Race Report: 2012 Old Dominion 100-Mile Endurance Run, and 2012 Bel Air Town Run 5K

At long last, time out from lugging heavy bags through many airports (one of which was Cleveland Hopkins - can't seem to get away from that place) to write about round 2 of my Old Dominion/Bel Air Town Run double.  For those who missed the first round, refer to this: http://tokenrunningblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/week-in-review-29-may-4-june-and-old.html.

Why do it again?  Well, besides feeling as though I could better last year's performance, and the training benefits, this year was to be a "reunion" of sorts.  I ran my first Old Dominion 100 back in 2008, after Collin Anderson talked me into it, with Chris Avedissian crewing for us.  It was only my second 100-mile race, and the race where I met Dave Snipes.  To make a long story short, I endured brutal heat, got lost a few times, including in the last three miles, but managed to sneak in under 24 hours, totally spent.  (It was even more epic than that sentence suggested, but that's not the point here.)

Fast-forward four years, and Collin, who now lives in Utah, was coming out to run Old Dominion again, Chris was coming up from Georgia to crew, and of course, Snipes was going to be there.  Between that, and the tradition of the Bel Air Town Run (shooting for 17 consecutive finishes there), I was excited to continue a weekend of running tradition.

In the week leading up to this ridiculous double, though, my body was less excited.  I felt crummy just about every day, on every run, and I was glad that I was limiting myself to 5 or 6 miles a day, because my body wasn't having much more than that, anyway.  Wednesday midnight Collin pickup antics at BWI (with the cops aggressively forcing cars through that weren't actively picking people up), followed by an epically long last day at work on Thursday, with two late nights with my girlfriend thrown in there, and things leading up to the race weren't particularly restful.

Still, on Friday, Collin and I managed to leave Baltimore around noon, in plenty of time to stop by Whole Foods for his $7.00/gallon chocolate milk ($5.00 for the milk, plus a $2.00 bottle deposit), without any sort of scramble to get on the road, and the 2+ drive via Route 70 and Route 81 was mostly uneventful . . . except for the part where my "crew" sent me a text, around 3 pm, saying that he wasn't going to show up.  Considering that this race uses Succeed electrolyte drink, and my fueling strategy lately depends heavily on Gatorade, this was a potentially serious problem.  Fortunately, it was enough notice for me to stop at the Food Lion to pick up Gatorade and Zip-Lock bags to make drop bags, and to stop at Arby's for dinner.

With drop bags distributed, and the pre-race meeting underway, I was feeling a little better about things.  I calmly ate my Arby's roast beef and cheddar and curly fries with hummus that I had bought at Whole Foods while the race director went through the standard litany of cautions and informations (perhaps most amusing of which was NOT to call 911 at any point during the race, because three counties will show up and there will be a huge mess).  The meeting was over in less than an hour, which gave us plenty of time to organize our things for race day, set up sleeping space in the barn, and hang out with Meg and Charles, who were there to volunteer/crew.  The rain came, as predicted, but was over by 9 pm, leaving behind this rainbow:

Left to right, Collin (in the barn), Charles, Meg, and Lynne, demonstrating a 75% rate of marveling at the double-rainbow.

In other pre-race silliness, in a video that needs no further explanation, Collin was tending to other things:



It turned out that only four of us (Collin, Meg, Charles, and me) were sleeping in the barn - far less than usual, and since we were sort of our own quasi-cohesive group, we could make group decisions such as "turning all the lights off" and "not making lots of noise during the night" so that we could all get some sleep.  We all went to bed a little after 9 pm, and, besides a brief bathroom break at around 1 am, I slept soundly, arguably some of the best sleep that I had all week.

We didn't really need alarms, because shortly after 3 am, people started entering the barn and checking in.  Since everything had been piled neatly the night before, there was no "scramble to get my stuff together" fiasco, and I had plenty of time to put on clothes, A&D ointment (except on my nipples - oops), and eat potato chips before the start of the race.

