my triumphant return to moab!
Mar. 23rd, 2022 04:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ilanaramaMy racing history in Moab goes back to October 2009, when I ran The Other Half with my RW Forum friend Karah - we'd met in person the month before at the Imogene Pass Run, and she'd encouraged me to come do this one (and share a hotel room) - and came home with a new PR of 1:41:44 and a trophy. Over the next seven years I raced both The Other Half and its sister race, the Canonylands Half in March, nearly every year (along with two other Moab races, the Winter Sun 10K twice and the Dead Horse 50K once); I brought home more trophies and other awards most years, as well as my all-time half marathon PR of 1:35:55 at The Other Half in 2013.
And then in 2017 I didn't feel I had enough training to register for Canyonlands, and I got a pelvic stress fracture at a trail race in July, so I didn't do The Other Half either. 2018 was mostly very slow recovery and ramping up my fitness again, though that was also the summer of the 416 Fire which made training a challenge. I signed up to do a local half in August but strained a muscle in my groin mountain biking, so I bailed on that race. In early 2019 we were feverishly finishing our new house, so no Canyonlands Half for me that year, though I did run a local half in June, after we'd moved in. Our trip to Spain in the fall conflicted with The Other Half, but I signed up to do the Canyonlands Half on March 14th, 2020 - which was canceled due to the pandemic, as were many races over the next 18 months. I again signed up for the August half here and again had to bail due to mountain bike injury. (I should probably learn a lesson from this...)
Which is why, when I toed the metaphorical line on Saturday at the Sandy Beach river access pull-out on Highway 128 along the Colorado River, I had not raced a half for nearly three years, and had not raced in Moab for five and a half years. But I had ten weeks of solid, careful training, and a good taper week; I had reasonable goals and excellent weather. I was ready.
Well, as ready as I could be, anyway. I'd dithered over clothes since the night before - I have always worn a singlet and shorts for this race, with gloves to start, but under the new management that had taken over the race since the last time I'd done it, the start time had been moved from 10am to 8:15. Even though I race best in the cold I was worried I'd be too cold in the predicted mid to upper 30s F. I pinned my bib to my shorts rather than my top, and threw a short-sleeved shirt into my gear bag so I could swap last-minute if needed, but in the end I went for my original clothing plan. (Spoiler alert: it was the exactly right choice.) Of course, starting early also meant that I had to eat my breakfast muffin early and my, er, digestive system failed to get with the program despite my several hopeful visits to the porta-potties at the start. (Spoiler alert: I didn't have to make an emergency stop!)
I was doing this race with a local friend, Chuck, who had raced his first half in August (the one I DNSed due to injury). He and his wife had driven out with me and Britt, and while Chuck and I ran, our spouses would be hiking. We sat together on the bus to the start, but we lost track of each other in the milling crowd (about 750 people, maybe half of what this race used to have) at the start. I did a half-mile warmup (easy run with some strides) and then joined in the milling until the announcer called three minutes to start. But even after that, it was still a sort of amorphous blob of a crowd, as the starting line was at an angle across the entry to the parking area that was the staging zone, with no clear lane and no indications of pace as in the old days, where pace signs stretched back up the road to show people where to line up. (The race was taken over a few years ago by a new management company, Mad Moose Productions, and this year they changed the course, starting a few miles farther upcanyon and going upcanyon for a short distance to a turnaround before heading down, in order to finish at a park on the Colorado River rather than continuing into town.) When the announcer abruptly said, "Okay! 3-2-1-go!" it was a bit of a scrum to get over the line, and I ended up walking across in a dense group of people.
Once on the actual course, people spread out more and I could run, though they spread across the entire road and didn't stay in the left lane, as marked by cones. I was wary, since we were only running upcanyon for half a mile before turning around the last cone and coming back downcanyon on the far side of the cones, but I managed to not hit any cones and also not have anyone side-step into me as the first runners rounded the turn-around point and started heading back toward us. I felt as though I was running a nice, easy pace, and was pleased to look at my watch and see that I was holding an 8:10 pace as per plan. (It's amazing to me how race day magic - okay, the combination of training, taper, and the adrenaline from being among other runners - makes what is a hard pace in training feel comfortable in a race!)
The upcanyon section started with a short downhill, which meant that when I came back that way it was a short uphill, but I just floated over it, hardly noticing. This course is net downhill but undulating, with gentle uphills and downhills, which is the kind of running I like best. I tried to keep my effort even, even if my pace varied. I was not aided in this by my heart rate monitor, which decided to cadence-lock and give me uselessly high numbers about the middle of the second mile, but I'm a pretty good judge of effort, and everything felt fine. (I did notice that I managed to blow my tangents early, though - the mile markers consistently came about 15 seconds after my Garmin buzzed off the mile mark.)
