Why the marathon is not for me

"Are you training for a marathon?"

I get asked that question a lot by people who find out that I like to run. It's a totally understandable question, given the prominence that the marathon has assumed as the presumptive "event" for recreational runners. And yet, I have pretty much zero interest in running one. To be sure, I say that with absolutely no intention of downplaying the accomplishment of those who train for and run (or try to run) one. If that's what gets someone motivated to run, that's great. It's just not for me.

My 2014 race results

Excuse my shameless self-promotion here, but after all, this is my blog!

RECAP OF MY YEAR IN RACING (2014)

Total races: 14 (plus one untimed zombie run).

- 1 mile: one
- 5K: nine
- 10K: three
- half: one

Size of races:

- largest: 353 (halloween-themed 5K)
- smallest: 35 (fundraising 5K)

Top 10% finishes:13/14

- The one miss was #16 out of 154, so if I'd finished one spot higher, I would've nailed this category.


Age Group Finishes:

- #1 finishes: nine [3 of these were overall #1 masters finishes]
- #2 finishes: one
- #3 finishes: four

(Quite pleased that I finished first, second, or third in my age group in every race this year.)

PRs:

- 10K: 44:22 (by 16 seconds)

Thank you, rain!

Being able to tolerate the rain is definitely a useful life-skill for living in the Pacific Northwest. It's not that we get so much rain in absolute terms; most major East Coast cities get more inches of precipitation per year. It's the eight months of gray misty drizzle that you have to get used to.

Tolerating the rain is one thing. Being thankful for it is altogether different.

And yet, here I am, thankful for the rain.

Fall Saturdays are quite busy in my household, with lots of soccer games for my kids. Saturday races are therefore anything but guaranteed for me, which is too bad, seeing as how fall is the prime running season. There's a Halloween-themed race that I've run every year since it began three years ago, but it looked like this year I wasn't going to be able to make it because of my kids' soccer conflicts. Boo! The race organizers very generously told me if I couldn't make it, I could run the 5K virtually, and they'd get me the race bib and medal later (most likely at the next event). Of course, it wouldn't be quite the same because race day atmosphere is so important.

And then it turned out that the recent downpouring of rain we'd gotten here had left all of the local park fields waterlogged, so the parks and rec department cancelled all soccer games this weekend.

As the dad to soccer-playing kids, I must expressed sadness at this turn of events.

As a race-loving runner, all I can say is, "Woo hoo, thank you, rainfall!!!"

Race regrets

I ran a very hilly 10K race this past weekend and finished fourth overall (first among Masters runners) out of 86, which doesn't sound too bad. Because this was a hand-timed race, not a chip-timed one, I didn't know how close I was to the top when I left. In fact, I missed the awards ceremony, which is a shame because I was the #3 male.

Anyway, when I finally saw the results posted on-line a day later, I learned not only that I was #4, but that I was just 79 seconds behind the winner. 79 seconds in a 10K isn't particularly close (about 13 seconds per mile), but it's not that far off either.

This was a race where I led for the first mile or so before giving up the lead. However, I was generally better going uphill than my peers (though worse going downhill), so I had some advantage on the hilly course.

The biggest mental obstacle, though, was that I lollygagged miles 5 and 6. Because it was such a hilly course, a 10K PR was not even remotely plausible. (I had run this area in a race once before and noticed that everyone seemed to be about 30 seconds/mile slower than normal.) With no PR in sight, I just didn't feel like subjecting myself to more discomfort, particularly when I seemed to be able to keep my relative position in the race at the end.

And yet . . . take a look at my mile splits:

Splits

NAME

PACE

CLIMB

1 mi

7:34

20

2 mi

7:21

-72

3 mi

7:53

9

4 mi

7:09

-259

5 mi

8:56

313

6 mi

8:41

-30

Egad! Cutting 79 seconds off a 10K normally wouldn't be that easy to do, because presumably you're running at your max pace, and 13 seconds/mile is far from trivial. But miles 5 and 6 jump out. Sure, mile 5 was pretty steep, but I'm sure 20-30 seconds could've come off there. And mile 6 . . . argh.

I enjoyed this race, but now I have regrets about not pushing myself more, and taking it easy just because no PR was in reach.

Now I kind of know how Tantalus felt

In Greek mythology, Tantalus was the guy who was punished in the underworld by having to stand in water below a fruit tree, all the while feeling terrible hunger and thirst. Yet, when he reached for the fruit or bent down for the water, each would move out of his reach. It's the image of eternal temptation that can never be satiated.

Now I kind of know how he felt. Not the eternal part, of course. But I just got back from a trip to SoCal, and we were staying in Anaheim. Not too far from Disneyland, in fact, though we didn't go into the parks. We did, however, spend part of one blazing hot afternoon at Downtown Disney.

This happened to be right before the Labor Day Weekend, which happens to be the weekend for a bunch of Disneyland road races.