After a brief prayer, as is custom at the race, we were off for our lap around the fairgrounds, with little fanfare.  Although I had weighed in sort of heavy (138 lbs), I was feeling relatively light and springy, considering that it was 4 am, and compared to how I had been feeling all last week.  I led the charge, with another two runners nearby, and this neck-and-neck race continued through town and up most of the climb on Woodstock Tower Road.  It might be sort of silly to run up this, but it is a "road-grade" climb, and I ran up it last year, so, whatever, I ran up it, and dropped one runner, but the other runner, Oliver Leblond, continued to chase me, and, from the sound of it, he was chasing hard.  We crested the climb and I started bombing down the other side, and he continued the chase.  I wasn't sure how long he could keep this up (I had never run with him before), but it was going to be an interesting race . . .

Especially since at this point, disaster almost struck.  At the bottom of the hill, we reached Boyer, where we were directed to "go up the road, make a left onto the trail, run the trail loop, and come back to the aid station."  My memories of the early parts of the race are fuzzy, so as we ran down the road, and it got to be a few more minutes without a marker than were comfortable, the thought occurred to us that we might have been going the wrong way.  But I spotted an orange flag, so we continued up the road, and eventually, we found a double-orange flag that signaled the trail turn-off.  We climbed the winding, technical trail, only to discover, in horror, three runners coming TOWARDS us . . . they had thought they were the leaders, because they were breaking cobwebs.  Oliver was confused, but I immediately realized that, since there were no arrows on the ground, we had mistakenly entered the loop where we were supposed to exit, and were now running the loop backwards.  Panic set in - would we have to re-run the loop?

In any case, it made sense to finish out the loop, since if we had to re-run it, we would have to go back to where we got off course (which was the entrance to the loop).  After lots of reassuring oncoming runners that they were going the right way, we made it back to Boyer, where Ray, the race director, was sitting on his truck, directing us left.  Oliver talked to him, and he let us continue, since we had run the same distance, and correctly followed the ambiguous directions (we were technically not wrong, since there were no arrows indicating the direction of the loop; there were, however, arrows throughout the rest of the course, painted on the ground).  I imagine that they will paint arrows on the ground on this part of the course next year.

At any rate, with that minor catastrophe resolved, we ran together to the first crew stop, where Chris was waiting for me.  My bottles were empty, and somehow, my drop bag hadn't made it there - minor catastrophe #2.  Fortunately, Chris Wilde, a runner from Baltimore who was crewing another runner, had a jug of blue Gatorade that he was willing to share, so I was able to leave the aid station with one bottle of Gatorade, and one bottle of gross Succeed drink (which I eventually dumped).  Half a banana and some Coke later, I was heading down the road.

For the next 13 or so miles of road, Oliver and I ran closely together.  Sometimes he would get ahead, and then I would catch up (at one point, he ran off the road, distracted by extraneous orange flags on somebody's property, which led him partway up a grassy hill), but he was starting to put distance on my by pretty much blowing through the aid stations, while I was taking a minute or so to drink a Coke and/or eat a few banana chunks.  I was feeling good on this fueling strategy, and reasoned that he couldn't possibly keep skipping the aid without crashing.  Plus, this was apparently his first 100-mile race (or so he said, in some sort of accent), and he was running with me because he was "crazy."

As I neared Four Points, at around 33 miles, Oliver had pulled out of sight, and now, entering one of the more difficult sections of the race, I had to decide how hard to push.  Ultimately, I decided that with about 2/3rds of the race left to run, it would probably be better to run a little conservatively, in the hopes that Oliver would blow up.  I ran so conservatively here, in fact, that the third-place runner, Mike Mason, briefly caught and passed me at around mile 44, on the gravel road back to Four Points.  Fortunately, I gambled that he was running too hard too early, and that the tougher stuff ahead (particularly the ATV trail) would get the best of him, and I won that round . . . eventually, coming downhill on the ATV trail, I passed him.  But on the return to Four Points, Carter (who had taped my bleeding nipples on the way out) commented that I had slowed down, and seemed concerned (although I wasn't too concerned), and nobody was talking about where the leader was, so I got the feeling that people were thinking that he was totally out of reach.

