Running of the Green 2022: Dumpster Fire

And 2022 Race season has officially commenced!  Although the title of this post might indicate a sob story, let me reassure you, you won't need tissues.  Maybe something to stifle a laugh or eye roll but hey, that's about standard for this gig - you know how we roll here. On to story time.

Johnny's Not Johnny's Running of the Green 5 miler is the official kick off  party race of the Rochester race season - the last big party we had was in 2019, which is where my year of awesome began.  We don't talk about 2020, where we subbed in our own version dubbed "Dirty Leprechaun" or....2021 where we just drank and didn't even run.

2022 brought it back.  REAL LIVE RACING BABY!  This event is just awesome for so many reasons.  All the people are there.  There's green donuts and beer.  And after two years of COVID, a thousand of us were ready to rock and roll with the return to racing!

I have quite a history with this race.  I've done it at least a dozen times since I started running in 2005, and the last time I raced in real life, I almost cracked a 7 minute mile with a finish is just over 35 minutes and ended up in the front pack of women.  I had ambition to break 35 this year - or bust, baby!

I forgot one small thing.....in order to race fast, you have to train fast.  Whoops.  In 2019 I was almost solely run trained with at least one tempo and one speed session in the midst of fifty plus mile weeks.  This year....well, I've done two speed sessions in the last five weeks, and out of my fifteen hour trainng weeks, about five hours of them are running, with roughly 30-35 miles run per week.  What could possibly go wrong?

Oh right. I was also at the tail end of a build block, so I was coming off of three straight fifteen-sixteen
hour training weeks.  I took zero time off pre race, and while I didn't run the day before, I swam hard and rode.  The plan to break 35 was solid.  No problemo.  I see no barriers. We'll get back to the less cool part of this post - the actual race.  The part I want to focus on is the party!  Pre race I did all the things one should do (note the pink *sarcasm* font)- I drank coffee, ignored food, gave out hugs, hung out, and took pictures.  I was undecided if I wanted to rep Roadkill, RATs, or Reapers, so I wore all the singlets, layered.  I laughed.  I caught up with friends.  I ignored going to the bathroom.  I *did* manage a quick warm up - quick being the operative word, as I found a few friends out for a warm up and tagged on, running way too fast for my own good - Marcus, Dave Bradshaw and Matt Blodgett kindly indulged me as I made sad jokes about how I managed to keep pace with them for a mile (this was an 8:00/mile, people.  I know when I'm out of my league.  Happily, I have no shame).

Pre race I gave Greg a smooch and wished him luck (he, unlike me, rocked this race)  and ran into Barry, the lead biker and friend, who gave me a beer back in 2019 and after a sip I managed a PR.  Since this was as sound a strategy as any you've read so far in this post, I gave him a hug and joked about my beer.  He opened up his bike pouch without a second wasted and handed me a cold one.  Without hesitation, I shot gunned it and headed out to git r done.  (Please note that this race report could also just as easily be titled "What not to do in order to PR".  But we already had a pretty cool title rockin', so just keep in mind that's my working subtitle .  There's more). 

Aside from that sub 35 ambition, which I knew deep down was a silly goal, my backup goal was to find someone zoomies and just hang on as long as I could.  I had a great selection - my speedy friends Jeff, Blair, Laura and Sean were all signed up and right next to me when we started out the race (psst....they all ran 6:30-6:45 pace....spoiler alert....I did not).  I set a loose "B goal" of 36:00, which would be roughly a 7:10 pace, which seemed more reasonable.  Jeff's goal was a sub 35, same as Sean's, so I lined up with them toward the front third and before I knew it, we were off!

Right off the bat, I knew my shoe choice was dumb - I opted for my zoom shoes, which are Saucony

endorphins.  Since I've been wearing them for 5 months, they don't have much zoom foam left, or I forgot to charge the batteries on the engine feature (that's a bad joke), but they felt kind of gross and also don't handle bad weather well - it was snowy and slushy out (and windy, but more on that later) and I slipped right out of the gate.  I didn't bite it, but I carefully did the navigating clear road/dodging/weaving run around for the first half mile a little slower than I wanted, and by the time I had clear road, I had lost all my rabbits.  Dammit.  Either way, mile 1 was rather uneventful, over the bridge and clocked in at 6:54.  

