Race Day (RAGNAR DC 2009)

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve. Whether you are a gazelle or a lion, when the sun comes up, you better start running.

- African Proverb

On race day, I have always had this calm before the storm experience. I am not nervous, I feel no anxiety, no adrenaline rush or excitement, not until the few moments I spend on the starting line before the start of the race. My RAGNAR experience was no different. I was confident that my training had prepared me to complete the race, but I was unsure that I would be able to run 6:30 pace. The van arrived at the exchange a little after dusk. It is beginning to feel like Autumn, although the days are hot, once the sun sets, the air soon becomes crisp and cool. As I stepped out of the van to begin my warm up, I decided that it was too cold to run in a short sleeve shirt and put my bib number on a long sleeve shirt.

The calm before the storm is beginning to fade. My brother will be coming around the corner and handing off to me within 15 minutes. I have enough time to warm up... but it has been so long since I have raced, I am unsure of what to do. I guzzle down a bottle of Accelerade and jog around the parking lot.

Striders... I need to do some striders I think to myself. 10-15 seconds across the parking lot at 90% pace should be sufficient.

But how many should I do?

3, 4, 5, that feels like enough, but now my calf is tight, shit.

It is getting dark now and I realize that I will be running in almost complete darkness, on a paved trail through the woods of West Virginia and Maryland. After 10 minutes of warming up I decide that perhaps it is a bit too warm for a long sleeve shirt. I nervously shuffle through the van, find my bag, and switch my bib number to a short sleeve shirt. I put on the mandatory fluorescent orange vest and an LED headlamp.

If I backtrack on the course I will be able to see Jason before he gets to here and I will know when I have about a minute left. After a couple more minutes, I decide to wait closer to the exchange. I jog in place, stretch my calves, and take one last swig from my water bottle. My teammates Dorothy and Scott are waiting by the exchange and I am sure that Jason will be here within a few minutes and I go to the exchange.

"170" I hear a volunteer yell, Jason's bib number. 30 seconds to exchange.

Woman: "You need a headlamp and a flashing light for your back." The woman at the exchange tells me as I see Jason rounding the corner.

Me: "I don't have a flashing light for my back!"

Woman: "It says right in your race bible that you need to have a light for both the front and the back."

The calm is over, the storm is here... And this woman wants to harass me about a stupid blinking light for my back!

With seconds left, Bridget comes running from the van, "Here is your flashing back light."

Jason enters the exchange zone and hands me the snap bracelet which is being used in place of a baton. "Don't be a hero." he says as I turn toward the course.

5 minutes and 45 seconds - My internal dialog has started now; it is both friend and foe during a long race such as this one. "You have done the training, you are ready for this, just ease into it. Lets shoot for a 7 minute mile pace." I tell myself. "Yes, this feels about right." I am comfortable, my breathing is controlled, and my calf has spontaneously healed. There is a blinking red light off in the distance, another runner. The adrenaline is coursing through my veins, I am now a lion with a prey in sight. I am certain I could be running much faster, but the race will be much more successful if I ignore this impulse and run smart.

13 minutes and 30 seconds - It is dark, I can see about 8 feet in front of me, and the sharp contrast of light from the LED headlight and the dark of the night is dizzying. I must be approaching the second mile by now. I decide that I will maintain a comfortable pace for the first 30 minutes and then gradually accelerate the second half of leg. The blinking red light comes in and out of sight. Am I getting closer? I look behind me and see a headlamp off in the distance. I decide to put in a surge and try to catch the runner ahead of me. My legs feel strong, but not fast. I guess that's what the mileage is supposed to do. He's getting closer, definitely, but it is hard to tell how far away he is because the darkness is so disorienting.

16 minutes - The runner is about 25 meters away now, maybe I will run along with him for a few minutes, the darkness makes me feel so alone. I approach him on the left. "How's it going?" I say, its the only thing I can think of to say right now. He doesn't respond, Asshole. I then notice the white wires running from his pocket to his ears, not an asshole, an IPOD. Ha! I decide to continue running by myself. This pace feels comfortable so I continue at this "post-surge" pace unsure of how well I will be able to maintain it.

21 minutes and 15 seconds - I am confident that I am 3 miles deep into the race and approaching the 4th mile. I hear noises in the woods, I look left and then right; nothing except for mile marker 7. NICE. It is difficult to judge my pace on a trail in the woods at night but mile markers should help. I see 2 more blinking red lights.

