What I've Done (A Year in Review)

A random rainy Tuesday night, lounging on the couch next to Ash, the resident "Tiny Kitten," as he kneads away at a blanket, after a little run in the rain, seems like as good a time and place to do something I've been putting off for a while now, which is a brief retrospective of being 28, and what that entailed (running-wise, anyway).

To put it briefly, this was a year of quite possibly the highest highs and lowest lows that I've ever experienced as a runner, often in close succession. In other words, it was a good year. Let's recap, chronologically:

Hellgate 2009: A big bad DNFing disaster, precipitated by physical and emotional turmoil, I left with the resolution to finish this race someday (as is the resolution I'll be making with all the races where I DNFed).

Club Challenge 2010: Finished in something like 1:06, not at all what I was hoping to do there. To be fair, I had just run 20+ miles the day before, and that didn't go very well, so there was only so much that I could hope for in an all-out 10-mile war.

National Marathon 2010: Kept the completion streak alive (starting with the first-ever National Marathon in 2006), but the "go faster every time" streak ended this year, as I hit the wall around Mile 15, and ended up finishing 3:15ish. Probably the best I've ever done in the context of a "crash," though.

Boston Marathon 2010: Finally, a good race! 2:58:33, which, while not a PR, is only about a minute off from my marathon PR, and ended up being a huge confidence boost, considering how badly the National Marathon went.

Frederick Marathon 2010: In what may have been the last ever running of this race, ironically enough, the heat, which I had been fastidiously training for in anticipation of Badwater, was my downfall at this race, as I hit the wall between mile 14-15, and struggled to come in under 3:50, with cripplingly painful cramps turning the last mile into a deathmarch.

Bel Air Town Run 5K: You know, I could look this up and tell you how I did, but honestly, I don't remember. And the important thing is, I did it again, putting the streak at 15 years straight.

Western States 2010: The goal was to go under 24 hours here. Mission accomplished, in 23 hours and change. It was a hard fight, though; I blew out my quads on the downhills, and the last 20-ish miles were brought to you in part by my angel of a pacer, who endured more loud cursing than anybody navigating the woods at night with a headlamp should ever be subjected to.

Badwater 2010: Perhaps the most high-profile achievement of the year, two weeks after Western States, a solid training effort brought me into Badwater even stronger than I had been for Western States. Although I was plagued by stomach issues, my top-notch crew fought to keep me in the race, and I finished 17th, in about 34 and a half hours, resolved to come back even stronger next year.

Summer Beast of Burden 100 2010: My first ever 100-mile race win, and a PR in 16:19 and change (which I believe is at least two hours "soft"), this was perhaps the pinnacle of my fitness, and arguably my greatest running achievement.

The Ring: This went well for about 30 miles, until I got lost, went about 15 miles off course in nowhere near the right direction, and wound up having to DNF.

North Coast 24-Hour Run: My heart and mind said yes, but my feet said no. Fallen arches made running excruciatingly painful, and after 50 miles in about 8 hours, I decided that was quite enough.

Grindstone 2010: What I had hoped would be a marquee event for me became an unmitigated disaster, as a combination of physical and emotional fatigue caused me to drop out after a little over 20 miles.

Oil Creek 2010: Two weeks after Grindstone, with less of the emotional issue, but more of the physical issue, and ultimately, the same result.

Army 10-Miler: The important thing is, I finished this race in under 7-minute mile pace. My legs were really dead, but the "party" afterwards was worth it.

29th Birthday Run: Okay, not an official race, and technically not run when I was 28, but I completed 29+ miles on my 29th birthday, in the first 3 hours and 50 minutes of being 29. No, not blazingly fast, but hey, I finished!

Both Satchel Paige and Boston have advised against looking back, but considering how much has happened in the past year, I'd be remiss not to look at all of this, and draw some conclusions about where I've been, and where I'd like to go. My top 5, as food for thought:

1. My greatest successes came about as a result of an obsessive level of control over my training schedule. Boston and Beast of Burden, besides being alliterative, were the races where, objectively, my finishing times were the best. I don't think it's a coincidence that, in the month before these races, I developed, and followed to the letter, a rigorous training plan, focused on the race.

2. The focus on "experience" was one major contributing factor to my failures. In every case where I failed to live up to expectations, I went into the race with less of a focus on the training plan (see #1) and more of a focus on "giving it a shot," and "getting some experience." I always got what I bargained for.

3. The high level of activity in my life in general was the other major contributing factor to my failures. Between school, work, and home, there were enough distractions to keep me from being able to focus on (and during) races, to complete training as planned, and to get enough rest to make the training pay off.

4. My best performances most likely would have been better on better rest. I've demonstrated a pretty large capacity for work, even under stressful circumstances. What I haven't had enough of is the opportunity to rest.

5. I have a far deeper understanding of the "tiny details" that are a major part of a successful race. In reflecting on my failures, I could write pages and pages about the things I did wrong that contributed to the outcome. In the past, I've had a fair amount of success, somewhat by accident, and I didn't have as much to consider as I do now. In the coming years, in planning for races, I'll have far more experience to draw from, and I'll be able to take many more steps to increase the probability of a favorable outcome.

