5km Race...

Joy here...after flying back from my sojourn out of town for a conference, we did an easy 9 km run in order to prepare for a 5 km race that we had signed up for in our city.  This little 5 km race was on Sunday morning, and the whole point in our signing up for it was that it would give us a chance to have a race experience before our 1/2 marathon, and it would give us a gauge for our fitness only one month away from our 1/2 marathon.  Okay, so that was the rationale behind signing up for a little race before the 1/2 marathon.  Now here's what happened:

It was a cool, crisp morning, with a blue sky overhead, when we headed out our door to run to the race site.  We figured that we'd be able to warm up and be prepared for the race.  So we jogged along the canal towards the race start, and we did some strides, and tried to fit in a few minutes of tempo running to get our legs warmed up and our heart rates going.  Then...here's where things started to go wrong...I had to go pee before the start of the race.  This isn't out of the norm or anything like that, so I headed over to the port-a-potties (and the line-ups) to "do the deed."  When I emerged, The Man was nowhere in sight.  There were 14,000 people in this 5 km race, and he was somewhere in the crowds among them.  Oh well, no problem, I thought to myself; just head over to the start line, and if you don't see him, you'll just meet up afterwards, no biggie.  So I trundle over to the start...me and about a hobajillion other people.  Now this is only my second race in my whole life, and when Nomi and I showed up for the 10 km race in Singapore in May, we just got to the front-ish of the 5,000 women in the race, and were ready to start.  But when faced with barriers and thousands of runners all crammed in before the start line, I wasn't sure what to do.  Do I just push my way in?  Do I move the barrier and enter the starting group wherever I want?  Do I go to the back and try to force my way forward?  Do I just follow the crowds and go where they go?  I ended up pushing my way into the mass of people about 200 meters behind the starting line.  I tried to elbow my way forward from there, but I had no luck; I was locked in behind people.  Okay, no big deal, I thought, they don't start timing until your chip passes the start line, so it doesn't really matter where you are.  At least that's what I thought.  And as I was standing there, having those thoughts (and trying to see my husband through the crowds of people somewhere), the girl in front of me did the weirdest stretch I've ever seen anyone do.  She was just standing there, and then she bent her knee and kicked her leg back...RIGHT INTO MY LEFT KNEE CAP!  It was excruciatingly painful, and tears sprung unbidden to my eyes immediately.  She turned around to apologize, and I was trying not to respond and make her feel guilty, but my knee was screaming, my eyes were crying, and I was thinking that for sure she had just screwed up my knee after all the work I've done to it.  Then the announcer told us there were 40 seconds until the start.  So I stood there, rubbing my knee, trying to will the tears to stop, and forcing my rushing thoughts to calm down.  It wasn't going to do me any good to contemplate the fact that my knee might be screwed; I might need surgery; all my 1/2 marathon training might be out the window etc. etc.  I just had to calm myself down, and I only had 40 seconds in which to do it.

And then the cannon boomed and the race was underway!  Or was it?  Back from the starting line, crammed in like cattle to the slaughter, we weren't moving at all.  We weren't even walking.  Then slowly, slowly, and slowly, the knee kicker in front of me and the rest of the crowd started making progress forward.  Try as I might to move faster or get around people, I was jammed in like a sardine.  I wasn't going anywhere.  I figured that it would clear out a bit once we passed the starting line, and I could get to a comfortable pace and just run my own race.  Wrong.  Wrong.  Wrong again.  Basically for 5 kms I just weaved in and out of masses of people, never once being able to just hit a comfortable pace and hold it.  I dodged around mothers and their kids.  I weaved in and out of people who would just stop running right in front of me and start walking.  I ran around undergrads who were running en masse and chatting.  I ran up on the curb to try to go around masses of people.  I ran the long way around corners in the hope of getting past some people to a clear stretch of road.  In short, it was the most frustrating run of my entire life.  My Garmin pinged at the halfway point, but it still felt like I hadn't even gotten started.  When I saw the 1 km to go banner, there wasn't even room for me to open up a sprint for the final leg of the run.  I was still weaving in and out of crowds.

To be clear here, I never planned on running super fast, and I never planned on being really competitive for this 5 km race.  I always just wanted to see it as one stop on my 1/2 marathon journey.  And so in that spirit, I had hoped that I would be able to stick to a certain pace (or at least a certain effort), and then be able to tell myself during the 1/2 marathon race itself:  "Don't worry, you've been able to hold this pace for 5 kms, and you only have 5 kms to the finish line...you can do it!"  Instead, all I'll be able to tell myself during the 1/2 marathon race will be:  "Well, you know that you can weave in and out of thousands of people if you have to, without getting so angry that you punch someone."  And that's about it.  I can't say anything about my pace, my heart rate, how I felt, or even anything helpful about how to use the "energy" of a race environment.  Instead, all I can say is that on a Sunday morning in September I ran along among a whole bunch of other people also running along, and after getting kicked at the start line, at least no one trampled on my toes during the rest of the run.  That's really as much as I can say, and it's pretty darn depressing.

On the upside of things, it was a beautiful day, and there are worse things to do on a Sunday morning than go out for a run.  After the race itself, I met up with The Man (who, by the way, had a much better race, because he and our 6 foot 4 friend just muscled their way right up to the startline) and we ran back home and treated ourselves to a good breakfast.  I now know that in order to have a good race experience, you have to get your butt up to the front-ish of the racers.  It's not so much about time, but unless you're at the beginning of the masses of people, you will spend too much time and energy running in and around people, and a 5 km race just isn't long enough to make your way to some clear road for a good race.  You'll find yourself crossing the finish line with the feeling that the race hasn't even started yet, because you're still jostling for position and a bit of space.  Even while someone is putting the finishers medal around your neck, you'll still feel like you've never even begun.  That sense can tend to detract from any sense of accomplishment you might otherwise feel; so take my advice:  get yourself to the front of the start!  Just mosey on up there like you belong, and don't let anyone else ruin your race for you!

In the end, my finishing time was 26:20:09, and my chip time was 23:49:06, which means that it took me THREE MINUTES to travel the 200 meters from where I was in the starting crowds just to pass the start line!  And, of course, it's not like the pace magically picked up after that.  My finishing time put me in 52nd place out of the 1,015 people in my age/gender category.  I guess everyone else was also running through crowds the consistency of molasses.

So my fingers and toes are all crossed as I hope, hope, hope that in four weeks my 1/2 marathon race turns out much better than this little 5 km race!

Over and out, 

Joy