Park 2 Park 5 Miler {July 4, 2017}

Park 2 Park 5 Miler

July 4, 2017

7:30 am

Official Time: 35:34.7 (*Pushing Gabe*) (33 second PR)

Overall Ranking: 54/554

Female Ranking: 8/272

AG F30-34: 1/35

(My 11th race of the 2017 season)

So Monday around 4:45pm, Clint, Gabe, and I headed to the shop to register for Park 2 Park. We ran into Amber and Sophia there and chatted for a bit - Amber told us she was planning to head to a hot yoga class at 6 for a good stretch after leaving the shop. Hot yoga is one of my love languages, so I commented that I would love to join her…I quickly calculated times in my head and didn’t think we could make it work with such limited time. Clint, however, insisted that I go…so we hurried home, I fed Gabe who promptly fell asleep for a late nap (this holiday weekend had us alllll sorts of discombobulated!). Clint prepped me a bottle of Tailwind (the nectar of the Gods) and I was out the door by 5:40. I called Amber to give her a heads up that I would be joining her…and extended the offer for her to join us for dinner afterwards.  I got to Body, the studio where the class we were attending was being held, with about 7 minutes to spare….turns out there were only 4 people attending the class which was pretty awesome

Yoga was ahhhmazing. I think I have only managed to make it to 3 postpartum yoga classes, a bit pathetic because it is something I truly enjoy. I had to reign myself in a few times to keep from extending too far in some of the poses…my body hadn't done some of the poses for a while and there was no need to get hurt the night before Park 2 Park! After a great class, Amber and I headed back to our place where Clint had made us a great pre-race dinner. Yoga + a personal chef = no excuses NOT to have a great race, right?!

After dinner, we did our best to go to bed early-ish. Morning always comes too quickly on race days…when my 5am alarm I lounged around for probably 20 minutes or so before jumping out of bed to get things ready for the morning.  Clint had prepped my traditional GF pita with almond butter and salted honey, which I started eating as I got things packed up and ready for the day.  A few minutes before it was time to leave, I got our sweet/tolerant child out of bed, changed his dipey, plopped him in his carseat and we were off! We left our house around 6:10, just 10 minutes behind our goal time of 6:00. We drove separately, first to the Corncrib where we dropped off our blue car. Clint hopped into the SUV with me + Gabe and we made our way to Miller Park/the race start.

We rolled in right at 6:30. It felt great to have a whole hour to spare before the start. My stomach was a little rocky…not sure what was up with that. I did the usual bathroom visits (love the option to use the indoor bathrooms at the pavilion!) and chatted with people at the race start while Clint and Gabe and I hung out. We saw Jeremy who hung out with us for a while…but other than that, we didn’t see any teammates.  I was moderately concerned about this because I had Holly-Rae’s race number that I needed to get to her prior to the start!

A little after 7 Holly-Rae texted saying she would be looking for us around the pavilion but was putting her phone in the car…so I put my phone away in its little pocket on the stroller and Clint and I set out on our warmup, all the while keeping our eyes out for the bright Often Running uniforms. We still didn’t see anyone!! As we started in on our “warm up” (we were really already quite “warm” from the muggy air!), my stomach started telling me that it didn’t agree with any sort of running plans I had for the morning. I felt as if I might surely vomit and started walking around 0.7 and turned my watch off at 0.8. Well. This certainly didn’t bode well for the race.

Right about this same time, Clint saw Holly-Rae walking toward the starting area and screamed out to her. She saw us and ran toward us, all in a tizzy ;). FINALLY - we had made the connection and we were able to pass off the race bib…success! We also saw the rest of our teammates…kinda funny how most of us missed each other all morning! Oh well - the important thing is that we all arrived safely, on time, and everyone got their bibs!! BAM!  We lined up at the starting line (no strides for me…stomach said NOPE) and I literally prayed that my stomach would allow me to push hard through this darn race.