And so it went for the rest of the race.  I stuck with my Gatorade/Coke/bananas fueling strategy, and kept plugging along - the temperatures never got much about 75 degrees, and with the shade and the breeze, the conditions were very forgiving (which may have inadvertently made Oliver's race strategy a good one - going out too hard in the typical Old Dominion heat tends to be a recipe for disaster).  I felt pretty good the whole way, but I never had any indication of how far ahead Oliver was, and, in retrospect, maybe I should have asked.  Because by the time curiosity got the better of me (just past mile 90), it turned out that he was about 15 minutes ahead - apparently I had been shrinking his half-hour gap for a while.  I charged as hard as I could in the last 9 miles, but it was too little, too late - in town, with about a mile and a half to go, I saw the lead Jeep coming at me, and I knew that he had finished.  So I slowed down and pretty much walked the rest of the race, costing me about 15 minutes on my finishing time, but since I was solidly in second place, I wasn't terribly concerned (room for improvement next year, right?)

Chris and Henry were the only people waiting for me at the still-darkening finish line.  Chris took pictures of me (I'm sure my nipple-bleed looked great), and Henry recorded my time:

Old-school Old Dominion Results Sheet

17 hours, 46 minutes, 58 seconds later, I was finished, and shortly afterwards, I was on the road back to Baltimore.  The intermission between races at my girlfriend's apartment is worth mentioning:  I drove back in the clothes that I wore during the race, nipple-bleed on my shirt, number still pinned to my shorts.  She lives just up the street from a club in downtown Baltimore, so on a Saturday night, parking is scarce, and I was forced to park about three blocks away from her apartment. Just as I was parking, the police arrived and began clearing the club, due to some sort of physical altercation on the premises, so I was walking towards a parade of evacuated clubgoers in my gross running clothes.  You would think that the first thing somebody would have commented on was my nipple bleed, but it was actually the second - the first comment was from a guy who said "dang, you been running?"  I smiled and said, "yeah, a little bit."  But the height of this experience was when two police officers stopped me a block away from my destination and said "are your nipples bleeding, sir?"  I explained that I had been running and that it was no big deal, and once they were satisfied that I was not injured in the club brawl, they let me go.  (And things like this are why I do things like that.)

And . . . on to Act 2, the Bel Air Town Run.  Last year, I was pretty much crippled, and it took me over 25 minutes to finish the run, but the important thing was the finish.  This year, I finished Old Dominion nearly 2 hours faster, and felt better after the race, so I figured I could at least go slightly faster than last year.  I had a nice little "reunion" prior to the race with my family (all of whom came out to watch), and some friends from high school (Pete DeCapite and Patrick Early), which helped me feel a little less terrible about three more miles under these conditions.

The weather remained cooperative, though, and I optimistically lined up near the front of the pack, to discover that once the race started, my legs loosened up, and I was running reasonably fast (albeit not entirely comfortably).  I went through the first (downhill? short?) mile in 6:58, according to the clock on the course, and was not feeling as though I had totally spent myself, so I just went with it, kept passing the people in front of me, and, in what seemed like a comically short amount of time after 17+ hours of rugged trail running, I was at the finish line, 21 minutes and 47 seconds later:

Snuck through the crowd and snapped a picture of the results.

The "after-party" at the Town Run was better still - it seemed like everywhere I turned, somebody I knew was there hanging out, wanting to talk about running (including Brien Christesen, another friend from high school, with his wife and children). It was sort of surreal, since so many years have passed since high school, but being back there, where the Town Run has been every year, made things feel, in an odd way, like they hadn't changed at all.

And speaking of "not changing," we all waited patiently through the traditional long age-group awards, and then the more-to-the-point overall awards for the bike raffle, and, for the 17th consecutive year, I did not win the bike.  Oh well, better luck next year.  Then it was back to my parents' house for shower, food, and a ride to the airport, so I can spend two weeks at Fort Leavenworth learning about . . . um, something, I forget.  I hope there are good places to run here!

