Race Day: SL “1/2”
Marathon-So
this is the third year in a row that I’ve done this race. But, I’m going to commandeer
this race report to first discuss my “injury” and current state of mind about
it before I get to the details. First, thank you to everyone that has already
commented. I’ve been really up and down emotionally the last week and really
didn’t know what to expect. Last Wed was really a bad day. It was the first
time I can ever remember stopping during a run and walking. My knee had really
locked up and with the “noise” coming from it I was seriously convinced that I
had torn something. I immediately locked down mentally and tried to decide what
to do. To my surprise, as I already mentioned, my knee was not in “pain” as early
as the next day. However, last time I tried to run through an injury I was out
for 3-months and I didn’t want to take any risks this time so I took the next
day off. I then ran two days later and didn’t feel “right”, ran one more day
with the same feeling and decided to take some “real” time off. After talking
to one doctor and seeing another, I decided that I wasn’t broken just damaged. I
ended up taking the most time off since my last injury (almost two years ago) and
really didn’t know what to expect. I was really down on myself for what I
thought (in hindsight) was so stupid, running hard downhill in new shoes. In
all reality though I don’t think that could have been what it was. There are
about a dozen other things that I’m sure all added up to it. So the good news
as we’ll read in a moment is that my worst fears were not realized.
Started
the day off a little extra early as I was picking up James (Fiddy) and Eric (Phoenix)
for the ride to the start. We met Eric at the start where he left his car and
headed up. This year James (race director) had done a good job at the start
with a lot of extra Port’o Potties. It was cool but felt good. The three of us
just chatted and did an easy warm-up to about the mile mark and back down. A
little into that I saw something moving on the mountainside. As we got closer
we thought it was a bear or cow but then it turned to us and it was actually a
large bull Moose with a huge rack! It is my first Utah moose sighting. On our
way back it had moved closer to the road and we had a pretty good view of it,
though it was still probably 200-300 meters away.
As
I mentioned above I was really not sure what to expect today: 50% of me thought
I shouldn’t be here, 40% thought I should do it as a training run (yeah right,
like I could take a race easy), and 10% thought I wanted to win it… I saw BJ at
the start with some of his team but quickly found out they were all relay
runners… Looked around for anyone else that I would worry about and decided
James and I were in for a fun run.
At
the gun four of us went out; James, Jason Schoenfeld (unknown to me), myself,
and 4th guy. A few yards ahead of us was one of the relay team guys.
I was perfectly happy to tuck in behind the others and let them pace. Really
until the first mile I was seriously thinking I would stop at the top of the
hill, little did I know... We hit the mile mark at 6:30 and I felt perfectly fine. “4th guy” started
to fall back and it was the other three of us running easily together. I did
notice that my breathing was more labored than I would have liked but up to
this point my knee was still behaving. The next mile has the worst of the
climb. We still managed a 6:50
and I felt perfectly happy letting the others set the pace. At this point I
thought I noticed Jason getting anxious at the bit and he started to move.
James and I went with him. The next mile (still with 115 ft of ascent) we
managed a 6:16, at this point
I really went into competition mode and that last 10% of me took over. I felt I
would just go with this guy and kick it in on the downhill. At this point James
fell back a little and we kept going. Just before the top of the hill Jason actually
made the first move and put about 10 ft on me. I thought “no problem” I’ll pour
it on after the crest. Mile 4 I had a 6:30.
This actually put me ~40 seconds ahead of my time at this point last year!
Though I didn’t know this at the time. I really felt that I was just going with
the flow.
Now
here is also were a problem sets in. It turns out that I’m pretty sure Jason
had the same plan and he just started to put distance on me. My next mile was 5:24 which I knew was a good bit
slower than last year’s mile 5. The next mile I pushed it a little more but
didn’t really seem to be gaining any, 5:13.
I could feel my knee a little with the added effort so at this point I had a heart
to heart with myself and in the end decided it was not worth hammering my legs
on this race to try and catch this guy so soon after having such a big blow-up.
Mile 7 was in 5:27 and mile 8
was in 5:31.
The
next miles are where I’ve really pushed it the last two years but I decided
that I was not gaining on Jason and this is just supposed to be a training run.
Somewhere in here I could have also sworn that I heard Chad and turned to see I
runner coming up the canyon but couldn’t see him. Turns out it wasn’t but it
was funny, hallucinating about Chad that is… The next three miles were all just
in cruise control 5:44, 5:47, and 5:40. Coming out of the canyon I looked at my time and
thought about going for a 1:15:##, but in the end just decided to keep it in
check. Mile 12 5:30 (you can
see the twinge of hunger in that split). I then saw Josh Steffen and he cheered
me on to catch the relay guy ahead of me. I ended up catching him just before
the turn, the exact same spot in the course I caught the last relay person last
year! Just after passing that guy I saw Steve Ashbaker. He ran in most of the
last mile with me and we just chatted. My one calf (the one on the bum knee
leg) was starting to tighten up on the slightest of uphills at this point in
the course and I looked up to see the clock tick off 1:16. I finished in with
the last “mile” in 5:46. Like
the last two years the course was short but it was still fun. Final time was
1:16:13 with the Garmin reading 12.96. Some cool down with Steve A and a little with James. I also got to talk with Jason a little after the race and gave him the blog sales pitch. Also, congratulated him on a great race, turns out he had run in college but has only been on and off the last 5-yrs. I hope he has a great race at TOU in a couple weeks. Overall, I really like this course (winning
the race the first time I ran it probably has something to do with that) and
think that James does a good job trying to drum up a large field.
Post
race assessment: Well I took second and only ran ~40 seconds slower than last
year so I can’t say that I’m disappointed. In fact I am REALLY happy with it.
Considering my mind set and the week I’d had before the race I couldn’t have
asked for more. I’m a little bummed I didn’t keep the legs moving enough to go
under 1:16 and have all three finishes in 1:15 but know I’m just being greedy. Mostly
I just think that the bar has been raised so high this year that I really have
to keep things in perspective and realize that every race can’t be a PR. So for
now I’m happy with how quickly I seem to be recovering from whatever it was
that happened last Wed. I’ll still take it extra easy this week and then just
four weeks until game day!!!
For
the other number geeks out there here are my splits for the last three years.
You can really see where I made the decision to just run it in this year…
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1
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2
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3
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4
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5
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6
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7
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8
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9
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10
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11
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12
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13
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2008
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6:30
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6:50
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6:16
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6:31
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5:24
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5:13
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5:27
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5:31
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5:44
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5:47
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5:40
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5:33
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5:46
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2007
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6:36
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6:59
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6:26
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6:46
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5:17
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5:10
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5:34
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5:27
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5:39
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5:21
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5:26
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5:19
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5:24
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2006
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6:31
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7:04
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6:18
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6:37
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5:25
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5:22
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5:24
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5:36
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5:30
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5:36
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5:16
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5:15
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5:16
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