27 minutes and 35 seconds - Mile marker 6, I am running 6:20 pace. I passed two more runners, and I still feel great. I am almost half way done this first leg and I decide that now I will start to push the pace. Lets see how a 6 minute mile feels. It feels like I am pushing at about 80% effort, I think I could go to 85%, but am still not confident in my fitness. I pass another runner and run a 6:08 mile. This is a good pace, I am confident that I can hold it and it is much faster than my anticipated 6:30 pace.

I am having fun, I am enjoying this race. It is dark and lonely on this course; no fans, not even pedestrians who just happen to be walking by. I look forward to seeing blinking red lights, they are my motivation. I manage to pass another 4 blinking lights, one of which was a RAGNAR sign that directed me straight ahead.

45 minutes - I have just passed Mile marker 3, lets see what's left in the tank. My last mile was just a hair over 6 minute pace, this will be fun. It may seem crazy, but I smile to myself, all alone on the course. I am in shape and this is fun for me. I check my form. Arm carriage is good. Stride is comfortable, calves feel fine, and my piriformis doesn't even hint of tightness. Mile marker 2 and a 5:54 mile, mile marker 1 and a 5:48 mile. With one mile to go, I am ecstatic, I push it in at 90% effort.

62 minutes and 15 seconds - 10.3 miles and I closed in 5:42. Scott is waiting in the exchange zone and I hand off. Bridget, Tim, and Mark are waiting at the exchange zone and congratulate me on my performance.

"We weren't expecting you so soon!" they confess. I jog over to the van. It is 9:15. I feel awake, alive, and I am proud of my performance. I haven't felt this way in a long time. Again I have a sense of purpose, I belong to something, a team. They trusted me, relied on me, and I came through. This is why I get up at 6 am on Fridays to fit in a double run, this is why I do core work and stretch, this is why I do tempo runs and workouts. This is why I do 90 minute runs twice a week.

This is why I run.

Leg number 9. Preparation for the 2009 DC RAGNAR Relay

Last weekend was the 2009 DC RAGNAR relay. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the race, it is a 12 man 196 mile relay from Cumberland, Maryland to RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. Each team is allowed two support vehicles to transport the runners to and from each exchange point. Rather than divide the 196 mile journey into 12 equal legs, the course is divided into 36 legs, each of a varying distance and difficulty. The runners are then assigned a corresponding leg and must run 3 times (runner 1 for example must run legs 1, 13, and 25).

One runner from each of my group runs had competed in a similar event called "Hood to Coast". When they returned from the competition, they exclaimed that it was an "incredibly challenging event", and that "it was as hard on the body as a marathon," despite being a shorter distance. It took them two weeks to recover from the race and for their training to return to normal.

My brother (and now coach), Jason, sent me an email 3 weeks ago titled "Best Friends". The content of the email was information about the RAGNAR relay, which, did not quite correspond with the subject of the email; but I came to find out that it was remarkably appropriate. How could this be an appropriate subject you ask? I challenge you to spend 24 hours in a van with 5 other competitors and try to not forge new friendships.

Considering that I am training for a marathon, this seemed like a good litmus test... A chance for me to see at what level my fitness is, so I jumped at the opportunity. The team was being organized by Jason's very capable coworker Bridget, a Saucony rep. and we would be running as a Saucony sponsored team.

Being familiar with my mileage and training, Jason touted my fitness to Bridget and I was designated as runner number 9. The RAGNAR website describes the three legs I would be running in the following way; a 10.5 very hard leg, an easy 3.2 leg, and a very hard 7.0 leg. The legs are designated as easy, hard, or very hard based on the distance and net elevation gain/loss. 24 hours to run 20.5 miles, sounds easy enough right?

Each team is asked to give an estimated pace for each runner so that the event coordinators can stagger the start and allow most of the runners to finish together within a 2 hour window. Jason informed me that he had put me down for a 6:30/mile pace. Remember those slow runs I was talking about earlier? I have been doing most of my distance runs at 7:30-8 minute pace. I had done a 10 minute tempo run during a workout and was able to labor out a 5:45 pace, but I was unsure that I would be able to maintain a 6:30 pace for a total of 20.5 miles over 24 hours while being sleep deprived and cooped up in a van.

In an effort to better prepare for the race, I did a few double runs to see how my body would respond. Thursday night I would meet with the Potomac Runners Group and log about 8.5 miles, Friday morning I'd run an easy 40 minutes, and Friday after work I would log another 6.5 miles. Although it was a couple of miles shy of what I would be completing on race day, it seemed to be a close enough approximation that I was confident I would be able to complete my 3 legs on race day.

Now I just had to find a way to incorporate sleep deprivation into my training and I would be ready to roll.