My A-goal was to run 6:50s. My 5k PR pace is 6:38. Saturday I ran a 5k with a 6:57 pace (pacing HR). My tempo workouts are generally around 6:50 though, in all honesty, I can’t recall right now when my last one was….so….yeah. Maybe this goal was not realistic. Well, that’s neither here nor there. As I lined up, in spite of my rocky stomach, I was still hoping to finish with a 6:50 average.

I lined up near the front of the pack, always a bit nervous to do so, but I knew I could bust out fast enough to deserve to be up there…plus, again, having the stroller in the middle of the pack is really more hazardous for everyone.  A guy to my right said, “Good luck!” and then reminded me that he was the guy who had helped me cover Gabe’s ears with his hands prior to the start of the Lake Run in May (protecting him somewhat from the loud cannon blast!). Awesome!! I exchanged some, “good lucks” and fist bumps with teammates…and soon enough it was GO time!

As the signal blasted, I did my best to bust out of the starting area without running into anyones’ ankles.  Jennifer LaFrance, a sweet girl who is one of Clint’s new run coaching clients, pulled up next to me and we settled in together for the first mile or so.  We chatted about the fact that it was stupid hot and humid and GROSS and also about our experiences last year at the race. She told me she did last year’s race in a 7:08 average pace but wasn’t thinking she would be able to do that well this year because she’s been battling some injuries. I was thinking to myself, “girrrrl you’re starting out fast and strong now!” I told her about the fact that this race marked one year of postpartum racing for me…my first postpartum race last year was Park 2 Park when I had been back to running for about 5 1/2 weeks and Gabe was about 2 1/2 months old. I had gotten 40:02 which kinda ticked me off because my goal was 40:00 or under. HA!!! Anyway, with this being the one-year anniversary of my jaunt back into racing I was hoping to smash last year’s time (and maybe PR my 5 mile…36:07 set in 2015?).

Sometime during the first mile, Gary and Marshall Watson ran by me.  Uh, why do I always go out harder than Gary? That’s not the way things should be. I literally always see him pass me that first mile in races and think, “Ugh!! I did it again! I have NO business being in front of him for any amount of time!” The first mile ticked off in 6:39. Whoops. Maybe a little too ambitious. Darn race-day adrenaline. Oh - apparently my stomach stopped hurting. Or at least I forgot about it!

Somewhere after the first mile, Jennifer dropped back.  Ryan Leuty ran with me for a while somewhere in the second mile. I was able to keep what I felt was a strong pace during that second mile and pulled away from him and some other ECo peeps. It was so hot. I kept asking myself why I decided to push the stroller. I saw Diane Eckhoff, who had actually offered at one time to watch Gabe during the race, spectating to the left in the Downtown Bloomington area. She gave me a shout and I thought about shoving the darn stroller off toward her…but instead I smiled and soldiered on.  Mile 2 clicked off in 6:46. WOOT! Still sub- 6:50! Right on target for my “A-goal,” with 15 seconds in the “bank,” right?! Uh…yeah.

The third mile started in and I felt my muscles start to refuse to keep firing at their previous rate. Here the course starts a mild climb up to the water stop near the end of Mile 3/around UHigh. I concentrated on my breathing…in through my nose, out through my mouth. I was steaming HOT and asked one of the young boys at the water stop to throw a cup of water on my head. Uh - some quick advice. If you ask someone to do this, CLOSE your EYES. He was alllll too eager to douse someone in the face with water and threw a cup on me with gusto. The water hit my open eyes, causing my left contact to fold and travel down to the bottom of my eye. I did my best to keep running while I blinked maniacally and rubbed my eye, trying to get the rogue contact back in place.  I thought about what would happen if I had to finish out two miles with only one contact…and knew it would give me an awful headache.  Thankfully, I was able to work it back into place and continued on…soon turning to the right and DOWN Gregory before the worst hill on that darn course.

I remembered last year when I got to this point. I can still remember exactly how I felt - almost defeated. It was hot, it was hard, and Julie Sibley was coming up behind me. Pre-baby, I knew I could beat her…but that day, there was no way. She gave me some encouraging words as she passed me up the hill. I sighed, and carried on.  This year, though, I didn’t let up. I channeled her positive wishes from last year and was greeted at the top of the hill by some familiar faces cheering - Ryan Case’s wife (we had just chatted with them prior to the start of the race) and Kristin Techmanski, a co-worker at SPICE. It always feels so good to see familiar faces, especially when it’s during a hard point in a race.

