Race Report: Frostbite 4

I love late race starts. I love sleeping in, even though sleeping in meant 6:30am, followed by a turn off the alarm and reset for 7:30am. Still felt great. I got out of bed, tried to figure out what to wear, and even had time to use my neti pot to flush my overloaded sinuses. Too much of a visual picture there? Sorry. THERE WERE BOOGERS EVERYWHERE! Too graphic? sorry.

I picked up Toni at 9am and we headed south. We got to Beresford around 9:30am and it was then that I realized we had 90 minutes until the race started. Ha. Oops. We hung out inside the school, catching up with friends until about 10:15 and then we headed up to do a warm up. As soon as we stepped outside, the wind had picked up and it had started to sleet/snow. WHAT. IS. THIS. Luckily within a couple of minutes, it stopped. We did a two mile shake out with a few strides thrown in. We determined it was warmer than we thought it'd be, and were thrilled we opted for capris instead of running pants.



We had time to snag a picture with the SFWR crew and our favorite speedy elite runner Bensane.



Before too long it was time to board the buses to be bussed out to the race start. They have 3 race courses for this event and pick the one that is most with the wind. There wasn't much wind, but we were bussed out to the south.



One of my running friends said she thought she'd be around 8 pace, so I thought I'd keep her in my sights. Another running friend ran exactly the pace I wanted to last year, so I'd hoped to stick with her as well. The race started, and we were off!

I got out a little too hard, probably but wanted to get ahead of the clumps of people. I felt good, but was a little startled when I glanced at my watch and it said 7:41. Ooooooh, that's too fast. I didn't consciously slow down, but I must've or my watch finally caught up to me, because I settled around an 8:22 pace. Perfect.

Once I settled in, I realized that I was feeling good and I wanted to push the pace a little bit. I went by a few of my running friends, and luckily the gal I was hoping to follow based on last year, leap frogged back in front of me. I was really pleased when mile 1 clicked off on my watch.

Mile 1 8:11

Typically I slow way down in mile 2 of a faster race because I've gone out too hard, but I kept pushing. And I was pleasantly surprised when I was feeling pretty good still. We came up on the halfway, and I did some quick math to determine that I wanted to be at or under 16:30 to shoot for that sub 33 that had become my new goal time. And then in all the math calculations, I forgot to actually look at my race time when I hit mile 2. Lolz.

Mile 2 8:10

Who is this consistent runner? Because it's surely not me.

Ok, mile 3 will hurt. It always does. During the warm up miles, Toni and I were talking about the mile. Back when I was a miler I would always go out too hard on lap one, lap two I would suffer dearly because I went out too hard, lap three I would work to make up what I lost in lap two, but the split would be basically be the same as the second because my legs were fatigued AF and then lap four I would kick it in because I was a sprinter at heart, and it's easy for my brain to think about running super hard for just a shorter period of time. I tried to embrace the hurt, knowing it was going to be hard. I was running pretty solo at this point, but thought if I could pick up the pace in this mile, I could maybe put myself in a position to out kick some of the folks in the pack of runners in front of me.

Mile 3 8:06

I started getting really hot during the final mile. The sun came out in full force shortly after the race started. For a minute I contemplated shedding the shirt because I was so warm, but I knew I couldn't finanagle my bib off in time. I wanted to drop the pace to sub 8, I was tired and hot but that's all the more reason to get it over with fast, right? The two peeks I had was at 7:48 and 7:54 pace. Uff da.





I started to get really tired with about a half mile to go. That group that I had hoped to kick and catch up to? Well they also had a kick and pulled away even further. There was a small group of two mile run/walkers that I had caught up to, so I tried to focus on them. With about .35 to go I really tried to kick to finish strong.







Mile 4 8:03 pace (my watch read 3.98, so my last split was 7:51 for an 8:03 pace, others had 3.99 or 4.0 so maybe I just killed the tangents for once in my life!)





Official time: 32:20 for 8:05 pace.
Average HR 170, Max HR 180.

Race Result

Overall87 / 245 (35.5%)

Ages 30 - 397 / 42 (16.7%)

Gender30 / 143 (21%)

My A goal for this race was 8:19 pace. 8:19. That's almost 15 seconds slower than I ran. To say that I'm ecstatic with my performance is an understatement. After a really rough half, where I felt like death, it really made me question my fitness and my training, and all of the not so fun thoughts that go through your brain on a bad day. This race day proved that I've been working my butt off this past year, and that I've made significant progress, and that there's still speed in these ol' legs. In October I ran a 5k in 8:11 pace, and I ran a mile farther, faster at this race. If that doesn't show progress, I don't know what will (again, saying that 100% to my brain that sometimes has doubts :P).

