300 Minutes of Heck: Augusta 70.3 Preview and Ramblings

    This Sunday is the  Augusta Ironman 70.3.  It's been a while, and I am curious how I will fare. 

    See, after the birth of my daughter and immediate divorce, I jettisoned long distance triathlon, to focus on things other than my hobby.  This was no noble sacrifice, but rather a necessity of divorced parenthood, career, and time management.  Moreover, let's not kid ourselves, the longer the race, the weaker I get.  I'm hell for an hour, no question about it, which is how I continue to win sprint triathlons outright in my mid-40's.

Me for an hour.

    Alas, the 60 minutes of hell I unleash dissipates quick-like.  I remain hot up to the Olympic Distance (2 plus hours), but beyond that, I'm embers.   At the half iron distance, the brimstone fizzles and I bring you, at best, 300 minutes of heck.  I am more than OK with this:  better to be strong at one distance than mediocre at all.  The exemplar of  endurance extremes, I've won 15 tris outright just since I became a dad 10 years ago, all but two of them sprints.  Yet if you'd seen me walking sideways, crab-like in my last ironman, you'd agree I am not mediocre at that distance either.

    Whatever your distance, whichever leg is your best, triathlon is a hobby.  Call it a "lifestyle," get the M-Dot tattoo; change jobs and cities twice to accommodate your training and race desires;  but  unless you feed your your kids from your winnings, or are bleeding through the nose trying to get your pro card and some sponsors, then triathlon is your hobby.  Not your job.

    I get it that you are addicted to the training, the hours, the sweat, the feeling of accomplishment that approaches hubris, and that delicious soreness after a brutal track session. This sport attracts addictive personalities.  I get it that you surround yourself exclusively with the similarly fervent, and that your social life and your sport are so intertwined, wisteria-like, you can't distinguish between them.

    Well, trainspotters are obsessive too, they are just tougher to spot in a crowd, without the Livestrong bands and bike tans.  Your avocation is what you choose to pass the time before you die, and impose meaning on your life beyond work and sitcoms.   I applaud your choice in hobbies -- I gravitated to this sport in law school back in the last century, and haven't left the fold --  but there are birders who will gut you over a tufted titmouse sighting.  And rival Trekkie gangs beef over Kirk vs. Picard with Biggie vs. Tupac combustibility.

 

My Vote.  Fellow Jew.  And debauched and awesome in his dotage.  Note that Spock, too was a member of the tribe.

    And I wonder if, on the whole, birders, and comic-con types and Trekkies and Jehovah's Witnesses are better adjusted than triathletes, of if we could trade obsessions  and find interchangeable underlying impulses.

    I digress.


    Now then, this 70.3 race on Sunday.   This will be my first venture back at an M-Dot incorporated event since they rebranded the half-ironman distance as "70.3."  Remember how we used to call them half-irons?  Perhaps the "half" seemed reductive, hence the name change.  "Half " resonates with lite beer and half-off sales and the implication that you couldn't hack something fully or completely, since it was just half the full hot order.

    Then again, with the proliferation of decimal point car window stickers -- 13.1!  26.2!  70.3!  140.6! -- perhaps the 70.3 title makes brand sense.  Maybe this is M-Dot corporation following the decimal point sticker trend, not setting it.  Branding aside,  I am keenly interested to see how my short course skills suit this distance after a 7 year hiatus, and whether I am as weak at long stuff as I remember it.   More mileage in the final month would have helped going in, but it's been a strong summer on the bike, I am not over trained and I believe plenty fit enough.

    I look forward to finding out:  300 minutes of heck unleashed on a race, and that same number of minutes spent imposing meaning through sweat on another Sunday morning in my life, until I run out of them.

Winners announced in the 'Will Power Indoor 5K'

Winners announced in the 'Will Power Indoor 5K'

Getting out of town for Labor Day weekend.

Treadmill Trackstar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3epCwbclw0&feature=plcp

So last Wednesday I woke up and it was race day, and the sheets weren't sticking to the scabs. 

I found this encouraging.

Most open wounds from Sunday's bike wreck had scarred up enough to wear shorts in public.   I took it as a sign that I was supposed to race. Of course I would have raced anyway, and justified it on some dubious theory that my road rash needed to "breathe," or something.  The go compulsion, like The Bible and the U.S. Constitution, can be employed to justify multiple and opposing outcomes.  Here it justified testing the knee, which took the brunt of U.S. Hwy 80 in my spill, on a hard run.

Also,  I knew the race course was blisteringly fast, and designed for an easy P.R.

I called the race director, told him to count me in, and drove to run the Will Power 5K .

