Belleville Pond 10K

For the second week in a row, my race participation was a last-minute decision.  Last week, it was a balky ankle.  This week, I had a litany of excuses at my disposal.  On Friday night, I nearly cut off my son's finger while trimming his hair, throwing all of our weekend plans into upheaval as we spent Friday night and part of Saturday in the emergency room.  Luckily, kids forget quickly, and my wife is a very forgiving person.  Then, my lingering cold came back with a vengeance on Saturday.  I felt awful on Sunday morning but really hate to back out of a race, especially one I knew would be an epic experience.  So, I threw down some Day-Quil, chugged a cup of tea, and headed out to Ryan Park.

A shoe or a weapon?

My biggest concern going into the race, however, was not my cold or barber skills, it was my footwear.  After slipping around the Old Mountain Field course in my wife's YakTrax "Walkers," I knew I needed something different this time.  So, earlier in the week, I ordered a pair of the Kahtoola Microspikes that Bob Jackman had worn to victory at OMF (obviously, it must have been the equipment, and not his superior fitness, that allowed him to beat me that day).  Well, Amazon Prime FAILED to meet their two-day delivery promise, and so I was back to the YakTrax as my only option.  Then, I had an epiphany. Well, maybe it was more of a memory of something I had seen, like, a few days ago than an epiphany.  When digging out my old track racing shoes prior to last month's 800 meter race, I remembered seeing a bag of ridiculously long spikes.  Sure enough, after rummaging around the basement, I found these things and put them in my old XC shoes.  I'm not even sure how to describe how they looked.  It was like having bayonets attached to my feet.  Why did I even own these?  I ran a lap around the house in them, and they seemed pretty good, so I figured I'd give it a go.  They had to be better than the YakTrax.

The Race

The ninja falls into line behind Jonny.

My only strategy for the race was to get right behind whoever would take the lead.  My best guess was that it would be Jonny, since this is his home course, and he's one of the few people ballsy enough to break trail for the rest of us.  Sure enough, Jonny jetted out to the lead, and I fell into step behind him.  The footing was awful almost immediately, and I discovered the one downside of my shoe choice -- what I gained in traction, I lost in surface area.  I was wearing whatever the opposite of a snowshoe is.  In the soft snow, I sunk right through, and my foot twisted off anything hard or uneven.  I made a mental note to be careful to place my foot directly within existing footprints wherever possible.

I was pleasantly surprised that no one tried to pass us as we cruised through mile 1 on the rail bed.  I felt way better than I had expected and was content to sit behind Jonny as long as possible.  My hope was to wait until the halfway mark to make a move, thus turning the 10K into a 5K, which I felt would give me more of an advantage over the guys who thrive at the longer distances.

There were two things during this period of the race that stand out in my memory.  One was when we came upon a small fallen tree in the trail.  There was plenty of room to go around it, but Jonny launched himself over it like an Olympic hurdler.  I sidestepped it at the last second, not realizing that my late move had screened the branch from view of whoever was behind me.  Turns out, it was TNT nemesis Bob Jackman, who got a wicked lashing across the shins as he ran straight through it.

The second was the incredibly cool image of a single-file line of runners following Jonny around turns and up and down the hills.  As we ascended the steep hill by the power lines, I joked that we all owed Jonny a debt of gratitude, and Bob promised to buy him a beer.  These were fun and innocent times, but a race still awaited us in the coming miles, it was just a matter of who would make the first move.

Should I tear Jonny's heart out?  Never!

A little after mile 2, as we churned through the rough trail along Route 4, stuff started happening.  First, Jonny very matter-of-factly declared, "I am done."  The Mortal Kombat "Finish Him" screen flashed through my head, but I didn't want to break Jonny, I wanted to give him a break. He had been doing yeoman's work to this point, and I was feeling terrible that I hadn't traded off with him earlier.  I was about to make a move, when I heard some commotion behind me. Apparently, Bob was getting hot, and his clothes were coming off.  It seemed like a good time to mix things up a bit, so I told Jonny I'd take over for a little while and promptly accelerated as I went by.  The footing was terrible in this section, and I quickly realized how much I'd been relying on Jonny's trailblazing.  I was trying my best to land within the existing footprints, but these were too close together, and I felt like it was quick-stepping through the trail.

Which Jackman was running shirtless behind me??

We finally popped out into a meadow, and I had a chance to look behind me and see who'd covered my move.  As expected, Bob was right behind me, but who was that behind him?  It was...Jeff???  I was thrilled and terrified at the same time.  Was he about to take me down? Fortunately, I started getting excellent traction on this hard-packed section, so I was able to up the pace a bit (to 9-minute miles maybe?).  As we were about to re-enter the woods, I stepped in a hole and twisted my stupid ankle.  There was no time to worry about it, though, so I dug down and tried to gap Bob on this next technical section.  I really didn't want to battle with him during the last mile, so I decided to push myself now and relax later.

