Tim was there! He told us that he'd gotten stuck behind the four hour runners but ran a bunch of 5:30 miles to catch us. People apparently were yelling at him to "respect the distance, young man" as he went flying by them during the first 10K. The audacity of some people... Having Tim join us was fantastic. It tremendously dropped my stress level (which was never that high), because from miles 7-15, it was just like any other day of my life from 2009-2012 running with a friend on a cold morning. We talked about all the same crap that we usually do-- FCPS, FARC, how his youngest sister is smarter than the rest of his family combined, etc. I almost completely forgot that I was running a marathon, save for the fact that I was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that my left calf was getting pretty sore, I had a stitch in my left side, and my abs felt like they'd been on the receiving end of a boxing match (not quite like I needed to use the bathroom but not quite like I didn't... I don't know.) We started to pick up a nice little group too, with 4-5 other guys benefitting at some point from the fact that we had a 2:14 guy setting the tempo with a 2:26 guy as we ran 2:42 pace. We covered 7-10 in 6:07, 6:08, 6:10, 6:11. That seems like the wrong progression, but we were steadily going uphill.</div>
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Alec, though, was not feeling too good. I noticed that was we started to pick it up, he started to fall off a little bit. We'd dropped everyone else in the group save for one VT guy (who originally was ahead of us but stopped to pee before Tim joined and latched on for a while.) I realized we were a) going too fast and b) losing Alec, so I told Tim we needed to drop back and I told the Hokie that it was going to happen. He wished us well and went on his way ahead as we closed mile 11 and 12 in 6:03 and 6:04. Definitely too fast at the point, especially given where we were on the course.</div>
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Alec regrouped with us, telling us that we didn't have to wait for him and we hit mile 13 in 6:15. I may have been waiting for him, true, but I also didn't want to run low 6-0s at that point in the race yet. He'd heard from someone (I think 10 people on LetsRun) that Richmond was a fast course if you could make it to mile 18 feeling good, and that from there it was all fast and flat. I excitedly declared that we were right where we wanted to be as we hit the half marathon in 81:10 (my plan was to run between 81-82 minutes.) He agreed but said he wasn't planning on feeling as bad as he did at that pace, and I agreed with him too. Miles 14-15 were a nice downhill stretch as we gathered ourselves to run across the James River, and we covered them in 6:02 and 6:09. Getting on the bridge, Tim told us to tuck in and he'd lead the way. I do love Tim but he is not big enough to block the wind for me. But we crossed the bridge in single file nonetheless. This was the second time that I checked the instantaneous pace and my Garmin said that we were doing 7:10 pace. Tim's said 6:05 (or was it 6:30) and we have the same exact watch, so I call it a wash.</div>
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That bridge took forever though. It was probably the longest part of the race up to that point. We covered it in a 6:19, which is pretty good compared to what Alec wanted at 6:15, considering how windy it was out there. I'd been thinking about giving Tim my gloves when he dropped but after crossing through all that wind I decided I needed to keep them, no matter how wet they were from all the water stops. Alec thanked Tim for a fantastic job getting us across the river (like Washington crossing the Delaware) as we briefly returned to town. I saw one of my former UVA students and waved at her. She called out my name and not Alec's despite the fact that he probably coached her at Albemarle too. One point for me.</div>
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That would be the last point we could keep track of. We headed off towards mile 17, where Mark should be waiting for us. I asked Alec if he was going to yell at his dad when we saw him and got no answer. Tim said he'd stay with us until he saw some street names he recognized and went almost all the way to 17. Mark appeared with someone I didn't know and also Karen Pulliam (I'm sure that was coincidence) and started asking Alec if he needed any water or gels. I looked over to see this other guy sprinting alongside of us next to with a bottle and a gel. Marked yelled to ask if he wanted the water poured on his head. I joked to Tim that it was 30 degrees out and no one would want water poured on them. </div>
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He'd been talking to me for the past few minutes about catching the next two or three people in front of us over the final miles of the race. There was a group of four that we could see pretty close by that included the Hokie kid, and then two more people pretty far ahead of them. Tim suggested that Alec and I work up to one group at a time, sit on them a little bit and then go on to the next one. I assured him that I'd pass everyone who I could see. He pealed off and then it was just the two of us. I turned back to Alec, who was a few feet behind me, and told him to come up with me, as we were running the same pace so we might as well run together. He may have tried, I don't know, but I said it again. He told me to go on ahead without him as we got to the 17th mile in 6:06.</div>
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<b>Picking up the pieces</b><br />
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Then I was alone. This was a long stretch of road on West Main Street that then turned right onto Boulevard for an eternity. The group of four had splintered, and I quickly passed a woman who'd been dropped hard. The Hokie was the next in my sight. I knew that we'd be crossing the bridge by the Diamond and could see the top of the bridge in the distance (miles away), so I took that that tangent as best I could in the sunlight while everyone I could see was hugging the right over in the shade. If they'd been running in a group, I could have understood it, because it was very windy again, but they were all alone and there was no shelter from the headwind. It made no sense to me. But this is where things got out of hand, a little bit. I was excited to be past the James and on the back half, and I started picking it up. Too much. Passing the Hokie, I ran 5:58 for the 18th mile. I crossed Broad Street and set my sights on the next runner, a woman (she was in 2nd). Moving up to her, I got to 19th in 5:52. A little too hot, too early.</div>
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I passed her going over the bridge and moved down it pretty quickly to catch the next guy. He was wearing a maroon jersey (turned out to be VT as well) and was the first guy I've seen on the course taller than me. After that last mile, I decided I should listen to Tim and actually sit back for a little bit, so having this jolly giant ahead of me gave me the perfect opportunity to hide from the headwind. I had a hard time settling down though and actually clipped his heals once. I apologized and was feeling very light hearted. As we worked towards mile 20, there were two other people in front of me that I was thinking about: one short dude wearing a pink shirt (I'd thought he was a woman 13 miles before) and another dude in neon yellow. Otherwise I was thinking about a total time when I got to 20. Part of my brain was thinking about some of my lower faster races being well under two hours at twenty miles, and another part was thinking about the <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2013_12_01_archive.html" target="_blank">3 Bridges Marathon</a>, where got to 20 in <strike>right at two hours</strike> in 2:02:51(I looked it up, I was wrong. I also thought I ran a lot faster that day than I did. Oops.) and decided to see if I could run under 40 minutes for the last 10K to break 2:40. Yesterday at 20, I was 2:03:04 after running 6:10 behind my wind block.</div>
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This was depressing news. As I just said, I thought I ran a lot faster at 3 Bridges than I really did. I thought I ran 2:36 or something. That race was just a formality, trying to run under 2:45 to get a Boston Qualifier so that I could get from <a href="https://youtu.be/bsbG1Yn9fWo" target="_blank">Logan to the Government Center</a> in 2015. Yesterday I thought I was over 3 minutes slower through twenty than I was that day in Whitehall. So I tossed away my "pie in the sky" goal of 2:37:21 (if you want to know why that specific number, feel free to ask.) But slowing to a 6:10 was unacceptable, and I was chomping at the bit to get into this last 10K. We had merged with the half marathon course a few miles back but I actually caught the last three participants here. I'd had a little trouble getting my last GU down, so I decided to start earlier with #3 in an effort to use the whole thing. The half runners took some left somewhere to do a loop before popping out in a neighborhood right where the marathon 21-mile marker was.</div>
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The road was coned in the middle and marathon runners were supposed to be on the left, but I was taking the tangents anywhere I could and some spots were full of half runners, no matter what side I was on. Getting to the water stop at 21 (first one at an odd mile-- they'd be at every mile the rest of the way), I pointed to the first water guy to let him know I was coming to him, as I'd done at every single stop and always do. Reaching my hand up to take the cup from him, I heard laughing and saw another volunteer sprinting at me with a cup in his hand and basically shoving his cup right in front of my hand as I was about to grab the other guy's cup. Both cups fell to the ground and I had nothing! I tried to get another cup of water from later people but they'd all given them to the half marathoners and were reloading, so I got nothing! I was pissed, and the guys were laughing about it, so I said something less than pleasant to them. Of course all of this happened in an instant, and I was stuck with cold, dry chocolate-mouth. Ridiculous. I've seen little kids fight over who gets to give a cup to a runner, but these guys were adults.<br />
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In my frustration, I missed the 21st mile split. Realizing that, I took a split late. 6:09. Good Lord how fast was I going? I don't know how far behind the sign I was, but this had me pretty excited. The pink shirt was getting really close, although I seemed to be having a hard time actually making much ground up on him for a while. There were some rolling hills and turns in this nice little neighborhood we were running through, but I was worried about the lateral motion as my legs were starting to feel the pavement. I just tried to focus and move up. Luckily, someone had started to set up their own water table and I was able to snag a cup to wash down my GU. But I was starting to lose my mind...<br />
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We were either on Fauquier Avenue or Brock Road, and things were getting narrow. There was a median and both races were on the same side. Crowds were loud and supportive, there was a beer table, candy, soda, wet towels, all sorts of things. As I ran by one group of people standing in the median, a shorter girl with straight, blonde hair wearing a beanie and holding a baby cheered my name. "Anne! What are you doing here," I thought. "This isn't mile 22!" I was so rude and focused, I didn't even notice my own sister standing right in front of me. Later though, I heard someone yelling from 50 yards in front of me, "My brother is coming! Everyone cheer for Bert!" So no, apparently that wasn't Anne, and I didn't miss her. I was so out of it. Passing Anne, she told me that I was in the top-20 and I asked her to call KC. I don't know what exactly I wanted her to say to KC, probably just to tell her I was alive, but that's all I could muster at that point. Call my wife. KC later confirmed that Anne did in fact call her, and had no idea what she was supposed to be telling her.<br />
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<b>Racing</b><br />
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I don't know if I passed the pink shirt before I got to my sister or after, but my short mile 22 split was a spicy 5:43. So either way, I'd run 11:53 for 2 miles and gotten back on track under 6-minute pace after sitting behind the giant Hokie at mile 20. There was one more guy right in front of the pink shirt, wearing neon yellow, and I rolled by him too before taking a dangerously painful turn onto Lombardy Street. It was starting to occur to me that I was running out of miles to run, and I had a lot of race left in my legs with guys that I could see and still catch. I ran through a traffic circle and almost got hit by a pedestrian who wasn't paying attention before spotting my friend Sarah walking the half marathon with her brother and sister-in-law. I yelled at her and she told me that I was slow. Thanks, Sarah. That's what I get for being friendly. But that me think about being slow for a second and I wondered where the 23rd mile marker was. I glanced at my watch to see a high seven-minute time... damn, I missed it again. I decided not to take this split until I got to 24-- a time of 7:50 and 3:50 would make no sense to my brain, but I could still compute 2-mile times.<br />
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I passed Mark and Karen (again, strange coincidence) again, and Mark asked me where Alec was. I think I tried to shout out some gibberish, but only managed really to shrug my shoulders to him. Getting ready to take one of the last few turns in the race onto Grace Street, another person got right in my face and yelled at me. I had no idea who it was. No. Clue. But I loved having my name printed on my bib-- it was very helpful in making people yell at you. This turn was TOUGH, and I took it pretty wide (the least tangential part of the race for me probably) but swallowed up two guys immediately afterwards. There was just one more that I could see close to me, and I knew this part of the course. I've run the 8k here a bunch of times and knew what was in store for me-- long, straight stretches of flat or downhill road, with three more turns to take. And here comes mile 24... gotta get that two-mile split: 11:44. Shit. I'm going to die.<br />
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No, you're not going to die, drama queen. This was 2:26:40 into the race. I should be finished by now. You're running the Richmond Marathon. You've barely trained for it. This is nothing. You're not even running fast. I ran 11:19 for miles 23-24 in <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2012/10/chicagomarathon.html" target="_blank">Chicago 2012</a>. In a different vein though, I only ran 12:31 from 23-24 in <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2015/04/2015-bostonmarathon.html" target="_blank">Boston</a> last year. So I guess I was moving a little bit for an old man.<br />
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Those last two miles were a blur, honestly. It was all about run straight and don't fall over. We had some mostly downhill rolling terrain. I passed one more guy right before mile 25 and there was no one left in sight. I did what I told Tim I would do, catch everyone I could see. I hit that penultimate marker in 5:55 and felt a huge pull in my groin area, predominately the left side. Focus. Breathe. You're fine, you've done this plenty of times. Just hug the rail and get it done. I took those three turns gingerly, just trying to stay upright. Then came the downhill.<br />
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I told Alec that if we were together at this point in the race, he'd probably put two minutes on me. The old course had an aggressive downhill finish on Cary Street. I've run my 8k PR on that course twice. You could fly on it. But this finish down to Brown's Island is <i>scary</i>. I'd say I've been a mediocre downhill runner in my day, but I just want to talk down this thing. Back in 2004-05, I used to repeat some quote, I don't know from where, about how "seventeen miles of downhill running (in Boston) will turn your quads into hamburger meat." Well, a quarter mile down S. 5th St. to Brown's Island will do the same thing. I told myself I wasn't going to look at my split when I got to mile 26, because really, what's the point? You're already there. Nothing is going to make a difference at that point in the race. It's the same thing in a 5K. Why look at your watch when you're at mile 3 when you can probably see the finish line? I always had to remind myself of that as I came around Pitt Street onto Sophia.<br />
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But I don't know what I did. Looking at my split right now to write this, I was surprised to see that it was a 6:02. That leads me to believe I didn't look. What I do know, though, is that when I ran over whatever blue mat they had on the ground so that photographers could take pictures of you from above over something that said "Richmond Marathon," my quads gave out. I hopped a few strides and almost came to a complete stop. I managed, though, to grimace through it (apparent in the photos) and basically roll down the hill to the finish line. I definitely shook my head in disapproval when I saw the clock ticking along to stop at 2:39:51 when I finished, though I'm not entirely sure why. I knew that's what I was going to run, it certainly wasn't a big surprise.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnSoDvcB_ohxKR8RXLee3rV6xMIGiqfv94Y1fRoNJ6uQtsdT-el0kDRaxkY8pbZe3dDwa-BVI8_1C1nMxOHWwi4hCdNWJHxkbsx5Q52W5-b-CnRKaJvJhaJyiwobMtIwW1-kHSE0uNFRzj/s1600/Pain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnSoDvcB_ohxKR8RXLee3rV6xMIGiqfv94Y1fRoNJ6uQtsdT-el0kDRaxkY8pbZe3dDwa-BVI8_1C1nMxOHWwi4hCdNWJHxkbsx5Q52W5-b-CnRKaJvJhaJyiwobMtIwW1-kHSE0uNFRzj/s400/Pain.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pained look courtesy of Marathonfoto. Please don't sue.</td></tr>
