Race Report: Brazen New Year's Eve Half Marathon

Why did I sign up to run this race? 

The story of how I ended up running this race is a bit silly. To be honest I was sort of thinking of it as a kind of New Year's Eve turkey trot, i.e., the rest of the day is going to be busy & involve a bunch of socializing and celebrating, and it will be nice to have a nice, solid plan in place for getting a long-ish run in early in the day. Originally, I just started googling for local Dec. 31 half marathons, but unless I missed something, this was the only half marathon within a reasonable driving distance of home. I hadn't really been planning on making my trail half debut at this time but figured, "Eh, trail races, that's just, like, a kind of long cross country race? And I'm not even trying to run fast, just get in the miles, so who cares. Hills, pshhhh, whatever."

And then what happened?

WELL, I went to Dubai for 1.5 weeks during which time I wasn't able to run at all thanks to work scheduling, travel logistics, and jet lag. I got one good run in after I got home and then promptly got sick and spent most of my holiday travel feeling terrible (as well as jet lagged). By the 26th I was starting to feel a bit better so went for a short four-mile run, then six miles a couple days later, and six miles when we got home on the 30th. I was definitely not feeling 100% and went back and forth on whether running a trail half was smart or not (vs. just going out for an easy 6-10 miles or so at home). Partly because I had looked at the elevation profile for this race, and because the first trail race I EVER ran back in 2011 was in this park, I knew *exactly* what that second big hill was like. 🤣

In the end, though, I thought, "Eh, how bad can it be, it's only a 35 minute drive," and went for it. #famouslastwords

Race Day:

I didn't think I needed to get to the venue (Lake Chabot Regional Park) super early but I did want to get there early enough to get reasonably close parking, which I managed. I was so distracted by other things toward the end of December that I have to admit preparing for this race was kind of an afterthought--like, the night before race I kind of just started throwing things in a pile (hmmm yep that looks like a sports bra, these shorts are probably fine??? Let's try out that new team singlet, why not! Probably don't really need the hydration pack, but better safe than sorry. Vaseline, coconut oil, Body Glide, a metric fuckton of safety pins, seems like a good time to try out these brand new trail shoes I guess??? Cereal bars, gloves, sunscreen, hat, sunglasses, watch, look some old ShotBlocks from ca. 2014??? Why the heck not. 🤷🏻‍♀️). The whole time I kept thinking "This is probably overkill but who cares, just throw it all in the car."

In there somewhere???

Rocking my West Valley retro singlet for the first time! (A trail half is of course a GREAT opportunity to try out a new singlet AND new shoes, follow me for more pro tips. 👍)

Now, I know myself enough to know that sometimes it can be REALLY HARD to just take a race easy when you are only doing it for miles. Even if you know right in the front of your mind that you are not racing, just take it easy and enjoy the ride, it can still be so hard not to get caught up in the race atmosphere and people rushing around you in bibs. I lined up about in the middle of the half marathon group at the start in an effort to not be surrounded by super fast people and tried to take those first 2 miles pretty easy since I knew what was coming. Even so, I felt like I was running faster than I wanted to because I was just sort of "keeping up with the flow of traffic."

Off in my own little world, just keeping up with traffic

Now, let me tell you that though I was only doing this for easy miles, I still had this goal of not walking--like sure, there are some mega MEGA hills on this course, but if you just run them really slow, then no problem!

HAHAHAHA.

Now in that first hill (miles ~1.8-2.5ish), I really did try to just take it slow and jog it. And I felt very strongly about that goal for, like, the first 0.2 miles, and then it was like my body just said NOPE! Too steep. Too hard. Too much like impending literal death. So first I walked and then I literally just stopped and stood there trying to catch my breath.

Like, yes, I am not in super duper great shape now and not even a little bit trained for trail racing, but I was still surprised at just how quickly I went from feeling "OK this is a little faster than I'd planned on running but fine" to "Wow I feel like actual death."

Once I'd caught my breath, I started up again, jogging the rest of the hill and feeling so incredibly relieved when I got to the downhill/flat section. But, of course, I knew that the biggest hill of the entire race was coming up, and I just did not know how I was going to make it up the whole thing without walking.

And friends, I tried. Like, I really, really tried! I jogged so slow, so slow, until I lost the ability to push my body off the ground. And after that I speed-walked, just trying to put one foot in front of the other over and over again, until I started to lose feeling in my quads and started to feel like if I did not stop to catch my breath, I was going to keel over and have no choice but to crawl.

This part of the race reminded me of nothing so much as how I felt trying to do *any* sort of training last spring--like my body simply had no gas whatsoever, like exerting near maximal effort was resulting more in a shuffling-wobbling-kind-of-gait, like there was almost no connection between my mind and legs. It was a terrible feeling then and it was equally terrible now--like you have no connection to your body and no control over what it is doing.

"Well, yeah," I remember thinking, "you are barely not sick, still jet lagged and under-slept, and haven't done any significant running in nearly a month. Of course your body feels terrible and like you're about to keel over." It was at that point (just shy of 4ish miles) that I really, truly considered quitting--my body really felt like it had nothing left to give, even just walking, which is not a great feeling at mile ~3.9ish of a half marathon.

So the negotiation went something like, Well, okay, there's no one to even discuss quitting with until you get to the next aid station, which is at the top of this giant-ass hill. So there's nothing to do but walk, pause, walk, pause, etc. etc. until you reach the top. I was also starting to feel super low blood sugar, which is a weird way to feel after less than four miles, regardless of the hills. Fortunately, I had those clutch nine-year-old ShotBlocks in my hydration vest! If nothing else, the little burst of sweetness gave me some other sensation to focus on while I contemplated my impending surrender.

