Race Report: Victory Half Marathon 2023

Whew, finally getting this one out into the world!

The deets:

Brazen Racing is well known in the Bay Area for fun, inclusive, reasonably affordable, and extremely well-organized events, with the vast majority including a 5K, 10K, and half marathon. Most of them are trail races (including some real doozies!), but they host a few flat, paved events as well (including Hellyer in the South Bay and the Bay Breeze/Summer Breeze races at the San Leandro Marina). It is always a really fun and supportive crew, and their races are known for such perks as big beautiful medals (including age group winner medals), cool shirts that you'd actually consider wearing *not* only for running, free photos taken by volunteers stationed on the course, and an epic post-race spread.

Why did I sign up for this race?

I didn't have anything on my spring race calendar until the USATF Masters 10 Mile National Championships on April 2nd, and I wanted to run *something* in the 10K-to-half-marathon ballpark between New Years and then just to see where I was fitness-wise. My criteria were a) late Feb/early March, b) 10K, half, or something in between, c) mostly flat-ish course, d) reliable organization, e) fairly close to home, & f) not too pricey. That's a lot to ask for in one race! So I actually felt very lucky that I was able to find even ONE race that checked all the boxes.

Victory starts and finishes at Craneway Pavilion in Richmond, just over the bridge and a bit down the freeway, about 30 minutes from me. It's a really pretty area of Richmond with some gorgeous waterfront views (a lot of which you get to see on the course). All three courses are mostly out-and-backs and pretty close to totally flat. I have run the 10K at Victory twice before (2017 and 2020) so I felt very comfortable with the logistics (getting there, parking, the course, etc.).

Brazen has always put on some of the highest-value "low-stakes" races in the Bay Area--if you just wanted to run and have fun and see what you could do, it's always been hard to do better in terms of price and what you get for it. Alas, inflation has of course come for us all of late, including race directors. So prices have gone up a bit. But prices have gone up everywhere, so Brazen is still a QPR winner any way you slice it.

This year's prices for the 5K/10K/Half:

• Until 12/18/22: $58 / $67 / $83
• Before 1/22/23: $63 / $72 / $88
• After 1/22/23: $68 / $77 / $93
• Race day: $73 / $82 / $98

And then what happened?

Unscheduled rest days? We do that here. (Victory Half Week 7 of 8)

Monday morning I dragged my suitcase up my front steps at 10:00am, so bone-deep exhausted I was almost sick with it.

Actual footage

I'd left DFW airport (Texas) at 7:00am central time; this meant setting an alarm for 4:00am, but it turns out you don't actually need an alarm when you're awake all night (like literally allll night, not even even a bit of light dozing). It's not that I didn't try to sleep but I often have a hard time sleeping when I have an early alarm, and unfortunately none of my usual tricks (melatonin, diphenhydramine, reading) were helping.

So yes. Up at 4:00am, out the door at 4:30, returning my rental car at 5:15, at the gate for my flight at 5:45. (It wasn't boarding until 6:30am so I was earlier than I needed to be, but that's because everything went perfectly and you can never count on everything going perfectly when air travel is involved.) 

After ~3 hours of fitful airplane sleep, I touched down at SFO, took an Uber home, said hi to my cats, and tried (in vain) to get some real sleep on my couch. (My bed wasn't made and I was not not NOT in a place to make it. So, couch.)

The kitty welcomed me back home and by 'me,' I mean 'my body heat.' (She's like one of those sea creatures that can only thrive in the extreme heat of hydrothermal ocean vents.)

Bad Puns, Solid Workouts (Victory Half Week 6 of 8)

There are certain running puns that make my eyes roll so far back in my head I'm in danger of losing them. "In the long run." "Back on track." Anything involving the word "half" when you're running/training for a half marathon.

But here I am, about to say that I am {cringes} "back on track" this week after last weekend's minor shit show. And I wasn't going to say it, but then I was going to write something about how it feels getting back on the track again after a hiatus, and {sigh}...

Welp. Here we are. Back on track.😬

A Song of Ice And Snow And Wind And Blizzards (Victory Half Week 5 of 8)

Week 5 started off great but kind of fell apart at the weekend. A friend of ours was renting a house in Tahoe & invited us to come up and stay with her, and given the epic snow conditions lately, we decided to take her up on it.

It's such a fine line between "Sounds awesome but I can't, I'm prioritizing training right now" and "Life is short and you're not a pro athlete, don't let training turn you into a monk." I have really been trying to prioritize getting in pretty-ok-to-decent shape for Victory Half but I also really like to ski and with everything else I have going on nearly every weekend between now and May, I wasn't going to have a lot of chances.