Cresting the hill felt amazing….SO good to get that thing in your rear-view mirror! Somewhere around here I noticed that Taylor Yaklich, a speedy area 12-year-old who had beat me at the Memorial Mile and at the Downs Freedom 5k, was just ahead - well within reasonable striking distance. I narrowed my focus and concentrated on pushing to pass her, which I did somewhere around the 4 mile mark. My 4th mile clicked off in 7:30, my slowest mile of the race by far.

I shook off the feeling of that yucky mile (and made peace with the fact that a 6:50 average pace finish wasn’t happening today) and dialed it in, picking up my pace. I concentrated on trying to put some distance between myself and Taylor. I saw that Ryan Case was right on my heels…pushing a stroller with his 8 month old. Well, there goes my top stroller finish! I knew he would have no problem catching and passing me, but I did do my best to hold him off as long as I could. He passed me with his stroller and cute daughter, both of which were decked out in red-white-and-blue. Ryan Leuty also pulled up next to me again, passing me around the 4 mile mark and then pulling away.

After a quarter mile or so into the fifth and final mile, I was able to catch back up to Ryan. I yelled up at him, “Don’t LET me catch you!” He didn’t respond, but did pick up his pace a bit. I pulled up next to him and told him he could feel free to curse at me if he needed, as I gave him some encouraging heckling.  He was obviously hurting and I wondered if some verbal pushing would help him out. With less than a half mile to go, a cute brown dog ran by on my right side. I thought maybe someone behind me was running with a dog on a leash. Whatever, I am a rule-breaker with my illicit stroller…so I really wouldn’t mind if someone was running with a dog. I turned my head to the right to note, though, that the dog did have a leash on…but it was running with the leash dragging beside it (with no human attached). I turned my head to ask the runner behind me if it was her dog…turns out it was Taylor Yaklich who had caught back up to me! She said it wasn’t, and the dog proceeded to wind in and out of the line of runners from one side to the other. The whole thing made me kinda nervous for the poor lost dog! Right before the trail crosses Raab prior to the entrance to the stadium, I saw Jamey Whitlow - hooray for another friendly, familiar face cheering!

I continued to spew encouraging words at Ryan as we crossed Raab and made our way through the parking lot and into the stadium. I remembered two years ago - in 2015 when I saw David Quinn here at the stadium entrance yelling at me to “Get on your TOES!!!” We crossed the parking lot and entered the stadium. I saw Clint to my right and barreled down to the finish as fast as I could.  Mile 5 clicked off in 7:08. We crossed the finish line right on Ryan’s heels…chip time of 35:34.7 (the final 0.6 by my watch was at a 5:54 pace)…a 7:06 pace (or 7:02 according to my Garmin with the course being slightly long)…and a PR of 33 seconds. 

I know this was a great performance and I am truly satisfied. However, truth be told, I am a little bummed about being so-close-yet-so-far-away to my goal of a 6:50 average pace/sub 35-minute race. This is not to ask for sympathy or pity…I just need to keep working, keep pushing, and keep (hopefully!) chiseling away at my times!!

After crossing, I cheered in teammates and some Heat Wave ladies. After chatting with a few finishers (and making my way over to Clint!), I loaded up the top of the stroller (with Gabe sleeping inside - he worked HARD, ok!?) with water bottles and stood at the finish to hand them out to sweaty finishers!

THANK YOU to Mitch, my teammates, Saucony, and Coach Clint. This is a fun race to suffer through together as a team!

***PS After a tough race and a busy weekend…what’s the most sore today?! Yeah….my arms from that darn yoga class are aching. HA!

Have a great week, all! Hope everyone comes down from the 4th of July holiday-hangovers and is able to be productive in life the rest of this week (ha!).

Rachel

Next up - Dog Days 5K

On Deck - Bix 7