Race information

• What? Last Chance BQ.2 Grand Rapids
• When? Sept 10, 2016
• How far? 26.2
• Website? http://lastchancebqgr.com
• Strava https://www.strava.com/activities/707091815

Goals

Training

Pfitz 17/62 (yes it’s totally a thing shutup). After a hypothermic nutrition med-tent failure in New Jersey last year, I was pissed enough to run the 4 weeks recovery plan and then immediately fall back into a real training plan. I usually take more time off for mental reasons.

Training went pretty well, if not a little borked because of a three week Eurotrip, [41, 25, 41, 22, 44, 58, 59, 41, 62, 57, 55, 37, 53, 31, 28, 16] -- that’s a normal Pfitz progression, right? But the LTs, VO2s, long runs, etc all went well so I wasn’t too concerned.

My only regret was I didn’t really have a tune-up race. I ran a 10K time trial by myself 6 weeks out (39:10), and had an EPIC relay 4 weeks out. But I didn’t really have a sense as to what I could race at.

Pre-race

Morning of I woke up at 4am for my usual gluten-free English muffin with peanut butter and coffee without milk or cream (I realize that since I adopted a 24-hour ban on gluten/dairy/fructose prior to races I haven’t gotten sick again (thanks Mrs. BB!), but it’s the worst diet). There had been warnings of thunderstorms during the race, but got to the starting line and it was (technically) dry. 70 degrees and 100% humidity though, which is less than ideal.

The “corrals” were just groups of people all with the same numbers (if you’re qualifying time is a 3:05, your number is 305XX. This makes it so that at any point, you can look around you and see if you’re still surrounded by similar paced people). Chatted with a guy or two about expected pace, a bunch of us were shooting for 3:01 or so, so 6:55’s it was.

Miles [1] to [10]

They played a rendition of the National Anthem as performed by Boston, which we all kind of laughed at. They really went full-force with the “Road to Boston” theme in this race. And then we took off, and stayed pretty tightly as a peloton for the first 10 miles. I didn’t even have to check my watch, because everyone was technical, calling out “We’re running a 6:52, slow down a bit” basically every minute. It’s not how I typically race, feels a bit too mechanical, but that was resolved relatively quickly when we hit a deep woods patch and everyone’s GPS went haywire.

My race almost ended at mile 2 when two huge deer jumped out of a bush and bowled across the race path. Missed me and few others by about 4 feet on both sides, but thankfully no one was hurt. Got an extra surge of adrenaline though, so that was pretty cool. At mile 8 I missed grabbing a water, which, since water was only every 2 miles, threw off my gel plan since I didn’t want to take it without water. I’d have to start at 10.

Miles [11] to [16]

By this point, the peloton was breaking up. A few guys dropped back, but there was another 3:05er ahead that I paced with for basically this whole stretch. I think around 16 he stopped to tie a shoe, and then it was just me out front, at least I couldn’t see any others ahead. I considered dropping back a little to regroup with some of the others trailing me, but I was maintaining a 6:57 and had hit a groove, and didn’t want to mess up my pacing in the slightest. Still feeling pretty good at this point, the plan of half a gel every 2 miles until I ran out was working.

Miles [16] to [22]

I was basically out on my own, and it became a mental game -- very little crowd support, I couldn’t see anyone to pace with, it was solitary. But I think my savior was that we had started lapping all of the other runners, so I at least could focus on someone in the distance, catch up to them, rinse, repeat. At mile 17 I hit a mental wall, and the first physical wall came at 21. Pretty par for the course for my races. You can see the dips in times around these points too, which is kind of funny. At mile 18 my mental mantra kicked in -- “settle” -- since this is the point I usually get excited (“I’m close!”), speed up as a result, and crash. Didn’t do that. I settled.

Miles [22] to [26.2]

Around mile 22, I unfortunately started passing my fellow brethren. The heat and humidity had gotten to everyone, and a lot of 3:05/3:10ers slowed down or were walking. But by the 6th lap of the course, I knew where to surge, where to hang on, when the uphills were coming, when to let gravity do it’s thing on the downhills and float to recover, and I was hitting tangents like it was my job to measure the course itself. My pace was really solid here, even if it slipped a little at mile 25. Hit my second wall there, but managed to hang on. With half a mile left I decided to kick, with a half mile 10ft realized I didn’t have a kick, and with .2 managed to pull out a decent sprint. Crossed at 3:02:42.

Post-race

I guess I should be thankful I needed to train in a concrete jungle of heat and humidity. 70 degrees was a respite for me, even at 100% humidity, but it got to everyone, except those really qualified or those who came from Tennessee. In a race where 60% of people usually qualify, there were only two 3:05 quals out of 20 attempting, and my measly 3:02 came in 7th place overall (a few 3:15ers were pretty fast). I think only about 50 people out of 330 made their time in the entire race. A lot of DNF’s, especially for a race where the population is required to be fit. Tough day.

Not my A-goal, not even my B-goal (I definitely jinxed myself, didn’t I), but I qualfied, finally! So I grabbed a New Holland Mile 27 beer, repped the Moose, and basked in the sun. Which quickly turned to torrential downpour, so I headed to the Founders brewery instead.

What’s next?

I’m not sure if I even want to run the Boston next year, but even though my time wouldn’t have guaranteed me an entry to the 2016 race, I think because it’s such a hot year that it might actually get me in for 2017. It'll probably depend on whether I get into Tokyo.

But I have a beautiful marathon in 3 weeks in upstate NY wine country which I’m just going to jog, Mrs. BB has her tune-up Half on the same course, so I’m excited for that. And then a 55K in November, so I’ll be back up in mileage soon enough. And now that I know a 62 plan works, I’ll give sub-3 another go at some point, once El Nino gets the hell out my face. What a jerk.

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