This race was on the PA circuit, meaning a deep field, a good course, and (supposedly) a well-organized race overall. I was hoping to run something in the 5K-10K range around this time, so poof! Perfect. (Even more so because I'd never run a certified 8K before so I had no real expectations.)
And then what happened?
One of my research teams got a paper accepted to a pretty major conference & the conference was Thursday April 21-Monday April 25 in San Diego. It would have been no problem for me to go if our session had been on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Monday. But no; we got Sunday.
Fortunately, there was a virtual option and I wasn't all that excited about the rest of the conference, so our team agreed that we would present virtually. The race was at 8:30am so unless something went horrifically wrong, I'd be done running by 9:10ish. The first session slot was 9:45am and the next one was 11:30am, and it would be no problem to be home & presentable by 11:30am. "Surely," I thought, "there is no way my luck is so bad that our session would not only be on Sunday morning, but also the ONLY slot that I couldn't possibly get home in time for.
So yeah. The only way this was going to work at all was if I got a hotel room in San Jose super close to the finish so that I could dash from the finish line, into a shower, jump on my computer. Except there *were* no hotels that were that super close to the finish. The closest one I could find was 1.5 miles away, i.e., not walkable. Which meant I'd need to drive from the hotel to the finish line, park my car at the finish, AND THEN get myself to the start 5 miles away. (Did I mention it was a point-to-point race? It was a point-to-point race.) All this meant I'd need to get up at like 6:00am for an 8:30am race, boo.
And because I am SUPER on top of my life, I made Don & myself a dinner reservation at a place in SF we'd been wanting to try the night before. I was like, "Oh, low key dinner at 7pm, then we'll go home & I'll drive to San Jose, nbd." Which in retrospect, uhhhhh, do the math, Angela; we got home around 9:30, I left around 10:00, and got to the hotel around 11:00, which meant I got to bed around 11:30 and definitely was not asleep before midnight. Off to a great start!
Race Day:
My alarm went off at 6:00 and to be honest I didn't feel terrible, even though it would have been nice to sleep more. (By the way: All that stuff about how the night of sleep before a race doesn't really matter as long as you got good sleep the night before that? Lies. ALL LIES.)
I was dressed and out the door by 6:30, drove the 1.5 miles to Santana Row where the finish was, and easily found parking in the huge and mostly empty free garage there. Phase 1, accomplished!
There was a Starbucks just steps away, so I ducked in for some breakfast since the hotel breakfast didn't open til 7:00am. After surviving a very sudden and intense bout of nausea (???), I finished what I could of my breakfast and ordered a lift to the start 5 miles away. This part was a bit stressful due to three drivers canceling and Lyft taking a VERY long time to find me a fourth; also the driver had a hard time getting to the start due to a bunch of road closures, but at long last he was able to get me to within less than a mile, which was fine because I wanted to warm up anyway. Phase 2, done! Maybe this is all going to work out okay after all.
I did a little jogging and hit the portos, then saw Jen, & after chatting briefly then both headed off on our respective warm-ups. Once I got ready to check my jacket, I realized another hole in my plan: I hadn't brought anything to wear or carry my phone & car key in. Ordinarily I only carry my phone in long races, but since I absolutely definitely needed to have it handy during my presentation (and needed my car key to get back to the hotel at all), I did NOT want to risk something hinky happening with the bag check. I've been burned too many times by bag checks in the past, which is *particularly* a problem with a phone or car key. So...that meant carrying it in my hand. For the whole race.
Friends, I was not feeling this warm up. My stomach was still unhappy and whatever this right heel/Achilles issue is was pretty painful. Finally, though, it was time to head to the start corrals.
I have to say, the logistics & organization of this race were a bit disappointing given that it was a PA Grand Prix race. I mean have been to races that were just a complete cluster, and this wasn't that. Just, when something is a Grand Prix race, you expect certain things are on point, so I was surprised by some of the logistical misses.
