Brrr-lingame 10-mile Trail Race

I have found that a good gauge of my readiness for a race is the degree of muscle soreness I feel the day or two afterward. This is a retrospective indicator, of course, and does me no good other than to say, "Yeah, I was trained for that," or "Nope. Wasn't ready." A week ago, I was pleasantly surprised to find almost no soreness after my 800 race. I was apparently properly trained for that race. As for Saturday's 10-miler? Not so much. I walked around Sunday and Monday like I had two wooden legs -- sore hips, quads, and hamstrings(?!) making each step painful and awkward. But the worst soreness wasn't in my legs at all; it was on my head, of all places. A well-placed branch that was just lower than the top of my head nailed me on the second loop, dazing me for a second, and leaving me with a huge lump. It even drew blood, which I discovered after the race. Alas, another hazard of thinning hair...

Not exactly the "bloody sock," is it?

This was my third race of the South County 4th Season trail race series (I missed the Resolution Beach race) and the first without snow. It is also my final race of the series, as I will be out of town for the Big River half marathon. I'd fared pretty well in the two earlier races but knew this one would be a test. My training has been focused on running a race 1/20th of this race's distance. In fact, my total weekly mileage two weeks ago was only 13 miles -- three miles longer than I'd have to go in this race. And 10 miles is pushing the limits of my endurance even when I'm trained for it. Add to that a few fresh faces (Greg Hammett, Derek Jakoboski, etc.) and a bunch of familiar faces with increasingly well-trained legs, and I knew I'd be in for quite a race.

One thing I had going for me was that I had zero expectations coming into the race. Really, my only goal was to beat Bob Jackman, because, well, I don't know. We've developed a little friendly rivalry, and I wanted to prove that the Belleville Pond result wasn't a fluke. Aside from that, I just wanted to have some fun.

The race took off across the grass field, and, as described in a few other posts, we funneled into a single track where we found ourselves mixed up with a bunch of the usual suspects and a gaggle of high schoolers. High schoolers are the worst, by the way. They go out too fast, they goof around too much, and they say things like, "We're just doing this as a workout," even though they're secretly racing it. So, imagine my frustration when I got stuck behind them on the first woods loop. I kept reminding myself not to worry, that the race is long, but I couldn't deal with them for more than two minutes. I sprinted through the woods around their pack and settled back in behind Greg Hammett. At this point, I was in fifth place, following a pack of Jonny, Bob, and Greg, and little behind Derek. Bob made a move to try to close the gap, while Greg clung to Jonny's shoulder a little longer. You might say he was following in his older brother's footsteps. Thank you, thank you. Eventually, he too got antsy and moved up to join Bob's chase. I settled behind Jonny until just after the mile mark, when I spotted a little shortcut over a couple of fallen logs on the inside of a turn. I sprinted through, hurdling the logs, and came out on the other side ahead of Jonny. I apologized for the obnoxious move and asked him not to report me.

After we crossed the park entrance road, I found myself in no-man's land. Bob and Greg were maybe 15 seconds ahead, while Jonny and Justin were 10-15 seconds behind. I wanted to keep contact with Bob but didn't want to expend too much energy doing so. It was tough trying to figure out the right effort level during these early miles. I wanted to keep my breathing in check but knew I also needed to keep the pace peppy. I was using the others around me to figure out whether or not I was running the right speed. (A little behind Greg? Check. A little ahead of Jonny and Justin? Check. Behind Bob? Uh oh!) It turns out (as I'll show later) we were probably all doing the same mental pacing checklist and forced each other into an unsustainably fast opening lap.

On the ridge (an esker, perhaps?), I noticed that I was gaining on Bob, while Greg had taken off in pursuit of Derek. I caught Bob on the downhill, and then we ran together on the open dirt road in the campground. It was nice to chat for a few minutes, actually. We made some predictions about whether or not Greg would catch Derek, laughed about wishing that we could catch him, and then I unceremoniously pulled ahead as we exited the dirt road. (In case Bob was nervous about losing points to me in the series standings, I thought about telling him that I wasn't going to be at Big River, so he need not worry. But that would have taken the fun out of it, wouldn't it? Instead, I let him sweat it out until afterward.)

