Beach To Chowder 10K Race Report

Warning, what follow is yet another interminably long race report, hidden in between the beginning of a tale of a visit to see family. :)

Friday
I had intended to write a post on Friday with my worst, probable, and best case goals for the Beach to Chowder 10K, but I spent the day fighting feelings of nausea and repeated trips down the hall to the restroom for something other than urination. :( Not auspicious for the day before a race, and the day of our next great experiment in travel. For the record, and because it matters later in our tale, what I was going to state for goals was worst: 52:00, probable: 50ish, best: 48 or under.

I finally bailed out of work and stopped to get some Pepto and Immodium and to get packed for our drive down to my Mom's place. We decided to try the red-eye technique of travel. Load the car up early, give Kaitlyn dinner and bath, and then toss her in the car seat and let bedtime and the drone of the car lull her to an quiet, sleep filled, 3.5 hour drive to Moms. Then get there, toss her in the pre-set up portacrib, and go to bed... Good plan, anyway...

We got the household stuff banged out, got her in the car, and were on the road by 7:30. She was asleep by 7:45. She woke up at 8:30 and except for a handful of 5 or 10 minute naps, she was awake, but fortunately, quiet, till we got there at 11. Then, when we got inside, she went into full blown Kaitlyn mode. Running around, getting toys. Wiggle, and roam. We finally got her to bed, on Val, at around 1:15. Ahhh, what fun. I got more sleep than Val, since she was worried Kaitlyn would manage to roll off of her and then off the bed. (It's the first time she's slept with us in well over a year, so we're out of practice. :))

Race Day (Saturday)
Little Miss woke up at 7, ready to go. No being groggy and just hanging around for our girl. Eyes open, and let's go!!! We got her out of bed, dealt with Toby, hung out with my Mom for a few minutes, and then I got dressed and walked the 3 whole blocks over to race registration. Kaitlyn showed us a new trick starting this trip. Go to the diaper bag, pull out A&D, diaper and changing pad, open changing pad and lay on it. Hmmm... I wonder if she want's to be changed. :)

I had managed to procrastinate through the deadline for mail in registration, so this became the first time I've done a morning of registration. Had to fill the race form out twice since apparently ballpoint pens have trouble writing through A&D residue. :) Got my bib and my packet, with my tickets for the Chowder feed, and a couple of coupons to the 42nd Street Cafe among other stuff. I wandered down to the arch at the entrance of the beach (also the finish line) to make sure I had my bearings, and then walked back to my Moms. It was a perfect day for a race. 50 to 55, overcast, but no rain.

When I got back to everyone else grabbed breakfast, I did the runner thing and had some OJ, a clif nectar bar, and some water. Whee. :) I was ready to run right then. The wait till we walked down to the start just killed me. We left the house at 9:30, the race started at 10:00, we got there with 20 minutes to spare. :) The race started on the hard packed sand, so we walked under the arch where I checked out the lanes they wanted the runners to come in on and down the road to the beach. My Mom's little 'cart' for her leg (which, by the by is doing much better, she's in a small walking brace and can put a little bit of pressure on it to walk with a cane now.), couldn't make it past the large rocks they had put down to extend the trail to the hard pack so she gave me a hug and stood there to watch. Val and Kaitlyn came down to see me off. The breast cancer people were doing the pink thing the best they could and a trio of gals came in with big pink hats and matching outfits. And a boom box. Playing music. Thank goodness they were running the 5K.





Everyone was just standing around in kind of a cluster. Yellow bibs for the 10K, white for the 5K, pink for what must have been a Breast Cancer component to the 5K. All just milling around, all 150 of us or so. :) Finally someone I had seen when I was registering wandered down with a bullhorn and mumbled something incomprehensible. Everyone started to cluster closer together for the "runners briefing". So the 5Kers go South, around the red sign, back north, then break right here and go under the arch. The 10Kers go north, around the red sign, get redirected on the off beach trail and then finish under the arch. Any questions. No? OK. Well let's do this run. Points to the cop car on the beach, who then blips his horn. And we're off? Oh crap we're running. I looked at the guy next to me, and he's like "We'll I guess we just started". Val said it was pretty neat/funny to see this gaggle of people separate out into the separate groups.




This is most of the 10Kers. I'm in the red and silver sleeveless shirt in the middle of the pack.

The Race


obviously, the course map. interactive version

My timing is a probably a bit off because of the odd start, but its close enough for me.

miles 1 to 3 (22:56; 7:39/mile pace)
The hard packed sand was pretty nice to run on actually. No build up on my shoes, and it was easier on my legs than the cement I normally run on. The fast pace I set for myself at the start and overall pace for this stretch was brutal. I started wondering what the eff I was doing running this friggin race, which was a 180 degree flip from how excited I had been a few minutes before.

I chased my rabbit for the first mile or so, and since it's not polite to stare at a woman's ass, I watched her feet. And because we were on sand, her footsteps. Which were in a perfect line. Left, right, left, like she was centering each foot on a laser line. No idea if it means anything technique wise or anything cool like that, it was just neat to watch. And it distracted me from the older gentleman to my left rear who grunted EVERY time his left foot hit the ground.

Just after I passed my rabbit, and got far enough away from the grunter not to hear him, I looked at my watch at about 15 minutes in and had some unpleasant words for myself about how much this sucked, and why are am I doing this anyway? Shortly after that I caught a glimpse of the turn around at around 2.9 miles in and then started seeing the leaders headed back. Tried to give the leader, a tall Kenyan, a "Whoo Hoo", but all that came out was a croak, so I stopped trying to embarrass myself and just gave everyone thumbs ups.

