A Marathon Haiku

While I did sneak a triathlon into September, I've basically been focused on training for the marathon the past few months. Unfortunately it turns out that writing about running 20 miles is only slightly more exciting then actually running 20 miles, so instead, I leave you with a little poem.

Marathon to run

Tomorrow to the start line

Tonight restless sleep

I'm overwhelmed by my own creativity lately. I'm sure you are too!

A Tale of Two Races - Part II

Local Olympic Tri in the Middle of NoWhere, NJ

or, the day I remembered that I love small home grown races, they're fun

circa late September, 2010

Before

At some point in my marathon training I was gearing up for a 20 mile run that followed a step back week. Just two weeks prior to the planned 20 miler I had run 18, but after an "easy" week with a long run of "only" 10, 20 was daunting. It seemed so long and far. Liz assured me that my muscles have memory and they'd remember what to do and it would be fine. And that 20 mile run was fine.

So, before the race I hoped that the same muscle memory logic would get me through this race for which I had done minimal (at best) biking and swimming preparation.

One of the best things about local races is sleeping in your own bed. It actually might have been a bit of a stretch to call this race "local" but having done the sleep in own bed and drive further v. hotel analysis, my own bed won. So it was local.

One of the best things about small races is that you can dilly dally a bit in the morning and getting there just under an hour before the start is actually plenty of time. I think I took two or three trips from my car to transition because it was just that close.

It was a bit chilly that morning so my wetsuit went on faster then it might have otherwise but before long it was time to get in the water for warm up. The race is in a pretty small lake, and I swam close to all the way across it while warming up. The water was much warmer than the air, so even after deeming myself sufficiently warmed up (when you've only swam twice in the past two months it is a fine line between warming up and tiring yourself out!) I stayed submerged.

The Swim

All things considered this was a good swim. It was a bit chaotic because, due to the small lake, you had to essentially double back across the lake before you were allowed to make the final turn and emerge. It seemed clear when you were standing on shore, but once you were in the thick of it, it was easy to disorient and now know how far you had come or how far you had to go.

My biggest issue with the swim? The dude that backstroked the whole thing - I went through the photos to confirm that this is indeed what he did (it is). He was actually quite a good backstroker but its hard to tell where you're going when you're looking up at the sky (or so I would imagine) so he kept crashing into me and/or crossing my path - it was frustrating and took some time to get by him but probably led me to speed up a bit to just get away, so maybe I should actually be thankful he was out there cruising along ...

Other than that, I swam well and met my goal of getting out of the water in under 35 minutes (at least according to my watch).

The race was only one wave and I was about in the middle of the pack which is a nice place for me to start the bike.

Bike
I've never been so thankful for pre-riding a course. There is just so much slow grinding up. My goal here was to stay focused and to ride as hard as a I could (because actually, riding anything short of as hard as I could would likely have meant walking) and to finish in less than 2 hours. I met all of my goals, finishing in about 1:57. Clearly this wasn't fast, but to put things in perspective, the fastest mph average of the day was 18. Its a hard, hard course.

Run
My goal for the run was to not finish the race last. I knew there were a few people behind me on the bike and perhaps a few catchable people ahead of me so I set out. The biggest issue was that the run was falsely advertised as flat. That run is a lot of things, but flat is NOT one of them. Later the race director would query whether anyone would actually have done the race if he hadn't lied! I finished the run in 1:00:27 (why do those :27 bother me so much? why?) - a 9:44 pace which, after considering that I've been stagnating at marathon training pace for awhile, isn't bad.

The Best Part
I had fun. I attribute it to the smaller low key aspect - I was far from winning, but really no one was out there to "win", everyone was there to do their best and have fun. The shorter distance might have also helped. And of course this:


It was a very, very, very small race. But I was second in my age group. And when you're me, you take awards whenever you can.

the end.