Bright (and windy) Beginnings 5K

A few weeks ago, my coach suggested that everyone on the team run the Bright Beginnings 5K that took place this morning. He was so keen on us doing it that he labeled it as the day's workout and there would be no scheduled long run. I wouldn't have opted to run a 5K two weeks out from a marathon because I think it's too short to be a good predictor of marathon fitness. However, I thought it would be fun to run a race with so many teammates and I'd get a good workout in. Plus if my coach is recommending it, there must be something to it!

I was in Chicago this week for work and I flew home last night. My flight was supposed to get in at 7:35pm but it was delayed by an hour. And the delay was while we were on the plane, waiting to take off so it's not like I go to walk around or even use my iPad for entertainment. By the time I got home, it was around 9:00. Considering that I'm normally in bed by 9:00, this wasn't exactly ideal, but I still ended up with a decent night's sleep.

I woke up feeling pretty good and ready to race. Usually during the days before any race and I very focused on the race. However, this time I was completely chill about it. I honestly just saw it as a hard workout with my teammates and I didn't get nervous or anxious. I was looking forward to the race, but I didn't have my normal "excitement" that I typically get when I race.

Greg is unfortunately injured so he played cheerleader/spectator again. He drove and dropped me off near the start line since we were running a bit behind schedule. I can't emphasize enough how much I appreciate all his support. He was feeling tired and cold this morning but he still drove me to the race, dropped me off, parked kinda far away and came back to stand in the cold, windy weather to watch me race.

It was about 35 degrees, partly sunny and breezy. Being familiar with this course in West Potomac Park, I knew that it was flat, but could get windier than other areas in the city being so close to the water.

I warmed up for about a mile and a half with some teammates and was ready to go.

The race started about 10 minutes late because people were still picking up their bib numbers. We were all freezing cold at the start line, ready to get going, but the wait seemed to go on forever. We danced in place and stayed close to each other, trying to stay warm. There were about six runners on my team who were in my "group"-- running approximately the same pace as me. Two of these women ran the epic Love Rox half marathon with me two weekends ago. My plan was to try and stick with them and work as a team.

In terms of a time goal, I thought I was in shape to set a PR, and that I could probably run an average pace of around 6:50.

Mile 1

Mile 1, Photo by Cheryl Young

The race started and I felt great for about 2-3 minutes. And then the realization hit that this pace probably wasn't sustainable so I backed off and let my teammates get ahead of me. Never have I felt so crappy so early on in a 5K. At first I thought it was because I was pulled out too fast, but then once I backed off, I still felt sluggish. My coach was at the first mile marker calling of splits. It's always a great pick-me-up to see my coach in a race. I ran the first mile in 6:47, which was a little faster than my goal, but I knew there was a tailwind helping me out.

Mile 2
There's still two more miles of this? Oh my God, that seems like forever. I just didn't have "it" at this race. My sports psychologist refers to "it" as kinesthetic feel. He says that some days you have it and some days you don't. Performance is dynamic and some days you are in your groove, and on other days, you just can't find it. Well, I didn't have any kinesthetic feel. I typically have a mantra that goes through my head that keeps the rhythm steady and I feel energized. This morning, no mantra came to me and I just felt really "off". There was no rhythm to my running, I felt clumsy and tired, and I just wasn't really on. The turnaround was a rude awakening, because the nice tailwind was gone and I was running straight into a headwind. I hit the second mile in 6:53.

Mile 3

Mile 3, Photo by Cheryl Yong

The headwind during the last mile felt like it was pretty strong, but in reality it may have been like 10-15 mph.   Unfortunately I had lost sight of my teammates so there was no hope of running as a group to battle the wind.  I was just miserable during this mile. I used every mental trick I knew of to keep running strong, but I felt like I was running in place. I pushed as hard as I could and I gave everything I had- but it just wasn't there. The wind was coming directly at me, my face was freezing, I felt exhausted and I'm pretty sure my form was falling apart. Based on the two mile splits, I knew that all I had to do was run a 7:00 pace or faster and I would PR. I really wanted that PR but there was just nothing that could get me to go any faster. I ran a disappointing 7:20 which is slower than some of my half marathon miles from two weekends ago. I've run 6-mile tempo runs with faster miles in them. I think this speaks volumes to how crappy I was feeling during that last mile.

