spring race recap: syracuse half
Preface: this post was easy to write, but hard to share. As a coach and a runner, I know we all have our off days – and this race was certainly that – but it feels pretty vulnerable to share my failures so publicly. But hopefully it can lend itself to a learning experience, for myself and for someone else, so here goes …
March 20 — Syracuse Half
To be honest, I cared more about performing well at this race than I did about Boston. I have really grown to love this distance (it’s second in my books only to the 15K). Syracuse Half is where I ran my first official half marathon way back in 2014, and also set my Half PR in 2017. With the pandemic, that PR has stood for 5 years – and I felt like I had so much to show for what I had worked on since that amazing race in 2017. So the pressure was on: mistake number one.
I literally held my foot and gave it pep talks this week.
Remember that intense foot pain during the Electric City 5 Miler? When I woke up the next day, it hurt to walk. OK, convinced I have a stress fracture. Sunday was a planned day off, so don’t freak out … yet. By the end of the day, it was better. Monday morning: hurt to walk when I got up, again. OK, on goes the boot. Tuesday morning: hurt less when I got up, and faded by the time I was done with yoga which I did right away. I called up a PT friend to talk me through what was going on; we agreed that the location and description of pain, as well as the fact that I could go up and down stairs normally, rise up to my toes, and hop in place all without pain, did not really suggest a stress fracture. The one key thing here though was that 5-6 weeks prior, I had had my first big week of training – and what we are seeing now with bone stress injuries is that looking back in the 4-6 week timeframe is usually a good indicator of the “tipping point” that triggered the downslide. Wednesday and Thursday: no pain when I woke up, no boot, able to go for walks – all good. Finally on Thursday afternoon I went out for a short run, starting on the track then transitioning to the roads. All good! I didn’t feel like I was in the clear after this run, but it certainly was heading in the right direction.
Back to Syracuse Half. So obviously I did not really run all of that week. The foot issue threw me off, but it wasn’t like I lost a ton of training time – I wasn’t going to gain anything in those few days that would have helped me in the Half, and it wasn’t a huge week of marathon training because I was focused on the Half. No big deal. I put this sticky note on my bathroom mirror to build my confidence before race day:
We used to live in Syracuse, and we still have friends out there (thanks for hosting us, Marguerite!), so we were really excited to get out there – and also to go to Wegmans, of course! We had a great dinner, I didn’t sleep well (as expected), breakfast went smoothly, warm-up & multiple potty stops were all according to plan.
RACE READY!
And then the race started.
I went through 5K in just over 21 minutes. My goal was to be between 20-21, so I was not too far off, but it felt too hard. By mile 5, I was ready to quit. I felt awful, looked awful (Alex was concerned when he saw me around 5.5 and really didn’t know what was going on), and was running terribly. I just could not get my legs to move, my stride felt off, my breathing wasn’t in control. I did have some pretty solid spurts of being competitive from about 2-4 miles, then again 6-7, and around 8 miles on the long downhill (I love downhills!).
The big PR I wanted and expected was just not going to happen. Then sub-1:30 was not going to happen. Ouch. I ran a half in 1:32 in January, on no training, with a sub-max effort … nope, 1:32 was not going to happen either. At this point, I just wanted to be done and go home. But, that wasn’t what I was there for. I needed to tough it out and just give my best effort on that day, as I tell my athletes.
For most of the second half, I was feeling some serious blister formation on both feet – one in an expected place (I think I broke my toe a few years ago, and it just never went back to being the same alignment so it rubs pretty often, oh well!), and another in a totally new place. The bottoms of my feet were burning with every step. For whatever reason, the sock/shoe combo I picked that day (one that I had worn in a marathon without any major issue) was not working for me.
With less than a mile to go, I felt one of those blisters pop. Awesome. Gut it out, I’m almost done. I finished, not with a smile, but with so much relief to just be done. Fortunately, one of the best cheerleaders in the Syracuse region (maybe all of New York), Penny Noll, was there handing out medals and she gave me a much-needed hug and reassurance that I was going to be alright.
Things I learned from this race: I needed new racing shoes before Boston, and I needed them ASAP. Pressure to perform does not work well for me, so I sort-of set myself up for a tough race. I can do hard things; I could have dropped out, I could have jogged it in – but I gave my best effort for that day, and it was just unfortunate that my best effort was not what I had hoped it would be. And finally, in reflecting on previous training cycles, on more than one occasion I have had “blow-up” races like this about 4 weeks before big PRs – so that was encouraging, and I wrote another sticky note (this time, stuck to my training log): “I WILL run a PR at Boston.”
I sent Emma, Alex & Marguerite out for a bike ride / walk while I processed (OK, sulked) and started to recover … onward!
Results: 1:34:37 (average 7:16/mile). 217th overall, 46th out of 1119 women, and 6th of 131 in F30-34 age group.