Ugly Mudder 2/23/14: Hogging the Trails of Mt. Penn

Yesterday was our second PCS race of the year, far too few if you ask me because they're superbly executed and fun trail runs.  The Ugly Mudder is, in theory, just another one of their trail runs, 7 miles (give or take course conditions) on Mt. Penn in Reading.  Conditions are usually lousy, hence the name and general theme of this race.

I was looking forward to the race all month, but with an extra boost before race day, I found I'm at the lightest racing weight I've ever had at just under 160.  Holy crap, I think I've accidentally lost too much weight.  A bit of fear that I'd hit the wall early with a lack of body fat but eh, what am I gonna do?  All  week, I'd felt great but this morning I was inexplicably sore in my calves and just feeling tired and kind of miserable, I shook it off, knowing I've had lousy runs when I felt great and good runs when I've felt lousy, performance isn't always related to feel.  

My race plan was pretty loose due to the course conditions.  Conditions were pretty interesting.  Ron Horn, PCS' race director, let the corral of runners know he believed that course conditions were the "worst ever" on this morning during his always entertaining pre-race debriefing.  One of his volunteers suggested it's even "worse than that," whatever that means.  Ron notified us also that the course had been shortened due to the conditions, somewhat relieving.  He told us it was 5-point-something miles instead of the planned 7...

Actual weather conditions were pretty nice.  It was probably mid-40's at the start, a little cloudy which would open up during the race to warm up a little more but we were tackling some unbroken snow from the last few snowfalls.  Despite the recent break in the cold weather, the warmth of the weekend didn't have enough impact on melting away any of the snow.  Fortunately for me and 99% of the field, we'd have a packed track to follow.  A narrow track.

Kristen and I met our friend Josh before hand and we chatted some about race plans and all pretty much decided to throw them out the window and focus on having a fun run.  The reality was it was going to be a difficult course to navigate via single track and it was inevitably going to be a walking conga line at multiple pinch points and climbs.  

With the race start, we poured out across the start line onto a brief stretch of road where Josh and I tried to move ahead in the pack to avoid getting stuck in lines, we did some work to move up to the front 1/4 of the pack and he made out well a little further ahead, I'd never see him again.  He's a running coach and I'm just some dude so he's got some great ability while I'm still developing.  The first pinch point came fast, as soon as we turned off the road to the single track.  A few people ran around the pack, plowing their own tracks a little wider of the course, I submitted to the line and thought I'll choose my passes wisely later on in the course.  I think it was a strategy that worked well.  

Early on, a slow entrance to the trails

The narrow track, but beautiful scenery.

We stretched out along the trails, eventually forming packs and mashing our way through the slushy course.  As I've become used to them, I wore my Ice Trekkers (on my NB 810's) and felt pretty solid in regards to footing.  I had no issues on the runnable climbs and any descent was a lot of fun, taking long, gliding strides and "sledding" a little on each strike in the slush.

The single-file running was nice in that I could mindlessly pursue whoever's in front of me but I could only maintain the position for so long before feeling restless or bored so I changed my scenery as often as I could, breaking trail along side of the single track just long enough to get by a few runners and eventually far enough to find the next pack of runners.  You could see little patches of blood in the snow from the runners lowing through the unbroken trail marking the trail, I had a few scratches from the icy top surface too, so it's a nice little badge of honor to earn while moving through the packs. 3 miles of that and I suddenly felt a ton of energy, I was ready to go and I wanted to go fast!

I did what I could and cruised through the last 2.5 miles pretty easily, enjoying the race and scenery.  At about 5.5 miles, we approached the final aid station right below an abrupt drop in the course where the girl I was following decided to suddenly stop to contemplate her decent and with cat-like reflexes I hopped to her left and into a foot-first slide right off the hill, somehow making a quick work of the "obstacle" and trotting another 100' to the final aid station.  By "aid," I mean lager.  I pounded a beer and kept going on to the finish, invigorated.

The slide with fermented refreshment just ahead.

Is it weird that this is the only aid station where I stopped?

Finish of a much quicker race than I expected.

