Days Off, Dreadmills, Drumlins, Dad & Mom and Dumb Falls

Since last Monday, I have on five occasions made a mental note to update my blog. Each time, I have been unable to find the time to do it and as a result, we end up with a "super entry". Chronologically, I want to recap my struggle to take a day off from running, my rare run on a treadmill, a hilly race, a visit from my parents & Auntie Ann and a bloody post-workout fall. I will attempt to tell them in short story fashion for the sake of brevity.

Chapter 1: Days Off

I struggle with the concept of rest. I am aware my body needs it. Even my mind tells me I’m tired and to take it easy, but the obsessive compulsive in me fights back. I found myself in this situation last Wednesday. I had come off three straight weeks of 80 miles and had a race coming up. I hadn’t taken a day off from running in 30+ days. It was time. These situations always unfold the same way. Leading up to the planned day off, I bragged about it and built it up in my head. “I’m going to sleep in and eat a big breakfast,” I’d say to myself. “I’m going to go straight home and eat a big dinner, maybe watch some TV.” Then, Wednesday arrives. All day, I think about how great it would be to go for a run. Even though my ankle is feeling a little sore from a tweak on a hill workout the previous day, I consider doing just an easy five or six. Ultimately, scheduling saves me. I’ve already missed the morning run, and I don’t enjoy running in the evening heat. I compromise and do one hour of lifting instead.

Chapter 2: Dreadmill

Thursday morning was not a planned day off. I had 12 miles on my calendar, 6.2 of which would be a preview of Saturday’s race course. I woke up at 5:05am, roughly 36 seconds before the deluge. It was already lightning and the thunder was getting closer. Then, it started pouring. I don’t mind running in the rain. Heck, in this weather I love it. But, I do mind running in the lightning. I am constantly looking around to see if I am the tallest object in the immediate area. If I am, I freak out. Before I even had a chance to think about my options, I got a text from Lauren telling me to be careful and channeling my mom. I decided to drive to the Y, hoping that by the time I got there, the storm would have passed. I sat in the car for about 10 minutes before I realized that was not going to happen and if I wanted to get a treadmill, I'd better get inside quick. To make what was coming a little easier, I told myself I'd do 7 miles on the treadmill, then run again in the afternoon. Let me quickly explain why I only run on treadmills about twice a year. I fell off one in college. Not off one, on to one. It threw me off. Thankfully, into a pile of wrestling mats, but while it softened the blow to my body, it did not prevent the scars on my dignity. I got on the only available death machine and remembered my headphones were in the car. This was going to suck. Thank God for closed captioning. As the miles passed, I read the news on WBTV and took in my surroundings. When I got to four miles, I thought "Ok, I can do eight." When I got to eight, I told myself that if I could do 10.5, I could call it a day when it was over. So, that is what I did, thus completing what is unofficially the second longest treadmill run of my life.

Chapter 3: Drumlins

Technically, a drumlin is a smoothly rounded hill. For the purposes of this blog and for the sake of alliteration, it is just a hill. Saturday's 10K course was all drumlins, and what seemed to be very few valleys. I will be out of the country for Greekfest, so I decided to sign up for a rare 10K and see what kind of shape I was in. I explained my training in Chapter 1, so I knew I wasn't going to be fresh, but I didn't think a sub-34 was outside the realm of possibility. Despite ice baths, sticking and more stretching than usual (which is to say, I stretched), I woke up with still heavy legs. From the get-go, the race felt like an effort. Aaron paced me through the first two miles (5:14, 5:30), and Chris was with me through three miles. We went through mile three at 16:17, and after that I was hanging on. Chris and Aaron had dropped back and I struggled to keep my head in it. A runner from UNC Charlotte was a good bit ahead, and Allejandro was a good bit behind. I saw Billy Shue somewhere around mile 4.5 and thought about asking him to jump in to keep me company and keep me from slowing down so much, but for some reason I decided not to. I know he would of, because Billy would give you the shirt off his back. I didn't get the splits on the final 2.2, but they felt like a disaster. I ended up finishing second. My watch said 34:27, the gun time was 34:29. The chip time never registered. It's a one second PR, but I have run four 10Ks in my life. The first one was when I was getting back into shape and was somewhere in the 37s. The rest are 34:50, 34:30, 34:29. I think I am in a 10K rut.

Chapter 4: Dad & Mom

Mom and Dad and Auntie Ann all arrived the Friday night before the race. I love when they come down because I don't see nearly enough of them. My challenge is always finding new things to show them. I know they don't need to be entertained, but I like to entertain. Dad came to the race and met a lot of very important people. We spent Saturday afternoon at the NASCAR Hall of Fame, which is pretty cool. It's one of those places I might not have made it to if I didn't have someone to take. We had to drag Auntie Ann out kicking and screaming. She wanted to go back through. Not really. There is a pretty cool NASCAR simulator in there. I crashed five times. After my 18 mile long run and church on Sunday, we payed homage to father dollar by hitting retail hot spots Concord Mills and Ikea. Note on Concord Mills. Their PR people get really upset when you call it a mall. I always thought that was kind of petty, but had never been there. Now, I have. It's a mall. We did lots of good Charlotte eateries. Cabo, Zada Janes, Yoforia and then Zio last night with Mary Brooks. I won't go in to detail, but if you ever meet Mary Brooks, you'll know why spending an evening with her was the highlight of my family's trip.

