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!

Exceeding Expectations

Last year the Patriot half ironman was a real breakthrough race for me. While I talked all about pee on my blog, that was my first real win of the year and the first time I really saw that I might be on to something on the bike. That was a great race for me, I wish they all could come together like that race did... well, maybe without the bit about pee in my shoes.

This year I only signed up for the Aquabike. All I could remember of last year's run was getting passed, and passed, and passed, and wanting to cry when I saw the uphill into the finish. Fuck that. So even though in the triathlon world, an aquabike seems to be a "respectable DNF," it was sure a hell of a lot better than running. I showed up at Big Red's house with reheated coffee at 4:25 am and we were on the road singing along to P!nk songs in her Little Purple Car by 4:30 in the morning. Check-in and marking went uneventfully. Michelle (who also makes me pee my pants) turned up minutes behind Red and me, and I spent the morning hopping back and forth from my rack to theirs, nervously drinking from a 2 gallon jug of water. I racked my bike, made for the porta-potties as usual, and set up my transition area. By "set up my transition area" I mean that I took my cycling shoes out of my bag and clipped my helmet to my handlebars. Aaaaah, only doing 1 event is great!

Well, okay... it was a bit more complicated than that. I also had to set up my drink bottles. If you remember from my last race, I had a bit of a problem with my aero bottle rubbing on my front wheel. I took the bottle over to show Michelle and Big Red the groove on the bottom. You could have rolled a marble down that groove. "Holy cow!" Michelle screamed, appropriately impressed. "You essentially rode that whole race with your brakes on!" So it is a matter of public record, the groove was deep, and I am a badass (Michelle, please back me up on this). I was nervous about that bottle. I must have fucked with it a dozen times trying to figure out a way to make it sit above the wheel, but since I still didn't have a way to hold it in place, there wasn't much I could do. ...Which lead to another question, how many bottles to carry on my frame? I had only planned to carry one, but if I had to dump the aero bottle then I would need to slow down for more bottle handoffs. But if I carried an extra bottle, that would be a LOT of extra weight on my bike. I wound up filling all the bottles and deciding that I'd dump one of the frame bottles if the aero bottle worked. It didn't, so now if any of you want to see the DEEP ASS GROOVE that my wheel made in the bottom of my bottle, you'll have to search in the weeds at the side of the road in Freetown, MA.

I've already peed in my wet suit twice... and I haven't been in water any deeper than my waist yet!

For some reason I was INCREDIBLY nervous for this race. Maybe it was because I had put really high expectations on myself. Maybe it was because I was thinking about the whole event all at once swim, bike, transitions, and all. Maybe it was the fact that I was in the last wave, and I had to wait half an hour after the first starters to actually get in the water. Maybe it was the 20 oz Starbucks coffee I'd had on the way over. Then I realized that I'd forgotten to put the sticker with my number on the front of my new sperm hat (aero helmet), and I got even more nervous. Do they DQ for that kind of thing? By the time Grease Monkey (who had driven down later) found me in the bull pen, I was so wound up that I thought I would explode.

The Swim
1,500 yards cleverly disguised as 1.2 miles

I was in the same wave as the relay swimmers and the fat people waves (sorry, I just don't believe in Clydesdales and Athenas), so I was kind of expecting all the relays to take off ahead of me, and all the fatties to fall behind me. That's what happened. I think. The swim can be so isolating, you can only see such a small space ahead of or behind you, that unless you're in a pack it can be so hard to tell how you're swimming. I was alone for the whole swim out to the far buoy.

I'd been really working on my swim, getting wet every chance I could since I got back from France, and my mojo finally seemed to be coming back. I wasn't swimming as well as I had been last winter, but well enough. As I was swimming, I could feel that I was having a good swim. I felt strong. The buoys were coming quickly. The far buoy came quickly. We had to swim around 1 cross-buoy before we could turn back to the beach, and after the turn was when I caught up with 2 guys from my wave: The Kicker and The Drafter. I easily got around The Drafter (over and over as The Kicker pulled him through), but I just couldn't seem to get by The Kicker. I got a mouthful. I got another mouthful. And another, this one went down. UGH! Not again! The water was a really, really nasty thick shade of red. I felt nauseous only until the next turn buoy, though, when I was finally able to get around The Kicker and swim into shore.