I did my best to continue forward progress among the field of runners but it was still a limiting factor.  My last few miles were quicker than I'd expected and I turned in a 1:16:37 for 6.37 miles (Ron must have misspoke at the beginning about the revised course distance, no big deal).  Josh greeted me at the finishing chute and said I did really well, only finishing 3 minutes behind him.  In those 3 minutes were 63 other runners.  Josh just missed placing in our age group and I felt like I cheated myself, sandbagging too much at the beginning.  I found Derek Schultz at the finish and chatted with him a bit; he's an awesome runner.  He turned in a 17th place finish, the final award position for our age group.  I was expecting him to be in the top overalls but he had some similar struggles with the course and had to deal with losing a shoe when someone gave him a flat tire.

We stuck around and shared a pitcher of a tasty dark German beer and watched the awards.  I love PCS races, they're really awesome and the people are fantastic. Happy training, folks, enjoy the race recap video!

Feel the Love 5K: A couple miles for couples

Bryn Mawr Running Store puts on an annual 5K race for couples called Feel the Love.  A little cheesy but hey, 'tis the season for mushy Valentiney stuff.  It was a fun race with a cool format: 2x 2.5K loops with a partner.  Each couple runs the same loop but in opposing directions so you get to see each other 3 times during the race.  Couples' combined times were used for the placing and individual results were still tabulated.

The race is held in the Philadelphia Navy Yard, a quick loop with a total 7 feet of elevation gain.   A stark contrast to our typical trail races and training runs, we both fully enjoyed the change in pace (quite literally).  We looked forward to the 5K for a little change up.  I was eager to see what kind of time I could put down since it's been a long time since my last official 5K.  The quickest 5K I had to date was 23:29 and that was a little time trial I did on my own one morning.  I can't find my last official race 5K time but I am pretty sure it was over 24 minutes.  I considered my recent training and what I thought would be an acceptable goal to set.  I thought that holding 7 minute miles would be great and figured I could easily do that for the first 2;  This would really be a test of maintaining the same pace I started with for the last 1.1 miles without letting myself slip.  Twenty two minutes would be a good goal to set.

The 2.5K loop

I had considered my cadence during the week prior.  I've become aware that it may be far more useful to maintain a higher turnover rate than longer strides.  Boning up on running cadence via intense Googling (over 5 minutes worth of research) I did my homework and settled on a target.  Any target is a great place to start, several sources indicate 180 is ideal so there's my target for this race: 180 steps per minute or 3 per second.  I'd tried counting my cadence manually during some runs in the woods by counting out loud: "one-one thousand, two-one thousand..." etc., trying to make it a good 3-beat cadence meter.  I found it a little tricky because I'm a simple man so I gave it up and let technology figure it out for me.

I don't always run with music, when I do, I use an iPod nano loaded with running songs.  It's more appropriate now to just call them pump-up songs because I've repopulated that playlist with truer running songs after this exercise with cadence.  Each song was picked less for how awesome I think it will be to go along with zooming around the trails or roads but now specifically for it's ability to help me maintain a proper cadence.  I downloaded a pretty awesome $7 program called... you guessed it: Cadence.  Cadence works as an extension of iTunes to measure each song's beats per minute quite well.  After analyzing my eclectic library of tunes, I sorted my iTunes library by BPM and after purging my iPod, threw a handful of songs on that were going to fit my raceplan.

Screenshot of Cadence

The race was in the afternoon, which I didn't complain too much about.  I prefer to get these done early and have a great full day afterwards.  We arrived about 30 minutes early, checked in, got some cool swag, and decided to stay warm in the car since it was only about 27 F that afternoon.

The pre-race couple, team Tired Feet. 

We lined up in our respective corrals as each departed from the start line in a different direction and our own races were off.  I lined up in the middle of my pack, Kristen directly beside me in the middle of hers and we were off on our first road 5K in over a year.

I don't remember which song I started off with but it wasn't working.  I was caught in a pack and could start off quite as planned.  After some patience and some maneuvering, I made my way into some daylight and cruised along as I fell into my pre-planned pace.  As is my habit, I didn't consult my Garmin during the race other than to accept its buzzing alerts for each mile covered.  I made the assumption my pace was on target.

It really didn't take too long to see runners coming from the opposite direction.  The leaders were running 5 minute miles, something I aspire to do, maybe once, maybe for just one mile.  Soon, I saw Kristen, we high-fived each other and continued on until the next time we saw each other.  I ran my race solely focused on keeping a steady pace, not mindful of my actual performance.  I was going to know nothing until I approached the finish line.

