This weekend, a washout

This weekend was supposed to be great. It was going to be a breakthrough weekend physically and mentally. I was going to see friends, do races I'd been looking forward to, set PRs, laugh, smile, and be merry.

Life is full of disappointments.

First off, it rained. A huge storm blew through on Friday morning, and it's been raining pretty constantly since then. Now, Monday morning, it still has not stopped. Despite Ray of Sunshine Damon's argument that training when the weather is bad just makes you stronger than the competition, I HATE the rain. Dreary days make me sad, grouchy, depressed, and most of all, wet.

Saturday morning was the Wicked Half Marathon in Salem (of witch-burning fame). It was going to be great. I had wanted to do it since I saw the t-shirts last year. The WICKED half marathon, get it? Wicked because it's in Salem, the witch city? Wicked because it's near Boston and we say wicked here? Wicked because wicked kind of means cool and badass at the same time? Get it??? And it was only a half hour away. Then when Michelle said she wanted to do it with me I was thrilled! I knew I could run a PR, but with Michelle to pace off of I bet it wouldn't even hurt!

But life is full of disappointments.

First, Michelle canceled on me. You can't really blame her, the race had an early start and she'd only gotten in from a week in San Jose the night before. So I was already pretty disappointed as I drove alone through the spooooooooooky fog in Salem at 6:15 in the morning. It was eeeeeeeeeerie driving around so early in the morning when no one was out. Come to think of it, where was everyone? Salem is a really confusing place to get around, and it took me awhile to find the right place. Finally I did, but it was deserted. Mysteeeeeeeeerious Actually, scaaaaaaaaary. I went up to the door. It was locked. Creeeeeeaaaapy. By this time I'd figured out that I was in the wrong place, but like an idiot I hadn't printed up a copy of the race directions to find out where I'd gone wrong. You know how sometimes the night before they have packet pick-up in a different place from the start? Yeah, I'd gone to the nighttime packet pick-up place, while the race was starting some 10 miles away. Fuuuuuuuuck.

But sometimes you fuck up. And life is full of disappointments.

So I did not run the Wicked Half Marathon. I went home and ran 6 laps around the pond a mile from my house, the same fucking pond that I run around all the time. I figured it was about time for a half marathon PR, and I didn't need any stinkin' organized race to do it. I figured 8:20 miles would be a pretty challenging pace to run, but I resolved to be tough and soldier through. Alright, it would be really tough, but since I figured I wanted to be able to run a marathon in 3:39:59, I might as well get used to running 8:20 min/miles. Sure, all evidence suggested I couldn't run 13 miles at that pace, and barely run 10K at that pace, but I was sure I could suffer through it.

You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find... that life is full of disappointments.

The first 2-mile loop I felt great. I meant to be running 8:20 pace, but every time my eyes drifted off my wrist, I would drop down to 7:30 pace. I was a rockstar! Still, I somberly reminded myself, you don't want to tucker yourself out. Keep the pace.

The second 2-mile loop I managed to hold roughly the pace I wanted, like clockwork. I had finally mastered this pacing thing! I was feeling pretty proud of myself, but I was feeling pretty queasy too. When I run around my threshold it makes me feel like I'm going to poop my pants. I had assumed that this was just something that happened to everybody, but apparently it does not. It has nothing to do with an actual need to evacuate my bowels, as I found out early on (I can never actually go afterwards). It just feels like really bad menstrual cramps, or when you've eaten something that doesn't agree with you. Alright, it feels like diarrhea.

Anyway, by the time I set out on the 3rd loop I felt like I was going to shit my pants and decided to slow down a bit to see if I started to feel better. Then I planned to speed up.

But the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and shit happens. And life is full of disappointments.

I never sped up. In fact, I slowed down. I got this feeling that I never used to get, but I get now. My legs feel fine, my muscles aren't sore, and my turnover is fine. I just get tired. I can get enough air, but it's like there isn't enough oxygen in it. It feels like someone has turned down the volume or something, and I just want to curl up by the side of the road and take a nap. I THINK I am beginning to understand the need for proper pacing, and the implications of going out too fast.