Mile 1 - 8:10
Mile 2 - 8:11
Mile 3 - 8:04
I was on the fast side of my plan - my A goal of 1:46:45, the equivalent performance of my age 50 PR at my current 58 years, worked out to be 8:09 pace. But I felt as though I wasn't working particularly hard, and so I let myself speed up a little, especially when I caught sight of Chuck ahead of me sometime around mile 4. I was surprised he was ahead of me, as he'd been feeling negative about his fitness, and had told me he expected to do about 8:30 pace, as in his first half marathon - clearly he'd changed his mind! We chatted for a while, and then I spotted a woman I thought was probably in my age group, and sped up a little bit so as to pass her. I never saw Chuck again until after the finish, but he later told me that keeping me in his sights helped him stay focused. ♥
Mile 4 - 7:57
Mile 5 - 7:49
Mile 6 - 7:57
Mile 7 - 7:57
The course continued to undulate. I continued to feel comfortable and smooth. Somewhere in here we finally broke out of the shadow of the canyon walls for a short time, but around the next bend it got shady again. In past years I took off my gloves after 3-4 miles, but I kept them on until after the halfway point, as it was still quite cool. Amazingly, the wind that is a usual unwelcome guest at this race did not show up. (Hah, I first typed 'gust', which would be an appropriate typo!) I walked the (few) aid stations as I hadn't even thought about bringing a straw - my usual go-to for race drinking - but as I quickly came back up to pace afterward I don't think it slowed me down. I carried a little candy in my pocket but never ate it.
Past the halfway point! I started doing ridiculous race math in my head. My A goal was looking good - even beatable. I started thinking about beating my worst time on this course, 1:45:50 in hot, windy 2012. I decided I could afford to press down a bit more on the accelerator.
Mile 8 - 7:40
Mile 9 - 7:45
Mile 10 - 7:45
Race math starts to get dicey this late in the race, but because I was now on the part of the course we shared with the 5-mile race, I could see the mile markers counting precisely down to the end - that is, a short distance after my 10 I saw their 2, so I knew at that point there were exactly 3 miles to go. The time on my watch was a little over 1:21. If I could run under 8-minute pace for the last 3 miles, I would get in under 1:45.
I had not finished a half marathon in under 1:45 since 2016.
I would, I thought, do a murder to come in under 1:45.
I looked at my watch, which told me I was running better than 7-minute pace, but I knew better than to trust it in this mile, which curves very closely under a stunningly huge and beautiful sheer rock cliff face that plays havoc with the GPS signal. I pretty much ignored the 7:15 when my watch buzzed, and checked at the 5-mile's marker 3 instead. Still on pace for my murder-goal!
I concentrated on passing a woman in a yellow windbreaker who looked like she might be in my age group, and then just kept it up. Volunteers and signs directed us to leave the road and run on the bike path alongside, which was great because it bypassed the hill the road went up and then down. I just kept chugging; nobody passed me. Along the bike path, into the park, and under the banner that marked the finish line!
Mile 11 - 7:15 (spurious)
Mile 12 - 7:37
Mile 13 - 7:47
0.26 to the finish - 7:17 (!!!)
I crossed the line at 1:44:xx on the finish clock, 1:43:58 by my watch, and as it turned out, 1:43:53 official chip time (I must have started my watch a little early).
Chuck finished a little over a minute later, winning his age group (he's 61) by just 3 seconds. I came in third in my 50-59 AG out of 61 finishers, less than a minute behind #2 but over 9 minutes behind #1. Though I console myself that both of those women are 50 (eight years younger than me) I also have to acknowledge that the 60-year-old who won the 60-69F AG also beat me by about a minute and a half, so I can't get too cocky! I was the 26th woman out of 467 finishers and the 83rd human being out of 755 finishers.
In the end, though, the placements didn't matter, as Mad Moose Productions doesn't actually give awards. "I treat all my runners the same," said the woman I asked about official times and awards. "Everyone gets the same medal." It was certainly an impressively large medal - see photo, with my hand for scale:
Not only did I beat my A-goal by almost 3 minutes, I ran my fastest half marathon since my last Moab race in October 2016, and my best age-graded performance ever, over 82.1% of the world record time, my first >80%. This is considered "National Class", though I think that's a stretch. (Looking at the actual world records, which are only given in the usual 5-year groups, the WR 60F performance was a jaw-dropping 1:24:56, which is better than 11 minutes faster than my best absolute time! The youngest WR performance that I have actually beaten is 70F. Yay, at my peak I was faster than the best 70-year-old woman in the world!)
So, how did I completely blow away my own expectations? A number of factors lined up, I think:
Anyway, all in all, I am super happy with how this race went!
