Math is hard, and its consequences: a race recap

Folks, an order of business before we get to your (somewhat) regularly-scheduled blog post: a Boston Marathon and Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge fundraising update! We are just one month out from Patriot's day and today I received my number (17512) and wave/corral (3/2). I'm feeling pretty fit at this point but this last month will be key for honing and maintaining my fitness and motivation. I'm headed to Boulder this week to train at altitude and gain some speed by osmosis from all the crazy fast runners up there. More importantly though, is that my fundraising is really coming along! Also today I hit $7,000 and I'm hoping to close the gap to $10k soon. If you haven't donated yet, I urge you to take a look at my fundraising page here and donate whatever you can to help raise money for cancer research.

Speaking of marathon training, let's talk about long runs. They're long and often take a lot of mental energy to even just begin. For this reason, "tune up" races are very attractive to those of us crazy enough to give up hours of our free time just put one foot in front of the other at a considerable speed. It was with just this in mind that a colleague and fellow Boston bound runner suggested that we tackle an "18 mile" race together. I said sure and didn't think much of it. Unfortunately for her/fortunately for her family, her son's hockey team made it into playoffs that day so I ended up flying solo.

I did not have big expectations for this race, Stu's 30k, and had a vague plan to negative split the run. I didn't anticipate going out fast but as I eavesdropped the conversations at the starting line, I realized that I could do better than I had initially anticipated. I headed out at a little over 8:00 ppm and settled in with a group of runners. Nothing particularly exciting to report from the first half of the race except for the running commentary (pun intended) by these men. First he mentions, to no one in particular I believe, an interview with some "little known" runner who is making her marathon debut at Boston. She runs for adidas, he said, but his mispronunciation of the brand both piqued my interested and pissed me off. He was talking about Neely Spence Gracey who, if you follow the elite running world in any capacity you would know, is not all that up-and-coming. A few miles later, I was leading this same man and one other in a triangle formation (I'd say that they were drafting off of me but both had a big height advantage on me), and the first comments to the second that I have great running form. "Yeah, she runs real tight," the second replies. (Okay, WHAT does this mean!?) The first responds that maybe he would run as spritely as I do if he were 50 lbs lighter. I turn around and flash a smile at them, and then take off.

It felt like I started to find my stride around 12 miles, when I was comfortably hitting 7:30-7:45 per mile. The weather had warmed up and the sun was out. I made sure to take water every chance I got, especially after I ate each GU. I could feel the end of the race coming up and was excited that my legs were really responding well. But here's when that starts to break down. Sharon, my colleague, had sold this race to me as an 18 mile training run. The race was actually 30 kilometers. As I tell my Spanish students frequently, I am not that good at math. I have, however, run for long enough that I can convert metric to imperial, and I soon realized that this finish line that I was chasing was actually significantly farther than I had figured. When at mile 15 I tried to kick for the last 5k, my legs started to resist. Together, we faced a long and winding hill, and as I rounded the corner at mile 18, I was dismayed not to see the finish line.

Reader poll: was I wearing shorts?

Do you know what it's like to coerce your body to continue to work and push after you thought you had expertly portioned out your energy over a certain, finite distance? I thought about using the remaining .7 miles as a cool down since this race didn't particularly matter anyways. On the other hand, I spied a woman in front of me (in orange in the photo above) and I was going to be damned if I lost an age group award to her by that small of a margin. So I pushed one more time (<-- that sounds like I'm giving birth...) and as soon as I crossed the finish line my legs cramped up. In my marathon last spring, mile 18 was where I very discernibly hit the wall, so I was at least grateful to postpone that feeling for a little longer in this race. I ended up not winning an age group award after all but I did manage to run an average 8:03 pace, which is just shy of my 8:01 marathon pace from Providence. This means that had I continued for the rest of the 12 kilometers, I would have still finished right around my goal time for Boston. See, I can do some math at least! And I walked (very slowly) away from this race with one lesson that I will take with me to Boston: it helps to know the course before you race; no one wants a surprise on race day.

Post race: proudly repping Dana-Farber

Sincerely,
Rachel "it's almost taper time!" Runner