Saturday Nov 7 was the date of the Halifax Road Hammers’ last time trial event of 2020. After a really solid fall training block and in this 2020-pandemic-year of no race calendar, I was super excited to lace up, line up and lay down a fast one. The title is a spoiler: alongside fierce boss Kaili, I ran a 70 second PB with a 37:28. At age 40. Instead of a traditional race recap, which I usually write for myself (they are for Age 80 Erin), here’s recap of what is behind this performance.
Here’s what was behind this performance:
Kaili
Stephanie
Maura
Christy
Kara
Krista
Katie
Carly
Meaghan
Mary
Jennie
Tonya
Britney
Hilary
Danielle
Bea
Liz
All of the women who I coach with Love Training More who inspire me far more than any inspiration I might provide for them.
And the women who blazed this fast trail before me, showing me that Faster As a Master is the Boss-Lady way it’s done: Denise. Linda. Rayleen. Paula.
On this historic day that saw the first ever Woman and Black and South Asian Woman elected to the office of the Vice President of the USA, the list of what’s behind this performance is: WOMEN. Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris’ win is the real win of Saturday, Nov 7. It simply pleases me that our small scale girl-win came on the same day.
Here’s a secret that you might not know: there is something special and something magical going on with the fast women in our city of Halifax. It’s all women. Building each other up. Helping each other along to be the best and most badass athletic versions of ourselves that we can be. Helping each other dream bigger. With fewer limits. For many of us, we are running into the best and most badass versions of ourselves after age 40. I have written about this already. This is Christy Pound, telling us Linday-Crouse-style, “why not us, too?” This is us harnessing our locally grown version of the Shalane Effect. This is Stephanie telling us often and fervently that our fastest days are ahead of us. She lives this so big and loud that we believe it and live it too.
This is Wednesday-morning assistant Coach Tonya showing us a video of the Commons at 6:20am. It’s nearly pitch-black-dark. There are a group of runners on the inky-horizon, ripping off fast 800m. You can see indistinct fast bodies. But all you can hear is women chatter. It was the day that I was getting dropped by my women with each rep, even though I was running 2:53 800s, 3:36/k pace. This is us telling each other Desi Linden’s words, all the time: Keep Showing Up. And then living out those words. We keep showing up. This is Masters Age Women Power and I could not love it more.
I loved it right into a massive PB. I put the consistent, hard work in. Alongside women and also yes alongside some of the Hammer men. Especially Alan and WIll before the hour of 6am. Jake in early workouts. Nick McB, Dave and Mike M when I can catch them.
And so here is a PB-story.
Race Week:
This week came and I treated it like a real race week. Taper down. Do the last workout. This feels like garbage and that’s ok, I know the work has been done and I have done well. Do the shake-out and strides. I always run a last race-week run at Fairview Lawn Cemetery where lies my late Coach Cliff Mathews because it feels good.
Group chat with boys, Will and Alan; them asking my goal time. I say that I don’t have a goal time, just a pace that I think that I can hold. I have narrowed in on that. Group chat with girls, Kaili and Maura. Coach Lee has us together in the 3:52/km pace group. I tell them that I can agree to run that x first 4km. Then press on gas. We are fitter than that. Lots of chatter with Stephanie, all week long. We are going to do this and do this big!! One last email with Dave M- asking why I am running in the 3:52/km pace group because I am going to destroy that and I say “yep, that’s the plan.”
Before the race, I had been chatting with Coach Lee and instead of placing a ceiling or goal time on me, he simply said: “You are moving really well. You’ve done excellent in workouts. It will be nice to see how you feel in the 10km.” I am sending out a huge thanks to Coach Lee for his creative work in planning out the final training leading into this 10km. I have been running with Lee since the inception of what was to become the Road Hammers, when he took on 10 Cliff’s Antique Runners way back in 2015. The polishing off of this build included some unique long continuous efforts which served me very well.
Race Day:
Race morning presented me with that delicious nervous-excitement feeling. The kind of which I only get on race day. I braid up my fast-braid. I drive down with Kaili. Relaxed. Excited. I do my superstitious 17 minute warm up with Christy, Dave and Jody (poor Kaili has to dash home to get her forgotten Garmin!). It’s actually Christy who says we must do the 17 minute warm up. Everyone is amped. Confident.
I tell them about how my 6 year old, in this pandemic-time, now asks me, “Are you running a real race tomorrow? Or a “made-up” one?” lol. A 6 year old will also make sure that you don’t take yourself too seriously. We laugh and do our final preparations for this Made Up One; the best we’ll get in November 2020, COVID-times.
I also tell my pals that I ran my last 10km PB, also a Made Up Race Time Trial, down here solo while Christy did her own time trial. I was 39 then. Now I need an authentic-age-40 PB.
The lining up is hurried and anti-climactic. Maura, Kaili and I greet our pacer, young Aaron Manning. Dave and Christy are with us too doing 5km at this pace. GO.
I run the first 2km up front, next to Aaron. I am happy. I like to be upfront. The morning is superb. The Halifax Harbour, next to us, is still. The sun is rising. I say, “Girls, we are so lucky.” I’m not looking at my watch but I suspect we are pushing the pace a bit. Faster than 3:52/km. I see Aaron looking and slowing himself.
By 3km, it’s Kaili next to me. We are slowly pulling away from our pacer. I can see looking at my splits afterwards that we ran a 3:46 3rd kilomether so it must have been here. This is ok. We have each other. I can’t hear Maura, I don’t know if she’s on us. I hope she’s tucked in behind. I can’t hear Christy either but silent and efficient, I know I won’t hear her anyway.
