The 1 mile would be my second event at the 2022 USATF Indoor Master’s National Championships. I had a brilliant, record breaking day on day 1 in the 3000m. One of the best things about a track meet is that you have such a blast on day 1 and then you get to come back and do it all over again on day 2!
I knew that my day 2 would be complicated by an unfortunate bad fall in my 3000m cooldown. Ending Day 1, I didn’t know exactly how impacted it would be. As is my preferred frame of mind, I chose to be hopeful. Hopeful is always the best option.
My night was pretty sleepless, I kept waking up to ask, “hamstring? How are you? How bad is it?” I didn’t really know getting out of bed. Christy, travel partner extraordinaire, was gone when I woke up.
Christy bursts into the room. She’s super excited, amped up, and loud. It’s 7:30am. This is one of the things I love most about Christy: she is loud and excitable and all in on whatever the subject of said excitement is. I’m not quite sure what the 7:30am hype is yet.
“GUESS WHO I MET?”
I can hardly imagine. She’s been prowling around NYC at 7am, lol.
Christy has been at Tick Tock 24 hour diner, haha. She comes back into our 27 floor hotel mid-Times Square. In the lobby/breakfast area, she sees Michelle Rohl from track day 1, new 3000m F55 American record holder and wife of my new track coach friend Mike Rohl. Then she sees Coach Mike. In our hotel. Out of literally thousands of hotels in NYC. Mike was so amazing at yelling my splits yesterday, helping me do my track job.
She has a chat with them. Michelle races the 1 mile at 11:25. Christy asks Mike, “what are you doing at 11:50am?” This is my 1mile heat time.
Mike says, “Calling splits for your friend.”
So my day starts on a hopeful note. I do some ever so gentle rolling with a lacrosse ball in the hotel room. I read over my race plan. I nail down a best case plan. My seed time was 5:15. I ran a 5:02 for 1500 in March and know I made a few mistakes. It could have been a 4:55 if I had executed well, like I did in the 3000m yesterday. I need to know what I am doing so the girls can tell Coach Mike.
Compared to the 3000, there is less race strategy required for the mile. In the 3, you need some strategy on how to approach each kilometer. In the mile, you run an exact opening lap and then you just run as fast as you can until the bell rings then you run one last lap faster. Easy as that, ha!
The mile is an 8 lap + 9 m race. I land on this: 42 opening, 39-40s x 5. Close with sub39s x 2. Christy and Meaghan are ready to “brief” Coach Mike.
Christy and Meaghan both had an exhilarating day at the track the day before. They fully absorbed all of the fun to be had. Meaghan’s husband Brett would be joining us for this day, after flying in the night before. I can’t wait to have another friend experience the thrill of the Armoury for the first time.
We make our way to Washington Heights via subway. I try to buy some muscle rub on the way but the corner store doesn’t have any. I figure some of my new friends at track will have some.
We are not quite as early in our arrival to the Armoury this time so I have to get right to business. First, I need to procure muscle rub for my hamstring, which is pulling with each walking step. So Cal Track Club have a massage table set up. They don’t have any. There are distance women from the 3k in the stands next to the track. They are eager to help and they produce a collection of items for me: tiger balm, icy/hot, cbd topical lotion. I go with the tiger balm and icy/hot. I slather it on and hopefully head out for my warm up.
This time, I don’t venture close to the Hudson with it’s spectacular but dangerous-to-track-runners panorama. I run in circles using just the block around the Armoury. I made friends with 64 year old Steve from So Cal Track Club. It’s fun! Fun is so much better than hyper-awareness of my hamstring. He tells me that he is in the “regrettable” top of his age group as a 64 year old. The 60 year olds are so fast! What an amazing proclamation, eh? He says he will be that fast 65 year old next year and it will be awesome.
I take this slice of awesome indoors to the warm up track. My hamstring is definitely present in each run step, creating a background of pain. It’s tolerable. It’s there.
I cautiously almost tip-toe into my dynamic warm up drills. A-drills are ok. B-drills are not. I can’t do them, it creates too much pain and pulling at hamstring. At this point, I doubt that I will be able to run the half marathon the next day. This is ok, though. It’s not tomorrow yet. I only need to worry about today. Right now.
I do two strides, in giant marshmallow HOKAs. Pain. Tolerable. Acceptable. I only need this hamstring for 5 minutes of racing. I will replace the HOKAs with track spikes. I cancel the final 3 strides, I don’t need them.
Before a race, I operate on a principle of “no wishy-washy.” If I start, I finish. I commit all the way. There can’t be any mid-race thoughts of “am I going to finish? Will my hamstring impact this? Will I DNF” Those are wishy-washy thoughts. Not allowed. I commit to starting and that means committing to finishing. No more thoughts allowed re hamstring.
I find Meaghan and Christy for a final fist-bump. I march determined-ly to the check in and call area.
From the call area, I see Michelle Rohl just crushing her mile. SO FUN!
My warm up was a little rushed, so I get my spikes on and plan to continue with the drills that feel good. While I do this, I look up and OMG DOREEN IS HERE!!!
Doreen Redmond, aka QueenAger, is a fierce senior-masters athlete who I coach. She is running the NYC Half the next day as well. She made it all the way up to Washington Heights to see me. She is a having a time, taking this all in.
We gush about how fabulous this event is. She is another runner to seduce with the magic of Master’s Track. It’s exactly what I need.
I also see Michelle Rohl tear up the track: so fierce!
