The Nightmares Begin

One month to go before IM Cozumel... Not that I'm nervous or anything. Not that I've put these crazy expectations on myself, or that there's anything that could go wrong. I've started having nightmares where my flight is delayed and I miss the start, or my bike goes missing, or I get arrested the day before and I'm still in a holding cell the morning of the race...

Last year I was worried about land sharks ruining my race, this year it's I'm worried about the vicious blood-sucking chupacabras who leaves only bone-dry livestock in its wake. Sure, it's unlikely that the spiny wolf-sized demon will attack me, mostly because it is fictional. But still... the chupacabras is a nocturnal creature and if I'm in the lightstick crowd, I'm sure it will be lurking behind some resort landscaping waiting to suck all the blood out of me. Your aerobic capacity really goes down if you've been sucked dry. Even though it's unlikely, my coach has pointed out that it's always a good idea to have a hotel room on at least the second floor.

Beyond the chupacabras, I'm also being haunted by a very real menace: airline baggage trolls, who I have become convinced will lose my bike in any one of my long layovers. Before you suggest I ship, I've already looked into it, and both UPS and FedEx are over $300 each way to ship. The airline's only $100 each way. Because I'm poor, I've had to go for a less-than-ideal travel itinerary: namely a 9-hour layover in NYC and an overnight layover in Cancun. In my mind, the longer your bags are sitting in an airport, the greater their chance of finding their way onto the wrong plane.

But one thing could go wrong to fuck up the whole thing more than any of that other stuff: me.

I'm not saying that I don't think I can finish or anything, I'm saying that I have the ability to fuck up my race more than any of the baggage trolls ever could. If I have learned one thing since starting this Ironman training under someone else's guidance, it's that I don't know shit about my body. This is not something that my coach has told me, but a conclusion that I have reached independently.

First, there's my swimming. I always thought that swimming was kind of a formality: just a chance to offer contestants up as chum and to make sure that you were good and uncomfortable when you got on your bike sopping wet. I never figured that a short little 1-hour splash would be enough to get me tired enough to have an effect on my overall race. Sure, there's a short adjustment period when you get back to dry land and need to shunt blood back to your legs, but that's over in about 10 minutes. To my surprise, it turns out that swimming is also my first chance to fuck up this race. Recently I have been having swim sessions that are challenging enough to make me think I'm going to throw up in the gutter at the pool (10x100's at 1:25 pace with 10s rest when my best 100 time is around 1:21). I have noticed that after these sessions I feel... tired. And hungry. And... drained. I know that I can swim 2.4 miles at around 1:35 pace fairly comfortably, but what if I go too fast? When my mind doesn't get in my own way, there's always the fear of sharks.

Then there's the bike. If there is one thing that I thought I knew about that has been challenged most, it's my perception of myself on the bike. I used to think that I never got tired on the bike and that I got stronger as time went on. For some reason, suddenly I started getting tired around the time I got a coach. (I actually think it was the running that ruined my cycling legs.) On top of that, around fall every year I come to the conclusion based on no evidence whatsoever that I will never be able to ride a bike again. Normally it doesn't matter because all I have waiting for me and my bike are long trainer hours. But now... not so much.

For some reason, when it's cold I can't "feel" my legs. No, not like they're numb from the cold. It's just something about not having skin exposed to air fucks up something with my propioceptive awareness (sense of my body in space) and it's like someone unplugged my legs. My bike feels squishy. I can't and don't want to get my heartrate up. My body wants to ride 16 mph, and I can't seem to overcome it. I do not want to ride 16 mph. Right now I can't even hit the heartrate that was my average heartrate at Patriot in June.

