Double your fun (part 2)
Oct. 8th, 2012 03:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ilanarama...or, taper is overrated. :-)
After running the 25K of the Durango Double on Saturday, I got a quick leg massage, drank a couple of beers, and then went home to rest up for Sunday's half marathon. (I should add that I got to the race start - and home again - by bicycle. Needless to say, I rode home SLOWLY.) I did a little stretching and foam rolling, and I iced my calves.
My legs were starting to ache by evening, and when I woke the next morning DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) had set in. Oddly, the part of my body that hurt the most was my butt! Walking around the house in the morning helped loosen up my muscles, as did the hike to the start, about 3/4 of a mile - and 350 feet vertical - at the college on top of the mesa behind my house. It was quite cold, and I wore a jacket and gloves along with my short-sleeve top and running skirt, intending to send them to the finish in my drop bag. I ended up keeping the gloves on, and in fact didn't take them off until mile 9 or so.
I said hello to several of the people I'd run with the day before, and other local runners I knew, and we all jockeyed for position at the start. Both the half and full marathon were starting together, as had the 25K and 50K on Saturday.
The first part of the course was a loop around the mesa's rim with a little climbing. I started out a little fast, but soon settled into about an 8-minute pace, and quickly all the leftover aches disappeared. I didn't feel at all like I'd just raced the day before - but I didn't really want to put the hammer down, either. But then the course headed down the mesa, and it just felt natural to speed up...and then speed up some more...and then some more. Because of the cold, dry air, I wasn't sweating enough to make the contacts work properly on my heart rate monitor, and so the readings didn't help me until almost halfway into the race - I just had to go by feel.
We crossed the river again. This was where the previous day's race went up the hill and onto the trail, but here we continued on the rec path, under a highway bridge and past an aid station. This was where I saw the first half marathon runners coming back from the turn-around. I started counting women, and was amazed to discover that I was in third place. I had no idea - I hadn't really paid attention at the start - and it energized and excited me. Not only that, but when I hit the turnaround (just under 8 miles in) I saw that I had a pretty good lead on the women behind me.
I ran back through the aid station, back past the drummers, back past the bridge where we'd turned on to the path. I was mostly running by myself now. A lot of the runners coming my way told me I was the third woman, and I always thanked them; if they said, "Good job!" I would say, "You, too!" Now that my HR monitor was working I could see that I was pretty much in marathon HR rather than half. I didn't think I could push harder, though.
On the last bridge I sneaked a glance at the path behind me - nobody in sight. Good thing, because I was really slowing down. But then I came up from an underpass and saw my husband Britt ringing a cowbell and waving at me, and that gave me one more tiny burst of speed.
I turned off the path and onto the last few roads that would take me to the finish. There is one nasty uphill, then a flat stretch (right by my house!) and then a lovely long downhill finishing chute. I gathered my strength for one last burst of speed, guns a-blazing, grinning like a loon as I crossed the line.
Final chip time was 1:43:10, third OA woman (out of 104) and 13 person (out of 172). This is well off my PR, and a pretty slow time to be an overall winner, but it's a small race, and the "double" aspect is a big deal - I haven't actually counted, but just looking at the results I think on the order of a quarter of the participants ran both days. Incidentally, the women who came in first and second also ran the 25K, coming in third and fourth; the first place woman in the 25K didn't run the half, and the second place woman was listed as DNF. And the (male) winner of the 50K came in second in the marathon with a sub-3! YOWZA. (I looked him up on Athlinks, and he runs a marathon or ultra pretty much every weekend. And he runs them FAST!) Also, one woman who was running the half marathon missed the turnaround and decided to run the marathon (her first) instead. She came in first in her age group!
This is the award I got for my 3rd OA finish:
And here is the special personalized award, hand-painted at the Ute Mountain Pottery, for "doing the double" - the (EIGHT, OMG!) runners who did both the 50K and the full marathon got a bigger platter, with a sage green rim instead of the terra-cotta, but any other combination got one like this:
After running the 25K of the Durango Double on Saturday, I got a quick leg massage, drank a couple of beers, and then went home to rest up for Sunday's half marathon. (I should add that I got to the race start - and home again - by bicycle. Needless to say, I rode home SLOWLY.) I did a little stretching and foam rolling, and I iced my calves.
My legs were starting to ache by evening, and when I woke the next morning DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) had set in. Oddly, the part of my body that hurt the most was my butt! Walking around the house in the morning helped loosen up my muscles, as did the hike to the start, about 3/4 of a mile - and 350 feet vertical - at the college on top of the mesa behind my house. It was quite cold, and I wore a jacket and gloves along with my short-sleeve top and running skirt, intending to send them to the finish in my drop bag. I ended up keeping the gloves on, and in fact didn't take them off until mile 9 or so.
I said hello to several of the people I'd run with the day before, and other local runners I knew, and we all jockeyed for position at the start. Both the half and full marathon were starting together, as had the 25K and 50K on Saturday.