Chapter 5: Dumb Falls

I chose running as my sport because I am not coordinated. Throw a ball at me, and I will drop it. Give me a jump rope and I'll trip over it. Running is like walking, but faster. It's instinct. How can anyone screw that up? I'm here to tell you how. I hammered my way through a pretty challenging track workout this morning. Through the entire thing, near 5:00 mile pace, I managed to stay upright. However, with a half-mile left in the leisurely cool down, I was chatting with Jordan as we approached three trash bags on the left hand side of the sidewalk. I saw the trash bags, made note of the trash bags and yet somehow still managed to catch my foot on one and go tumbling into the concrete. You've fallen before, so you know how it feels. Everything happens in slow motion and defying physics, you manage to cut up spots all over your body. I have a cut on my ankle, my knee, my elbow, my side and my back. The latter three require dressing and Lauren has to do it because I can't do it myself. I thought taking that initial shower would be the most painful part. Well, it hurt, but when Lauren put hydrogen peroxide on for the first time, I thought I was going to go through the roof. For those of you keeping track at home, this makes my second bloody fall since Memorial Day. How many of those were on rooty, technical trails? None. Both on sidewalks.

Apologies for the epic, and if you made it this far, I suggest a good book.

China Grove - but not the same one the Doobies talked about.

As much as I would have liked to be running a race in a town immortalized by the Doobies, a quick glance at the lyrics of that classic rock song let me know that the Brothers Doobie were actually jamming out about a place somewhere in Texas (In the San Antonio area I believe) and not Rowan County, North Carolina.

Going into this week, the last in my first meso-cycle of the new Mark Hadley training plan, I knew I was either going to start my summer season in China Grove for the Main Street Challenge on Friday night, or in Hendersonville with the Civitan Sun 5K Saturday morning. Ultimately, it was Paul Mainwaring and the rave reviews of China Grove that convinced me to give it a try. With just one month of post-Boston marathon training under my belt, this race was to act as a fitness test. I really wanted to do well, but I also wanted to use it as a gauge of where I was and what kinks needed to be worked out as I settle in to the 5 and 10K distance for the next couple of months.

I think the last time I raced at night was in college....maybe even high school, and that was on an indoor track. Well, not counting the Blue Ridge Relay. It's tough to plan your day around a 9pm race. What do you eat? Can you sneak a nap in the middle of a work day?

At the last minute, Jordan decided to join Paul and me for our 38 mile road trip from Charlotte to China Grove. We took off at 6:45 in hopes of a 7:30 arrival. We arrived right on time and got a money parking spot between the moonbounces and the porta-johns. I hadn't registered yet, so I signed up while Paul claimed a door prize. The race packet was definitely nice. It contained a dri-fit shirt and a coupon for Chick-Fil-A which I would later learn was only usable at a Chick-Fil-A up there. Oh well.

Around 8:10, Paul, Jordan and I set out to run the course. We found it to be pretty flat with some very modest inclines. It's an out and back, up main street. On the way back, just before town, the fire department had parked one of its trucks and it was spraying water from above. This was needed on a night where it was near 90 even after the sun went down and a pea-soup-kind of humid.

At the line, I did some strides, jumped up and down a few times, then a man in a paper Krispy Kreme hat said a prayer. Shortly following the "amen", the horn went off. I knew enough to stay away from Jordan and Ryan Woods. They were in a different race. But, I wanted to keep Paul and Chris in my sights. I figured the three of us were the race for third. Chris left me about 400-600 meters in to run with Jordan and Ryan a bit. I chose not to go, hoping he would come back to me later in the race. Paul was a few seconds back when I went through the mile in 5:04 (that's what the Garmin said, but the guy on the side of the course calling out splits said '5:00'). Paul caught up to me shortly after the mile marker and we ran side-by-side to the turn around. We both believe we lost a couple of seconds by taking the turn around so gingerly. Both of us slowed down to go around the barrel that marked the midway point.

As we went through the turnaround, I noticed Chris had pulled up from the lead two and we were catching him quickly. I figured he wasn't finished and was glad he went with us when we got to him. For a half-mile or so, it was the three of us running as a pack. I decided to make a move and Chris came with me. For the next half-mile we ran together. I'd put in a little surge and he'd come right with me. With about 800 to go, I put in one final surge and opened up a nice gap between the two of us. I was hurting, but thought I could maintain. I hit the firetruck with the water, and remembered it being MUCH CLOSER to the finish. Did that firetruck move? I was still composed though, and could see the line. I guess this is where I got complacent because all of the sudden, Chris was right on me again and I had nothing left. As we approached the line, he outkicked me and I lost my breath. I started to cough like I haven't coughed in a race since some track races back in the day.

I finished in 16:07, but probably lost three seconds trying to breathe as I came through the chute. Chris, Paul and I both had our hands on our knees for a good two minutes following the finish. We may have underestimated the toll the conditions were going to take.

The time is a new PR, and encouraging as I plot out the rest of the running season. I know I have a lot more workouts and development left. I know I need to work on finishing (and that has been the case since I started running), and I could still use a little work on pacing. According to the Garmin, the splits were 5:04, 5:14, 5:14 and :35 for the last 0.1. Looking at times from last year's race, I think the humidity slowed the average pace down a bit. Ryan ran 14:58 to win in 2009, and Jordan won it this year in 15:05. The guy who was fourth last year ran 15:58 and I ran 16:07. Of course, I can't say I could run 15:58. I have never run that time. This performance made me optimistic that a sub-16 is possible though.

Gutsy performances out there by Jordan, who is in awesome shape, Chris who had my number at the end and Paul who left everything out on the course. Also, a nod to Alice Rogers who set a new PR in 18:01, finishing as the second overall female.

This race also gets high marks for its post-race buffet. There was cantaloupe, watermelon, legit bottles of Gatordade, Cheerwine (which I don't particularly enjoy, but is a Salisbury-area staple), cookies and Pizza Hut Pizza. Kudos to Jordan for snagging a whole box on the way out.

Next race could be Summer Breeze at Freedom Park, but the next meso-cycle ends with the Sodus Point Light House 5k at HOME!