But then again, since I'm finding it so hard to judge my bike fitness right now (it's been months since I rode with anyone else), I have no idea how fast I can ride. And you know what happens when that happens? I see a low average speed and decide that I should be riding faster. And I hammer. (It's a good thing that the pro's leave 15 min. before the age groupers, because if not I'd be coming out of the water with Yvonne van Vlerken, and I KNOW I would be tempted to try and keep up on the bike. THAT would be a mistake!) And when I hammer, I have learned, I REALLY fuck my chances for a good run. I want to have a good run. Which reminds me, I have no idea about how to run either...

My REAL Worry

Yeah, you think I know how to run, but know what? I have no idea. I've run what? like 9 races of marathon distance or longer, and it's taken me 5 years to figure out that I have no effing clue what I'm doing. I learned this when someone else took over my running and I inexplicably dropped 1 min/mile off my average pace for no reason whatsoever (certainly not training, anyway). That was when I surrendered my running completely to someone else, but the problem is that I'm STILL running faster than the paces that he sets for me, unintentionally. And here's the terrifying part: I haven't run longer than 15 miles in this whole Ironman build-up. So not only is my sense of pacing completely baffling me, I also have no clue how my body responds to fatigue these days. How am I supposed to know how to pace a marathon???

Think about it: When you start a marathon, based on your training runs you know more or less the rate of perceived exertion or pace that you can hold for the better part of 26.2 miles. This is based on two things: your knowledge of your body's preferred "steady" pace, and the knowledge of how your body has responded to fatigue on long runs. Pick a "steady" pace that's too fast on your long runs and you crash at the end. Lesson learned, don't do that in a race. But I have no idea what my "steady" pace should be (I've dropped about 5 s/mile off my average pace on each my 90+ minute runs for the past several weeks), nor do I know how my body will respond to anything above 15 miles.

Add that to the fatigue of an Ironman and well... you get the picture. Last year I was so underfed and hot that I could barely move after the bike. After my 110-mile training rides this year, my legs have still picked out a low-8-minute pace for me. I could NOT keep that up for a marathon.

Plus, even though I ride better in the heat, I run like shit when it's hot. Put those two together and you get a bike that's too hard and wrecked running legs that couldn't even run if they were fresh. Also, have I mentioned that it's been in the 40's and 50's every day here. It's going to be in the 80's in Cozumel. Which means that anything I thought I knew about pace, heartrate, etc can be thrown out the window.

A question:
So I have a question for those of you who are successful runners (I'm especially interested in those of you who can keep your pace for the final 10K of the marathon within 10s of your pace for the first 10K). How do you pick your perceived effort for the first 10 miles of a marathon??? How do you know???

What a jackass

So IM Cozumel is supposed to be a non-wetsuit swim (I think), so I just started pricing speed suits to figure out if it was within my price range. Tra, la, la, I'm looking through all the different brands when suddenly I see... hey! Isn't that my wetsuit?

When I bought my Orca RS2 sleeveless "wetsuit" in the spring of '08, I bought it because most of my open water swims are in warm lakes and I didn't want to overheat. So I bought the thinnest material there was (it was also a couple hundred bucks cheaper). Imagine my surprise when I see this on the Orca website:
"The RS1 SWIMSKN combines Orca’s most advanced triathlon and wetsuit technology and thinking to provide you with the advantage in non-wetsuit swims. The RS1 SWIMSKN is constructed from a revolutionary new BioLite fabric, which has been scientifically treated with Orca’s exclusive anti-friction coating and is USAT and FINA approved."

Okay, so maybe I can at least save a couple hundred bucks on a swim skin. I started pumping my connections, and it only took a few minutes for PJ to hook me up with this list of USAT non-wetsuit-approved speed suits. There are 3 RS2 models on there, but none of them look like mine.

DAMMIT!

So I've got a wetsuit that's not quite a wetsuit, and not quite a skin suit. Talk about buyer's remorse (two seasons after the fact!).