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<b>It's over</b><br />
<br />
So I finished this thing after all. I stood around the line for a minute, struggling to move with my quads locking up, before someone realized what was about to happen and propped me up. Two volunteers continued to encourage me to walk to the right and exist the area, but I politely declined to wait for my friends. I was thirsty though, so I asked someone from the medical tent if I could have a bottle of water. She acquiesced and I just hung out for a while, waiting. Where was Alec? I started to see some of the runners I'd dispatched coming in, hoping to see my friends soon. The girl I passed around the Diamond came in, 2nd place female overall. Ugh, that's disappointing. When they finished interviewing her, I asked one of the reporters what the winning woman ran, but they didn't know. I'd seen no signs of her, so it was obviously well ahead of me. That's not something I'd considered happening today...<br />
<br />
I asked to borrow a telephone from a stranger waiting on the other side of the fence so that I could call KC. Our call was brief, I let her know that I'd finished, because then Matt came in. 2:48:05! Holy crap, Matt! That was a HUGE PR! 17 minutes! Oh man, I was pumped for him. I hung up on KC and went to congratulate him, and we both asked each other where Alec was. Oh no. Matt never passed him. He dropped.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVshp_4S581wIaqnLSYjYoYeHmTzvtejTsH9j-6HZzkAPDTP75bXnIx3dfqtua9ziBJz0B8ObxX-SOWimlb4LoUV1yUoHbKqqLWE2WTycAomtw26qLEgEtn-Fa1oMaHOxjeRexB6r71cFA/s1600/IMG_0899.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVshp_4S581wIaqnLSYjYoYeHmTzvtejTsH9j-6HZzkAPDTP75bXnIx3dfqtua9ziBJz0B8ObxX-SOWimlb4LoUV1yUoHbKqqLWE2WTycAomtw26qLEgEtn-Fa1oMaHOxjeRexB6r71cFA/s200/IMG_0899.JPG" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Non-quitters</td></tr>
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Alec, I know you're reading this (or Rachel is reading it to you at work), but it was like Trump had won the election all over again. I just walked sadly through the chute. Medal, Hat, Blanket, whatever. Garbage. We ran into Joel though, and got our picture taken with him. It should have been you. Ugh. On to the bag check, we decided to get your bag so we could at least give it to your family at your funeral. I had 54 text messages on my phone from all the people I'd set it up to track (and then I think I got everything twice for some reason). It took me about 20 minutes to get clothes on, mostly because I have a hard time putting on compression socks when I <i>haven't</i> run for 2.5+ hours, so this was extra challenging. But we got going and found Matt's wife, I inhaled a piece of pizza and chatted with some friends (Skeeter was there and ran 2:35 with only a 12-mile long run leading up to it. Although that is deceptive because he was in shape enough a month ago to drop out of Chicago). This part of the story is really boring and I should just skip to the happier parts soon. We got in touch with Alec through his wife's cell phone. He'd stopped right after I left him, but he will tell you his story in a guest post soon. They were debating going straight home to Charlottesville or participating in our post-race lunch at <a href="http://mekongisforbeerlovers.com/" target="_blank">Mekong</a>. This was probably the most upsetting part of the day up to that point... how DARE he threaten to skip Mekong!?!? This is what the whole thing was all about, I thought, was to get us all down in Richmond and eat pork spring rolls and drink sour beers until our stomachs exploded! No way was he skipping Mekong!<br />
<br />
He agreed, knowing that his day could only get better with a belly full of crispy pork goodness, and we all decided to converge on this Vietnamese paradise. It took me about 17 hours to walk back to my car, though I managed to get a pretty picture of Tim Kaine's old house to commemorate my trip to the State's capital. Alec kept calling and texting, as he was getting cold and impatient, fearing that his child might explode at any moment. But hey, I wasn't the one who'd changed the plan and skipped out on our meet-up at Brown's Island. No sympathy here, pal! I shared my location with him so that he'd know where I was relative to arriving, but I sort of forgot that his phone was in his bag, which was with Matt... oops. He texted me as I entered the parking lot asking for my ETA. 10 seconds, Alec. Calm down.<br />
<br />
<b>To the victors (and the dropouts) go the spoils</b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYBjtrDujbzCd75rwjDbyjBbvzdRKpO31obCER31OIHmH3HwQox8T2tjrpzfINeLYB8nvxO91talIzSgAVzGS3zpgaG3qVD3PHauqm5TCa8RsvXm8W_8IVCTp7tzRH3lA8UkirnNviYTAv/s1600/IMG_0901.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYBjtrDujbzCd75rwjDbyjBbvzdRKpO31obCER31OIHmH3HwQox8T2tjrpzfINeLYB8nvxO91talIzSgAVzGS3zpgaG3qVD3PHauqm5TCa8RsvXm8W_8IVCTp7tzRH3lA8UkirnNviYTAv/s200/IMG_0901.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I took a bite first, sorry Instagram</td></tr>
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Well, Mekong was amazing. I only ate two spring rolls (I did just eat a piece of pizza) and ordered some entree that was pretty good, but I will definitely be going back there. They had an extensive beer menu (though I doubt I'd like 80% of them) and delicious spring rolls and dumplings. I'd need someone to help me with picking out an entree again (I was criticized when I was going to order fried rice), but it was a cool place. There were lots of other families there with kids, but the acoustics must have been top-notch because I couldn't hear a single person in that place besides our table. Mark called Alec to find out if he was alive and then wanted to talk to each of us. As I am the son that he wishes he'd had, he was very excited to remind me that I barely ran 6:08 pace for 10 miles seven weeks ago, and here I was able to run 6:05 pace for 26.2. I don't know if that speaks more to how badly out of shape I was at the Lynchburg VA 10 Miler or how much better I am at the marathon than anything else. But either way, it's a positive way to look at things.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis8EicoI22o6LFN-y6mAE7DFv52OKD3JwMfg-DoIM7Q4689g9zUhUu3SUul2Zf9TcTxxpMB3FTcQAQ41U1d4qCUN1EteworIJDMsyHvcFOQmlg-m4uHyHPTaEbg2pD8gJ5ZSy-lrWssFyE/s1600/IMG_0902.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis8EicoI22o6LFN-y6mAE7DFv52OKD3JwMfg-DoIM7Q4689g9zUhUu3SUul2Zf9TcTxxpMB3FTcQAQ41U1d4qCUN1EteworIJDMsyHvcFOQmlg-m4uHyHPTaEbg2pD8gJ5ZSy-lrWssFyE/s200/IMG_0902.JPG" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Weirdos</td></tr>
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Back off the phone, I couldn't eat any more. I drank my beer, but couldn't finish my food. #workoutstomach. The group decided to disband, agreeing to never see or speak to each other ever again. Just kidding. Alec tried to ride home with me but his wife wouldn't let him. Later that evening, we were talking about drinking together but I don't think any one of us had the strength to leave the house. I wanted to go running the next day, but as usual, life got in the way. Now it's late Monday night and I have to run tomorrow morning to pick up my car from some far away place before work. Better get to bed. No time to proof read.<br />
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Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-28582180848597015142016-11-08T21:41:00.000-05:002016-11-08T21:41:50.233-05:00Pace Bands<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Charlie, it's a circle, a star, two rectangles, and some letters and numbers. It's not a naked lady with a snake wrapped around her."</blockquote>
<br />
My dad ran in the 1979 and the 1980 Marine Corps Marathons. They were the only two that he ran. The Marines were an important group to him-- He was very pro-military having gone to VMI, working in Prince William & Stafford counties, and being very involved in the Stafford Rotary Club. I imagine it was special to him to support the group and be able to participate in the event in it's early years. He was 30-31 when he ran them, and I'm fairly sure they were the only two marathons he ever ran.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">So slow.</td></tr>
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When I ran my first marathon, the 2002 Marine Corps Marathon, I had a couple of different time goals. Primarily, I wanted to beat the time that one of my freshman hallmates ran at the Shamrock Marathon that spring. After that, I hoped to beat my dad's first time (3:34), to beat his fastest time (3:11), and to break 3:00. I wrote splits on each of my arms for the times that I needed to hit (not knowing that I could make custom pace bands using the Internet). One arm was 3:34, one was 3:11. At one point during the race, someone who I was passing/running with briefly asked me what was all over my arm. I told him the times and he told me that I was running way too slow for either of them. He was wrong and I ended up running much faster than my dad ever did that day (but not quite under 3:00).<br />
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I had a subscription to Runner's World at the time that I was receiving at college. Some time after the marathon, the time came to renew the subscription and I asked my dad if he would pay for it. I suppose I did this over email? Carrier pigeon? I don't remember how people communicated in 2002-03. I didn't have a cell phone yet. But I do remember that my dad responded to me through a card in the mail where he told me that he would renew the subscription for me because I was "a world class runner" and that I should have that subscription to help me to be faster. The greatest endorsement of that magazine ever written, to be sure. And for those of you keeping score, this statement was made to a boy who failed to make the cross country team at his college a few months prior to completing this marathon.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">October 18, 2003</td></tr>
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But my dad always supported my running. I was lucky enough that his real estate investments and my forced labor on said investments as a child allowed me to focus on academics during college rather than part-time employment. Feeling as though his financial obligations to me were complete (and I don't disagree), he provided little beyond tuition, room & board to me during those four years away at school. Yet he supported running. He supported that to the fullest extent, financially, but more importantly, emotionally. He wasn't able to come to all of my races in high school (and I was pretty terrible then anyway), but he came as often as he could when I was in school. He came to watch me run in some of the William & Mary home meets, he came to DC and Boston, he always came down for the Colonial Half Marathon in February. I was supposed to see him at the 2006 race, but he didn't make it that year.<br />
<br />
I remember one summer I came home to run a race and he was putting down new beams on the deck. He and my brother had been working on this project for a while, and in frustration, David asked why he had to help but I didn't. My dad told him it's because I had a race the next day. Had I known that running could get me out of manual labor, I would have been a lot more motivated as a child to run fast!<br />
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My dad never lived to see me run a good marathon. In fact, he only got to <u>see</u> me run one bad marathon, as he didn't see me during Marine Corps, and Boston was a disaster of a day for me. I ran well in my third attempt, and he knew about it but didn't get to watch that day either. I'm sure he knows about the dozen or so I've done since then. But as I get ready for my latest, I keep thinking about numbers written on my arm. In my first marathon, they were his numbers-- the times I needed to run for each mile to do what he had done. This is the first time since that 2002 Marine Corps Marathon that I've run a marathon with my dad's numbers written on my arm.Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-84515242035309271952016-11-06T15:32:00.000-05:002016-11-06T19:22:59.608-05:00Men's 4 Miler (5 days to go)This morning was the Bill Steers Men's 4 Miler, and important race on the RMR calendar each year (despite the fact that the race moves all over the calendar). Nine of us were slated to race, once again pitting Team Mark against Team Harry for all of the marbles. Last year, though some amazing twist of fate, Team Mark AND Team Harry ended up with gift certificates to Devil's Backbone, so we made a day off it a few weeks later to booze it up for free. Pride may or may not have been on the line as well. Teams were as follows:<br>
<br>
Team Mark: Sean, Thomas, Lee, <strike>Steve</strike> (scratch due to illness), me<br>
Team Harry: Matt, Charlie, Andy, Dan, Alec<br>
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Since 5 of those 9 are racing marathons in the next two weeks (Alec and I next week in Richmond, Charlie, Thomas and Matt the following Sunday in Philadelphia), effort was varied across the board. Alec and I were messing with Sean this week, trying to make him worry about the competition from Bryan Flynn, and there was an amazingly written trash talk email by Alec (re: locker room talk that isn't demeaning to women or anyone else besides the people who received the email-- but it was VERY demeaning to those people.) The Philly guys worked out yesterday, and Alec and I actually worked out before the race.<br>
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Worked out is a loose term, all things considered. I jogged around JPA with Lee for 10 minutes before shedding some layers and heading out for 4 miles with Alec as a "marathon simulator." The plan was to replicate race morning, starting with a 6:30, then 6:15, 6:10, 6:05, or whatever we end up agreeing to do next weekend. That didn't happen. With a windy and uphill start, we casually strolled to a 6:20, as Alec commented about how easy 6:30 pace felt. The second mile of the course is more challenging, and we slowed to a 6:25 as we kept up the conversation. On the faster third mile, we rolled to a 5:59. Then we didn't quite finish the 4th mile (thankfully) because we weren't going to run into the stadium and Alec wanted to pee. The pace for that last segment was 5:57. So I guess we got done what we wanted to do, but didn't really accomplish the goal.<br>
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I jogged back to the car as runners were already lining up at the starting line. Things were getting loud by the line as I hurriedly got out of my warmer clothes and trainers and into my racing gear. I needed to pee too, but couldn't tell what was going on and heard a lot of cheering, so I sprinted to the line as spectators started to spread out of the way for the start. I hopped on to the line with no less than 10 seconds to spare before the "gun" went off (lady said go.)<br>
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Things started out quickly. My heart was racing from sprinting to the line and I tried to stay calm as the field exploded out of the gate. I let a lot of people pass me in an effort to remain controlled, and I could hear Charlie and Alec talking behind me. I looked around, sort of hoping that they'd be right behind me and I could group up with them, but they weren't there. The field hugged the right side of the road while I took the middle and the wind all to myself. Rounding the corner onto McCormick, I crossed through the classic CTC 1/2 mile mark in 2:39. "Well, time to start going backwards now or else I'll be crawling home later," I thought. Alec and Charlie must be laughing (if they had been, I'm certain I would have heard Charlie so now I assume they weren't.) I did start to scale it back, and grouped up with Lee (Team Mark) heading up towards the lawn. I actually told him to get out of my way as we got to the water stop because I wanted to get a drink. I don't think he believed me or understood, because he laughed at me and stayed right in my way as I drifted right towards the volunteers. We went through that first mile in 5:27. Not as bad as I thought it was going to be, and probably one of my slower first miles ever in this race. Also, very, very slow.<br>
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"And the middle miles seem to float on by." Lee and I worked together through the next one. I commented to him that it was nice of him to stay with me and help me out but that I'd understood if he took off once the downhills started. He responded something to the effect that he was doing all that he could do right then. Our second mile split was 5:24 and we caught a group of 3-4 runners that included Dan Foley (Team Harry) and some dude wearing a Hanson's jersey. We split around them and broke them apart as we started downhill at the light to Grady, and Dan came with us. He must be 8 feet tall, it's not very often I feel short when I'm running a race. Just across the Beta Bridge, some dude in a neon yellow singlet came out of nowhere and started putting down the hammer. Lee went after him and closed the gap quickly, but I took a little while longer to get rolling and couldn't catch up to them until Brown College.<br>
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I was on their heels at mile 3 (5:24), and going down the hill I caught yellow jersey, who was a little behind Lee already. I took the tangent on the right side of the road and he must've felt me move because he got right in front of me, so I stepped off the gas, went left, and went right around him up to Lee. I got next to him at the gates in front of the Chem building and let him know it was me. I didn't have much confident in beating Lee from there... I've been in too many situations with this joker where he puts an entire minute on me in the last 200 meters of a race, so I just kept trying to grind it out with him to stay with him as long as possible. Yellow jersey tried to mount a comeback on Alderman, but we were dialed in at that point. I even tried to move on Lee as we turned left around the clock tower, but when he countered, I didn't respond. I knew that this wasn't important, nor would it be worth it if I were to somehow out-kick Lee if my legs were toast at the end of the day. He pulled further and further away as we went down behind and into the stadium. I took a quick glance over my shoulder going into the parking lot and knew that I didn't have to worry about anything.<br>
