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:

Hardcore January!

I've never done a monthly recap before, and to be honest I don't see them becoming a regular thing. (Alright, I know we're well into February; the beginning of the month sort of got away from me.) I tried to write a monthly recap back in August & the whole thing just felt a little rehash-ey and un-genuine. This month I'm doing one for #OpHardcoreFit, which feels less re-run-ish and more genuine because I actually have stuff to tell you about that is actually NOT the same stuff I've been writing about all month!

First among those things is, well, Operation Hardcore Fit. OHF is the baby of Meg O (of Watch MeGo Run), who is training for her first marathon this year & gunning for a sub-4:15! (GOOOO MEGAN!!) As she put it in a December blog post about marathon training, "The only option is hardcore."

"So, once I was all registered, I was all, "I'm so cool, I'm gonna run a marathon" and so I decided that one thing and one thing only could happen at the gym today: HARDCORE. No wimpy workout. Go big or go home."

Then in January:

"Recently I've been thinking about Operation Hardcore, my mission to train for the marathon and be an overall better runner this year. I'm terrified, to say the least. What if I don't have what it takes? Then, I thought, 'you know what would make this better? If I had other people on the same page as me.'"

And thus #OpHardcoreFit was born, its essence being thus:

"Operation Hardcore is a project to push yourself past your comfort zone into a territory you may not even know existed. I have a feeling 2012 is going to be my year and I want you to join me in it, by making it your year too. To push yourself past your limits, test yourself, and prove you ARE stronger than you think, faster than you feel, and better than you know. It will motivate you on the days you think, "I'm too tired" and will convince you that you, do, in fact, "got this" on the days you feel unstoppable."

The idea is to choose one big goal and maybe a few other smaller ones for the year & support each other in doing what we have to (even when we don't feel like it) to make it happen. My big goal is to run 2,000 miles this year, and my smaller goals are a sub-1:40 half marathon and a sub-22:00 5K.

Now, I will be honest with you. These goals are not going to "push [me] past [my] comfort zone into a territory [I] may not even know existed." They are 'safe' goals that I feel pretty sure I can achieve in a year without taxing myself overly much. I decided to "HardcoreFit" them, though, because over the years I have had a very bad case of the "I-have-nothing-to-prove"s. Ie, "It would be kind of cool to run a marathon, but I know I could do, it takes a lot of work, & I have nothing to prove. So whatever." It turns out, though, that no one is very interested in things you know you could do if you wanted to but haven't actually bothered. For me, I guess that's what #OpHardcoreFit is about.

So what did I accomplish this January in that vein?

• I ran every single day that I had scheduled for a total of 131.5 miles.
• I've recovered from my post-marathon 4-week period of holiday sloth.
• I've lost 6 of the 8 pounds I gained during said period of holiday sloth.
• I've averaged ~4 strength workouts per week.

Other more and less hardcore things that happened this January:

1) I finished reading this book, which, at 925 pages, I had been putting off for a while. Yes, it took me a month, but it was a fantastic read and well worth it. Like just about all of Murakami's work, it's a bit strange in places, but the story is really sweet and about as original as they come. (Runners may also want to check out his autobiographical What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I confess that I haven't read it yet but I've heard it's fantastic.) #hardcorereading

2) I found out that I was being tested for 1st kyu on Feb. 6th. (Note: It's over and I passed! :) ) Kyu ranks are student ranks and go from 10th (white belt) to 1st (3rd degree brown belt). 1st kyu testing is kind of a big deal because it's the last one before black belt. #hardcorefighting

3) Volunteering at Coyote Hills 5K/10K/Half. I've run two Brazen races & really enjoyed both (even though neither were among their *real* hardcore trail-ey ones), but this was my first time volunteering. I was up at 4:30 & at Coyote Hills Regional Park in Fremont setting up tents in the dark by 6 am. (In retrospect, I should've brought a headlamp.)

From about 7 to 9:30 I worked at the bib table, then spent 9:30 - 11:30 pouring gallon after gallon of water into tiny Dixie cups for the finishers. And OMG, I had no concept of how much water even smallish races (2000 people?) go through!

Maybe two thirds of the gallon jugs of water we went through.

