Friday June 22, 2018 was Halifax Road Hammer’s inaugural Chase the Pace 5000m event at Saint Mary’s Track, in partnership with Lululemon, Aerobics First and Atlantic Chip. This post is about my own 5000m experience with a prelude and some lessons. Which are mostly for me. I don’t always write 5km race recaps but one of my training partners ordered me to. More later.
Prelude
On the eve of 5000m race day, my Love Training More athletes were talking about spectating and I posted this on our private Facebook page:
I’m racing in the 7:10 pm heat. I am hardly in peak race shape but here are my pre-race pep thoughts for myself:
1️⃣️ I truly love the track and racing on it
2️⃣️ if we limited ourself to racing only when we are at peak fitness/when everything is perfect/when we can win/when we can PB…. we would miss out on many special athletic experiences and moments
3️⃣️ my Road Hammer training quartet is this: Mike, Dave, Nick McBride and me, Erin. We are #bettertogether so of course I should be out there with them. I know they will eventually drop me and that’s ok. I’ve placed last on the track before, I can embrace that. If I want to race with the big boys and the university girls on the track, I need to be ok with that!
4️⃣️ your friends, training partners and family don’t actually care about the time on the clock when the 12.5 laps are done. They just want to see you enjoy doing what you love
5️⃣️️ I can/will/have deluded myself into believing that my track racing experience and experience in running my body into the ground in a race (so to speak) are more important than being fit right now.
▶️ And so, 5000m, here I come #hammertime
Deciding to lace up was a big decision because the track even ended up falling on the same day as a retirement party for my work friend and mentor of 10 years, Sharyn. That party was close to the track, 11 minutes drive according to google maps. The party started at 5pm and I knew it would go until 10pm or so. When the heats were finally announced Thursday eve and I was at 7:10pm, I decided it could make it work. With an 11 minutes drive, I would drive 5 minutes, run the rest of the way for warm up. Race x 19 minutes. Run back to the car. Get back to the party. ? 80 minutes absence. Committed. The day before.
Race Day:
I received a stream of texts from my Hammer guys. Nicky telling me that he got his go-fast hair cut. Dave telling me to lay off the cake at the party, he doesn’t want any excuses out of me.
The hype was good. The 2 work girls who I told encouraged me to duck out and not worry about it, people might not even notice.
So I dressed for the party with my Lulu race gear underneath my cute clothes.
I partied. I got race-scared and started texting my sister who was at the race volunteering. I no longer wanted to go.
“Fun vibes here! No fears” she responded.
Race Time:
So I ducked out. Drove 5 minutes. Executed some kinda super-runner/crazy woman outfit transformation in the car and ran the rest of the way to the track to join my tribe.
At the beginning of June, when I signed up, I had entered my seed time at as 18:45 (optimistically). Damn it, Mikey Juurlink is now announcing that during my warm up. The track event was unique and awesome in that Coach Lee had set up 5 heats, each with pacers for specific time goals to help our club members maximize our 5000m performances. The pacers were our fast Road Hammer guys.
My sister was right, the vibe was all fun. I loved seeing Heat 3 crushing and it and Jamie leading fierce runners to PBs.
I had almost no time to process or think about what I was doing. I was running around trying to find my bib, get my racing flats on (last minute decision) and find another safety pin after one popped off. Coach Lee was doing roll call and it was time to line up and go.
I didn’t really have any business going out at 3:45/km pace with the training I put it over the last 4 weeks. I’d completed 3 workouts since my April 29 marathon in Big Sur. One, two, three. Three. I ran 50km last week and that was the first week that I ran 5 days. I’ve been working hard at rehabbing an inflamed big toe joint tracing all the way back to early March. When I set my seed time @ 18:45, I had been planning to train hard in June, use Lunenburg Muffin run as fierceness practice and then be fit for this race. Instead, I went to Maura for physio, ran smart and easy to heal my sore parts, got some practically orthopedic running shoes and had to skip the Muffin Run. But I balanced that with many weeks of healthy training from December 2017 to April marathon day and chose to be excited/scared/excited anyway.