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Entering the stadium is always awesome. Football players have it so lucky that they get to do that every week during the season. And that's with thousands of screaming fans. We might have had 200 people there tops. At least one of those people shouted my name as I shut it down heading through the line. Last year I really gave it everything I had to get to the tape, but today I really eased my way in. That doesn't mean I was any more comfortable finishing... I ran 21:35 after a 5:17 last mile. That got me 11th place, and 2nd in the 30-34 age group. I'm fairly confident that this is my first time losing my age group... although as I write that, I remember a little race in Lynchburg in September where I was 5th (had to look it up). So never mind. Lee finished 9 seconds ahead of me. All 9 of those seconds were put on in the last quarter mile. Well done, Lee. As usual, you embarrassed me in the homestretch.<br>
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Most importantly, I beat Alec and Team Mark put 4 runners in before Team Harry had 3, so we won. But the 9 of us will split the winnings, a nice $125 gift certificate to Kardinal Hall. I suspect we won't be able to use it until December though, if we can ever manage to get everyone back together again.<br>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7UvkkNHFq6UBToot3EgMbTsd43FNaldikmaBAwuNEW8Q8l4sKvpV9uevDxSolr07A-jOym4zCfUD5B4UNlbucziK7eujBBo-ziIXHsu6hw68AR5ezKkAt-qX4hMoe_k_neOLbveUxe86o/s1600/File_000+%25281%2529.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7UvkkNHFq6UBToot3EgMbTsd43FNaldikmaBAwuNEW8Q8l4sKvpV9uevDxSolr07A-jOym4zCfUD5B4UNlbucziK7eujBBo-ziIXHsu6hw68AR5ezKkAt-qX4hMoe_k_neOLbveUxe86o/s200/File_000+%25281%2529.jpeg" width="200"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not Team Mark & Team Harry</td></tr>
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So, what about that marathon? Dana asked me if there was anything that I was training for (clearly not a dedicated blog reader like Scott and Rachel). I laughed, as we all know I don't like to use the word "training" to refer to my endeavors this fall. It sounded stupid to say out loud that I was going to run a marathon next weekend after averaging 43 miles a week in my buildup. Although, I've been in the 50s the last two weeks! Despite the low mileage, I'm reasonably confident that I can finish this thing. I said last week that all I have to do is drink lots of water and avoid getting hit by a car. It may not be as simple as that though, as the knee pain that I mentioned from my last long run has persisted into a consistent pain throughout the day. So in addition to water, I need some ice, ibuprofen, foam rolling and stretching. And easy mileage. I'm mostly looking forward to just getting out there and doing it.<br>
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Exciting news though, is that supposedly Tim will be joining Alec and I for 16 miles. We're still trying to convince Sean to run some with us too, and today I may have gotten him sold on running from mile 17 to mile 25 with us. We'll see. We don't need the pacers, obviously, but with the marathon, I say the more, the merrier!Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-3822829489213554692016-10-31T17:00:00.000-04:002016-10-31T17:00:30.080-04:00The Machine - Dedicated to Alec LorenzoniThis morning, under a beautiful star filled sky, Alec confessed something that I've known all along. He looks up to me and I'm his hero. As if telling me that part wasn't hard enough for him, the reason behind his outpouring of emotions was the fact that he's having a difficult time watching me suffer through our workouts and runs without keeping my usual up-beat attitude. One of the things he's always admired about me is the way that I've maintained my confidence and positive outlook on running despite my many ups and downs, especially since moving to Charlottesville, where the balance seems to have shifted more downwards than upwards.<br />
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It hurt my heart to hear Alec share this with me. Not because I didn't really know it, but because Matt was there to hear it as well. So it was especially embarrassing for Alec to admit that in front of Matt, who by all accounts is the real man that Alec and I both should aspire to be. Matt had to hear Alec whimpering like a little baby about how he needs to see me get back on the horse and be the champion he knows that I am. It was a touching moment for all of us, surely. The first step in that road to recovery, as far as I can tell, is a rushed and poorly written post about a mediocre workout I had last week.<br />
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But before I get too far out of the comfort zone of my other 4 readers by being so positive, I'll start out with a bad workout recap.<br />
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I had a decent Time on Feet run on Saturday, October 15 with Alec and a couple other folks that I was happy to get through painlessly and reasonably effortlessly. The next day I did 6 with Henry in the BOB, accompanied by Charlie and Thomas. I ran too fast. Monday morning, I also ran too fast. Tuesday, I took the day off for whatever reason, who knows. Then Wednesday arrived and it was time to workout. 2 x 2 miles on the track at some sort of pace that is faster than "current marathon pace." Current marathon pace right now is close to 6 minute pace (circa 2005). I think we agreed to try to run around 5:33 for the first set, then faster for the second. Hard to remember.<br />
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Matt was running behind with both kids awake, so Alec and I got started and he led us through the first mile around 5:33. I took the lead on the homestretch of lap 4 and slowed us down a bit, going through in 5:35. But it was way harder than it should have been, and I had a side stitch like a rookie. I knew I was dehydrated going in. 4-5 minutes of recovery later, and we went through a 5:31. I tried to take the lead this time on the back stretch of lap 5 and just couldn't get around Alec. I think I stayed on through 6 laps and then just cratered home, running 5:50. I couldn't even breath when I finished. ugh.<br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="500" src="https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/embed/1411617620" title="2 x 2 miles at my actual marathon pace FAIL" width="465"></iframe>
I took the next day off because apparently I don't run on Thursdays anymore. Friday, an easy 8. Saturday, big workout. 15 miles total (hardly even worth getting out of bed for) with 12 at marathon pace. At this point, I haven't run more than like, 2-3 miles at marathon pace successfully, that I'm aware of. At least if I did, it didn't make much of an impression on me. So I was particularly nervous about this workout and how much it would hurt. I had to buy a stupid headlamp because we were going to do it in the black hole that is Riverview and I didn't want to fall into the water after getting dropped and not being able to see anything. I wasn't too excited about it. (Don't worry Alec, things are going to get better soon! Hang in there!)<br />
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We had a big group show up though. Matt and Alec were there, obviously, and Stewart Sackson, Rachel and Sean! 6 people at Riverview at 4:45 in the morning... that's probably more people than show up at some of the RMR workouts! Stewart was doing 3k repeats, so he was just going to run most of the way, stop and wait for us to turn around, and then hop back on. I forget how many he had to do. Sean warmed up to join us and we all were ready to roll at 5am. Alec warned the fast people (Rachel and Sean) that it was going to take us a while to get into the 6-minute pace, just so they weren't too anxious.<br />
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Well the six of us started, all wearing our headlamps, running in the dark. We were a fluid pack, with Sean and Alec holding it down in front and the rest of us floating around behind them. It was probably the most fun I've had running in a year. There was some chatter, but for the most part we were quiet. No one was breathing hard, we were just doing the work we had to do. It started off well, with 6:07 first the first mile, feeling good. It was faster than I anticipated starting, but it wasn't really too surprising with the work horses we had in the group. Sean doesn't like to run slowly unless it's right before he drops out of a marathon (burn), and we had the pack mentality going for us. I was letting the GPS take care of the splits, and went 6:02, 6:06, 6:05, and 5:59 through 5 miles. Alec was taking real splits and got us at 30:04 through 5 miles, which was right around what I did in Lynchburg a month before. So if I could avoid blowing up, I'd be right on track to run faster than I did there, albeit it on a much easier course.<br />
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After that, it wasn't so much about holding on for dear life, but more just waiting for us all to take off. I started to feel guilty about how good I felt and about how easy we were running, but part of me still worried that I was going to implode at any moment. Splits were consistently under 6 minutes for the next two. Stew finished his workout and Rachel stopped to cool down with him, so the four of us left were just gliding along in the dark. I knew that the last two were going to be hot, so when we turned around at the end of the park, I did a manual split so I could see what we were really doing. When I took that split, my watch said 5:21 and I thought "well, I've been cutting off a lot of time." That's because my watch was usually splitting a bit after turning around.<br />
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At the turn, I tried to take the lead and share some of the work at the end, so that if I did die, I would do so gloriously. But Alec (yes, the very same one who looks up to me as the older brother he always wanted) just wouldn't give up the lead. That was fine, he could have it, so I just tucked back in right behind. Going across the bridge at the mile, I dropped back a little bit because of how narrow it is and I wanted to actually take/look at the split. Maybe it was the speed, maybe it was the leaves on the bridge, maybe it was the shock of reading 5:33 on my wrist... but I ran way off the path into the brush and almost wiped out. As I rebounded and got back onto the pavement, I called to Sean and Alec (now miles ahead of me it seemed) if that was accurate. Sean's "yep," may as well have been a lasso around me as I closed the gap instantly to rejoin them. That moment, cruising along, I thought to myself, "This is marathon race pace." Maybe again some day.<br />
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The last mile was a rush. Matt rightly dropped off, as the pace was ridiculous when he's targeting 6:20s in Richmond. Sean and Alec decided for some reason that we were going to go left along the river to finish up, which slowed us down a bit with tighter turns and more debris in the way. I knew we were moving but had no interest in looking at anything... just keep my head up and relax. As we approached the end of the line, I shut it down and jogged into the parking lot, splitting 5:22.<br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="500" src="https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/embed/1415266411" title="The machine" width="465"></iframe>
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I'm sure I don't have to tell you how happy I was with this workout. It's what prompted me to start writing the last post that went out yesterday (a week late). It's what finally made me remember that I won't die when I run this marathon in two weeks. It's the first time I've felt good running longer and faster* in a very long time.<br />
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A week later, running 54 miles in 5 days, I'm still feeling good. My left calf is a little tight and I'm fairly confident I'm going to get a sinus infection within the next few days, but as long as I just keep drinking water and not getting hit by cars, I'll probably be able to run this marathon.<br />
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Racing season is here for the next 3 weeks:<br />
Sunday, November 6 - Men's 4 Miler<br />
Saturday, November 12 - Richmond Marathon<br />
Saturday, November 17 - Kelly Watt 2 Mile<br />
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Then I shut it down, stay injury free, and start over in 2017. Is that upbeat enough for you, Alec?<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*Still not very fast.</span><br />
<br />Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-60763702155778321932016-10-30T17:34:00.000-04:002016-10-30T17:34:50.648-04:00Florence and the (interrupted)I've been meaning to sit down and write an update for a couple weeks now (he says at the beginning of every post), <strike>but after my day yesterday, I decided to write a different one. So this will be a two-for-one. But really a three-for-one after I noticed the last post I wrote in May never got published. Lucky you, Scott.</strike> Nope, that was 7 days ago! Post what you've got or the race might happen first!<br />
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"Training" is not a word I'd causally throw out to describe the way that I've prepared for the Richmond Marathon. It hasn't gone well. After a rocky first 5 months of the year, I went back to PT looking for a fix. I was told to change the way I run by increasing my cadence and to start wearing a heal lift in my right shoe at all times. For the first time in my life, I started running with an iPhone strap-- not so that I could listen to music, but so that I could listen to a metronome set for 175 beats per minute. It wasn't bad when I was at the beach running alone, but it had to get annoying to my friends when I got back. It was a struggle, especially trying to pair the beat with my foot strike, not with my breathing. I had a lot of really short, fast runs as I re-learned how to keep my heart rate and pace down while putting my feet on the ground as quickly as possible.<br />
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It did not go well. I was still in pain. So I went back to Dr. Wilder and he gave me three choices: a) try for another month, come get an injection of something, take two weeks off, then start trying again; b) get the shot right now and take two weeks off; c) something more invasive. I went with option B, got a shot and stopped running for another two weeks.<br />
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In those two weeks, I tried to bike and swim every day. I got my biked tuned up for the first time since I bought it from Ryan Stevens in 2005. I went on real bike rides and I went on wasted bike rides where I just peddled next to Matt and Alec while they ran. I actually enjoyed being on the bike for the real rides and had this grand plan of cross training every week once I got going again. The bike is still in the garage, my swim goggles are still in a bag by the door, and I haven't been doing either of those things for months. Shocking news, I'm sure.<br />
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When I tried to get back on the horse, it still hurt. So rather than going back to Bob for option C, I just decided to suck it up and see if I could get through this. I kept focus on my cadence, <i>sans</i> metronome, and have tried to do everything I can the right way. I jumped into workouts and long runs very, very quickly. Too quickly. I was suffering every time. I think my long run progression was 8 miles, 11 miles, 14 miles, 18 miles, 20 miles. On the 18 mile run, I probably should have stopped and taken an Uber home for the last two miles because they were so slow. I'll blame that on Rachel though, she was probably there and probably pushing it early.<br />
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Back when I signed up for Richmond, I also committed to run the Virginia 10 Miler in Lynchburg. Alec tried to talk me out of doing it, but I didn't want to back out of the race if I was healthy. I contacted the race director, told him about my fitness, and offered to pay for my entry, but he insisted that I still come down and give it my best shot as a comped elite athlete. I've never felt less elite than I did on that day. I don't even know what place I got or care to do the math to know what my total time was, but on an extremely challenging course, I ran the slowest paced race of the last 10 years or so probably. I think it was 6:09 pace. At no point did I feel like I was actually racing, I was just running hard the whole time. The only upsides of the race was that it gave me a benchmark, and I was able to run the last uphill mile at that same pace, which was faster than I'd done for several of the previous miles. So I came home happy and did another 20 miles the next day. That was the end of one of my TWO 60+ mile weeks during this build up.<br />
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I have never felt so unprepared for a marathon. I've had 25 days off since I was cleared to run again on August 5. That means I've only run 71% of the time. I've averaged under 44 miles per week for the last 12 weeks. That's 40 miles less per week than I averaged for the same 12 week period this far out from my last marathon. Again, not feeling prepared.<br />
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I've been adjusting my goals. It's hard going out and doing workouts, hearing the paces that I'm trying to run and thinking that they're so fast when in reality they're much slower than things I've done in the very recent past.Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-50281840054909287952016-05-14T09:30:00.000-04:002016-10-23T12:02:04.874-04:00Spring update (I'm still alive) FORGOT TO SUBMIT<i>I went in to start writing another post today and saw that I never published this one from the middle of May! I wonder why? Oh well, here goes without a re-read! I hope it's not riddled with typos and grammatical errors...</i><br />
