Lord Hill 10k Trail Race

After struggling against that challenging Seattle area competition in the Silver Lake 2-Mile Swim and Meet of the Miles Picnic (see below), I decide to find a small, local running race to assuage my ego.  I spot a Half-Marathon and 10k trail race at the nearby Lord Hill Regional Park.  After a bit of pondering I choose the 10k, figuring a half-marathon is a bit far in my new trail shoes and on my 50-kilometers per week of training (and the half-marathon costs $10 more).  

Both distances start together and for the first 4k I find myself in a pack of four guys with a college kid out ahead of us..  The new trail shoes feel great - I run the steep rocky downhill sections much more aggressively - lifting my elbows and leaning forward.  Still I find myself laboring on the up-hills, and stressing at the thought that to be competitive I really need to get around the 4 guys when the trail widens and go after the college kid.  

  

Then, to my amazement, at the 4k mark every other runner around me splits off to do the half-marathon.  I am totally and completely alone in first place.  If I was in a more competitive mood I would have been disappointed (or perhaps even ignored my event registration decision and gone after the other 5 runners).  But at this moment I was just delighted.  I felt burst of energy and surged along a mostly smooth flat stretch of trail to an aid station turn-around at 6k.  On this short out-and-back I could see I had a good 2-minute lead over second place.  When I begin to tire on some brutal roller coaster terrain over the last third of the course I repeatedly twist my head to see if there is anyone closing in on me.  I don't see any one and think "Oh good, I can slow down - who cares about my time as long as I win".

I win the race by 3 minutes.  I cover the hilly trail course in 45:20.  I even win some nice Rudy Project sunglasses.

The top half-marathon guys come in around 1:45.  I try to talk to them and ask them how their races played out.  But they see me with all my prizes and glory and adoring fans and they walk away, their faces contorted with scorn, contempt, and jealousy.   It is somewhat understandable that they look down on us pedestrian runners who only completed 10 kilometers.  As for me, I find myself extrapolating my 10k pace and wondering how I would have finished if I had run the half-marathon.  

Meet of the Miles Picnic

Seattle's Club Northwest summer picnic is combined with the "Meet of the Miles" a Sunday afternoon set of mile races on the West Seattle track.  I intend to go to the picnic, so  naturally I am game to jump in a mile race.  Who cares that I have not done much mile specific training?  I figure the 12 x 400 meter intervals I did a month ago might help.  And at the Club Northwest track workout on the previous  Wednesday we ran 4 x1600 on a 3-minute rest cycle.  I managed to run the last 1600 in a 5:20, providing me with a modicum of confidence going into the picnic run.  I figure a picnic event should be pretty casual anyway - three-legged races, tug-of-war, water balloon tosses...   But Club Northwest is all business.  Even the "Milk Mile" (drink 12-ounces of milk then race 400 meters x 4) is a remarkably determined affair - especially in contrast to the revelrous beer mile I participated in (see below). 

The small group of grimly determined runners in my masters (40 years old+) mile heat burst out at 70-second per lap (4:40) pace, and it is all I can do to not follow them.  I knew I had to go out easy…  Still I hit 400 meters in 76 seconds and after that I find myself slogging out the remaining 3 laps at 80 second pace with no one even close to me (the pack finishes 30 seconds ahead, and another group maybe 30 seconds behind me.  

The 5:16 effort seems like an awful lot of pain - just to shave 4 seconds off the interval I clocked 4 days earlier.  I wonder if I could run much faster at this distance - how much short-distance specific training would help.  If drafting and having more people around me would help. Or would warming up more like in the workout help?  Or perhaps it is just an age thing.   It used to be easier for me to run a 5 minute mile, and any halfway decent junior high kid runs a 5:16.  But still I tend to reject the general mindset that there should be some tight correlation between one's age and the run distance one must race at.  

Silver Lake 2-mile Swim

I thought I might finish near last place as I drove to last weekend's Silver Lake Swim.  At that point finishing last did not really concern me - it was a sunny morning, and this swim event served as a good workout and a fine opportunity to work on open water swim technique.    But upon arriving at the lake my expectations start to change. 

I don't mean to sound arrogant or disrespectful, but the athletes that surrounded me at the starting line of the Swim did not look particularly, well, athletic.  I have grown accustomed to events like the Frankfurt Ironman and staring up at strapping, muscular German young men with their focused game faces as they determinedly rack their $10,000 bikes, drink their complex energy drinks and talk intensely about their 20+ hour per week training regimes. 

I arrive at Silver Lake and find myself chatting with a neighborly, silver haired woman in front of me in the event registration line who talks to me at length about her grandchildren's summer camp.   I look around and at least two-thirds of the field I would characterize as being above an optimal weight.  I start to think that I should be pretty competitive. 

Yet when the gun went off almost all of these other athletes burst out ahead of me, and even as I tell myself to surge toward the first buoy I find the rest of the crowd pulling further and further ahead. 

My first mile was a disappointing 33+ minutes.  The second mile loop did not seem much faster as I zig-zagged around the buoys, the swimmer ahead of me far in the distance.  But somehow, (as is always the case in my swims), I seemed to settle into a rhythm and speed up -- I was just over 30 minutes for the second mile.  My goal for the day had been to break an hour, so at least I was on pace during the second half.  I just somehow need to improve my starting speed and my sighting. 

Oh and I didn't finish last.  A couple other swimmers straggled in behind me.  But I didn't see the grandmother at the finish - she must have been well ahead of me. 

Training Summary - June 30, 2013

I had grand ambitions.  At the outset of 2013 I planned to increase my running mileage beyond the feeble 40-kilometer (25 mile) per week average - the level I had been mired in for the past few years. 

But for various and sundry reasons I have not been able to sustain higher workout load without my legs protesting, as you can see in this 12-month mileage chart --

Meanwhile my "cross-training"  (I can hardly say "triathlon training" since I never actually compete in any triathlons) has averaged around 8 hours per week.  8 hours is also pretty feeble by triathlete standards, but then most triathletes derive many of their weekly training hours on the long, time-consuming cycling workouts.  Since I have yet to do a cycling workout outside this year except for during a week in May in Seattle (see below) all of my hours are swims, runs and turbo-training sessions so it is a reasonably quality effort I think.  Here is 6 month chart extracted from Triathlog