Race Report: Lawyers Have Heart 5K, May 18, 2024

I ran the Lawyers Have Heart 5K today, finishing in a time of 23:18, which was a new lifetime worst for the 5K distance. 

(It had to happen sometime.)

I was initially entered in the 10K for this race, but I dropped down to the 5K because I have a para-athletic track meet in New Jersey next weekend.  The 5K would work better as a rust-buster for the shorter distances.  And though I've only done a few track workouts since Boston and my post-marathon break, they've all gone well.  Plus, I knew (or thought I knew - foreshadowing) this course and thought it would be a good one for me.

The website said the race started in West Potomac Park, so I had assumed that they were using the old 5K course that was a simple out-and-back towards Hains Point - very fast, flat, and smooth except for the brief humpback bridge each way.  

However, a few days before the race, I received an email detailing all the race day information, including the course - instead of heading to Hains Point we'd loop around the Tidal Basin and then take Independence over to the Memorial Bridge for an out and back before heading back on Independence to finish near the MLK Jr Memorial.  Still a fast course, but a few more inclines and declines than I had anticipated, and some rough pavement.   

But....one thing I know about managing neurological stuff - you have to keep pushing the edge and testing your capabilities, or they'll continue to shrink.  Viewed from that standpoint, the inclines and rough pavement were a plus.   

***

I debated what pair of shoes to wear for this race, before going with the Vaporfly 3 once again - they have good traction on wet pavement (rain was in the forecast), and I'm considering wearing them for the BAA 10K next month.  So I'd give them a test drive here.

With that decision made, I headed over to DC, arriving around 6:45 for a 7:45 start.  There was no parking near the race, so I parked near the White House and jogged the mile+ to the start in a comfortably cool drizzle.  My legs were worryingly stiff as I jogged over, but I had several miles of warm-up routine to do - hopefully that would take the edge off.

Things did smooth out some, but I never felt great.  I decided to write it off as a bad warm-up that had nothing to do with my potential race performance (I've run some great races after existentially poor warm-ups) and lined up.  Wished my teammates good luck, and we were off.

***

And...the race pretty much went the way the warm-up did.  My gait was off and awkward.  On a good day I feel smooth and can accelerate; on a bad day I'm locked in.  On a good day I can handle uneven pavement and cracks OK; on a bad day it feels like I'm running on a technical trail - liable to trip and fall if I don't place my feet carefully.  And this was a bad day.

Each mile was rough in its own way - I struggled with a slight decline off the bridge in the first mile, and then got stuck behind traffic on a narrow section of the course.  The second mile was Independence Avenue, which has needed repaving for the past three years.  And then there was the out-and-back on the bridge with all those seams - here's what my power meter looked like for that section.

I didn't even bother to look at the clock as I approached the finish - I knew this was not going to be a good performance by any standard other than pass/fail.  I crossed the finish, stopped my watch, and yup...23:17 - way slower than I had anticipated.

There were no mile markers on this course (ridiculous, given that this race had a $50 entry fee).  Not realizing this until too late, I didn't have my Garmin set to autolap, so we'll have to go with the Strava laps:

Mile 1: 7:33

Mile 2: 7:23

Mile 3: 7:17

Last bit: 6:55 pace

Overall - I ran this 5K at 7:30 pace.  As compared to the 4 mile tempo I ran last week on the track in 28:22 (7:08 pace).  But of course the track was flat and smooth, and my legs were working better then.  This race honestly felt like a much harder effort, for all that it was significantly slower.

The good news is that all of my teammates had great races - it was a fast day on a fast course.  Just not for me.  But...this race is in keeping with my recent trend of having an awful first race back after a break, so this is not necessarily an indication that I'm going to have a bad summer.  Indeed, it may indicate the opposite - I got the bad race out of the way early.  Let's hope.

***

Other notes:

• It was drizzly and low 60s for this race; had it not been raining this would have been a warm and humid race.  But the rain made all the difference.
  
  
• I wore Vaporflies for this race.  More specifically I wore my newer and bouncier pair of Vaporflies for this race.  I really do think that I need to be saving the newer pairs for workouts and racing in the older pairs, as odd and counter-intuitive as that sounds.  If I'm having any gait issues, the bounce amplifies them.
  
  An online friend has also been encouraging me to start racing shorter distances in non-super shoes - the hypothesis is that the super shoes cost me more than I gain at the shorter distances.  I do think he has a point - I just wanted to give things one more shot since my track workouts had been going so well in Vaporflies.  But...my best 5K performance in the past few years has been in the Adios 7, so I think I need to shift back to that type of shoe for the summer.  I guess it's a positive that the para-athlete track meets I'm going to do this summer will require me to wear a non-super shoe.
  
  
• I also think I need to tweak my medication some more.  This is hard to do - basically the neuro meds have both an immediate effect and a longer tail - any time you change doses it takes several weeks to see the final effects of the change.  The fact that I felt so good the first two weeks after we changed stuff, and then have felt a bit worse since, indicates to me that perhaps we undercut stuff slightly, and I'm a bit too low now. So I need to figure out how to bump it up slightly.
  
  
• I deliberately ran on trails the day before the race to try to prep a little for the rough pavement.  Didn't help (or maybe it did, and I would have run worse without having done so).  I think that for this summer I'm going to move some of my tempos away from the track and onto a running trail with some uneven pavement and undulations.

Training log - week ending 5/12/2024

This week was 40 miles of running and 9 "miles" of pool-running -- training log is here.

Not too much of note here - just track workouts on Tuesday and Friday.  I turned 50 this week, so I intentionally kept the weekend light on training so I could focus more on social stuff.

Yay new age group.

