Hell yes.
I very badly want to break the 1 hour 45 minute time mark for a half. It's a milestone. Not only is it an even 5 minute marker, like 2 hour, 1 hour 55, 1 hour 50, etcetera. But it is a quarter of an hour faster than I ever thought I could be. And, perhaps more importantly, it would mean I could run faster than an 8 minute mile for 13 miles. It also represents a pace that I might be able to turn into a Boston Qualifying time.
Of course that means running 26.2 miles - hmmmm.
I picked Hellyer because my wife wanted to go to a family reunion for spring break. I looked at the two weeks I would need for recovery after Monterey, and the time I would need to adequately train, and the time for the reunion. Hellyer was close to my location, the perfect date, I could eat at Maurizio's the night before, and I found two blogs from runners who had PR'd on this course.
Training started out fairly typical. I'm still struggling to find a place for hill sprints in the weekly routine. Mostly I tend to fit them in on Monday during my weight lifting. Treating them like they are type of resistance training and not a variation on running seems to help. I even got a few hill sprints in on Wednesday after doing intervals. That ended once the longer "Strength" runs began. But I continued to work them in on Monday.
Following the training paces strictly for the Monterey half did not net me a PR or the pace I was supposedly training for. Thinking upon this, I realized that I typically hold a "Strength" pace on race day whatever that may be. So if I'm running 8:05s for my strength runs, then it is an 8:05 I can expect to hold for my race. With this in mind, I was determined to keep strength training under 8 minute miles.
This wasn't easy. In the past I create little mantras or mentalities to get me to a knew pace. Most recently this has been "Breathe hard and don't stop running." The idea being if I am breathing hard then I'm running as hard as I can. Unfortunately that wasn't netting me better than an 8:10. So one day while feeling frustrated that I couldn't hold a sub-8, I had the phrase "Reckless Abandon" pop into my brain. My eyes half close, my right hand goes limp like Deadpool's after he struck Colossus with his bare fist, and as I peek down through my squinty eyes I see I am running a 7:40 pace.
For interval training I was determined to hold a 7:30 or better and managed this:
I also set new records in my 5k and 10k times, finally breaking the 50 minute barrier in the 10k.
Strength training came along and I was mostly successful at holding a sub-8 pace. It was the "mostly" part that was most worrisome.
When I ran Merced, I knew I was going to PR. It was just a matter of by how much. For this run I was much less sure. There is some sort of psychological block in my mind to anything faster than an 8 minute per mile pace.
As I began my taper, my doubt grew. The day before I started carb loading, never done that consciously before. I had potatoes and eggs for breakfast. Normally I'm on an intermittent fasting routine, and breakfast is a no-no. I had ramen for lunch, and pasta for dinner. Maurizio's had spaghetti and meatballs as a specialty - Ragu de Bologna no less. I had two glasses of Pinot Grigio.
I also took a nap on Saturday, and went to bed early the night before the race. We stayed at the Wyndham Garden in south San Jose. I told my wife I was pretty sure that it wasn't going to happen, but I would run the race at a comfortable pace and get their cool race medal.
The first few mile weren't bad at all - as usual. I ran without my running watch. Perhaps this is a mistake and I would run smarter if I had it with me to keep me from starting too fast.
I broke through the crowd and found myself pacing and being paced by an elderly gentleman. I'm pretty sure he was older than me. He got tired of my too leisurely pace and went to hang with the group I was following and would follow for most of the race.
Hellyer is an interesting course. You start outside of the park. Run down a relatively short driveway to the park trail and then turn left, proceed for several miles to a loop, turn around, run back past the point you entered the trail down to another more complex loop. Here you turn around again and go back to the driveway and up to the finish line. They started their 5k and 10k runners after us. I thought this was a mistake.
Turning back on the first loop we encountered the 5k runners and things got crowded. I had to pick up pace past the comfort point to go around a runner with a double stroller. This was a public park and there were pedestrians and bicyclists to work around. On the second loop we contended with 10k runners. There were fewer of them and it wasn't much of a problem.
I stopped at all the drink stops, except the last one, and alternated between water and electrolytes. Somebody pacing me passed me at these points, but I always caught up with them. Around the 5k runners I passed this pacer while going past the stroller and never saw this runner again until coming back from the second loop. They never caught me. The group I was pacing became smaller, until only two remained, including the elderly fellow who had paced me at the beginning.
Things are starting to hurt, and I start thinking, "Reckless Abandon." I turn to my forefeet for extra speed and goose past some more people.
There were hills, and frankly, too many of them. I thought, once again, I would never be able to PR this. I was pretty certain my stride broke down the last 3 or so miles. I lost the two I had been pacing. I thought, "Why am I doing this to myself?" And, "This is so not worth it." And, "Never again!"
I'm getting close to the end, past the last loop, and hear from a guy going out to the loop tell his running partner it had been 1 hour 39 minutes. I think, "Oh crap, maybe I do have a shot!" So I turn to, "Breathe hard, and never stop running."
As I come in I see 1:43:"seconds ticking away," and I dig deep for whatever I have left, but knowing I'm going to PR. I came in with a smile on my face.
1 hour 43 minutes and 37 seconds. The top 25% for gender, but strangely only 6th out of 11 in my age group. There were a lot of fast 50-54 year olds in this race.
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