Running Ruminations

2019’s front half carried with it a lot of stuff, as helpfully non-specific as that word is, and I felt like I had very little mental bandwidth or interest to write, which is pretty uncharacteristic. My writing mojo is slowly returning, so as bizarre or useless as it may be to write about races or training that concluded months ago, well, here we are.  

Represent Running’s 408k, the Race to the Row, is my favorite local race in SJ and one that, for whatever reason, I usually don’t end up running, despite almost always having a comped entry as part of the social media ambassador team. In fact, in the last five years, I think I’ve only run it twice, including once during my second pregnancy.

This year’s iteration fell in early February, and unfortunately, even the move from the usual March date didn’t help my cause. I have no idea why, but 3 times out of the last 5 opportunities I’ve had to run this race, I was sick with typical winter/seasonal crap (or recovering from a hemorrhagic stroke), and at this year’s iteration, I was super stubborn and insisted that I felt “well enough” to race. 

You know how this is going to end. 

Generally speaking, RR races are an excellent opportunity to see lots of your local running buddies, and the 408k is no exception. During my warm-up, I saw lots of other Wolfpack, Arete, RR ambassadors, and Strava friends, which just made the already beautiful morning even more so. The 408k was going to be a rust-buster, a way to get comfortable getting uncomfortable for the first time since the last time I had raced, all the way back in December at CIM. After some time off in December and a gradual but respectable build in January, I felt ready and excited to see what was in my legs, for the grand master plan was to use the 408k as a barometer to help direct my training for the Mountains to Beach marathon over Memorial Day weekend. 

And then I got sick, and I was stubborn as hell (and kinda dumb), and you know how these things go. 

The beautiful race day morning really couldn’t have been better (we had a freakin’ rainbow at the start line!), and, well, the sickness that brought me down for the better part of February made its presence known pretty early in the race.

It’s probably revisionist history, but I’d like to think of it as the most positive (split) run ever, starting around 8k pace and ending somewhere in the easy/recovery zone. Seeing friends and teammates on the course, racing, or alongside the course, volunteering, is always a delight at this race. After the first mile, I felt laughably horrible, but hey. I kinda got what was coming to me.  

Racing while sick, or racing while in the beginning stages of getting sick, is a pretty dicey proposition; this was definitely one of those “do as I say, not as I do” situations. If any of my training partners had been in my shoes, I would have actively told them to not run (or to not try to race-race, anyway) and instead opt to volunteer or just stay at home and get some rest. For myself, though, I was too stubborn to see the forest through the trees, and I’m sure trying to run hard in the beginning stages of sickness was just fuel for the inferno that ultimately lasted five-plus weeks. Lesson learned.

(Runners are idiots sometimes… or I am, anyway). 

As goes the girls, they had a blast in the darling 408k kids’ run! C (understandably) wasn’t keen on standing around in the rain for a while, waiting for the kids’ races to begin, so after he took off, the kids and I had a blast playing in the kids’ zone area and chatting with local friends and their children.

A had a blast hamming it up with the mascots, and G seemed to really enjoy both cheering for her sister (in the form of chasing after her) and running her own little race, herself, with her hand squarely locked in mine. Even though my race was (understandably) for shit, the girls had a great time, and that memory — not my crappy racing — is what has left such a positive experience in my mind so many months later.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the 2020 408k will fall on a weekend where I’m not beset with a nasty seasonal sickness because I love this race (and TBH, the distance) and because I’m pretty sure the girls were ready to do it all over again as soon as they were finished.

People love RR races, and with good reason, too, since they’re typically extremely well-organized and executed, offer fun swag (including race memorabilia that you’d actually want to wear), and more than anything, these races just exude a great vibe. They’re fun and competitive, which can be a tricky combination to pull off.  

If you’re in town for the 2020 edition, I’ll see you there, for this is one race I’d gladly do again and again.