Monday: 9 "miles' of pool-running.  Foam rolling in evening.

Tuesday: 9 miles, including a track workout of 2x800, 1600, 800, 2x200 in 3:24, 3:24, 6:48, 3:18, 48, and 48.  Recoveries of 2:4x-2:5x after the 800s and 5:30 after the 1600; full recovery for the 200s.  Followed with leg strengthwork.

 

Wednesday: 9 miles very easy (9:22) and by upper body weights/core. Foam rolling in evening.

Thursday: 6 miles very easy on trails (10:13) and streaming pilates. Foam rolling in evening.

`

Friday: 9 miles on the track including a 6400m tempo in 28:21 (7:16/7:10/7:01/6:54) followed by leg strengthwork.  Foam rolling in evening.

Saturday: 7 miles very easy (9:20) plus drills/strides, followed by streaming pilates. Foam rolling in afternoon.

Sunday:  6 "miles" pool-running. Foam rolling in evening.

Training log - Week ending 5/5/2024

This week was 52 miles of running and 9 "miles" of pool-running -- training log is here.

I was still recovering from being sick at the start of the week, so I did Iwo Jima hills (500m to the top, 90 second jog, 100-200m downhill stride, and 45-60 second jog to bottom) as a form/gait workout.  This meant that I kept the effort very limited - instead of trying to run hard or fast, I focused on good form while only picking up the pace slightly.  

By Friday I was feeling better, so I returned to the track with tempo intervals.  These were much faster than I expected, despite the fact that I felt (and am) out of shape.  I suspect this is because I recently (post-marathon) changed my meds slightly.

By way of background, Parkinson's is essentially the brain's inability to produce enough dopamine. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that sends signals to muscles, telling them when to contract and when to relax.  Without sufficient dopamine, your muscles get weak, confusing, intermittent signals - this results in weakness, slowness, shakiness, and poor control of your muscles.

So...you replace that dopamine through oral medication. This is obviously not going to work as well as the original - basically you are dumping chunks of dopamine into your brain a few times a day instead of your brain producing on demand when you need it.  And if you have too much dopamine in your brain, it doesn't always sit there and wait until it's needed - instead it starts sending additional and unwanted signals to your muscles. Which results in (again) poor muscle control - things like muscles contracting unexpectedly.

Ideally you hit the perfect not-too-much/not-too-little dose, which has to be adjusted according to activity - when you are more active (or stressed) you burn more.  It's a bit tricky.  What has made it more tricky for me is that I am very small, very active, relatively young, and female.  Your stereotypical Parkinsons patient is bigger, less active, older, and male. And the medications are manufactured with that patient in mind.

Rytary is essentially extended release dopamine - it comes in four different strengths (95, 145, 195, 245), and most patients - older, bigger, inactive men - take 3-4 pills of it at each dosing (generally you take a dose 3-5 times a day).  Because they take 3-4 pills each time, they can mix and match the different strengths to fine tune the dose to their needs.

However, I need a much smaller dose than the average patient - I take just one pill each time, with one of the strengths (the 145) being not enough and the other (the 195) being too much.  Ideally, I'd be on a "175" but they don't manufacture that strength and the pills can't be split.

So, I've been swapping back and forth - taking a 195 pill before working out in the morning and dropping to 145 for the other three doses that day.  It's worked OK, but not great. Basically, running on the 195 means that I'm constantly working really hard mentally when running to keep my leg muscles  from contracting at the wrong time in each stride cycle. And the faster I try to run, the harder it is to control things.  Effectively, my speed is limited not by my fitness but by my ability to manage my legs.

So....the change that we recently made was to add another medication, called a COMT-inhibitor, which basically boosts the Rytary (it's more complicated than that, but you get the point).  The thought was by adding the COMT-inhibitor and then dropping back to a lower dose of Rytary, we'd get closer to the ideal amount of medication for me.

And...so far it seems to be working.  While things aren't perfect, I have a lot more control of my legs now.  And better coordination means that I move more efficiently, with less mental effort.  I have a little less power/energy - which also corresponds to less dopamine - but the tradeoff is overall a big positive, running-wise.  I'm fighting my own muscles less, so I'm running faster.

One of my big frustrations during track workouts over the past year is that my lack of coordination has been the upper limit on how fast I can run - I am (or was) limited to slightly faster than tempo pace. Which has made it really difficult to improve my VO2Max. 

This held until Friday - my first track workout on the new medication regime.  On Friday, for the first time in what seems like forever, I was able to run hard enough to really elevate my heart rate during the workout. That itself was a shock to the system (and highlighted how unsurprisingly out of shape I am), but it was a pleasant shock. Not coincidentally, I also ran my fastest 1600 on the track in about a year despite the fact this was my first track workout after my post-marathon break.  

If I'm now capable of running faster than tempo effort during track workouts, then that's good news - it means that the door is open to improve my speed, and maybe get a bit closer to where I used to be.

Monday: 7 miles very easy (9:24) and upper body weights/core.  Foam rolling in evening.

Tuesday: 8 miles with 6 moderate Iwo Jima hills plus leg strengthwork.  Sports massage in evening.

 

Wednesday: 8 miles very easy on trails (10:06) followed by upper body weights/core. Foam rolling in evening.

Thursday: 9 "miles" of pool-running and streaming pilates. Foam rolling in evening.

`

Friday: 9 miles with 3200, 1600 in 14:13 (7:14/6:59) and 6:45, with ~5 minute jog in between, followed by leg strengthwork.  Foam rolling in evening.

Saturday: 8 miles very easy (9:25) plus drills/strides, followed by streaming pilates. Foam rolling in evening.

Sunday:  12 miles easy (8:58) and streaming yoga. Foam rolling in evening.