The first part of the course was a loop around the mesa's rim with a little climbing. I started out a little fast, but soon settled into about an 8-minute pace, and quickly all the leftover aches disappeared. I didn't feel at all like I'd just raced the day before - but I didn't really want to put the hammer down, either. But then the course headed down the mesa, and it just felt natural to speed up...and then speed up some more...and then some more. Because of the cold, dry air, I wasn't sweating enough to make the contacts work properly on my heart rate monitor, and so the readings didn't help me until almost halfway into the race - I just had to go by feel.
mile pace +/- ft avg HR max HR 1.00 7:52.36 +9 hr data spurious 0:07:52.26 2.00 8:09.00 +92 hr data spurious 0:16:01.15 3.00 7:49.32 -114 hr data spurious 0:23:50.37 4.00 7:31.52 -122 hr data spurious 0:31:21.79 5.00 7:11.61 -149 hr data spurious 0:38:33.31 6.00 7:25.64 -107 153 (78%) 166 (88%) 0:45:58.85I was feeling pretty good as we turned onto the old highway, down a frontage road, and through the parking lot of the Animas Surgical Hospital where we had started and finished Saturday's race. We retraced our steps around the building and across the river, then down the paved rec path again. There's a bit of a climb here, but I hardly noticed it; I could hear a bunch of people playing drums farther down the path and it pulled me up and over. Marjorie, the president of our running club, was one of the drummers, and she gave me an encouraging shout-out as I went by.
We crossed the river again. This was where the previous day's race went up the hill and onto the trail, but here we continued on the rec path, under a highway bridge and past an aid station. This was where I saw the first half marathon runners coming back from the turn-around. I started counting women, and was amazed to discover that I was in third place. I had no idea - I hadn't really paid attention at the start - and it energized and excited me. Not only that, but when I hit the turnaround (just under 8 miles in) I saw that I had a pretty good lead on the women behind me.
I ran back through the aid station, back past the drummers, back past the bridge where we'd turned on to the path. I was mostly running by myself now. A lot of the runners coming my way told me I was the third woman, and I always thanked them; if they said, "Good job!" I would say, "You, too!" Now that my HR monitor was working I could see that I was pretty much in marathon HR rather than half. I didn't think I could push harder, though.
mile pace +/- ft avg HR max HR 7.00 7:35.66 -37 157 (81%) 173 (94%)(?) 0:53:34.41 8.00 7:47.29 -5 155 (79%) 163 (85%) 1:01:21.60 9.00 7:39.37 +3 153 (77%) 158 (82%) 1:09:00.87Then suddenly, somewhere after the 9-mile mark, I started feeling all the accumulated miles come crashing back into my limbs. My lungs felt heavy, like it was work to breathe. Time to focus, to stay strong, to get it done. I was slowly catching a man in front of me; I concentrated on reeling him in, bit by bit, and somewhere in mile 10 I passed him. Because I run this path several times a week, I know every bit of it, which was both good and bad: good because I knew just how far I had to go and what downhills and uphills awaited...and bad for exactly the same reason!
On the last bridge I sneaked a glance at the path behind me - nobody in sight. Good thing, because I was really slowing down. But then I came up from an underpass and saw my husband Britt ringing a cowbell and waving at me, and that gave me one more tiny burst of speed.
I turned off the path and onto the last few roads that would take me to the finish. There is one nasty uphill, then a flat stretch (right by my house!) and then a lovely long downhill finishing chute. I gathered my strength for one last burst of speed, guns a-blazing, grinning like a loon as I crossed the line.
mile pace +/- ft avg HR max HR 10.00 7:58.50 +26 156 (80%) 161 (85%) 1:16:59.27 11.00 8:08.33 +46 155 (79%) 159 (82%) 1:25:07.50 12.00 8:12.54 +9 153 (78%) 157 (81%) 1:33:19.93 13.00 8:38.17 +69 152 (76%) 157 (81%) 1:41:57.99 13.16 7:39.18 -25 152 (77%) 153 (78%) 1:43:13.80
Final chip time was 1:43:10, third OA woman (out of 104) and 13 person (out of 172). This is well off my PR, and a pretty slow time to be an overall winner, but it's a small race, and the "double" aspect is a big deal - I haven't actually counted, but just looking at the results I think on the order of a quarter of the participants ran both days. Incidentally, the women who came in first and second also ran the 25K, coming in third and fourth; the first place woman in the 25K didn't run the half, and the second place woman was listed as DNF. And the (male) winner of the 50K came in second in the marathon with a sub-3! YOWZA. (I looked him up on Athlinks, and he runs a marathon or ultra pretty much every weekend. And he runs them FAST!) Also, one woman who was running the half marathon missed the turnaround and decided to run the marathon (her first) instead. She came in first in her age group!
This is the award I got for my 3rd OA finish:
And here is the special personalized award, hand-painted at the Ute Mountain Pottery, for "doing the double" - the (EIGHT, OMG!) runners who did both the 50K and the full marathon got a bigger platter, with a sage green rim instead of the terra-cotta, but any other combination got one like this:
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-08 09:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-09 10:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-08 11:17 pm (UTC)I did a 5k a few weeks ago .. it was a thing for water for a village in Africa. .. But I can't imagine going for as long as you.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-09 10:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-09 06:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-09 10:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-09 06:34 pm (UTC)You have the best pictures, too!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-09 10:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-09 11:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-10 09:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-10 08:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-10 11:09 am (UTC)Imma get to see all that lovely nature today (or, tomorrow, since I apologize in advance for most likely being terribly tired when I arrive, and wanting to go straight to bed), yaaaay! Fresh air!?!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-10 08:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-10 04:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-10 08:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-12 11:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-13 07:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-16 12:34 am (UTC)I have to agree with Rebecca that you look GREAT. And the photos make you look like you totally owned the finish line!