Running Ruminations

In the five or so months that I’ve been absent here, I have been somewhat quietly training for a marathon, my first since the pandemic began; the unnecessary hedging here is that if you follow my training, it was obvious that I was in road marathon training mode. I just haven’t devoted time to capturing it here due to a predictably-packed schedule from January until now, the end of the school-year. 

I won’t bury the lede, so here goes. My thirty-fifth marathon (!) on Sunday, the 2022 Mountains 2 Beach, from Ojai to Ventura, CA, was my slowest in over a decade, if not the slowest in about 14 years (I should fact-check that, but it sounds right), and it was hella memorable. Forty-eight hours post-race I’m a little gutted about how the day transpired, but the gratitude for the experience – albeit soooo profoundly far off my hopes and expectations as it is – outweighs any feelings of disappointment or gutted-ness. The experience was great. The race was terrible.

One of the bad things about not writing regularly is that there’s almost always a lot of catching up, a lot of side stories to help better orient the reader as to what (or how) the heck whatever happened, happened. My attempt… 

After the 50k in November, I took a few weeks-a month of very low-key, low-volume running and picked up Pilates Reformer and chair class two-three times a week at the gym. Post-50k, bodily I felt strong and well, though I knew that I needed to be much more intentional about diligently doing any ancillary work, much more so than I have been in the past, that whole aging thing and all. A 55’ Pilates class a few times a week made a lot of sense, and I quickly felt like it was complementing my running, and I began to feel stronger than ever.

I ran the ‘19 M2B and signed up for ‘20 without much hesitation, determined to have a better, GI-malady-free day the next go ‘round. Of course, the pandemic precluded both the ‘20 and the ‘21 version from manifesting, so ‘22 it was. When I started to think about how I wanted to train for this year’s race, I decided to get a coach again, since I had trained myself for the 50k from about July-onward. I connected with Tanya from ITR, whose experiences in both roads and trails I thought would be a good fit for my goals, and I began training under her tutelage around mid-January, 16 or so weeks out from the race and with all the volume from 2021 and 2020 under me. Between her training and the aforementioned Pilates, I have never felt stronger or faster, so I was thinking (hoping) if I had a fantastic day at M2B, I could destroy my 3:19 PR and get closer to sub-3:15, possibly not far north of 3:10. I feel like I’ve chronically underperformed at this distance, so I wanted to take a big swing and see what happened on race day.

M2B communicated about a month out from its original race weekend (Memorial Day) that an unforeseen scheduling/staffing conflict with the Ventura Police Department meant that the race would have to be delayed a week, to the first weekend in June. It was fortunately inconsequential for me, since I was driving down anyway; luckily, I was able to change hotels for the new weekend and didn’t have a conflict with the kids’ stuff that weekend. Many people were unable to run on the new race weekend though (including Erica and many of my Wolfpack teammates), which was disappointing. If I were flying in and using this as a destination race, I would have been pretty upset at the somewhat last-minute change in plans.

In the literal final two weeks leading up to the race, the beginning of my taper, my youngest came down with a nasty upper respiratory (non COVID) bug that had her coughing, sneezing, and snotting all over the place, impressively and non-stop. Without fail, days later, my husband came down with it as well, and despite my best and numerous attempts to steer clear of them and their viral factories working overtime, by Friday night, the week before the race, my symptoms began: sore throat that felt like fire when I swallowed (Friday-Saturday night), relentless coughing anytime I tried to go horizontal (Sunday-Friday), post-nasal drip that left me gagging, and having no voice whatsoever from Monday-Wednesday, which was super fun because I talk all day. Many negative COVID tests (antigen and PCR alike) and a video visit with a PCP all but confirmed that it was one of the many URIs circulating right now – evidenced by the bare shelves in the cold/flu aisle at CVS, as C later learned – and that it was just a matter of time before it cleared. I just had to wait, and hope, and hope some more that it would be gone in time for my race.

