USA HALF CHAMPS
Well I think I need to implement a no racing when sick policy. I've done it a few times now and am just miserable the whole time. I just didn't have the energy I needed today. I went out hard shooting for 1:04:59, which has been my goal for this race for quite sometime. First three miles were 457 457 451. And then I just hit a wall, yes I hit a wall at mile three! It got ugly very quickly and I just wanted to quit the whole time. It was like the last ten miles of a bad marathon experience, just nothing in the tank. Oh well, not much I could've done about it so I won't beat myself up. Sometimes we get sick and sometimes the timing sucks. Full report will come later.
Meanwhile huge shout out to Ogden Crew Member Jason Holt who threw down a 1.5 min PR today in 1:07:02 and was top Utahn. I am bugging him to put a report on the blog here as he is a lesser known member. So look out for that and give him a big congrats..very well deserved.
Ok, I'm home and have a computer now so here is the report.
If you followed my blog in the last week, you saw that I contracted a bad cold/flu with a high fever, chills, headache, cough, fatigue, and runny nose. It was miserable. I hoped to get well in time to race and the fever did go away as did the chills, but the rest remained. I went back and looked up my UV Half report from last summer when I raced with something similar and it brought back memories of how awful it was. I tried my best to convince myself this would turn out better. I tried to believe I could still run to my ability level.
Race morning I sat next to Jon Coyle on the bus (Jason was assigned another bus) and then we met Jason at the start line. Port a potty stop, warm-up, port a potty stop, strides, and I was ready. Or was I? I felt terrible. I was sitting there staring off into space and Jason asked if I was all right. I snapped back to reality and told him I thought it may be a long, ugly day and that I didn't feel well. The warmup was taxing at 8:30 pace. But I tried to stay positive and push all that out of my head.
Right before the gun, I think I kind of had convinced myself I could still run fast. Maybe it was getting caught up in atmosphere/moment. So I went out hard and thought I'd hold high 4:50s as long as I could. A half mile in a kid yelled out "65 pace group right here for whoever wants to work together". So Jason, another Brooks ID guy, and I joined that group. It was a good group 8-10 guys. We ran as a pack for the most part for the first 5k. The first mile felt terrible and got me worried, but mile two felt actually pretty good and I thought maybe I just didn't warm up enough and that's why mile one was tough. But then mile three got really hard (the group did drop the pace 6 seconds a mile here and I fell off the back of the pack running 4:51, they must've been 4:49-ish). Miles 1-3 4:57, 4:57, 4:51.
So I fell off the back of the pack and thought that's fine, just stay at 5:00 pace. But with no one around I fell off pace much more than that. I ran mile four in 5:04. During five Jason passed me, he had fallen just a tad back off the pack before I fell off the pack. He encouraged me to go with him, but I was content trying to stay at 5:05. Because I wasn't even certain I could hold that and was pretty sure I couldn't go 5:00. I just didn't have any zap and I was working really hard (burning fuel/energy at a quick rate it seemed).
So already I was kind of solo. It's hard to believe but just like that after a 457 457 451 504 start I was toward the very back of the race, maybe 10 guys behind me including Jake and Coyle. It was crazy how fast even the back half the race ran especially at the start.
Mile five was 5:10 and I knew I was in big time trouble. I was bleeding a lot of time with more than half the race to go. I started coming up with excuses in my head why it'd be ok to drop at the next medical tent. Mile six was 5:14, still bleeding time and working so hard, so much harder than when I average 5:14 for 8-mile aerobic builders at altitude. I realized I wasn't even half way and I chuckled so as not to cry. Amazingly my 10k split wasn't terrible it was like 31:38 I think.
The first half of mile seven I looked down and saw that I was running 5:28 pace, I knew I couldn't slow that much of else it was really going to be a disasterous result. So I tried my best to speed up and hit another 5:14, so for one mile I had finally stopped the bleeding. If only I could've kept it at 5:14!
Mile eight was 5:19 despite my best efforts. Just after eight I heard footsteps and thought for sure it had to be either Jake or Coyle. Sure enough it was Jake. I wished him well and he was gone in no time. I didn't even attempt to hang on with him, as I was already hanging on the best I could to avoid 5:20s.
In the next mile I could no longer hold off 5:20s despite my efforts and ran 5:23 for nine and then 5:22 for ten. Mile 11 had some on the only downhill in the race and it was barely even noticeable but it helped and I ran a 5:19. But 12 had the uphill offset of 11 and I barely held off 5:30 and ran 5:29. During 12 some guy passed me running probably 5:00-flat pace. Not sure what he'd been doing all race until then but he was moving very quickly.
With one mile to go all I could think was 6:00 and I can roll over and die and lay down and whatever. Just 6:00 more minutes, hold on! I ran a 5:25 and then right before I was about to make the final turn for the last 0.1 I heard footsteps behind me. Right then the announcer also said, "we should see the top female turn that corner any second now". So I thought I was seconds away from getting "chicked". And just like that I went from 5:25 pace to 4:40 pace for the last tenth. As I approached to finish I saw the tape being held for her to cross and finished hard and just held her off. Or did I? Actually it was just another guy in the men's race and she was another two minutes back. I don't know why they thought she was ready to turn that corner, but it did help my time by 4-5 seconds running out of fear...haha us men and our egos.
After I finished I found Jason and found out he ran a monster PR. A few minutes after me Coyle finished and he did just manage to hold off top female by 15 seconds. He said at one points she was ahead of him after he took a pit stop and that he had to really work hard to get back in front of her, it was pretty funny listening to him tell the story. Then I had a terrible coughing fit and basically coughed up a lung. My chest was on fire and my throat was raw. I kept dry-heaving on all the mucous from being sick. It was a miserable five minutes after the race.
I didn't do a cooldown as I had no energy and I didn't want to experience another coughing fit. My throat couldn't handle much more coughing, it hurt pretty bad.
So, fun experience minus the actual race! It's so frustrating, but what could I have done differently? I just need to not worry about it and move on. My fitness is still very good, best it's been. This race doesn't reflect my fitness and I just need to remember that. I hope to kick this illness soon as I really need some sleep and just can't get any lately with waking up with a cough every 2-3 hours.
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