Game Change -- The Fastest I've Ever Run

It’s been quite a while since my last blog post.  Busy season was, predictably, busy -- but it’s over now.

I’ve been trying to come up with a list of the races I’ve run so far this year.  I started out the year with the Resolution Run Half Marathon, and then did another half at the Famously Hot Half-Marathon in Columbia in March.  There was the Green Valley Road Race 8k in February.  It seems like there was another 5k or 10k or two in there prior to last weekend, but it might be that the others were in 2011.  I’m just not sure.  But I think there was at least a 5k somewhere.

5k races have always been just kind of throw-away events for me.  I mean, they’re a good time, but it’s just not a distance I’ve ever taken seriously.  I’m not terribly fast, so I suppose that’s led me to focus on the endurance aspect of running rather than what I’ve considered the more speed-oriented shorter distances. 

Even though I have strayed from strictly following the schedules therein, my training has largely been based on Coach Roy Benson’s Heart Rate Training, which has consistently served to slow me down.  By running slower over the last year, I have built up my aerobic capacity and am able to do longer distances.  Really, in all the races I have run, I find myself finishing the race with lots of energy left in my tank.  When I finished the Columbia half, I had to go run an extra mile just to burn off some of the reserves that I had been unable to exhaust in the 13.1-mile race.  Every race I’ve run, I end up flying past people for the last half mile or so.

Every race, that is, until last weekend.

April 21^st was Greenville’s RunWalkAdopt 5k.  Again, it wasn’t something that I was particularly excited about, but it was to be the first race after busy season, and might be a good chance to blow off some steam.  The course itself was moderately difficult, running along hilly parking lots and foot paths rather than roads.  Anyway, no big deal of a run.  Approaching the end of the race, I decided to turn it up a notch, as I typically do.  Pass this couple, pass this guy, then approach a short girl and start to pass her.  Have to turn up the gas to pass her.  I start to overtake her, but she doesn’t want to be passed.  I dig in, kick it up a notch.  So does she.  I put my pedal to the metal.  She doesn’t want to give in.  As we approach the finish line, people are cheering us on.  “C’mon!  You can beat him!,” they yell to her.  I thought I had a step on her, but no luck -- she’s right at my side.  In the end, I beat her by a fraction of a step.  The race website has us both finishing with the same time, but it’s only reporting to the second.  The final difference between our finish times must have been within a couple of hundredths of a second.

I had never been too interested in my pace, using it instead as a broad guide to make sure I am in a good rhythm halfway through a long race.  But this time, I was anxious to go home to upload my GPS data to my computer to see just what happened at the end of the race.  As it turns out, there was no illusion.  We really did keep getting faster & faster for the last half mile.  We finished the race at a 5:17 pace, or 11.36 miles per hour.  It is probably the fastest that I have ever run in my life.

This has been a game changer for me.  What if I decided to start taking 5k races more seriously?  Would I end up finishing with more competitive runners?  Would I find more people who will bring out the best in me?

I’ve been to the mountaintop, and I want to go back.

Running and Thinking Without Words

Mark it for posterity: I have officially run my first endurance race.  Last weekend, I ran the Greenville YMCA Resolution Run in Traveler’s Rest, SC.

It was a beautiful day -- a sunny Carolina January morning.  I was grateful that it was warm enough to just wear compression boxers.  I have been having some issues with the compression tights that I have been wearing when it has been cold outside.  I’ve tried two different brands: CW-X and 2XU.  The CW-X are thicker and warmer, while the 2XU are very thin.  Either one might be preferable depending on the weather.  However, I think that neither is designed for someone with any kind of belly, so they tend to drift southward.  The result can be chafing, which is exactly what they are supposed to prevent.  And while chafing can be uncomfortable for a three- or five-mile run, it’s downright terrifying for a longer run.  Anyhow, I was thankful that I didn’t need to complicate matters by worrying about how I was going to keep my pants up.

