I ran the Rothman 8K on Saturday (part of the Philadelphia Marathon weekend), finishing in a time of 36:19.
I did this race for a few reasons: I've always wanted to do it; I needed a rustbuster and preferred doing it in a large race; and it gave me an excuse to go up to Philadelphia and cheer for friends over the weekend.
The weekend started off nicely when I got to Union Station early on Friday for my 3:30 pm train to Philly. On a whim, I swiped my train ticket through one of the kiosks to see if there were any earlier trains, and....the 2:55 pm Acela (bullet train) was open and was $50 cheaper than my normal regional train (I suspect that they discount the tickets 30 minutes before the train leaves). So...I got to Philly substantially earlier than planned, and for $50 less.
After checking into my hotel, I headed over to the expo, where I grabbed 8K bibs for myself and a teammate. Unfortunately, they were out of safety pins, but like any good goth/punk I have safety pins everywhere on my backpack, so that was an easy problem to fix. Then back to the hotel to do some reading and sleep.
***
The Rothman 8K didn't start until 11 am, which made for an awkward day. Eating-wise, I ended up handling breakfast the same way I did when I ran the Boston Marathon - 1/2 in the morning when I woke up, and the second half about 2 hours before race time. Then I left my hotel around 9:30 to jog to the start.
I noted as I jogged over that it was chillier than I expected, and the wind had picked up substantially. I was only wearing a thin throwaway shirt over my singlet and shorts. Fortunately I had both a credit card and a CVS in sight. I ducked into the store and headed directly for the holiday section, where I found exactly what I was looking for - a pile of $8 holiday themed blankets. I grabbed one, swiped my card, and then jogged on towards the start, blanket tucked under my arm like a precious football.
All of the Philadelphia events have security checkpoints for the start/finish area. I wasn't sure how much room there would be to warm-up once inside the secured area, so I tucked my blanket under a tree and ran my warm-up as back-and-forth 150m laps (so I could keep an eye on the blanket). Once those were done, I grabbed the blanket and proceeded through security (meaning I now had a security blanket).
***
The good news was that there was room inside the secured area to warm-up, so I was able to keep jogging. The bad news was that the race wanted people in the corral 15 minutes before the race start, which would be long enough for my legs to lock up nicely. But I knew this was the deal when I headed up to Philly. Since many big races make one enter the corral at least 10 minutes before the race starts, it wasn't the worst thing in the world to have to practice this during my rustbuster. Plus, I had my security blanket.
The other bad news was that there were no signs indicating how to seed oneself in the corral. For a fairly large 8K, I thought this was ridiculous. My teammate Matt seeded himself by walking up until he saw Vaporflies. For my part, I looked at faces, trying to parse between serious and having fun, and seeding myself between the two. Since there was a high correlation between Vaporflies and serious faces, Matt and I ended up lined up next to each other. I kept my security blanket wrapped around me until we were two minutes from the start, and then I tossed it and exposed myself to the elements.
***
The race started, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I had much less difficulty with the early race churn/chaos than my recent norm.
Surprised may be too strong a word - my problems with early race chaos seem to be mostly due to an "exaggerated startle reflex" which means that when something happens near me that I don't expect, my body overreacts. So, this week I started a new medication in hopes that it would muffle that startle reflex, and sure enough, it seems to be working already. Excellent.
So that was good news. The less good news was that my legs were pretty stiff from standing in the corral, and it was hard to get things moving. But again, remembering how to manage stuff like this is why I don't like to take too long between races, so I got to work.
The course was pretty simple - run slightly downhill to the southeast, then around a circle and to the northwest, with a slight uphill. A bit after mile 3, we'd turn around and head southeast again, to the finish. There was a very strong wind from the NW that amplified the effect of the uphill and downhill.
The headwind/slight uphill combo made for a miserable two miles. There's not much I can say about those two miles other than that I was extremely happy to see the turnaround.
The next two miles were a very fast gentle downhill with a tailwind, but I was unable to benefit as much from this as I would have liked. The will was there, but the legs weren't turning over, so I was stuck at my current pace. The good news (in a sense) was that I was mentally at that point where I was sorely tempted to jog or even walk, so at least I got a chance to practice managing race suck.
I crossed the line and checked my watch: 36:20. This was surprisingly slow - I had recently tempoed 4 miles at about 7 minute pace, so I had expected to be under 35 minutes for this race at a minimum, even with a lot of wind. But it was what it was.
Splits were:
Miles 1-2: 15:00
Mile 3: 7:12
Mile 4: 7:13
Last .97 - 6:56.
So, very evenly paced, and it certainly hurt. But slower than expected.
It wasn't until I got back to my hotel that I remembered that I had started the new medication 6 days ago, and that my Tuesday workout had felt surprisingly hard for the paces. The new medication is a very small dose of Lexapro, and I've read other reports online of people feeling like it slowed them substantially for a few weeks when they started it (note: in the timespan between this race and the completion of the race report, I did another track workout, and was also substantially slower for a given effort - so something's up). So I think I'm going to write this race off as due to that.
Overall, I was still happy I did this race. I got my rustbuster out of the way and got to practice dealing with both large chaotic starts and race suck in the process. And I had a good excuse to go to Philly, meet up with others from the Running Ahead forums (both of whom PR'd the marathon), eat some good meals with cool people, do some shopping, and cheer for friends at the marathon on Sunday. So overall a net positive weekend.
Other notes:
- The weather was pretty good for the race, other than the wind - temp 49 and dewpoint 38, with overcast skies. But the wind (25 miles per hour from the northwest) made it feel much colder. I wore a tanktop, shorts, and arm-warmers, and I wish I had worn thin tights instead.
- Managed to get an age group award anyways (4th) which was a pleasant surprise.
- I am decidedly not a fan of races that start at 11 am.
- I can recommend the following restaurants in Philly: El Rey and Restaurant Aleksandar (both in Rittenhouse Square).
- I can recommend the following stores for shopping in Philly: TheDreamEerie and Digital Underground/Isotank (both in the South Street area). And also CVS for all of your pre-race Christmas security blanket needs.
- Wore my Puma Deviate Nitro Elite 1's for this race - I really like this shoe for shorter races, as it's lower stack and agile. I don't think my slow race was the shoe's fault.
