Running With Perseverance

And Other Lies I Told Myself To Run A Great Race

Lie #1: I don’t believe in carb-loading.

I have read many different articles on carb-loading, and I am not convinced that I need to carb-load before a ten mile race. I am more concerned about post-race GI issues, and since Carrie wrote this article about half marathon race preparation, I think over-eating before a race may be more risky for me than under-eating. Still, I can’t completely pass up an opportunity to indulge the night before a race!

Zpizza California pizza on whole wheat crust, hold the onions, sub Greek olives.

Lie #2: I am not excited about this race.

I went to bed early (around 10 pm) and set my alarm for 5:00. Even after a week of business travel, I woke up before my alarm. As soon as I was awake, I couldn’t resist checking the Army Ten Miler countdown clock.

Before I took Tiger Lilly for a walk, I cleared off the kitchen counter and set out everything I needed, so I wouldn’t forget anything.

Lie 3: 50° is perfect race day weather.

When I checked the weather and saw that it was 50°, I thought it was perfect running weather, and it was. But, it wasn’t perfect weather for waiting around at the start for two hours! Oh, I did I mention the wind?

Oops! That’s my alarm going off after I had a quick shower and was getting dressed.

I wore a throw-away sweatshirt over my t-shirt, but I could have used another layer and some gloves.

My husband says my bright Zensah compression socks made me easy to spot!

Lie #4: I don’t care about my pace.

As I explained last week, I don’t feel like I really trained for this race. Because of that, I didn’t set a specific time or pace goal, other than being careful about not starting out too fast like I did at the Go Fourth 8K and Lawyers Have Heart 10K earlier this year. My friend also didn’t want to push herself, so we agreed to “take it easy” and “have fun.”

I originally had decided that 8:30 should be our maximum pace, but we settled in at 8:15 and that felt good. We even discussed our pacing at mile 4, and we both agreed that we felt good where we were. When we still were maintaining an 8:15ish pace at mile 6, I thought: We got this! 

Lie #5: I love the 14th Street Bridge! 

This really should be lie #1 because it is such a lie, but as I faced my nemesis (a/k/a the 14th Street Bridge) I decided that I needed to draw on my mental strength to get me through. What better way to do that than use a positive affirmation?

I love this bridge!

I repeated that as a mantra as I went up its first climb, and had to smile at the absurdity of it. I repeated it earnestly as I looked over and saw the Potomac River glistening in the morning sun. I repeated it with a vengeance as I trudged up its last climb just before the 9 mile marker.

The whole course is remarkably “hilly,” with bridges, overpasses, underpasses, and steady climbs. The 14th Street Bridge spans from shortly after mile 7 to mile 9.
That last overpass after mile 9 was a bitch joy too.

Lie #6: I can’t do better than I did last year.

According to an article in Runner’s World, I have reached that age when I really can’t expect to improve my performance year after year. Instead, I can focus on “beating the line” of steady performance decline that comes with getting older. I was really happy with my Army Ten Miler finish time last year, especially since it was 1 minute and 50 seconds faster than the year before. As I ran the Army Ten Miler this year, I couldn’t remember what my pace was last year, but I had an idea that it wasn’t as fast as 8:15. When I looked up my results, I was astonished to see that I have improved my time each year over the past three years, and beat last year’s time by more than two minutes!

The past results are out of order for some reason,
and the “gun” time is really “chip” time.

Did you surprise yourself this weekend?