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Apparently I only write blog posts twice a year. Sorry about that.<br />
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After my fall racing season wrapped up with the Turkey Trot (disaster), I promptly took a break from caring about running to instead care about my new baby boy, Sam. He was born the first week of December and I didn't care about running for a while. By the end of the month, Sam was already sleeping well and I was running 4-6 days a week, usually in the low 40 mpw range. January, February, and March continued to trend in the same direction... if it was cold or rainy or I didn't get much sleep, I didn't run and I didn't worry about it too much. My 5am training group was all in the same boat, as Matt had his second baby a few days before we did and Alec's only child continued to give ours a run for their money. But we saw light on the other side of the tunnel and decided to sign up for the Richmond Marathon in November. So that is happening.<br />
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April came around and things were looking up. I managed to run several days in a row without having to take a day off due to weather and better sleep and generally starting to care again. As my mileage crept into the 50s and almost 60s, so too did a pain in my left leg. It stated with my plantar fascia and my calf, which I tried to take care of, but soon it moved up to my hip, hamstring, quad, and groin. I called Mark to update him but said I was just going to try to treat it and I wasn't ready to go to the doctor or anything. But it started to feel like I should cut my leg off. After an amazing 24 days in a row of running, I took a day off.<br />
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One day turned into 5. I got the itch to go again one day while everyone else in the house was asleep and went out for a slow 20 minute jog. Worst decision of my life. Everything hurt the entire time. At no point did the pain subside. I called Mark and told him I'd like to get in to see Bob Wilder. Bob didn't find any stress fracture but did think that it was time to correct my leg length imbalance and some other problems that generally stem from me being weak as hell in my core and just un-athletic on a whole. I scheduled a distant PT appointment with Eric Magrum and retreated to the "rest and recovery" phase I'd already been going through.<br />
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Two years ago when I got a stress fracture running in the <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2013/12/twenty-four-bridges-marathon.html" target="_blank">Twenty-Four Bridges Marathon</a>, I know that having an amazing newborn baby at home is what prevented me from spiraling into depression, and that same thing is true now, except that in addition to having an amazing newborn baby, I also have an amazing 2-year old too. There is no time for depression with two kids under three in the house! But I still got very sad when I looked at a calendar of May two days ago and realized that I hadn't run yet this month. I decided it was time.<br />
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I went out to my favorite place, Colthurst Farms, to run on the grass loop. Two loops, three miles, overcast sky. It was the hardest thing I've done in a long time. That course is unforgiving. I completed the circuit running just over 8:30 pace. I wore my heart rate monitor and my watch told me that I needed 37 hours to recover from the effort. I felt fat, pale, out of shape, and sore. But I ran, and it didn't hurt as badly as it did on April 30th when I tried 20 minutes around my neighborhood. Maybe grass was key.<br />
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After a torturous ice bath that night, I went back to the farm again yesterday. Under a bright, sunny sky, I suffered through a true #suntanrun in a slower pace than the day before, but with no more pain than on Thursday. I limited my icing to my foot last night, and today I only have a tremendous amount of pain in my heal, so I'm calling it progress. I'll take today off and try again tomorrow. Maybe when I show up to my appointment with Eric on Wednesday, I'll have a better outlook on running. I have plenty of time before Richmond and summer mileage is right around the corner.<br />
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Scott, I'll try to blog again in less than 7 months so you have something to keep you entertained down in the wilderness. I'm just chalking all this up to being old now.Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-52938440509509441272015-11-08T21:08:00.004-05:002015-11-08T21:08:55.615-05:00Fall Racing SeasonIt is November and the fall racing season is here! I dropped a fat wad of cash this week signing up for the Charlottesville Men's 4 Miler, the Kelly Watt Memorial 2 mile, and the YMCA Turkey Trot 5K. I've taken a big break from racing since July 4 to focus on being a husband, father, and employed contributing member of society. But I love racing, so I had to lace 'em up.<br />
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Leading up to the 4 miler, there had been much discussion about the race with my new regular training partners, Matt and Alec. Our 5:15 AM runs 4-5 days a week cover an average of 8 miles. We've tried to throw in some long runs and workouts when we can, but the mileage (and the level of seriousness) has been low. In the last two weeks of October, I only ran 6 times and less than 40 miles. I actually thought I might have a stress fracture last week, but the x-rays came back looking good. (How you get a stress fracture off of low mileage is beyond me, but I avoided it.) I'm just doing what I can right now, and I'm rather indifferent. I know that I'll get back to it, but right now I'm just happy living the life that I have.</div>
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So naturally a lack of training correlates to a lack of confidence. I did not think that I would run very well in the 4 miler. We were doing workouts and I was struggling to run close to marathon pace. I figured I would go out very slowly and hope to finish well. We formed two RMR teams this year, so I made it a goal to finish in the top-10, but also hoping not to lose to anyone who wasn't an RMR member. I forgot to mention that this race was today! Yes, the fall racing season officially started this morning and runs for the next 19 days. RMR+ had a big group of people out to warm up together on a perfect morning in the mid-40's. I was tired and my back was sore as it usually is before races now, but I did a lot of extra stretches to loosen it up. We all got to the line and heard some pre-race instructions and the national anthem and were off.</div>
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Charlie, who ran a huge PR in the half marathon YESTERDAY in Indianapolis (67:03) sprinted off the line ahead of Sean and Brandon, who had already done a 6 mile tempo run as their warm up in preparation for their Richmond Half in six days. Charlie's bold move got everyone going, and I went through the classic CTC 200 (37), 400 (75), and 800 (2:38) meter splits way too fast. My goal of finishing in the top-10 looked like it was going to be out of reach already though, as I was running just near 10th and could already sense my impending doom. There weren't a lot of changes in that first mile after the first 400 meters, expect that I passed Steve Rosinski (local triathlete star who I finally met last week) and got passed by Bob Thiele, who was matching with me wearing the black RMR singlet. My first mile was 5:15 and I worried that I was going to die. I told myself to relax and just stick with it and we headed down Rugby Road. I could see that Charlie wasn't in the front anymore, and we were a long string of people running largely single file down the road. KC and Henry were close to the 1.5 mile mark across Beta Bridge and I loved seeing them there, smiling and cheering and clapping. I gave him a little wave so he'd know that I saw him. </div>
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Taking the right hand turn uphill onto Grady, I started to gain a little bit on Bob, who in turn was gaining on Dan (also in RMR black), but Steve was right on my heals. I clipped Bob a little bit on accident coming around the next turn off of Grady, and over the hills the four of us grouped up just in<br />
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time to get back onto Rugby at 2 miles (another 5:15) and break back up again. Steve powered up the hill and I thought I could bide my time because I was very tired, but cresting it he pulled away even further as we gapped Dan and Bob. I started to realize that I was only half way there and the suffering started. I kind of lost it a little bit mentally heading back downhill on Rugby Road and started thinking about how I needed to relax. Steve became a distant target but I noticed that the other two guys in front of me not wearing RMR were starting to come back so I was hopeful. Crossing University Avenue and passing the Chapel, I was reminded of Bob's presence by Dana's cheering (but it didn't prevent her from taking this nice photo on the right!). I tried to regroup going down the hill towards the bridge approaching mile 3, but a 5:27 split crushed me mentally. I tried doing the math but was too tired to realize that I was still OK... Steve was close enough in front of me that I could hear his three mile split and heard mine somewhere under 16:00, but I had no idea that I was about to go through 5K in 16:30! I recognize that this is terribly, terribly slow, but I didn't realize that I could run that fast right now!<br />
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The excitement of the 5K split was short-lived as Bob Thiele went by me. I was mentally defeated. I watched him run away from me as we came back up McCormack towards O-Hill and I just thought about how much farther we had to go. It seemed like an eternity. He rounded the corner way ahead of me and I just tried to take the tangents and get there as quickly as possible. After all, the team competition was based on times, not places, so I still needed to cross the line as fast as possible. I know I was ready to quit because I took a quick peak over my shoulder as I turned left onto Alderman. I was looking for Alec. I didn't see him, but instead saw someone in an old orange Nike singlet way behind. Somehow, knowing that I wasn't about to get passed made me feel better about being so far behind Bob and I was able to pick it up. I took the left at the AFC down towards the back of the stadium and found myself moving closer to him. At the turn onto Stadium Road, he still had a big gap but I really leaned into it on the downhill and by the time we were entering the parking garage, the gap was much smaller. I knew we didn't have much left so I just went for it right there as we entered the straightway to the tunnel and I felt like I flew by him. I knew I needed to get past him before entering the field because I had no clue how close, or far away, the finish was going to be. So I surged by him and hung on for dear life, running all the way through the line as hard as I could go. I hit the tape in 21:14, running a 5:16 for my 4th mile. (I probably was on pace to run a 5:25 or something like that until the last 300 meters and made it all up right there...)<br />
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I was spent. I turned around to congratulate Bob and stumbled through the chute. Many of my teammates were waiting around at the bottom of the stadium steps to congratulate everyone, but I had to get out of there immediately in case I threw up. I'd rather it be in the parking lot than in the stadium where some volunteer would have to clean it up. Luckily that wasn't an issue. KC and Henry arrived in the parking lot just in time to see me before the cool down. The team regrouped and I went for 4 more miles with Matt Barresi, after which I was so drained that I ate about 5 whole oranges.<br />
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I ended up getting 9th place (<a href="http://charlottesvilletrackclub.org/latest/results/2015/mens4miler.html" target="_blank">Results</a>), which was good for 3rd in my age group behind Matt and Steve. Alec finished right behind me, and Matt Thomas had a great race too. It was the fastest I've run in the 4 miler by a few seconds, which was surprising because I remember being very pleased with <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2013/06/charlottesville-mens-four-miler.html" target="_blank">my performance in 2013</a>. I was happy with what I did today even before finding that out. Team Mark (me, Alec, Matt, Sean) lost by 9 seconds to Team Harry (Brandon, Charlie, Thomas, Lee, Dan), but each team was awarded a $100 gift certificate to the Devil's Backbone Brewery. I'm sure we'll manage to spend over $200 with that group. RMR ended up with 11 finishers in the top-19.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Matt (4), me (9), Dan (19), Charlie (3), Lee (17),<br />Thomas (5), Alec (11), Sean (1) & Brandon (2).<br />MIA: Bob (10) & Dave (14)</td></tr>
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Aside from having a good race today, it's made me much more excited about Kelly Watt and the Turkey Trot. I'm going to continue to talk a lot of trash to the boys cross country team at Monticello in hopes that they'll come out to Kelly Watt and race me, and maybe I won't embarrass myself in front of the home crowd on Thanksgiving like I'd been fearing earlier this morning. Regardless, I just had so much fun today. Racing is so much fun, I love it!</div>
Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-72670937930049369862015-06-20T14:49:00.000-04:002015-06-20T14:49:05.252-04:00A decade under the influenceI've been wrestling with a difficult decision to make. Typically, my beach vacation with my in-laws <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2014</td></tr>
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begins around the 4th of July. It may start before, but I've always run the Heritage Festival 5 miler in Fredericksburg on the 4th (sometimes the 3rd) and then driven down afterwards. Once, this resulted in a 10-hour drive due to holiday traffic, but usually I get on the road early enough after the race to arrive in a reasonably short amount of time.<br />
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This strange and seemingly selfish practice has been accepted by my family because they know how important the race is to me. I've run the race <i>maybe</i> every year since I was seven years old. The newspaper did a feature on my family when I was in high school because my dad had run the race every year since it was founded, and my siblings and I all ran it with him. It's just what we did on July 4-- run the race. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2003</td></tr>
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Adding to the tradition, ever since I graduated college and started running hard year-round (as opposed to seasonally), I've done well in the race. For a full decade, I've been on the <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2012_07_01_archive.html" target="_blank">podium</a>, with eight 2nd place finishes and <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2013_07_01_archive.html" target="_blank">two 3rd place finishes</a>. The victory has been my white whale, and 90% of the time I've lost to someone who was better than me on that day. I've been chasing that victory for years, but it's only really been within my reach once. This year, it is not within my reach. I'm not selling myself short here, nor am I taking the easy way out. I just recognize that this is not going to be my year for three reasons.<br />
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The number one reason is that I'm not in shape. I've been running for the past six weeks or so, semi-<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2011</td></tr>
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seriously, doing 1-2 workouts a week and a long run, but it almost feels like I've just been going through the motions. I tried to excite myself by running in the SPCA 5k in Fredericksburg two weeks ago, but that didn't do anything to help me mentally or physically. My workouts aren't going great, and my heart just isn't in it right now. I've got a million other things going on right now, and running isn't a priority. The focus that I maintained during the beginning of the year on Boston is difficult to replicate consistently, and recognizing that is important to maintain my sanity. Sure, there are a lot of other people out there who CAN and DO put their heart and soul into training year-round, but our situations are very different and that's not a choice I want to make right now.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2005</td></tr>
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The number two reason, and this one is the one that makes me seem like a wuss, is that I don't think I can beat the competition. "So line up anyway," you might say. That's what I usually do. I lost to Tim Young twice, Jason Lewis, and Will Christian. I'm certainly not <i>afraid</i> of competition. Those are just three guys that I know I'll probably NEVER beat in my life, no matter what. Everyone else that I've lost to, I've beaten on more than one occasion (if I've ever raced them again). Everyone except Skeeter Morris. I'd have to go back to college racing results to see if I ever beat Skeeter, but I don't think that I've ever come out on top. Skeeter won last year's race several months after getting 2nd place at the Marine Corps Marathon, running 2:22 on a challenging course. If I were in tremendous shape this year, I might be able to give Skeeter a tough time, but I'm not, and so I know that I can't. And he's returning to defend his title.<br />
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Reason number three is that a minimum 4-hour car ride from the beach to Fredericksburg on July 3 and the same trip back the next day after the race doesn't sound very appealing when I'm not in shape and don't have a decent shot to win.<br />
