The Fox & The Turkey

In a stunning development, I ran another race! Partly, this is a jest - what else do I blog about? - but partly, I'm serious. I run a fair bit (sounds like an upcoming blog post) but people generally think that I run more races than I do. (Three this year, after zero last year.) On Thanksgiving I ran The Fox & The Turkey in Batavia. It's close to home, and reasonably cheap, so why not? As an added bonus, I convinced my friend Wes to do it as well. (It's always better when you know someone is expecting you to show up, particularly when it might be cold.)

Training:
As required by law (Murphy's), I got sick the week before the race. I was all geared up for a really good race off some good training, but that all went out the window when the sore throat and headache moved in. I didn't run at all from 10 to 3 days before the race, and then got in 2 reasonable runs the week of the race. Based on my recent half marathon time (1:30:59), the internet thinks that I should be capable of 4 miles at 6:23/mi, which sounded crazy to me, particularly after a week of being sick. (This is actually revisionist history, I only checked this after the race, but the point is that . . . ) To me 6:40/mi seemed reasonable, so that was my goal. Really, anything under 27:00 minutes would be fine, though I was hoping closer to 26:30.

Race Day:
I drove down to the race, parked just across the river and walked over. Surprisingly, over 2000 people signed up for the race. I logged the temperature at 51 °F, with more wind that I would have liked (10-15mph). I didn't feel nearly as bouncy and energetic as I did before but the half marathon, but I did a half mile warm-up and went and found Wes. I think this was his second race ever (and longest!) so I gave him all my sound advice ("Run fast, but don't die.") before inserting myself into the growing mess of a starting line. 2000 people is a lot of people, and they all packed pretty tightly in, leaving little room for me to wriggle up to the start line. (Maybe once we achieve world peace we can work on the tougher problem of getting middle of the pack finishers off the starting line?) I managed to get about 5 rows off the starting line; any closer would have required me to start throwing elbows. We all stood there waiting for a few minutes when suddenly, and without any warning, a horn sounded and off we went.

Race!
I took off quickly from the starting line and started weaving through the traffic in front of me. I was concerned that with only 4 miles, getting off to a slow start doesn't leave much room to catch up later. There is a significant uphill right off the bat, and then everyone settled in with no one running more than 1 or 2 abreast. I was tempted to ask some people with their fancy watches how fast we were going, but I didn't. Then we hit the 1 mile mark at 6:04. Six minutes and four seconds. SIX OH FOUR!!!

I don't time myself on single miles. Occasionally on normal morning runs I'll make note of the time on my watch when I'm nearing home and then go back and see what my pace was at the end. About a year ago I did the final 0.84 miles of a 6 mile run at 6:19. (The first 5.25 miles were at a 7:57 pace, so that was very much a sprint at the end of a slow run.) That's the fastest timed distance of any sort in my log over the last 5 years and 497 runs. 6:04. That was not the intended pace, and no one ever suggests that you go out and run the first mile 30 seconds faster than you intended to. That is a very good way to have a very miserable last mile or two. (And this is why I included the earlier ahistorical bit about the calculated 6:23 pace.) But, once you've run that ridiculously fast mile, you can't undo it. You can only keep running. So, knowing full well that this might end badly, I kept going.

A few people passed me in the first mile or two, and I passed a few people. The course was mostly flat and through neighborhoods. Mile 2 came in at 6:10. Ok, I hadn't fallen apart completely yet. Nothing to do but keep running. Somewhere around the end of mile 3, I uttered my only words during the race when I passed someone I'd been running behind for quite some time and said, "this hurts". Because it did. I've heard short races described as being a test of how far you can retreat into your "pain cave". That is, if done right, it's going to hurt and the race is all about how well you can deal with that pain. I don't know if I did all that good a job, as mile 3 took 6:26.

Thankfully, the race wasn't any longer, because there is no way I would have been able to remember any more mile times. I'd banked up over a minute of time on my goal in the first two miles, so I knew I should be in the bag and anything else I could squeeze out was just an extra bonus. Keep running. The downhill back to the start/finish line was nice, though almost too steep to run effectively on such tired legs. The last mile came in at 6:12 for a total time (on my watch) of 24:52! Somehow, I smashed by best expectations by over a minute and a half. I guess that's what happens when you don't run a race shorter than a half marathon for two and a half years. The official results put me at 24:56 for both chip time and gun time, implying that I instantly crossed the starting line, which I didn't. (As I look through the results, I see that every single person I checked in the first 300 finishers has the same chip and gun time, which just can't be possible. All this is to say that my watch is probably more accurate than their official time.) I do take their word that I placed 30/2254 over all, 28/994 among males and 4/90 in my age group. Guys in my age group finished 1st and 3rd overall, so they should be ineligible for age group awards and there should be a 2nd place award somewhere with my name on it. (I didn't stick around long enough to see any awards given out after the race.)

Post Race:
I hung around to catch my breath, get some hot chocolate, see Wes finish and get some more hot chocolate. (In that order.) My post-sickness lungs felt pretty trashed, and then as the day went on my calves were sore. For at least 3 days they were sore - though interestingly not sore to run on. All-in-all it was a good race and a good day. (Any day that ends with pie is a good day, right?) Now some pictures. I'm very nicely giving a thumbs up to the camera every time. (Without even looking at the camera!) I guess I run with my left thumb up. Who knew?