For the last half hour I sorted trash & recycling (which was kind of gross because they were giving away It's It ice cream sandwiches, the discarded parts of which were melting all over EVERYTHING). I will not lie to you and say that I wasn't mainly doing all this for a free entry into next month's Bay Breeze 10K, but I am also not lying when I tell you that it really was a lot of fun and I would totally do it again. Jasmin & Sam are great & I can highly recommend their events. #hardcorevolunteering

4) I went to Sonoma with Don & his folks. If you have never gone wine tasting with someone who works in the industry, you absolutely must get on that shit. It is no secret that I love me some good wine or that Don & I spend several weekends a year in Paso Robles & Napa/Sonoma, and it's also not too terribly uncommon for us to chat up the folks pouring & end up not paying tasting fees and/or tasting things that are supposedly not open / VIPs only / sold out / etc. But when one of your party is a wine educator & buyer & has done a bunch of consulting with well-known wineries, that experience is increased by an order of magnitude. No tasting fees? 30% discount? An hour & a half in your caves tasting everything you make? Yes please.

My top Sonoma / Healdsburg / Santa Rosa wine picks:

• Porter Creek - Super tiny; $5 fee waived with purchase; tasty pinot, award-winning viognier, & a really unique food-friendly zin. Plus reasonable prices!
• Williams Selyem - Mostly pinot, but they're making a few other things now as well. Not cheap, but hands down the absolute best California pinot I have ever had.
• Bella - This was a first for me on this trip. Don's dad wanted to go to pick up some of their Late Harvest, but we ended up tasting through everything. The Late Harvest & Late Picked were both amazing, they had an excellent pinot & chard (under their Ten Acre label), and several very tasty zins. Plus, very reasonably priced for the quality.
• Siduri & Inspiration - These two are right in the same little plaza in north Santa Rosa. Siduri makes a TON of stuff under that label and another one called Novy Family wines. Very tasty pinots, a FANTASTIC $17 syrah (!), and a lovely dessert white. Inspiration has only a few wines, but their chard & viognier were lovely, and I enjoyed the zin, pinot, & syrah very much as well.
• Yoakim Bridge - A long-time favorite mom-and-pop winery. Don is a member so we go there any time we're in the neighborhood. Uh-may-zing zin, syrah, cab, and petite sirah.
• Ridge - Not cheap, but reliably good. Taste the Montebello if they offer it because you probably won't ever get another chance. They also have a tasting room in the Cupertino hills.
• Seghesio - Reliably good zins, a lovely field blend called Marian's Reserve, and a tasty 60/40 cab/sangiovese blend called Omaggio.
• Twomey - It's been a while since I was there but I pretty much loved everything I had and the tasting fee is cheap even if you don't buy anything, so just go.
• Wilson - Lots of really good zins, & several other things that are worth tasting as well.

#hardcoreoenology

So that's really it for my hardcore January. For February my only real goals are to keep building mileage & stay healthy, and to run strong at Bay Breeze 10K on Feb. 18.

How was your January? Anything hardcore to share?

Race Report: Bad Bass 10K

This race was stop #3 on my 2011 10K Summer Tour (Santa Cruz, SF PrideRun, Bad Bass, and Summer Breeze). Similar to PrideRun, I had a little bit of an injury scare going into this one. I've been having some weird Achilles tendon pain on and off lately, and for reasons I won't bother going into, I ended up doing my last run before the race on Friday morning instead of Thursday afternoon (1 mile warm up + 2 miles at 10K pace), then spent somewhere in the neighborhood of four hours shopping in SF on foot. I finished the run with just a little bit of Achilles soreness and a little bit of tibia pain; on the other hand, while it may not do much for your cardiovascular system, it turns out that four less-than-leisurely hours on your feet can still tax your musculoskeletal system in ways that are not insignificant. My legs were not happy by the end of the day. Thankfully, we spent a chill evening seeing Captain America (better than I expected!), which gave them a little break and helped some. Still, I'll be making a note to myself to just stay off my feet altogether the day before a race as much as possible in the future.

Last week, I set several different goals for this race, depending on how my legs were feeling:

• "A" Goal: Race the bloody hell out of it; shoot to place (and to not fall down a hill and die / inflict serious damage on self)
• "B" Goal: Run the whole distance, but at a conservative pace; run to finish strong & stay injury-free, don't stress about placing.
• "C" Goal: Run most of it, but take walking breaks if I have more than very mild pain.
• "D" Goal: Finish any way I can, even if I have to walk all or most of it. (This was the "already-paid-for-the-schwag-might-as-well-show-up" consolation goal.)