And then in 2017 I didn't feel I had enough training to register for Canyonlands, and I got a pelvic stress fracture at a trail race in July, so I didn't do The Other Half either. 2018 was mostly very slow recovery and ramping up my fitness again, though that was also the summer of the 416 Fire which made training a challenge. I signed up to do a local half in August but strained a muscle in my groin mountain biking, so I bailed on that race. In early 2019 we were feverishly finishing our new house, so no Canyonlands Half for me that year, though I did run a local half in June, after we'd moved in. Our trip to Spain in the fall conflicted with The Other Half, but I signed up to do the Canyonlands Half on March 14th, 2020 - which was canceled due to the pandemic, as were many races over the next 18 months. I again signed up for the August half here and again had to bail due to mountain bike injury. (I should probably learn a lesson from this...)
Which is why, when I toed the metaphorical line on Saturday at the Sandy Beach river access pull-out on Highway 128 along the Colorado River, I had not raced a half for nearly three years, and had not raced in Moab for five and a half years. But I had ten weeks of solid, careful training, and a good taper week; I had reasonable goals and excellent weather. I was ready.
Well, as ready as I could be, anyway. I'd dithered over clothes since the night before - I have always worn a singlet and shorts for this race, with gloves to start, but under the new management that had taken over the race since the last time I'd done it, the start time had been moved from 10am to 8:15. Even though I race best in the cold I was worried I'd be too cold in the predicted mid to upper 30s F. I pinned my bib to my shorts rather than my top, and threw a short-sleeved shirt into my gear bag so I could swap last-minute if needed, but in the end I went for my original clothing plan. (Spoiler alert: it was the exactly right choice.) Of course, starting early also meant that I had to eat my breakfast muffin early and my, er, digestive system failed to get with the program despite my several hopeful visits to the porta-potties at the start. (Spoiler alert: I didn't have to make an emergency stop!)
I was doing this race with a local friend, Chuck, who had raced his first half in August (the one I DNSed due to injury). He and his wife had driven out with me and Britt, and while Chuck and I ran, our spouses would be hiking. We sat together on the bus to the start, but we lost track of each other in the milling crowd (about 750 people, maybe half of what this race used to have) at the start. I did a half-mile warmup (easy run with some strides) and then joined in the milling until the announcer called three minutes to start. But even after that, it was still a sort of amorphous blob of a crowd, as the starting line was at an angle across the entry to the parking area that was the staging zone, with no clear lane and no indications of pace as in the old days, where pace signs stretched back up the road to show people where to line up. (The race was taken over a few years ago by a new management company, Mad Moose Productions, and this year they changed the course, starting a few miles farther upcanyon and going upcanyon for a short distance to a turnaround before heading down, in order to finish at a park on the Colorado River rather than continuing into town.) When the announcer abruptly said, "Okay! 3-2-1-go!" it was a bit of a scrum to get over the line, and I ended up walking across in a dense group of people.
Once on the actual course, people spread out more and I could run, though they spread across the entire road and didn't stay in the left lane, as marked by cones. I was wary, since we were only running upcanyon for half a mile before turning around the last cone and coming back downcanyon on the far side of the cones, but I managed to not hit any cones and also not have anyone side-step into me as the first runners rounded the turn-around point and started heading back toward us. I felt as though I was running a nice, easy pace, and was pleased to look at my watch and see that I was holding an 8:10 pace as per plan. (It's amazing to me how race day magic - okay, the combination of training, taper, and the adrenaline from being among other runners - makes what is a hard pace in training feel comfortable in a race!)
The upcanyon section started with a short downhill, which meant that when I came back that way it was a short uphill, but I just floated over it, hardly noticing. This course is net downhill but undulating, with gentle uphills and downhills, which is the kind of running I like best. I tried to keep my effort even, even if my pace varied. I was not aided in this by my heart rate monitor, which decided to cadence-lock and give me uselessly high numbers about the middle of the second mile, but I'm a pretty good judge of effort, and everything felt fine. (I did notice that I managed to blow my tangents early, though - the mile markers consistently came about 15 seconds after my Garmin buzzed off the mile mark.)
Mile 1 - 8:10
Mile 2 - 8:11
Mile 3 - 8:04
I was on the fast side of my plan - my A goal of 1:46:45, the equivalent performance of my age 50 PR at my current 58 years, worked out to be 8:09 pace. But I felt as though I wasn't working particularly hard, and so I let myself speed up a little, especially when I caught sight of Chuck ahead of me sometime around mile 4. I was surprised he was ahead of me, as he'd been feeling negative about his fitness, and had told me he expected to do about 8:30 pace, as in his first half marathon - clearly he'd changed his mind! We chatted for a while, and then I spotted a woman I thought was probably in my age group, and sped up a little bit so as to pass her. I never saw Chuck again until after the finish, but he later told me that keeping me in his sights helped him stay focused. ♥
Mile 4 - 7:57
Mile 5 - 7:49
Mile 6 - 7:57
Mile 7 - 7:57
The course continued to undulate. I continued to feel comfortable and smooth. Somewhere in here we finally broke out of the shadow of the canyon walls for a short time, but around the next bend it got shady again. In past years I took off my gloves after 3-4 miles, but I kept them on until after the halfway point, as it was still quite cool. Amazingly, the wind that is a usual unwelcome guest at this race did not show up. (Hah, I first typed 'gust', which would be an appropriate typo!) I walked the (few) aid stations as I hadn't even thought about bringing a straw - my usual go-to for race drinking - but as I quickly came back up to pace afterward I don't think it slowed me down. I carried a little candy in my pocket but never ate it.