At about 2.5 miles I started feeling more labored breathing set in.  My  legs felt strong but I was getting winded.  I decided ain't nobody got time for that and just ignored it.  Sure, I enjoy longer races, but this is a road 5K, it's short but still supposed to be hard if I'm showing up to race in it.  I was in no danger of dying so I poured it on down the last stretch of road and through the finish in under 21 minutes.

Hooray for maintaining cadence!  Usually this looks like a hilly course profile.

My official chip time is 20:51 and I must admit, I wasn't overjoyed with crushing my goal but really just satisfied.  I have that sub-40 10K goal in the back of my mind and this was a huge step in that direction, I immediately recognized that while I've made great progress, I still have work to do.  At least it's work I'm glad to do.  I may have to plan a 10K time trial for next weekend.  With my race in the books, I grabbed a water, cheered on more racers and waited for Kristen to turn in her own PR and tell me how using songs for pace is her game-changer.  Happy to know it worked for both of us!

I'm sure you're dying to know what got my going on this run so here's the playlist, songs close to 180 or 90 BPM that I felt fit to run with.

Fun fact: Billy Idol's Dancing with Myself was my favorite of the race, getting me to the finish line ahead of schedule.

NJ Trail Series Half Marathon 2/1/2014: Ramping up for 2014

Kristen and I completed our second race in the NJ Trail Series yesterday, our first was the Watchung Run, this nameless race was our first >10 mile race of 2014, both aiming for the half marathon.  After a few weak runs and tweaking my fueling habits, I was feeling good and scouted the course a little finding the course profile from another runner's Garmin data to wrap my head around the runnability of the race.  Similar to the Watchung course, it was another 10K loop.

After feeling crushed after Chilly Cheeks, I felt like I made some significant progress during the week to recover and adequately prepare.  I logged some quality miles and ate well, at least I think.  Mentally and mechanically I was feeling pretty solid for a much flatter course and to target my goals.  My primary goal was to keep my heart rate under control.  I'd been noticing that Garmin suggests most of my runs are "overreaching" and I am not training effectively at my HR goes above 150 bpm.  Without too much deep investigation on where my HR should be, I wanted to keep it under 150 on average, based on Garmin Connect and a little digging in the Triathlete's Training Bible, keeping it a little lower that I had been running at was a safe bet.  Before my next long race, I'll be measuring my target hear rate zones to dial in a little better.

My half marathon HR data,  average was 151

My secondary goal was a bit of a reach but I wanted to hold around 11-minute miles.  A challenging trail run Thursday morning made me believe that was a legitimate target.  7 miles @ 10:45 and felt good, sure, I think I could manage that in a race twice that distance.

We arrived about 25 minutes prior to the 9:00 start time, checked in, hit the porta potty and met the oncoming wave of starting runners as we'd missed the start.  Whoops!  We fell into line with the pack about .25 miles from the start, kissed eachother good bye and started pounding snow.  The field looked pretty small compared to their last race with maybe a hundred people here or so.   The longest distance event this day was the half marathon so I imagine this didn't interest a lot of the longer distance runners as it looked like less than half the amount of racers from Watchung.

Part of the 1K loop at the start before 2 10K loops

These courses are well marked with orange spray paint in the snow

Conditions were great, at 25 degrees, I layered lightly and ran on my NB 810's with Ice Trekkers again: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.  My Asics long sleeve from the Celtic Solstice 5mi, a light down vest, running tights, shorts, a hat, running gloves and my Nathan handheld bottle were all I had on me.  In my pockets I carried a Lara bar and 2 packs of baby food.  Yes, baby food.  Gels are awesome but not Whole30 compliant (10 days in).  These things provide a small amount of carbs and electrolytes and they did a pretty good job keeping me going and avoiding bonking.  I enjoy that they're larger and I don't feel hungry as they fill you up a little more.

