Quicker Quaker Oatmeal 5K Race Report

All races begin long before the starting gun goes off, and this race was no exception.

The day before the race I was mellow.  I went to my appointment at Tri Massage and lived through another grueling session under Josh’s freaky-strong fingertips (I didn’t cry, though wanted to when he was working on the scar tissue around a rib that’s been out of place for months).

Before a race you’re supposed to carb-load, hydrate and get lots of sleep.  Let’s just say that I batted a zero on all fronts.  The next morning I woke up starving with a dehydration headache and red, puffy eyes from lying awake much of the night.  Call it over-active brain, insomnia, whatever… I had it, bad.

The first order of business was food and drink.  After pounding two full glasses of water and eating two fried eggs with toast, I was ready to pee and start all over.  More water, get the kids up, dressed, fed, attach timing chips to shoes… we were ready to go, except my sister Rachael wasn’t here yet.  She was supposed to meet us at the house at 8:30 so we could ride over together.  Sophie was running the race with Bill and me, and Rachael was hanging with Connor on the sidelines.

She pulled up ten minutes late, we jumped into the still-moving car and zoomed off again.  It’s a full five minutes to the race, and we didn’t want to be late.

I shouldn’t have worried.  We parked two blocks from the start line and walked over with 35 minutes to spare.  There were a few people there already, volunteers were still putting together the finisher shoot, and two policemen were directing traffic on Baseline and South Public Road.  Sophie wanted to do a little warm-up so she, Bill and I jogged slowly around the block before hitting the porto-potty line.

Sophie’s run kid races before, but this is her first “real” race.  I asked her if she had any particular goals for the race.  Wise woman that she is, she said, “To finish.”

“That’s a good goal, honey,” we told her.  “Anything else you want to shoot for?”

She didn’t understand what we were asking so I broke it down a little.  “Some people set a goal of not walking at all, or not walking until a certain point, or running more than they walk… those kinds of things.”

She pondered, and then decided that she would try to run the whole thing.  Bill was going to run with her, which left me to race my little heart out.

I lined up close to the front and Bill and Sophie walked a little farther back.  My goal was to beat my current PR of 24:02 and finish in 22 minutes, give or take a few seconds either way.

The gun went off and I hit Start on the Garmin.  People started running, there was the usual shuffling of feet and jostling for position, and I scuffed over the mat a few seconds later.  For being as close to the front as I was, I couldn’t believe the crush of people around me.  I couldn’t get a pace started in the mass of humanity and used my small size to squeeze through gaps between people so I wouldn’t have to dodge around and use up precious energy.  I was running the tangents and no one was going to get in my way.

We quickly came to the first right turn and I let myself get carried into the flood of people that rounded the corner before spreading to fill the street.  We were like water, finding the path of least resistance and flowing to the lowest points before surging upward again.

I found a pace that felt good and held it, hoping it was sustainable.  I should have looked at the course to note the hills, but hadn’t remembered to do that before now.  Oops.  I remembered Bill saying that there was a pretty big hill going into mile 2 and figured that things would start getting hard really fast.  But… where were the signs telling the miles and/or kilometers?  The Garmin beeped at the mile mark and that’s when I realized we were on our own in terms of pacing.  Thank God for the Garmin, otherwise I would have no idea how far I still had to go before slowing down.

The hill was long as we headed up to Waneka Lake.  I felt my pace slow and tried to keep a steady push up the hill, but I knew this would be the slowest section.  I was still dehydrated and my stomach was saying things that weren’t very nice.  My breathing was a metronome; I sounded like an oversized windbag being inflated and deflated on a very steady basis.

I kept glancing at the Garmin to make sure the pace hadn’t fallen into the 8-minute range.  As long as things stayed in the mid-7’s as I trudged up the hill, I was happy.

The final 100-meter push to the top of hill and I could see racers coming down the other side.  The leader was running fast and strong, and the guy chasing him was a full 25 meters behind.

We crested the hill and ran on the dirt trail for a minute before rounding the hairpin turn and coming back down off the trail.  I tried to keep my eye on the opposite side to try and catch a glimpse of Sophie and Bill, but I never saw them.  A water station was set up and even though my mouth was dry as the Sahara I wasn’t about to slow down to drink.  This was an all-out push, a test to see what my base speed was before I went full-tilt into speed training for the Half Marathon on March 27.  No water stops for me, I would drink when I finished and not a moment before.

“You’re almost there, only 2k to go!” a well-meaning volunteer called out to us.

“Yeah, right,” muttered a guy on my left.  He wasn’t having any of the niceties and spent his breath uttering other cranky things about being “almost there”.

But really, it WAS all downhill from there.  The Garmin beeped at the 2-mile mark and I was still feeling okay, save for the stomach that had an ache.  It was hard to tell if it really hurt, or if I was just running faster than it thought we should be going, or if I was going to be sick. My motto is KEEP RUNNING.  And that’s what I did.

A little boy was just ahead of me, and I decided to not let a 10-year-old beat me.  I started the leap-frog process of picking someone, reeling them in, and then picking another person to pass.  He was my first victim, though he was really cute and his left shoelace was smacking the asphalt as he ran.  As I pulled up next to him I said, “Honey, your shoe is untied.”

“I know,” he gasped.  Cool.  He was going to win, with or without tied shoes.  I liked his spunk.

The next victim was an older, wiry guy of about 60, dressed head to toe in black spandex.  He had a good pace going too, but alas, I ate him up.

And so it went for a few more minutes, until we made the final turn and there was the finish shoot.  My Garmin beeped the 3-mile mark and I sprinted down the road.

“Go, Lara, go!!!” I heard Rachael yell.

“Go Mommy, go!” Connor joined in, and then they cheered wildly as I crossed the two timing mats and slowed to a walk.  Miraculously I remembered to stop the watch.  A volunteer cut the timing chip from my shoe, I found a cup of water, drained it and grabbed another before walking back to where Rach and Connor were waiting.  I figured I had a few minutes before Sophie and Bill would come rolling in.

Connor came running up and grabbed me, almost pulling me over.  He’s a puppy in a lean 8-year-old boy’s body, and doesn’t know his own strength.  Thank God I’m still just a little stronger than him.  In a few years though… I shudder at the thought.

It took a few minutes for me to check my time on the Garmin.  I remembered that the finish clock said “22:xx”, I just couldn’t remember what.  Checking my splits, this is what I found:

Mile 1:  7:16

Mile 2:  7:42

Mile 3:  7:02

Mile 4: 5:55 (last .12 miles)

Total:  22:43

Average:  7:17/mile

The official time was 22:37 (mat to mat); I started the watch when the gun went off.  Still, 7:17/mile?  That’s a sweet new PR, especially considering how I felt at the start.

Bill came barreling in a few minutes later, sans Sophie.  He said that she was fine with him taking off after the first two miles, so he pulled out a little speed for the last mile.  Sophie came running down the street a few minutes after Bill, and rocked her first 5K in 32:12, coming in 9^th in her 11-14 Age Group!  Her proud parents were all over her, yelling and cheering as she crossed the finish line.

Where are the pictures, you might ask?  Sadly, we have a total FAIL.  We forgot the camera.  There WILL be a next time though; last night Sophie said she definitely wants to do it again next year.  With any luck, she’ll get a few more chances this year to race again.  Is it possible we’re raising a runner?