USATF-NE Masters Championships

This past weekend was the USATF regional Masters meet, one of the few places where I might be considered to have a full and lustrous head of hair.  There's something about track races that gets my nerves all aflutter, and this one was no exception.  I rode up to the meet with Jonny and Mike, and I found that the company helped keep the adrenaline at bay.  It also gave me a chance to hear Mike recount, word-by-word, the new Jack Daniels book.  Impressive reading comprehension, I must say.

Upon walking into the facility, I almost laughed out loud when I realized just how low-key this meet would be.  Imagine a big room full of grandparents running and jumping and throwing.  That is literally what this was.  I was fully at ease from that point on and was able to enjoy the day. [One particularly old-timey sighting was of a guy high jumping using the scissor-kick technique, which was largely abandoned after the Fosbury Flop came along...in 1965.]

The Mile 
First up was the mile, in which Mike, Jonny, and Greg would be throwing it down against a menagerie of other runners.  You can read Mike's and Jonny's take on the race and then watch the two videos below for the (almost) full action.  [I got a call from a telemarketer mid-way through the race, which apparently stops the phone from recording video.  So much for the Do-Not-Call list.]  Mike dominated the second half of the race en route to a 4:28, while Greg had a rare off day yet still ran a 4:46.  Jonny nearly came through with his first sub-5 but left himself a little too much time to make up on his furious sprint over the final 200.  It will come, Jonny.  It will.

 Men's Mile - Part I

Men's Mile - Part II

The 800

Pre-race

The last time I wore these spikes - New England meet at UCONN, 2000.

There was a convenient break in the meet that allowed me to run my warm-up indoors rather than braving the cold temperatures and graffitied streets outside (hey, I live a very sheltered life).  This was especially welcome given that my hamstring has been bothering me for a couple of weeks, and I'm sure all of the cold weather running hasn't helped.  My legs were feeling great until I did my standard active stretching routine of leg swings and lunges.  During my very last lunge, I tweaked something in my groin.  Not bad at all, but enough to worry me.  I was able to do a bunch of strides without pain, so I put it out of my mind.  I threw on my 14-year-old spikes and stripped down to my shorts and jersey, and it was go-time.  

[Note 1: I just realized that my spikes would be in high school if they were a person.  Fortunately, they are not.]

[Note 2: I had a nearly embarrassing moment when I pulled off my warm-up pants.  Both the pants and my shorts are made of a some extremely thin, light-weight material, and when I took the pants off, it really felt like I had also taken my shorts off by accident.  I spastically pulled the pants back up, only to realize that I hadn't gaffed in the first place.  I gave a casual look around, as if I'd meant to do it, and then proceeded to get ready.  Smooth, as always.]

The Race

I lined up in position 11(!), just to the right of Mike and Greg.  I joked to the guy on my right that his spot was in the bleachers.  He didn't even give me a courtesy laugh.  

My race strategy was fairly simple - don't lead early, try to run 30-31 for the first two laps, don't lose touch with anyone, and then see what's left in the tank for the final 400.  The race went out at a decent clip, and I tried to fall in behind Mike and Greg, but there were a few interlopers in the mix, as well.  I wasn't expecting so much traffic and ended up running in lane 2 around the first turn.  I'm typically very conscious of not getting boxed in during the 800, as nothing is capable of ruining a race faster, so I thought about staying in lane 2 for the remainder of the lap.  I realized, however, that no one behind me was seeded anywhere near me, so it would be unlikely for them to come up on my shoulder.  I took a chance and went to the inside rail, where I patiently waited for things to sort themselves out ahead of me.  I hit the 200 in 31.5, a little slow, but close to target

In the second lap, things started to string out a bit.  I made a move to go by one fading front-runner and tried to maintain contact with Greg.  Mike took the lead, and I was tempted to pull myself up to him, but I wasn't sure if I would be able to hang on, so I decided to stay where I was for the rest of the lap.  Coming around turn 2 of the second lap, I was hit with this wave of nostalgia.  It had been 11 years since I last ran an indoor race, but it suddenly felt so familiar.  The smell, the dry heat, the burning lungs and legs.  It was like I had been transported back in time.  What a strange and wonderful feeling.

