I ran the 1500 and the 3000 at the Hartford Nationals meet in Grand Rapids, Michigan on July 13-14, with times of 7:09 for the 1500 and 14:31 for the 3000 - finishing as top female in both heats.
The Hartford Nationals are (using their own words) the "largest and longest-running national sport championship event for athletes with a physical disability, visual impairment or intellectual disability." The full event covers multiple sports over 8 days, including track and field, swimming, archery, weightlifting, triathlon, tennis, and several others.
I went last year and really enjoyed the event even though I had to withdraw from my races due to injury (I did hobble through an 800, but I decided that didn't count as a race). This year, I resolved to come back healthy.
At last year's Hartford Nationals, I planned an ambitious schedule - targeting the 400, 800, 1500, and 5000 over two days. Since I'm a marathoner, this didn't seem very intimidating. However, I learned over that summer that warming up and racing a short distance two or three times in the same day with a gap of several hours between each was very hard on my body. I suspect that doing so at several meets in a row was why I got injured. So this year I planned for just one race each day.
I also chose to enter the first race of each day at the Hartford Nationals. I thought this would give me my best chance to perform well. To explain why, I first have to go into the differences between Move United meets and the USATF meets in my area. (Move United is the governing body for adaptive sports in the U.S.)
In my experience, meets sanctioned by Move United are much more formal than USATF meets. At a Move United meet, the track is open for warm-up for a specified period of time, and then closed, and there's generally not any other good place to run while awaiting your race. Move United meets also want the athletes to check in well ahead of time. And once you've checked in, they keep you on a fairly short leash.
In contrast, the USATF meets I've done have always had some place to run besides the track and also allow athletes to do laps on the track infield while waiting for their heat. USATF check ins also seem more casual. I tell them I'm there, get my hip #, and then I'm free to head off wherever while awaiting the start. If I miss my race, it's my own damn fault.
For a number of reasons (age, Parkinsons, and being a marathoner), I need a long warm-up before a short race, and I need to time it so that my warm-up finishes shortly before the race starts. Thus, at Move United meets, it's a lot easier to time my warm-up correctly if I'm in the first race of the day.
So, back in March of this year, I pulled up the preliminary schedule for the Hartford Nationals and noted that the 1500 and 3000 were the first races on each of the two track days. I found a Move United sanctioned meet in May where I could snag qualifying times for the two distances. Once I had those, I submitted my entry and booked my trip to Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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I flew out of BWI to Grand Rapids. While waiting to board, I noted that most of the other passengers appeared to be going to the Hartford Nationals as well. I was surprised at first and then recalled that there's a significant para-athletic/adaptive athlete program associated with the Kennedy-Krieger Institute in Baltimore.
Unsurprisingly, there were a LOT of pre-boards. I idly wondered if I would read something on social media later complaining about how many people took advantage of pre-board. In this case, a good third of the passengers on board really did qualify for and need pre-board.
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The flight went smoothly. Once in Grand Rapids, much of my time was dedicated to standing in line. This was because I did the same thing everyone else did - I booked my car rental through the airplane, and I stayed at the hotel where all the official meetings were held. So that was a 20+ minute wait for a car, and another 20+ minute wait to check into my room. Clever me also decided to pick up my bib numbers and other stuff at the same time as everyone else later that afternoon, so that was another 30 minutes.
The moral of the story - next year I need to be more original in my planning.
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Friday evening was the "track and field coaches meeting" to go over the rules of the meet. Since I was there on my own, I attended. As someone who really wishes that track etiquette rules were posted at my local track (this comment aimed at the woman who does her recovery jogs in lane 1 clockwise...) the slide presentations warmed my heart a touch.
Sunday morning was my first race - the 1500. Unfortunately, though I was in the first race of the day, I was not in the first heat of the day. Rather, I was in the 6th heat (of 10) for the 1500. Oh well, I knew that I probably wasn't going to be lucky enough to be in the first heat, and it was what it was. I warmed up on the track during the scheduled time (6:30-7:15 am). With my heat estimated to start at 8:30 am, I then tried to keep walking and stay limber, before starting to jog on a slip of road near the call tent around 8 am.
I didn't feel great, unfortunately. Just sluggish and a bit dull. Which surprised me as the air was still relatively dry and the temperature was in the low 70s - perfect for a summer 1500. But whatever, I was here, and I would race as best I could.
My heat of the 1500 was a mixed ambulatory field - meaning men and women (all 18 or older), with different impairments. Most were in the 18-21 age range, including another woman with a coordination impairment. And then there was a female lower leg amputee in her 30s and me.
We lined up for a waterfall start - men on the inside, women on the outside. I noted that the amputee was to the right of me, with her left leg being the prosthetic. I've noted that prosthetics tend to swing outwards slightly. Given my balance issues, any contact between my leg and her prosthetic would mean a possible fall for me. I made a mental note to let her cut to the rail ahead of me, and then hopefully pass her on the outside.
The gun started, and just like always I was in last place. I took a few breaths to try to relax my gait and then started working on that weird blend of "running hard but not running too hard." Over the next 3 and 3/4s laps I reeled in both of the women. It wasn't pretty, though. Every time I would try to aggressively pass my quads would lock up, and I'd have to ease up and re-establish my rhythm and relax the tense muscles. I ended up swinging out to lane 2 and passing each very gradually (no surges).