Passed a sign staked into the beach and looked over my shoulder to read it and realized it was the mile 3 marker and then hit the turn. The turn around was a big red sign that said "10K turn" with a pickup parked by it and a family of volunteers handing out water. Passed on the water, made the turn and headed back for the 3 mile sign. And holy crap where did the wind come from? Oh crap, are you kidding, headwind?

mile 4 - 8:03
Beat my head against the head wind for about a mile and a half. Saw the mile 2 marker I missed, and then the mile 4 marker. Wind gave me a 25 second drop in pace, and my thighs are starting to burn. It was like a mile and a half of low grade hills. I'm not sure where exactly the turn to the trail is, so I'm keeping my eye out. Saw my 9th bird gutted crab, pretty much the only scenery other than runners, sand, and water. :)

miles 5 and 6 (17:01; 8:30/mile)
Around mile 4.5 the pointed us over to the trail. And about .15 miles of loose sand later we finally get there. God I hurt. My thighs and calves both were just trashed after trying to keep in something resembling a run thought the soft sand. the start of the trail influenced by attitude about it later because it has some sharp switch backs and some elevation changes (we're talking the biggest overall was something like 20 feet, but before that there was none.

The trail was really nice, paved with asphalt, and clear, but was much weavier and wavier than I expected. I was expecting a basically straight trail with maybe some slight curves to it. And to be honest I didn't expect the trail at all, since I just learned about it race morning. Pounded out the miles, but no mile markers that I saw so I just ran, and tried to keep my new rabbit in sight. Spent a lot of this stretch waiting for a statue of Lewis and Clark we stopped at with my Mom on our last visit since I knew that was close to the street that would lead back up to the finish.

Finally hit the statue, and shortly after that the merge in with the 5Kers and headed in towards the finish. Just before I hit the nicely labeled mile 6 marker, I heard a 5Ker mom respond to what I'm guessing was a question from her child with. "He ran twice as far as we did, and ran the whole way", which at the time was pretty neat.

My abs are pretty trashed at this point. Despite the wind and trail challenges, what's bothering me now is core, not cardiovascular or thighs. So, I need to stop my experiment of how much better I can get with just running, and start adding core workouts. It's been a neat experiment to be able to say that more mileage and weight loss made the changes in my speed and distance, but it's cutting my nose off to spite my face to continue doing this if I want to get faster, or go further at the same pace. I think I'm just resisting because I got into this to run, by gosh, and not to have to do core workouts, and cross training, and all this other stuff that's going to make me a better runner. Ah, well.

last 0.2 (1:29; 7:25/mile)
Just after crossing this final marker, I'm trying to take advantage of the fairly flat road to speed up and finish strong, and Val, Mom and Little Miss are off on the right cheering me on. Val got some good shots after some careful baby and camera juggling.






This was the first race I've run where we used the tags at the bottom of the bibs, I started to tear mine off (per instructions) just after I saw my family, managed to do that, keep a reasonable pace, sort myself into my lane, and then keep running till I actually crossed the line. Handed my tag to the guy at the end of the lane, grabbed my bottle of water and, how cool, a finishers medal. And finally stopped running.

After the race
Doubled back and walked back to see family. Passed by the Kenyan who one. Nodded, 'waved' with one of those hand flip thing you do when you want to act 'cool' and got a thumbs up back. :)

Got and gave some sweaty hugs, and Kaitlyn curled up on my shoulder while I drank the chocolate milk I had my Mom buy, but had to be reminded about. :) Val asked if I had fun. My response was "No. That really kind of sucked." About a minute later though, I was mentioning that I have another 10K planned for the 4th, and will probably come back next year.

It took a few minutes of talking with Val and my Mom about the fact that I was bummed about not hitting 48 minutes, and talking about the challenges I've bitched about above for me to remember that 48 minutes really was my best case scenario, in ideal conditions, and despite feeling like I was making excuses, that this race had some valid challenges. At that point I felt like I had a really good race

Dropped Kaitlyn back into the stroller and walked back to the house. Ah, frabjous joy, Kaitlyn fell asleep on the walk back. We skipped the chowder feed and the awards ceremony while Kaitlyn and Val slept, so I'm still waiting to hear the official results.

Final comments
Oh yeah, watch time was 49:29. Which is fantastic! I cut right around 5:30 off my previous PR, that I did May 10,6 weeks ago, in Tacoma.

For me this was a good race to learn lessons about assumptions, expectations, and adapting to changing circumstances, as well as respect for a course you've never seen. I'm pretty proud of the fact that I kept driving on thought the whole race, and I think it might mean I'm a runner since I pushed through the discomfort, and want to go back and do it again. (Now that the discomfort's stopped, anyway. :))

I had some pretty negative thoughts about running longer distances and my ability to do that during the race. Once I stopped, though, I realized that I just can't run that pace for longer distances, yet. Two weeks of 7.5 or so show that I CAN run longer distances comfortably. I ran the distance set in front of me, and I gave it my all. It's pretty obvious from my almost finished picture that I'm trashed, and when I go look at that last .2 and compare it to other runs, the speed difference is pretty apparent. There was no real kick left. But a few minutes after I stopped, I was fine, and was able to chase Toby around a ball field a few hours later.

Those of you who made it this far, thanks. I needed to get it out of my system, and Val's done hearing about it. :) I may type up the rest of the trip in another post, but I have a Monday run post to do. :)