Mike had started to open up a gap going into the third lap, and I couldn't let him get away.  I moved around Greg and the early leader on the first turn and tried to run Mike down on the back stretch.  I finally pulled up behind him with about 250 to go.  Now, it was decision time.  

The 800 is a great distance for so many reasons, but one of the best is that every little tactical move can have a huge impact on the outcome of the race.  Here, I was faced with a critical one.  Do I sit on him for another 200 and then try to eke out a win in the last 50?  Do I wait until the back straightaway to make a move?  Or, do I make a move now and see what happens?  I chose option 3, and I tried to do it decisively and just before the first curve to catch him off-guard, hoping he would have to wait until at least the backstretch to respond.  I did everything I could put him away (or "snap the elastic," as he so eloquently put it in his write-up).  But, to his credit, Mike kept in contact.  I was running out of steam around the final turn, and his footsteps kept getting closer and closer.  It's so much worse to be the prey than to be the predator.  As I hit the final 50, there he was, primed to blow by me.  He went by surprisingly quickly, and I responded a little too late.  We ran together down the final straightaway, but I couldn't pull back even with him, no matter how hard I tried.  I gave the best lean I could at the line, but he leaned too.  Mike finished 0.08 seconds ahead, but it might as well have been 10 seconds; he was the clear winner.  

Men's 800 (turn the volume down unless you want to hear my son cry every time I run by)

The Aftermath

I had no idea what to expect coming into the meet and had guessed a seed time of 2:03.  I ended up running 2:02.66, which I was pleased with...at first.  Then I realized that I had just lost to a guy who was sick with a cold, had already run a fast mile, and until this year hadn't run an 800 since his senior year of high school (when I was just in fifth grade).  Still, it was one of the most fun races I'd ever been part of, and there's almost no one I'd rather lose to.  Besides, I'm getting used to it by now.

Anyway, I hope this puts me in a strong position to get under 2:00 later in the season, but there's still plenty of work to do.

I am quite sore right now, one day after the race.  (I hate you, DOMS.)  The worst spot, by far, is my groin, which had nothing to do with the race.  It will subside, I'm sure, but I'm screwed for Tuesday night bowling (Kingston Bowl - oh yeah!).  My breathing also suffered.  Immediately after the race, I was coughing like I had smoked 5 packs a day for 40 years.  Mike gave me one of his cough drops out of pity (creamsicle flavored?? what was that thing?), which helped immensely.  Now, I have this mechanical wheezing sound in my lungs whenever I take a breath.  I'm sure that's normal, right?

Next up, back to longer distances at the Super 5K.  I'll have to remember not to go out with a 30-second 200 this week...

The little fan saying hello.

The quest for 1:59

At the end of the week, I'll run my first 800-meter track race in five years and just my third in the past 11. The dearth of recent attempts is not due to a lack of interest on my part.  In fact, I've tried to make "comebacks" nearly every year since graduating from college but have been thwarted by injury in all but one of those attempts.  Here's the rundown:

So, needless to say, I'm proceeding with caution this year.  I suppose as long as I don't end up looking like the photo below, I'll consider the season a success.

Just imagine how good-looking I was before this.

With that said, I still have high hopes for the season.  My goal is sub-2:00.  Let's call it a quest. I'd go so far as proclaiming it a Vision Quest, but one can only listen to Lunatic Fringe so many times.

A little history

The eager little 800 runner wearing
compression socks before they
were a thing.

In seventh grade, on my first day of middle school track practice, I was given a sheet that listed all of the track and field events.  I was to circle one or two of these, and those would be my events for the rest of the season.  As a 4’11”, 79 lb. 13-year-old (those are my actual measurements, forever preserved on the back of my 1994 little league card), I was ill-suited for pretty much everything besides the distance events – the 800 and mile. I could only choose one, and the mile seemed kind of long, so I chose the 800.  Little did I know that I’d be starting a relationship that would impact my life in many, many ways. (As just one example, I chose my college in part because I thought I could be a successful 800-meter runner there.  That choice led to me and my wife meeting as members of the track team.  Thank you, 800.)