So, like any other respectable modern woman, I decided that choosing was a false dichotomy and with enough effort and hustle, I could "have it all."

If you've ever tried to "have it all," you can probably guess where this is going.

Do You Run With Headphones??? (Victory Week 4 of 8)

Spoiler: I do, most of the time. :)

 

Look closely, they're there! 

These days my headphones of choice are Shokz Aeropex (now listed as Shokz OpenRun), which are bone conduction open-ear headphones specifically designed for running. That means that they don't actually go in your ears, which means you can still actually hear everything going on around you while using them. Yes they're a bit pricey, but I got my current pair on a Labor Day sale in 2021, and given that I use them nearly every single day of my life (not only for running but also a lot of times while working, doing errands on foot, or doing chores around the house), that $141.16 (after tax) amortizes to something like 30 cents a day and dropping, which seems like a pretty good deal. (And also people pay $250+ for freaking AirPods???? 😱 JGDFC.)

More Recovery Talk (Victory Half Week 3 of 8)

Not that I've had any actual *hard* or *intense* weeks yet, but this last week was slightly easier (in terms of how much running I've done) than Week 2 for a couple of reasons:

1) A last-minute ski weekend in Tahoe! Back in December I got new skis and have been looking forward to trying them out. Since there's now ten bazillion feet of snow in Tahoe (and somehow all my free Jan/Feb weekends are starting to fill up with Stuff), it seemed like a good time to go. (Also, this early in my season when I am running fairly low mileage, I don't really mind taking an extra day or two off of running.)

 Top of Lake View Chair at Palisades

2) My lower left leg/ankle has been feeling a bit tight and pound-y, and again, there's no reason to risk overdoing it this early when I'm just trying to build up the miles and re-acclimate my whole body to running. Luckily I was able to get in with my massage therapist on Wednesday who did some SERIOUS work beating up my various fascias and such. It's generally better to give body work a good 12-24 hours to settle in before a run anyway, so rather than thinking of it as a Sad Unplanned Rest Day, I tried to think of it as smart recovery so I could run happy on Thursday.

Speaking of recovery, a quick reminder of the basic equation that governs all of training, for literally anything:

Victory Half Week 2 of 8

No stories this week, just a good old fashioned training log (and a few pretty pictures to keep you entertained). So far, so good! My main challenge right now is not getting over-enthusiastic and doing too much too soon just because I feel good. Trying to think ahead to April/May/June & how I want to be running then, which will require a slow-but-steady approach. 🐢🐌 (Also really nailing recovery! Which I'll try to talk more about next week.)

~*~*~ Victory Half Week 2 of 8 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 35 miles, all easy

Monday 1/9: 5.18 urban hiking! I felt good on Monday but didn't want to run because I was worried about increasing my running miles too quickly like I did in December. So instead I vigorously walked 5+ miles of these San Francisco hills, which pretty efficiently gets one's heart rate into the same range as easy running.

Yeah; I live here.

All-In On Recovery (Victory Half Week 1 of 8)

Technology is amazing, think of all the years I spent without a watch to let me know how tired I am. 🤣😭

So, starting in mid-2021, I decided to go all-in on injury prevention. Of course injury prevention is key for anyone making an effort to challenge themselves with their running and racing, but the older I get, the more clear it is that keeping all my parts strong and happy and bouncing back from what I ask them to do is going to take regular, systematic attention (vs. the whack-a-mole / catch-as-catch-can approach of my 20s and 30s).

Of course part of the reason I was never able to attack injury prevention with as much gusto as I would have liked in my younger years (especially 20s) has (like so many other things in life) to do with time and money. Not that I'm rolling in the dollah dollah bills now or anything, but one of the perks of getting older and further along in my career has meant that I do have more flexibility and control over my time than I used to, and a bit more expendable income. Even so, just a few years ago, I still did a lot of skimping around stuff like strength and body work and was constantly asking myself, "Geez, this stuff isn't cheap, is it really worth it?" 

And the conclusion I came to at age 40 (knowing that I have enough expendable income now to do it without being irresponsible) is "HELL YES, it's worth it." Because it's not just about being able to run the way I want to; it's also about just generally taking care of my various bones and muscles and joints so that I can be that old lady toodling happily around the track and living happily and independently well into my golden years.

This year's theme, I think, is shaping up to be recovery.