Week of 27 February - 5 March, and Seneca Greenway 50K Race Report

Okay, first, the numbers:

27 February - Club Challenge 10-Mile Race (we went over this already), 1:06:38, plus about 35 minutes of warm-up/warm-down, for 15 miles total.

28 February - 35 minutes of random hills on the treadmill, set to "15," whatever that means (grades between 1.5% and 11.5%, I suppose), 4.5 miles

1 March - Exactly 29 minutes of running, for some reason, in the vicinity of Patterson Park, 4 miles

2 March - 40 minutes (about 6 miles) at APG, then another 57 minutes, in part with the Falls Road Wednesday night group (another 8 miles) (incidentally, was called a "bullet in the night" as I snuck up on two women running by the park on Ellwood - this was right after a dude on the passenger side of a car stopped at the intersection of Ellwood and Eastern gave me the middle finger, because the woman driving the car - presumably his wife or girlfriend - was checking me out. Most eventful last quarter-mile of a run in a long time.)

3 March - 28 minutes at APG (about 4 miles) - would have run more, but there just wasn't time.

4 March - 73 minutes, Patterson Park/Fells/Canton (about 10 miles) in the morning.

5 March - 4 hours, 19 minutes, some seconds, about 32 miles, Seneca Greenway Trail 50K, 5th place.

Total Time: 623 minutes
Total Distance: 83.5 miles

And now, the race report:

(But before I begin, 20-second commercial break to shout out my Badwater 2011 sponsor, Natural Vitality. Their Organic Life liquid vitamins, Calm Plus Calcium, and NutraRev! are at least partial contributers to the below-described success.)

When I parked my car on the side of River Road at 6:25 a.m. on race morning, I sat for a minute, and briefly considered not running the race. Historically, Seneca Greenway has been a painful introduction to the spring running season, leaving me broken-down, hobbled, and disappointed with my time. Also, there always seems to be a section of the course that never ends, usually somewhere in the last 10 miles. Having been through this three times already, I had to wonder if it made sense to go out there for a fourth round . . .

On the other hand, just about every race that has gone well for me has started almost exactly this way (i.e. recollection of painful memories, and reluctance to start). And, the purpose of this race was to see what, if anything, the past couple of months of training had done for my running, so if I really wanted to know (instead of just sitting around wondering, hence contributing to the anticipation I was feeling as I sat there in the car), I was going to have to get out there . . .

A little background on the race: The Seneca Greenway 50K is a low-key, $20-to-enter, no-prizes, no-promises, the-course-is-probably-too-long kind of race. Which of course makes it theoretically perfect for an early-season training run . . . except for the fact that most of it is on rolling single-track. To be fair, there are no prolonged steep climbs or descents. At the same time, only about 3 miles of the course is road or road-like flat. The constant winding and up-and-down sneaks up on you and leaves you feeling pretty beaten-up, which is probably why none of the finishing times are all that fast. Given that, my goal for the race was not to run a fast time as much as it was to run a solid, strong race until about 5 miles to go, and then give it whatever I had left.

The bus to the start was noisy with ultrarunners talking ultrarunner-talk, the wait for the start was ball-peen cold (a term I have adopted for the kind of cold that's just slightly too cold to be comfortable shorts and a t-shirt, but not cold enough to complain about the cold without sounding like a whiner - you just stand there and it hits you like a ball-peen hammer), and one of the two bagels that I ate before the start was definitely dyed pink, meaning that it was probably at least two weeks old, but all in all, there have been colder, more uncomfortable starts to this race. Then again, a woman came up to me at the start because she recognized me from my Hellgate failure (apparently she was the woman who drove me back to the starting line), and also from my failure at the Ring, and then she mentioned MMT, which I told her I was doing this year, to which she replied incredulously "why would you go back after all that?" . . . to which I graciously replied that it was a bad day, and that some days will be better than others. (Emotional crisis averted.) As Ed gave us the traditional starting command to "get out of here," I felt nothing, and as far as I could tell, that wasn't a bad thing.

Of course, that quickly changed when the race turned into a track meet from the start. I wasn't entirely expecting this, as the crowd at the start didn't look nearly as fast as last year's field. But the old judging a book by its cover thing was clearly failing me here, as the early pace felt way out of line with what I was trying to accomplish, so I held back and was content to let people pass me on the first 3-mile trail segment. In the meantime, a guy asked me about my cut-up MT100s (so far, in every race, at least one person has marveled at how I could run so far in them), and I would have been less irritated with him if he hadn't said "light as a feather . . . must be nice" and then proceeded to pass me.

Once we hit the first road crossing, though, things began to settle down (i.e., people stopped passing me), and I started finding a better rhythm on the trail (this always seems to take me a few miles). For the next five to seven miles, I wasn't actually closing the gap on anybody, but nobody was running away from me, either. Thinking that I probably didn't have the footspeed to chase anybody, and knowing that going all-out wasn't my plan for the race in the first place, I kept telling myself that if I could just keep up a steady pace, sooner or later, the track stars up front would blow up, and the race would come back to me. I had a feeling that, considering that most people rarely run more than two hours at a time, at about an hour and a half, if I was still feeling okay, the tide would start to turn.

And sure enough, it did. I passed the second aid station, a couple of bottles of water, three chocolate wafers, and two generic, suspiciously-yellow Chips Ahoy-style cookies later, finding myself finally gaining ground on the three people who were in sight in front of me (including MT100-marveler). On the trail up to Mile 15, I concentrated on gradually closing the gap. The timing couldn't have been better, as I was coming in for the kill right at the aid station . . .