The pace I was holding post first mile immediately felt crappy and I slowed somewhat, taking it down a notch.  Mile 2 wasn't too bad, but I knew I had taken it out too hot and clocked mile 2 in 7:10.  At this point the cross winds were pretty decent, but seeing the leaders come back through (its an out and back) was pretty cool, and took my mind off the fact that I was pacing beyond my five mile reach.  I took a quick break uphill to catch my breath halfway, and thus began the ridiculous descent of my race - cutely dubbed the dumpster fire for a reason.  Check out this speed profile:

I probably could just end the post here, but that wouldn't be any fun.  See the nice (albeit slowing) blue line of progression that's solid until about 17 minutes in?  Yep.  That's me running.  Those little dips?  That's me walking.  We don't like that in a race, especially a five miler (to my personal standards).  See the red line below?  That's my heart rate.  Its not going in the right direction either - we like that to be pretty constant.  It might rise a little bit the first ten minutes as you warm up, but the continued increase as I slowed my pace meant....I cooked myself.  Ego over brain, baby.  It's a thing and happens to the best of us.

Needless to say, the return trip back to the finish line was not as fun.  While I hit the first half to pace nicely for my 36 minute goal (just under 18 minutes) the pace was not sustainable, and I knew it. I grabbed a cup of water at the aid station from my friend Josh, who yelled encouraging things about looking fast (he's such a sweet liar), and began the painful journey back.

Mile 3 had little going for it, except I got to see all the fun people heading toward the turn around - some strong Roadkill racers, RATs, Greg looking awesome, and a bunch of RWB teammates (which I am slightly part of).  Everyone, despite the crap weather, was having a blast and it was so great to see.  This high lasted me until about mile 3.5, when I said screw it and walked again.  (Mile 3 = 7:26) Again, this was the dumpster fire ensuing.  I must have totally looked like real shit at this point because a passing runner slowed to see if I was ok, which I lied cheerfully about and begrudgingly started running again.  Mile 4 - 7:35.

I looked at my watch as I (walked) up the Ford St bridge and saw a sub 37 in my future if I got my head out of my you know where (I was also running tangents like shit and about .1 off the course mile markers).  Fine.  Screw it.  Lets end this. I picked it up to a respectable pace and ran it in, with the last quarter mile a little showy for my Wolfpack fam and cheery speedsters at Roadkill (Something about putting on a good face?) and zoomed it in for a 36:52, and 7:13 overall pace, oddly, not too far off my B goal pace.

Post race, I grabbed a water and hung around chatting Ironman with the Dave's (Bradshaw and Hansen), discussing Kona dreams (theirs, not mine) and waited for Greg to finish, which he did in a kick ass time of 41 minutes (nearly a PR!).  We headed inside for green donuts and more socializing, which really, with perfect hindsight, might have been smarter for me to skip the 36 minutes of pain and just stuck with what I came to do anyways.  But do I ever learn?  Nah.

I shook out 8th in my AG out of 91, and 30th overall woman out of 535.  Not quite 2019 standards, but for my crap timing, pacing, and attitude, I'll take it.  The socializing aspect was top notch so we will call one out of two not bad, and roll with it.

Aside from the jokes, was I a little bummed about this race?  Sure.  But once I stepped back and looked at my training so far for the year, I was in no shape to run as fast as I wanted to - so it was more about unrealistic goals.  I laid down some amazing times last fall in the 5k and half marathon- because I did the speed work.  That's not the focus right now, and I'm ok with it.  Evidence to support my theory included a really strong temp ride Saturday evening and kick ass fifteen mile run the day after the race.  Clearly, I don't have a fast engine right now.  And to cover 140.6 I don't need raw speed - I need consistent effort over several hours on the course.

And now that we are nearing the end of block 3 of training, I know you're all dying to know how that went.  Well, stay tuned, folks.  There's always more to chat about.

And about dumpster fires?  Well, among all the friends I saw at the race, I managed to land myself smack in the middle of a new group of runny friends, complete with two sub 3 hour marathoners that want to take me on some long runs.  The smack talk is already great, complete with dumpster fire gifs and completely inappropriate jokes.  I can't figure out what they want with me, but I'm gonna roll with it - and according to Dave, the lead smack talker, "All good race seasons begin with a dumpster fire".

I don't know about that, but I'll roll with it.  So, with that note, bring it 2022 race season.  Up next - Fly by Night Duathlon on May 14!