I laced up my Minimus Zeros, and thought OK GO. Then I torched the flattest, straightest course I will ever run.  Although the course isn't USATF certified, it is accurate within the meter, and it has not one single turn, hill, pot hole, or intersection. 

Because the race is on a treadmill.  Really. 

How the race worked was, you booked it, showed up at  World of Home Fitness, and raced the clock alone, like a cycling time trial, and store owner William Sutton posted your time on the wall.  And he did it with alacrity.

Because let me tell you about Mr. Sutton.  He speaks in ALL CAPS.  I walked in and he leapt over, trumpeting YOU MUST BE JERRY!  He might have been average height, if muscular, but I can't say for sure, because HE WALKS, TALKS AND MOVES IN ALL CAPS.  This eclipses everything else about him, and in the rest of the room. He reminds me of a tattooed, heavy duty spring.  Or Tigger, if he knew about hack squats. This is one enthusiastic fellow.  He vibrates.  And he WAS GLAD I WAS THERE TO RACE!  He assured me the treadmill had sufficient horsepower and maximum speed to accommodate my needs.  He was so energetic, I only noticed the thick black cast on his foot when I was leaving.  He would explain he'd broken it when he  FELL OFF A ROOF.  I remarked that this sucked, but he countered that THERE'S ALWAYS SOMETHING ACTIVE YOU CAN DO, and that he JUST HAS TO WORK AROUND THIS SETBACK. 

He took an intense interest in my run.  I had an attentive audience.  Matters of pace, form and -- to the extent I had one for a treadmill run -- strategy fascinated him.

He had to deal with others while I was starting.  This gave me a moment to settle in on a treadmill in the storefront window, facing busy Abercorn Street.  I was doing this race on my lunch break from work, and watched the traffic lurch while I warmed up.  And let my mind wander, as it does when I run slowly.  Look at all the cars;  do I look like that when I drive;  his bass is thumping the windows in here; this treadmill is fancy;  I want peanut butter;  look, a shiny thing;  oh, time to start.

Three miles easy, then I began.  I decreed that I would not let the treadmill fall below 10.1 mph, or a bit faster than 6 minute pace.  My plan was to open at that speed and ratchet it up every tenth of a mile until I hit 11mph, or 5:27 pace, then assess.

Mile One:  5:41.

I felt good.  I now resolved not to fall below 11 mph again, and probably run it out right there.  Pshaw.  Picking a manageable speed and holding it is so responsible.  Where's the fun in that?  It's like carefully avoiding all the other drivers on the bumper cars. 

Also --  you try racing 5K on a treadmill without variance.  After a mile or so, ennui sets in.  And so I maxed the thing out at 12mph (5 minute flat mile pace) for a minute, recovered at 10.1, maxed it again, surging that way for the next two miles, as if to shake a phantom competitor.  It's heresy for running purists to say anything good about treadmills, but this was now fun.

Mile Two:  5: 26.

By now Mr. Sutton was on hand and into it.  Say what you want to, tell me you are an individualist, that you run only for internal satisfaction;  tell me you are unmoved by the exhortations of others, and that you always race your own race.  Whatever.  When you have someone watching you run, particularly someone who is passionate about athletics and expects something of you -- when that happens, you run harder.

Mile Three:  5:19. 

I hit mile three surging, maxing the Precor model 9.33 out at 12mph.  I held that speed across the constructive finish line and was astonished.  A recent P.R.

5K total:  16:57.

For you skeptics out there, yes, I am aware that it takes a treadmill from 20 to 30 seconds to get up to speed once you start it, depending on its horsepower and how much pasta you've been packing away.  With Mr. Sutton's consent, I got a moving start.  After my warm up,  I had him witness my full speed start  at .1 mile,  my saying GO, and my hitting my stopwatch.  We timed me for 3.1 miles, from .1 mile to 3.2 miles.  My thinking was, in the real world the gun goes off and you are running.  It doesn't take 30 seconds to run, you just run.  The purist counter-argument goes, right, but it still takes some time to accelerate from a dead stop.  Certainly true, but it's an imperfect world and I wasn't gonna get penalized for standing there while the thing eased into action. Running start.

Now, I haven't broken 17 minutes on pavement in probably ten years.  Partly because I don't race many 5Ks any more, partly because I am nearly 44, and partly because of a spate of  nagging injuries from 2006 -- 2011 that reduced me from runner/triathlete to cranky cyclist who dabbled in running. 

So I well understand that my 16:57 isn't the same as if I had clocked it at Heart Of Savannah.  Treadmills give you a 3 to 5 percent advantage over running on the ground, because when you run outside, your body moves.  Duh, right?  But more specifically, your body moves through air. It faces wind resistance.  That slows you a little.  On a treadmill you stay in the same place, so there is that savings of effort -- you don't have to fight wind.