All in all, a satisfying weekend of upholding running traditions, making new memories, and, in some cases, squeezing Hi-C boxes into empty gallon jugs of water.  And I don't feel cripplingly bad . . . maybe I'll continue a tradition, and go running again today. :)

With Swagger: 2011 Boston Marathon Race Report

It's Boston, so this is special enough to merit its own (most likely) lengthy post. As I write this, I'm not sure that I've fully processed my performance, which, to recap, was a 7-minute PR, on a marathon course where I've suffered through some of my most spectacular failures, in shoes (the Asics Pirahna SP 3) that people told me I couldn't run a marathon in. (And probably some other, less significant "obstacles" that I'm forgetting here.) Nevertheless, I have to give this a try, before the memories go stale . . .

By way of background, if you've been paying attention to this blog recently, you'll have noticed by now that in 2011, I haven't run a single race that wasn't at least a little bit scary to me. This is by design, because if the training and mental preparation that I've engaged in leading up to these races hasn't been sufficient to allow me to rise to the challenge, then there's something wrong with one or the other (or both), and I need to address it in order to move forward. In this case, the "scary" was my attempt at 2:50. Considering how much faster this would be than my PR, this was a brash goal, but one that, given the new Boston qualifying standards, was absolutely necessary to achieve if I wanted to assure myself a spot in the 2012 running of the event (which would be my eighth consecutive finish).

With that in mind, I slogged through a 10-hour drive in a hot car on Saturday (always in training for Badwater), slept soundly on a friend's futon for eight hours, then woke up, dressed, and headed off for the expo. Along the way, a lot of bizarre stuff happened, including stumbling up the steps from the T into the tail end of the Women's Elite Mile race, confetti and noisemakers at the Palm Sunday service at the "church of the finish line," a ridiculous picture with Josh Cox that made the teenage girls that took it giggle, and a "who's THAT guy" look from a girl that I'd like to think was Desi Davila (it was sort of the same look the confirmed Desi gave me when I got her autograph at the expo last year) . . . but none of that is the point. The point is, in spite of the crowds, I felt very, very alone. Not that I was expecting company, but with my "outlandish" goal in the back of my mind, and nobody else willing to step up and be equally (or more) convinced that it was possible, I began to have the vague sense that I may have been setting myself up for failure.

And then things took a turn for the better, when, as I was sitting outside City Hall Plaza, waiting for the time on my meal ticket to come, I decided, even though I was dressed in torn-up Abercrombie jeans and a polo shirt, to run on the Adidas "charity mile" treadmill while I waited. I still needed to get at least one mile in to keep my streak alive, so why not? As I hopped on the treadmill and cranked it up to a low-7-minute-mile pace, a strange thing happened. People stopped to watch, and then smiled, and I smiled back, and then three women (who were more dressed for this than I was) came over and signed up to run a mile, marveling at how strong I was running in jeans (not that I haven't pulled similar stunts before, in front of fewer people, over longer distances). This convinced me of two things: 1.) whatever happened in the race, the training I'd put in had me at the point where the joy that I feel when I run was visible to others, and 2.) this race would not go badly, because this pace, even in the wrong clothes and the wrong shoes, felt very comfortable. As it turned out, running a charity mile in all three locations made you eligible for a drawing to win a free pair of Adidas shoes, so I spent the next couple of hours mostly walking between other locations to get my three miles in. (The last of the three was the most amusing - a small, slender girl in the dress, seeing me on the treadmill, dragged her well-dressed boyfriend over to run a mile, and he refused, in spite of her insistence, while all the while, I trotted along happily.)

By race morning, not that everything was fine, but I was feeling better about this entire endeavor. I have the bus ride and the athlete's village bit down now, and my timing from port-a-pot to nutrition to port-a-pot to clothing change to start line was very comfortable, even if the temperature, for standing around, was not. As I jogged down the road in my Pirahnas, I felt strong and in control (at least, that was what I was telling myself, because the pre-race psychology speaker told us to tell ourselves that), and increasingly convinced that this would be a good race.