What’s strange is that relatively speaking, I actually felt pretty good for those 10 days pre-race. I was still following my taper schedule and checking-in with my coach pretty regularly about my symptoms (the most annoying of which, besides not having a voice, being that I’d lose 45’ of sleep each night to nonstop coughing), so I felt fairly certain that I’d still be able to race on Sunday morning because all things considered, I felt …fine 🤔🤷

I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea – HUGE RED FLAG FOR NEXT TIME, SELF – but I figured after a solid 4 ½ months of really good training, I couldn’t *not* go and see what happened. I wanted to take a big swing, to try to bet on myself and my training (and my body), because if nothing else, I’d have an answer for my little n of 1 experiment on “can I race a marathon, with really good training under me, after having a URI 10 days out from the race?” 

You can probably see where this is going. 

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There are a lot of frustrating burns to this recap, and one is that for a 2:30am wake-up on Sunday morning (to allow me enough time to get to downtown Ventura for my 4am shuttle to Ojai – they wanted runners parking and congregating by 3:30 at the latest), I slept the best I had all week on Saturday night! Throughout the week, I had been throwing the veritable sink at my bug, including Sudafed, Mucinex, Flonase, Tessalon, and chlorpheniramine, AND drinking so much water and tea that I was convinced I was going to go hyponatremic before the week was done, AND napping on a near-daily basis. Saturday night was the only night all week wherein my sleep wasn’t punctuated at the same interval as a newborn’s feeding schedule. It was an auspicious beginning to a big day, I thought for sure. 

I met up with my teammates (Krystal was running the full, Coach Lisa was there to support and hype on bike, Kylie was running the half – her first!, and Maria was also running the half), and it was nice to see familiar faces so early in the morning. We had met up the night before for dinner – our group being a fraction of the original size, thanks to the race date change and all – and the positive energy and excitement was lovely. 

Krystal and I rode out to Ojai in the darkness and hung out until the race began at 6am. It’s so nice to have company at these endeavors because if you’re lucky like I was, you get to catch up with people you rarely get to see 🧡🐺🖤 and because of course, it helps keep the nerves at bay. We chatted, went to the porta-potties a hundred times, and ran a little 5’ shakeout before we lined up in Corral 1. As much as I can remember from registering for this race roughly forever ago, I think everyone in Corral 1 said that they were shooting for a 3:15 or sub. 

Aaaaaaand then we waited. For about 15 minutes. 

I’ve done enough races to know that races won’t begin until the course is cleared and safe, so I didn’t think much of the delay, annoying as it was. The weather was very comfortable in the low 50s in my crop and shorts, and I figured it was better to just wait and be safe rather than have a potential catastrophe unfold mid-race because of an errant driver. Once we finally began, Krystal and I split up pretty quickly because I wanted to hang back and treat the first couple miles gingerly, knowing that the first 5k or 10k was a net up, based on my ‘19 experience. I was pretty surprised to see that my first couple miles split at mid-8s – I was thinking it’d be closer to 7:50s/8 – but at that point, because it was so early (and again, the net up), I didn’t think too much about it. 

Curiously though, before the mile 2 marker, I saw two guys about 20” ahead of me bolt over to the left side of the road. In the middle of the road stood a large, white, rectangular sign saying COURSE ← , but all the runners were heading straight still, instead of turning left as the sign seemed to indicate. I heard them yell over to the volunteers positioned at the street something like “Hey! Aren’t we supposed to turn left here?” (on Gorham Rd), to which the volunteers quickly said no. The runners said that that was confusing because of the aforementioned sign on the street, but we kept all following the people in front of us. As we passed Gorham on the runners’ left, I could see another sign on the right side of the road (after one would make the L turn onto Gorham) that said RUNNERS STAY RIGHT, which, again, was curious because if we weren’t supposed to go on that street, why was that sign there? 🕵️

As it turned out, apparently a lead bike or police escort made a mistake. We missed Gorham entirely, so by the time we did the hard hairpin OAB turn on McNell, the course markers were off relative to everyone’s GPS. (And obviously, I’ve done enough races to know that most people’s watches don’t perfectly align with the course markers, making some people claim that “the race was long” or “the race was short” or whatever. This was a legit mistake, however). For the rest of the race, almost to the hundredth of a mile every single time, my watch was ahead of the course markers by .41 miles. 

