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2018 Lake Health HILL YEAH! Half Marathon Race Recap – Kirtland, OH

2018 Lake Health HILL YEAH! Half Marathon Race Recap – Kirtland, OH

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Yet again the girls and I travelled to the midwest to see my family for a few weeks this summer, and yet again, I am training to run TSFM at the end of July, thus taking marathon training on the road with me. Fortunately, running is nothing, if not flexible.

Ohio-bound. That book, btw, is bizarre but so interesting.

Fortunately, there isn’t a dearth of racing options near my family, and some QT on ye olde Google before I left California pointed me to the 2018 Lake Health HILL YEAH! Half Marathon in Kirtland, Ohio, just a few days after we arrived. A half marathon five weeks out from race day and with apparently so many hills that it comprised the race namesake? Sold. That’s exactly what I want, and when I want it, in the throes of marathon training.

If you’ve been reading this space for a while now, you may remember that I am consistently a poor HM runner. Shit always seems to hit the fan for me in these races, and the typical reasons include a) being in the thick of marathon training and thus, fatigued AF (since I don’t taper for them); b) GI distress, which happens probably 9.5 times out of 10 at this distance for me for some reason; c) shitty weather (eh, nothing over which I have control); and d) course topography (I have a penchant for seeking out and doing the “hard” races). Some of that I can control, sorta, but a lot of that I can’t. It’s fine. I feel like I race one good HM every few years, so we’ve been in a drought since late 2016, IIRC. I’m a mentally tough competitor, but for whatever reason, HMs of late have just been tough nuts to crack.  

So it was without really any semblance of expectation that I signed up for this race and thought even if it’s a horrible day where everything goes wrong, at least I’ll get some good road climbing in and some good simulation for TSFM. Perhaps that’s a rather defeatist way of approaching this HM challenge, but it is what it is. In the days preceding the race, Coach Lisa asked me how I wanted to approach it, and we both agreed that making it into a strong workout would be worthwhile and valuable at this point in my training. I had zero interest in going for a PR attempt here (see all the aforementioned reasons a paragraph earlier; my eyes are on a different prize right now), but if I was going to be driving nearly an hour each way, I wanted to at least make good use of my time.

Come race day, I arrived to the little farmpark area that hosted the half marathon and half marathon relay’s start and finish line, picked up my bib and shirt, and felt pretty chill: no race day nerves, a healthy bit of excitement to be doing a workout in the company of a lot of other people, but more than anything, just good ol’ gratitude to be there and to have the opportunity at all. That stuff is never lost on me. I ran a couple mile warm-up and quickly determined that it was going to be a humid race (add that challenge to the hills that we’d be encountering, why not?), making me pretty happy to be doing a workout and not actually racing-racing.

I like the sentiment here, but isn’t this inaccurate? shouldn’t the pic be of a sheep?? (or say imaginatooooootion)???

The race plan was to run the first five miles at goal marathon pace + 10 seconds; run the next five miles at HMRP for 3 minutes on, 2 minutes off; then run the final 5k at “GO!” I liked this approach because it’d give me a lot of opportunity to get a feel for changing gears many times mid-race which, conveniently, is my usual strategy at TSFM to help account for the changing elevation. 

I recalled reading in the course description that the entire course was rolling and that the two significant climbs were around miles four and eight. Most of the run was on backcountry roads (that were still open to traffic but were heavily patrolled by local police, thankfully), but there were a couple jaunts into some local preserves — first the Chapin Forest Reservation and later, the Penitentiary Glen Reservation —  with the former making me think of the Santa Cruz XC course, what with the super tall trees and just beautiful canopy. It was 85% a road race but still had a good mix of hilly trail stuff thrown in there for good measure with those two reservations and the starting/finishing area at Lake Metroparks. The mix was really awesome and not something that I’ve really experienced before in a race of this distance.

Running a really specific workout like this in the throes of a race atmosphere is an excellent test of patience. It was initially tough to not chase down the 10 or so women who flew off the line, but I reminded myself of what I was there to do that day. I felt good during my MP mileage (and came in a little hotter than necessary for some), and during the climbing around mile four through the preserve, I felt really strong and passed many runners. Once I finally finished the first 5 mile bit of my workout, I quickly transitioned into the HM portion and came in HOT, thanks to the surge of adrenaline, the opportunity to pass a lot of other women who had been in front of me for a while, and with the boost of a slight downhill right off the bat. It was fun to keep changing gears — going from running at HMRP for a few minutes and then slowing it down to recover — and the fun was sometimes compounded by whatever the topography was at the moment. Running fast is obviously a lot harder on steep uphills than it is on downhills, and similarly, it’s hard to recover when you’ve got a looming descent calling your name. Again: patience. Heed the plan. Trust. Trust. Trust.