Most of the swim back was spent getting around the blue caps from the wave in front of me, and the odd orange cap from the wave in front of that. The swim was over so quickly! I could live with that. I don't dislike the swim, but it always makes me anxious and I'm always eager to get out of the water and get on my bike already. I looked down at my watch as I was coming out of the water: I was in the 22 minute range! That couldn't be right... Looking at my times and others' times, it seems likely that the swim was 1500 yards instead of 1.2 miles (about 500 yards short).

Official time: 23:16
Official pace: 1:06 per 100 yd (I'm going to the Olympics!)
Estimated real pace: 1:32 per 100 yd
Division (Aquabike) place: 8/27 (30%)
Estimated overall place: 75/307 (24%)
Improvement on last year: 9:33 (not really though)

T1

Transition should have been easy, but I was worried about that stupid sticker for my helmet. I rooted through my bag and found the envelope with my run number still in it, and there was the sticker for my helmet. I fiddled with it for what seemed like forever, and was probably only about 4 seconds. I couldn't get the paper off the adhesive on the back. I gave up. I went to put on my shoes. It felt like it took forever. It probably took about 10 seconds. Helmet on, garmin on, glasses on, let's get the hell out of here!

T1 time: 2:45

The Bike
58 miles of Get outta my way!

As soon as I'd started riding I checked my water bottle. It had slid down and was rubbing my wheel again. I tried to shift it higher in its cradle, but nothing I did would make it sit higher, so I just pulled it out and chucked it at the side of the road. I felt bad about littering, but felt that the Universe owed me this one after all the Gatorade bottles I've had chucked at my head by snotty teenagers. It was probably the best decision I've ever made in a race.

What I hate most about being in a late wave is that you have to fight your way through the whole, entire field. It felt like it took forever for my legs to come around, but I was still passing everybody. I practically lived on the left side of the road for the first loop yelling "LEFT! COMING UP ON YOUR LEFT! YOU HAVE A RIDER COMING UP ON YOUR LEFT!" over and over again. You should all know that even though I'm super cocky on my blog, I'm actually a pretty nice person out on the race course. I'll say "excuse me" and "please" and whenever possible I'll use full sentences to let people know that I'm coming. It seemed like every time I came into a turn, I was about to pass somebody. I would try to yell, "YOU'VE GOT A RIDER COMING IN BEHIND YOU, I'M GOING TO PASS YOU AS WE COME THROUGH THE TURN!!!" That way it seems like I'm being nice. Really, though, I'm just making sure that nobody does anything stupid like swerve, or get mad and sprint past me and get in my way. Plus, in a turn if they think they're going to be passed, they'll slow down even more. Hey, it makes my life easier!

On the back half of the first loop, the traffic was getting bad. There were cars backed up way down the road making it hard to pass, and I was in the thick of the pack at this point. At one point a pickup pinched me into the shoulder and almost drove me off the road and I had to brake hard. I was glad I'd done a lot of urban riding and had developed a sixth sense for when drivers are going to be stupid, so I wasn't in my aero bars at the time. I know it's hard for races to get permits to close off entire roads for a morning, but I wish that they would at least find a way to keep one lane closed so no one gets hurt.

As I was coming back towards transition to begin the second loop I checked my average speed for the first time. For the past 29 miles I'd been averaging 22.4 mph! The next time I looked down it had come up to 22.5! I was so excited. I had set a best-case-scenario goal pace of 22 mph and here I was going half a mile per hour faster and feeling great! I felt like I could negative split this thing.

On the second loop I had already fought my way through much of the pack, and the farther I rode, the clearer the road got. Thank goodness! Before long I spotted Michelle up the road! She had left 20 minutes ahead of me, and I hadn't expected to catch her at all, let alone so early in the bike. Then again, I was having the ride of my life. I yelled something encouraging to her as I passed, and then I said, "I'm averaging 22.6 mph!" I just had to share my excitement with someone. That .6 at the end only lasted for a few more minutes, though as I irrevocably dropped back down to 22.5.