As it turned out, I wasn’t very good at the 800, breaking 2:30 but once by the time I’d finished middle school.  Still, I was hooked, and when I started high school track (now 5’3” and 98 lbs!), I informed my coach that I was an “800 runner.”  Fortunately, he didn't check the veracity of this claim with my middle school coach and threw me right into the mix.  I struggled for a bit but had a mini breakthrough by the end of the season, running 2:11 in the last meet of the season.  [Historical Anecdote: At that meet, I told a friend that if I broke 2:11 I would ask out a particular girl in our class.  I ran 2:11.0 and was never more relieved in my life.  Had the girl known about it, I’m sure she would have been, too.]

I won’t bore you with every boring detail of my running history, so here's a quick summary.  In 10^th grade, I finally started growing into the chiseled physique I have today, and my times began to drop.  I ran 2:03 that year, then 1:59 in 11^th grade, and 1:56 as a senior.

College was full of ups and downs.  Actually, mostly downs, due to a series of injuries.  I ran 1:54 as a freshman and then didn’t run faster than that until senior year, when I had one final breakthrough, running 1:52. 

In case you were on the fence about my nerdiness, this is plot of my time from every 800 I ever ran,
with yearly averages marked by the red line.  

So, back to my goal for 2014

Between 1998 and 2003, I broke 2:00 in the 800 54 times.  In the 11 years since then, I have broken 2:00 ZERO times.  This drought has to end before it is too late.  The 800 is a fast-twitch muscle-dominated race, and, unless you’re Galoob or Gazelle, you lose fast-twitch muscle fibers as you age.  As I mentioned above, it’s not that I haven’t tried.  The one year I managed to race the 800 (2009), ended with a 2:00.22 at the Bay State Games.  Agonizingly close, but not good enough. 

This year, I’m embarking on yet another attempt at the barrier.  The plan is to run a minimum of three indoor meets - USATF-NE Masters this weekend, USATF-NE Open in February, and USATF Masters Nationals in March.  As for training, I’ve accumulated quite a library of workouts (see tab at top of blog), so it’s just a matter of choosing the right ones to prepare for these races. I’ll occasionally post in here a summary of my workouts and how I’m feeling (you care about my feelings, right?), and hopefully it will be a training methodology that works and that I can follow in future years when I try to do this again.  After all, I’m committed to this relationship with the 800, and we will only break up when my legs can no longer make it the whole half-mile around the track.  Stay tuned...

Old Mountain Field 5K

I'm not sure what looks more ridiculous,
wearing a balaclava or a baclava.

After last year's OMF race and ensuing long-term injury, my goal this year was simply to make it through in one piece. I am happy to report, in that regard, the race was a success!  I wore my trusty ankle brace just to be sure, but the ankle was the furthest thing from my mind this time around.  Thanks to the 6+ inches of snow we received on Thursday night and the seriously cold temperatures (-5 F when I went to a dentist appointment this morning and 15 F at race time), I was more focused on staying warm without overheating and choosing the right footwear for the conditions.  I went with a balaclava (not a baclava, though that would have been a delicious choice), a hat, about a hundred shirts, a single pair of tights, and long Nike dri-fit socks (the kind that have become cool to wear if you're a hip teenager, and much less cool if you're me).  On my feet, I had my regular running shoes with a pair of "walker" Yaktrax that I had gotten my wife as a present about three years ago yet were still in their original packaging.  You're welcome, honey.  I was a little concerned with the "walker" designation but it had to be better than plain old sneakers, so I went with it.  OK, now that you're caught up on my wardrobe, let's get to the race.

At last year's race, I placed fourth, well behind the top 3, and just barely outkicking Jonny (after obnoxiously sitting on him the entire race - here's his description of that).  I figured I was in better shape this year, but with these conditions, anything was possible.  I could see myself finishing anywhere in the top 10 depending on my foot slippage relative to everyone else's.

Getting off the line.  I'm the silly gent 2nd from left.
Photo by Jana Walker.