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So this year, for the first time that I can remember, I will not be racing in the July 4th Heritage <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2010</td></tr>
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Festival 5 miler. Someone else will be able to collect that podium finish for the first time, and I won't have members of the Fredericksburg Host Lion's Club making fun of me for not winning as I collect my prize. The cash has always been good for buying gas on the way to the beach or stopping to get a bushel of crabs at the border station entering North Carolina, but I'll just do without, and spend the 4th with my wife and son. I know that I will regret this decision, but I think I'd regret either one. It's lose-lose. And this doesn't mean that I'm finished either. The white whale is still out there, and I'm going to keep chasing him.</div>
Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-68727000777412182192015-05-02T21:04:00.001-04:002015-05-02T21:04:53.567-04:00Chasing RedemptionAs would inevitably be the case, as more time passes, I’m better able to reflect on my race, but I have less to say.<br /><br />As a matter of fact, I ran 6-7 minutes slower than I wanted to run in Boston on April 20. I am disappointed that I spent 10-12 hours a week running, plus another 3-4 hours doing things related to running, for almost four months, to come up short of my goal. That being said, I am not terribly disappointed in my race.<br /><br />For this race, I trained differently than I have in the past. I ran a lot more volume, but a lot less intensity. I trained more alone than I have in the past. I was more tired than I’ve been before training for a race. I also have been in a much different place personally and professionally than the last two times I’ve tried to run a fast marathon. And this is the third fastest marathon I’ve run before. I’ve only been under 2:30 twice, and before going under, my PR was 2:32:17. So I ran 15 seconds faster than that.<br /><br />Even writing that though, right now, I don’t understand how I’m not more upset. If I’d run 2:32:02 in Arizona in January 2012, I would’ve been devastated. The same is true of Chicago 2012. But for some reason, right now, running 2:32:02 in Boston 2015 doesn’t seem like a complete failure to me.<br /><br />I ran hard. I raced hard against the competitors around me and against the clock. I did not listen to the pundits talking about the weather who said that people should scale back their goals and expectations. Maybe I should have, but I didn’t. I didn’t put in all of that time, all of that work, all of that energy (and all of that money) to give anything less than 100%. So when my mile splits were slower than I wanted them to be, I tried to pick up the pace on the next mile. I couldn’t worry about the miles that had already gone by, so I focused on the ones before me, trying to run under 5:35 as much as I could. When I got to the hills, where I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to run as fast, I pushed anyway. My legs were cold and my muscles were tight. I did all of the work for about 12 miles of that race for the people around me, and when I got to mile 21, I just lost it.<br /><br />And I could have stopped. A lot of people would have. I know a lot of people who have, and did on Monday. That is their choice, but it was not a choice for me. I kept going… I kept fighting. I thought that I could continue to run under 6-minute miles. I was wrong. My legs continued to cramp, and I slowed. But I continued, and I finished. And it wasn’t a <i>bad</i> time. Charlie passed me with 5.5 miles to go and put 2 minutes on me. That’s about 22 seconds per mile faster that he ran after passing me. If I’d run 6-minute miles, I would have been right at 2:30. If I’d been under, I would have been in the 2:29s. After coming through the half in 74 minutes, I thought that I could run 2:28. I know that these are just numbers and are completely hypothetical, but it’s the way I’ve rationalized the race as an acceptable one.<br /><br />A lot of people think 2:32 is great. 8 years ago, I was one of those people. Maybe it was great for the conditions, but 88 other men ran better than I did in those same conditions. I don’t know. I just don’t. I have mixed feelings about it, but that’s inevitable when you don’t reach your goal. I don’t know the next time I’ll run another marathon, and I don’t know what it will be like to train for another one in the future. That’s one of the harder pills to swallow. I went all in for this one, and came up short, and I don’t know when I’ll get to chase redemption.Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-24258099486407948062015-04-25T12:05:00.000-04:002015-04-25T12:05:13.032-04:002015 #BostonMarathonThey may have just shouted "Go!" I have no idea what happened. Was there a gun? A whistle? A count down? I have no clue, it was a blur. We started running and I am not exaggerating when I say that Adam, Charlie and I were passed by 1,000 runners in the first 3 minutes. There was a race marker on the side of the road that said "1" and Charlie and I both expressed relief when we got to it and found that it said "1 Kilometer," rather than "1 Mile." That would have been a horrible way to start the race. The three of us moved effortlessly downhill, constantly getting passed by runners who we'd inevitably see again in the later stages of the race.<br />
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So, what was the plan, you ask? From the beginning, I've been training to run a PR. After <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2012/10/chicagomarathon.html" target="_blank">Chicago in 2012</a>, I knew I had more in the tank, so I trained to run fast in Boston. I said that I'd be happy with any increment of a personal best, but would really prefer to run under 2:26 so that I could say that I've run 2:25 instead of 2:26. It was only 32 seconds that I needed to shave off of my time from Chicago. Adam and Charlie are more talented than I am, so I figured I should try to hold onto them as long as possible. Beforehand, through email, we'd discussed pace. Their goals, as I understood them through the cloaks and mirrors, were to try to run comfortably through 20 miles around 5:28-5:34 range and then see what we could do. I knew that anything much under 5:30 per mile would push me too close to the line, so I figured I'd run 5:33-5:35 with them if I could, and if not, just let them run away from me and hope for the best. I'd done a lot of training alone this winter, so I wasn't too worried about having to run alone. I also expected to find someone else on the course moving at the same pace as me and maybe work together with them if need be. So that was the plan from the beginning. But 20 MPH winds and rain aren't the ideal racing conditions for a plan like that, but we still came to race.</div>
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<b>The Saga Continues</b><br />
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The three of us got to the mile right at 6:00. It was a few seconds slower than I would've liked, but still fine. I was always happy to say that in Chicago I never had a mile in the 6:00 range after the first, so I thought I'd just have the same today. The three of us were together, although not necessarily in a group. In my mind, it seemed like we were each operating independently, but occupying the same space. After the first mile, there was a conscious effort to go a little bit faster, but I knew I wasn't going to worry about anything until the first 5k was over. We hit 5:48 through the second mile, and passed two elites runners who were already walking on the side of the road. One of them was Dylan Wykes, who posted the tweet below the night before the race. I took a screenshot of the tweet (it had been retweeted by someone I follow) and sent it to KC, because the photo made me miss her and Henry.</div>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
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Ready to go tmrw 4 <a href="https://twitter.com/bostonmarathon">@bostonmarathon</a> Grateful to be part of <a href="https://twitter.com/jhboston26">@jhboston26</a> elite team. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WeRunTogether?src=hash">#WeRunTogether</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/MizunoRunCanada">@MizunoRunCanada</a> <a href="http://t.co/9MqXVHJbFV">pic.twitter.com/9MqXVHJbFV</a></div>
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— Dylan Wykes (@DylanWykes) <a href="https://twitter.com/DylanWykes/status/589864092174831616">April 19, 2015</a></div>
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Well he was already walking, and after the next guy, Charlie said "That's two," as in "two guys we don't have to pass at the end," or something to that effect. We hit a water stop and I started to drink. I would end up drinking at every single stop on the course. My legs did not feel great. I was still pretty cold and my left hamstring felt tender right up under my butt, but we were already going and I didn't think I needed to drop out yet like these guys did. Despite the cold, I threw my hat off, mostly because I knew that it was just going to make me sweat more and lose fluids faster if I kept it on much longer. Mile three came in at 5:42, and I remember thinking it was time to go. We went through the 5K in 18:05 and almost automatically started to move up as a group. Our next two miles were 5:36 and 5:37. We'd be moving along and catch up to a big group, then stay there with them for a little bit until we found out that they were running too slowly. Mile 6 was an example of that, as we'd pick up the pace breaking a group apart, running a 5:31. That was too hot, so I'd back off a little and join the next group. I think around 10K, (35:29 - 17:24 last 5K), I saw Charlie point to the left side of the road at Chip, and I turned and saw him and pointed too. He was cheering and had a "Run Bert Run!" sign. It was nice to have some support out there!<br />
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After the 10k, I got out a GU so that I could finish eating it before the water stops at mile 7, and disaster struck. While trying to close the pouch, my glove got stuck on the velcro and a GU fell on the ground. I turned around and watched it as we motored away, never to be seen again. I did not panic, as I knew there was going to be something on the course from CLIF, and probably random children passing out candy in the later stages of the race. I hit the 7th mile in another 5:37, moving along with a fairly big group, but was unsatisfied with the pace. The next few miles were more of the same... catch a group, break a group open, go after the next group. We were passing hundreds of people, and it was still early. Mile 8 and 9 were 5:37 and 5:33, as we got to the 15K mark (52:52 - 17:23 last 5K) and it started to rain a little bit. My legs were already turning pink from the cold winds. Miles 10 (5:38) and 11 (5:33) were uphill miles, but nothing really changed. I started to get frustrated with the groups, wondering how it was possible that EVERYONE in this race was trying to run a 5:37 mile pace. Mile 12 came and went in another 5:38.<br />
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This is when I just went for it. I stopped worrying about what anyone else was doing, stopped worrying about the groups, and stopped worrying about Adam and Charlie. Something clicked in my brain and I just said, "I'm here to do work," and I went to the front. I was completely focused on running the pace I wanted to run. We went through a busy intersection and I heard Chip yelling my name as I passed by him and saw him out of the corner of my eye, but it was too late to acknowledge it so I just kept on driving. When I got to Wellsley, I knew that I had to let go of some of that focus or else I was going to run under 5-minutes for the mile past the screaming girls, and so I backed off a bit. Some of the group started to come back to me and I didn't feel quite alone, but then as we headed uphill towards the 20K mark (1:10:20 - 17:28 last 5K), they all fell off again. One guy (#195) stayed with me, and I asked him what he was trying to run. He said "times are out the window today," to which I said "Ok, but what do you want to run per mile now?" He said 5:30-5:35 and I agreed and just kept motoring away. Mile 13 was a 5:33, and I got to the half in 74:06.<br />
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<b>Regrouping</b><br />
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At that point, I accepted the fact that a PR was probably out of the question. I wanted to get to the half between 72:30 and 73:15. I didn't think that I could run a sub 72 second half, especially with the hills that were coming. I didn't feel great from the start, and my legs were not warming up. Before I started breaking out of the groups, there was no shelter from the winds, even in the middle of the pack. I only saw one guy on the course the entire day that was noticeably taller than I am, so it's not like I could tuck in behind someone. But I wasn't giving up. Just because I couldn't PR, didn't mean that I couldn't run a good race. I did some math in my head and decided that I'd just run an even race and try to get under 2:28. I could just replicate everything that I'd already done, use the slower miles from the first 5K as my miles up the hills, and coast down to the finish. No problem.<br />
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The water stop started at the same place as the mile split, so between getting out my second (and last) GU and taking water, I neglected to look at or take a split. I couldn't get that GU down for some reason, and ended up spitting the entire thing out. That was a bad sign. I'd dropped one gel and spit out another... Charlie caught up to me after 14, saying that he came to help, to which I replied that it was about time. I told him I missed my split and asked him what he was running, and he told me it was 6:00. I figured that might have been accurate, as he'd caught me, so when he started to lead, I made sure to go with him to make up for a bad 14th mile. (He later told me that he was messing with me and apologize for ruining my race by lying to me.) We got to 15 with a total time of 11:12, so 5:37 pace, and I thought nothing of it. Just past 15 there was a really big downhill as we got to 25K (1:27:37 - 17:17 last 5K). With that downhill, mile 16 was the fastest mile of the day (spoiler alert) at 5:26. I'd been advised by a friend that the hill at this point was really bad, mostly because of it coming immediately after the big drop just before it, so I backed off and tried to run very controlled on my way up it. I lost Charlie in the process and got to 17 in a slow 5:43. Going up the hill, they had the CLIF shot station and I knew I needed to get one. There were four different flavors and I got each one to make sure that I got something similar to chocolate. The 4th one was Mocha, so I threw the other three on the side of the road. But disaster continued to strike as I struggled to get the thing open, got one small taste of it and then for some reason just dropped it. Great. My life is ruined.<br />
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After that dramatic event, the pace for mile 18 wasn't any better with another hill, and I covered it in 5:49, passing the 30K mark in 1:45:20 (17:43 last 5K). This was my slowest 5K since the first, and it was largely uphill. But I still felt ok. My legs were sore and my hips and knees were starting to get tighter, but I wasn't losing control yet. I knew it was coming though, and decided to just keep pushing. There was no "saving myself for the last 10K" like some people do in Boston. I was just going to get to the top of those hills and hope for the best on the way down. I started drinking full cups of Gatorade at the water stops, knowing that I hadn't gotten the fueling that I was expecting to have during the race and my legs were going to need all the electrolytes they could get. The next mile markers were all at a higher elevation than the one before it, and as a result, the splits got slower. I was ok, still working hard and running under control, but came through 19, 20, and 21 in 5:39, 5:51, and 6:04.<br />
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<b>Heartbroken</b><br />
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So what about Heartbreak Hill? Despite having printed off 4 copies of the course map and placing them strategically throughout my living spaces (Fridge, dresser, desk, car), I had no idea where Heartbreak Hill was. Motoring through what I thought was Boston College, I was under the impression it was at the end of mile 22. My ignorance may have been a blessing, or maybe it was my focus, but when we (me and #195) reached the top of Heartbreak before the end of mile 21, I was shocked. I said to him, "Was that it? Was that Heartbreak Hill?" He said that it was, and I hope that he didn't think that I was being cocky, but honestly I felt relieved that it had come and gone without me even thinking about it. I maintained a strong effort, albeit slowly, and felt good as I moved past it. It was literally almost all downhill from here, and I'd gotten through the hardest part.<br />
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But at mile 21, my right hamstring completely went out. I jump/hobbled for a few strides to keep myself from falling over, and watched as #195 (who hadn't done ANY work over the last 10 miles, by the way) left me in the dust. And just like that, I was finished racing.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3BC8FgIPnraEwCKIEPhk-oFZaoimum7_UqqkOE416HlbpE_BLOPx8fo1Xu012mSD46sJOLW5PLPo15qvsuLYfu1x2oNZOJERNgZ7nNwUka0vfC75qOveWtuob9R4ScTFnyxNe9wBIisVO/s1600/IMG_1420.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3BC8FgIPnraEwCKIEPhk-oFZaoimum7_UqqkOE416HlbpE_BLOPx8fo1Xu012mSD46sJOLW5PLPo15qvsuLYfu1x2oNZOJERNgZ7nNwUka0vfC75qOveWtuob9R4ScTFnyxNe9wBIisVO/s1600/IMG_1420.JPG" height="200" width="200" /></a>People like to say that the marathon really starts after 20 miles. On this day, I made it 21 before I really had to start trying. The last 5 miles, for me, were about not falling flat on my face. It wasn't really the death march that I experienced on some of my harder long runs, nor did I hit the wall. I felt completely fine, except that my legs just didn't work anymore. I have had enough experience running races, and marathons in particular, to know what I had to do: slow down. On that first mile after the pull (#22), I ran downhill in 6:03. So slightly faster than my last mile, but downhill.<br />