Therefore, driving to the parking lot required driving right under the start line of the 5K race, and at Downtown Disney, there were lots and lots of people were wearing race shirts from previous Disneyland races. I saw "Goofy Challenge," "Dopey Challenge," "Double Dare," and "Run Disney" shirts, among others. All of it reminded me that I have yet to run a Disney race....

What was even more irksome about all of this is that the 5K was on Friday morning. Our flight home was on Friday afternoon, so I easily could've run the race on our schedule. I just wasn't paying attention and didn't realize that we'd be in town for the 5K. (The longer races are over the rest of the long weekend.)

Oh well, it had probably sold out before we finalized our plans. Right????

Racing sans GPS

I don't have a GPS watch (although I'm sort of eyeing the Garmin Forerunner 15), but I do run outside with my smartphone and RunKeeper for GPS tracking. I set RunKeeper to give audio cues for time/distance/average pace every 2 minutes. It's not as good as being able to look quickly for up-to-date average pacing, but even in a 5K race, I'm going to get 10 separate pace indicators.

Unfortunately, my smartphone's GPS decided to take a vacation during my Fourth of July 5K race. It was a clear, sunny day, so there shouldn't have been any obstruction to the satellites, and anyway, even on our often overcast days in the Pacific Northwest, I haven't had to wait too long. I suppose I could've started RunKeeper earlier, just to have it ready, but I didn't. And so when the race started, RunKeeper was still looking "searching" for the GPS satellites.

Now, the race was chip-timed, so I suppose I could've just stood there while a mass of people started around me, waiting waiting waiting . . . but my son was running with me. I guess I could've told him to get going, that I would catch up - after all, I was going to run at my own pace anyway. But this idea didn't occur to me at the time, and anyway, I think the public shame of just standing there, staring at my smartphone screen would've been too much to endure.

That is how I came to run my first race without GPS since a long time ago. Worse yet, because I was flustered at this turn of events, I didn't even start my digital watch timer, although I did manage shortly afterward to glance at the time, so I was able to estimate the approximate elapsed time of the race.

It wasn't terrible, and I felt like I paced myself fairly evenly, although of course I can't be too sure. I think I hit the halfway point around 10:30 or so, and I finished at 21:13, so if my estimates were right, I was a little slower in the second half. But the second half also had a slight elevation gain, compared to the elevation loss in the first half.

The major downside to not having those 2 minute pacing indicators was that I didn't have an accurate sense of whether I could meet my primary goal of finishing in under 21 minutes, which would require an average pace of just over 6:40 minutes/mile. If Ms. RunKeeper had been calling out, "Average pace six minutes forty-nine seconds per mile" at the 16 minute mark, I would've known that I needed to step it up. On the other hand, it's not like I was lollygagging the last half mile of the race. I had just caught up to the fastest female runner, and that was motivation enough to keep going.

I'm still having some issues with the smartphone GPS; looks like I might need to replace it when my upgrade period arrives.

When 5K races aren't 5K....

Once you start running races, if not even before then, the kilometers to miles conversion gets pretty easy to do in your head. I think it's because the most popular road races are 5Ks and 10Ks,but here in the United States, we still use the English imperial system of measurement, so 5K = 3.11 miles and 10K = 6.21 miles.

I don't have the best kick in the world, but sometime before those last 0.11 miles in a 5K, I like to go all out and empty the fuel tank. That leaves me dependent on either having a reasonably accurately measured race course, or knowing in advance that the course is going to be a non-standard distance.

For some reason, I've had a string of races lately that have been off. There was a 10K in March that checked in at 6.43 miles, a 5K in April that came out to 3.18 miles, and then most recently, a 5K that fell short at 2.93 miles. Now it's possible that the GPS on my smartphone was slightly off, as even GPS watches aren't perfect, but I'm inclined to think that the errors in those races were the actual distances, not my phone, because the race times I turned in (and in some cases, those of other racers that I talked to) were consistent with the courses having been mismeasured.

Assuming that my smartphone GPS was accurate, we're talking about mismeasured course distances of 3.5%, 2.3%, and 5.8(!)%. Those seem like pretty significant inaccuracies. The last one was the strangest one of all, as there was a short out-and-back segment in the middle of the race, where it seems like it would have been trivially easy to tack on an extra 0.09 miles to make the distance right.

Now, I'm not an elite runner, and these aren't qualifying races for any bucket-type events, so in the long run, it's not a big deal. But I found the last race in particular a bit annoying because I was pacing myself based on the expected distance, and the end of the race was hidden around a corner, so I basically finished with a very short kick, not to mention a sub-20:00 "5K" time - a goal that I'm chasing right now - that isn't real. I was comped this race, so I can't really complain, but if I'd paid the entry fee, I think I'd be a bit more annoyed - although I guess it would mean that if the organizers use the same route next year and I run it again, I'll be prepared to speed up at 2.7 miles instead of 2.9.