I think this was exiting one of the reservations, but I can’t recall which one.

Somewhere in the second five mile portion of my workout, the skies completely opened up out of seemingly nowhere and just rained buckets on us. It was so humid earlier that the downpour felt pretty nice, but man, that came out of nowhere! WTH, Midwest?! I was so impressed with all the AS volunteers just taking in the rain — most of whom didn’t have any raincoats or ponchos — because while it felt great while running in it, I think it would have been kinda cold to stand around in. I thanked every volunteer and police I saw because it can be boring to stand around waiting for runners to come through, and in shitty weather, it can be positively miserable. They did us all such a huge solid.

While that first big hill at mile four, through the forest preserve, was definitely a challenge, I thought the second big one was actually a lot more manageable, perhaps because it was on roads and not on trails. The good and bad thing about running somewhere unfamiliar is that you have no idea where you’re going — particularly if your internal GPS is a bit unreliable, ahem — and even with the supposed “big hills” behind us, and the bulk of my workout done, that last 5k of any half can be positively brutal. By mile 10, I had taken two or three SiS gels — one at zero, right before the start; then one again around mile 5-6; then one more around 8-9, I think — and I think it was after mile ten that the meteorological gods again showed up to party and dumped more buckets on us. Cool.

I hadn’t seen a woman in front of me for a while, and I hadn’t heard any immediately behind me, either, but I was clinging to hope that I may be able to finish high in the women’s field, provided I didn’t totally tank on the final 5k. Of course, we had more rollers right up until the very end, and around mile 11, we landed in front of our starting area at Lake Metroparks and passed through the starting area to run in the park behind where we began. In doing so, our last couple miles were on the farm property and through some just beautiful tree canopy again and close enough to the finish line that we could hear it before we could see it.

the view from the last 1.5 or so, in the farmpark area (the race’s staging ground). I took this and the next during my CD, when I went back out and ran the last couple miles of the race in reverse.

 

The view over the last mile or so at the farmpark

I was feeling pretty tired toward the end, and by mile 12, I felt like I was tanking fast. Naturally, out of nowhere, a young girl, probably high school-aged, showed up and passed me, running scared and looking behind herself periodically to see how far back I was. I tried to stay with her and catch her but didn’t succeed, cursing myself for not taking that last SiS I had in my pocket earlier. I had no idea if she were a relay runner or a HM, but I tried to close the gap as much as I could over what felt like an endless mile through a field before one last tiny incline and then a downhill finish.

It wasn’t until somewhere late in the race that I flipped my watch screen over to see my time and saw that I’d probably come in right around 1:40, +/- a few minutes, which is typically my HM split during a marathon. Once I realized this, I tried to finish as close to 1:40 as possible and juuuuuuuust missed it — 1:40:10 — but was satisfied. I had a solid workout and accomplished that which I wanted to, for the most part, even if I felt like I had begun to tank with a mile to go, attributable to stupid fueling choices on my part.

completely and utterly drenched after 3 downpours and a very humid morning. notice the cowbell medal that’s an actual bell!

I checked the results and learned that I was in the top 25 finishers for the half, and after I ran a few more easy cool-down miles — after getting poured on again (third time, if you’re keeping count) — I came back and learned that I had won the woman’s side! I accepted my award from the RD, a white envelope in which I assumed was a gift certificate to one of the local stores, and it wasn’t until I was beginning to drive away that I checked and realized I earned some cash money for my efforts. How completely unexpected and generous!

Dry clothes (well, up top, anyway) FTW. I was really surprised to learn later that I had earned cash because the website specifically said that this year’s race wasn’t offering cash prizes as they had in previous years.

Overall, it was a great morning. Not only did I get to race workout against the elements of humidity (which was tough) and pouring-buckets-rain twice mid-run (which was a welcome cut to the aforesaid), but I also did so against the backdrop of a tough course (about 800′ gain) five weeks out from my goal marathon and on untapered legs. You can see how the workout shook out at my Garmin notes, if you want some numbers. 

the rain and humidity made my braid nearly double in size, resulting in an impressive squirrel nest. nothing that some copious amounts of conditioner can’t fix!

If you’re ever in the area, I’d definitely recommend this race. It’s affordable, well-organized, logistically very easy, has a challenging but totally doable elevation profile, and offers some nice little amenities like a tech shirt (that my seven year-old loves and wears almost nightly to bed), free race pics, and (this year, anyway) an actual cowbell medal. The weather’s a gamble — late June in Ohio, of course it’s going to be — so just consider that as one more notch you can earn on your mental toughness belt (or whatever). Doing hard things is fun. This race is a great opportunity for that. 

Five weeks from TSFM!  