I ran along, planning to ease in, and for the life of me, I couldn’t understand what was happening. I had great training behind me, a solid taper, good sleep, new race day carbon shoes (that I had put ~40 miles in the previous month, only in workouts): why (or how) was I seemingly unable to break from a mid-8 pace to something more than 30 seconds faster? 

By about mile 4 or 5, I ran into Leah, a lovely runner from the south bay I met at a Meb signing a few years back, and we chatted for a couple downhill miles where I finally broke from 8s into squarely 7:40s, downhill, and felt absolutely terrible. There was no pain or anything like that, but I just felt completely and utterly gassed. It was an unfortunate reminder of how I felt at this year’s Silicon Valley half (I didn’t write a RR for it, but the plan was to try to run MP for it/faster than MP, but instead, on the day, it was a purely aerobic/easy LR effort because I felt similarly gassed and spent, likely from cross-country travel the day and other life extenuating circumstances). What were the odds that on race day for literally the only two races I’ve done this year, I’d end up feeling like hell on both days?? 

Apparently, the odds were very high and most definitely not in my favor.

By the 10k mark, I felt like my body was giving me all types of today’s a great day for an easy-paced recovery run! signals, as though it had decided that today, of all days, would be a most excellent day to run a marathon, recovery pace, to recover from … marathon training. Damn. I debated DNFing but decided against it because the race logistics would preclude it; so much of the course is on rural roads or on a rural bike path, and I had no phone, cash, cards, or any way to get myself back to Ventura. I figured that as much as I didn’t want to do it, literally running my way to Ventura was probably going to be my best option.

I kept wondering how Krystal was doing – I never saw her at the one time the marathoners would see each other on an OAB portion in Ojai – and how Kylie and Maria were doing at the half (that had a different starting location, but the same starting time). I did the only thing we ever can do in races when things aren’t going our way – put one foot in front of the other, over and over again –  and in time, the 3:25 pace group caught me, then the 3:35, and then the 3:40. As runners passed, I heard rumblings about the course markers being off, and I heard one pace group leader saying that the markers were off simply because the course had to be rerouted due to road maintenance issues. Much of the middle miles that were on rural roads in ‘19 were instead on the bike path this year, which was actually pretty nice in terms of the shade it offered but less desirable in terms of the even sparser spectator support, encouragement, and distraction. 

A couple times along the run, I saw Kelli, another woman I knew from the south bay who had recently moved to Seattle, and I was surprised to see her when and where I did, making me think that maybe something was wrong or that she was hurt. It wasn’t until much later in the race, around the 20 mile marker, that we started chatting about how our races were going (not as planned) that we began running together for a while. It made the miles tick by much more quickly than they would have if I continued to be by myself in what felt like no-man’s land. 

Shortly after mile 21, I saw Taryn (a total surprise! Hadn’t seen her since SFM way back when) cheering for her athletes, and soon enough, we were running through downtown Ventura on the very streets where I had run the day before on my shakeout run. The temps were definitely warmer this year than when I last ran this race in 2019, but at the same time, they also felt pretty comfortable since SJ had recently experienced a series of infernal, 90+ degree days. In the final mile of the race though, I saw a runner passed out on the side of the road, with ashen-colored skin, legs going the wrong way, with an EMT over her, saying her name. Warm/summer races can get so dicey, so quickly. It can be scary, for sure.

And before too long, my 26.2 mile unplanned recovery run – my marathon recovery run from marathon training – wrapped up … and then I finally hit the finish line at about 26.71 miles. Unintentional ultra 🙃

Marathons are such strange experiences. I love them. I do. I genuinely love the training, and typically, I love the experience of running 26.2 miles, even if the race goes sideways a million different ways between the start and finish lines. No matter how many times I’ve run the distance, and regardless of how the race ultimately fares, part of me is always somewhat bewildered by it when it’s all said and done. It’s equal parts why the hell do I do these things again, I can’t believe I just ran from Point A to Point B (in this case, Ojai to Ventura), and I can’t wait to do it again. Admittedly, this time around my mind was more heavily leaning toward the why the hell do I do these things again camp, but as it usually goes, 48 hours later, those feelings are beginning to diminish. 