The gun went off (I could actually hear it from the second corral), and the crowd lurched forward, gradually breaking into a run. As we headed down the first downhill, I reminded myself not to push too hard, as this is the part of the race where breakdowns are born. Still, I found myself passing a lot of people on the first downhill, and on all of the downhills within the first few miles. I would have been more concerned about this, except for the fact that it felt very easy. Maybe it was the fact that this year, more than ever before, I've put a lot of effort into being light and fast on the downhills, or maybe I was just very prepared for the race.

Whatever the case, I was loosely tracking my splits, and I could tell that I was going pretty fast, although I couldn't exactly tell what sort of finish I was on pace for. I decided to wait until the halfway mark to pass any judgment on my progress, and to re-assess at that point if necessary.

If only there were something more dramatic to talk about here, but there really wasn't. I kept gradually moving up in the sea of people, although occasionally, one or two people who felt the need to kick in a very early finishing sprint would come whipping past me (in most cases, only to eventually get caught again). I experienced some minor discomfort here and there, but overall, it was manageable, and I felt strong and comfortable. I reached the halfway mark in a little over 1 hour, 25 minutes, which was effectively my strategy - to be in the 2:50 ballpark at the midpoint, then to run the best second half that I could manage from that point on.

And in the second half, the lack of drama continued. I kept riding the downhills and passing people, and when the Newton Hills hit, well, I was trained for them, and I kept passing people there, too. At the bottom of Heartbreak Hill, Steve Uhl, a classmate of mine from high school, saw me and shouted "Go Ploskonka," the first time in the race anybody had acknowledged me thus far. This was a great time to hear that, since I was already fixated on attacking the hill, and this gave me an even better reason to do so. Once I made it through the Newton Hills, my biggest worry was my stomach/nutrition. My stomach had been feeling lousy since the start of the race, and I had been balancing that with my need for nutrition. A couple of times, I felt the "bonk" coming, and I forced down Gatorade to stave it off. The last such instance would be Mile 24, in deference to my Holiday Lake finish, when I bonked spectacularly and took 40 minutes to go the last 2 miles.

Then, in the last few miles, things got interesting. I passed somebody I knew from the Army 10-Miler team at work, and then Seth Tibbitts, who I was sure had a much faster marathon in him than I did (and as it turns out, his chip time was a minute faster than mine, because he had started a corral behind me). Passing these people turned this into a real race. While I was still cautious about blowing up, I had the general sense that I was potentially going to run under 2:50, and I pushed closer to the red line (although, in retrospect, I was still far from overheating the engine). I felt strong and fast until the last turn, when I rounded the corner and saw the seemingly never-ending path to the finish line, which conjured up all sorts of memories of my past struggles to the end, and these memories overcame me to the point that I may have lost a bit of time here. But this close to the finish, anything less than the magical 2:50 was "loser talk," something I take care not to engage in these days. I did my best to suppress all of the bad memories of this part of the race, and crossed the finish line with 2:50:10 on the clock, and I was pretty sure that my starting line offset was more than 10 seconds (as it turned out, I finished in 2:49:33). As it turned out, I had split the last 5K in 19:17, my fastest 5K split of the race. This was apparently pretty dramatic to people who had been watching my progress online, since up until that last 5K, I was on track to run about 2:51. I congratulated Seth on a great race as he came in shortly after me, and then began the deathmarch through the finish chute to post-race food, mylar blankets, medals, clothing pickup, and the family meeting area (although, of all the post-race things I could have, at that point, the thing that I wanted most was a port-a-pot).

And here endeth the lesson.

Except not really, because it turns out that my parents had decided months ago to come up to the marathon to watch me run, and had seen me rounding the last turn and heading for the finish line (although I hadn't seen them). They later said that (in spite of how I felt at this point) people remarked at how strong I looked at the end of the race. I didn't find out that my parents were there until my mom called me, and said she was at the finish line waiting for me. Strong as I was, I couldn't hold back tears as I walked towards the family meeting area to see them. To be fair, I cried in 2005 when they handed me my first Boston bib at the packet pick-up, and I cried in 2009 when I broke 3 hours at Boston for the first time, but this was the most I ever cried at the marathon. To understand this, you have to realize that they didn't show up at my first marathon (Baltimore in 2004, when I ran 3:00:51, qualifying for Boston on my first try), and then they came to Boston in 2005 and 2006, when in both cases I blew up and finished well over 3 hours. They don't normally come to my races, and so to have them show up here was beyond unexpected, and made even more amazing by the fact that they had just seen me run the fastest marathon of my life, the marathon that I wanted to run to make them (and everybody else who's supported me along the way) proud.

