Run Thru Hell recap

I don't think I could've asked for better weather for this race. When I left East Lansing at 5:30am for the hour drive down to Hell, it was 50 degrees and hovered around there under absolutely clear skies. My friend Megan hitched a ride down with me, and we got there with plenty of time to spare, but that's ok because I didn't wanna be caught in the log jam that happens if you come within an hour of starting time. Megan and I did a nice relaxing warmup, and it felt great because I was sort of worried about my knee. The knee felt great, and I had confidence to pound out these 10 miles. So, here's the recap...

Mile 1: It's always a crapshoot because you're trying to dodge the slower runners and find a gap where you can just run your own pace without tripping over somebody. It's also not nice to have an immediate steep incline about a quarter of a mile into the race. I looked at my watch after 1 mile and noticed it said 5:40.37....which means a sub-hour race. I knew I had to slow down if I was gonna have on a chance on the hills...

Mile 2: I felt like I settled into a good pace. About 1/3 of the way into this mile, the girl who had won this race the past two years passed me with another young lady about 3 seconds behind her. I sort of sped up to keep pace with them but then reminded myself, "Hey, this is your race, run how you want to run." So I just let them go, but honestly kept them within 10-15 seconds ahead of me for the next 4 miles. The second mile clocked in at 6:08.35, which was a) a good pace for me, and b) slower than the first mile. Or so I thought. I had my stopwatch set so that it only showed my splits, so after the race when I was reviewing my splits, I noticed that I somehow touched the button after only 44 seconds on the first mile. So I really ran the first mile in 6:25.28. Yea, it confused me too.

From Mile 2 thru Mile 5, I focused on keeping a steady pace and keeping up with the girls. I didn't care about the other guys around me because I wasn't too concerned about placing in my age group. The girls weren't too quick going up the hills, so I made up some ground on them by fighting those inclines and actually passed one of the girls at one point.

Halfway into the 6th mile is when it all came unraveled....literally. I was having a confident race, save for the coming-and-going side stitch, when I noticed that my right shoe was becoming looser and looser by the moment. I looked down, and yes...my shoelaces became untied. I'm anal about always double knotting my laces, but somehow these knots just managed to find a way to escape. I kept going for a moment, pondering whether I should just live with it or just stop and fix the problem, then I remembered we were running on rocky dirt roads and a lonely sock probably wouldn't provide much comfort if the shoe fell off. So, I veered to the side, hunched over, and tried to do my business. Keyword = tried, because with all the adrenaline in me, I had absolutely no hand-eye coordination. I felt like a first grader trying to tie his shoes for the very first time. Though it felt like forever, I think I only lost about 10 seconds but it was enough to put a dent in my confidence. The two young ladies had trudged ahead and they looked like they were far, far away at this point, and it didn't look like I was catching up to them anytime soon.

I had heard there was a huge hill around mile 7, but it really wasn't that bad, at least not compared to the umpteen other big hills on the course. There was a hill on mile 5 that I thought was way worse than this one. Once we got past the pseudo-Heartbreak Hill and pressed onward to the 8th mile, the roads were fairly flat from there on out. All I was focused on was just finishing strong. Somewhere in there, however, I got into no-man's land. I really don't know why it happens, but it seems to happen to me EVERY race. In this case, there was a pack of runners about 15-20 seconds ahead of me, and a pack of runners about 15-20 seconds behind me. It was kind of lonely hearing peace and quiet after hearing tons of footsteps around me for the past 45 minutes. The no-man's land always frustrates me because I do all I can to try and catch up with the pack in front of me, but it just seems like I'm not making any progress. Eventually I did catch up on the last mile, but I was gassed. I was also hurting...around the beginning of the 9th mile, the no-show sock on my left foot slid down low enough that the back of my shoe rubbed against my Achilles Tendon each time I took a step. It hurt, but I just had to suck it up and keep going. Now I can look at it and be proud to call it a battle scar!

When all was said and done, the clock read 1:03:06 (6:19/mile), good for 11th in my age group and 61st overall out of 870 runners. The one girl won again for the third straight year in 1:01:54 and the second place girl came in at 1:02:27. The top time for the guys was 53:39 by a guy who, if I'm not mistaken, is part of the Hanson Racing Project. My mile splits:

1 - 6:25.28
2- 6:08.35
3- 6:10.06
4- 6:09.40
5-6:22.78 (the mile with the huge hill)
6- 6:31.41 (the mile where I had to tie my shoe)
7- 6:21.44
8- 6:26.86
9- 5:55.04
10- 6:35.81

Yea, the 9th mile looks out of place. I did feel like I was going faster, so it doesn't surprise me. I also think the 10th mile was slower because of the pain on my Achilles Tendon.

How do I feel about the race as a whole? Well...I know at the end I was just thinking about somehow finishing, but after I took off my timing chip and started my cooldown, I thought to myself in a sort of sadistic way, "That was fun...I wanna do that again." I really think that, now that I know how the course is laid out, that I can come back next year and really utilize a good strategy on the hills and get closer to the one hour mark. Another positive mark is that I felt strong on the inclines, and it makes me wonder how much stronger I'd be if I didn't have to take all of June and part of July off. I also mentioned in my last post that this course easily adds 3 minutes to your usual time for 10 miles. So, do the math....take off 3 minutes for the course and 10 more seconds for the shoe fiasco and *poof!*, you have a sub-hour 10 mile race. It may just be on paper (or the computer screen in this case), but it makes me think that it's possible, and I can do it. It's all about confidence.

This morning, the hills got the last laugh because I was sore as hell...no pun intended. I biked a total of 13 miles today just to keep my muscles loose and it worked for a bit. Now they're just as sore as I was when I woke up. Just gotta let it run it's course. This morning was also the Leg It For Life 5K in East Lansing, the next race in the Playmakers Race Series. The results haven't been posted yet, but my buddy BJ (who runs every race around here, believe me) left me a message simply saying that the race "got ugly, man." Hmm...wonder what that's about...