Finally a race I am really happy about!! A post-surgery half marathon PR! (Five seconds, but I will take it) but more than that, a race where I felt really good!
Let me back up a minute.
New Bedford Half attracts a fast field. It’s a great tune-up race for Boston and it’s the USATF-New England half marathon championship race. I’ve run it once before in 2022. I had three main thoughts about that 2022 edition. First, I ran 1:52 and was disappointed. Little did I know – that was my last half marathon before thyroid surgery and I should have been celebrating! Never take a healthy starting line for granted. Second, I was having a lot of struggles with running at the time, but on a foggy day, I ironically found some mental clarity staring at the yellow lines and the cones in the loop out near the shore. That was a breakthrough to better racing subsequently. Third, Mervus and Rose came along with me and we all really enjoyed New Bedford.
This time around, I was using New Bedford as a prep race for London. My family was willing to come along and I was so grateful for their company!
Training for London had been going pretty well. Then a few days after the Colchester Half, I started feeling icky. Sore throat, congestion, watery eyes. We have a drawer full of Covid tests and boom, positive. Ugh. I’ve heard so many stories of runners who struggled to come back from Covid. But, I got lucky. A few days off, a few days of easy running, and eight days after the positive test, I started to feel more like myself. Twelve days after the positive test, I ran 18 miles and felt really good. Ok, game back on again!
I was more targeted with my pre-race mental prep for New Bedford than I had been for other races this spring and it paid off. I did a quick session with the sports psychologist I’ve worked with before. We talked about running fast while feeling sad. The idea of “being where your feet are.” But I suspect more than anything, I just needed dump my feelings out for an hour because I felt a lot better after our session.
ChrisNewCoach and I had a really great talk and he had excellent advice, some practical and some inspirational. From a practical perspective, we agreed on 8:45 as a goal pace. He recommended that I get splits rather than run by feel. I wrote down protocols for arrival, warm up and fueling. He said not to worry about the hill at mile 12 – the race is almost over by that point. He noted that if I ran the last 200 meters of the race in 50 seconds, which we know I can do, that I could shave 10-15 seconds off my time. It’s worth it to kick!
That was all great advice, but it was something else he said that really stuck with me: “I want you to hold yourself accountable out there.” Oof. Yeah. Different versions of this might be “Don’t take the deal” and “Define yourself” but this time around, “Hold yourself accountable” became the phrase of the race.
Race morning, I woke up at 5:45am, aiming for a 7:15am departure. Here’s what I did for fueling:
6:15am: Oatmeal (1/2 cup dry) plus chia seeds plus maple syrup plus ½ apple plus very small banana for breakfast. Threw in banana because it was on its last legs. [Do bananas have legs?] Regular meds (.25 calcitriol, 1000 Vit D, 600mg Citracal) plus Zipfizz electrolyte drink.
8:30am [in the car]: ½ peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
9:30am [arrival]: ½ peanut butter and jelly sandwich. 1500mg sodium drink from Precision Fuel and Hydration. I FORGOT to bring calcium!! Luckily I have back-up packets in my running bag so also: 1000mg powdered calcium.
Mile 4: Maurten gel plus 1 Tums.
Mile 8: Maurten gel plus 1 Tums.
Finish line: 1 Tums and 250mg sodium tab. I had planned to take sodium tabs during the race but couldn’t figure out how to swallow them while running. Something to practice!
For London, I’ll add a 360 Maurten drink so I will have to practice timing of that. I’m back to using Tums mid-race because I was choking on the calcium chews. I’m planning to tape a Tums and a sodium tab to every gel, but then alternate which I take. If you’re an athlete with hypoparathyrodism and you want to chat, please send me a DM. Happy to talk.
We had planned to leave at 7:15am, but actually left at 7:30am and then had to stop for gas. We arrived at 9:40am. Better than last time, but even earlier would be better. There’s a lot of traffic! We scooted over to the YMCA for bib and shirt pick-up. I found Badass Boomer and left a bag in the locker room.
I was doing my dynamic warm up by 10:30am. I had time for a short jog, dynamic stretches and strides before heading to the corral. I found Mervus and Rose. I was only in the corral about 8 minutes before they fired the gun and off we went.
One of my process goals was to not start too fast, but wow is that hard to do! Even feeling incredibly easy, when I looked at my watch, it said 8:10. Yikes. 8:45 is goal pace and I was hoping for no faster than 8:50 for this first mile! I tried to slow down, but next time I checked, I was still around 8:10. Finally settled into 8:45 and first mile beeped at 8:35. Second mile just rolled along, still feeling really easy: 8:37.
I’ve been working on my running form. This has been a FOREVER project. I know my form is janky. I know I have almost no knee drive. I know my heel doesn’t come up and therefore the pendulum of my leg is longer than would be efficient. I’ve known all of this for years, but I haven’t figured out how to fix it. Eight days before the race, I discovered a website called The Balanced Runner and I’ve been practicing their form cues ever since. The form check became a kind of consistent background noise: Check arm swing, elbows bent enough, swing like the pirate boat ride, relax shoulder blades, form of a relaxed C, knee-to-elbow, knee-to-elbow-knee-to-elbow [this is the big one!], breathe from the belly. Repeat. A lot. Over and over.