I avoided the prunes, assuming they'd facilitate the old saying "shit happens"

Baby food compared to a Hammer Gel

I may not have bonked but the race did go pretty slowly.  I felt pretty solid but to keep that HR down, I found myself taking the climbs really easily.  After the "halfway" point (after a 1K loop plus the 10K loop), I was not very pleased with my speed.  I gobbled down a few orange slices at the single aid station at the start/finish line, refilled my handheld and focused on running the remainder of the event.  I caught another runner, also named Aaron, and struck up conversation which is not typical of me but I thought I could use the distraction, conversation would keep me from moving too fast and a few miles would tick by a little quicker and it worked and we were about 2 miles closer to the finish before we broke the same pace and he took off ahead of me.

Somewhere pretty and downhill in Jersey

First running cap as swag!  I've got enough shirts.

Not quite 13.1, maybe I should have made it to the starting line on time...

Off my planned pace, I stewed a little but took in the beautiful scenery and knocked out another race for 2014, meeting Kristen at the finish line.  After the race, I stewed a little more, displeased with my speed.   I am looking forward to a quick 5K next weekend and a lot of time to figure out improving my training.  

USMS One-Hour Postal Swim Recap

Late last year I joined US Masters Swimming with hopes of just getting at least one event in, I imagined a swim meet, 50 free, 100 free, 100 back... just as a measuring stick of my current swimming ability.  With a whole ZERO swim meets any drivable distance from me, I just swam my own workouts and found the Postal Series with my friend Adam.  I did the 3000 short course yard swim at the end of the year in 53 minutes, good enough for dead last in the country (of 12 who entered that postal).

This year I intend to swim all 5 postal events.  They start with the 1-hour in January to be swam anywhere at any time before the 1st of February.  Adam completed his yesterday with 3225 meters (long course).  I had been feeling like crap lately in a race and a few workouts so I had suspicions I might not make it to 3000 yards.  Nonetheless, the deadline for submitting my swim was looming and it had to be done.

All my gear.  So simple.

Having noticed a huge depression in my energy and strength lately, I attempted to compensate by carbing up as much as I could leading up to the race.  What's made this tough is that Kristen and I started a Whole30 program on the 23rd, no doubt the cause of my slump.  So no pasta, bread or other "traditional" carbs.  Relying on what the good Lord gave us, we cranked out some pretty awesome starchy vegetables for carbs like loads of sweet potatoes (breakfast hash, or mashed), rutabagas, cauliflower rice, spaghetti squash, butternut squash and beets (these are a new favorite food but holy crap are they a bit alarming when they dye everything that comes out later a blood red).  I think I ate about 3 lb of vegetables Tuesday night and a good pre-race meal of the same and hit the pool around 9:30.

Only about half of what I'd consumed to fuel up Tuesday evening.

I don't really like warming up, so I forced myself through a few laps to at least see how I felt mechanically.  My back's had a pretty wicked knot in it for about 2 days and I expected to feel it on my left arm pull.  I could detect the knot each stroke but it didn't really cause any discomfort and definitely no pain so after my lame warmup, I was ready to go.  I preset my Garmin for time alerts every 15 minutes.  I had originally intended to just set it at one hour but that would have caused me some certain madness.  I am in a time warp when I don't have at least some perspective of where I was in the hour, I need alerts at shorter intervals to keep my from thinking I'm 40 minutes in when it's been only about 12.

I started off typically, quicker than a pace I could keep throughout the hour but with swimming, it's a different strategy than running, at least for me.  I'm going to blast through as much yardage as I can while I can maintain good form.  I got about 300-350 yards in before my pace was slower than 22 seconds/length.  I attempt to maintain pretty decent form the whole way because quite simply, good form makes swimming easier, the problem is, it's not that easy to maintain for a long period and be efficient.  I watched my strokes/length tank and tried to take advantage of being in a short pool because I'm pretty good at turns.

After I was done knifing through the water, I started plowing through it, I could feel fatigue setting in pretty quickly, almost right around 350 yards when I felt my self slow down, with a lot of doubt between me and at least 3000 yards, I pressed on.  I had nothing better to do at the moment.