Half way. Am I jogging?
Photo from Jeff Walker (taken by ??).

I found myself narrowing Greg's gap as we neared the end of the first loop and closed to within a few seconds by the end of the lap. He stopped to grab a drink, leaving me to face the stiff headwind across the field without the luxury of following in his wake. He caught up to me on the single track, and we talked for a minute about how close Bob was and some strategies to put some distance on him. Then, unexpectedly, Greg urged me on to go after Derek alone. I thanked him and slowly pulled away, probably putting 10 seconds on him over the next mile.

After crossing the street, I noticed that I could see Derek way up ahead. I checked my watch and discovered I was about 30 seconds back. At the next opportunity, I checked again, and was now only 20 seconds back. Could he be rigging? Was I going to catch up? Just as these thoughts crossed my mind, I was stunned back into reality as my head smashed into the overhanging tree limb. I yelped out in pain and literally saw stars for a second (you mean that doesn't just happen in cartoons?), but I don't think I ever broke stride. I swore at myself for not paying closer attention and then was quickly able to forget that it had happened (memory loss, maybe?).

Right around then, I noticed that Greg had crept back into the picture and was looking quite strong. Incredible. He caught me just before the ridge, and hung on my shoulder through this technical section. We chatted some more, and he finally made his move as we entered the open dirt road. I wished him luck in catching Derek, who still had a huge lead. If anyone could chase him down, it was Greg.

As for me, I was starting to realize that I was in survival mode. It was interesting, actually. I was not breathing hard. In fact, I was breathing more easily than on the first lap; I simply could not make my legs move any faster. By mile 8, they felt like dead weight. I looked back constantly but fortunately did not see Bob.

My mom's comment upon seeing this: "Nice fancy dinner gloves." 

Photo by Scott Mason.

I was content to finish the race by myself and tried my best to keep up the effort through the finish, which I crossed in 1:03:21. I was amazed when Justin flashed across the line seemingly a moment after I finished. Where the heck did he come from? I had looked back a quarter mile ago and didn't see anyone, but there he was, finishing strong in fourth place. If that race had been a mile or two longer, I'd certainly have been caught. Maybe I should be thankful I'm not racing the half marathon in two weeks!

WTAC had a great race, as always. We're getting faster as a group, too, which is encouraging to see. I also want to acknowledge Greg for having the guts to come out and race on a tough course despite his recent injury and the few weeks of abbreviated training that resulted. It's not easy to put yourself in position to lose to people who should be nowhere near you (i.e., ME), but he did it and then still beat me.

Now, this wouldn't be one of my posts without some graphs. I was curious to see how well we paced ourselves on the two laps, and the incredible Mike Galoob did us the favor of recording our halfway splits to allow the analysis to happen. The chart below plots the 1st lap against the 2nd lap for the top 10 finishers. Perfectly even splits would fall along the green line, while positive splits are above and negative splits are below. Do you notice something about the race? We almost all went out too hard! Only Nicolas Migani -- the sixth place finisher -- is the clear outlier here, as he had a huge negative split. Could it be, as I surmised earlier, that we were all gauging off each other? Migani, the newcomer, wouldn't have known where he should place among us and was able to run his own race. It's a good lesson for next year.

It was interesting that those of us with positive splits all seem to be roughly the same amount above the green line in the chart above. To get a sense of exactly how much we slowed down, the chart below shows our % increase/decrease on the second lap. Most of us hovered in the 3-5% range. Migani is obviously the exception, but look at who else separated himself -- Mr. Bentley, who only slowed down 2% on the 2nd lap.

Justin's sudden proximity at the end of the race had me worried. I wanted to know how and where it happened, so I took to Strava to get some more granularity. I split the course into four segments -- the first woods section, the second woods section, the main part of the campground, and the final piece along the pond. Doing this twice gave eight segments for the race. Our times on each are in the table below.

It's clear that Justin was gaining on me, but how does it look graphically? The waterfall chart below attempts to show this. I put time on him over the first six segments, eventually establishing a 38-second gap. But he closed 11 seconds on the last two to get to our final difference. It's no wonder I didn't see him until the end -- he was chasing me down over the last two miles. These charts are your presents for the fine performance, buddy.