I know I am still behind on doing older updates, but I will get to them very soon. However, I recently ran a race (yes, again) and wanted to share the running details of that fun fun stuff. One of my friends, my training partner for the 70.3 Ironman, Amy, talked me into this race. Her logic was that life had been rough for me lately, so training and racing through the hard times would make my mind more at peace. She was, as usual, right. This race was one of many in a long line of recovery runs. I don’t mean that, recovery, in the sense of a physical injury. Running has always been a place where I go when I am hurting on the inside and need to heal. I tend to run more when I am down or angry, because it puts me in such a meditative state, that my brain, for once, gets a chance to relax. I guess I need racing the way an addict needs crack. At least mine is a healthy addiction. So I signed up for this half marathon which was 2 weeks after the Cherry Blossom 10 miler. I figured the 10 miler would behave like a training exercise for the ½ and my body would understand what exactly I was putting it through. Race day morning all of the runners huddled about in a parking lot with the sky looming darkly overhead as if to say, “Ohhhhh you are gonna get it today!” Runners, at least the ones who have been doing it long enough to injure something, know that races are done rain or shine. I ran my first ½ on a lightly rainy cloudy day and it actually was quite pleasant, but I have never enjoyed running in a downpour, which I have done before on training runs. At least I can say that I am adequately prepared to run in every season and every weather type. I have run through feet of snow, down pour hurricane style rain, blistering 100 degree heat, and well, everything else (i.e. - the nice stuff). While I kept on eye on the sky hoping and wishing for a break, I knew that this race would be a bit more difficult than my previous runs.
Let me start off by saying that this was the smallest race I have ever run. The Long Island Turkey trot I did last November was bigger. I kid you not. There were maybe about 200 runners total in this race. Of course this means that of my age group there were only 15 runners including myself. I knew there was not a chance in hell for me to do well in this race, but I was going to give it my best shot, like I always do. After the gun went off, we took off down the course at a quicker pace than I would have liked. I crossed the starting line within seconds of the gun going off and had to work very hard to quiet the competitive part of my brain and focus on running my race for me. I tend to get very competitive at the beginning of races, and around the halfway point I realize the race is for me and not the other runners there. I am no where’s near as good, nor will I ever be to participate in elite running, but I enjoy the run and that’s what makes me love racing. I race myself. I try to do better and be stronger each time. I try to use each running experience to make me just a little bit better of a person. But anyway, I was trying to base my pace and speed off the runners around me, a useful trick that I almost always use during a race. I also like watching the runners around me, thier habits and tricks, but by mile 3 every one had spread out so much that I was emotionally and literally alone. This was a very strange and slightly disconcerting feeling for someone who is very used to large races with many things to look at and focus on. I tend to get a bit of separation anxiety when I am running alone in a race, like I am being left behind. I also forgot my ipod (in the car, it wasn’t even at my house; it was just back at the car!), which made the run a little more unpleasant. I understand there are many runners out there who can and in fact love to run without their head phones, but for me it’s the thing that keeps my brain from focusing on the pain I am feeling while racing. I tend to zone out anyway, but my mind will keep pushing me back into reality and pain when I don’t have my music. But this time I didn’t, so I had no choice. It was one of those times where I wished I was better at mediation and yoga and could go to a higher state throughout the race and only be present spiritually for the run, especially since the sky now looked like it would crack open any minute and downpour on my shivering 5’4” frame. I decided that the easiest way to make it through this race was one foot in front of the other and focus on breathing. I have read that focusing on your breathing as your run can help with the meditative state and bring you to a closer or maybe to a higher level with running. I agree that focusing on the run can bring you to a better place, but it just doesn’t work quite right during a race, a road race especially at that. I would like to clarify that I like to be distracted when I run. My brain kind of does this sort of splitting non-sense, where part of it is rumbling over emotional issues or work drama, and the other part is very much like, “oh, look! A chicken!” Not that there is anything wrong with this, it just may seem strange to some folks. My brain is non-traditional and non-linear. I jump thoughts and topics mentally often faster than a seagull devouring a French fry. While I am running, my thoughts follow the same jumping bean pattern except faster. I do not tend to dwell for a long time on a thought, but instead my thoughts will rotate, sometimes coming back to the original set of ideas, sometimes not. During this race, I was thinking about the rain and racing with a very small group of people.