I woke up Saturday morning feeling strong, refreshed, and pain-free, so as long as my legs held up, "A" Goal it was. (Apologies for the lack of pre-race photos; I had planned to arrive an hour early since I hate feeling rushed, but I got kind of lost on the way to Lake Chabot and ended up arriving only 25 minutes before the gun. This ended up being just enough time to park, get my bib & timing chip, check my sweats, warm-up (sort of), and suss out my place in the start line hierarchy. Despite a little bit of panic, I kept reminding myself that things like this are exactly why I always plan to arrive an hour early.)

Location: Lake Chabot Regional Park, CA

Date: Late July (July 30, 2011 this year)

Price: 5K -- $29 until 6/19, $34 until 7/17, $39 after 7/17; 10K -- $34 until 6/19, $39 until 7/17, $44 after 7/17; Half Marathon -- $50 until 6/19, $55 until 7/17, $60 after 7/17

Deadline: Race day registration if space (there was space in all distances this year)

Sellout Factor: Unlikely; it was a small event with race day registration

Logistics

Parking is available inside the park ($5 for all day) a short walk from the start, or you can park on Lake Chabot Rd just outside of it for free if you don't mind a slightly longer walk. For all intents and purposes, I suppose the free parking is technically unlimited, but if you arrive late (ahem) and want to park for free, that can mean a much longer walk because all the close parking will already be taken. I was late enough that I decided to just cough up the $5.

In addition to local pre-race packet pickup on Thursday and Friday, you can pick up the morning of (which is what I did). The pick-up table was well-labeled, well-organized, and efficient. There is a free sweat check at the start/finish (the 5K & 10K are out-and-backs and the half marathon is a loop, and the race is small enough that it's a short walk from the check to the start); you go pick up your own at the end. The T-shirt and goody bag station (also well-organized and efficient) was right by the sweat check; you could pick them up before or after the race.

The Course

The nature of the course varies tremendously, depending on which distance you run. The 5K is all on pavement with just a few easy, rolling hills. The 10K keeps going past the 5K turnaround; it was on pavement until about 1.8 miles, at which time it heads up a fire trail called Live Oak Trail, or as I prefer to call it, the Ascending Fire Trail from Hell. The turnaround is basically at the top of the hill. From what I can tell, the half marathon seems to be about half pavement and half fire trails. It includes the Live Oak Trail portion as well as a few other reasonable hills. We had great weather (sixties, dry, slightly over-cast), but I could see why this (and any other trail race, I suppose) would suck ASS if there were rain or had been rain at any point in the last week or so. (The paved part of the trail was also mostly shaded, which was nice too.)

Let me just say this about the Ascending Fire Trail from Hell: Look at the elevation chart. Look at it closely. Look at the units. Do the math. Find out what in your area is comparable, and train on it. Here, I'll help you:

I knew it was there, and I looked at the elevation chart, but still I failed to appreciate the truly ridiculous nature of the Ascending Fire Trail from Hell. I was like, "Yeah; I run hills. No biggie."

Let the record show that it was indeed "a biggie."

Knowing mile 3 consisted mostly of a big hill, I'd planned to run a slightly slower pace than I would on a flat course. I didn't do a great job of this during the first mile but I reined it in somewhat during the second. Then I saw the hill. Ugh..., I thought, this is going to suuuuuuuuuck...

I slowed down & figured I could probably run the whole thing if I didn't push the pace. All around me runners were slowing to a shuffle and then to a brisk walk, and after about a third of a mile I was having a very sober conversation with my central governor. We can get up this hill without walking, said the CG, but that probably means a slow, painful crawl to the finish. Which made sense. I knew running back down the hill would be no picnic either, and I hadn't run crazy stuff like this enough to know for sure how my body would feel or what it would be capable of afterward. So I played it safe and stopped trying to run and just walked as fast as I could, keeping an eye on my heart rate (which on weird terrain is usually a better indicator of whether I'm on track than pace). There were a few short plateaus so I tried to jog those a little whenever I could.

The trip back down was absolutely terrifying (right). I basically had to watch my feet the entire time, which made it a lot harder to watch people around me and not go careening into them. I tried to stay on my forefeet and lean forward, but on some of the steeper sections it became clear that this was probably a bad idea given my lack of trail experience, and a lot of the time I found myself braking down on my heels in an effort to stay vertical and not eat dirt. I have never in my life been so excited to see pavement.