We enter the Navy Dockyards and friends have parked and are cheering and it’s magnificent. The fastest guys are coming back from the turnaround. Always a pick-up.
We turn at the turnaround, about 4.1km. I yell for Dave and Christy to go. Kaili and I go too. I know we are now alone, out in front of our pacer. This. Is. Awesome.
Photos by Sheila
In these early 10km miles, I am telling myself to Relax, Relax, Relax. Use as little energy as possible to run this fast. Kaili and I are stride for stride. It’s immensely helpful to be in this together. I know we are pushing the pace down. I do look briefly at my Garmin when I can no longer discern where we are within this 10km and I see it reading high 3:30s for pace. That’s s*&t is scary. I put it away and don’t look again. At age 39/40, I have really learned to race by feel and I know how I should feel and with Kaili here, I feel like I should.
Now we are into the 6 to 8km grind-it-through land of 10km. You’re in deep but it’s not time yet to Hammer. It is SO. HARD. at this point. It’s a grind. Your perceived effort is through the roof. It’s a far way to go. This is the point where you are at dangerous risk of telling yourself, “End the pain. This is good enough for today.” I hear nothing behind us. I only hear our synchronized footstrikes. Something remarkable happens here. We’re together, Kaili and I. But I can see Matthias’ 3:45/km pace group ahead of us. They are pacing evenly for a half marathon. And they are inching back to us. Even though the effort is so big, the pain is so big, I know that we are running fast as hell because we are gaining on this steady and even 3:45/km half marathon group. This hard evidence of success is so very helpful here. We’re doing it.
Coming in here, along with this evidence, I also need a mantra. Something to repeat in my head so I can keep at it and keep engaged and keep my negative evil-b*tch voice turned off (we all have that evil gal!). I riffle through my mental filing cabinets quickly and I come up with this gem. OG Senior Masters Queen, Doreen Redmond, yelling at Maura and I on the 2019 Blue Nose 5km course. She’s yelling, “BE THE STORM.” This is it. I proceed to repeat to myself, “I. Am. The. Storm” to close out these last 4km.
Kaili and I definitively catch the 3:45/km group just before 8km and it’s exhilarating. Then Kaili just as definitively blows right by these 3 men. My brain is yelling, “I thought we were catching then, we are blowing by them!?!?!?” My legs don’t listen to this barely functioning brain, they just run. I keep at it. I can see that my 9th km split is my fastest of the day at 3:37/km.
Kaili is ahead of me now and this is ok. I still feel together.
9th kilometer rings and there is one to go. I tell myself the same thing I always do in the last km, “run yourself into the ground, Big Bad Mama, Do. Not. :00 This!” I have no clue what the cumulative race time is on the Made-Up-Race Race Clock. I haven’t looked at the time on the clock even once. I can feel that I have ever so slightly lost my top speed. I can see that I have because Kaili is ahead. What a QUEEN! But I hammer within everything I’ve got. No :00s today.
Beep, beep, beep, it’s over. I wildy hit stop and crash into a tree and hang over it’s branches in front of the Halifax Seaport. I live that goddamn beautiful moment where you know that you’ve laid it all down on the road and you know that it was a big result, you just don’t know how big.
When the stars clear, I hold my Garmin up to my face.
Yes! Yes! YES!!
37:28.5
I start yelling, “Kaili! KAILI!” We regroup and it’s just the best.
I can’t wait to see members of my crew. And we must find Maura. Stephanie is still running the half marathon.
I see Alan and I’m pumped to tell him. The typical reaction as hoped, “No way! Stop it! No!” he goes on, “Every single time!” (every time he runs a PB, I run one too and match/beat his and then he has to tell his mom. Who delivered my babies). I find Dave Martin, “Can you believe it!?” I say, I am so happy. “Of course, I can believe it.” he says.
The supporting cast of this post. Christy ran a tremendous 5km PB of 19:20. Stephanie polished her stellar racing resume with a 1:23 half marathon. Maura had a hard day after a hard week and she still ran a 39:04 and if that’s not a Big Bad Mama performance, I don’t know what is.
We celebrate with coffee and at Garrison. The atmosphere is jubilant. Supportive.
I am so filled with gratitude for my women. Especially these three: Maura, Stephanie and Kaili.
I get home to my husband and two children. No one could care less at this moment that I have just run a 70 second PB. That’s just the way. But I know they see it and that it sticks with them.
One morning this week, after getting home from a 5am taper run with Will, I did my physio exercises and then came upstairs. At this point, I was weaning capris with knee-high socks pulled up to them. I had not done my sport laundry and had no pants left to wear on this cold morning. I had on a winter hat and a sports bra. My husband looked sideways at me. Then says, “Sporty Erin is my favorite.” I smile. She’s my favorite too.
Saturday after lunch, my kids are scrambling to run out of the house to play with friends and my daughter lays eyes on a pair of Steve Madden high heel boots I had left by the door. “Whose boots are these? Why are they here!?” I tell her that they are mine. “What?!” She doesn’t believe me. I wore them to the restaurant with Daddy on Thursday, they are mine! My son chimes in, “Mom. You are not really fancy. You are more sporty than fancy.”
Yes, my love. I surely am. Sporty. 40. Bettered by a crew of women.
Post-Script: the public health professional in me feels compelled to point out that the Halifax Road Hammers are a registered club with Athletics Nova Scotia- the regulatory body for our sport of Athletics. As such, per current Public Health Measures, we are permitted to hold sport events with groups up to 50. All public health measures were followed with this time trial event.