By the time we popped out onto the rail bed, I started to feel confident that I was going to make the lead last.  I was hoping to hammer this section to put the race away, but the footing was far worse than it was on the way out.  I also realized that, having only run the course once before, I didn't know where the turn off the trail was.  Did I already pass it?  Was Bob going to have to redirect me again, as he did the Christmas 10K?  Would he be so nice this time?  At long last, the turn appeared.  I took a peek behind me as I made the turn and didn't see Bob.  Thank God, because my resilience was as close to 0 as it has ever been in a race. I would have let Colburn Graves pass me if he wanted to.

I kept the pressure on through this final technical section, nearly crashing into Scott Mason over the bridge.  Mercifully, the baseball field came into view.  I trudged around it, so thankful that I didn't have to try to mount a kick through this ridiculously tough section.  I stumbled across the finish line, just cracking the magical 48-minute barrier.

I enjoyed seeing Jeff finish strong to secure his incredible third-place finish, then Nate also crushing it for fourth, Justin and Jonny coming in together (almost), and Seth shortly after.  Great work all around.  Once more, thanks to Jonny for doing literally all the work for us for the first 1/3 of the race. You're a tough and selfless guy, Jonny!

Post-race
After pathetically complaining about my historical lack of race prizes in my last post, I was almost in shock as I got to choose from an array of cool stuff Mike Galoob had assembled.  I came away with an awesome watch and a BBC beer -- thanks, Mike! While I'm writing my weekly Galoob tribute, let me give this guy one final shout-out for his crazy fast mile at the NB Boston Indoor Games.  Oh, and the man who placed second was just a former Olympian (and a New York State high school legend whose name I've known since I first started running).  Incidentally, there was also a Quadzilla sighting in Boston that day.

Physically, I'm a mess right now.  The spikes did a number on my calves, which are still sore to the touch three days later.  My cold mutated into some nasty infection, and my voice, well I'm not sure how to describe it. Sandpaper on a cheese grater on a blackboard maybe? Regardless, I have no regrets.  It was a fun race to be part of, and obviously I'm thrilled to get a rare win and for another great WTAC team performance.

Super 5K

Despite this being my first time running the Super 5K in Narragansett, I was well prepared for the race thanks to some excellent and detailed race write-ups from past years by my WTAC teammates.  What I gleaned from their blogs was that it is an out-and-back course, with wind likely, featuring a competitive field and a debatably large hill in the middle of the race on which you may or may not benefit from running hard.  OK, the info was mostly helpful and was certainly appreciated. You guys can rest assured that your blog posts do in fact make this world a better place.

What I didn’t anticipate was an ankle mishap on Thursday. If there's one thing you should know about me, it's this: I sprain my right ankle A LOT.  This was the 18^th recorded incident since 1997, and I’m sure it will continue at about that rate for the rest of my running life.  There’s not much more I can do to prevent it from happening.  I wear an ankle brace on every trail run, and I do balancing exercises EVERY DAY, for crying out loud.  Yet, I still find new and creative ways to do it.  This time, it happened during a rest interval on a 6x300 @ 800 track workout at the Exeter-West Greenwich HS track.  I’d just finished the 4^th 300 and was jogging in lane 1 on the first curve of the track.  It was mostly dark at this point, and the moon was having a great time on the other side of the earth, so it was getting awfully tough to see.  On top of this, my legs were getting pretty tired, so I was weaving a little bit as I made my way around the turn.  I realized I was running on the inside of the track and started making my way back to lane 1 when I spotted a basketball-sized clump of snow in my way.  Instead of jumping over it, I decided to step on it because snow is fun.  An instant later I was dropping an atomic f-bomb as my foot slid right off the side of the ice chunk and landed on its side.  My first thought was how will this look on Strava?  My second was that I had to finish the workout.  I promptly counseled myself into walking for at least a lap and then re-evaluating.  At the end of the lap, I tried to run, but it was no good.  I was limping, and my foot was killing me.  I was hit by a wave of frustration.  What do you do when you’re frustrated?  You throw stuff.   I picked up a nearby hurdle and put 137 pounds of fury into launching it as far as I could.  My god, hurdles are heavy.  It literally went nowhere.  I mean, I could still touch it from where I was standing. RAGE!  Maybe I should have gone here instead.

The answer to my question: this is how it looks on Strava.

I drove home left-footed (I’ve had lots of practice), iced immediately, kept it raised, and stayed off it for two days.  The Friday injury reports had me listed as doubtful for the race, and fantasy running players were scrambling to the waiver wire to find a replacement (my god, I wish that was a true statement).  I was upgraded to questionable on Saturday after strolling around the yard to test it out, and by the time Sunday morning rolled around, the pain and swelling were miraculously gone, and I was removed from the injury report. 