What seemed like 25 minutes into the swim, I finally felt a buzz on my left wrist.  One quarter of the way done.  I was still feeling lousy and at this point I had another swimmer sharing my lane.  She appeared to be just doing a kicking set, and really only a bit slower than I was swimming, at least in my head.  This was part depressing and part motivating.  I made a mini-mission to see how many times I could lap her.  I lost count but it was a fun side game that made the yards disappear until I felt the 2nd 15-minute alert.  By now, I was feeling looser and in a comfortable pace, I'd figured I'd pushed through a wall and was good to go and the 3rd quarter hour ticked by in what seemed like 5 minutes and I had only 15 to go.  And was pretty oblivious to how far I'd swum to that point.  I did do one quick distance check at about 27 minutes and saw 1775 yards done.  A bit of a surprise at my pace and I figured, pessimistically, I'd only continue to slow and 3000 was still in jeopardy.

The last bit of the swim was a mixed bag.  Some laps felt awesome, almost "fast", others felt like each recovery stroke pushed me backwards when it hit the water in front of me.  Feeling sloppy but still moving comfortably, the up/down feeling of the last 15-min leg expired quickly and I'd finished my first postal of 2014.  3700 yards and boom goes the dynamite!

I knew I had some metal blocks with my 3000 yd postal last year and a new nutritional challenge that I think I might have figured out for this one.  I'm excited for the rest of 2014's postal series but the 10K sounds like a beast.  At least I have a ton of time to prepare for that.

Chilly Cheeks 7.2 miler: 1/26/14

If I hadn't mentioned it already, I'm a fan of Pretzel City Sports' trail races.  They put on great races, although they're a small hike from where we live (it's worth it), I try to do as many as possible.  I'd signed up for Chilly Cheeks just this past week, a race new to me I wanted to run and do well in.  I had a good training week with my new gym class and put in some good solid miles leading up to the race.  I was fully prepared for the weather which I realize sucks to talk about in the first place but nonetheless is a factor.  At a whole 21 degrees at the start, it was warmer than the last week or so has been.  I'm sure all runners there were psyched about that and I think I layered appropriately for the balmy run in the forest, maybe just a little lighter than we did for the single digit temps for Watchung.  My gear list for Chilly Cheeks:

• Long sleeve Nike base layer shirt
• Another long sleeve tech tee over that
• Random hoodie sweatshirt
• Outdoor Research liner gloves
• Fruit of the loom boxer briefs.  I might as well share all gear.
• Nike "pro combat" tights (for battling the cold?)
• Some polyester "athletic" pants from Old Navy
• Smartwool ski socks
• New Balance MT810's
• Ice Trekkers
• a Buff.  These things are awesome.
• a knit cap
• Camelbak
• GoPro, Garmin and ipod

And I received new gear:

PCS, as always, has pretty cool race swag. 

I expected the typical trails that meander through the normal network that PCS usually uses.  Having never run this, I did not expect a chin-scraping, bushwhacking scramble up a hill only a half mile in.  Looking back, it's a far tinier hill than it felt like but I let myself get back into bad habits and scrambled up as fast as I could.  Here's the maps and course profile from my Garmin:

Not the typical PCS routes I'm used to but very challenging.

Total gain was 1529 ft

Right off the start, I felt pretty tired; my legs didn't feel like they had much juice.  I figured I'd just need to get them moving and warmed up but that quick scramble a half mile in took a toll while I considered it an opportunity to move up in the field as the single track would be a little more challenging to navigate with other runners once we got past the climb.  I managed to keep a pace to finish that mile in just under 12 minutes.  Perhaps I should have taken it a little easier on that climb.

Approaching the scramble up the hill at the half-mile mark

My view for the entire climb.  All extremities were used to get to the top.

Leveling off a bit near the top.

A bit of flat for some recovery.  At this point, I'm assuming I'll hold together pretty well.  I mean, we're only 1/10th of the way in... 

My anonymous pacer for several miles.

I am victim to another female runner!  What am I even doing out here?!

 The trail was in pretty good shape, the most technical challenge were the steeper downhills that were a mix of powdery snow and leaves making for a pretty slick footing.  The Ice Trekkers were a great pickup.  They're comfortable and I know they aided my footing on the loose downhill and in general all over the snow.  So glad I had them.  The way the race was going, there were certainly times where I thought trekking poles might have been good addition to the gear I'd brought.  No one wants to be that guy, so I'm glad I didn't.