But even accounting for that pleasant five percent discount, I'm still not that fast.  Treadmills offer a bigger freebie than the wind factor.  They pace for you. And that's what makes racing hard.  They man up, all you do is keep up.

When you go out too fast in a race, you end up easing up in mile two.  You scorch your legs around all those downtown squares, and so you pay for it with fatigue in mile 2.  Your legs want to tie up, so you give in like an indulgent parent,  rationalizing that discipline will come just a bit later.  You tell yourself you will pick it up in the third mile.  You don't.

Ah, but the treadmill, provided you can resist tampering with the buttons, maintains your pace.  You just have to hang on like George Jetson and not call for Jane  to save you. *

No idea what this 16:57 translates to.  Gun to my head, I'd guess 18 minutes flat, which would be a respectable time for me these days.  If I could run it off the bike in a triathlon, then afterward I would dance.  Doesn't matter though, because everyone ran the exact same course and our times make sense compared internally, to each other, in this race.  I was about 80 seconds behind Robert Santoro, my occasional training partner, which means I raced well. Rob's a beast and has gone 15:20-something this year.  I will take it!

I warmed it down briefly -- had to get back to work, and only had time to splash my face and towel off first -- and was about to thank Mr. Sutton for having me, but he THANKED ME FIRST FOR COMING TO HIS STORE AND GIVING IT ALL I HAD.

I was content, and had happily discerned that my knee must be ok, for the big race coming up later this month.  I was the one who needed to be thanking Tigger.

I heard that runners came by all last week and raced alone.  Mr. Sutton submits their times to Fleet Feet, who will email out the final standings this week. If you placed, you'll just go get your trophy. What this awards ceremony format lacks in, well, ceremony, it makes up for in efficiency.  No waiting "just a few more minutes"  after the race, while the timing crew scratch their heads at the 12 year old girl who ran an 11 minute 5K, or the 88 year old who somehow finished before he started.   A coffee junkie who's always doing 3 things at once, I endorse this sort of awards ceremony.

To put this race in perspective, when Savannah can accommodate a treadmill race, its running boom has matured. Just like Atlanta's (In 1978).  It's hard to miss the throngs in Daffin Park during your hour jaunt after work. You'll acknowledge groups of up to 50 newbie runners, often in matching attire, and nod at their coaches.  Sometimes these are charity groups, like Team In Training, aimed at some specific race and an ardent cause. Good for these people.   Neither training in packs, nor busking for donations (noble or otherwise) has ever been my scene.  But I am pleased to see them all out there.

More runners out there benefit us all:   motorists notice us;  safety in numbers;  more races.   So let's resist the urge to be running elitists.

Yeah, I know. You were a runner here back before it was trendy.  Me too.

And you knew about R.E.M. before Murmur.   Me too. Let's get over it.

It's okay if other people discover your favorite band; your identity isn't watered down because you have to share Peter Buck's jangly guitar solos with the rest of us. If you feel diminished, get a life.   If you must, go ahead and wear your 1992 Savannah Marathon long sleeve T (white with blue trim! Proof of your runner street cred!) to packet pickup for the Rock'n'Roll Marathon.

But these new runners don't just crowd your lonely hearts club.  Those courtesy coolers around town weekend mornings,  full of iced water for your long run?  Unheard of 10 years ago, before Robert at Fleet Feet started driving around and putting them out, to accomodate running groups.

And shuffling down Bull Street at dusk, you are less likely these days to get robbed of your ipod or Oakleys, or receive a pointless beat down.  Thugs with guns will never fear a solitary, bony runner, but that throng of witnesses decked out in Team In Training singlets may give them pause.

And you may have noticed, weekend before last, you had the option of two local races:  a half-marathon (in August) and and a cross country race for grownups.  Each unique, each stellar, and both on the same day.  Because we have enough runners to support two races.

The causes of our delayed onset running boom deserve their own blog entry and they shall have it.  For now, I observe that we are fortunate to run in a town where we suddenly matter, and where the racing market is so saturated that we can go do a treadmill race inside a fitness store if we want to.  One where someone fervently WANTS TO SEE HOW FAST WE CAN GO.

That might be worth taking off the hairshirt singlet, and admitting Savannah's new runners into the enclave.

On! On!

Jerry


*That I felt compelled to include this Jetsons' link makes me feel old.  But no one under say 35 would get it.  Plantar fasciitis, bad knees, and stale pop culture allusions.  Oh My.