Wicked Race Report... Wicked Late

A few weeks ago I signed up last-minute for the Wicked Half Marathon. This was a bit of an unfinished-business race. I saw the t-shirt 2 years ago and decided I HAD to do it, so I signed up last year, and got lost on the way to the start. Damn. I've always had good luck in Salem (also at this link, and this one)... at least to the races I can find the start of, and since I was going to miss the Wild Turkey 5 mile race this year, I was just itching to run in Salem. I know, me, itching to run. Weird, right?

This year, my body is different. For reasons that are a mystery to me, I've been running a lot faster. I also hadn't run more than 10.5 miles since last February. How would my body react to a half marathon? Would I crash? Would 13.1 hard miles tear my legs apart? It was a regular training week, so I wasn't especially rested stepping into this race (but come on, that's not that out-of-the-ordinary for me). I hadn't run a road race in about 8 months... What would happen?

I was trying some new nutrition tactics to deal with my phantom poo problem. I had a light breakfast, only 2 pieces of peanut butter toast, and tucked my usual smoothie into the mini igloo for after the race. I went to Starbucks, but I only sipped about a quarter of my coffee on the way to the start. I'd had a shitty night's sleep, so passing on the joe took some willpower. When I got to the race, I vowed to break Claire's Number 1 Rule of Public Pooping: Don't, but I had to walk about half a mile from my parking spot to the school. Then there were only three bathroom stalls, and a line out the door for the bathroom. As I got closer to the front of the line, I realized that one of the stalls was missing a door. How could I break Claire's Number 1 Rule of Public Pooping if there was no door?! Luckily, when my turn came, my stall had a door. Too bad I stepped into the stall at 6:59. The race was supposed to start at 7:00! I got out what I could, washed my hands, and ran for the door.

Luckily, they held off the start for about 10 minutes and I had plenty of time to elbow my way into the starting corral. There was plenty of room, and when the gun went off I got to start running right away. Weird. It was one of those courses that look pancake flat on the course profile, but once you're running on it, the undulations really break up your rhythm (or mine anyway, I can't run up a hill to save my life). The weather felt cool, but as I started running I felt fine in just spanky shorts and a t-shirt.

Rather than watching my watch and trying to sit on a goal pace, this time I was trying something different. I kept my head up and only checked my watch at the mile markers. In between, I would listen to my breathing and my body. I tried to ignore what everyone around me was doing. I fell in with some runners who were going at a pace that felt comfortable and tried to resist the urge to pass people who were only a few yards ahead. Steady, I told myself. Find a groove you can follow for the next 13 miles. Then every time my breathing got hard I would remind myself to just find a groove.

I looked down at my watch at the first mile marker: my watch said .98 miles in 7:39. Good, the mile markers were right on. I knew that I probably wasn't going to hold 7:39's for the whole course, but hey, I had no idea what my body was going to do. This pace felt good and so I was going to sit on it dammit! I looked away from my watch and kept running.

My second mile came at about the same interval, 7:41. At the third mile, the hills started. I laid off and watched everyone around me pull away. A woman running with her long hair down (I hate that!), an iPod in her ears (I hate that!), and a running skirt (I hate that!) pulled ahead of me, and I resisted the urge to hate her guts. I knew that if I pushed the pace anymore I knew I would dig myself into a hole I couldn't get back out of. Mile 3 came in 7:46, phew, I didn't lose much time. Mile 4 was also steady: 7:45.