April 2018 Training Recap

April 2018 Training Recap

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The difference a month can make is pretty incredible. In my March training recap, I opined that all month long, I was hoping that things — running and life in general — would continue to feel like normal and that I could put all the “stroke stuff,” for lack of a better phrase, behind me. A month later, now heading into May, I am ecstatic to say that as far as I am concerned, life is — and feels — normal.

normal.

A mental shift occurred sometime this past month — fortunately — because until then, as irrational as it is, I often entered each weekend feeling a bit anxious and scared and just stewing on the fact that OMG X number of weeks ago today was the stroke. X number of weeks ago was when everything got upended. It was as though I was dreading each Sunday because it was on a Sunday that the stroke happened, as though somehow, Sunday rolling around each week again was going to put me at a greater risk for future strokes (irrational, right?). (Imagine what it must have felt like to drive back to Sacramento, on a Sunday, for a race in early April, since that was the same setting just a handful of weeks earlier when I actually had the stroke). Anyway. Sometime this past month, some sort of transition happened. I went from sorta fearing the weekends to a couple days ago, on the last Sunday of April, actually looking at a calendar and realizing oh. It has been 12 weeks, three months in a few days. Okay. I don’t want to overstate the importance of this mentality shift, but I have a hunch it’s pretty damn important for my post-stroke psychological recovery. It’s beginning to feel less like it happened and more like it was just a weird-ass, very life-like dream.

hello to downtown SJ behind us, from Sunday’s 18 miler up in the ARP foothills. It wasn’t until I was home and done with this run that I realized that for once, I hadn’t at all stewed over the otherwise mundane fact that it was a Sunday. I smell progress. (PS, people in this picture are training for marathons, Ironmans, a World Championship 50 miler and representing a country in the process, and a 100 miler! I feel like a slacker)

…that is, until I talk to insurance each week. The insurance company and I have this completely ridiculous song-and-dance routine that consists of me calling them each week, usually on Thursday, to find out the status of a bunch of outstanding claims. I am literally on a first-name basis with two different insurance reps at this point, women who are “handling” my “case” while things get “investigated” or “researched.” Eyeroll, eyeroll, eyeroll. As you can imagine, I satisfied our family deductible pretty quickly by being in ICU for a week, but because of some mistake somewhere — honestly, what I’m guessing amounts to someone’s clerical error — insurance thinks that I’m going to pay in the upwards of $15k out of pocket for costs that they are claiming were out-of-network but weren’t because of that whole emergent care detail that supersedes everything else. Yeah, nope. 

I am usually pretty excellent about compartmentalizing my life — be it family stuff, school stuff, Girl Scout stuff, stroke stuff, running stuff, whatever — but my weekly insurance call is the one time that I can’t *not* think about the fact that yeah, no, that stroke thing apparently wasn’t a dream; it actually did happen. While I luckily don’t have the physical repercussions from it, I still get to deal with insurance bullshit until The Unknown Person(s) gets their act together and fixes things. It’s so very annoying.

There was a time not that long ago when talking to insurance each week would wreck me and leave me pretty emotionally distraught; friends, let me assure you, you haven’t lived until you’ve cried on the phone with a health insurance company because you’re so enraged over someone else’s incompetence. I could go so long without thinking about or ruminating over the fact that this bad thing happened to me, but lo and behold, every week when I’d make this phone call, reality struck me in the face and reminded me that it wasn’t all a bad dream. In fact, for many weeks post-stroke, it would take the better part of the day the work up the gall to make the call to find out WTF was going on. Honestly, sometimes I’d only phone in if I were having a shitty day in the first place because talking to Those People all but promised to put me in a sour mood for the rest of the day. These days, fortunately, the tears have turned more to the direction of action (and anger, for better or worse), compelling me to stay on the phone on hold in the upwards of an hour+ if need be so someone, anyone, The Unknown Person(s), can get this crap straight. It’s amazing what we can accomplish when we’re put on hold, gang!

This whole ordeal is so, so frustrating and infuriating, but if bitching about insurance 3 months after having a stroke that could have ended me is the only thing that I’m complaining about, then I have it pretty good. It angers me to no end though that this is what we apparently have to do in the United States in the year 2018. There is so much that is so profoundly wrong with this situation.  

