Oconee 4-H 4k: Race recap

I'd been looking for a race to get my 5k time down. I saw this 4k and thought it looked weird (I liked weird) and thought it would be a nice way to try out by speed and practice faster times for a 5k.

My strategy going in was 7:20, 7:10, 7 minute pace for the last half mile. With a time around 18 minutes. Hahahahahahaha

The week before the race I start getting shin splints. And then two days before the race, I realized the route was really hilly. Ugh.

I've been feeling super tired for the last two weeks, so at that thought I lost a lot of enthusiasm for the race.

But the morning of, we show up. (There are no signs)

We sign in. There are no race bibs or swag. The T-shirts are cotton. (All of this is fine with me)

I try to find the hill on the course and can't. And I jog to the start with about 2 minutes to spare. (But there are about 5 minutes of announcements, so I would have been okay.)

And then it's race time. I lined up near the front.

I go out fast. My watch says 6:40 pace. I know to slow down, but two other women are right with me. The first woman falls off at the first turn and I pace on. A dark haired lady (I'd guess early 20s) gets about 10 seconds ahead of me on the downhill. I let her have the lead. I keep her within a few seconds the entire race, and plan to catch her at the end.

The downhill is nice. You run down towards a weird metal silo loop around it and then run UPHILL. The first half of the hill I power up and feel great (thanks hill training), the second half of the hill is a little rougher, but then the course turns, it gets a tad steeper (4% grade) and I've been running a quarter mile and it's awful.

My first mile is 7:10. Which is a little fast but okay.

Then comes that same long hill a SECOND TIME. This is where I want to quit. I'm breathing hard and thinking about barfing. I wonder if I walk how much time it will cost me. But I don't. I finish the hill the second time (and my pace has fallen off considerably) and get to the marker for mile 2.

I feel awful at this point. And my brain is dead. I'm on auto pilot. There's half a mile left and I don't have 7-minute mile pace in me. I run. And the lady in front of me makes a wrong turn. I'm following the guy in front of her and I pause for one second before the course monitor turns her around and I sprint to the finish and win the women's division overall.

And I feel a little bad about this. I MIGHT have kicked her in at the end (she didn't put up much of a fight and kick it in after the wrong turn—that's what I would have done), and I don't think the wrong turned cost her more than 10 seconds, but I was on the course following the leaders. Should she have won? Would I have  passed her at the end? We'll call this luck and I hope I'm not a horrible sport. But surely I shouldn't have stopped for her? And this race had no stakes. It won't even show up any any timed races services websites—no athlinks. So there's nothing she lost in this. We'll just say I won my age group and she won hers. She ran a good race.

They handed me a card at the finish.18:28. For eighth overall. She finished 10-15 seconds behind me. They handed me a medal and that was that.

I got a banana and a water. There were no prizes. There was no medal ceremony. They said it was a no frills race and it was. For this, I'm glad it's a good fundraiser for them. I worry about races not raising money when they have to buy timing services or pay for a police escort (they did neither of this since it was on their land and they own the timer). This is all fine with me. A prize is nice but I don't need it.

So it wasn't the race I'd hoped for. But because of the hill, I'll say I did OKAY. (Also no shin pain during the race, though I did take medicine. I was a little achey after the race, but mostly fine).

Honestly, I don't think I'd do this race again. And I'm currently looking for FLAT 5k courses.

Hill repeats

I used to run hill repeats in high school. Tuesdays and Thursdays. I HATED THEM. We ran up a super steep long hill. It was torture. Then I did like running down the hill. The undoubtedly made me strong and a better trail runner.

I've really avoided hill workouts as an adult. I run the hills in the trails I run and call it running hills. Because ugh hills.

But hills have been killing me in races lately. I definitely need to be a stronger hill runner. So when hill repeats came up in my weekly running plan, I decided I would actually do them. The workout was 2 easy miles, 5 hill repeats (of 2 minutes each, so 2 minutes up the hill and then jog down) and 2 easy miles.

I went home after work and took a nap before trying this workout and then headed out to try it. (In my mind I was saying that if I did four that would be good.)

I ran my two miles. I felt good. And then I opted for a side hill instead of the hill I've dubbed HORRIBLE hill. And this hill ended up being a good length. It was about .2 miles with a 6% grade. (Which I was looking for a .25 mile hill was a 5-8 percent grade.) This hill took me almost 2 minutes to climb (like the workout said) and it killed me. One minute in the first one, I was dying. The second hill was faster. The third one was okay (feeling strong), four started feeling rough and five I finished. (I finished the hill in 1:54, 1:44, 1:45, 1:48 and 1:53).

So I finished all five. And I felt great on mile two of the cool down. When I'm running 9-minute mile pace, I feel like I can run forever. It's just hard for me to find that speed.

So hills—I'm really glad I did this workout. I felt stronger for doing it. And I swear the grade seems steeper than 6 percent. I didn't do the workout as fast as the directions said. I was supposed to do the hills at race pace. I did them at survival pace, 9:20-ish pace, I think. They got faster actually. Miles 2-3 were at 9:14 place and miles 3-4 were at 8:38 pace. I am not good at hills (yet) and I feel like my heart rate gets too high when I do them. So, I can learn to NOT WALK on the hills then it's progress. Speed will come later.

White Trail 2: Sara 0

The white trail wins again.

Today was a running day. I couldn't run my usual trails because there was a Brad Paisley concert there. (College town. Go figure.) So I went to the botanical garden and decided to try my nemesis, the white trail, again.

I tried the white trail last month. And almost got lost and died. It was excruciating.

I'm in better running shape now, so I figured this would be easy-peasy.

The first two minutes of my run I felt great. I looked at my watch at 6:40 in and thought this was going to be bad. I was breathing hard and ready to use my asthma as an excuse.

The trail is all hills. My iPhone said the run was the equivalent of 40 flights of stairs. 40. It was a hard trail with lots of roots and rocks. There was even a piece of red mud trail grooved into the ground. It was very narrow and steep. They should rename it break-your-ankle trail. It was hills and more hills and more hills. And seemingly all uphill. No downhills. (Should I run it in reverse next time?)

And I had to walk. Ultimate fail. I had to walk a few steps here and there. I was dying. My calves were on fire. I frequently felt like I was going to barf. I haven't had a run this bad in a while. I did, however, show a group of high school runners how to power up a steep incline of stairs. #beastmode. They were staring at it like it was going to bite them. I didn't want to lose momentum so I just ran up it. They seemed to be just staring and not wanting to go.

The white trail is 3.22 miles and the botanical garden's hardest trail. I finished it in 24 minutes.

However, I finished where I started and not where the trail ended. My iPhone also said it was just over 2.5 miles at that point. So I don't know what I did there, but I didn't get officially lost. I didn't double back on purpose, but I must have gotten on another trail and then gone back to the white trail. So I finished the last part of my run with the orange trail, which was flat to down hill and I liked it so much more than miserable trail. I felt good on that trail. I guess the white trail is something to work up to. You're seriously tough if you can run this trail without walking. Forget spartan races—just try this trail.

I am so dead right now. Everything hurts. My calves, my abs. My wrist hurts from gymnastics yesterday. It's 9 p.m. and I want to go to bed already.  I haven't been so dead after a workout in a long time. Will I be able to walk tomorrow? Will I ever beat this trail? We'll see.

Other running notes:
Where do all of my headphones go? I keep losing my headphones. I had to use some crappy iPod headphones from 8 or so years ago when I couldn't find my good ones today. I did later find my new iPhone headphones in the pants I ran in on Monday (before I put them in the wash). But there's still another pair of headphones out there somewhere.