So I didn’t really have any business going out at 3:45/km but I did anyway because my (rather reckless) philosophy (only for myself, not the athletes who I coach) is that you never know if it’s going to be that magical day where it all comes together and you blow it out of the water. And you’ll miss it if you don’t show up and pony up. So giddy’up, I went out with Matt, the 18:45 pace group and my guys.
My splits were this along with the theme of each km:
- 1km 3:45 (I’m ok)
- 2km 3:48 (I want to quit)
- 3km 4:00 (I can’t quit, I have to go back to the party and they will ask me how it was)
- 4km 4:01 (Suffer)
- 5km 3:59 (Suffer)
- 19:42 final time
Postmortem
My friends on the sidelines were telling me that my form looked good and strong and I felt like it was, I just didn’t have any second gear because I’m not fit- I haven’t trained any second gear. 19:41 to 19:45 is like my 5km default. When I’m not particularly fit or trained, I run this. It’s like I have a default button. I now have a collection of at least five races with this time. It’s not too bad and the best news was that foot did not hurt even 1% and I was wearing racing flats.
This is a medley of the thoughts I had during this race. As it turns out, racing across the neighborhood, pulling your miniskirt off to reveal shorty shorts, and blowing onto the track with 18 minutes to spare does not help oneself get into the zone. I was outside the zone. I was actually so far outside the zone that I was in a new zone that was the antithesis of the zone. There was no race fierceness available to me.
These are way too many thoughts over 5000m:
Tucking in off Mike shoulder, this is happy, I am good- I am ok
- When this starts to hurt, I’m going to want to quit
- I want to quit. But it doesn’t even hurt yet.
- Can I quit?
Gah! Small gap between Mike and I, how did that get there?
- Gap is growing
- Gap is groooowwiinnnng
- No, no, nooooo! The boys are gone.
- The boys are on the other side of the track
- The girls are coming.
- Kyle (19:30 pacer) says come. I say no thanks, not today.
- I no longer want to quit. I have to return to the party. I will not return as a quitter.
- Coach Lee’s coaching voice is very gentle and kind. Like he’s talking to a puppy. Am I running like a puppy? Bad. Bad. Oh it sounds the same for Maura too. She’s not a puppy ergo neither am I (way too many thoughts, I know).
- Looks at watch. Can’t see or interpret numbers
- 2km to go. How many laps is that? Brain. Processing. Silence.
- Brain is working (!) 2km = 10 laps.
- That’s not right. That’s the indoor track. This is outdoor. The race is 12.5 laps. How many laps is 2km? Silence.
Juurlink says 4 laps.- Juurling says 4 laps again. WTF!?!?!
- Now I just don’t care. My form is good. There’s no extra gear. And I don’t care. This will due. I’m so far off my goal and PB (19:00 {don’t even}), I just don’t care. I will stay here.
- 3000m is so much better than 5000m.
After the pain and confusion faded, I settled on the fact that this was fun. I loved being out there with my crew. I so appreciate the teammate cheers. I didn’t look at any of you as is proper track racing but I loved what you were saying, especially Shauna, Tash, Ian and Jamie, thank you, thank you!
I snapped 2 photos as evidence at the finish line. Ran 3 cooldown laps with Mike and then ran back to the car and drove back to the party. I texted Jenn on the way to see if anyone noticed. I had been gone x 70 minutes. She said one or two people asked where I was and she said they loved it when she said I went to race. I got back to the party and it was all fun and it’s debatable if they think I’m more or less nuts than before.
Then I went to the Road Hammer party and was postmorteming my race and Dave’s race. Dave says he had no thoughts x 12.5 laps. He was just looking at pacer Matt’s head. He nailed it in 18:38. That’s a great track effort. Me: not so much. Even working with what training I had going in, I clearly gave up.