I slugged through the first few miles below my expected pace.  I wanted to be around 10.5 min miles and that wasn't looking feasible.  Negativity was taking over and usually I'm thinking of random stuff on my training runs like "why would the robots develop a Terminator with an Austrian accent?  What even makes sense about that?" but it was so rough on me today I was dwelling on my overwhelming feeling of physical weakness that I'd resorted to walking the hills around mile 3.   I'm confident it was lousy fueling preparation prior to the run, nothing to blame other than myself.  That whole nutrition thing and I need to train harder on hills to the point where I outgrow the local hills and have to move west.

At least the course was beautiful, I was warm, maybe a little woozy after 5 miles but as I pressed on, I could taste the finish line at the peak of the last climb at 5.5 miles.  The long, gradual descent to the finish was a Godsend.  

After the final climb, as I walked and collected myself.

Finally through the woods.  And pretty much proof I did finish (20ft is a gimme, right?)

From the top of Reading, PA, I got my legs moving and eked out a finish in a race I find difficult to compare to others.  Certainly there have been harder races, longer races, colder or hotter races but this is in it's own category.  Kudos to Ron Horn, the RD, and his crew!  I finished pretty upset but moved along after making my way to the indoor breakfast banquet they had set up for runners.  Live music, eggs, coffee and best of all, no more running!  I housed a plate of eggs, chatted with other runners a bit who were mostly interested in the GoPro and departed for home.

Another race, another lesson or 2 learned.  Next week, half marathon!  Applying what I learned and bouncing back!

Minor Watchung Regret and training fun

Sometimes, we all learn a good lesson the hard way or in a way we'd wouldn't otherwise choose, usually those lessons are entirely necessary.  In my case, I am kicking myself just a little for bailing on the Watchung half marathon from the prior weekend.  I distinctly recall the fatigue, the biting cold and quit on my half marathon goal for what?  Saving myself a little misery while doing what I set out to do?  Yeah, it was hard to continue but it was doable.  It's also hard to run my first marathon, every race should be hard, it's part of any sport.  Long races won't get any easier as they go, that's a given.  And if I'm running them correctly, they probably won't really get much harder as the miles pile on.  It seemed like a solid plan at the time to bail with a 10K, but I am carrying some regret.

My initial "acceptance" of 1:13-and-change was something I was content with considering the conditions.  That turned out to be good enough for a surprise 9th place of the 51 10K finishers.  Perusing the results, I was pretty surprised to see the number of runners that stuck it out.  There were 49 half marathoners, 11 30Ker's, 34 marathoners, and 23 50Kers.  The top 2 50Kers finished within 24 seconds, holding some very impressive splits and both finishing at 4:42:17 and 4:42:41.  What they did in those conditions is impressive.  While I hope for dry ground again in my revisit of the Ironmasters Challenge in April, I'm still just hoping for a sub 6-hour showing.  Granted, Ironmasters' course is significantly harder than this 10K loop, I am left with a considerable amount of work to do before then.

Hercules' brutal cold and half foot of snow did make for a great first cold race of 2014.  I will be back in north Jersey for a trail half marathon on Feb 1 to attempt for redemption.  This time, I'll fall back on a new aid, my Ice Trekkers.  These puppies kept me upright for a solid 9 mile training run on Saturday while the remaining Ice on the Wissahickon trails seemed to be combating the 63 degree temperature and pouring rain.  Ice and mud were no problem with these.

That run was fantastic.  I had set out with intent to finish around 13-15 miles and settled quite happily with 9.  I soaked in (no pun intended) the empty trails, the fog settling down very low, icy corridors in trail sections that seemed to avoid the day's blast of heat.  It was a top 3 trail run, period.  Something about it was special and I will enforce a new rule because of it.  Let no trail run go undocumented, written or visually.  I need to be a better run journal keeper and need to bring that handy GoPro on all trail runs.  Even though there's something about keeping it to myself that makes it a more personal experience, there's some beauty in that dreariness that only a trail runner might appreciate that I want to share.  When you see no other humans for almost an hour on the trails, there's an odd annoyance when you overtake a couple walking in rain gear with their dogs on the trail, I wonder what they're doing on my path during my run.  Then you pleasantly say "hi, careful on the ice." they say "thanks, you too," and you're alone again for another long span.  Eventually, I crossed paths with another guy running the trail.  We had a manly nod of respect to each other kept on cruising.  Knowing we were piling on miles and most our competition was planted in front of their TVs.