In other random bodily systems news, with our insurance switch in 2018 came all new providers, and included in that mix was a new GI for me. Long story short, she completely refuted my former GI’s microscopic colitis diagnosis, so in the past month, I’ve begun another battery of tests to figure out WTF is going on with my insides at any given time. So far it sounds like my intestines are about on the same level as that of a newborn; basically, my guts are just hyper little bastards that don’t ever apply the brakes when they should, amounting to a vicious eat-then-poop-eat-then-poop cycle all the time. You’re welcome. More tests throughout May should help elucidate things a bit.

filed under things I’d rather not do again: chug barium

But in the running compartment of my life — which is what we’re all here for, anyway, right? — April was really good to me. I posted just over 180 miles for the month (183), raced at the Sactown 10 miler, the Silicon Valley half, the Food Truck 5k (taking third!), and started building my long runs in earnest (on trails!) with Janet as she ramped up her MTB training. Meeting and running with Meb was as awesome as I had hoped it would be, too. Nestled in the mix of all my own running this month was my eldest daughter’s Kids’ Race at the Food Truck 5k as well as her first triathlon of 2018 this past weekend (RR forthcoming!), so suffice it to say that weekends were fairly busy, yet super gratifying, in mi casa.

from the kids’ race at the SV half weekend

 

finishing up a 16 miler in ARP and honing those ever-important “taking selfies while running” skillz

The end of April and beginning of May also marked the beginning of SF Marathon training, which is pretty exciting. I feel like I’m in a good place physically and mentally at this point and look forward to training and to seeing what I can do this cycle. Marathon training cycles can often be great teachers, and I’m just elated to begin the grind again.

—

 

Reading: There’s a lot of really good stuff out there right now. I really enjoyed Endure and wrote a recap of it earlier in the month. Tara Westover’s Educated was also really good but also incredibly sad and pretty disturbing, if you ask me; honestly, I was pretty pissed most of the time I read the book (but I’ll refrain from saying anything so as to avoid spoilers). I’ve gotten through most of Meb for Mortals since Meb signed a copy for me and like it a lot as a solid resource for training, though it’s not exactly something you’d read all the way through as you would a regular book. In the past couple days, I’ve also started Deena Kastor’s Let Your Mind Run, which I’ve really enjoyed and will likely recap sometime in May. Maria Shriver’s I’ve Been Thinking has been satisfactory so far, and I’ve really liked Enlightenment Now, though I think I’m going to have to renew it several times before I actually finish it.

major life points unlocked

Life: Lots of running but also lots of fun and exciting family and home stuff was the norm for April: enjoying spring break with the kids at home; getting new floors and replacing our beat-up carpeting; flying down to LA to see my childhood BFF for about 18 hours; following along from afar the craziness that was Marathon Monday; and surely more that I’m forgetting. April was the beginning of the end of the school-year, and I think it just made everything feel as though it was moving at light-speed at any given time. Experience has taught me that if I think April is fast, just wait until May…

spring break, new floors, and QT in the kitchen (once there was flooring down)

Listening: Every post-Boston podcast I’ve listened to was just awesome, particularly with Sarah Sellers, Boston’s 2nd place woman finisher. I still haven’t made it through all the post-Boston episodes, but I’ve really liked those I’ve heard so far. I love how so many non-professional runners just owned the day and ended up finishing on some of the biggest stages of their lives. That’s just an incredible storyline.

Racing: April meant the inaugural Silicon Valley half and Food Truck 5k for me and the Kids’ Run for my eldest, as well as the Sactown 10 miler for me. I was going to run another PA race, the Stow Lake 5k at the end of the month, but opted to stay home and run long instead, which I think was the right decision, even if it meant missing the fun social opportunities that race day provides. Right now, I don’t have any racing plans on the calendar for May, just good ol’ fashioned marathon training. It’ll be great. Do I write weekly training recaps, now that I’m beginning training? Or just keep it in this monthly format? Does anyone even care? Decisions…

the blue hour’s my fav.

Watching: Anytime I include this section, it just makes me realize exactly how little TV I watch or how infrequently I see movies. It’s sorta pitiful. I am, however, looking forward to Deadpool 2 (is that even what it’s called?) coming out in May, and we already have double feature date night tickets.

Writing: A fair bit here last month with all the race recapping and book reviewing, plus a healthy volume of freelance stuff. It’s all feast or famine with the latter, and it seems to be freaking Thanksgiving right now, luckily.

Anticipating: Everything. It’s that time of year.

no fun to be had in the woods. no fun at all. (PC: Saurabh, I think)

Dreading: An obnoxious and super restrictive GI test I get to have done at the end of the month. Basically, if I understand it correctly, if I have diarrhea at all in the weeks preceding the test, that could alter my results (ok, so that’s already surely strike one against me). For about 2 days before the test, I can only consume plain white rice (and a bunch of meat and poultry that I wouldn’t eat) because … something about results getting skewed otherwise … and then the day of, I think have to fast for about 12 hours prior to the test. This will be after another test I get to do that’ll have me at the doctor’s office (with my two year-old in tow) for a good 3+ hours doing various breath tests to test for … something. I’m not even sure, to be honest. Sounds pretty rad, right? I swear I’m keeping the medical establishment in business.     

May!