Past the halfway point! I started doing ridiculous race math in my head. My A goal was looking good - even beatable. I started thinking about beating my worst time on this course, 1:45:50 in hot, windy 2012. I decided I could afford to press down a bit more on the accelerator.
Mile 8 - 7:40
Mile 9 - 7:45
Mile 10 - 7:45
Race math starts to get dicey this late in the race, but because I was now on the part of the course we shared with the 5-mile race, I could see the mile markers counting precisely down to the end - that is, a short distance after my 10 I saw their 2, so I knew at that point there were exactly 3 miles to go. The time on my watch was a little over 1:21. If I could run under 8-minute pace for the last 3 miles, I would get in under 1:45.
I had not finished a half marathon in under 1:45 since 2016.
I would, I thought, do a murder to come in under 1:45.
I looked at my watch, which told me I was running better than 7-minute pace, but I knew better than to trust it in this mile, which curves very closely under a stunningly huge and beautiful sheer rock cliff face that plays havoc with the GPS signal. I pretty much ignored the 7:15 when my watch buzzed, and checked at the 5-mile's marker 3 instead. Still on pace for my murder-goal!
I concentrated on passing a woman in a yellow windbreaker who looked like she might be in my age group, and then just kept it up. Volunteers and signs directed us to leave the road and run on the bike path alongside, which was great because it bypassed the hill the road went up and then down. I just kept chugging; nobody passed me. Along the bike path, into the park, and under the banner that marked the finish line!
Mile 11 - 7:15 (spurious)
Mile 12 - 7:37
Mile 13 - 7:47
0.26 to the finish - 7:17 (!!!)
I crossed the line at 1:44:xx on the finish clock, 1:43:58 by my watch, and as it turned out, 1:43:53 official chip time (I must have started my watch a little early).
Chuck finished a little over a minute later, winning his age group (he's 61) by just 3 seconds. I came in third in my 50-59 AG out of 61 finishers, less than a minute behind #2 but over 9 minutes behind #1. Though I console myself that both of those women are 50 (eight years younger than me) I also have to acknowledge that the 60-year-old who won the 60-69F AG also beat me by about a minute and a half, so I can't get too cocky! I was the 26th woman out of 467 finishers and the 83rd human being out of 755 finishers.
In the end, though, the placements didn't matter, as Mad Moose Productions doesn't actually give awards. "I treat all my runners the same," said the woman I asked about official times and awards. "Everyone gets the same medal." It was certainly an impressively large medal - see photo, with my hand for scale:
Not only did I beat my A-goal by almost 3 minutes, I ran my fastest half marathon since my last Moab race in October 2016, and my best age-graded performance ever, over 82.1% of the world record time, my first >80%. This is considered "National Class", though I think that's a stretch. (Looking at the actual world records, which are only given in the usual 5-year groups, the WR 60F performance was a jaw-dropping 1:24:56, which is better than 11 minutes faster than my best absolute time! The youngest WR performance that I have actually beaten is 70F. Yay, at my peak I was faster than the best 70-year-old woman in the world!)
So, how did I completely blow away my own expectations? A number of factors lined up, I think:
- I based my goals partly on my PR at The Other Half, which was my previous best age-graded performance. But that was a harder course, which despite also being net downhill had more total uphill, and several significant uphills. There were no long or steep hills on this course.
- I also considered my tempo runs, trying to predict a reasonable half-marathon pace by looking at my pace over 6 miles at HM effort and heart rate. But my training runs were all here in Durango, around 6500', while the high point of this race is around 4100. I've found that for the half, there is a definite advantage to training high and racing low - it's less effort to maintain pace.
- Also I carried a water bottle and a small pack (with my phone and the extra clothing I started the run with - I usually stripped off a layer after my warm-up) during training runs, but was unencumbered for the race.
- Probably most importantly, the race started at 8:15 rather than 10, as it used to. This kept most of the course in the shade and therefore cool, and the wind, which usually gets stronger throughout the morning, hadn't kicked up significantly. Also I lucked out that the race was held on a relatively light-wind day - the next few days were much windier, and right now I'm listening to the wind howling (10mph gusting to 25) outside my window. Typical springtime in the 4 Corners area!
Anyway, all in all, I am super happy with how this race went!