An Exercise in Humility

Now that you have all the background about my food and exercise, I'll dig into the "meat" of the blog (so to speak).  My 18-week marathon training schedule officially starts in a couple of weeks, and until then I have mostly been attempting to maintain my general fitness level by running and/or cross-training every day.  Flash and I also signed up for a couple shorter races in May and June to keep ourselves in the running mindset. The most recent race was the Lawyers Have a Heart 10K, a notoriously overly-hot race in early June. One of my coworkers (who has run multiple marathons, including New York) mentioned actually getting sick twice during that race one year because of the brutal heat. But there just weren't that many other races in the near future because of the hot DC summer, so I signed up.

As many of you know, a major, record-breaking heat wave hit DC last week: the heat index actually hit over 100 degrees for a couple of days, which is pretty much unheard of this early in the summer. The weather forecast for Saturday morning at race start was 80 degrees with 90% humidity- not good.

On race morning, I woke up at 5:45 and got into my race clothes before rustling up my usual pre-race meal (half a wheat english muffin with peanut butter and half a banana) and while I was munching I quickly checked my e-mails before running out the door... and lo and behold, there was an e-mail from the race coordinator: they had downgraded the race from a 10K to a 5K because of the heat and humidity.

Now, considering the fact that I have run a couple of half marathons, it might come as a surprise to you, but I had never actually run a 5K. Yes, really.  The only time when I had raced that distance was when I did a sprint triathalon in high school (the running portion is a 5K at the end of the swimming and biking) but that's a completely different scenario.  As I was standing in front of my computer in my race clothes and bib, I realized... I had no idea how to run a 5K. Basically, it's a three mile sprint (yes, I can run three miles easily- but I never usually sprint on training runs).

Since I was already ready to go, I just decided to head to the race. I got to Georgetown very early, and met up with Flash. Having already run a few 5Ks, he was already planning to break his PR of 24 minutes (for you non-runners, a "PR" is a Personal Record for a race).  At the race start, Flash was off, well, like a flash. Figuring trying to keep up with him was a lost cause, I basically tried run as fast as I felt I could sustain for about 23-25 minutes, which was at about 7:45 minutes per mile pace.  That might not seem all that fast for a sprint, but remember that I am an endurance athlete; it usually takes me at least three miles to warm up and get into the groove of running.  To put things in perspective, I ran my latest half marathon in an average of 8:44 minute miles (totaling 1 hour 54 minutes), but I ran the first mile or so at about 9:30 pace and was able to run several miles at the end in 8:15's.  So I was completely unused to running at that kind of speed right off the bat.

I could tell within the first few minutes that this race was going to be awful. The heat was unbearable, and the air was so thick with humidity that it practically felt like I was breathing soup.  I made myself walk through the couple of water stations so that I wouldn't get dehydration and/or heat exhaustion, but even so, I felt sick throughout the race.

I ended up finishing in 24:30 or so, which is about 7:55 pace overall (Flash broke his PR and finished in 22:02).  When I told my personal trainer later that the 10K had been changed to a 5K, he said "Oh, you can do that in your sleep!" My reply was that I would sooner run a half marathon than do that kind of race again- it was brutal. I called this post "an exercise in humility" because even though I believe I am in pretty good shape, a little 3 mile race really humbled me.  It's amazing how certain conditions can change your athletic performance, and especially how much a difference in pace can make!

(Me running the 5K)