Toni ran a really strong race, and had time to snag some stellar finishing pictures of me. What a BRF!



After the race, we got in a one mile cool down, that felt hard. I looked down at my watch, and expected it to be at a quarter mile and it was at .08. I thought for sure my Garmin was wrong. Nope. Just had felt like forever. Uff. After the run, we went to the after party at the Bridges for free chili and chicken noodle soup. This race is great! I would highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't done it!

605 Series 4 Mile DNS

Last weekend was the first race in the 605 Series, and the only one of the series I planned to race! I ran long on Friday so I'd be able to race on Sunday. Buuuuuuut, my legs had other ideas. Friday evening my legs started to feel really tight. I foam rolled and sticked and took some ibuprofen before bed. When I woke up Saturday morning, I could barely move them, my IT band was so tight, my quads felt completely locked up.

I had lunch plans with a friend and just assumed they'd loosen up as the day went on. After lunch I realized, maybe that wasn't the case..... I spent more time foam rolling, took more ibuprofen, found some biofreeze, and took a two hour nap.... in the name of recovery, mind you.

I woke up, foam rolled some more and took an epsom bath. They felt a little better, finally. I texted Toni that I was going to try to do my warm up miles before the race, and decide if I'd race after that. I woke up Sunday and my legs were still super tight and painful. I turned off my alarm, mopey, and tried to go back to bed. Until I realized that I had picked up friends' packets and had to bring them to the race. Grr....

I did some more foam rolling throughout the day, but not as aggressively as the previous days, as they were still super tender to the touch and maybe I overdid the foam rolling a smidge. I really wanted to run that race, so I was doing everything I could to get there. Oh well.

I had another epsom bath and took a restorative yoga class. Monday my legs felt almost okay. I took a yin yoga class and 15 minutes of foam rolling, and my legs felt almost back to normal. I opted to take another rest day just to be sure.

So I'm back to normal, I think. This is similar IT band issues that I've had when my form is crappy during a long run or race. I think going to POWER for the first time in three weeks may have worked my glutes too hard, so they were just off completely during my long run. It's a good reminder to keep my foam roller nearby as the miles are increasing, and to make sure that my glutes are ready to rock during runs. Eeps.

605 Series 4 Mile Race Goals

Last weekend, I was looking ahead to week 3 of our training plan and fired off a frantic text to Toni, "holy crap we're racing next weekend already!" We had signed up for the 605 Race Series a few months ago, and they've been on the calendar since then, but somehow it's already the end of July and I'm just not sure how that happened!

The race series is a 4 mile, 8 mile, and 12 mile every other Sunday leading up to the Sioux Falls half. I was hesitant about signing up, because I know that "racing" 4/8/12 leading up to the half won't benefit my training, my Toni insisted we sign up, and not race them. And duh. She's totally right. The race series supports my favorite running store, their wheelchair race adventures, it's super cheap, there's awesome prizes, and even though they say it's low/no frills, I won at least 1 nice pair of running socks last year, and to me that's MUCHOS FRILLS!

The plan for Sunday's four miles includes 8 miles with 4 at tempo-ish. This is the one race of the series I'm actually planning to all-out race. I think we'll do a 2-3 mile warm up, 4 miles race and then 1-2 mile cool down.

Based on my best 3 mile of this summer, McMillan puts me at an 8:30 pace for the 4 miles. That'll be my A goal for Sunday.

My last 5k was at a 8:39 pace, so I'd be pretty happy if I could do 4 miles at that, especially if the weather is more favorable than it was on the fourth.

Otherwise, my last, and only, 4 mile race was during this series last year, and I completed it in 9:06 pace. Our tempo paces have been around 9:05-9:15 in the 100% humidity over the past few weeks, so  4 miles at tempo would still be a great workout for the day.

Either way, I'm looking forward to running and racing with a bunch of my friends and supporting our local running store.

Race Report: 605 Race Series 4 Mile

I woke up at 6am to eat some breakfast and head to town to do an early packet pick up and some warm up miles. I was really close to hitting 100 miles for the month of July so that helped me get there to do a couple of extra. I picked up my bib and headed out. It was so thick and muggy, and my head was completely full of mucus. Did that paint a vivid enough picture for you? Uff.

The warm up was a complete slog and I ended up only going 1.5 miles and being completely drenched. I did manage to get some monster snot rockets blown out during the warm up so I could breathe a little bit.

We all lined up for the race announcements and I was excited to see some of my runner friends. I found a couple of pals I thought I could try to stay with and/or keep in my sights based on our recent 5k race series times. 

