Two years ago this week I set out to run 30+ miles around Holiday Lake, my first ultra marathon. Having never run further than twenty miles or longer than five hours I was, to put it lightly, a tad nervous. Shin splints, knee pain and inexperience had me shaking at the start line.
I had a plan; two or three eleven-minute-warm-up miles followed by an increasingly faster pace for the remainder of the first loop in hopes of an overall time of 2:50 for the first loop. Todd had agreed to run with me and we hoped to run the second loop about the same, if not a few minutes faster. We both wanted to finish in under six hours. The first few miles went as planned with the exception of frozen, aching toes. But my plans went south when my knees started to hurt nine miles in, an IT issue left unresolved set about wearing me down both physically and emotionally. At mile twelve Todd ran on without me. Despite the knee pain, the doubt that I would even finish and the disappointment of Todd leaving me I managed to pull my race back together in the second loop, managing to run not only a negative split but finishing ahead of my time goal in 5:29.
In less than a week's time I will set out to run that same ultra again. This time it will be my third 50k and sixth ultra and it isn't the distance that frightens me. I feel pretty confident in my ability to run for thirty miles. I know the course forwards and backwards. I have a better understanding of fueling than I did two years ago when I ate four chomps and a few quarters of PB&J. I want to pace myself, run a steady race and finish, if possible, in just under five hours. I can't believe I am evening typing that, admitting to my best case race day scenario, but yes, I would love a sub 5 finish. However, I am getting a lot of feedback from many directions that I need to race on Saturday. Go out hard and hold on. This is daunting. Frightening.
And so it begs the question, am I a pacer or a racer? Up until this point I have been a pacer at the ultra distances, driven by arbitrary time goals, paces or time cut-offs. I have believed up until this point that success is in running at a steady even effort and feeling (relatively) good all day, in finishing. It's going to take real effort on my part to race this coming Saturday, in convincing myself that I can if I try. These past few days I have focused on what it will mean to race, and how to determine my success or failure if I change from time goal to overall placement. If I pace, I listen to my own body, run my own race entirely and maybe run sub five. If I race, I risk pushing too hard too soon and bonking and maybe run sub 5. If the end result is possibly the same why does the word race scare me so badly?
The answer is, simply put, because deep down I know I am a racer. I want to do well, succeed, chase and be chased. It's scary, yes, but exhilarating. I want to go out to Holiday Lake and run as fast and well as I possibly can, but I don't want to feel like everyone's eyes are on me as I attempt it, because what if I fail?
I've yet to really fail at a race, but the closest I have come to feeling that I have was going out too fast at a 10k early last spring. Knowing it was too fast, but wanting so badly to feel like I could be that fast, I decided to hold on. It didn't work, I wasn't strong enough. My pace, finishing time and ego suffered because of it. The memory has encouraged me to hold a little something back at every race of every distance since.
This is not to say I haven't run hard at an ultra, I have run hard but never from the start. I like to hold back until the end is near, when I feel mostly confident in what I have left in me and how far left I have to go. I know the solution to racing for me is somewhere in the middle, going out faster than I would like and pushing sooner than I might otherwise.
I'm still uncertain about Saturday's race, I'll probably go back and forth the remainder of the week about race plans and strategy. I know one thing, when the race begins I will give it as much of myself as I can bear, all that remains to be seen is whether that effort is out of the gates or with five miles left to go. If everyone could just avert their eyes, promise to love me no matter how I preform, and have an Orchestra of tiny violins at the ready should I fail, that would be kind of wonderful.
-Alexis
No comments:
Post a Comment