I would have liked to have run down some of the men as well, but I just had no oomph and they were too fast for me.
I crossed the line in 7:09. Good enough for top woman in my heat and a win in my division. I wasn't very happy with how I had run, though. I was frustrated by both my rough gait and how off I felt. The gait clearly needed more work, which was fine - it's always nice to have room and potential for improvement. But why did I feel so rough?
I figured it out later that morning when I checked the weather on my phone. We were under a code red air quality alert due to forest fire smoke from Canada that had rolled in overnight. It wasn't affecting me enough to make my asthma super obvious, but how I was feeling was totally consistent with a mild asthma flare.
Unfortunately, the smoke was predicted to linger through tomorrow morning (the second and final day of track) before dissipating. Of course it was.
Normally I try to avoid running outside in smoky air to protect my lungs. But, I was here and tomorrow's 3000 would be a short race. So rather than hang around at the event for the rest of the day to cheer others on, I took a quick tour of the vendor area and then headed back to the hotel.
***
The vendor area was pretty cool. Several businesses that cater to adaptive athletes - primarily those with wheelchairs or prosthetics - had set up shop. Some pictures:
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| This tent had the wheelchair equivalent of the "trainer" used by cyclists. |
If you zoom in on this picture... |
| You see a fancy carrying case for a prosthetic. |
I went to bed fairly early so that I could get up around 4:30 to do my full routine of mobilization/stretching before heading over to the track to warm-up for the 3000. Unfortunately, I somehow either slept through or didn't set my watch alarm with the result that I woke up at 5:15 am instead.
Unfortunately, when I checked in for the 3000m, I learned that the 5000 was being held before the 3000, so I no longer had the first race of the day. (When I had registered, the 3000 had been listed first on the schedule). Oh well. Such is racing. I waited until the 5000 had about 6 laps left, and then began jogging again, trying to stay limber. Then we were called to walk to the start line.
I approached the 3000 with a different strategy. Given the air quality, I didn't want to be pushing things too hard, lest a subtle asthma flare become less subtle. So this was the perfect opportunity to practice staying as relaxed as possible while racing. No TENSION. This strategy might backfire and cost me the race, but the air quality was already limiting me, so this was the perfect time to work on this.
When the gun went off, my legs were definitely stiff from the wait for the race, and so I very delicately eased into what felt like the fastest pace I could maintain while staying completely relaxed and smooth. Fortunately, this pace was fast enough to gradually close the gap between me and the female amputee from the 1500 (this was another mixed race, with men and women from different classifications combined). Every time I felt the slightest bit of tension, I backed off the pace.
Focusing on smoothness, I eventually pulled up next to her. She threw in some surges trying to keep up, but I did my best to ignore her and the fact that I was racing her and just keep my gait smooth. We went around like this for two laps - her in lane 1 and me in lane 2 the whole time (yes, I know, but dropping behind her on the turn and then attempting to pass on the straightaway wasn't an option - my legs would just lock when I tried to pass).
Then things began to loosen up, and I started to pull away. Eventually I had enough room to move into lane 1 comfortably. From then I was running by myself, with a male runner about 50-75m ahead. I spent the next laps negotiating with myself, because I knew I wasn't running at full race effort and I had someone ahead of me. But my biggest goal for the morning was to run the entire race with absolutely no tension, so I held steady.
I finished in 14:31 (I don't have intermediate splits because I wasn't allowed to wear a smart watch for this race). Significantly slower than what I had hoped for when I entered, but I had finished as top female, won my division, and run a much better race (from a gait perspective) so I called it a good morning.
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| I won two gold medals - aren't they pretty? |
Other notes:
- This was my second time at the Hartford Nationals, and I'm really glad I came again. Overall, it was a really good experience and I hope to return next year. I do think I need to focus on competition and forget about running my best times at this meet. With the big gaps between warm-up and race starts, The meet is just not set up for me to run my fastest. This is not a complaint at all, just an observation, in the same way that I'd never use a hilly marathon for a PR attempt.
- The New Jersey Navigators (an adaptive athlete team from....wait for it....New Jersey) have informally adopted me and let me use their tent when we're at the same meets. It is very much appreciated.
- I had optimistically booked a flight for Monday night back to BWI. That flight was cancelled about 10 hours before takeoff, due to a predicted storm that actually did happen. Fortunately, I had planned for this and packed everything I needed for staying an extra day as well as going into the office straight from BWI, so I declined Southwest's offer to rebook me that evening and just swapped to the 5:30 am flight on Tuesday morning. This was a good decision.
What was not a good decision was trying to save money by clicking on a last minute Trip Advisor deal for a hotel right next to the airport. The hotel had 2.5 out of 4 stars and was a national chain, so I assumed that $50 would get me a clean safe bed and a shower for the evening.
I was so very wrong. I ended up checking out roughly an hour after checking in, skeeved out by the non-working door bolt, the pot smoke everywhere, the vague warnings from staff to avoid the back or side of the building, and the clerk's willingness to dispense a key card for any room to anyone who wanted a card for that room without confirming identity. I went back to my previous hotel and gratefully paid another $150 for another night of clean sheets and clean air.
Lesson: never book a hotel "deal" without reading the reviews.
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