So enough of that . . . what's next?

Having reflected on this past year, I've decided that, since school will no longer be a burden on my free time in 2011, my goal will be to systematically set PRs in the following major distances: 5K, 10 mile, marathon, and 100-mile (and at the 100-mile distance, this may well mean winning the race). How I plan to do this is the subject of another post, but I'll be starting with the 5K, and my goal race is the Resolution Run 5K in Patterson Park on New Year's Day, 2011. My 5K PR is something like 18:20, so let's say at least sub-18 for the 5K. In the weeks ahead, I'll be posting about progress towards that goal, and if something else funny or exciting happens, I might post about that, too.

What I Learned At Hellgate 2009

They (you know, those mysterious mass-majority who are the authority on life and everything in it) say that you learn more from your failures than your successes. As much as I don't want to believe that the conventional wisdom about everything is always true, I think that "they" have a point in this case, because for me, Hellgate 2009 was overall, a spectacular failure, and, upon further reflection, I have a list of things a mile long that I could have done better. Here goes:

1. Eat a lot more in the days leading up to the race. In the past, I've paid more attention to this, eating until just past full for about three to five days before the race. This time, given my hectic work and travel schedule, I had to eat on the run most of the time, which made it difficult for me to do this. No, I wasn't starving myself, but if anything, I lost weigh over the past two weeks, which is not the direction to be heading before a race like this. Consequently, I was hungry within the first ten miles, and that never got better because . . .

2. You have to warm your food before you eat it. At the second aid station, they had food, none of which looked appetizing to me, but I knew I needed to eat, so I shoved a potato chunk in my mouth, and . . . ouch. Not only was it so cold that it was hurting my teeth, but swallowing something that cold was making me nauseous. In retrospect, it would have made more sense to take food from the aid station, keep it close to my body, and eat it after it warmed up.

3. You need to be mentally and emotionally present before you start one of these things. Due to my hectic schedule between being out of town for work for a week and a half, traveling for Thanksgiving, getting engaged, final projects for school, not to mention the other miscellaneous life stresses (like laundry, bills, dishes, and all that other garbage that responsible people worry about), by the time I got to the race, I was physically there, but mentally, I was already exhausted. In the past, I've been able to put myself in the right frame of mind as the race went on, but at Hellgate, the race was too long and too dark for me to get myself back together. Every time I starting feeling even a little bit tired, all of the stresses of the past few weeks started bearing down on me, and I was too emotionally weak to fight them. So, although I was physically fit, I was emotionally burned out from so many highs and lows that I came in to the race emotionally exhausted - not good.

4. You need A LOT more sleep. I had a good 9 hours of sleep the night before race night, but that was after I stayed up for almost 40 hours straight (due to work, school, and personal commitments that were all happening at once), and I was not recovered from that going in to the race. Being sleep-deprived definitely does not help your emotional state, but unfortunately, that's where I was.

5. Not giving all of the above their due. You would think that, coming in to a race like this under-nourished, sleep-deprived, and emotionally distracted, I would have been more mindful that these were the real demons that I would be battling. Instead, all I could think about at the time was how bad food tasted, how awful I felt, and how much I wanted to give up. By the time I was able to properly recognize the source of the problem, I was too far gone to attack it. Really, these were problems that should have been dealt with in the week leading up to the race.

But, in spite of all of that, there were some successes during the race, and to give them their due:

1. My clothing worked. I hate cold weather, and normally I choose to just tough it out and freeze. However, in a last-minute 100-dollar shopping spree, I bought socks, glove liners, gloves, poly-pro baselayer, and an outer wind shell to keep me warm, and the system worked. Yes, it was very stressful to be doing this in the few hours before the race, but the point is, I was never cold, except at mile 22 when I was first thinking about dropping, and I stood around for about half an hour, making no attempt to get warm. Considering that it was about 10 degrees out there, I feel that my clothing strategy was successful, since I have NEVER been out in that kind of weather for as long as I was (9 hours) without feeling really miserable about the temperature at some point.

2. I found a comfortable long hill rhythm. For months, I've been trying to develop a "low gear" for hills in these long races. At Hellgate, after the food that I ate before the race kicked in, but before it wore off, I fell into this groove going up a very long hill. For about three miles, I chugged up a long hill, passing about a dozen people, and workig my way back into the top 15.

3. My shoes worked. Because they didn't have my size, I bought a pair of Mountain Masochist trail shoes that were a size and a half too big. As it turns out, this was exactly enough room for my feet to swell, so I wound up not having any toe problems, even though my feet got wet a lot during the race.

So overall, the point is, I focused so much on the cold weather aspect of the race, and being adequately trained for the race that the more basic physical and mental aspects of preparation fell through the cracks. In the future, I need to recognize that mental preparation is just as important as physical preparation, and, above all, that you are never alone when you run one of these races. There are always people back home that love and care about you, and if you are too full of confusion and negativity to have room to carry what may be the most important thing of all - their love - in your heart, then you might as well be running Hellgate naked, without food or water.

Oh, and also, don't get your shoes or your windpants too close to the fire - they don't have to actually be IN the fire to melt or burn. :)