By mile 5, we hit the lollipop through some rolling hills. As we set out on the lollipop, we saw the race leader coming back in the other direction. "Fuck that!" I heard a voice say over my right shoulder. I looked over and saw a guy in an Mdot hat. Now that could keep me inspired to push. You all know how I feel about Mdot folks. "Is that a Timberman hat?" I asked.
"No, Rhode Island," he said. Then he started the Mdot monologue about how he'd done Ironman Florida, blah, blah, blah. New Zoot shoes, blah, blah. I watched more backs pull away as I we the next mile marker in 7:49, but my Mdot buddy was still there, telling me more about the shoes. "I'm a heel striker, see. And this shoe has almost no padding. It just doesn't fit my running stride." Still high on my barefoot running kick from reading Born to Run, I bit my tongue about the shoes probably being a good idea for a guy like him. When it came out later that he runs a 10K in western Mass and is a coach, I was apalled.
We hit another hill and I said, "Well, this is where you pull ahead of me. Byeee!" and let him heel-strike on ahead. But at the next water stop, there he was, massaging his calf. "You alright?" I asked.
"Yeah, shoes just making me cramp up. These people cannot have a booth at my expo!" he said. I ran on. Alone. But the chick with the long hair and the skirt was still ahead. The big hills came between miles 6 (8:04) and 7 (7:55).

Starting at mile 8 I was beginning to feel fatigue. I had decided not to put any calories in my drink bottle, and I was beginning to wonder if it would be a problem as we ran over the jetty back into Salem. My stomach hadn't given me problems, but now I was having other issues from the lack of food. My 8th mile split was 7:59, but I finally picked off the lady in the skirt. I slowed down at an aid station and grabbed a Dixie cup of water, pouring it down my shirt more than in my mouth as I ran on.

Mile 9 came in 7:58 and I could feel the wheels falling off. One of the muscles in my right quad (vastus medialis, i think) was beginning to kill, and breathing was getting pretty hard at an 8:00 pace. Mile 10 was 7:59, and lasted a lifetime. I wasn't really falling apart, but it was that feeling of impending doom that you get when you realize that you're falling behind on your nutrition, and you're not going to make it to the end before you run out of gas.

Miles 11 (8:00) and 12 (7:52) felt like they were lasting forever, and like they were over in no time. My right quad was really killing me now, a feeling I've never had. I hadn't run this far all year, and although my long runs had been faster, they had still been 30 seconds per mile slower than this. Finally, I was inside the last mile as other runners kicked it in, so did I. The problem was, despite doing my hardest running all day, I was running my second slowest mile (8:03). I did everything I could to hold on. My quad was killing me! When was this going to be over?

Still, I let myself watch my Garmin in the last mile so that I would know when I could pick up the kick without digging myself into a hole. I was going to set a half marathon PR. I thought that if I broke 1:45 for a half marathon that would certainly put me square in the middle of the pack, but I could only see one guy pulling away about 100 yards ahead of me and there was no one else around. What do I have to do to catch the pack at a half marathon?

Now I could see the school. I did everything I could to kick it in, but this had to be the longest .1 mile of my life. I timed the final sprint to end right where the crowd started, because the finish line had to be there. I had been running for way longer than .1 miles, but when I reached the crowd, they directed me down into the parking lot. I still had some 50 yards to go, and it was just enough to deflate my final sprint. I was mad. Every mile marker had been dead on with my Garmin, and now I finished with 13.2 miles on my odometer. Lame! The last .2 miles were at 7:26 pace, some sprint!

One of my uglier finishing moments. Looks like A) I'm still heelstriking, and B) my quads are enormous! (yuck!), and C) look how far off the ground I am! Why can't I just run at a fast cadence like fast people?!

I finished in 1:44:01, or 1:44:06, or 1:44:08, whether you believe Garmin, my HRM, or the official time for a 7:53 mile if you believe Garmin, and 7:57 if you believe the official results. It was about a 2:13 PR. I had finished 110th overall (19%), and 13th of 105 in my age group (12%), but I would't get too excited about it since there were people who ran in superhero costumes. As I was fishing a water bottle out of the kiddie pools at the finish, the chick with no hair tie and the running skirt came up to me. "You're really strong. I was chasing you for the last 5 miles and I just couldn't catch you!" Hehehe... I win! I thought, but I smiled and told her that she'd been pushing me for the five miles before that. The best part though? I finally beat Gadfly Thom! I was wandering around the finishing area with that dazed look that you get after a race when I saw him come through two minutes behind me! So ha!