Tom King Classic 'Race' Report and a February training recap

I feel like the phrase "the days are long, but the years are short" (or in this case weeks) really applies to this year's Boston cycle so far. In the moment, it seemed like February went on FOREVER, but now it's kind of hard to believe that it's in the rearview and we're sitting only 6 weeks out from Boston. Overall, I had a pretty solid February of training - I won't say it was anything earth shattering, but I was extremely consistent and did all of the things that I planned on doing. I finished February with 213 miles, about 30 miles more than last year. I think I give the most credit to the fact that I've been much better about extending my "standard" run distance from 6 miles to 7-8 this month, only allotting myself one 6 mile day per week. Those extra 1-2 miles per day add up! Also nothing super dramatic happened in February. The weather was fine, my legs were fine, I had some of the usual February mental struggles, but it was pretty much just a standard training month to get through.

I did have a pretty enjoyable experience last weekend doing a workout/race at the Tom King Half Marathon in Nashville! The whole thing actually came about in a hilarious way - back in December, my teammates and I were on a bar crawl (where we ran between bars, of course) and Taylor brought up the fact that she was going to Nashville for a friend's 30th in February, and also doing a half while she was there since we'd be Boston training. It occurred to my slightly drunk self that 1) my sister lives in Nashville, 2) I hadn't been to visit her yet, 3) this sounded fun, and 4) I SHOULD GO ON THIS TRIP. One thing led to another, I found a $120 round trip flight, my sister was thrilled to host me, Joy hopped on board, and soon enough the crazy idea turned into a delightful reality!

Things were made more interesting by the fact that Nashville was experiencing historic amounts of rain and flooding in the week leading up to the race, to the point where the course had already been modified twice due to flooding by the time my plane touched down in Nashville. Having raced all out at the 10 miler 6 days before, I was already planning on doing the race as a workout but was still a little worried that it would get cancelled all together. I arrived in Nashville after quite a long travel day (left home at 7:45 am and arrived at 5:15 pm, losing an hour due to the time change), and enjoyed a delightful and leisurely dinner with my sister and brother in law at Henrietta Red. We then headed to a local brewery (Bearded Iris), because why not! I'm long past caring about staying out a little late/drinking an extra beer the night before most races, particularly those I'm running as workouts.

Saturday morning dawned, and while it was raining pretty heavily it was NOT thunderstorming, which was the only condition which the race directors had advised would cancel the race. I have to take a moment to give huge kudos to Nashville Striders - the communication leading up to the race was outstanding and this was one of the best organized races I've run despite all of the challenges that they faced - I know many races in New England that would have cancelled all together if forced to change the course due to flooding, so major props! My Lyft driver hilariously told me that he "hoped I won" the race as he dropped me off at Nissan Stadium. I will admit to being a little disappointed that we did not get to finish on the 50 yard line as planned (rain, again), but it was sort of a unique experience to be hanging out before a race in an NFL stadium. Taylor and Joy arrived, and we warmed up fairly miserably around the stadium.

Life is...OK?

Taylor and I had discussed running together although I know her well enough to know she was probably going to drop me at some point, it was nice to have someone to work with through the first section of the race. My goal was to run no faster than my ambitious GMP (7:10) and while it felt like I was holding back a bit through the first few miles, I knew I was making the right call. I could definitely feel the travel day + the previous week's work in my legs and I was honestly pretty happy that I didn't feel pressured to race all out - in fact, I was a little nervous that I wasn't even going to be able to hold GMP. It continued to rain pretty steadily but at 55 or 60 degrees was really quite comfortable...I mean, once you're wet, what does it matter if you get a little wetter? The modified course was pretty straightforward - we made a lap around the stadium, then did a long out stretch to loop around the park, came back, and then repeated. I'll admit, when I was running back towards the stadium and saw the leaders heading back towards the park, I got a little sad that we were going to have to make the same loop again, lol. Taylor pulled ahead of me around mile 6 and I just tried to maintain pace while keeping her in my sights. I started putting in some little 20-30 second surges at the start of each mile, just to keep myself from getting complacent. While I felt like I was putting in a little more effort than I would have liked, I was pleased with how well I was holding approximately the correct pace, with the majority of my splits between 7:13-7:16 with a few faster outliers. While the out and back made for a less than thrilling course, it was nice to get to see/cheer on other runners, and to get some awesome high fives from Joy on the other side of the course. 

On the second loop around the park, the fatigue kind of all hit me at once - I was over it! Mile 10 was the least enjoyable of the race, as we headed up a pretty minor but long incline that I just was not in the mood for. I took a Gu which helped quite a bit (I don't think I've ever actually felt the moment when the caffeine from a Gu took effect before, but I had an actual instant of "whoosh" about 5 minutes after I took it and I all of a sudden felt better). I also saw a huge heron flying through the park which was a pick me up as well, as we are always on the lookout for wildlife lol. Heading back towards the city I was just about ready to be done, but had promised that I would try to pick it up for the last couple of miles. While I did manage to pick it up slightly, I was unfortunately MUCH more tired than I had bargained for and only managed to muster up a 7:01 and a 7:04, lol! Oh well. I crossed the line in 1:33:14 - the course was slightly under 13.1 but I'd still say good for a sub 1:34. Not bad for a workout! 

Work work work work work.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the whole experience! It's always fun to race in a new place, and I thought that I executed my plan about as well as I could have. I do feel like the effort for 7:10 was definitely higher than I'd like for marathon pace, but then again I still have another month of hard training, and there were plenty of excuses I could make as to why it felt harder (travel, weather, cumulative fatigue, etc). So in general, I'd say the fact that I can hit GMP for half a marathon is not a bad thing for February! My biggest disappointment was that I finished just out of the AG rankings in 4th (annoyingly, I would have been 2nd in the 25-29 AG and 1st in the 35-39! Argh.) and the award was a really nice coffee mug! Guess I'll just actually have to race it next time.

Meanwhile, back in Boston, March has come in like a damn lion. Saturday was one of only two long runs that aren't races that I needed to achieve during this 6 week block, and wouldn't you know it, we had a winter storm! So I slogged through Natick and Wellesley, completely ate it at mile 5, cried a little bit, thankfully met up with my teammate Elise, we bitched and moaned, ate some Gatorade snowcones at the firehouse, and somehow at the end of the day I completed 20 miles only slightly slower than planned (this was my one "easy" long run so was aiming for 7:50-8...somehow managed to finish averaging 8:03). This weekend it's back to the race course for a 20 miler - once again, I'm planning on running this as more of a workout situation, but am not totally sure what that's going to look like yet. Aiming for the whole 20 at GMP seems aggressive, so I'm thinking something more along the lines of starting easy, GMP miles in the middle, a little recovery, and then gunning the finish. I don't know! We shall see...all I know is last time I ran this race it was 7 degrees with -30 degree windchills and I ran like 7:25 pace, so hopefully I can at least beat that!

Tom King Classic

1:33:14 (? short course, 7:10 pace by Garmin)

61/332 OA, 13/125 F, 4/13 F30-34 (the weather definitely kept people away - last year there were 4x as many women in that age group!)