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Charlie went past me right at 35K (2:03:48 - 18:28 last 5K) and offered words of encouragement, but I couldn't run with him. A few more guys passed me too. But I still had a good attitude about it, and I thought, OK, let's just try to run 6 minute pace and see if we can get under 2:30 still. I latched onto some guys as they started to pass me and tried to run with them, but then my left leg went out too-- this time my quad. Mile 23 was a slower 6:19. Not the right direction. I looked at the clock and thought about this last 5+K, just trying to keep it under 20 minutes. I was taking deep breaths, trying to get as much oxygen into my lungs and legs as I could, and stay relaxed. Mile 24 was a little better, a 6:09. "Ok," I thought, "the worst is over, you can do this." PULL. For the third time on the course, I almost had to come to a complete stop to prevent myself from falling over.<br />
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The last two miles took an eternity. Knowing where the finish was, just trying to get there one mile at a time, having so many people cheering for me to go faster and telling me I was almost there, when I physically couldn't do anything about it. I was just going through the motions, putting one foot in front of the other, to make sure I didn't collapse. I hit the 40K mark in 2:23:09 (19:21 last 5K) and thought, "This is when I should have gotten to 26." Could I run two kilometers in under 7 minutes to break 2:30? I was tired enough then to not figure out mathematically that the odds were small, but I kept pushing, knowing where I was going and how badly I wanted to be there. Mile 25 was a slower 6:22, and my heart just kept breaking. My legs would not listen to my brain, to my heart, telling them to push. I could not get enough air into my body to lift them off the ground any faster. I ran past Corey Miller, in town to cheer for his dad, holding a Team Blitz sign. I could not go. I ran past Mark Lorenzoni and the Charlottesville cheering section, hearing their voices loud and clear, but I could not go. I turned right onto Hereford Street and left onto Boylston Street, and I could not go.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCwiPuXUi98QdSUyz9DgzFksUDOFyulxK22Jb6k8bHnEKJNhgHxAMEuEmNCN9LsISQge-fxjjLNZeXowtdiCwNlKrxW45xyqNiux2UV1hMDubLgzU3kjBYA0nzSqC-4U7o6LGsTTLCmIgQ/s1600/IMG_1412.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCwiPuXUi98QdSUyz9DgzFksUDOFyulxK22Jb6k8bHnEKJNhgHxAMEuEmNCN9LsISQge-fxjjLNZeXowtdiCwNlKrxW45xyqNiux2UV1hMDubLgzU3kjBYA0nzSqC-4U7o6LGsTTLCmIgQ/s1600/IMG_1412.JPG" height="112" width="200" /></a>The stretch on Boylston Street was underwhelming. They say that it's the loudest part of the course, and the place where people are the most emotional as they head for the finish line, but it wasn't for me. I just didn't have it in me. I could see Charlie in the distance as I rounded the corner, and heard them say his name as he crossed the line. He was so far ahead. I could see the back of #195, just barely ahead of me as he must have struggled home in the last few miles as well. I got to mile 26 and didn't look at my watch as I split a 6:31 -- the slowest mile of the day. I knew I had to kick it in, and I thought that the giant structure in the road was the finish line, so I was driving to it as much as I could, but my legs had no response. I stopped the clock, just behind a wheelchair athlete and a group of military officers who had walked the course, in 2:32:02. The time was well short of my goal of running under 2:26:31. The performance didn't even warrant them saying my name as I crossed the line.<br />
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Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-12737643881395964422015-04-22T19:41:00.000-04:002015-04-22T19:59:14.122-04:00Getting to the lineAll of my running for the past two years was a build up for Boston. I ran the Three Bridges Marathon to qualify, and broke my foot during the race. That hiccup pushed things back, and I had to start from scratch last spring. I got up to a decent level of training and fitness in the fall, then took a two-week break in December to recover before a build for Boston. Ideally I would've taken time off earlier and had a longer buildup than December 29 to April 20, but that's just the way it worked out.<br />
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I started to get into a grove pretty quickly in December, and found the mileage coming easily. Sometimes the intensity wasn't there for my workouts, but I was tired from the mileage. In the past, I've never been able to get more than a week or two in the 90 MPW range without getting hurt, but this cycle I averaged over 90 for eight weeks in a row. During that time I won a half-marathon in under 72 minutes, and ran a challenging 10 mile race in 54 minutes at the front of a 40 mile weekend. But I also had some bad workouts. There was a 4 x 4 mile workout that I had scale back on, and a 23 mile long run workout that went pretty poorly. Heading into the last two weeks before the race, I was looking for confidence, and found none when I felt a pop in my left hamstring after 4 miles of a marathon simulation run. I knew there wasn't anything I could do two weeks out besides take care of myself and stay healthy. I got three massages to try to take care of it, and was feeling much better heading to Boston. I just tried to relax and take care of the little things, like stretching and rolling as much as possible.<br />
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The trip to Boston was pleasant and uneventful. There were 5 of us on the plane together, Charlie, Adam, Josh, his wife Lara, and me. All of us but Charlie were staying in the same hotel, so we landed and rode the T down to UMASS Boston. There was a nice grocery store there, we got settled, then went to dinner at Jon Healey's house. It was a nice time.<br />
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The next morning, Josh, Adam and I went for a run along the bay to loosen up and stretch. Then it was Expo time, and we met up with Charlie and my brother-in-law, Chip, who was there to support and spectate. After snapping some group photos at the finish line and visiting Greg at Marathon Sports, we retreated to the hotel to sit around for the rest of the day. We got lunch from the grocery store and watched hours of Netflix while I graded papers. I was bored to death.<br />
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Finally, it was time to go to the pasta dinner at City Hall Plaza. Two minutes before the train came, Adam told us that he wasn't feeling well and was going to skip dinner and stay at the hotel (more on that later). Despite soliciting tickets from the the Boston group in Charlottesville, I was unable to get all of our dinner tickets for the same time. But that didn't make a difference, we were all able to get in just fine. My friend Rachel, who went to William & Mary and lives in Boston, came to join us and I enjoyed talking with her and Chip while they got to drink the free Sam Adams beer.<br />
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It was funny, getting into the building was like going through the line of a soup kitchen. They threw the food into our to-go box and moved us through so quickly, but then we went into the building and listened to pop music from the mid-90's and could get unlimited refills on the inside. I thought that the food was good, and I probably stayed too long as Chip, Rachel and I were the last ones in our group to leave. On the way back to the train, we stopped in Boston Commons to give away my eight remaining dinner tickets to some homeless people. We told them they had to get there quickly (it was 7:15 and it ended at 8:00), and they took off running.<br />
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On the way home, I missed my train stop because it had gotten dark and my stop was the first one above ground, but I didn't know that I was above ground yet. I had to wait outside for another train for about 10 minutes, and I worried that I was going to catch a cold without a jacket on. I did not really pack very intelligently for a trip to the northeast... all I was considering was the race. Adam was back in the room and he hadn't really eaten anything, but we went to bed in preparation for the battle to come.<br />
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I don't know when I fell asleep, but I woke up and the TV was still on. It was probably too late. I turned off the TV and fell back to sleep, only to wake up again at 3 AM to go to the bathroom and never fall back to sleep again. I tried though, but that was it--up at 3 AM on race day.<br />
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At 5 AM, I got up to start getting ready. I ate a yogurt with granola and a peanut butter sandwich. Adam got up at 5:30 and we moved our stuff to Josh's room and headed to the train. We were running a little behind to get to Boston Commons, but got our bags checked and met up with our whole William & Mary group: Trevor, Adam, Josh, Charlie, me. The 5 of us boarded a school bus to ride to Hopkinton around 7 AM. This was my nightmare! I'm too tall to ride in a school bus seat. It was hot, muggy and loud. I just wanted off of that bus so badly. Luckily I didn't have to go to the bathroom while we were on it.<br />
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As soon as we arrived at the Athletes' Village a few minutes after 8 AM, we posted up along a brick wall immediately inside the village before it started to rain. We sought refuge under one of the three tents at the village. I felt like there were a million eyes on us as we walked into this place that looked like a war zone. There were bodies strewn everywhere, laying under blankets with tattered clothes and bottles around. People seemed so protective of the spots around them, as if we were coming in to rob them. The 5 of us were able to get some space within 20 feet of each other, but it was pretty linear. I could talk to Josh, he could talk to Charlie, Charlie could talk to Trevor and Adam.<br />
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I was cold and uncomfortable. They were giving away the tinfoil blankets to keep us warm, and I had one on, and I put on a trash bag over that and another one around my feet, but it just wasn't enough. The village started to fill up, and lines for the bathrooms were 20 people long. I did not like the situation that I was in, and it made me long for the comforts of the "Elite Developmental" tent in Chicago. Around 8:45 AM, Adam and I went out to wait in the bathroom lines. By the time we got to the front, I really had to go and I was trembling because I was so cold. I think it took 20 minutes to get through, and then I went back to the tent to get ready to warm up. </div>
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Back in the tent, people had started to disperse. Wave 1/Corral 1 was supposed to head to the starting line at 9:05, and I was going to warm up at 9:20. Many of the familiar bodies had disappeared while I was in the bathroom, and new ones appeared. One that appeared on top of my stuff was a girl named Katie who was a graduate student at UVA (I think in Nursing) who wanted to try to run under 3:30 originally. Small world, right? I talked to Katie while I got ready to go and listened to people complaining about the cold, wind, and rain. The general consensus was that it was going to be a slow day. Katie didn't think she'd be running anywhere close to her goal, nor did all the other strangers in the tent. No matter, I'd done the work and I was ready to go out and try. I didn't spend all this time and money to go up there and give up before I started.</div>
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Adam and I went out to warm up for a few minutes and basically just ran back and forth on the open parts of the field as runners started to head to the starting line. Adam cut it shorter than I did and was actually gone from the tent before I finished. I did a few light stretches with my rope, put on my singlet and body glide, changed into my flats, and said goodbye to the pile of stuff that I was leaving there. It was still too cold to shed any layers, so at this point I had on two pairs of gloves, a hat, singlet, t-shirt, sweater, sweatshirt, shorts, and sweatpants. Jogging out of the tent, I knew that it was essential that I use the bathroom again, but the 15,000 people in the village who were waiting in line for their start times weren't likely going to care if I needed to go now. So I ran out of the village fully bloated hoping that the toilets near the starting line were less crowded.</div>
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It was a very long run down to the line. But luckily there were another 200+ porta-potties in a parking lot and the back end of the lot was much less crowded than the front. I did what I needed to do, stretched a little more, took GU #1 and took off my sweatpants. Heading to the line was a bit of a zoo, and I was moving past people walking around during the national anthem. I passed Adam and he and I grouped up as we worked our way towards the front, still maybe 5 rows back from the rope separating the elite from the masses. Charlie found us as well from a spot 4-6 people to our left, so we'd be able to group up quickly. I kept my layers on me as long as I could before taking a knee in the crowd and got ready for the onslaught of runners to pass us after the gun went off. I was surprised that they didn't let the rope down and allow us to move forward 2-3 seconds before the gun, instead making us start running well beyond the line. But that's what they did and the gun was off and I started my watch as I crossed the starting line...</div>
Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-26502557665311573612015-04-19T12:44:00.000-04:002015-04-19T12:44:02.503-04:00Shipping up to BostonThis weekend has been a long time coming.<br />
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I was a sophomore in college when I ran my first marathon, and qualified for the Boston Marathon for the first time. Friends at school seemed to make a big deal of it, qualifying for the Boston Marathon, and I think I got a little hyped too. It was too late to run Boston the next year, but after an aborted attempt to make the W&M team, I signed up. I have no recollection of what the process was like. I’m sure that I didn’t sit down at my computer on the day registration opened to ensure that I would get in, I just didn’t realize that was the way that things worked. I found an expensive hotel that had a 3-night minimum, and booked rooms and tickets for my parents at the end of February. For comparison, I booked in August this time around, and signed up within the first 10 minutes of registration.<br />
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I had an excuse for waiting. My dad insisted that he was going to fly us to Boston himself. Once my mom put her foot down and said she wasn’t getting in an airplane with him at the helm, I was able to book. I remember when we landed, standing in the terminal, my dad looked around at the vast, open tarmac bordered on one side by the Atlantic Ocean, and he said to us that he was glad we flew commercial, that the airport was much bigger than he expected it to be. <br />
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2004 was an adventure trip. I thought that I’d reached the pinnacle of the running world (or at least the world to my own abilities as I perceived them.) We got there on Friday night and went to Legal Seafood, because that’s where my mom wanted to eat. I went to the Expo on Saturday and Sunday, getting autographs and photos with Frank Shorter, Khalid Khannouchi, Carrie Tollefson, Jen Rhines, Alan Culpepper, Jorge & Edwardo Torres, Greg Meyers, and anyone else that I could find. I waited in line for this stuff! My dad and I walked by the Snickers Marathon Bar tent a hundred times and brought back 30 pounds of energy bars. I bought a jacket, a t-shirt, pants, and shorts! This was IT! This was my opening ceremony for the Olympics! I was having a blast! I took pictures of everything, as though I’d never been to a real city before and never would again (to be fair, I don’t think I’d ever been to a real city before, outside of D.C.) We went to the pasta party, my parents drank beer, and I wore my brand-new Boston Marathon jacket. We walked around Boston Commons. What foolish mistakes…<br />
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The race started at 1pm that year, and the buzz around town was how hot it was going to be. My mom went with me that morning, once the sun was up, so that I could board the bus to Hopkinton. My gear-check bag was bigger than my son. At the Athlete Village in Hopkinton, I sat in the sun and melted while looking for my roommate’s mom, who promptly told me to sit down and get into some shade. Once the race time started to approach, I remember that it felt like a blur—just like in my first marathon. All of the sudden I was on the starting line right before the gun went off and I was running. Now, if you’re reading this, you’re probably expecting things to go poorly based on the description of how I spent my time the two previous days. If you’re thinking that I ran like crap, you’re exactly right. I went out there and I suffered. It was hot, the race was long, and I was tired. I don’t have to go into great detail—if you’ve ever had a bad race from start to finish, you know what it felt like. I went out more conservatively than I’d planned because of the heat, but then I just never bounced back. My goal was to run 2:48, and I finished well over 3:00. <br />