I lined up at the front along with the rest of the crew and, as the race went off, found myself in the lead next to Jonny as we approached the baseball fence.  I remember making some stupid comment about how we should just take it nice and easy and not let anyone pass us, but this thought was quickly erased as we rounded the fence corner and were suddenly faced with a drop-off into a snow drift of unknown depth.  Jonny literally disappeared from sight on my right, and I managed to leap just in time over the drift, landing safely at the bottom of the hill.  I spent the next 30 seconds laughing hysterically.  That image of Jonny vanishing into the snow is one I won't forget for a long time.

I regained composure as we crossed a bridge and headed into the woods.  I wasn't really planning to be in first place here, but it's not a bad spot to be on a narrow trail with few opportunities to pass.  I knew there were people right on my heels, but I thought I'd do my own thing and let them worry about how to get around me.  Figuring out how to run in these conditions was a challenge.  I upped my turnover, guessing that smaller strides would mean I was less reliant on the stickiness of any single step.  I also alternated between running on Galoob's snowshoe tracks and running in the fresh snow on the side but couldn't determine which was better.  I slipped less in the fresh snow but it took more energy to plow through it.  I noticed that my quads were burning as they would if I were running up a huge hill, yet the ground was perfectly flat.  I started worrying a bit about what fate awaited me in the miles ahead.

At around the mile mark, I finally had a chance to see what was going on behind me.  I noticed two white jerseys right on my tail, and then a decent gap to the chase pack.  I assumed (correctly) that one of the jerseys belonged to Ryan Woolley, who is quite a bit faster than I am and must have been biding his time before making a move.  I had no idea who the other one was.  I thought perhaps it was Jonny, a master of these technical trails.  I knew Bob Jackman must also be somewhere close by, but I forgot what he was wearing and guessed he'd be in the orange TNT jersey that at least one of his teammates had on.

I was still in the lead a little before the two mile mark when, on a downhill just before the long uphill, a white blur charged through the woods past me and into the lead, leaving a trail of debris in his wake.  It was such a sudden and bold move, Ryan and I both mumbled in astonishment.  Sure enough, it was Bob Jackman, disguised in a white jersey.  He was already almost out of sight as we ascended the steep hill, and I quickly moved aside and urged Ryan to go after him, figuring he was now the best chance we had at an individual WTAC victory.  As Ryan went by, I gave him a push in the back (probably illegal...but it's for the team!) to get him moving up the hill in pursuit.  Ryan went for it but gradually ran out of steam, and I eventually pulled back up behind him as we finally reached the course's high point.  Bob was long gone by this point, his huge move executed to perfection.

Slogging out of the switchbacks after abandoning
my fallen teammate.  Photo by Jana Walker

I ran along behind Ryan through the switchbacks, content with the pace and position, until he took a spill around a sharp curve.  I went ahead of him (like a jerk) and pushed as hard as I could the rest of the way to try to close Bob's gap to a respectable amount.  It was frustrating trying to mount a kick in the final 400 meters but having my legs spin under me like I was Scooby-Doo chasing Old Man Murphy at the abandoned amusement park.  At long last, I pulled through the finish line in 23:52 for 2nd, a full 20 seconds behind Bob, who really earned this win, and just barely ahead of Ryan, who surely would have beaten me in normal conditions.  As at the Christmas 10K, it was awesome to watch the train of WTAC singlets cross the line in succession behind me - Jeff, Nate, Jonny, Seth, and even Muddy a short time afterward in his glorious return to racing.  A great team performance in tough conditions.  I'd expect no less from this hearty group.

Kudos to Mike Galoob for putting on the race despite the weather and then absolutely crushing two indoor track races later in the day.  He is a machine.

Post-race WTAC team shot. I guess I was the only one who didn't get the memo
about not touching each other.  Sorry guys.  Photo by Jana Walker.

2013 - A review

If you'd told me in March that 2013 would be my most successful year of running since college, I'd have laughed and laughed and laughed. You see, I laugh when I'm uncomfortable, and I get uncomfortable when people talk to me, but some of that laughing would also have been because that would have seemed like crazy talk.  Here's why: by the end of March, I had gone roughly 100 days without running a step, due to a badly sprained ankle and bone bruise sustained during the Old Mountain 5K in December.