And then all three of them turned off onto the marathon course, leaving me alone to chew on a rock-hard ginger snap as I began the lake loop. This was a bit unnerving, since I had been keying my effort off of their gradual exhaustion, and now I was left to guess on my own how much I might have left in the tank. I didn't see anybody in front of me, and I didn't want to think about what was behind me. So I shut off my brain to the extent possible (except for the part of me that couldn't stop thinking about how I fell on two bridges running around the lake section last year), and kept my effort under control on the lake loop. It felt as though it was routed longer than last year, but maybe I just blocked a lot of last year's lake loop out.

In any case, I came out of the loop and back to the marathon split-off aid station unscathed, but, as far as I could tell, no nearer to whoever might have been in front of me in the 50K (and now, with the marathon runners on the trail ahead of me, there was no way to tell who was really ahead). Still, being in the position to pick off runners (even if they weren't in my race) was confidence-boosting, so I kept the pace steady, kept passing people, and miraculously, kept two more fake yellow Chips Ahoy cookies from being thrown up (although I could taste the chocolate-flavored bile in my throat).

It was at about this point in the race (somewhere a little past 20 miles) that it occurred to me that this was the furthest I had ever gone in this race without (1) stopping due to nature's call or (2) walking because the trail had burned me out. I attribute the former to spot-on nutrition - not too much food the night before the race, or right before the race, or during the race, but just enough to keep me going (and since my usual diet is fairly low-carb now, it doesn't take too much sugar to keep me going anymore, which is great news for my slow digestive system). I attribute the latter to all the time I've spent running on uneven ground in my cut-up MT100s, and the time I've been spending in the weight room. As I meditated on this, of course, I had my obligatory stumble of the race, on a root, uphill. Being an old pro at these now, I instinctively rolled, rose to my feet, and after about four walking steps to make sure that nothing was knocked loose, continued running the hill.

As I reached the final aid station, I looked at my watch, which didn't actually have the race time on it, since I had accidentally both stopped and reset the timer vaulting a wooden guardrail earlier in the race. By my estimates, the stopped watch incident happened around an hour and a half in, and my watch was now showing about 2:20, so with 7-ish miles to go, I was (relying on admittedly flawed memory here) about 10 minutes faster than my fastest split at this aid station, the only split I ever pay attention to, because usually by this point in the race, I am ready for it to end at any minute. But surprise! I felt strong, and people were telling me that I looked strong, and they weren't lying about it, so now I thought might be a good time to start stepping on the gas and seeing what was left in the tank.

And lo and behold, a target appeared, in the form of a big tall guy in a tri kit, taking his sweet time getting out of the aid station. I passed him as he was adjusting some trivial part of his getup, and he began to chase. Hard. Hard enough that his heart rate monitor was beeping at him every time we would climb or weave through some particularly difficult obstacle, begging for him to stop. Silently, I was begging for him to stop, while at the same time grateful that somebody was forcing me to push the pace. At the first short, steep hill, I took the opportunity to walk, and he thanked me for the nice "cadence," which is when I knew that I would pass him eventually. Over the next section, we passed a few more people, but knowing that I still had a very long 4.5 miles to go, I let off the gas a bit, and he passed me, but this was fine. I kept him within sight until the last aid station, and as we cruised in, I passed him, shoved a bunch of candy hearts in my mouth, and hurried towards that last cruel climb. Passed. (And, according to the photographer at the aid station, looking like I hadn't just run 30 miles.)

With a little over 2 miles to go, I knew that a solid finish was in the bag. Something between 4 hours and 4 hours and 20 minutes seemed like what was going to happen, although I couldn't do the math right then and there. All I knew for sure was that the race was nearly over, I didn't feel nearly as bad as I thought I would, and the candy hearts were still in my mouth, stuffed under my gums because chewing and swallowing them was too distracting at this point. So, time to drop the hammer, and as soon as I hit the road, I dumped my water bottle to lighten the load, and gave it whatever I had left, and, just to make the last mile a little more exciting, started closing in on another runner who was dying. Unfortunately, I wasn't quiet enough, because he heard me coming, looked back, and started picking it up a bit. There just wasn't enough course left for anything short of a Usain Bolt-style sprint to be good enough to catch him. As it turned out, he was in the 50K, and finished 4th, some seconds ahead of me. I finished fifth, in 4 hours, 19 minutes, and some seconds, with a huge smile on my face, tossing my water bottle into the air in celebration, and spitting out the now-useless candy hearts. (Attractive.)

As it turned out, either the course conditions were amazing (they were pretty good, but there have been better years), or the field was stacked at the top, because in the five times that they've done this, my time would have won the race twice, been two minutes short of the winner's time twice, and lost outright only the year that the course record (4:06) was set. (Who knows, a new course record might have been set this year - I didn't stick around to see the results, and they aren't posted yet . . .) I managed the mile-long deathmarch back to the car more comfortably than usual this year, my plate of barbecue not being entirely appealing, but my legs not being completely wrecked either. And, as luck would have it, as I was putting my track suit on by the car, Hellgate woman came running past, asked me how I did, and reacted even more incredulously when I told her my finishing place and time. (So there.) And thus, all business of relevance being finished, I departed. (Wearing the track suit, windows up, heat on full blast . . . never too early to start training for Badwater.)

Overall, this was a very satisfying race, since I accomplished every goal I set out to accomplish: run steady, finish strong, live to run the next day. I had an appropriate pre-race quasi-taper, an appropriate nutrition strategy, appropriate preparation for the course itself, and exerted an appropriate effort level. Could I have run faster? Probably, considering how much I had left at the end. With a less conservative start, a finish of about 10 minutes faster seems plausible; beyond that, who knows. My downhill running has also improved, although not quite to the level that I'd like. So there is definitely more work ahead of me, but this race served as reassurance that I'm on the right track, and that I have a solid base to build on. The future looks pretty bright (even if it is peppered with various foods of questionable nutritional value).