Final Kick
I almost always have a very strong final kick. Even in my crappiest races, I can almost always manage to find something left at the end. But not this time. I ran toward the finish line, looking at the clock and wanting to get under 22:00- so I pushed and pushed, but could only muster a 6:48 pace. In my past THREE half marathons, the last 0.1 was faster than this.

Final time was 21:47, average pace of 7:01.

I am not beating myself up over this and nor am I upset. In fact, I cannot believe I ran a 21:47 (just 18 seconds slower than my PR) feeling so crappy. And because I had nothing left to give in that final kick, I know I left it all out there and tried my best.

My key takeaways are:

Mile 3, Photo by Cheryl Young

• I gave it all I had despite feeling crappy. My lack of final kick is evidence of that.
• I didn't have "my groove" this morning (possibly because of my Chicago trip, or possibly for no particular reason at all)
• I ran a significant positive split, but that had a lot to do with the tailwind on the way out and the headwind coming back in.
• I enjoyed running a race that so many of my teammates were participating in
• Fitness-wise, I think I am definitely in my best shape ever. I don't think I could have ever previously run as fast while feeling so blah.
• I'm not upset or beating myself up-- in fact just the opposite-- which shows I've grown mentally.
• I didn't compare myself to my teammates. It would have been nice to run with them, but I accepted early on that it wasn't going to happen and I stayed focused on doing my personal best.
• I broke 22:00 for the second time ever.

My coach suggested I run 10-12 miles tomorrow, and I hope I'm not too sore! My primary focus for the next two weeks will be staying healthy from both an injury and illness perspective. I don't want to turn into a germ-phobe, but I do want to be mindful about washing my hands, taking vitamins and keeping a good distance between myself and co-workers who are sick. Thankfully I will not be getting on any more planes during the next two weeks. I plan to stretch and foam roll a lot, and if my legs are feeling too sore tomorrow, I won't sweat cutting the run short.

I'm glad to have another solid race under my belt this year!

Capital Area Runners post-race

10 for the Army

It's 3:39a.m., and I can't sleep. I finally gave up on it and thought perhaps it was because I didn't write my Army 10-miler blog yesterday. Until I write a blog about a race, I don't feel proper closure. So here I am in a hotel room in Washington, D.C., at 3:39a.m. writing a blog on my laptop. I didn't write the blog yesterday because I was so busy with a work event that my company is hosting in D.C. More on that in a bit. . .

Yesterday, I ran my first Army Ten-Miler. This race accepts 30,000 registrants and is the largest 10-mile race in the country. I had never run it before because I had heard it was ridiculously crowded and that the crowds prevented you from running your best. Dealing with the metro system and the crowding didn't sound at all appealing, especially since I had a panic attack after the Marine Corps Marathon in 2006 due to crowding. But my husband really wanted to run this race, so I registered too. I registered part of team Pacers Ambassadors, and it would be my first time racing as part of a team. My husband was on the Lockheed Martin team (they actually had about 20 or so teams).

Before the Race
The day before the race, my husband and I spent several hours moving and unpacking boxes for my work conference. After getting our race packet, we made our way to the conference hotel in Georgetown where we met up with a few other employees to unload a truck full of boxes. I felt guilty that my husband was doing manual labor for my company the day before a race, but he was more than happy to help out.

Given the fact that I had been stressing about the conference all week and not sleeping well, and that the day before was spent on my feet moving and unpacking, I didn't expect a fantastic race. The weather forecast was for partly sunny and 58, which to me is too warm to run at my peak anyway. It's by no means disastrous, but for Oct. 24 in Washington D.C., at 8:00a.m., I expected temperatures in the mid to upper 40's-- that's what we had been having the past two weeks. I decided I would just go out there and try my best, despite the weather being a little warm and despite how tired and stressed I had been all week.

The Start
On Sunday morning, we took the metro from our hotel to the race. There were swarms of people. We knew we needed to be in our corral by 7:50, so we headed over there at 7:30. It wasn't a far walk, but due to the immense amount of people, it took almost the full 20 minutes to get to our spot. My husband and I were both in the Green Corral, which was the first corral behind the elites. We looked behind us and it was amazing to see the sea of people. I was amazing at how they didn't at all enforcing the corral system. Each year they say they are going to be strict about not letting people into corrals if they didn't have the proper wave, but there was absolutely no enforcement. There was also no enforcement of the headphones policy. I saw quite a few people wearing them. I stopped racing in headphones over a year ago, so this didn't affect me, but I know a lot of people really like wearing them in races.

