Like a Chinese Motorcycle

That's a Marro-ism for falling apart really bad. Normally I would shun using a reference to quality based purely on country of origin, but with pieces of shit like this coming on shore every day to make cycling even more dangerous than it already is, I'm going with it. So see how bad I look below in my "last mile" picture from Derry in 2008? Well this year was about 100x worse. Or at least it felt that way. I was beating myself up even more post-race (while drinking beers with zencycle in the Pinkerton Academy parking lot, being treated to a free titty show from some chick who decided her sportsbra was just too clammy for the drive home and had to go), but now after analyzing my splits and Polar data, I don't feel quite as bad about it.

I went into this race with a solid, conservative plan. The past few years I've learned my lesson about going out too hard in running races. I've even tried to train the way I want to race, with a slight negative split for the latter half of a run. But Derry is 16 miles, and the only time I've ever run that far before was the last time I did this race. And it is hilly. Very hilly. None of the climbs are that long or that high, in fact my altimeter only recorded 350 meters of climbing. But most of them are steep, and in running this presents a problem whether you're (or more accurately I'm) going up or down.

Going back to the last post, I referred to the 2 seconds/mile/pound thing. I don't remember if I've ever brought this up before, but the idea is that all else being equal, adding a pound to your body will slow you down by 2 seconds/mile. And I'm about 4 pounds heavier than when I ran this in 2008. At that time I was deep in a calorie counting/food logging adventure in a quest to see just how lean I could get. Now that I know the answer and how to get there I'm a bit less concerned with what I weigh in January, and it shows on the scale. So for the purposes of figuring out a race plan, I took the 6:57 average pace I ran this race at in 2008 (in the snow, which had to be slower than this year's dry conditions), and added 8 seconds/ mile to it, which of course is 7:05. That would be the pace I would attempt to maintain for the first half of the race, and after that I'd see how I felt.

My secondary pacing strategy was based on heart rate. In my running LT test last April, we came up with 149 bpm. The last time I ran this race I averaged 158 bpm, really high for me on a two hour effort. So I hoped to stay at around 150 for the first half of the race too. What I forgot was how hilly this course is, and how the distribution of the profile's bumps would affect pacing. Another small factor was my decision to pack a few small flasks of liquids in my pockets, probably another pound at least, so there goes another 2 seconds/mile.

That is not the end of my excuses. I lined up around 100 runners back from the front in order to save me from myself, forcing a slow pace off the start. The first mile is mostly uphill. When I got to the sign it was at 7:43. I sort of panicked. Now that was dumb, because if I was going for a 7:05ish pace, and starting in traffic, uphill, I should have only been looking for a 7:30 or so anyway. Despite my HR already being 146 or so, I went a little faster. Mile two had some downhill but it went in 6:12 despite me never pushing. The only explanation is the mile one guy was in the wrong spot, lengthening the first mile and shortening the second. But all this did was put doubts in my mind, and to be safe I kept running with the group I was near. My HR was in the 150-155 range, and I had to slow on the rises to keep it from going higher. But I felt pretty decent. The third mile was mostly downhill and it was 6:19. Now I was getting worried about going too hard, so I backed off a bit. The race has a timing mat at five miles, and I would be more confident it it's placement than some of these signs. Mile four was 6:34, but my HR was still creeping up. Mile five included a significant hill, and it took 7:18, for a five mile split of 34:09. This was only 13 seconds quicker than running in mashed potato snow in 2008, but so much for my plan...

Mile six was about 3/4 mile of steep downhill followed by 1/4 mile of steep climb and it took 6:44. The next two miles were fairly flat, or at least contained near equal up and down, and I maintained this pace, feeling pretty good about myself when I registered a halfway split of 54:23. If I could negative split this thing, then I'd nearly make my big, big, big dream stretch goal of 1:48. Well NOT.GONNA.HAPPEN. Of course I knew there were hills in the latter half. But I had no idea of just how DerryDoomsdayed I was about to become.

My hip suddenly started to hurt. Weird, I mean really suddenly, on a flat part of the course. Then not long after, Zencycle came driving by to heckle me. I was trying to focus, so I told him to go get some beer and meet me at the finish. Mile nine my pace slipped back to 7:03. And mile ten is the one with the steep hill... 7:29. My ten mile split was 1:08:55, meaning I'd only lost about 40 seconds for the miles 5-10 compared to 1-5, not bad considering the hills. Maybe I should not beat myself up too badly, as it appears I ran a decent race up until that point. But this would be the end of the good news.

From about 10.5 to mile twelve is all uphill. I guess this is "Warner Hill." I did not remember this. In fact, after seeing my crappy split for mile ten, I told myself to just hang on and keep a steady pace until mile twelve, then start going for it. What a fucking pipe dream that turned out to be! Mile eleven's 7:34 was eclipsed in suckitude by mile twelve's 7:43. I wasn't looking at the overall time but any hopes of beating 2008 were probably G-O-N-E already. Smarter, more experienced runners were beginning to come up from behind and pass me. The group I was with had splintered, with only one guy still visible just ahead, and even he was pulling away.

All hope was not lost. Mile thirteen must have had some downhill, and I put in a 7:18. The bottoms of my feet were hurting bad though. I'm a 25 miles/week tenderfoot, and all this downhilling was taking a toll. The race has a half-mary split mat that I tripped at 1:32:17. Not really horrible, and the rest of the way is almost all downhill, so I did not give up, and mile fourteen was another 7:18. Enter Chinese motorcycle. That was all I had. I was wrecked. When I got to the busy road where the cones are, runners were bearing down on me from behind. People with horrible running form, who were clearly a mess, were streaking by me. I can only imagine what I looked like. Mile fifteen took 7:42, and it was all downhill. At this point I did not give two shits about anything, and made a decision to start my cooldown NOW. After all, this was supposed to be training, and I wasn't going to run a single step after crossing the line. So I stroked it the rest of the way. Final mile, 7:47, official finish time 1:54:18, good for 68th place overall, 65/426 males, 18/139 age group.

I was pretty pissy, but zencycle had his dog with him and you can only be so pissy in the company of a friendly dog. Plus the race provided chile, pizza, and brownies, three things that always make me happy. After pulling myself together, we got a chance to chat with Mary the Ironmatron for a few minutes. She still had a lot of energy, and a weird accent, much different than the voice I've always put to her writing. But we made a pact to schedule some blogger pizza and beer sometime not too far off. Me and zen then went and knocked back a few old school style in the school parking lot.

So three-plus-something minutes, or 190 seconds slower than last time. 190/16 is 12 seconds a mile. Figuring my two seconds/mile/pound penalty, with four on me and one in my pockets for the liquids I did not drink much of until I started getting desperate near the end accounts for almost all of that. The rest I'll attribute to losing a minute in the final two miles with a blown engine. I should not be too unhappy, and I won't be so long as my hip does not turn out to be f'd. I will have to show more respect for race distances that are well beyond what I've trained for though. I probably should have bagged out on this one, but because it fills up I had to pre-register and for me that generally means no turning back. This had to be pretty boring, so congrats for making it this far. This week maybe I'll try to come up with stuff that is short and entertaining. Thanks for reading.