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I’m actually surprised, given my tendency to remember things like this, how little of the race I remember without relying on photographs. I finished and was taken to the medical tent, where my parents retrieved me in a wheelchair. I couldn’t take the wheelchair with me out of the finish area, so I got the boot and we headed to the nearest T station. The T still used tokens at the time, and when my mom went to buy the tokens for the three of us, the security guard let me through for free because I was a marathon finisher, wearing my tinfoil blanket and finisher’s medal. I didn’t even have the ability to put on any of my clothes afterwards, nor did I want to because it was so hot out. We got back to the hotel and I sat in my bathroom crying from the pain. Luckily I had a handicapped room (for some reason), so I had a large shower and there was a telephone in it. When my parents called to check on me, I just told them I couldn’t move. Everything was chafed. Everything was sore. I was sunburned.<br />
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Seeing how I approached the whole weekend with tremendous zeal, it’s not surprising that my parents and I had purchased tickets to the post-race party at some bar. Feeling bad about the cost of the tickets, I managed to go to the party and had my first legal alcoholic drink with my parents before promptly returning to my hotel room for a restless night of physical pain and emotional distress. My parents stayed at the party and had a very nice time (as I think they did the entire weekend.) The next day, we went sightseeing! We went to Harvard and the Reggie Lewis Center! They went back to the hotel to pack and I went to visit a friend of mine at her dorm at BU. Looking back, I wonder what in the hell was going on? What was I thinking?<br />
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After Boston, like many runners, I swore off the marathon. I went back to school and tried to make up for lost time on having fun. Hanging out with my girlfriend and her friends who were graduating, celebrating friends’ 21st birthdays, going to the King & Queens Ball (why??), just having a great time and not running. It would be 7 months until I even thought about running another marathon, after Chris Healey ran 2:55 in Richmond. My competitive spirit got the best of me, not wanting to have a PR that was so much slower than that of my peers. I ran Shamrock the following spring and haven’t looked back since. I’ve run 11 marathons since I last ran Boston, but now I’m back. I’m older, wiser, and more prepared to handle the task before me. I won’t make the same mistakes I made then, and I’m confident that I’ll come away in a better place.Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-89640370253828386772015-03-20T10:56:00.002-04:002015-03-20T10:56:24.878-04:00Winning mentalityI'm racing again tomorrow, and I'm running for second place. The Charlottesville 10-Miler starts at 7:15 AM, and I found out yesterday afternoon that my RMR teammate <a href="http://www.raggedmountainracing.org/athletes/sean-keveren/" target="_blank">Sean Keveren</a> is running after a disappointing race in last weekend's US 15K Championship at the Gate River Run in Jacksonville. Sean's presence in the race won't really have an impact on me, as he will run away from me like I am standing still in the first 100 meters. I'm realistic about my abilities and know that running after him would be a mistake I'd pay for dearly within the first 10 minutes of the race. Running for second place is mentally so much different than running for first. There is so less pressure, even if you're doing the exact same thing. I'd been looking forward to trying to win the race, but oh well. It's not that important anyway. The real race is 31 days away.<br />
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Training for Boston is going well. Last week I ran the highest weekly mileage of my life, and I've averaged over 92 miles per week for the last 4 weeks. I plan to be above 90 again this week and next week before I start tapering. I'm exhausted and my legs are sore after hard workouts and long runs, but I still feel pretty good. Hopefully tomorrow's race still serves as a confidence booster, despite the fact that my undefeated streak of 2015 will come to an end. Now there is less pressure on me to win in Boston to keep the streak alive...Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-60666603945572136172015-02-23T14:51:00.011-05:002023-03-20T10:50:37.002-04:00Don't call it a workout #LoveROXI'd planned to run the Colonial Half Marathon at William & Mary yesterday, as the race is always very important to me. I wasn't able to participate the past two years due to injury, so I was excited about returning for the 2015 edition. It was not meant to be, however, as Williamsburg got just as much snow as Charlottesville, and race directors were forced to cancel the half-marathon portion of the event. Rick Platt offered the elite athletes entry into the 3-mile race, but it wasn't worth the drive, no matter how much I love Williamsburg.<br />
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I got word of the cancellation on Thursday just as I was about to go out for a run. Despite my complete understanding and support of the decision that they had to make, I was pissed. Any wrench thrown into training is upsetting. Luckily, Google was able to find a race for me to run in Richmond instead. After my run, I looked at their website, which had lots of red font saying that the race might be cancelled, and called the phone number looking for an entry. Michelle politely told me that they didn't offer comp entries to elite runners, but offered me a 25% discount off of the $95 entry fee. She told me to sleep on it and that's what I decided to do. Results showed the previous winner was in 1:17, and I felt like I could easily run 1:15 if I had a good day, and maybe bring home money to cover my entry fee. The prize structure was $250-$150-$100, so all I needed was a top-3 to break even and actually come out ahead. Later that night though, when I was talking to KC about it, I got an email from Adam Otstot saying that he was thinking about running it too. So I said to her, "Well, I guess I'll have to beat Adam for the first time in my life."<br />
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The next morning we woke up with frozen pipes and decided we'd be spending the weekend in Fredericksburg. With KC in a boot and me potentially leaving town to race, it would be helpful to have some support from her parents. Besides, we needed to do some stuff in town anyway. I signed up for the race and we packed our bags.<br />
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As this weekend was not about running a fast half-marathon, but preparing to run a fast full-marathon in April, I ran 14 miles on Saturday morning. Tim met me for the first 7, then I got in some community service hours working with the FARC war vets for the next 7 miles. All in all it was an easy run, and extremely cold. I took my first selfie and posted it on Twitter for the world to see the small amount of ice that accumulated in my beard during the run. The rest of the day was uneventful, save for a 3 hour trip to a variety of "doc-in-the-box" clinics to find out that Henry had a dual ear infection.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">#selfie</td></tr>
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I woke up Sunday morning, still unsure about what the weather would bring in Richmond, after we'd gotten another inch or two of snow in Fredericksburg (and 6-7 inches in Charlottesville.) Getting out of the neighborhood was the most challenging part, and once I was on the interstate, it was just driving in the rain on an empty road. I stopped at my sister's to get my bib (she went to packet pickup for me the day before) and drove around in circles for 20 minutes trying to figure out where to park. Luckily I was ahead of schedule and had plenty of time. The sidewalks were covered in ice around the Richmond Coliseum and the Greater Richmond Convention Center, but the later was largely empty save for the runners wandering around it's cavernous hallways. I hid all of my stuff under the counter of an information booth and went out for my warm up.<br />
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It was very warm. I had planned to run the course (two six-mile loops), but realized I didn't even know where it went for the first mile and just went up Monument and back down Grace. I ran on the street for the most part, which was fine. I thought it was strange that all of the sidewalks in front of houses & businesses were shoveled, but not in front of the churches. Those sidewalks were all in pretty bad shape. As I got back towards the starting line area, I dipped into the Richmond Marriott to use the bathroom at 9:10, just as the 5K was starting 10 minutes late. I ran over to the starting area and asked some official-looking people if the half was going to start 10 minutes late as well. They said yes, so I kept running. My pre-race plan had me running a 6 mile warm up, changing my clothes and getting on the line just in time to start. This 10-minute delay was throwing me off schedule. But I didn't want to run much more. I got in another half-mile and then went in to change and decided to just take my time. I was breathing very comfortably and wanted to arrive on the starting line the same way, but hopefully still sweating. As I said, it was very warm, and I didn't feel chilly at all outside with my singlet and gloves on. I chatted with Adam as we did a few strides, and spoke with Mark Hopely while taking note of which runners had on white 10K bibs and which ones had on red half-marathon bibs. Then the gun went off.<br />
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Someone jumped out to a very quick start. Adam and I trailed behind with a group of people, and we went straight down a hill. I looked at my GPS watch (which I had disabled the auto-split feature of) for the first of two times as we were going down hill, and saw that I was running 5:10 pace. I backed off, and let Adam and another guy start to gap me. We did the finish of the Richmond Marathon/Half/8K and crossed over to Brown's Island. It was very sloppy over there and we had a lot of little snake turns. After we reached the mile in an authentic 5:12ish, I said out loud to Mark and the other guy wearing headphones that was with us that I was going to back off. Mark said something about it being a downhill mile, but I ignored him and allowed a gap to form. Things got sort of single-file there for a while anyway, as we ran across a footbridge, some cobblestone covered in snow, and a couple other treacherous spots. I could feel some tightness in my right hamstring and IT band right behind my knee, and started to get a little worried about the road conditions beyond that point. I took a turn a little bit too wide, missed the sidewalk, and ran completely into a pile of snow, soaking my feet. At this point, I was running behind 4 people who were all pretty far away from me. I passed the first water stop and the 2nd mile marker to see a 6:29 split on my watch. Good Lord, was I really running that slowly? I guess that's what happens when you're tired and you mentally let them run away from you immediately into the race. I decided I needed to catch back up to Mark so I picked it up. The next mile was largely uphill, but I caught him pretty quickly. I knew he had his GPS on (it beeped when we went through the first mile), so I asked him what he ran for the 2nd mile. He said something in the 5:30 range, I forget, but I knew that I wasn't a full minute behind him at that point. That was when I started to lose confidence in the mile markers. Kyle Pawlaczyk was on the side of the road cheering, and it was nice to see him.<br />
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I started gaining on Adam too, but it wasn't consistent. I went through the third split in 5:13, which seemed absurd, but I figured it was making up some of the 2nd mile being off. We kept working up hill and then had a little bit of a downhill before we jumped onto the big bridge at Lee Street to cross over the James River. I could tell that I was getting closer, but then all of the sudden, the gap would seem bigger. The two guys in front of him were so far gone. I knew that the first one was a 10K guy, but wasn't sure about #2. I could see them both as this was a very long bridge. There were 4 lanes of traffic in each direction, and they had the far right lane coned off for us to run in. I watched Adam from behind as he approached a huge puddle that went across all 4 lanes. Adam went to the sidewalk to avoid the puddle, but had to jump up into a giant pile of snow, only to discover that the snow was several feet deep at that point and then jump back down onto the road. Poor guy, because then he had to go through the puddle. I tried to learn from his mistake and just went through it right away. My feet were already wet anyway. But now, after the puddle my butt and back were soaked too. I kept getting closer and closer on the bridge, which was a lot more of an uphill than I remembered from running it with Anne in November 2013. On the other side, we went through a water stop and I saw a mile marker and took a split. 7:33. Nonsense.<br />
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As we got closer to Broad Street, I was getting ready to catch Adam. So the question was do I stick with him for a while and run together, or do I go for it now and try to hold him off at the end? As I looked at my GPS pace for the 2nd and last time, I saw that I was running 5:00 pace, so opted for the later. As I went by him, I asked if the guy in front of us was in the 10K, and said something about the mile markers being off. I clipped off another split, this time a 3:21, and slowly started to realize that maybe the last one that I got was a marker for the 2nd loop. (Sure enough, it was the 11th mile marker.)<br />
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Heading back towards the start/finish line, I worried that I was being too aggressive too early. But I didn't really know what was going on as my splits were so erratic that they could not be trusted. My next split, which came around the end of the loop, was a 5:34. I tried to believe it and was kind of happy that I wasn't running 5:15 pace, and decided to embrace it. I saw Jason Driscoll cheering for me, and acquired my own bike escort and several police cars to lead me back through the city. I missed the 7th mile marker (I saw it on the cool down) and just leaned into the hill. I wanted to put a gap on Adam if I could, so that he'd have to work at the end to catch me, unless I was walking, which is what I expected. I looked back for the first time when I got back over to Brown's Island, and saw that he was still coming down the hill, as was Mark. That gave me some confidence to relax while I was going through the cobblestones, without having to worry about him passing me then. Then it was back to work on the uphills, taking meaningless splits and running scared. Kyle was gone (disappointment), but I passed the first lapped runners about 8 miles in. I just kept telling myself that it was a marathon and that I was at miles 21, 22, as I continued. Work on that mental game. After those two runners (walkers), the crowds started to get thicker. Getting onto the bridge, there were a LOT of people.<br />
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Our one lane had turned into two lanes because of the puddle (I suppose), but as we approached the water, there was a police officer standing there shutting down the third lane so that runners could cross in the shallowest point. Wimps. Just run through the water! This was causing a huge bottle neck of traffic, and my one remaining police escort (a gator with 6 cops on it) got caught up behind some cars as I ran on the edge of the cones, just slightly in the car lane. Without the escort, some of the intersection police officers would yell at me, not knowing that I was leading the race, telling me to get inside of the cones. But I couldn't do that, as there was a sea of runners wearing pink and black who were taking up the entire lane.<br />
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My legs started to really feel it after going up the bridge, but I knew from the first loop that the last 2 miles were largely downhill. I saw that 11th mile marker again, this time correctly splitting between signs. But I'd stopped looking at my watch long ago, because I knew that the times were meaningless. I was just running as hard as I could on feel, no data. The rest of the race was just a blur, literally, as cars were spitting up water in my face from the street and I was just chasing the people who I was lapping and who were still finishing the 10K. Jason was back at mile 12.5 or about, cheering me on, and the gator reappeared to lead me in. As I rounded the second to last turn, I saw a guy with a microphone start running towards the finish line, assuming that he was going to announce that the winner was coming in. That did not happen, as I ran by him and to the line unannounced. The clock did not have the total time on display. I took my split and looked at it as I waited for Adam to finish. 1:11:44. I think I was too overwhelmed by the fact that I a) won and b) beat Adam to recognize how fast I had run. He came in two minutes later and we went for a slow cool down. I finished up the day with a little over 21 miles, and just a hair under 90 for the week.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">C.R.E.A.M.</td></tr>