At this point I pretty much felt like I was going to throw up. (Partly this was due to whatever bizarre sports drink they were serving -- it sort of tasted like Kool-Aid made with saccharine and did not agree with my stomach at all.) But then the training kicked in, and I found I was able to pick up the pace again pretty quickly. Not enough to get back to my usual 10K pace, but fast enough to know I'd be able to finish respectably.

With only about three quarters of a mile to go (and about eleven minutes behind my 10K PR), I was pretty much focused on just finishing in style and was not terribly worried about placing. Then I rounded a corner and passed a woman pushing her kid in a stroller. "Number four is right in front of you," she called excitedly to me. I don't know what she actually meant by that. But at the time, my brain decided to interpret this statement as meaning that I was within striking distance of the woman currently in fourth place in my age group (I know that's completely ridiculous; how could she have know that?). So I wrested control from the CG, mustered everything I had left, and went after her.

It took forever but I managed to push by her. With half a mile left, I spotted the next woman a few hundred feet ahead (remember, in my mind, she's in 3rd in my age group right now). She was the last one I could see, so I started sprinting, all the way past her and then all the way to the finish (at something like a 6:30 pace).

(Apparently, there was a sizable gap in the taking of finish line pictures -- the little speck circled in yellow is me. Click to embiggen.)

I don't normally post splits, but I think I will this time, just for the sheer entertainment value:

• Mile 1 - 7:12
• Mile 2 - 7:50
• Mile 3 - 12:44 (AFTfH, going up)
• Mile 4 - 9:16 (AFTfH, going down)
• Mile 5 - 8:05
• Mile 6 - 7:54
• 6.00 - 6.33 - 2:10 (6:34 pace)

In spite of a finishing time eleven minutes slower than my PR, I managed to pull off 3rd in my age group, which was pretty validating. (Also, can we just talk for a moment about how neither of the two women I passed in the last .75 of a mile were in my age group? Nope; it turns out one of them was the 1st place winner in the next youngest age group, and the other was the 1st place winner in the next oldest age group. Something similar happened at both my previous 10Ks; apparently all the fastest chicks are in their early-to-mid thirties. ;)

Goodies

A cotton T-shirt is included in the registration price. For $6, you can upgrade to a very nice technical shirt (or, if you don't want a shirt, you can deduct $5 from your race fee). An $11 tech shirt ain't bad. The only issue with the shirts was that we were warned that they run large, so if we were on the fence about which size to order, we should order a size down. I ordered a women's small, which I could barely squeeze into. They will do exchanges for you if they have an extra in the size you want, but apparently lots of people were having the same issue and trying to trade for a size up. On my way out, I swung by the table again to see if any mediums or larges had become available; there weren't, but someone had just returned a youth small, which to me looked significantly larger than my women's small. I tried it on and it was a perfect fit. I think they got a lot of feedback about the shirt sizes, but I'd still order a size up next time.

The Brazen Racing events are cool in that all finishers, no matter what distance, get a medal. For what they charge, you'd think they'd be dinky discount medals, but they're not; this one was at least as big and hefty as the one from Rock N Roll San Jose ($85!). In addition, they also award equally hefty ones three deep in each age / gender group in five year increments, plus Fleet Feet gift certificates to the overall male & female winners for each distance.

Each participant also got a small plastic bag with a few fliers, coupons, & samples as per usual.

I'm happy to report that, in spite of some insanely tight / sore quads (thanks, AFTfH), my lower legs are doing great today and not sore at all. I'm still going to give them a few days off (maybe until my Brooks Adrenalines get here), but going into this weekend I was really worried about how my Achilles tendons & shin splints would hold up. It really makes me curious if there's something I do differently when I'm racing than when I'm doing speed workouts at the same pace over shorter distances.

I can't say I'm likely to run this particular race again (the AFTfH may haunt my road racing dreams for a while), but I'm still really glad I signed up for it and was healthy enough to run it. There's something validating about trying something a little different, as well as running a really hard race and finishing strong (something all you SF half / marathoners know a thing or two about), and Brazen did a great job organizing the event. REALLY looking forward to running another of their events at the end of August -- on a pancake flat course. :)