I stayed in the finisher’s chute so I could cheer Kelli in, and while there, I chatted with Coach Lisa and got the run-down on how my teammates fared. Shortly after, I ran into Leah as well, and we all traded war stories from the day and compared experiences between Ojai and Ventura. Sweaty hugs are the best type, IMO. 

And before too long, I packed up at my overpriced and unfortunately smoky hotel (100% smoke-free my ass, LQ!) and slowly but surely made my way back to SJ. I couldn’t shake this weird feeling I had when I was leaving for this race. It eventually dawned on me that this was my first time away from the family in three years, literally since the last time I ventured south to run this race. The time away, and the trip itself, was lovely. My race itself, as far as anticipated versus actual outcome, was pretty terrible, but that’s ok. If nothing else, it’s fuel to the fire for the next go. 

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Admittedly, a few days post-race, this has been a fairly mixed-bag experience to write and talk about. Part of me just throws my hands up in the air, asking the universe WTF. I most definitely don’t think I’m owed anything – part of racing is managing the day as it unfolds, regardless of how you think or envision it looking – but holy moly, it’s wild to consider that I just ran my slowest race in over a decade, despite what I think (read: know) to be really strong training, arguably my best yet. Rationally, I know that getting sick 10 days out from my race with an URI could have very well taken it out of me and left me with little to nothing come race day, especially when I was insisting for the week leading up to the race that I was fine. Emotionally though, it’s like I can’t connect the dots between really good training and kinda shitty race day. It just doesn’t compute.

One of the many burns here is that throughout this training cycle, I worked a lot on the self-belief, mental aspect of training. In the past, it has taken lots of trial and error to learn to get out of my own head, to get out of my own way. It has come up time and again when I’ve been tasked to do a hard workout, and I convince myself that for whatever reason, I can’t do it, and then the mental self-sabotage begins and I kinda spiral.

Fortunately, more often than not, these days I’m more inclined to say fuck it and just go for it, along the way figuring out that either way, I come out ahead: it’ll go better than anticipated, which is a nice surprise, or even if it goes down in flames, it’s still feedback for training. I once saw a shirt at a swim meet that said something like “one of two things happen at every competition: I win, or I learn. Either way, it’s progress” or something to that effect. It’s so true! I have begun to feel the same during training; kowtowing to fear of failure doesn’t make a lot of sense anymore. Just keep the thing, the thing, and just go do it. More running, less thinking about running. This is supposed to be fun and hard; it’s what makes it enjoyable and what keeps me coming back for more.

And yet. When I was wallowing in the early stages of the race, I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that maybe my relationship with racing has changed as a result of the pandemic, or maybe it’s simply still not where it was before. In both races that I’ve run this year, SV half and M2B, on race day, it’s like my body clammed up and threw any notion of racing-racing out the window. I have reasons and justifications for each, ones that I think are valid and definitely real, but I can’t help but wonder if maybe deep down, my heart is more interested in the training – the getting lots of little victories along the way, and working really hard when energy is low and I’m continually adding to the ever-growing cumulative fatigue – than I am in the racing. 

Of course I can’t find it now, but in the aftermath of Keira D’Amato (love her) setting the women’s AR in the marathon at Houston this year, I once read her quote about how liberating running and racing is once you decide that race day is just that, another day. Runners tend to put race day on this magnificent pedestal, and it’s really unnecessary. Freeing yourself from the pressure – self-induced or otherwise – to perform on this one Very.Big.Day allows you to enjoy it more and, possibly, surprise yourself with what you can do. I can’t help but wonder if maybe I’ve got some weird cognitive dissonance going on, knowing that my training is there to have myself a day, but for whatever reason, on the day it matters, I’m somehow subconsciously choosing to just opt out. 

… or maybe I’ve just had shit timing with the two races I’ve done this year, and I’m overthinking this all because I want a clean reason, a clear cause for every effect in my running. 

—

The best is yet to come; I know I have more to give. It’s frustrating that I couldn’t make the withdrawal last Sunday at MTB and have the payday that I was envisioning for nearly five months. I couldn’t cash in on the day, but I will sometime, of this I have no doubt. 🐺🧡🖤🧡

Marathon #35 (Garmin), what a memory.