I ran the Jingle All the Way 15K today, finishing in a time of 66:14.
I signed up for this race for a few reasons - 1) I've always wanted to run it but the scheduling hasn't worked out; 2) I'm training for the Houston Marathon (still undecided on whether I'll do it) and this worked well as a tune-up; and 3) as I work through my neurologic issues, it's helpful to keep testing myself by racing.
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For those neuro issues (and I still don't have an official diagnosis - we're going with "dystonia" for now) I recently swapped to a new medication called carbidopa/levodopa. So far it seems to be helping, though I'm told it will take a few weeks to see the full benefits of it.
C/L is a tricky medication to be on - I need to take it every 5 hours, starting first thing in the morning. It takes about 30-45 minutes to kick in, and it also seems to wear off about 4 hours after I take it. I also need to time it carefully around meals, since food (especially protein) consumed too close to it can interfere with the uptake. At the same time, I also need to time my meals carefully around racing, since my ulcerative colitis means that I'm prone to significant GI problems when running if I'm not careful.
So yeah, it's complicated.
Normally, I would wake up around 5 am for this race (which had an 8:30 am start). Doing so would mean that I would have sufficient time to eat breakfast and move it through the system, so to speak. However, taking my first dose of C/L at 5 am would mean that it would wear off at 9 am - approximately halfway through this race. And obviously all of this medication and food timing will become even more tricky when I run a full marathon.
So... I tried the following schedule for this race:
-wake up at 2 am, take first dose of C/L. Try to go back to sleep.
-wake up a second time at 5 am, eat breakfast like normal. Allow breakfast to move through the GI tract while stretching.
- take second dose of C/L at 7 am, leave for race.
This sequence seemed to work well, as the C/L definitely did not wear off for the race.
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This race starts at the same spot as the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler, but is a lot smaller, so I had no issue finding parking reasonably close to the start. I swapped into my racing shoes and headed down to do my warm-up routine (20 minutes easy jogging, 3 minutes at tempo effort with 90 second jog, 4x30 seconds at 5K effort with 30 second jog, and then four 10 second strides) before hitting the porta-johns one final time and lining up. There were no signs indicating pace groups, so I just guessed at the right spot.
Since the first turn on the course is a right, I lined myself on the left side so that I would hopefully not be too crowded early on. (The C/L seems to help a lot with my hip extension/stride length, but so far it's not doing much for my issues with uneven pavement/curbs or crowds). Then the race started.
The first few moments of the race went well as we ran up a gentle slope. Then we turned right and descended, and my gait got really wonky. It was the trifecta of things that trigger my neuro issues - decline, crowds, and uneven pavement.
As always happens at this point, I really wanted to step off the race course, but I forced myself to keep going - the whole point of racing, especially on the new medication, was to see what went wrong and what went right.
The first mile was rough, the next mile a bit better, and then things smoothed out. By the time we hit mile 4 I felt pretty good, and from that point I was able to roll. I still had some limitations - aerobically it felt like I had more to give, but every time I tried to speed up, my legs would stiffen up and I'd start to catch my left toe on the ground. So I maintained the fastest I could run without faceplanting, and called it good enough.
The finish to this race is down a gentle incline (the same one we ran up at the very start). In years past I would have been able to fly here, but today I settled for maintaining my pace and trying not to face plant. Not ideal, but you do your best and accept it.
Splits were:
Mile 1: 7:39
Mile 2: 7:14
Mile 3: 7:06
Mile 4: 7:04
Mile 5: 6:58
Mile 6: 7:02
Mile 7: 6:57
Mile 8: 7:01
Mile 9 plus last .33: 9:15
I have pretty mixed emotions about this race overall. I still have a long way to go to get back to where I want to be, and the fact that I struggle so much with running in crowds and on uneven pavement is frustrating. On the other hand, I'm still doing this, and the later miles were smooth enough to give me hope. So I'll just keep trying.
Other notes:
- Perfect weather this year - temperatures in the low 40s, with overcast skies and no wind. That plus a lighting fast course made for a super fast race day. Hopefully more people will recognize this and show up in future years.
- I wore the Metaspeed Edge+ for this race. I have to admit, I like this shoe a lot for anything 15K or longer.
- My Garmin measured 9.55 miles for this course, but I'm sure the course was accurate. My Garmin simply went crazy under the Kennedy Center overhang.
- Supposedly it will take a few weeks for the C/L to take full effect (I've been on it for 2 weeks). So perhaps I'll see more improvement in the future.
- Surprisingly, I won my age group, so that was nice.
- Since the timing of meds worked well for this race (wake up early, take first dose, then take second dose in close proximity to race) I'll try the same for my long runs and ultimately the marathon.
- I wore tights, a singlet, and arm-warmers - it worked well for these conditions.
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