My husband wanted to be toward the front of the corral and I wanted to be closer to the back of it. We ended up a lot closer to the front and I had a feeling I was going to be run over by faster runners. This was not the case, though, because the first half of my first mile was a lot slower than goal pace. Instead of a horn or a gun, they fired a cannon and we were off.

Miles 1-3
As I said earlier, I got a slow start due to crowding. I ran the second half of the first mile a lot faster than goal pace to make up for the first half. As for "goal pace" I was targeting a 7:40. I wanted to run the tangents, but it was impossible to see where they were given all of the people in front of me. The first few miles felt like a tempo run, and so I knew I was pacing myself correctly. The big question was weather or not I'd be able to hang on at at the end, as the sun got higher in the sky and the temperatures rapidly rose into the low 60's.

Mile 1: 7:41
Mile 2: 7:34
Mile 3: 7:40

Miles 4-7
These miles seemed to go quickly. I took a Honey Gel at mile 4.5, which I thought would be good timing. I had been carrying a small bottle of water with me, which I tossed right before taking my honey. Afterwards, I only stopped at one water station at around mile 8. This part of the course is mainly flat, but it did seem like mile 7 was an incline downhill, which we would turn around and run back up during mile 8.

Mile 4: 7:38
Mile 5: 7:43
Mile 6: 7:38
Mile 7: 7:42

Miles 8-10
I knew I was on track for meeting my goal of 7:40, but I also knew that the hardest part of the course was the rolling hills at the end. Mile 8 was my slowest mile. It was up an incline, and there wasn't much downhill to make up for it. I wanted to keep a solid pace, but I also didn't want to burn myself out before the last two miles. I logged a 7:54 mile, which I knew would put me off target, but I figured I'd try to really stay strong for the last two. It was getting warmer and the course was getting hillier. I tried to maintain my strong effort level, but my pace slowed a little bit.

Mile 8: 7:54
Mile 9: 7:46
Mile 10: 7:53

The Finish
According to my Garmin, I ran 10.11 miles. So even though my average pace was reading 7:42 by the end, I knew that my official pace would be slower. After my Garmin beeped for mile 10, there was still 0.11 to go and I sprinted as fast as I could. I saw that I was at risk for not even being in the 1:17:xx range so I gave it everything I had. The last 0.11 was a pace of 6:18. Wow! Just goes to show what a little adrenaline can do late in the game! I was excited that they called out my name and my city as I crossed the finish line. It was quite the high, considering the thousands of people there cheering.


My official time was 1:17:54
I placed 104 out of 2010 in my age group, finishing ahead of 95% of them.
I placed 441 out of 9481 women, finishing ahead of 96% of them.

This is a PR by over 3 minutes, but my last 10-mile race that I ran at full effort was over three years ago.

I'm pleased with my race, especially given that I had a hard, stressful week and that the weather wasn't as cool as my recent half marathon. My pace was pretty much what I expected, although I didn't factor in the extra distance you get when you can't run the tangents and you weave a lot, so I thought I'd get around 1:17:00. My husband ran a 1:14:00, which we were both amazed at. That's over 8 minutes faster than his time from last year! He's getting so fast so quickly!

Post-Race
There wasn't any time for relaxing after the race. My husband and I headed straight for the metro and back to the hotel. Our conference attendees were arriving and about 40 of them were taking a bus tour of Washington. I was the only person from my company on this tour, an as one of the conference organizers, I was in charge of making sure it went smoothly. My husband joined me for the tour, which was actually really nice and informative. Thankfully, we spent most of the time on a tour bus and there wasn't much walking involved (until we decided to walk home from the last stop. . . ) It was really interesting to learn about all the places I had just run by, and it gave me a greater appreciation for the race.

After the tour, my husband headed home and I attended a cocktail reception as part of the conference. Because of all of this, I didn't have the opportunity to write my blog yesterday. But now that I have completed this blog, hopefully I can return to sleep for a few hours before the conference begins.

Next up: The NYC Marathon!