Thursday, July 16, 2020

Baker's Dozen Half Marathon - Montclair, NJ - June 28, 2020

When this race was introduced in 2017, I could not help but wonder if a bunch of Phish fans were behind its nomenclature.  After all, Phish's guaranteed-to-be-epic 13-night run of the same name had been announced in January of that year.  Then along comes this race in the spring in Montclair - a town sure to have its fair share of phans, as evidenced when the Trey Anastasio Band played at the Wellmont Theater in 2011 and 2013.  Coincidence?

Since I never got around to running the actual race (usually in March), this year's circumstances seemed like a good opportunity to finally give the course a whirl.

Having lived in neighboring Little Falls for eight years, I know a lot of the roads in Montclair, so much of the course was on familiar ground.  The race starts and ends at the Montclair Bread Company on Forest Avenue, in the eastern side of town, but this race hits just about every area except the northeast and southeast corners. 

(Race map: https://certifiedroadraces.com/certificate/?type=l&id=NJ17550JHP)

I had written out turn-by-turn directions to take with me, which was especially helpful in the early miles.  After turning off of Forest Avenue to head west on Claremont, there was already a bit of an incline.  I took it in stride, not letting out too much effort, and hit a 7:10 for the first mile after turning left on North Mountain Avenue and crossing Bloomfield Avenue (the main drag through downtown) to continue on South Mountain Avenue.  I can imagine that the locals, especially those in cars, are probably not too fond of this crossing on the actual race days.

Training had gotten pretty bad over the past couple of weeks, especially with speed work.  Tempo runs got slower and more painful; track intervals were more labored.  But as I hoofed it down South Mountain for the second mile (6:49) things started to feel like they were going to be OK.  With a loop around the southeastern section of town, along Eagle Rock Way and Stonebridge Road, my third mile stayed strong with a 6:46, but that would be the last sub-7 mile of this race.

Retracing the path back up South Mountain and crossing Bloomfield again, I could feel the slowdown  in the fourth mile (7:09), but the worst was to come when I turned left on Claremont Avenue and climbed a 115-foot incline.  I had to take the steep hill as gingerly as possible because I knew it would knock me out beyond recovery if I did not.  So after turning onto Highland Avenue, mile five ended up being 7:54, my slowest of any half-marathon ever.

The next two miles on the rolling hills going northbound on Highland Avenue (7:23 and 7:08) were followed by a right turn on Mt. Hebron and two miles southbound on Upper Mountain Avenue (7:16 and 7:29) and a left turn on Claremont to zig the zag northbound on North Mountain Avenue for another two miles (7:28 and 7:30).

During these miles, I could not help but think about how, a year and a half ago, these splits would have been slow for a marathon, let alone a half.  How had things gotten so slow, so quickly?

Worse, a nagging pain in what I assume was my piriformis muscle (deep in my right buttock) - something with which I had suffered a few years ago - started creeping in.  All I could hope to do was maintain the pace as best as I could through the twisty-turny next mile (7:34) along Parkside, Oakcroft, Brookfield, Edgemont, Parkway, Valley and Vera.  That was a lot of turns and the paper on which I wrote the street names was rapidly turning to soaked shreds in my hand due to my profuse sweating.  It was probably more than 80 degrees by this point.

I managed to push it to 7:14 for one last mile along Midland, Chestnut, N. Fullerton, and the home stretch from Rand to Forest, finishing the race near where it started with a final time of 1:36:09, my slowest half-marathon by more than five minutes (I ran a 1:30:40 at Seaside Heights in 2008).

The year 2020 is long going to be remembered as a dividing line in a lot of ways.  In addition to life in a pre-COVID and post-COVID world, for me personally, it is the year I ceased to be a "fast" runner for my age and bumped down to "average".  My goal is to learn to live with that, without beating myself up.  

Saturday, July 4, 2020

Great Swamp Spring Distance Classic 15K – Basking Ridge, NJ - June 7, 2020

The official race date was a week or two prior, but I ran this official course as part of my coronavirus-era series of “races” to keep myself training hard and racing regularly.  Almost as sad as the fact that these terrible times call for such a strategy is the fact that my abilities continue to decline.  If 2019 began the slide from peak performance, 2020 has sealed the deal with an exponential decrease.
This is a stone cold fact that you never read in any running book or article: When it comes to speed and stamina, you lose it much more quickly than you attain it.
I have been running for 15 years.  It took me 11 years to get to peak speed.  I maintained it, with some minor fluctuations, for about two years.  And in the last two years, I have already dropped to almost the levels at which I started.  That is a brutal blow to the psyche; a bruise on the ego.
But let us get to the matter at hand – the 15K in Basking Ridge (where Phish's Page McConnell spent his childhood!).  My last 15K was on the hills of Block Island in 2016, where I inexplicably, unbelievably achieved a PR of 58:22.  Less than four years hence, on a mostly flat course, I could not even come close.
Starting at the official line, spray-painted on the pavement, I headed east on Lord Stirling Road. The first mile was great (6:18) thanks to an early downhill.  Having rested the day before, my legs felt fresh.  I was glad I had studied the course map, because the first turn was on Carlton Road which has no street sign.  Thankfully, though, the turnaround point on that road was spray-painted on the pavement.  
I hit mile two with a more realistic (though slightly disappointing) 6:33.  But I figured that was a good place to be this early on in the race, knowing that for a 15K, it is important to keep some gas in the tank.
Before turning onto Lord Stirling again to continue eastbound and hitting the mile 3 mark (6:30), a fellow on a bicycle (there were a lot of those out there that morning) passed me and said, “That’s quite an aggressive pace you’ve got going.”
I wanted to be able to explain that I was trying my best to run races while there were no actual races happening and that this was one of the courses, all I could muster was, “Thanks.”
Still, if I could have stayed in that 6:30 range, I would have been happy, all things considered.  But by the time I made it to the mile 4 mark (6:44) on Pleasant Plains Road, I could feel it all unraveling.  It was getting warmer – sunny and approaching 70F – and I was getting fatigued already.  I was not even halfway finished.  I had to press on, though.  I had no choice – this was a race, after all.
After another well-marked turnaround I hit mile 5 (6:47) before turning eastward again on Lord Stirling.  With each successively slower mile, I was calculating in my head how much slower my overall pace was, and it was not making me happy.  I simply had to push harder.
For a little while, it worked.  I hit the mile 6 mark with a 6:40 before the final turnaround that would send me back west on Lord Stirling with a straight stretch to the finish line for the final 5K.  I just had to keep pushing.
There was almost nothing left, though.  I gave it whatever I could - using every ounce of energy, trying to extend my legs as far as they would go – and I still came up with only 6:54 in both mile 7 and mile 8.  With a little more than a mile to go, I let it out whatever was left and managed a 6:39 in mile 9.
If that was the end of the race, my average pace would have been 6:39.  Nothing about which to write home, but understandable with the way things have been going.  But in that extra third of a mile at the end, I had to run up that hill that I went down at the beginning of the race.  It took me 2:42 to go that last three-tenths of a mile.  That is a 9:00 pace.  It was excruciating.
With a 1:02:23 final time, it was my slowest 15K with the exception of my first one in 2006 (1:09:38).  Since my second one was in 2009, with a 1:00:46, this means my ability has dropped to that of more than 11 years ago.  That is 11 years of improvement lost in only four years time – and not for lack of training, either.  I have been training exactly as much and as hard, only to see myself deteriorate rapidly.
It is frustrating and, like I said, it is something you never hear about.  Even with no major injury and no change in training, it all just falls apart when you get old enough.  
But does this mean I am giving up?  Not a chance.  July is half-marathon time.