A Zack back to taking a whack at the track like an old hack

PRE RACE:

It has been a long time since I raced.  And the last time I did, it was my one foray into the 100.  That was back in October.  So a significant time ago.

Then over the last couple of weeks, I got an itch to jump into the Boulder summer all comers track meet.  I had not done a race on the track in close to four years.

There have been countless posts on how different running a mile on the track is from an ultramarathon.  Heck, I even read a post today about how mountain races of ultra length in the US are incredibly different from each other.  I will add this:  I am a heck of a lot less nervous before the start of the few ultras I have done versus track races. 

This is not saying that I am more confident in ultras.  I know that they are going to be a long hard challenging hurtful grind.  I know that at some point I am going to be looking inward and asking myself why I feel compelled to do such events.  I will wonder if pounding myself all that distance is really good for me or my skeleton.  I guess the difference is in an ultra, it takes me a long time to getting to those sort of questions.  It is sort of like getting into a big pot of water and the heat slowly gets turned up.  Eventually you realize it is pretty freaking hot and that you are cooking.  Using that analogy, in a track race – particularly the mile or the half mile, you are dipping yourself into molten metal within the first minute.  Sure, you only have to deal with that whole experience for a couple minutes, but is sickening. 

Maybe ultimately the pain is the same as some sort of flux equation.  You get a 240 ouchie units per minute when you do a mile.  Run it in 5 minutes and you net 1200 ouchies.  You get 1 ouchie unit per minute when you run a 100 mile.  Run it in 20 hours and you get 1200 ouchies.  Or something like that. But before a track race, knowing that I am going to have to deal with that … ugh.  I get that pit in my stomach like I did when I was a kid and I knew I was coming home from school with a bad report card.  My legs feel wobbly.  I get cotton mouth of nervousness even though I am well hydrated. 

Side note, a dentist’s cold water blast to an exposed tooth nerve is off the charts more painful.  A close second is when they give you a shot to the roof of the mouth to attempt to dull that pain.

RACE
Despite there being tornado warnings, it was warm (probably mid 80s?) and sunny.  No excuses due to the weather.  I made my way to the Potts field and was reminded as to how long it has been since I had been there:  the parking lot was PAVED, there was a whole new building over there and that wood chip half mile path that used to be there was gone.  I almost immediately bumped into Lucho  with his kids and Rob and then shortly after that saw Timmy G (his 10yo daughter was running the 1500), and then Bob.

I paid my four buck entry and did about a mile warm up – super easy.  I did a couple of strides that felt slow, but too fast around 5:20 pace.  There were over 20 people registered, so they decided to break the race up into two heats.  They set a cutoff at 5 minutes initially (or about 5:20 for the mile).  I thought that was a bit of a push as to what I could do, so I was ready to slip into the slower heat.  But as that did not divide the field up well, they pushed the cutoff to 5:30 for the 1500 (or about 5:50 for a mile).  So it was back into the fast heat, and hoping that I would not get lapped. 

We watched the slower heat, and it was cool to see Rob stick his nose in it.

And then bang.  The gun goes off and you are in it.  It has not really changed.  All left turns of course.  You can hear people cheering and your name occasionally but you are somewhere else where your breathing, your heart beat, and the burn you are shoving into your body are all louder than that. 

By 100 meters in, I was at the back of the pack, with only Bob behind me (as he announced he would do).  There was a small pack of three guys in front of me, slightly strung out by the 300 mark and I made a decision to sit on that back of that as the pace seemed appropriate and even.  We hit the 400 right at 80.  Already I could feel the doubt about whether I could hold this pace and was questioning if I went too fast.  There started to be a bit of separation between me and the guys in front of me and so I recommitted to stick to them.  Bob came floating by (as he stated he would and got about 20 meters on me in the next 200).    I came through the 800 in 2:39-40.  I recall thinking at this point that this was the pace I would use to start at for SIX miles – not a single one.  Ah, whatever – third lap and time to not lose focus.  I passed some folks who had gone out a little hard for their abilities.

I can say this about being out of shape or about being out of mile shape.  When you are IN shape, you can really jack your race more than when you are out of shape.  In other words, when an 80 second quarter is all you got, there is only so much damage you can do to your race.  When you have a lot more range than that, you can go out hard, have it not feel that hard and really blow up.  So while I was coming around to the bell lap, I could feel the burn that I had not felt in a long time – I also knew that I was not really racking myself.  It was not like I could have done anything else really, but is like the lack of specific training has put a governor on me. 

I heard the bell, and recommitted.  Hit 1200 in 3:59, and for a brief moment I thought I could see Bob coming back.  With 200 to go however, he got into a battle up there.  He put up a fight that put him out of reach for me.  Somebody came buzzing by me with 75 to go and I had nothing to respond with.  I probably looked like I was carrying a fridge on my back, and I finished in 4:55 for 10th place with Bob up in about 4:52.   

Thanks to Rob to the video that highlights poor running form by several people, me included.

I was pleased with the effort given the even nature of the splits, the rattle in my lungs and the back of my throat and the taste of blood in my mouth.  I came away with exactly with what I wanted:  a hard effort, a slap in the face to my ego in terms of time, and a knowing that the next time I did this I could probably expect to shave off five seconds, just cause I was now familiar with this thing.

 

POST RACE

I jogged a mile with Bob and Tim G’s daughter Riley.  We watched the 800 (a guy went sub 2), and then I talked Bob onto the creek path for a warm down of about 5 miles (where he gloated in his win over me almost as much as he whined about the warm down).  Rob T held an apres track meet party at his place and we sat in the hot tub, shared a few beers and pizza over incredibly thoughtful and intellectually stimulating conversation.  (Rob – thanks for hosting that).

I expect to do this again this summer.  It has been too long since I have regularly enjoyed this pain.