No races this weekend, probably just another long run and time on the bike trainer as preparation for the 1-hour postal and the Chilly Cheeks 7.2 miler the weekend of the 25th and 26th. My swim goal is over 4000 yds.  My run goal hasn't been given much thought yet.  I might just wing it with a goal of holding sub-10.5 minute miles.  Might just get crazy with it and try something else, who knows what the future may hold.

Stay light on your feet!

Watchung Run 1/4/14: Hercules defeats the half marathon

A while ago Kristen and I put the Watchung Run on our calendar but ultimately decided we'd just run it if we felt like it and register on the spot.  Like fools, we registered at a table in 4 degree weather, my fingers barely able to write out legible words.  So if Arrwm Sluwerhh gets credit for my race time, good for him.

Thursday night into Friday the cold and snow came.  We knew it was coming, we knew we'd prepare with layers to combat our first really cold race (I think the coldest prior race was the Dirty Bird from last fall which started in the mid-20's).  We were running anyway.  Because we're badasses.

I haven't had the pleasure of running this trail yet so I had no idea how technical it was, what its conditions were really like or how the conditions might change during the race.  I had on 2 long-sleeve tech shirts, a hoodie, Exoficio underwear, Nike tights, some cheap running pants from Old Navy, wool ski socks and my yellow New Balance shoes, a buff, ski mask, knit cap, Mizuno running gloves as liners and some heavier gloves over those.  At the starting line, my fingers were already frozen and I worried it might only get worse.  Wearing about 1/4 of all my running gear (and my Nathan fuel belt), I lined up with Kristen seconds before the start in a hasty scramble and we fell in line.

All my damn gear, minus the shoes.

Upon the start, I immediately started playing mental games.  I had expected to complete a half marathon race.  The course is a 10K loop so the options were 10K, half and full marathons (with a 1K loop to get to the appropriate distance) and 50K.  With an "out" at my disposal, I tried to forget about that option and just run my race.  My training runs leading up felt great and I thought I could handle the half well and hold an 11 min pace.

The field fell into line which started in a park for about 1/4 mile before turning onto the trail which was a very narrow single track, getting bored and staying cold, I reached a point where I just had to break some trail.  At a few opportune moments, I hopped out of the queue into the left lane and through some powder under which I had no idea what lied.  Either I was really lucky or the trail was pretty well groomed because it was one of the better decisions I'd made that day.

The course was pretty nice in the snow.  After all, being in the woods is a treat in and of itself.  Being out in the snow is a bonus.  Unfortunately, I'd left my GoPro plugged in at our friends' house but what the heck, here's a picture from the previous day in a different park in a different state.  Pretty much the same thing: snow in the woods.

In case you needed to see some snow in the woods.  Actually from a duck hunt the day before, non-Nintendo version is way better.

As I was making my way around packs of runners, finding open space to run and catch more, I was feeling great and the blood was flowing and I was nice and toasty.  The course was a little slippery but very runnable.  It didn't take long, though, for that 10K out to come back to the front of my mind.  And I'll continue to kick myself for this but here's the thing that bothered me: We anticipated the snow.  We purchased Yaktrax.  I left them.  In the car.  At the race.  (They were actually the walking model, all that we could find, so I also assumed that as they weren't the running model, they had the potential to become more of a problem than an aid.)

I assessed the other runners' shoes and it looked like 1/3 opted for YakTrax.  I assume they all beat me in the 10K or ran a farther distance.  I made a game time decision to just go in my trail shoes and that the trail should be worn enough to provide enough traction.  Because of the cold conditions, the snow never changed form; it stayed a fluffy powder reducing traction.  I'd venture a guess that the lost traction drastically robbed me of any running efficiency to the tune of 20-30%.  That's a shot in the dark, but by mile 4, I'd made up my mind.  I'll take the out and just end my race and get Kristen and myself out and into a warm diner. 

The Garmin data

I was actually pretty happy with my showing.  Not quite what my 10K goal would have been but despite the conditions, it was a lot of fun and extremely close to some of Kristen's family so a place to visit again when we're in the area.  We packed up, found a diner and made our way to a small family reunion with Kristen's cousins.  Great snowstorm weekend!