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perspective
Sep. 2nd, 2022 02:38 pmIn last week's post about my hopes for the Thirsty Thirteen half marathon, I said: So my A goal, I guess, is to beat my 2014 time (sub-1:45) my B goal is 1:45-1:48, and my C goal is sub-1:50. I guess my D goal is, you know, upright and breathing. With a time of 1:47:24, I made my B goal, though when I finished I did not feel good about it.
In the early miles, I noticed my time was about ten seconds/mile off the same splits from my previous time, which I was fine, I could live with. (I only had the first four miles memorized, I'm not obsessive or anything! :P) The first steep downhill stretch went pretty well, the short uphills didn't faze me, and the long uphill at mile 7 I didn't even look at my watch but tried to maintain a reasonable effort - it turned out to be slower than I wanted or expected. I figured I could make up the time on the second steep downhill stretch, but it started getting hot, and my legs started to cramp up, so although I was running faster, I was not running as fast as I should have been. The uphills at the end were terrible - I even walked a little on the last mile, in the second-to-last uphill - and I thought I could make it up on the downhill between the two uphills but I couldn't. Too hot, ugh. At least I ran all the way up the last uphill to the finish line.
My friend Chuck, who finished a minute behind me at the Canyonlands Half in March, finished around two minutes ahead of me. I came in fourth in my 10-year age group, though if it had been 5 years I would have been second (by over 4 minutes, ugh).
My feeling that I'd had a terrible race was only confirmed by the next few days. I did pretty much nothing the rest of the day; my legs were really sore. The next day I hobbled around the house and complained a lot. On Monday we drove into the mountains to pick mushrooms, so I did a bit of hiking, and it hurt. (I complained a lot. On the other hand, we got a lot of chanterelles!) On Tuesday I walked about 3 miles (ow ow ow), on Wednesday I ran about 3 miles at a breathtakingly slow pace (ow ow), and on Thursday I ran 4 miles at my "normal slow" pace with only a single (ow). Today I went mountain biking, and didn't ow at all!
Over the past few days I've been thinking about this race. Yeah, I did not have the race I wanted. But then I started to put things into perspective:
In the early miles, I noticed my time was about ten seconds/mile off the same splits from my previous time, which I was fine, I could live with. (I only had the first four miles memorized, I'm not obsessive or anything! :P) The first steep downhill stretch went pretty well, the short uphills didn't faze me, and the long uphill at mile 7 I didn't even look at my watch but tried to maintain a reasonable effort - it turned out to be slower than I wanted or expected. I figured I could make up the time on the second steep downhill stretch, but it started getting hot, and my legs started to cramp up, so although I was running faster, I was not running as fast as I should have been. The uphills at the end were terrible - I even walked a little on the last mile, in the second-to-last uphill - and I thought I could make it up on the downhill between the two uphills but I couldn't. Too hot, ugh. At least I ran all the way up the last uphill to the finish line.
My friend Chuck, who finished a minute behind me at the Canyonlands Half in March, finished around two minutes ahead of me. I came in fourth in my 10-year age group, though if it had been 5 years I would have been second (by over 4 minutes, ugh).
My feeling that I'd had a terrible race was only confirmed by the next few days. I did pretty much nothing the rest of the day; my legs were really sore. The next day I hobbled around the house and complained a lot. On Monday we drove into the mountains to pick mushrooms, so I did a bit of hiking, and it hurt. (I complained a lot. On the other hand, we got a lot of chanterelles!) On Tuesday I walked about 3 miles (ow ow ow), on Wednesday I ran about 3 miles at a breathtakingly slow pace (ow ow), and on Thursday I ran 4 miles at my "normal slow" pace with only a single (ow). Today I went mountain biking, and didn't ow at all!
Over the past few days I've been thinking about this race. Yeah, I did not have the race I wanted. But then I started to put things into perspective:
- One thing I consciously did differently preparing for this race was less overall mileage; two workouts each week (speed and tempo) instead of just one (speed in early weeks, tempo in later weeks); more cross-training (mountain biking and hiking). Okay, apparently this didn't work. I was approaching things this way partly because I noticed that my runs the day after the speed workout were very slow, and I was wondering if maybe it would be more bang for my exercise buck to do some alternative exercise the next day. Also partly because the book I base a lot of my training on suggests that older runners can do better by doing less running and more cross-training, and partly because I needed to prepare for our backpacking trip, and I like mountain biking!
I was talking after the race with an astonishingly fast 65-year-old man who came in 4th overall in 1:21. That time is literally world-class (he won his age group with a 1:22 at the World Masters Athletics Championships in Finland in June) and he mentioned that he uses a 9-day cycle, rather than a 7-day week. Maybe I should try something like that so I can get both speed and tempo workouts in before a half. He also said that his "secret" is that he just runs a lot - so much for the "older runners should run less" theory! - The race results website displays an "age percentage", which is the age-graded result in terms of percentage of world record time for your age, according to some particular age-grading algorithm. (There are several that differ slightly. I use the Masters Athletics web calculator, but my numbers come out higher/more favorable...) You can even sort by age percentage, and when I do...I have the 6th best age percentage, out of 510 runners! (Actually I tie for 5th with the winner of my age group, who I guess gets ahead of me due to her lower absolute time. The man I mentioned above is first, of course.) So I need to remember that I may be slow in an absolute sense, but for my age, I'm lightning!
- And I am really not slow in an absolute sense. I was 68th overall, which puts me in the top 15%. Lots of people slower than me. (When we left, we drove by runners who were in the last few miles. It was really hot. We cheered them on - they were having a harder time than I was!) I was the 18th female finisher out of 284, and 4th in F50-59 out of 38. It's ridiculous to feel sorry for myself because there are a few people faster than me. Perspective!