Race information

• What? Sugarloaf 15K
• When? May 19, 2019
• Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/2380948184

Goals

Background and Training

I haven't posted here in a while, but /u/allxxe convinced me to write a race report even though I'm not sure I learned anything from this race, but anyway, here we are.

It's been a rough year for ol' /u/blood_bender. This time last year I was in much better shape and had an awesome 15K at this race in preparation for Grandma's. Post-Grandma's, 3 weeks into my CIM training, after 3 failed workouts in a row, the growing pain in my femur turned out to be something not great.

Femoral stress fractures are "high risk", meaning crutches for 6 weeks, walking for 6 weeks, and then I would be allowed to run again. The first 6 weeks I wasn't allowed to bike, or even swim with kicking, so I bought a leg floaty and spent 6 terrible weeks in the pool, up to an hour a day with just my arms. Then 3 weeks of full swimming, 3 weeks of biking, and I went for my first run on Christmas day. (Sidebar: I now know how to swim, so I'm counting that as silver lining #1). My leg still felt really weird, so I backed off to biking again for another couple weeks. I think it was just deep scar tissue, because a few days of heavy foam rolling and it went away, but I was being really cautious. All in all, 15 weeks off.

I slowly ramped back up mileage for 10 weeks, adding in one workout a week, and was shocked at how much aerobic fitness swimming and biking can actually maintain, running a 1:18 half in March. Who knew cross-training actually does something??

My new goal was to train hard for 8 weeks and crush Sugarloaf. But sometime in April, a few weeks of heavy fatigue set in and prevented me from the mileage or workouts that I wanted. Got some bloodwork done and iron and cortisol were fine, but B12 and Vitamin D were low, so now I'm up to like, 10 pills a day of various supplements.

Fine, my new new goal was to have a good race, if everything went right, maybe snag a podium spot. And then race week my big toe really started bothering me, a nagging pain that had been hurting since, I'm not sure really, months at least. Saw a podiatrist and prognosis on that is... not great. But he gave me some anti-inflammatories and the pain went down slightly.

Fine, my new new new goal was to race and not get more injured. Sigh.

Race Weekend

/u/allxxe and I drove up from New York, stopping for a day in Portland where our goal was seven breweries. We didn't even come close. All the other loafers wrote about the rest of race weekend, so I'll leave out the rest of the details, but it was a fun time reuniting with some, meeting a bunch of new people, drinking some Bissel Brothers, and listening to jokes about onions that I never really understood.

/u/screwbuharvard2 and I discussed similar race plans, we were both planning on starting out at 6:00/mi and seeing from there. He did try to poison me with FODMAPs again this year but I caught it in time, though his pancakes were good, so overall he's back on my good side.

Race

/u/screwbuharvard2 and I lined up at the start, where I immediately abandoned our discussed race plan and took off at 5:45/mi. I was only planning on holding that for a short bit but I guess I didn't tell him that. Two other guys absolutely tore away at 5:00/mi, leaving me in 3rd by myself, a swath of wet footsteps chasing me down.

By mile 2 I couldn't see the two guys ahead of me, and by 3 I couldn't hear footsteps behind me. I was holding just under 6:00/mi and feeling decent. Not great, but decent.

And then around mile 5, about the same place where I had to disappear into the woods last year, I started hearing footsteps. I've never been good at leading races, my strength in high school/college was always catching and passing at the finish, so I wasn't happy. By mile 6 I couldn't tell how close he had gotten, but looking back to find out would be the end of me, I had to at least appear strong so he wouldn't smell blood, even though I was fading quickly. Mile 7 it had turned from separate cheering to "let's go guys" as a single cheer. Fuck.

Threw in a surge, nope jk that's a terrible idea, backed off back to pace. Powered up the small hills, but I don't think I was actually going any faster. I usually hit most water stations in races to just take a sip, but began skipping them in an effort to save a second or two, knowing it could make or break the day. But he wasn't fading, his haunting footsteps were still right behind me, and I started planning in my head what my strategy would be once he finally caught me.

But by around 8.5 I still had the lead, and finally felt safe enough to actually throw down a surge. The footsteps started to fade, and after a couple minutes there was now about 10-15 seconds between people cheering for us, and finally I could see the finish. Couldn't help myself but I did look back once as I rounded the final corner about 100m from the finish, juuusssst to make sure.

54:54, 3rd OA

Post-Race

Chatted with haunting footsteps Drew, and I'm glad I never looked back earlier because I think that would have given him an edge over me, he even mentioned knowing that I was in the same pain as him which allowed him to hang on. Hung out with screwbuharvard2 for a few minutes as he posted some NSFW photos of me to social media, before finding allxxe to run her in, and finally walking back a mile to cheer in the rest of the marathon squad. Not a single one of them was coming in on time, every single ARTCer was missing their goals, which made spectating tough. It was quite the emotional swing when we later found out the marathon started 10 minutes late and everyone actually had an amazing day.

Happy with the race overall. I forgot how stressful racing for place actually is, it's definitely a different part of the brain that doesn't get worked enough. Focusing on strategy instead of pure time is interesting. I'm not sure I like it.

What's Next

Nothing scheduled for a long time. If my toe issue really is hallux limitus, it's degenerative and might put an expiration date on my running career. So I'd be interested if anyone else has dealt / is dealing with it. As a result, this summer will be figuring out how to delay the issue, or how to mitigate it. What? I'm not stressed, you're stressed.