The Shamrock and Roll 5K on March 5th was the third race in my early spring season. Having run 25:07 at last month’s Run for Refugees 5K, I guessed that I could run about 30 seconds faster with better execution. Turns out I was right. I improved my time by 26 seconds from last month, running 24:41 at Shamrock and Roll. Now 26 seconds might not sound like a lot but that’s almost 9 seconds a mile.
Having run the Colchester Half Marathon the weekend before Shamrock in 20 degree temperatures and survived, I was feeling MUCH less fearful than before the Refugees 5K. I don’t want to jinx things. It’s possible my health issues have made me into a permanently more cautious person. But I really didn’t expect any post-race ER visit this time around and I also barely thought about it. That’s HUGE progress. Instead of worrying, I had a very chill evening the night before the race. VERY chill, as we bought tickets for a family trip to Iceland this summer! Whoa. More on that later, I’m sure. Iceland planning kept me up a little later than I’d have wanted, but not too bad and I got a decent night’s sleep.
I woke up the next day around 5:45am and got ready to go race. For my third race in about a month, I’ve got the routine down: Oatmeal, coffee, race outfit, change of clothes, fuel, etc. It’s even starting to feel normal to remember to have the Zipfizz and the Tums. I was on the road shortly after 7am, parked a couple of blocks from Toad’s Place, the bar that hosts the race, by 7:40, bib and t-shirt acquired by 8am. I met Prop Runner around 8:15 for a quick warm-up jog and some drills. I had time for one last porta-potty trip but unfortunately missed the team photo while I was in there!
The course is almost entirely a long straight out-and-back with a lollipop turn-around at the end. It’s also pretty flat. I can see why people run fast here! The start was different this year, but since I’d never done this race before, I didn’t really care about that. The starting chute was pretty narrow so I lined up closer to the front than I might have otherwise to avoid getting bogged down as happened at Refugees. That paid off.
Like Refugees, this is a JB Sports race. Race Director John Bysiewicz, who was hit by a car while cycling last November, is out of the hospital. This was his first race back. I got to know John a little bit when I was on the Board of Directors for the Middletown Road Race. He’s a classic race director personality – irascible, stubborn, detail oriented, and charming all at once. I was really overjoyed to see him. I don’t know him well enough to give him a hug, but I wanted to. Instead, I told him I was glad he was back and that I’d been praying for him.
Strangely, there was no national anthem or anything else. We just packed ourselves into the corral and the gun went off. I was walking when I crossed the starting line but I was able to start running pretty much right away, swerving a bit to find a path through the runners.
Pretty splits!
I’m still not looking at my watch at all when I race and it seems to be paying off. That first half mile sure is a leap of faith. On this day I told myself, remember “Control” is the name of the game here. You do want to be fast, but this shouldn’t be hurting yet. Trust yourself. You’ve run two good races this way. You know what you’re doing. If you’re way too fast or way too slow, it doesn’t matter. It’s just a 5K. I tried to focus on making it feel hard, but not crazy hard, not this early. During the first mile I passed a lot of people who had perhaps been too ambitious with their starting positions. Still, that always feels good. The first mile beeped and I resisted the temptation to peek. I remembered Coach Maverick’s advice: Focus. Keep the pedal down and pay attention.
Since this is largely an out-and-back, I knew I’d see the leaders soon. I cheered for my friends. What came out was not a full-throated cheer, but recognizable words for sure, not a croak! That’s massive vocal progress from last summer when I couldn’t speak at all while running. It’s still hard for me to talk in a loud bar and I struggled to make myself heard before and after the race. But I am holding onto that cheer as proof of progress. It was super fun to see a lot of other Manchester Running Company friends out on the course. Go team!
You can see the muscle tension in my throat in this picture. That’s the result of the thyroid surgery. It’s easy to see here why it might contribute to vocal fatigue!
As we approached the turnaround, Prop Runner passed me. We run together pretty often and I think we are fairly close in fitness right now. I considered trying to latch onto her and let her pull me along, but WOW, she was moving so smoothly. I decided to let her go and focus on my own project.
My own project for this race was to get more uncomfortable sooner and then stay there longer. I would say the last ¾ of a mile at Refugees was extremely unpleasant. But for a well-run 5K, you want at least the entire second half of the race to feel pretty bad, and maybe more of it than that. For this race, my main goal was to see if I could get back to pushing myself enough to feel that 5K suck. Mission accomplished. About halfway through that second mile, I started to get what I might call the “5K alarm bell.” It’s my body’s way of saying, this is too fast, you need to slow down, doesn’t walking seem like a good alternative? How about stopping? Stopping sounds great. My brain’s job is to ignore all that.
By halfway through that second mile, I was definitely wanting to walk. But – I was also wanting to push. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to race, and race well. Not just since thyroid surgery. But further back to the coaching confusion of early 2022 and the anger and fury of 2021. Now that I’m getting healthier and figuring out the mental side of racing again, walking feels less tempting. Not totally un-tempting – running fast is hard! But less tempting than in the past.
I ran past the second mile marker and the guy calling splits yelled out “You’re all going to break 25 minutes!” Having run 25:07 last time around, that was my time goal for this race for sure. I still wanted to walk but not as much as I wanted to break 25 minutes so that meant I had to hold onto this pace. John Bysiewicz also snapped into my mind again. I’ve called splits for him at races before. If John could show up with his prosthetic leg and his bossy race director attitude, the least I could do was hold onto this pace and break 25 minutes.
“All In!” was the motto for the last mile and I ran *hard*. I was sort of half counting, half listening to my music, mostly trying to see how much of the course was left. It felt like I was slowing down, but I kept pushing, telling myself, do your best, that’s all anyone can ask, including you. Rocky Raccoon was there yelling “Just one more corner” which was good to know. Finally I turned and there was the clock. I could see it ticking over 25 minutes, but I knew that was gun time and I might still make it! Done! I hung on a fence for a bit. My watch said 24:42, but actual time was 24:41! 26 seconds faster!
I caught my breath and found some MRC friends. Back at Toad’s, it was really much too loud, but they had donuts and ice cream and John Bysiewicz passing out awards so that was well worth it. We headed out shortly for the 12 Percent Beer project, which was much nicer.
Later that day, I had coffee with a friend who is also John’s cousin. She talked about how he is “so lucky”. The person who hit him with their car didn’t stop, but another driver saw the bike on the side of the road and circled back to see what was going on. That driver got there in time to call an ambulance and save John’s life. It would be easy to see John’s story as “unlucky” – it’s horrible to lose your leg in an accident like that. But he and his family have consistently spun it the other way: He was so lucky that other driver stopped. It makes you think. We don’t control our “luck” but we can control how we think about it.