Mile 3 and especially mile 4 are climbing miles. I’m running London as a fundraiser for the Organization for Autism Research (OAR). Autistic people go through life kind of running up hill metaphorically. The world is just a little bit harder for them, or sometimes a lot harder. All the time. Not just on this puny little hill. I can get up this hill. Near the top, someone yelled “Go Autism!” I almost teared up!
I knew my family would be here somewhere and I found them around mile 5. I was SO happy to see them. Now I did tear up. I smiled and waved and gave them the hands-as-heart sign. I wanted to say hey, this is going well! But I didn’t want to stop. Mervus called out “Elbows!!” and he said later that I looked totally different from how I usually look. By now, I knew I was having myself a day. I was working for sure, but every time I glanced down at my watch, it said 8:40 or 8:45. Or sometimes 8:30 or 8:35. The first mile felt good. You expect that. The second mile felt good, also normal. But I was up and over the biggest hill now, looking at a long descent and feeling good.
Often in a race we run around the same people, maybe for quite a while. There was a guy with red-white-and-blue zigzag shorts at this race. Someone was running barefoot in flowy brown pants, carrying a pair of boots. Someone else had a green shirt with a big zero on the back.
But then there was the woman I’m calling Joanie. Short grey hair and a cap, like Joan Benoit Samuelson, wearing lilac and blue and singlet that said Liberty down the back. She was not just in my vicinity. We were often quite close together and after mile 4 or so, frequently side-by-side. Anyone watching might have assumed we were friends, running mile after mile, stride for stride. We didn’t exchange a single word. When I checked my watch, I worried the pace was too fast, but I really wanted to stay with Joanie. My breathing felt fine and the miles ticked off. Occasionally I’d try to dial it back but then I’d end up next to her again. It was pretty damn awesome.
By mile 7 we were on flat ground, along the shore, and the wind really kicked up. In 2022 it had been so foggy that we couldn’t see the water. This year we had beautiful views! But, So. Much. Wind. I’d had a gel and a Tums at mile 4 as planned. As we rolled into the water stop just before mile 8, I pulled out another gel. I figured I would lose Joanie at this point – I was working and she looked so strong! But she also slowed at the water stop, took a gel, and got a good drink. Miles 8 and 9 were the toughest of the race. Splits here were 8:49 and 8:50.
With four miles to go, we turned and the wind abruptly dropped. ChrisNewCoach had said he wouldn’t be surprised if I got here and discovered I had more to give. After two straight miles of fighting that wind, I had expected to be exhausted. Instead I discovered he was right. I could pick it up! So I did! Hold yourself accountable!
Swing the arms. Relax the shoulders. Elbow-knee, elbow-knee. Breathe. Repeat. “God of the Impossible” came on my playlist and I thought, oh, this is a very good day. I started counting, up to 100 and back down. Mile 10 done. 8:23! And feeling good! I was passing people now. Quite a lot of people! More counting. Mile 11 done! 8:30! I couldn’t wait to get to the last hill because then we would be almost done. One more flat mile, mile 12, 8:37. Hold yourself accountable. Arms. Relax. Elbow-knee. Breathe. Count. I thought I had lost Joanie, but she showed up and passed me near the bottom of the hill. God, she’s tough. Then, go with her. Chase her up the hill. You have nothing to lose at this point!
I didn’t catch her but I stayed close. I knew there was a downhill and I’m quick on downhills, but so was she! Still didn’t catch her. Now I was confused because the course map said the hill was the end, but we were not running the right direction to hit the finish line. I wondered, did they move the finish line mid-race? Even to my hazy end-of-the-race brain, that seemed not very likely. Bottom of the hill, right turn, oof, still a stretch to go.
But then, remember what ChrisNewCoach said. Treat the last 200 meters like it’s the track. You can gain up to 15 seconds at the end. Those end-of-workout 200s I’ve been doing feel sooo terrible, but I called on that feeling now and kicked as hard as I could. Last .18 miles at 7:29 pace! My watch said 1:54:10!! Boom!
As per usual, I grabbed the first available fence post-finish line and just hung there for a few minutes. Then I made my way down the chute and found Mervus and Rose and pretty much started crying. Then I found Joanie! It turns out she is also a professor! I hope we can run together again some day!
This race meant so much to me. It’s obviously been a really long road. The pandemic. All my anger and confusion. Surgery. Calcium weirdness. Atrial fibrillation. A little basal cell carcinoma on the side. But today was glorious. A beautiful hard run in the sun and the wind, feeling strong, discovering what this body can do. The one I have right now.
Mervus had baked goods for me at the finish line. Seriously best husband ever. We found Badass Boomer and had some post-run snacks before heading out. Celebration dinner at the Blackbird, as usual, followed by lovely Irish music at home for a cozy ending to a fantastic day.
Thanks for supporting autism!!!