And then, a funny thing happened as I dragged myself to the top and reached the first aid station. I sort of went...Okay but the worst part is over?? Maybe we can get just a liiiitttle bit farther before we give up. Not much further, but like, it's flat now, so. ???? Maybe????

So I decided to try to start jogging a little, juuuuust a little, juuuuuust to see how awful it would feel. And...it actually felt okay? So I just went with it.

 

Looking a bit worse for the wear but smiling so that's a good sign

And then I hit the next hill. It suddenly became clear that whatever quad strength/endurance I had, I had burned through aaallllllllll of it with those first couple of attempts to get up hills without walking. While I felt totally fine jogging the flats and downhills, even a pretty mild uphill felt excruciatingly difficult. Suddenly I was contemplating trying to finish the whole thing, and I knew without a doubt on some intuitive level that if I was to have *any* chance of doing that in less than, say, four hours, I simply had to walk hills. I could jog some hills or I could traverse the full distance by foot, but I could not do both.

This was mentally the hardest part, because I just don't run trail races and just don't have the mental substrate in place for those kind of challenges the way I do for road races, even hilly ones. Like. In a road race where you are mostly able to run basically the same pace plus or minus some small and predictable delta, it's fairly easy to translate distance remaining into time remaining. Like even in the worst half marathon ever, I know that when I hit halfway I have (barring any debilitating medical issues), really absolute worst case, about an hour left to survive.

In a trail half marathon? Who the eff even knows! It could be an hour, or you could have to walk most of it and then maybe it's two hours. Will the next mile take me eight minutes or eighteen? Only Jesus can say!

I will also say that at this point I was very grateful to have had the experience of hiking the Haleakala Crater on Maui earlier this year, which was about 13 miles round trip with the last four miles or so nearly straight up through sand. It was frickin' awful, so at least I was able to say to myself, Well, look, you survived that, and this is nice packed dirt! And not *only* straight up! And it's nice and cool rather than 85F and humid! Like, part of me knew that even if I literally had to walk the entire rest of the race (which I knew I wouldn't), I could do it.

Why do these things never look as steep as they are in real life

When I reached the top of the last big hill around mile 9, volunteers at the aid station there assured us we were home free as far as hills went. Not that the rest of the way was flat, but it was at worst rolling and, under normal circumstances, completely runnable.

I, however, was not operating under normal circumstances and hadn't been for some time. I had not been capable of running up a hill, even a small one, even really really slowly, since mile 4. I felt absolutely certain that if I were to try, I would be jeopardizing my ability to finish. Honestly--I cannot remember a time in my running life when I felt so uncertain that I could physically reach the finish line due to non-injury-related reasons, and so certain that the choice was between "walk anything with even the slightest positive grade" and "possibly reach the point where your legs refuse to cooperate at all". I was 100% sure at that point that I could finish, but only if I walked hills.

So, I did. As soon as I'd hit flat or downhill, heyyyy no problem! Legs felt fine and I passed tons of people in the last miles during those sections. I also feel I have the last two seasons of running PA cross country to thank for how comfortable I've gotten bombing down off-road hills (which does wonders for saving your quads).

It's so amazing to me how dramatic all this felt until the finish line came into view, at which point I was like, "Oh, hm, look, the finish, cool cool cool" [shrug]. I finished and....suddenly didn't really feel that bad at all? I DUNNO! Trail racing, man.

I never look at Whoop before something I'm already committed to doing (because why??), but when I finally looked after the race, it became pretty clear (or at least partially clear) why I felt so awful:

Something I've learned this year is that nothing takes a toll on my recovery like travel, jet lag, illness, and general stress. Hard workouts and races have some impact, but it's nothing like those other factors.

Takeaways:

• Trail racing (at least trail races longer than 5-10K) requires a different kind of mental tool kit than road races. (Seasoned trail racers, of course, will be shocked by this, I know.) I think if I were to run another, comparable trail half I would have *such* a huge mental advantage, now having done it even just once.
• Trail races--okay, at least this trail race--are just like a completely different type of animal to me than other types of races, because of the utter unpredictability in terms of being able to predict time remaining. I'm super proud of myself for pushing through and finishing even though it got really, really tough, but the fact is that I like to run, and when the terrain is, like, half un-runnable (for me, on that day), it's way less enjoyable.
• If you want to run up like A LOT of ACTUALLY STEEP HILLS without destroying your quads in the first 40 minutes, your normal kind of ho-hum road hills + heavy squats training ain't gonna cut it. 😅
• The mental trick of OK look, maybe just one more mile repeated as many times as necessary continues to work beautifully.
• If you think you're over-prepping for a trail race, you're probably not. I was sooooo happy to have that hydration pack! And the gels. And the nine-year-old ShotBlocks. And I still had two orange slices and a cup of Coke at the last aid station.
• Real for-serious trail shoes make ALLLLL the difference! Ironically I probably wouldn't wear this pair again for a long trail race like this (the toe box felt a bit cramped for my preference and they felt a bit small even though I sized up as usual, resulting in a few spots on my toes rubbed raw and a few bruised and blackened toenails) but DAMN I was able to run across some pretty giant gravel / small rock fields without feeling a thing.
• I had zero count 'em ZERO little injury flare-ups during or after! I was sore in the quads and hips but that was literally IT.
• Also, zero chafing! Anywhere! Even with the hydration vest. I did my best with the Vaseline and coconut oil, but still, I just expect to have *some* kind of chafing issue these days if I'm running for over two hours and I couldn't believe I got away scot-free this time after a full two hours and thirty-seven minutes.

Up Next:

Now we do our level best in the next five weeks to sharpen up for Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Half. This race is kind of nice because it's close to home and super low stakes, but I would really really like to improve on Clarksburg (which should not be difficult).