Wednesday, April 6, 2011

15k Race Report

I have a love-hate relationship with running. Most of the time when I run, it feels bad at first, then gets better. Sometimes it feels bad at first and stays that way. Sometimes it starts out bad and gets worse. This race, I felt bad in the beginning, felt better in the middle, then felt like crap at the end. I thought that running 9.3 miles would be easier than 13.1, which is a half marathon. I also thought I could run a shorter distance at a faster pace. I was wrong.

Non-runners would probably wonder why someone would voluntarily hurt themselves by running. Running is simple. You run from point A to B. A run has a definite distance, a definite route and a beginning and end. I wish life was more like that. My life path is meandering and I have no idea where it is going. I don’t know where it starts or where it is going to end.

Running is uncomfortable, but the purpose of the pain is to see how fast I can run. Exceeding what I think I can do in spite of the ache is empowering and even fun. It’s a sickness common to runners.

I couldn’t warm up because this race was a point to point race, which entailed taking a bus to the starting point in McDowell Mountain Park. The efficiency of this transportation depends a lot on how many people need to take the bus, how far you have to go and how organized the race is. I got to the start line twenty minutes before the start so I had to choose between standing in a line to pee or warming up. I chose to pee because running with a full bladder sucks.

Usually the start of race is fun, a kind of a celebration strenuous physical activity. On this occasion, however, a moment of silence was observed for Sally Meyerhoff, an elite athlete who was killed in a car accident. Death is unexpected sometimes. Many runners were wearing dorky pink compression knee socks in her honor.

The lack of warm up didn’t make a great start to the race for me. My body does not like running, but it especially does not like suddenly running very hard. The first mile is uphill as well. My stomach was spewing acid into my esophagus and it felt like I had daggers in my chest in addition to breathing hard. I couldn’t convince my legs to move faster. They were waiting for the stomach acid to subside and were maybe hoping I would give them a break and walk.

I finally warmed up and was thankfully going downhill. This race goes from a higher to a lower elevation. It also means that you will climb because the area around Fountain Hills is known for its rolling, mean terrain.

The more uncomfortable I am, the faster I go. It doesn’t depend on anyone but me. If I am uncomfortable in normal situations, I don’t know if it has a point or if it’s going to get me anywhere. If I say “hi” to a stranger and it may mean everything or nothing. Racing is like a contest to see what I am capable of despite my physical or mental state. This game, however, wasn’t very easy to play.

It was getting hot. No trees were on the route to provide shade. The road was asphalt that collected heat and reflected it back on me. The temperature was in the sixties, but when I run, it feels twenty degrees hotter. I was pouring water on myself at the few aid stations that were out on the course. It would have been nice to have someone out there with a hose to spray me with water, but there wasn’t a handy source of water out here in the middle of the desert.

My acid reflux had settled down, but now my intestines were complaining. Running is a natural, unwelcome laxative. No porta-potties appeared in the desert, though I was fantasizing about it. The Sonoran Desert with it’s stunted creosote and wimpy trees doesn’t have much in the way of large, dense bushes to do your business behind.

I found the rolling landscape tough to run on. Most of the running races around here are flat, because most runners wouldn’t do them if they weren’t. It takes a different level of craziness to tackle hills. A person’s pain tolerance has to be higher. You have to like the suffering. This terrain was leaching the energy out of me.

By mile six, I was running at what I thought was a decent pace and then I hit the HILL. This sucker was nasty. It was over a mile ascent and it was evil. It was waiting to devour hapless runners, including me. After running hard for six miles, I was hot and hurting. My legs hurt and they didn’t want to climb. Other people were climbing it with grime determination, with some resorting to walking. Someone passed by me and said “who put this hill here?”. I was ready for this mountain not to exist anymore.

Finally, the torturous ascent ended and it was time to speed up again. My legs disagreed and told me to go to hell. Theoretically, a race is supposed to be run faster in the final miles. This theory would be fine if I hadn’t trashed my legs on the previous seven miles. All I could do was to press on.

The final miles were through Fountain Hills, which I am sure that drivers held up in traffic did not appreciate. I always secretly have a feeling of satisfaction making a car wait instead of me having to wait for them. Down the road I could finally see the finish line. I did an imitation of running faster. I finished in an hour, twenty nine minutes.

Every one of the 9.3 miles I had earned. This race was so hard I might be masochistic enough to do it again. I liked the feeling of accomplishment of running on the difficult terrain. I can’t explain the insanity. I just know it is there.

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