Saturday night dancing at Saint Ex until 2:30 am, home to bed at 3:15 am, up at 8 am for Sunday distance run... Sleep deprivation... Check.

Time to start logging some miles.

With a goal in sight, my training quickly ramped up to approximately 60 miles per week over the course of a month. 30, 40, 52, 61; as my mileage inched up, I anticipated that my body would go into shock or at least manifest some sort of injury, but it appears I made the jump unscathed. How was I able to manage such a feat you may ask? Easy runs... Really easy.

2 to 3 days a week, my training runs would be up to 3 minutes slower than my anticipated race pace. These long slow runs allowed me to continue to develop my cardiovascular strength without devastating my legs. This may seem like commonsense to many runners, but as a young and ambitious college runner, it seemed the faster and longer you ran, the better one was able to perform. By logging long slow miles, my legs were fresh for workouts and tempo runs. I find it very difficult to run at an 8 minute pace by myself; I needed to find a group to run with.

In an effort to get connected with the running community here in DC, I have been doing group runs on Monday nights with Lululemon on P st. NW by Logan Circle and another group run with Potomac Runners Group on Tuesday and Thursday nights. I have been going to the group runs for about 6 weeks now and have already made several great friends.

The time and miles seem to fly by during these group runs. It seems we all find that this time together is an opportunity to escape the stress of our jobs and just enjoy some free time with other runners. By the time I get home after any given group run, I already find myself looking forward to the next encounter. I strongly encourage all runners to try group training, for myself, it makes the miles easier and certainly more enjoyable.

A challenging transition

I found the transition from the world of academia to full time employment to be a difficult one.

Post-collegiately we find ourselves in a foreign world, all the mile markers which, for so long, have invited a sense of accomplishment and elicit the congratulations of our friends and family have changed. We can no longer rely on the external factors of honor societies, deans lists, and the like to evaluate our place in society. For the first two decades of our lives, we were constantly reinforced with standardized feedback; our performance could be objectified, quantified, and mailed home at the end of every quarter.

In addition to the lack of objective feedback, we have left a world we know and are familiar with for, what I have come to know as the "real world". As a senior in college or a graduate student, we have reached the pinnacle of our academic careers. We are on top of our game, we are connected in our communities, and we know the ins and outs of the system. It seems, that all too soon, we must abandon these familiarities for a foreign world in which we must again start from the bottom.

Many of our courses culminate with mock interviews to prime us for our job search. The valedictions of our professors, coaches, and classmates are heartfelt and filled with well-wishes, encouragement, and pearls of wisdom. One more minute, one more drink, one more week. We try to hang on to the world that we know, but it slowly slips from our fingertips as our friends pack up their cars and leave campus for the last time.

It is difficult to objectify our performance among our peers when we work with such a wide range of people with different backgrounds and experiences... But as a new employee we quickly learn our place in the work world. Vacation time, shift preference, and wages are all dictated by seniority, as they should be, but it is clear to see that we are at the bottom of the hierarchy. There is so much to learn, so much "constructive criticism", and no quarterly pat on the back. It is at this point that I realized I have to find something more than work to maintain a healthy psyche and self-image.

And so it begins...

I am a current runner, but a former competitor... Or at least I was until this past weekend.

Having developed a passion for cross-country and track while competing at both the high school and collegiate level, running is nothing new for me. Following completion of my graduate studies at Quinnipiac University and entering the working world, I soon found it difficult to get out the door for my runs.

For a decade, my motivation to train had come from a desire to earn the praise of my family, my coaches, and my teammates. No one congratulates you for fitting in a 45 minute run after work, and without a race to measure up against my peers in the future, I lost my appetite for running.

During the past two years, running has fit into my life in the same way many other pastimes do. It has served as way to relax after work and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

When I moved to Washington, DC in May '09, my runs enabled me to familiarize myself with the city and the National Monuments. It started out as just a few days a week in between bike rides and weight training sessions, but I soon found myself logging 20-25 miles/week. My fitness had started to return and it was no longer a struggle to finish a 6 miler.

While browsing through Netflix, I came across a documentary entitled The Spirit of the Marathon , which piqued my interest and I subsequently added it to my instant queue. The film chronicles the training involved in preparation for the Chicago Marathon. On a lazy Sunday morning, my brother and I decided to watch the movie. Following the movie, my brother turned to me and asked, "Do you want to run a marathon with me?" Almost reflexively I responded, "Yes."

I now have a goal and a purpose in my training. In the weeks since that lazy Sunday morning, my passion for running has quickly returned.