Race Day (finally)
As a warm up, Nate and I took a jaunt out along the Ocean Rd. stretch of the course.  We got back much closer to race time than I’d realized, and I had to scramble to throw on my racing shoes (20-year-old Asics flats).  I sprinted down the restaurant stairs and threw in 30 seconds at 5K pace just to remind myself what it feels like, since most of my recent running has been at 800 pace.  I arrived at the starting line to find everyone else already there, and sidled up next to Tom, who was looking fit and ready to roll.  As Tom described in his post, I asked him what pace he was looking to run, he said 5:20, and I said that sounded great to me.  In truth, until that point, I hadn’t even thought about my goal for the race, but 5:20 seemed about right, and it would be nice to have the company of a teammate out there. 

[Note: That was the first time in my life I had ever asked someone what pace they were planning to run.  I don't even know why I did it.  Ever since Muddy’s recent Level Renner article, I get all flustered when talking to other runners before the race and start blurting out whatever comes to mind.  Actually, that describes most of my interactions, but now it's worse than usual.]

Gray-shirt man poised to make his early move.  Photo by Jana Walker.

In his post, Tom nicely described the first half of both our races, so I’ll just note a few observations:

• Not since high school cross-country have I seen so many people go out too fast in the first half-mile of a race.  Some looked like they might be legit, and others definitely did not (ahem, gray-shirt man).  It turned out that only three of the eight or so to form the early lead pack were for real. 
• It was impressive to watch Mike and Ryan fall in behind The Colonel.  The speed at which they gapped us was ridiculous.  They had 15 or so seconds on the “chase pack” by the time we turned off Ocean Rd.
• It’s always disconcerting to be leading a pack of runners, especially when you have no idea who most of them are.  When will they pass?  Am I going too slow?  Too fast?  

We hit mile 1 in just over 5:20, and by the turnaround, it was just me, Tom, and a tall dude.  At some point shortly thereafter, the tall guy asked us, “Do you know where to go at the finish?”  Tom gave a courtesy grunt, and I said, “I don’t know either” (which was the truth).  What I wanted to know was why he had asked that.  Did he plan to surge ahead and knew he would be without our navigational services the rest of the way?  Or, was he hurting and wanting to make sure he could hold off the next group behind us if he lost contact?  I didn't want to wait to find out, so I gradually pressed the pedal to the floor.  You might call this move the anti-Jackman, since it was as imperceptible as his are mind-blowingly abrupt.  Anyway, I guess it was the latter of my two guesses, because that was the last time I heard from him.  Tom gamely clung to me, and I could hear his footsteps all the way down the hill past mile 2 (5:28) to Ocean Rd. 

Maybe it's a weird angle, but do I look incredibly
uncoordinated to anyone else?  Photo by Jana Walker.

I tried to keep the pressure on along the long final straight.  I could no longer hear Tom, and Wooley was too far ahead, so I just focused on running smooth and fast through the end.  I wound up running 5:07 pace over the final 1.1 (though Strava generously gave me credit for sub-5 thanks to some signal loss), finishing in 16:33.  It was my second-fastest road 5K ever, but I don’t put a lot of stock in that, since I never ran one when I was at my fittest. 

After the race, I got in a nice, long cool down with Nate, Mike, and Muddy, arriving back just in time to see WTAC dominate the post-race awards. 

Some final thoughts:

The good

• I was atypically intelligent about recovering from the ankle sprain.  I have never felt that good three days post-injury. 
• I ran reasonably well despite focusing on 800-meter training over the past two months.
• Running more than half the race with Tom was a treat.  Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to beat him, and apparently he felt the same about me (which just proves we’re all competitive jerks on the inside no matter our outward behaviors), but it’s a great feeling running stride-for-stride in solidarity with a teammate. 
• WTAC is absolutely crushing these local races.  We had 7 guys break 18 minutes.  That is crazy.  And if Jeff wasn’t in the midst of some major high-mileage weeks, he would have been the eighth. 

The bad

• I feel like an idiot for reacting so strongly to the ankle injury on Strava and then showing up to the race like nothing was ever wrong.  Thanks to everyone who checked up on me, and I’ll try not to be so dramatic the next time.
• I failed to hit Muddy’s estimated time.  You’re welcome, anyone who took the over bet.
• Finishing out of the money.  As the 4^th place finisher, I was the first one not to get a “cash” prize.  This is fairly typical.  If one person gets a prize, I usually place second.  Three people, I’m fourth.  Forty-five people, I’m forty-sixth.  The only time last year I earned a prize – when I won the Run for the Pumpkins 5K – I drove out of the parking lot with the gift certificate on my roof, never to see it again.  Some things just aren't meant to be.

Next up: Belleville Pond 10K on 2/9