We started out and I glanced down at my watch a couple minutes in to it to make sure I hadn't gone out too fast (as I tend to do, 7's? um... no thanks, not right now!) and was shocked that my labored pace was an 8:40. Uh... according to Mr. McMillan Running Calculator that should be pretty doable based on my 5k paces. Shoooooot. 

Mile 1 8:53

From there I decided just to run comfortably hard, and maybe my legs would loosen up and have some speed in them the second half of the race! (Spoiler alert: they did not have any speed or additional pep in the second half). I tried to just stay competitive in that I worked to catch people that were loosing steam in front of me.

 

Mile 2 9:15

At the turn around I glanced at my watch and saw 18:20, so my new goal was to finish around 36:40, as I knew I was fading and thought that might help me hunker down a bit. I leap frogged with a couple of gals during this stretch before one finally left me in her dust.

Mile 3 9:09

I tried to reel in a male and female that were in my sights during the final mile and tried to kick with .7 to go in the race. My mile split will tell you how slowly I must've been going for that first .3 miles. My legs just felt like lead.

 

Looking at my running form in the race pictures, I can totally tell why it felt like garbage. For some reason I've reverted back to my bad non-glute using running form. I like to refer to his as my sad panda form. Uff, my hamstrings ache just looking at it.

I finished the last .25 pretty strong, and even had a 7:20 something final kick.

Mile 4 9:08

.05 :21

My final time was 36:48 for a pace of 9:06. A PR. (auto PR, but whatevs)

 

Great start to a race series even if it was a last than fun race performance! That's a heckuva lot faster than I would've run on my own on Sunday in the humidity with a head cold!

Spring Race Plan

After a very lackluster running schedule, I opted to DNS the Houston Half Marathon. Bye bye $$$. :( Given how painful the Bemidji Marathon was while fairly prepared, I can only imagine how brutal a half marathon would be given my current running base (little to nothing). I'm truly enjoying yoga all day everyday, so I'm going to continue with that and run when I want to.

With that being said, my plan for this spring is to start back at the beginning (kinda)! Whenever I've "got back into running" I've always focused on a 5k race to shoot for. I know I'm doing great things for my body and my future running self, by strengthening areas that have given me trouble (glutes) and gaining flexibility in others (uh, everywhere, but hips especially). 

While I'm going to continue to go to yoga classes as much as humanly possible, I'd like to also start with shorter runs, lower weekly mileage, and re-introducing speed, essentially working from the ground up again. I'm hoping that by keeping my mileage low, and my goal races shorter, I can really work on keeping my form in check and find a balance between all the yoga and running.

My plan for this spring is as follows:

• 1/31/15 Frostbite Four (weather permitting). I've always wanted to run this race. It's a 4 miler in a town about 30 minutes south of me. They have multiple race routes plotted out and choose the route the morning of the race based on the direction of the wind. I think this race would be a good baseline indicator for me on a hard effort 4 miler. If it's ridiculously cold, I'll probably just go to a yoga class instead. Let's be honest. :)
• 3/14/15 Free Rebel Run 5k. I ran this 5k last year and had a blast. It's free/donation based and on one of my favorite parts of the bike trail. This is my first "goal" race of the spring. "Goal" being a loose term, but I'm going to attempt to add running back into my routine 3x/week with one speed session with a speedy-ish 5k time on this day as the game plan.
• 6/13/15 Harrisburg 10k. I love 10ks and look to have a crazy busy spring ahead of me as far as weekends are concerned, so this would be my next weekend free (insane!) in which there's a race nearby. 
• 6/19/15 Longest Day 10k (?). I have this Friday off, so if it's not a trillion degrees I may head up to Brookings and convince Megan to come run with me. :)
• 7/4/15 Firecracker 10k/5k (weather dependent). I love this race. I ran my 2nd fastest 10k there last summer. But I've also ran my 10k PW there on a hotter/more humid day. If it's gross out, I'll only make myself suffer through 5k. 
• 9/13/15 Sioux Falls half marathon. Shortly after the Firecracker race, it'll be time to start training for my 11th consecutive Sioux Falls half marathon! Wouldn't it be neat if taking things slow and steady all year long lead to a breakthrough race in September?? I wouldn't be mad... ;)

So obviously a spring marathon is out of the cards, as I had previously mentioned that Grandma's Marathon might be an option, and maybe 2015 will be the first year since I started running marathons that I won't toe the line for 26.2 miles. We'll see. There's still a little time that one could be snuck in if I feel the itch! :)