Dave says, “I read all your blogs. You never do that in a marathon or a half marathon. I never read about you giving up in those races.” I agree. I don’t.
“So why do you give up in 5km?”
“Go write a blog,” he suggests. “Figure it out.”
Figuring it out:
Lesson: Don’t leave a party to race on the track and expect it to go well. Only expect it to be fun.
Lesson: Train for your races (ha).
Lesson: When I get that first “I want to quit” thought, I’m always still running well. I have lived this a dozen times without changing my behaviour to date. But on the flip side, I have had a few magical days as well.
This is where I need to work the hardest.
I counsel all of the runners who I coach about strategy to dealing with negative thoughts. I write things like this in their race plans:
If and when negative thoughts or doubt/fear come into your mind, acknowledge them as thoughts that have no value on this day and let them go. It’s ok that they’ve entered your consciousness but you don’t need to hold onto them. They aren’t true. Be fierce in your confidence in your fitness: both your physical fitness and your mental fitness. You are fierce. You’ve got this. That is true.
I’m not dealing with this negative quitting thought in 5km. As Dave points out, I don’t get derailed by thinking about quitting in the 10km, half or marathon. But I do it often in 5km. At Chase the Pace, I let this thought of quitting become the only thought in my head and I let it dominate my race experience.
I was out of the zone and had not prepared any protection against the quit-thought. I didn’t line up thinking, “I will not quit.” I lined up thinking, “Do I even have all of my clothes on properly and I missed half of my warm up.”
I probably had the quit thought on lap 3, before I was even hurting. Not good. Wanting to quit then morphs into not caring. And then my “not caring” is insurmountable. When pacer Kyle (19:30) told me to come with him, I happily said “no thanks!” because I no longer cared enough to push myself to do it and there was no way possible I was interested in going with him.
My #5 pep talk clause above was this: “I can/will/have deluded myself into believing that my track racing experience and experience in running my body into the ground in a race (so to speak) are more important than being fit right now.” My track experience is in the 3000m. The clause seems to currently mostly apply to longer distance races. Not the 5km. But I can work on that.
At BlueNose 5km, I didn’t give up at all. I was prepared. I had a pre-race mental quit protection plan. When the 5km pain flooded me, I welcomed it and told myself that I felt exactly like I was supposed to and I closed out the last km at 3:42/km and I didn’t give up (for the record, I also ran 19:43 there but it was a better effort: 3 weeks post-marathon, 2 turn around cones and a long grind up hill for a 5km).
I will work on this in Road Hammer practice, hanging on when the intervals are hard and training my “don’t quit” resolve. What I need is two x four week training blocks.
Final Lesson: The last lesson isn’t even from the 5000m. It’s from earlier in the week. On Tuesday, at our children’s soccer practice, I was telling Tonya this lesson about being patient. How is training going? Fine, I am being patient. It’s what I need right now. It’s ok that I’m not super fit right now, that will come. I don’t need to be fit until late August when my goal races roll around. I’ll practice racing into both fitness and fierceness in July at the Windsor 5km race and Charlottetown’s Cox and Palmer 5km. I will be patient until it comes.
So here I am. This 5000m event was fun. I’m glad to have lived these athletic moments with my friends. The camaraderie and teamwork at the track was palpable and I loved being a part of it. Those are some of the best aspects of our sport.
Biggest shout out to Coach Lee, the staff at Lululemon and the staff at Aerobics First, and our Road Hammer volunteers for pulling this off. Along with Atlantic Chip for the bibs. A track event with 82 runners running 12.5 laps is a huge undertaking and y’all nailed it in the most fun and positive way possible. Well done x 12.5! Huge congrats to the runners who gave it there all and netted sweet new PBs, especially Tash!
And thanks for my work girls for tolerating and sometimes embracing my runner looney-ness.
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