[Sad and pathetic side note: I sprained the ankle with about a mile to go in the race and only kept running because I wanted to introduce myself to Jonny afterwards.  It was a great short-term move (we met!), but a very poor long-term move (the messed up ankle).]

I slowly built up my running after getting the OK from the doctor, started racing in July, and was miraculously running well a short time later.  There were two moments in particular that made me realize I'd gotten back in shape sooner than I'd expected:

The first was at the Bottone track mile in July.  I had no idea what pace to run in this race, so I took it out conservatively because there's nothing worse than hitting a wall on the track where everyone can watch every step of your demise.  Once I was safely through the first three laps, I discovered I had another gear left and churned out a 62 final lap.  That was shocking.  I'd given too much of a lead to the front pack and couldn't reel them in, but it was fun trying to close the gap in the last 400.

When my sister saw this photo, she asked, "Why do you look so old and so pale?"  I want to know why the other guys all look so young and so tan. 

The second was a couple of weeks later at a WTAC fun run.  I cruised the first mile with Jonny in ~6:00 and then decided to try accelerating throughout the rest of the run (see the graph below for proof!).  The second mile was 5:20 and the third was 5:00.  I don't think I'd ever finished a race with a 5-minute mile.

WTAC fun run pace profile (center part of graph). 

What I liked about 2013:

View from San Juan run.  Other, less savory,
views from same run not shown.

• No significant time missed to injuries after returning from the ankle sprain.  This is extremely rare for me.  I've missed running three of the past ten years due to some major leg maladies.
• Running my fastest times since college in a few events - 5K, 4 miles, 10K.  It was reassuring to discover there is life left in these  legs.
• Running in some new and interesting places.  Puerto Rico, California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Virginia, as well as discovering many of the great local trails and roads in RI.
• Joining the Westerly Track and Athletic Club.  After running mostly alone for the past 10 years, I joined this fabulous club.  I felt like I knew most of the guys already after reading their blogs while I was returning from the ankle sprain.  I was hooked once I joined the crew for a Summer Solstice sunrise run (at 4:45 AM, no less -- isn't this how the military tricks you into allegiance?).  

Why 2013 went so well:

• I have no idea.  Really.  But I have a few guesses:



Running the Bridge 2 Bridge race in my hometown.

• A bunch of injury-prevention activities.  Running only on trails, lifting, hip-strengthening, foam rolling, dynamic stretching, shoe rotation, ankle braces, shoe inserts, post-run refueling, ice, ointment, the list goes on and on.  I don't know which things helped and which didn't matter, but I'm going to continue doing them all until I have a reason not to.
• Group workouts.  Getting on the track with Jonny, Galoob, and Nate really helped me regain some speed for my fall races.  The early morning starts were rough, but I never left a workout feeling like I would've rather stayed in bed.
• Strava.  This one might require some logic bending.  I joined Strava in April and used it as a fun way to get in shape without too much pressure.  I loved the challenge of trying to go after various CRs, even if I got a bit carried away sometimes (Galoob even referred to me as a "Strava menace" at one point).  By only running fast when I felt like it, I avoided getting locked into a specific training plan, and I was able to push and back off when my body told me to do either.  

Looking ahead - 2014 Goals:

• Stay injury-free!  This is always my number one goal.  Injuries are the source of all that's wrong with this world.  Drought, famine, terrorism -- these can all be traced back to someone's running injury.
• Get fast.  I want to get back on the track and run some decent short-distance times.  Sub-2:00 800, sub-4:30 mile.  
• Hack a few seconds off 2013 race times.  Sub-16 5K, 10K PR, sub-47 at Li'l Rhody
• Get in triathlon shape.  This requires getting back in the pool and some more serious cycling.  Would love to join Jeff and Tom at some local races.
• Get strong.  More consistent lifting, chucking some rocks around the yard, whatever it takes.  Time to be a little less scrawny.

Looking forward to a new year and new running adventures.