Which brings me to the part where I try to make sense of all of this. Clearly, I trained both hard and smart since the beginning of January, I came into the race prepared, and I ran a smart race, utilizing every bit of my knowledge of the course. But to leave it on that level would be doing a disservice to the performance. And in the interest of plumbing the mind behind the run, I think there are two intertwined lessons here:

The first (which was to be the original title of this post, before I ran the way I did) is about being "alone in the crowd." We've all heard the cliche about "being alone in a crowded room." I'm a master of this - superficial socialization doesn't satisfy me, and in many cases, I'd rather just avoid it entirely. And in that spirit, it dawned on me this year that in many ways, a marathon, and, in particular, the Boston Marathon, is, at its core, this sort of socializing. We all gather in one place for one race, and we wish each other luck, and graciously accept the well-wishing from family and friends back home. And all of these things are all well and good, and we would do well to draw energy and support from them, and to be thankful that they are what they are. At the same time, when the gun goes off, and there are 26.2 miles between you and the finish line, the ultimate responsibility for your performance lies within. Only you know how you feel, only you know the struggle you're dealing with, and only you have the answers. And so, paradoxically, the marathon is both a joyous social gathering, and an intensely personal struggle. To be as successful as possible in a marathon, and in particular, in a race like Boston, you have to be able to optimally reconcile this conflict, whether, for you, that means charging forward with your head down and not acknowledging anybody, or smiling and waving to the crowd the whole time.

Which brings me to the second lesson, which is about "swagger." In case you somehow missed it, the "boston with . . ." campaign was plastered all over the city in preparation for the marathon, and one of the phrases (which was important enough to make it onto a pair of shoelaces, for goodness sake) was "boston with swagger." At first, I was a bit offended by this, especially since the poster children for this were two average-looking runners wearing those ridiculous mylar finisher's blankets. But after this race, I'm convinced that "swagger" is the most accurate word to describe what it takes to run a fast Boston Marathon. Consider that this race filled up just 8 hours after registration opened, and that unofficial world records (on a "net downhill" course, arguably wind-assisted) were set this year. Make no mistake, Boston is vying to be the grand marathon stage for years to come. And if you want to perform well on a grand stage, you need swagger. You need the borderline ridiculous confidence and flat-out guts to haul down the early downhills, your legs moving uncomfortably fast, banishing thoughts of a late-race crash due to your reckless abandon early on. And you need that same confidence to attack the climbs in the Newton Hills, in spite of what you just did to yourself on the downhills, knowing that even though you might be moving forward more slowly, you'll make up the time on the downhill backside, and still have plenty left to do it again. I will admit that the first few times I ran this race, I lacked that swagger. I was afraid. But this year, especially since I trained more specifically for this race than ever before, I came in with much more "swagger" than ever before, and it showed in my performance.

And just to make that last statement clear, just because "swagger" rhymes with "bragger" does not mean that they are necessarily related words. In this case, "swagger" is not about intimidation, talking a big game, or trash-talking after the race. "Swagger" is about having the quiet confidence to line up at the start and know that for the whole race, you will remain focused, positive, and confident, attacking the course and drawing strength from your competitors' challenge, rather than wishing it all away. And when the race is over, you know that you've run a clean, hard race, and risen to the challenge of your competitors the whole way.

So there (in probably too many words) is the 2011 Boston Marathon. Barring disaster, I'll be back in 2012, chasing a time that's 5 minutes faster, to assure my spot in the 2013 running. And I'll train even harder and smarter, so that I show up with more swagger than ever before.