The course is flat, but there are some rollers that can take you up 60–100 feet before they're done with you. On the second loop they broke up my momentum a little bit and took the wind out of my sails as I began to give some of my speed back. I could feel my legs were getting tired. I tried to eat and drink whenever possible, but I was having trouble finding times when the road was smooth enough and my breathing easy enough to take my hands off my bars and reach for a bottle or food, and then swallow it. Still, nobody passed me. There were maybe two or three guys who thought they could pass me, and pulled ahead of me once or twice but I passed them all and they stayed passed. To be fair, all the real guns had gotten a head start on me and never got the chance to pass me, but it was still fun. I didn't come up on Big Red until well after I found Michelle, which surprised me because she was having knee problems and had a terrible cold. But if there's anyone who can step up to the plate, it's Big Red. I tried to yell something encouraging to her as I rode by, but I forget what I said. Whatever it was, she made fun of me afterward, saying that I was even a ballbuster when I was trying to be supportive.

Finally I reached the final loop around the lake for the second time. I had given up a lot of speed on the second lap. While I'd averaged 22.5 on the first lap, I only averaged 22 on the second lap, for an average speed of 22.3 by the end. I know that I shouldn't be disappointed with that 22 mph for the second loop, seeing as it was my best-case-scenario goal to start with, but it still irked me. Why had I slowed down so much? I crossed the 56-mile mark in 2:30:37, but still had 2 miles to go to the finish. Three minutes and sixteen seconds later, I was dismounting my bike (Garmin says the course was only 57.14 miles).

Unofficial bike time: 2:33:53
Unofficial average speed: 22.3 mph
Average heartrate: 173 Max heartrate: 193
Gender bike rank (all women, all divisions): second

Improvement on last year: 12:04, 1.4 mph

The Run
Now that's my kind of triathlon!

I racked my bike on the Aquabike rack that they had set up and started sprinting towards the finish line. I had already taken off my bike shoes, so I ran the .12 miles through the finishing chute barefoot in my ass hat/aero helmet. Grease Monkey was screaming for me the whole way, and something happened that has never happened before...
... I finished the race smiling!

Official bike time: 2:35:29
Official bike speed: 22.4 mph
Unofficial run pace: 7:19 min/mi (haha! Wouldn't it be great if I could have held THAT for another 13 miles!)
Total time: 3:01:28
Women's Aquabike finish: 1st place
Overall Aquabike finish: 4th place
Overall Women's Swim/T1/Bike rank: 2nd
Improvement on last year's swim/bike time: 19:07
Gap on the next Aquabike woman: 22+ min.
How much I beat Bobby's Swim/Bike time by: 14:27 (another one off the list!)

The Aftermath

Immediately my ass cramped up. After a short visit to the PT booth to get stretched, Grease Monkey and I cheered Michelle through T2 before going to catch Bobby finish in a PR time of 4:55, and then we got to see Michelle finish her first half ironman, and finally Big Red come through, finishing strong on a busted knee.

As I was picking up my stuff from transition a chick I'd never seen before in my life said, "Are you Claire?" Oh god! I've pissed somebody off again! was my first thought.
"Yeeeeees..." I said, warily. I was ready to run once she started swinging. She looked sweet enough though. I wondered if I could take her in a fight?
"I read your blog!" Now I was really ready to run away once she started swinging! But she didn't take a single shot, amazingly. I was so flattered! I felt famous to have lurkers that recognized me (and didn't want to kill me). Thanks, PJ, you made me feel famous! And everyone should wish PJ luck in the Rhode Island 70.3 in 2 weeks.

Finally I got to shove food into my face and wait for the awards ceremony. At the picnic table, a woman struck up a conversation with me. I didn't know it till later, but she was the 45-49 winner. "I think I passed you on the course," she said. "Were you wearing a red, white, and blue helmet?"
"No, it was black and red."
"No, really, I think it was you. What color was your helmet? Does it have some grey in it?"
I couldn't resist. "It couldn't have been me," I said, trying not to let my attitude show through. "Nobody passed me."
"But..."
"Nobody."

They announced my name, gave me my award, and then went on to announce that they were giving premes for the fastest swim, bike, and run times. Even though they excluded elites, aquabikes, and relays, I still wanted to hear what the fastest women's bike time was. "2:43:24?! I rode faster than that!" I whined.
Michelle smacked me in the sunburn on my shoulder. "Yeah, but you didn't have to run," she said.
"Still, I beat it by 8 minutes," I sulked. "I could have WALKED a half marathon after I rode..." Actually, it wouldn't have mattered, because the woman who won overall still rode about 5 minutes into me. Now that really IS fast!