Settled, I enter back into the buzz of the athlete area. I am happy to see Ana, my new friend from Brazil who dusted me yesterday, putting 3 seconds on me in the final 300m of the 3km. I start to talk to her, only to realize that she doesn’t speak a word of English! Haha! I was so jazzed up yesterday, that I didn’t even notice we weren’t actually speaking to each other- we were just using the universal language of track celebration. She in fact only speaks Portuguese. She’s trying to figure out where the 1600m starts and how to cut in. Another runner and I hilariously try to mime to her how to line up 9m behind the track start line and to cut in (safely) at the gun. Yay, she’s got it!
Now it’s go-time.
Released onto track for final strides. I execute them. No investigation of hamstring, that’s done.
I line up with the same plan. Do my job. No wishy-washy.
The gun fires and we are off.
The runner next to me gets out in front of me. Great. Maybe she can lead.
But when we split through 200m, it’s 42.8. Too slow. Not my plan. I learned this the hard way in my last 1500, there’s not enough time to linger and wait and see. I have to run my planned pace immediately. I pass her on the bend.
Coach Mike, “42.8 ERIN! 42.8” Booming voice. I accept. The next lap has to be faster.
The competitor I just passed is tucked in practically on my back. She clips my heels. Annoying.
Do your job.
Coach Mike, “39.4 second lap Erin, that’s 39.4!!!!” 400m in.
OK, OK, I’ve got it! This is right where I want to be!
But actually: I don’t got it. When I reach for the power I want from my push-off to hold this 39-sec per lap pace, it’s not there. Thinking back, I didn’t so much hurt in hamstring but the power I very much needed from it wasn’t there.
My competitor clips my spikes again. She kicks me twice in this lap.
“40.9 Erin! 40.9 at 600m”
My competitor clips my spikes again because she’s so close to me. I shouldn’t be letting this break through my race job steely mindset but I do. It’s pissing me off.
“41.7 Erin! That lap is 41.7!!!” 800m. The 800 split is 2:44.38.
I have an awareness that the announcer is saying, “Leading the race is Poirier of Canada.”
I get clipped again and I am mad.
Right before the race, I had this lovely moment of sisterhood (theme of the weekend) where another competitor, Alex, new 3000m friend, of So Cal Track Club, said to me, “when you lap me, do you want me to be on the inside of my lane or the outside.” That is sisterhood. This track spike clipping is not.
We come through 1km at 3:26. I’m not solving the mystery of how I am performing but I know I have no power, I am off. I get clipped again and I yell at her: “Just go around me!”
I shouldn’t have let her behaviour unwind me and I did. I can own that.
We come to Coach Mike, “41.7 Erin! Increase your turnover”
I”m in that spot where I hardly know what I am doing but I can do that: pick up my turnover. My brain can order that. It seems that my legs can not respond. Power meter is too low.
But I do my job anyway and I fight as hard as I can. I have no idea how I am doing, I just fight.
The runner who has been clipping my heels every lap finally passes me, I think it was with about 350m to go. I can’t recruit enough power to go with her.
I keep fighting.
I don’t give up.
I cross the line in second place. 5:32.00. On day 2.
I hang on the railing for a long time.
When I finally lift my head, I see Doreen. She’s so happy!! So I will be happy too!!
I climb down the stairs and the girl who beat me is behind me. “Sorry” she mutters. Meaning for clipping my heels Every. Single. Lap.
When I see my girls and Brett, all I can say is, “that was so hard!”
I need Christy to remove my spikes for me. I can’t bend over and do it. I can hardly sit in the chair, my hamstring has turned into a broomstick.
I hobble out for cooldown. I tell the girls that it might be walking, it might be running. It will be 17 minutes. I can’t mess around all day, we have a broadway play to get to. I make it through gentle jogging. I feel all messed up. I decide that I can make my half marathon decision tomorrow morning in Brooklyn by either lining up to race or standing on the sidelines with Coach Lee and Brett to cheer instead. I try to sort through what just happened on the track as the blood flow returns to my brain and allows me to process it. I land on this: on the second day of a track meet, you just fight as hard as you can with what you’ve got. I achieved that.
I come back into the Armoury. I collect a silver medal as I finished in second place for F40-44 in the USA. At a National Championships. I have two children. Now I have a medal for each of them. When I dreamed about this day, I never dreamed that I would come home with a medal. The meet engraves the medals for free because this is a National Championships.
I catch up with Coach Mike: “You couldn’t get outta your 3km rhythm” he tells me. I tell him that I couldn’t access any power due to my fall-injured hamstring. He agrees. And says great running, keep it up. I hope I will see him again.
I do go on to run the United Airlines NYC Half Marathon as a victory lap.
When I get home, I catch myself. I need to be very careful how I talk about this race event. I’m on the phone with my sister and I tell her, “it wasn’t the performance I wanted in the mile” and my daughter snuggled up next to me says, “but mommy, you still did so good, you won a silver medal!” That will be the last time I talk about this event that way.
I won a silver medal at a National Championship.
I have the antidote to this experience the next night, while coaching my daughter’s hockey practice. My co-coach Jimmy rounds all the girls on the ice and says he wants them to know about how Coach Erin did at her races in New York. They all look at me eagerly. I tell them about setting a new provincial record and winning and daughter is shouting “she got a gold medal! A gold medal”. I tell them that a provincial record means no 40 year old woman has ever run faster than I did at that distance for NS. I tell them that my Gold Medal means that I am the National Champion in the USA for the F40 3000m. They all cheer and tap their hockey sticks on the ice and chant “Erin! Erin!”
I don’t need the glory out of this moment, it’s not the glory that is important to me. But in that moment, in our male-dominated sport of hockey, it was very important that all of those little girls had a female coach. And I do need that.
