For the St. Malachi 2011 race, I followed much the same training as I had for the Turkey Trot, and even stopped keeping manual track of my runs, opting to use the Nike+ system that worked with my shoes and iPod. It began in early January running on the Indoor JCC track that would become my home for the next 6-7 months. Slowly at first, I started building up miles, then lowering times through the ice cold January and February months, opting for a 3 day schedule of running per week. Looking back, I should have been training more days and less distance per workout, but hindsight is 20/20 as they say. I don't have a lot of data from this time of training since I did it all on the Nike+ site, which I no longer use, but I would say I was logging around 8-10 miles per week by the end of it. At one point in late February I got sick of the whole "follow a schedule" thing and decided to just go out and run 5 miles to see where I was in the training process. I ended up somewhere around 48 minutes without full effort, so I knew I was in for a good run.
For the actual race, about a week out all of my friends dropped out one by one. Nick was traveling, my partner in crime Kristy was hungover the morning of and couldn't answer the bell, my buddy Brian had a knee injury that kept him from training, and so on. On this day I found Brian's sister Megan, which was a HUGE lift for me, as I'm a social being (as you've seen in past posts). So, I was able to get mentally prepared with Megan and her fiance, who was watching their baby girl Sydney while Megan ran. The preparation for this day was all about proper clothes, and chowing a ClifBar and PowerAde Zero prior to starting. Not a terrible choice, but something that would be tweaked in the coming days. I actually had started on a regiment of Hammer Recoverite after 5+ mile runs, as suggested by Christina, and still follow that suggestion, so I had that in the waiting for post race consumption. The weather was supposed to be a complete mess at around 35* and snowing/raining, however someone was smiling on us runners that day when it turned out to be closer to 40* with copious amounts of sun. That really brought a smile to my face as I approached the staging area. I remember getting to the line a little late, and starting up my new Garmin Forerunner 305 about 5 minutes before race time. Since this was literally the first time I started it up, I had no idea how it worked. It was 3 fretful minutes to catch the GPS signal, and 2 minutes of light stretching before the race was underway.
In the first mile, I made the awful mistake of starting too close to the back of the pack. If I was to run the race I wanted to run, I would have to bob and weave through the entire crowd. St. Malachi had changed the run course this year to not include the killer hill into Tremont at the end of the 3rd mile, which was good in a way, but bad since the course took you down, up, down, up and down again over it's duration. First was a short 1/4 mile straight down a hill, then, a sharp right hand turn onto a narrow street,. This is when it became completely evident that I had chosen the wrong course of action as the street was so congested that I had to stop and walk for a good 20 seconds. Becomingly increasingly frustrated, I darted off into the grass to circumvent the mass of people on the outside, which was adding distance to my run already. After successfully navigating around the initial craziness, it was straight up hill to West 25th street. I felt really good pacing myself up this hill, probably learning a lesson from last year's Turkey Trot about sprinting up hills, even early in the race. I caught a nice pace on the upper portion of the Detroit Ave. bridge and glanced at my watch as it alerted me that I was going to fast. I would soon find out that these alerts were probably the most annoying thing about the GPS watches, and have since turned all but the mile marker notice off. It's a lot easier to be organic during a race and speed up/slow down at how you are feeling once you get a feel for that kind of thing. My plan for the day was to take the first 2 miles at around 9:00/mile pace, then lower each subsequent mile by a few seconds to finish just below the 45:00 mark, for the first time. The first 2 miles went well as after the Detroit Avenue bridge it was all downhill towards Browns stadium, until you hit the lake and turned around. At that point, the race came back up from the lake and was almost exclusively uphill, which I should have taken into account during the first 2 'easy miles'. About the half way point on the pier, I started thinking I may be able to hold the pace the whole time without any issues, but fatigue was starting to set in. There was a water stop out there somewhere and I stopped to collect my thoughts for 5 seconds while I drank the water. I think at this point I finally realized that I had to run uphill the whole way back and doubt started to creep into my mind.
Starting the 2nd half of the race and running back down the peer along side Cleveland Browns Stadium, I started watching the other runners that were behind me and felt a little better that I had less than them to run. And as I hit West 3rd street, I put my head down, cracked the tunes and barreled forward. Luckily there was a little break in the uphill right around West 6th street, so I was able to catch my breath right before the last climb up the Detroit Avenue bridge again, heading the other way towards home. At the bottom of the bridge I took as deep a breath as I could and looked down at the ground about 5 feet in front of me, not wanting to see how far I had to go. After what I felt like was a mile in it's own, I took a glance upwards expecting to be close to the peak of the bridge, only to see I had a significant distance to go. I thought about slowing down right there, but with my goal of a sub-45:00 in sight, I kept moving along. My watch had the distance by the end of the hill listed at 4.60 miles so I thought I had a bit more to go, but the finish line turned out to be right around the corner. I don't know if I had screwed something up or the distance wasn't quite right, but I was frantic when I saw the finish line well before I had planned for it. I sprinted into a crowd that was running 5 wide, bobbed and weaved through a few more people and crossed the finish line at a dead sprint. I glanced at the time on the official board 44:54.84. I had done it for sure, but I wondered by how much officially. Looked at my watch at it read 43:49, which turned out to be the time listed on the official website. 8:46/mile. I had slaughtered my last performance, and my goal of sub-45:00. The only negative to this was that I had NO ONE to celebrate with. I couldn't find Brian, who was down there in support of me and Megan. I couldn't find Megan either, so I was all alone to gloat in my victory. I went over to the tent, grabbed a banana and a water, sat down next to St. Malachi's and took in a beautiful day and beamed in silence.
Later on I found Brian and watched Megan cross the finish line, but it was a kind of lonely feeling not having anyone there to specifically root for you and wait at the finish line. To be honest, even given the awesome finish, it wasn't one of my favorite race day experiences. I pretty much said hey to Brian and Megan and then left for home, since it was Mandy's birthday that day as well. My in-laws were in town waiting and gave me a hardy congratulations, but it just kind of felt... lacking. This is still my favorite race and I will still run it every year that I am physically able, and it did kick off my most successful year of running by FAR. Triumphs would come in bunches in 2011, so I'm glad it all started in quiet fashion in downtown Cleveland, where I would return 2 months later for an even bigger challenge.
-RFH-
-Adam