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This is the 4th fastest half-marathon I've ever run. My PR is a little under a minute faster from Crawlin' Crab in the fall. I've also run 70:51 in Philadelphia, and I ran 71:33 at the Historic Half the year I won that. So three of my four fastest times have been huge victories run largely alone. Although its not fair to say that this was done alone since I had other runners around me for the last 5k. They were very helpful, and there is no denying that. I feel pretty good today. Mostly just normal soreness. The front of my right foot, under my big toe, is tender, and I think that I'll need to get a new pair of racing flats in the next couple weeks. My current Adizero Adios have been through a lot since September 2011, they've earned their retirement. Adam and I waited around at the post-race party/awards ceremony for a very long time, eating soup and bagels. They had the 10K results scrolling on a computer screen and did those awards pretty quickly, but we had to wait forever for the rest of the ceremony. Adam got tired of waiting and went to talk to them, but they weren't even able to confirm to him that he'd been second place! He left frustrated, and I continued to wait while they did the 5K results. Finally around 1pm (I finished before 11am), I heard some people talking about getting results from the directors and went to talk to them. Michelle (from the phone) was very nice and was talking with the top-3 women as well and made a phone call to confirm our places. So I got to walk out of there with a check. I learned this morning that my time was officially 1:11:43.8, and I was 2 minutes ahead of Adam in 1:13:44.5. I don't trust the results after that, as there was a woman in 3rd place and Mark Hopely was not in the results. Maybe he did drop out. But they also had the 10K guy running under 30 minutes yesterday, and today his time is not even close to that fast. They also have the winner of the 5K and the 10K as the same person. Maybe that is true. If so, he got a nice $500 payday out of it. Regardless, results are certainly suspect. How I don't have any splits and was not ranked first at the finish line is beyond me...<br />
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<a href="https://runsignup.com/Race/Results/17162#resultSetId-6142;perpage:100" target="_blank">Love ROX Results</a> at RichmondMultisports.com (Update 3/20/2023: The original link to these results which showed some level of splits no longer works, causing this blog post to get flagged for spreading Malware or Malicious Content. So I have updated the link, but the splits are gone.)<br />
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Anyway, it was a good day. I'm really happy with the time and to get the win. I was expecting to run 75 minutes. Hell, I was doubtful that I could do that unless the day was perfect. I remember thinking, can I run under 2:32 pace? Instead, I ran 2:23 pace! The weather was completely ideal, as I was even warm on the bridge with the sun bearing down. Once I left, I drove back to Fredericksburg and KC and I went to shovel the driveway at our house and her dad's office. We got back to Charlottesville around 6pm and I was happy to sleep in my bed and run an easy 8 miles this morning with Alec and Rachel.<br />
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Two months to go...Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-14564564477817072182015-01-10T13:27:00.001-05:002015-01-10T13:27:52.673-05:00#100DaysThe Boston Marathon is 100 days away. I've been running for thirteen days, and did my second "long run" this morning. I use quotation marks because it wasn't really very long, twelve miles. Two weeks from now, I'll be doing that and more every Thursday morning. But I'm starting out conservatively. I think that if I can get to that starting line 100 days from now healthy, that I'll run well. But today was very easy and a lot of fun. I can't wait until the runs start to get longer, and the weather starts to get warmer too!<br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="500" src="http://connect.garmin.com:80/activity/embed/670004110" width="465"></iframe>Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-36435937889246427022015-01-01T20:55:00.000-05:002015-01-02T09:46:44.103-05:002014 Running ReflectionIt's the time of year when everyone reflects back on what they've done for the past 12 months. Radio stations replay the top-10 requested songs, sports analysts look at the best plays, and the Mersiowsky family gathers around the breakfast table to discuss their favorite running moments shared in my blog. To help get their discussion started, I'll review the year 2014 as well.<br />
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2014 started out very slowly. On New Year's Eve, 2013, I was fitted for a boot to help heal my very first stress fracture. I spent the first 6-7 weeks riding my bike inside while watching Parks & Recreation on Netflix and all eight Harry Potter movies. I went to the pool on occasion, and I got to run on an <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2014/02/75-pounds.html" target="_blank">Alter-G treadmill on my birthday</a>. With a 5-month old baby at home, there couldn't have been better opportunity to stick around the house. <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2014/02/going-running.html" target="_blank">I ran on solid ground for the first time on February 20</a>, starting out with a prescribed walk-jog routine that I followed to the T. My doctor was apprehensive about the fact that I promised my wife that I would run the <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2014/03/kc-does-shamrock.html" target="_blank">Shamrock Half-Marathon with her</a>, but I agreed to take it easy and only start & finish the race with her.<br />
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As the intensity of the semester picked up, my recuperation slowed down. I took several days off in a row each week and never built the base fitness that I needed to run well in any spring races. Despite that, I started lacing up. <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2014/06/run-for-autism-5k.html" target="_blank">I ran a 5k in April</a> and a 4 mile race in May while very sick and out of shape, and the results showed that. It wasn't until the semester ended that <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2014/05/may.html" target="_blank">I finally started to run consistently</a>. I started running 8-10 miles a day most days a week, slowly. I lined up for my 4th of July race thinking that things might fall together. I was wrong-- they didn't.<br />
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Then I decided I needed something to train for. I looked at the calendar and decided on the USATF Club Cross Country Championships at Lehigh University in December, and the Crawlin' Crab Half Marathon at the Hampton Coliseum in October. Once I got back from the beach, I started doing workouts. <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2014_07_01_archive.html" target="_blank">I even ran a mile race.</a> I was running every day for the first time since Henry was born. My mileage was climbing, running between 70-86 miles a week for eight of the next ten weeks after vacation.<br />
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I signed up for some more races in the fall to test my fitness, three of which were on the grass to get used to wearing spikes. <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2014/09/september-racing.html" target="_blank">The Pepsi 10K went well</a>, but the two UVA Club Cross Country races I ran were <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2014_11_01_archive.html" target="_blank">embarrassing</a>. I went to Hampton and <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2014/10/welcome-back-to-crawlincrabhalf.html" target="_blank">won the Crawlin' Crab race</a>, running alone from the gun, in a 2 second PR. That was a pleasant surprise, especially coming off such a serious injury and inconsistent training for so many months.<br />
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With the half-marathon being my real peak race, I continued to train with the cross country races in mind, working out on the grass on the weekend and trying to stay sharp. I thought that I was in decent shape heading into my Turkey Trot, but ran slower than I hoped (and the same time that I'd run the past two years). That race was also run largely alone.<br />
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At Lehigh, I enjoyed running in a large group of people and <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2014/12/losing-2014clubnats.html" target="_blank">losing to over 300 of them</a>. At no point was I running alone-- I always had someone close enough to work towards, always had someone coming up near me to move up with. It was a lot of fun. Without many expectations, I ran hard and had a lot of fun racing as a team with the other guys on Ragged Mountain Racing. Then I took two weeks completely* off from running.<br />
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2014 saw me running over twice as many races as in 2013. Last year I ran 5.<br />
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April 12 - Run for Autism 5K - 2nd place, 17:11 (5:32 pace)<br />
May 24 - Charlottesville Men's 4 Miler - 6th place, 21:56 (5:29 pace)<br />
July 4 - Heritage Festival 5 Miler - 3rd place, 27:10 (5:26 pace)<br />
July 24 - Michie Tavern Downtown Mile - 9th place, 4:51 (4:51 pace)<br />
September 13 - Pepsi 10K - 3rd place, 33:04 (5:19 pace)<br />
September 20 - Cavalier Invitational 8K XC - 12th place, 28:51 (5:48 pace)<br />
October 5 - Crawlin' Crab Half Marathon - 1st place, 1:10:49 (5:24 pace)<br />
November 1 - NIRCA Mid-Atlantic Regional Championships 8K XC - 29th place, 28:16 (5:41 pace)<br />
November 22 - Kelly Watt Memorial Race 2 Mile XC - 2nd place, 10:26 (5:13 pace)<br />
November 27 - YMCA Turkey Trot - 7th place, 15:51 (5:06 pace)<br />
December 13 - USATF Club Cross Country Championships 10K - 314th place, 33:37 (5:24 pace)<br />
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I had a really nice progression going from April to October, getting faster at each race despite the distance increasing, except for those terrible cross country races I ran for the UVA club team. I enjoy racing, even if I'm not going to run a personal best. I'll give it all I've got every time I line up though.<br />
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Last year, I wrote about 2013 and called it "<a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2013/12/2013-decline.html" target="_blank">the decline</a>." My mileage dropped by over 1000 miles from 2012. Despite the six week break at the beginning of the year, I somehow managed to run more mileage in 2014 (2174) than in 2013 (2117), barely. I am hoping to continue that trend in 2015. I'm running the Boston Marathon in April, so I'll have to put in work for that. Depending on where my professional life takes me this fall, I will consider running a fall marathon as well. Graduate school and the birth of my son have rightfully shifted the focus in my life away from running, which is why running in Charlottesville may seem to be more challenging for me. It's all a part of getting older and growing up. But I still feel like 2015 is going to be a good year.<br />
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Interestingly, I started to wear a <a href="http://sites.garmin.com/en-US/vivo/vivofit/" target="_blank">pedometer</a> this year. I didn't get it until September, but in that time I walked 508 miles. I've test the accuracy of it by counting my own steps while walking for a while and it is pretty accurate. I don't wear it while I'm running, so I know that I'm not overlapping, but I'll be curious to see how many miles I walk in 2015 as well. I spend a lot of time sitting at a desk these days, but hopefully I'll have a job that makes me more mobile in the fall.<br />
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*Not completely off as I ran a beer mile during that time. It was the worst beer mile of my career.Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-66333108708562840972014-12-15T13:56:00.000-05:002014-12-17T13:01:07.923-05:00Losing @2014ClubNatsI don't have much time to make this post as substantial as I'd like it to be, so I apologize. Be happy with what you get!<br />
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I've done a whole lot of losing lately. Moving from Fredericksburg to Charlottesville, I entered a much more competitive realm. While Tim Young is certainly the best runner ever to come out of that place, he didn't race locally very often. And the old guys who were fast when I was younger just kept getting older, and the young guys who were faster weren't racing either. As a result, I won a lot.<br />
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I haven't won very much in the last few years. I <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2014/10/welcome-back-to-crawlincrabhalf.html" target="_blank">won a half marathon in October</a> this year and I think it's the first race I'd won since the <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2012/09/pepsi-10k.html" target="_blank">Pepsi 10K</a> in 2012. Well, this weekend, I raced the USATF Club Cross Country Championships at Lehigh University. It was the <a href="http://www.runnersworld.com/races/largest-field-ever-for-club-cross-country-championships-saturday" target="_blank">largest field in Club Cross history</a>, with over 600 men entered in the Open race, and 68 <strike>something like 70</strike> teams. Over the <strike>10,200 meter</strike> cross country course, I ran 33:37 for 314th place! Ridiculous! KC told me on the phone to try to finish above the 500s, and I'd told her I wanted to run under 34 minutes, so it was a successful day. Our Ragged Mountain Racing team finished 30th <strike>34th (<i>tentatively, results subject to change</i>)</strike>, so we beat half of the field.<br />
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Losing to 313 people was insane. I've never been in a field that deep since I started running for real. <br />
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My last USATF xc race went very poorly and I was only 112th (out of 168 finishers). I also ran really slowly that day compared to this weekend <strike>(5:51 pace vs. 5:18 pace)</strike>. The only time I can think of that I lost to MORE people in one race was at the Boston Marathon in 2004, when I was running my second (and slowest) marathon ever and I got 423 out of 16,743. Add 313 and 111 together and we're almost equal (random math fact that is almost cool but not because it's not the same...).<br />
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Anyway, I hope I don't lose as much next year. Hopefully I'll be injury free from start to finish and maybe win something. There's always July 4th...Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-3269400180100748502014-12-07T20:59:00.001-05:002014-12-07T20:59:37.825-05:00Annual Mileage PreviewIt is too early in the month to detail my annual mileage, but I am surprised to see that despite having a broken foot and taking the first several weeks of the year completely off, after tomorrow I will have run more miles in 2014 than I did in 2013. Granted, 2013 and 2014 will still be the lowest years of mileage recorded since joining the GPS world, but still. I am surprised to see that 2014 surpassed 2013. Assuming I manage to get out the door again tomorrow.Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2819419132144401768.post-33640405225432676432014-11-02T11:25:00.003-05:002014-11-02T11:25:43.557-05:00Not a kid anymoreCross country running is a young man's game.<div>
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I went back to Ash-Lawn Highlands yesterday to participate in the NIRCA Regional Championship as a part of the UVA Club Cross Country team. I'm not really on the team, but participated with the blessing of RMR, wearing a borrowed singlet from the club team. I was looking for redemption from my brutal post-baby <a href="http://run.bertjacoby.com/2014/09/september-racing.html" target="_blank">cross country debut from September 21</a>. I did not find it.</div>
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The race started out well enough. I got out in the front for the first 300 meters to avoid the chaos that I was stuck in last time, and then settled in and let the real front runners go. There were some kids throwing elbows at me trying to get the poll position, which was silly, and I'm happy to say I did at least beat them. I was running with the first chase pack behind 3 guys who were far out in front, and things were going well. There were two other UVA kids there, communicating with each other and with me about running together, and it felt pretty cool to be part of the group. I was relaxed and very comfortable, conscious of the fact that it was very early in the race and that the back half of the course was very tough. I was not controlling the pace, because there were some kids who were very insistent on being in the front. I was content to sit behind them.</div>
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Half way through the race, though, I just lost all steam. I started going backwards, getting passed by a lot of kids the rest of the way. I felt as though I were walking on some parts of the course, and had trouble getting my legs moving even on the downhills. I genuinely considered stopping. I had nothing left at the end to summon a kick, and stopped almost immediately after crossing the line. I had nothing left. I ran roughly 30 seconds faster than I did in September, but I'd attribute that entire 30 seconds to the weather, and not to my fitness. Certainly not to my racing tactics.</div>
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KC and Henry were there at the finish, so I walked back to the car with them to get them going ahead of the traffic. I wanted to leave with them, but knew I needed to cool down and shake out a little. I ran for less than 15 minutes with the William & Mary/Team Blitz guys, and then just disappeared in the middle of the awards ceremony. I had no business being there. I didn't do anything to help the UVA men's team, watching as I was passed by one Penn State runner after another.</div>
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It was a bad day. I've got plenty of things going through my head about why I ran so poorly, and none of them matter. I hope that I can turn things around in time for Thanksgiving to run well at the Turkey Trot, and I have six more weeks until USATF Club Cross Country Nationals at Lehigh. I've got to get used to running on the grass. My old man legs have lost all of their pep from racing on the road for so long already <i>[just a little sarcasm]</i>.</div>
Berthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07273010991476506590noreply@blogger.com5