Breaking It Down

I've been trying to figure out what I did right this year to have such a better race than last year. I think it's due to a few things (in no particular order):

1. My phyxie: I've put hundreds of miles onto my fixed gear this year, which has not only smoothed out my pedal stroke, but more importantly it has taught me to climb little hills in a WAY bigger gear than I normally might. So now when a short little roller comes up, I can stay in a much higher gear and keep up my speed over the top of it.
2. Suffering! I've been working since last fall to learn how to suffer. This time last year I was still racing where I felt comfortable, never going balls to the wall and always saving something for later. Now I've gotten a lot of practice at feeling uncomfortable, and I'm comfortable there. That whole ride I was sucking wind and at the point where if I pushed any harder, I would have dug myself into a hole that I couldn't easily get out of. Maybe in physiological terms I've raised my lactate threshold. All I know is that I can hurt a lot more now without actually hurting.
3. Yeah, I'm sure the mountains helped.
4. Riding more, not running: Last year I'd put in about 20 fewer hours by race day than I have this year, even though the race was 3 weeks later last year. Also, since I'm not wasting my time running, my legs are much fitter for my rides, and I have more free time to ride more.
   
5. Running: Alright, alright, I'll admit it. That block I did last winter where I ran my ass off did put me in phenomenal aerobic shape. I noticed that I was putting up the same times on the road this year AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SEASON (when I wasn't in shape) than I was last year when I was in shape. So yeah, the running helped.
   

I hate passing up free beer.

Dear Furry Man with Fuzzy Shoulders,

Please do not wear tank tops or running singlets anymore. Especially to events where you are going to sweat. It is not sexy. In fact, it is pretty gross. It makes the rest of your fellow runners uneasy at the crowded starting line because we are afraid that you will inadvertently touch us. And, by the way, I know you're the man who gets all nasty sweaty at the gym and then doesn't wipe off the weight equipment when you are done with it. That's gross too. You're gross. May I suggest you find a skilled hair removal specialist in your local yellow pages? Thank you.

Best,
Claire

Question: When was the last 10K I ran?
Answer: Sometime in the spring of 2006. I was living in Barcelona. I still smoked. I had a hangover. Joolie and I got lost on the way to the starting line and missed it by 8 minutes. Once we got close and realized that everyone had started already, we just started running. I set a PR somewhere in the high 50's.

If I signed up for a 10K I was pretty much guaranteed a PR. No matter that I'd already ridden over 130 miles this weekend, there was pretty much no way I could miss a PR. So I decided to switch out my Thursday tempo run for a Sunday 10K PR at the Malden Irish American 10K. I didn't even have to drive far to do it. Malden is only 2 towns away.

The race started at 11 a.m. How different from the races I've been doing the rest of this year! There were kids walking around with race numbers; also different from my usual trend. Most people were standing around in cotton t-shirts. Refreshing. I only paid $20 to enter (what a welcome change!) at the coat check of the Irish American club (a place that smelled like it had had a few too many Guinnesses spilled on its function hall floor over the years), and then wandered around watching everyone smiling, laughing, checking out the giant course map (a mapquest map printed out on a huge piece of butcher paper), doing cartwheels, anything but warming up. You can find more Massholes at an Irish event than pretty much anywhere else in Boston, and the Boston accents don't get much thicker than the ones I was hearing around me. Usually serious runners tend to be a dweebier, more white-collar crowd and don't tend to have the accent. I don't know if I heard an R all morning.

I showed up early. I got bored.

Half an hour before the start I went for a short warmup. I felt sluggish. I let my body pick the pace, and the pace it picked was 11-minute miles. Eight tenths of a mile later I was back and still not feeling warmed up.

I saw a chick stretching out wearing a pink top, pink shorts, pink socks, pink shoes, and a red Red Sox cap. I vowed to beat her. She looked stupid, and she didn't look that fast.

After some confusion over where exactly the starting line was, we lined up and they set us off exactly at 11:00. I was impressed at the organization, how they were able to set us off at the right time, and that the mile markers were dead on.

Running I felt like hell, but I figured I'd try to fake it. I'd set my watch to beep if I went slower than 8:00 miles. I might get tired, but I'm tough, I could handle it. It was only a 10K, a distance so short it almost seemed silly to run it. I followed the people around me, and after a couple of blocks I looked down to see that I was running roughly 7:15 pace. Oops. Better slow down. But it's hard to slow down when everyone around you is going so much faster than you're supposed to be. I consciously let people pass me, but I was still running too fast.