For example, the complete lack of organization in the corrals. Being on the PA cicuit--even in a small local race--means there are some VERY fast people looking to win overall, meaning they want to be right up on the start line because overall awards use gun time. Alas the lack of organization meant that, interspersed with all these Very Fast People were folks that really had no business being at the front of the corral and maybe didn't realize that because no one told them. Don't get me wrong, I think road races are for everyone who feels like running a road race, regardless of pace, talent, training, whatever, and I also think we should be careful about making assumptions about how fast someone is going to run based on how they look/how they are dressed. That said, a race like this has a problem if the greyhound-esque dudes in tiny split shorts, track singlets, and racing flats are fighting for space with normies wearing the race shirt and a hydration belt/vest and carrying hiking poles in a race less than five miles long.
Again, I'm not blaming race participants; individuals should not be responsible for managing this. But it's going to go very badly for everyone involved if the race directors, who presumably know what they signed up for when they agreed to be a PA Grand Prix race, doesn't make some sort of effort to organize people in the corrals or at the very least support people in managing themselves. And sure enough, I saw several people who had NO business at the front of the corral nearly go down and get trampled when the race started.
Also with ~2 minutes to go until the start, the announcer suddenly announces that there would be two waves, meaning those of us near the front would start at 8:35, then they would stop the rest of the group (arbitrarily, it sounded like???) and hold them until 8:40. Like???? Multiple waves is great, maybe tell people ahead of time and (again) organize the corral accordingly??
The other two logistical issues were plastic cups instead of paper and running out of toilet paper half an hour for the race. If there is one thing at a race that is unforgivable, it's that. You DO NOT FUCK with runners' pre-race toilet paper. As for the cups, this was less an issue for those of us running the 8K & more for the half runners. The cups looked to me like the compostable plastic kind, which, awesome! Use compostable! But here is the thing about most paper cups, they are also compostable. We've all gotten really good at the aid station paper cup pinch to try to get as much liquid into our mouths as possible and it just doesn't really work with plastic/plastic-like materials.
(One thing that was cool, though: The bag check truck was actually like a little locker room, and they just gave you a key with a number on it, which you wrote on your bib. It was cool that at the end of the race, all you had to do was jump in the truck and unlock your own locker. No waiting on overloaded volunteers required! The downside, though, was having to carry a key the whole race. Since I already had to carry my phone AND my car key, I just shoved it in one of the pockets of my phone case next to the car key & hoped it wouldn't fall out.)
As for my race, well, I hoped I would start feeling better once the gun went off, but I never did. Based on my workout times lately, it seemed really reasonable to start out around ~7:20 pace (hard but not red-line pace), then in the second half try to speed up and pick people off. But it was not to be. I don't know if it was all the logistical stress, lack of sleep the night before, or what, but from the first mile my legs felt so heavy & dead, like running uphill with a backpack and lead boots.
My first mile was indeed 7:20, but rather than a nice conservative starting place, it felt like the absolute fastest I could run. Like even if the race had only been one mile long, I'm not sure I could have run much faster. The rest of the race felt like the end of a marathon and I mostly just tried to focus on not stopping. I think I averaged like 7:30/mile as compared to 7:40/mile in the half marathon in March & 7:38/mile in the 10 miles earlier this month.
Only finisher pics this time, which is fine because I don't have much else to say about this race anyway.
- Official: 8K / 4.97 miles / 37:39 / 7:31 pace
Garmin: 5.03 miles / 37:40 / 7:29 pace
Now, if there is one cool thing I can take away from this race (and I'm all about taking one cool thing away from a not-great race) it's that, if you believe Garmin, I ran 7:20/7:30/7:36/7:36/7:24 and then in the last few hundredths of a mile, somehow got these legs to 5:28 pace for ten precious seconds!
I have never been much of a sprinter so for me that is QUITE FAST, friends. It makes me wonder how much of my struggles in this race were physical (undoubtedly some) vs. mental & from a purely physiological standpoint maybe there was a little more speed in my legs that I couldn't access earlier for some reason.
All my workouts lately have gone really well and I've found myself running paces in speed work that I haven't been able to hit consistently in years, so at least for now I'm inclined to see this race as a little bit of a blip, possibly due to all the logistical stress of the morning and not getting enough sleep. Maybe it's true that some people can have a shitty night of sleep before a race and be fine as long as their sleep prior to that has been good, but that hasn't been my experience; I can very easily look back at a number of races over the years where I slept poorly and had epically bad races the next day. So, hoping that's all it was, and that I bounce back a little better for Stow Lake 5K next month (which is at least super close to home!).
Onward!
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