Long story short, I completed 6 laps around that stupid lake (laps 4-6 tacked on another half-mile loop). I had hoped to run around 1:50 (8:24 pace), but I ran 1:56:57. Only about a minute and a half faster than my PR from February. Worst of all, I was only about 11 seconds faster than Anne's half marathon PR (under similar unofficial circumstances: loops around a different pond)! I knew I was better than that! I have been spending some quality time with the Jack Daniels VDOT tables, and he thinks I should be able to run 1:50:59!

I went home exhausted, deflated, and soaked to the bone. And I was disappointed. Life is full of disappointments.

I had planned to run the Vermont 50K the following day, Sunday. Now before you go all crazy on me, there was an actual logic to this. My big A race for this winter is the Disney Marathon, and I want to have a good race there. The only problem is that I'm also signed up for the half marathon the day before. This was actually NOT my idea, but that's another story. So what I wanted to do was actually get some overdistance training in my legs before I started my main training block, and I wanted to make sure it came in the form of back-to-back long runs so that my legs would be prepared to recover quickly for the marathon the second day. But because road racing is so hard on the legs (or mine anyway), and because I find my main limiter in the late stages of a marathon is mainly pain from the pounding rather than actual muscle fatigue, I wanted the second run to be on trail. See, not only do trail runs have less pounding and impact, but also there would be less pressure to run the whole, entire thing, thus lightening the load on my joints while maintaining the time on my feet and distance covered.

See? There is a method to my madness. But shit happens, life is full of disappointments, and there are days when it rains on your parade. You don't always get what you want.

This is what the Vermont 50K would entail:
Driving 2.5 hours to Vermont on Saturday midday to sign up (there was no race-day registration and I wasn't signed up yet).
Sleeping in my car at a campground (since I do not have a tent, nor am I the tenting type, especially in the rain).
Figuring out dinner, breakfast, and coffee in an unfamiliar place.
Then running 31 miles through a ski resort (we're talking alpine skiing) in the rain on trails that had been rained on for 3 days straight now.

I knew I COULD do it, but I knew that with the mud and the rain and the "camping" I would be miserable. And the performance from my legs that morning mad me think that maybe this wasn't the week to push my running.

So I stayed home. Life... sucks.

Instead I went on a 13-mile run with Michelle in the morning. I had slept really badly the night before, had already sent a text message to Michelle saying "If I'm not at the end of your driveway at 7:30, I'm not coming". When my alarm went off I hit the snooze button and thought, I'm going to lie here until that thing goes off again, and if I hear rain then I'm going to turn it off and go back to sleep. But I didn't hear rain. Fuck.

Life is full of disappointments, and it never rains when you want it to.

By the time I got dressed, though, it was raining again. And it rained the whole, entire time we were running. My body did that thing again, that thing where I just wanted to lie down at the side of the road. "Do we have to run 8-minute miles??" I whined. Then it became, "Do we have to run 9-minute miles??" Then "Do we have to run 9:30's?" What I really wanted to do was stop running and walk home, or curl up and sleep in a mud puddle at the side of the road. Eventually I DID let Michelle run on without me and I shuffled home by myself, disappointed and tired. I fell just short of a marathon over the weekend, which I suppose I should be proud of, but I'm not. Hey, it was over 2 days, it doesn't count.

I had such high hopes for this weekend, but it just fizzled. I'd planned to run 18 miles more than I did. I'd hoped for a PR and a huge mental breakthrough in the same weekend. I ran 26.16 miles in 4:03:05, but that's like adding up all my best mile splits of all time and saying that I'm a 3:15 marathoner. I know, I know, I need to rest.

I want to be a good runner, but life isn't fair, shit happens, and sometimes it rains (and more often on the weekends) on your parade. You can't always get what you want, and life is full of disappointments.