The official start to my 2008 Season came in the form of the Broad Street Run on May 4th. I felt incredibly unprepared for this race. I hadn't run 10 miles since the NYC marathon last November. My shorter, low intensity training runs were few and far between as I struggled to find my work/training balance with my new job in my life. I tried to back out of doing it, but my coach wouldn't let me. "You're not racing this race" he reminded me - "you're using it as a training run". The goal was take 2 miles to warm up, pick up the tempo for the next 6 miles, then go push it just to my edge the last 2 miles.
When I first did this race 2 years ago in 2006, I was in top form. I had only been running in races for 6 months. I had run my first half-marathon just the week before. I hadn't experienced any running injuries at that point. I was at the lowest weight I had been in since my dancing days and having worked with my awesome personal trainer for 18 months up to that point, I was strong. The weather was perfect that day - sunny and in the 60s. There were several musical acts along the route to put a pep in my step and I ended up posting a time 10 minutes faster than when I had run my only other 10 miler 5 months before. I knew there wasn't any chance I was going to repeat this performance at this particular time and since my focus was different, I shouldn't even be thinking about it.
It's a little chilly and overcast this morning, and i'm waiting on the corner of Albert Einstein Drive and Broad Street with my sweats on for some of my tri teammates who were also doing this race. With the exception of maybe 2 or 3 of them, all of us were treating this as a training run. I wasn't sure to base my strategy on time (my minute/mile pace) or heartrate (which, my coach and I discovered during a lactate threshold run test I had done a few weeks prior, is abnormally high). I know my coach and I discussed this strategy, but for some reason, it didn't stick in my mind, and this would be my first problem as I waited in the throngs of runners waiting to cross the starting line.
I corraled myself somewhere in between the 9 and 10 minute milers. After standing a few minutes and chatting with the runners around me, I heard a big cheer from the front of the pack. The starting horn must of have blown, but we couldn't hear it in the back. We stood for a few more minutes, then slowly started walking the two blocks to the starting line. It took 8 minutes for me to cross the starting line towards the back of the 15,000 runners that were participating in this race. Immediately, we start running downhill, which make it difficult to hold back if you're pacing yourself. Within that first mile, you run under a bridge holding the septa train tracks in North Philly. I had remembered a group of 10 students from a North Philadelphia High School banging their drums under this bridge two years ago, and they really put a pep in your step. Not this time - they were nowhere to be found. In general, alot of the acts or distractions that I recalled in 2006 weren't there in 2008, with the exception of Roman Catholic's High School band just North of City Hall and the guy blasting the Rocky theme song a few hundred meters before you entered the Navy Yard in South Philly.
My pace was slow - I was averaging 10:30 MM. I wasn't feeling taxed, but I wasn't feeling like I could give much more either. I wasn't able to get any sports drink until mile 7 because they were out at the water stations beforehand (that's what i've discovered happens when you're in the back of the pack). My heartrate remained in my LT zone the entire time - which is frustrating because I was already going slowly. So this was an indication that I wouldn't be able to sustain a much faster pace. Although, in the LT run test I did in the lab with my coach, we discovered that despite climbing into my LT zone fairly quickly, the amount of Lactic Acid in my blood remained relatively the same (around 4 milimoles) as I increased my intensity past this point. In other words, the level of Lactic Acid in my blood measured approximately the same at an 8:30 MM pace as it did at a 9:30 MM pace - and we believe that this might be related to my unusually high heartrate, which at LT is 190. So what does this mean? My coach thinks it means I can handle suffering longer doing this kind of intensity for me than others would be able to - so it's a bit of an advantage.
I cross the finish line - felt like it was an uneventful race for me - didn't feel proud of anything. Coming to a complete stop after crossing the finish line, waiting to get some food and drink, I cramped up pretty badly and started hobbling - it felt like a major sciatic pain shooting down my lower back and pain. It's frustrating to feel like you're moving backwards. The first six months of running I had increased my MM pace to 8:30 and was handling half-marathon distances pretty well. Now - distance was tough and speed was not there. I do hope I come back from my injury, start to regain fitness and speed. My running goal is to someday be able to consistently run sub-8's in races. Then i'll be happy. I have alot of work ahead of me.