When the sky finally did crack open, it was a torrential down pour for about 30 minutes. If any of you have ever run in heavy rain, you know that running in a down pour means you will be SOAKED. Your clothing feels like lead weights and everything gets scratchy. I was grateful that I was able to find my Vaseline the night before, because it was the only reason I did not have severe rashes from my wet clothes rubbing for 2 hours against my skin. So the rain came down and I started to play games with my brain like, how long can you go before wiping your face off again? Do you think that left big toe is still dry? If you move your headband up just a tad you should be able to blow some of the water rolling down your face. Do you think that guy ahead of you is struggling as bad as you are? Basically that 30 minutes of rain, was my brain playing the little kid in the back seat of the car asking, “Are we there yet? Can I drive? Can I park it?” Very annoying, but it kept my mind off the pain I was starting to feel. As with all my races, I kept going through my mental check list of aches, pains, etc to make sure everything was doing okay. For the most part I felt all right, but I could tell the soles of my feet were starting to get sore and my right knee was starting to feel a bit of the burn from the hills. Did I mention this course had hills? Because the ENTIRE course was hills; rolling hills for miles 1 through 5, then a lovely massive hill (with a 70-80% incline) up the 1.5 miles to the turn around at mile 6.5, then back down that steep unpleasant hill and back along the rolling course for like 5 miles. I don’t understand people that enjoy running hills on the road. On the trail, I am the hill master or monster even. On the road, my knees take such an ass kicking from the hills its not even funny. This course was probably one of the hardest for me thus far, because I had no idea what I had gotten myself into. I never looked at the race or elevation maps before hand and was extremely discouraged when it finally dawned on me that this was a particularly hilly race. Because of the rolling hills and the slightly higher elevation, my knees started hurting much earlier than I had expected them to. I knew around mile 7 of the Cherry Blossom 10 miler, my knees really started to get sore, so I figured this time around I should be okay until mile 10. This time at mile 4, I felt my hip flexor start to tighten and my knees start to hurt. I gave it everything I had and somehow made it up the giant hill to the turn around. I hit the turn around at exactly one hour. I felt pretty decent about this, because it meant I went 6.5 mile in 1 hour. Hypothetically, I could finish in 2 hours, which was my goal (well, anything below 2:29 was my goal) so I was excited. This is I was excited till I remembered I had to run all the way back down the hill and back along the hilly course. Heading back down, I tried to envision a seagull gliding above the water and told myself to be the seagull. While I wasn’t feeling particularly seagull-esque, I tried to keep moving forward and not walk. While running trails and in trail races, walking is a logical, normal, and necessary part of racing. While running and racing on roads, walking is a sign of defeat. During the MCM, I kept telling myself, ‘you get to walk when you finish, that is my gift to you; you get to walk when you’re done.’ At this race, somewhere around mile 10 (the miles were not marked at all, so most of the race I had no clue where the hell, distance wise, I was), I decided that I was in too much pain and would need to start taking walk breaks. So I would walk, which at that point my right quad was shot and my knee would not bend, for about a minute and then run for five minutes. This worked pretty well and allowed me to temper the pain with the breaks. IAfter a while though, the walk breaks mostly just made the pain worse. I kept thinking it would get better, but it didn’t. My shoe felt oddly tight around my ankle and I was starting to get stomach cramps. Also when you walk, your gait is such that your knee completely extends before it bends back, that completely extension was something I just could not manage. So my walk breaks were a sort of clearly-painful hobble. I imagine that to other runners, I always look like such a sorry state during races, but once again the race is always for me. The truth of a race is between me and the road and the finish line. I have nothing to prove ever to myself other than that I gave it my best.
At the next water station, one guy yelled, “You’re almost there, just a mile left!” and another woman yelled, “You’re approaching mile 11.” This was confusing and made me very annoyed. Was I at mile 11 or 12? This is important to know when you feel like your legs are being torn off with ever step and all you want to do is stop. I was a bit irritated at the organizers of this race for that. I was still coming off the MCM (which, by the way, is the Marine Corps Marathon, I realize I say MCM a lot without explaining it), which was one of the best organized races I had ever experienced; Marines hand you water and PowerAde throughout the race in an extremely organized fashion (would you expect anything less from the military?), everything was marked so clearly, and the pre- and post-race organization was stellar (probably my favorite race thus far). Then there was the National Breast Cancer ½
I am not sure what it is at the end of the race, in which your body digs up this block of energy from no where and puts it to good use. While part of you is thinking, ‘hey, what the hell? Where was this energy that entire last half of the race where I really needed it!?!’ the other part of you is going, “COME ONNNNNNN! You can finish this strong!” Once I started racing, I very quickly decided to master the ancient awesome skill of kicking it at the end of a race. So with ¼ left to go and running almost entirely on empty, I kicked. I pasted at least 6 people on my tornado like explosion to the end of the race. I saw my friends, Amy (who finished second in her age group and about 30 minutes before me) and Jess and gave them a high five. There was no one ahead of or behind me for a good minute at least. As I sprinted toward the finish line, I heard the announcer call out, “And here we have Nicole Meistrich from
So I laid another race down and I have more in the future. Yesterday, I signed up for the Marine Corps Historic Half Marathon, which is in 3 weeks. I figured that I can’t do the full MCM this year, because of its proximity to the JFK 50, so I can at least do the half. I love racing and running. It both defines me and creates me. Each race I discover something else about myself, this time I learned that I LOVE crossing that finish line.
Till next time folks. J
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