The majority of the first mile was uphill. I ran it in 7:44.

The next mile was mostly downhill, and I did a little bit of a better job of controlling my speed, mostly because it was already catching up to me. This was going to be messy. I ran the second mile in about 7:56. I'd hoped to run 8-minute miles, at least I was on the right track.

The third mile was flat, and I finally managed to get my speed somewhat under control. This was mostly because the first couple of miles, and all the miles on the bike this weekend were really starting to catch up with me. God, it was hot. It felt like it was about 95º (actually, only 80). I felt like hell and felt like I might shit my pants, but it was only a 10K. I could fake it for another 3 miles. I ran the third mile in 7:58, right where I wanted to be.

And then...

KER-PLOW!!!

Pieces of Claire went flying everywhere as I blew up into a million tiny little pieces. No matter what I WANTED to do, my body was going to make me slow down. NOW! No faking it anymore. We were running on a flat out-and-back section, and I saw the stupid-looking chick in the pink. She was about half a mile in front of me. Fuck.

I hit the turn-around and felt the wind in my face. I was thankful for it, since it was cooling me down, but did it have to be so damned STRONG?! For most of the back half of the course we had a 14mph headwind that gusted at times up to 22 mph. I ran the 4th mile in 8:23, exactly enough to undo all the extra seconds I'd bought myself with my overzealous start.

The 5th mile came and went. I alternated between yelling at myself to hurry the fuck up and wanting to go back to those 11-minute miles that my body wanted to run so badly. I ran it in 8:38. It was a compromise.

The sixth mile was more of the same. I ran it in 8:54. The red shirt that I'd been trailing since mile 2 pulled away and I felt like a failure.

In the last .2 miles a bunch of stupid punk 8-year-old kids decided to run out and run right behind me. Nothing makes you feel shittier than a bunch of 10-year-olds sprinting around you like you're a joke. I wanted to punch them. I wanted to push them under a car but there were none around. Then a lady that didn't LOOK like a runner passed me and I couldn't pass her back. And the stupid kids started saying to each other, "Are you still running?!" "My legs are tired." Stupid fucking kids, you've only run 3 blocks. I hope your legs are so tired that you DIE! Right at the last turn they had a bagpipe player playing a song that sounded like a hysterical dying duck. I felt like I was dying too. I averaged 8:00 miles for the last chunk. THAT's what I call a final kick?!

I came into the finishing chute all by myself in 50:37. My garmin said I had only run 6.13 miles for 8:15 pace; they say I ran the full 6.2 in 8:10's. I was over 5 minutes behind the bitch in pink. Whatever, I bet I look better naked than she does. She was kind of chunky and I don't think she had enough neck. At the end of the chute they took a look at my face to try and figure out if I looked over 21 and then held out a couple of drink tickets for me. "No thanks, I don't drink," I said. The last thing I wanted right now was a beer, I thought I might puke.
Then she said something like, "Oh, SHE'S the picture of health," that could have been taken as a compliment or an insult. Whatever, bitch. We're both here because we got the Irish drinking gene. The difference is that you come here to drink, and I come here so I won't.

I went to my car and changed into some flip flops (I still have gaping, raw sores on the backs of my ankles from my unfortunate sock malfunction last weekend - it's hard to take pictures of the backs of your own ankles, by the way) and came back to check out the results. Wow. I'd made the first sheet of paper! And somehow I'd managed to pull off third in my age group. I was going to get hardware in a road race! Alright, there were only 10 chicks in my age group, but I beat 7 of them. I got 6th woman overall, which sounds impressive until you see that only 23 women participated. Clearly the really fast girls didn't have the Malden Irish American 10K on their race calendar, but it was their loss. No free beer for them. And if those other two chicks had stayed home, I would have won.

It took them almost twice as long as it took me to run the race to begin to hand out the awards. I listened to the bad Irish band do jarring covers of Johnny Cash and Jimmy Buffet as well as some traditional Irish drinking songs. I seemed to be the only one getting irritated by the wait, since most of the freckle-faced participants, volunteers, and spectators were enjoying the $1.00 cups of Michelob Ultra made available by the race's generous sponsor. The race was to benefit the American Lung Association, and it kind of made me snicker to see how many people were lighting up once they got a couple of beers in them.

I got my medal, and then I went home, and that was it.

The end.

Anti-climactic? Yeah.