The run itself was a fascinating experience for me.  There were 219 entrants, which I think makes it a pretty small run.  I had decided on my heart rate splits rather arbitrarily before the race, planning a run that would allow me up to 80% of maximum heart rate for the first five miles, 83% for the next five miles, and then graduate upward for the last three+ miles.  The course itself was very hilly, so the splits were only rough guidelines in the actual execution.  Still, they reflect what my basic game plan for the race was: take it easy, don’t burn out; make sure there is always more in the tank; and shoot for a pretty consistent pace.  By allowing my heart rate to rise over the course of the race, I essentially allowed myself to keep very close to a set pace.  As it turned out, I ran right around a 12:30 / mile pace the whole way.

What fascinated me so was how this played against the other runners.  By the time we had gone a half a mile, I found myself running near no one else.  Those who fancied themselves runners had all dashed well ahead of me, while those who were looking to walk the 13.1 miles were all well behind me.  At the two mile mark, the course made a hairpin turn and retraced for about .6 miles on a parallel path.  As such, I was able to see much of the pack running back against me before I hit the two mile mark; and after I hit the turn, I could see the small group of walkers that trailed behind me.  I am thus able to say that, by the 2.5 mile mark, nobody was within a half mile of me -- neither ahead of nor behind me. 

For the majority of the race, I was running absolutely alone.  There were no other participants within sight.

These lonely miles of running were across rural residential roads.  At mile 4, the course crossed over Main Street, so I had a brief glimpse of the real world.  But apart from that, I’ll bet not even ten cars crossed my path for the remainder of the run before re-joining Main Street and finishing into the Travelers Rest Community Center. 

In short, I had a lot of time to myself. 

A lot of things ran through my head during this substantial chunk of the race.  Most thoughts that I have during running are free of words and thus ultimately deprived of substance.  I learned many years ago that putting words to things makes them “real” in a sense that they cannot be if they remain wordless.  Words give things labels; labels give categories.  Words help us to organize and understand our world, but at the same time they add something of a lie.  The reality of things is without words; understanding and especially communicating is where language comes in.  Words are a kind of tool or crutch.  As William S. Burroughs said, “language is a virus.”  Running tends to break one away from the world of language.  This caught me by surprise earlier in my running experience, when some of the occasions that I would seek to pray while running would come up short.

This is not so say that, when I am running, I find myself free of thought, however.  It is not simply a matter of abiding in the flesh at the exclusion of the mind.  While running, there is joy.  There is fear.  There is even love.  But, until I open my mouth to proclaim, “I love Julie!” or “Thank you G-d!” or some other such declaration (these being, indeed, my two most frequent linguistic utterances while running), the thoughts that I have lack the objective substance that only words convey.  Being free in this way might be the single strongest driving force leading me to run.

Enough with the philosophy.  As I mentioned, how my strategy and training played out during the race was quite interesting to me.  As I hope I’ve made clear, I was very much alone for much of the race. But after an hour and a half, a funny thing happened: I caught up to the group.  Well, sure -- not to everybody.  At first, I passed one guy that had obviously overextended himself and “bonked.”  He was struggling to catch his breath after a big hill.  He found someone to attend to him, so it’s not like I blew past someone passing out on the side of the road, mind you.  Anyhow, after overtaking him, I soon passed another couple people, then another couple, then another. . .  Did I mention that the course was quite hilly?

When all was said and done: Not one person passed me after the initial half mile stretch.  It was I who did the passing.  And no, I didn’t find myself magically transformed into a great distance runner, excelling all others in my preternatural abilities.  However, I set out to finish in 2 hours and 40 minutes.  My result on Saturday was 2:45, on a course that was much more challenging than I had anticipated.  For the scale of the hills I ran, a five minute swing is wholly satisfactory to me.  More important by far is that I finished the run.  At no point did I walk the course.  I kept my steady slow run pace from start to finish.  My old mantra of “Press on like Paul!” was fulfilled, if only for a day.

“It is not that I have already achieved this.  I have not yet reached perfection, but I press on, hoping to take hold of that for which Christ once took hold of me.  My friends, I do not claim to have hold of it yet.  What I do say is this: forgetting what is behind and straining towards what lies ahead, I press towards the finishing line, to win the heavenly prize to which God had called me in Christ Jesus.”  Amen V’amen!