The Spontaneous 5K

In the onthebusrunning household, I think my wife would agree that I’m usually the one driving the race calendar. So earlier in the week, my ears perked up when I heard her call out to me from the kitchen, "Want to run a 5K this Friday night?"

Like my dog, Mattie, after she hears the word "out," my head cocked to the side and I bee-lined it for her.

"A race?"
"Yeah, Crystal City is doing a Friday Night 5K race series and the next one is this Friday."

Five minutes and $40 later (for the both of us), we had entered.

It's been so long since I've laced up and run a 5K, that I forgot about the sheer delight of it. The last 5K I ran came at the end of a 17 mile training run that I timed with the start of the race so I could ensure that I really made it a "fast finish" long run.

Sure, a 5K can hurt like hell, but what race can't? The pain, however, is so short-lived compared to the multiple hours of toil that go into, say, anything from a ten miler to 26.2.

The thought of a race being over in 3.1 miles sounds blissful. Plus, you can hop into a 5K and still want (and be able to) go running the next day without being any worse for wear, unlike the weeks of marathon recovery before you finally feel like your old self again.

Even better, we're using the race as a rendez-vous point. Several of us will converge on Crystal City (subbing Breakfast Club for Supper Club), do the race, grab some dinner, then my friend will drive home with us and spend the night before we hit the road for Boston tomorrow morning.

Before we pulled the trigger on the registration, I gave a quick glance over to the fridge at my training calendar and noticed the word "OFF" as my Friday workout. And the 5K comes on the heels of a 3x2mi interval session last night.

Eh, what the hell...it's only 3.1 miles. Here's to being spontaneous.

A Long Way for Three Miles

The sun had started to go down but the volume of traffic had not. I came to a slow trot before a full stop at the light that marked one mile. The air had a familiar chill to it even though it had been unseasonably warm the past few weeks. I couldn’t help but notice that I normally wrapped up my runs when the sky glowed orange like this from the disappearing sun, but this time I was only just beginning.

I went through my normal interval warm up: some dynamic stretching and drills, only suddenly self-conscious as the light turned from green, to yellow, and finally red. There were some odd glances, some pointing, and some not so discreet smiles. I’m sure the short-shorts and singlet didn’t help. I suddenly missed the safety of the track where the leg swings and butt kicks don’t raise an eyebrow. I cursed the local high schools as I did B-skips and realized just how ridiculous B-skips look to the non-runner.

And then, as always after all the warming up, there was only one thing left to do: the workout. I clicked my watch and took off against traffic hitting 5:30 pace as the cars zoomed by…but that’s not how it was supposed to go.

You see, an hour and fifteen minutes before, I’d thrown my bag and water bottle into the car and set off for my local track, a private school just down the road plastered with “No Trespassing” signs. In the past, I’ve operated by the “look like you belong” strategy, whether that means as a high school student or teacher. Either way, it’s served me well. I pulled in to the parking lot and replayed the workout in my head: 400m-800m-1200m-1200m-800m-400m all at around 10K pace with the back end of the ladder faster than the front end.

I walked through the crowd of baseball fans, careful not to make eye contact with anyone. I did the same walking by the tennis courts and the lacrosse field and finally I came to the track. Occupied. Hurdlers. *gasp!* How dare they! I thought. I did an about face and walked back to the car and decided which public high school to drive to in the paralyzing suburban D.C. traffic.

I settled on one I thought would make for an easy “commute home.” I pulled in and drove around to the back, rolling by to scope things out. Girls lacrosse and track practice. Curses! Don’t these kids have homework?

Frustrated, I pulled out of the lot and started heading back toward my house, trying to figure out where I could find a relatively flat stretch of road to run intervals on. In my haze, I drove right by my exit. After I laced together a string of profanity, I hopped on the highway and went to the other track. When I pulled in, not only were there games going on, but smoke poured from a grill and a girl sat behind a desk selling tickets.

More profanity.

When I finally arrived back at my house, 75 minutes had gone by since I first set out. It didn’t escape me that it took longer to actually start the workout than it would have to complete the damn thing. I flirted with skipping it altogether but knew I’d spend the rest of the night and probably most of the next day in self-loathing.

So, that’s how I found myself on the flattest part of West Ox Road I could find. Over the course of a .6 mile stretch, I ran up and back and up and back with the beeps of my watch signaling another interval completed until finally it was time to make the one mile cool down back home.

It was a long way to go for just three miles of intervals.

The Hill

“I have a route for us,” my friend Rohan said to me a couple weeks ago. He had an ominous tone in his voice that indicated this route was for pain, not for pleasure. “It’s definitely a two-person job.”

Once calendars cleared, we lined up last Saturday morning as the day we would make our assault on Defense Highway. Not many trails put that twinge of nervousness in my stomach, but there was something about the way Rohan described the hills on this seven mile stretch that left me a touch uneasy. His wife only confirmed it for me when I arrived at their house. We pulled our gear together and she said, “Call me when you’re done. I want to know that you’re alive.”

My face fell. “What have you gotten me into?”

We piled into our cars and I followed Rohan to what would become the finish, where we would leave my car. I surveyed the road wondering if in fact I’d be chuffing up these monstrous hills that my car groaned on. We pulled into a parking lot. I grabbed my gear and locked the car.

“We’re not climbing that hill back there, are we?” I asked. He laughed.

“No,” he paused. “Worse.”

Rohan pulled out of the parking lot and his Honda Pilot began to descend. In fact, we joked that he could have put the car in neutral and ridden the brake the entire way down. I made mental notes along the way, spying landmarks to check off. The road made wide curves and sharp descents. The two lane road winding through budding woods and dividing marshy ponds reminded me of running along the shoulders of New Hampshire roads.

We arrived at the parking lot and began stretching. I went to trade my sandals for Asics only to realize that I’d left my shoes in my car back at the top. So, we made the trek one more time and got to glimpse the route from bottom to top.

Fifteen minutes later, we both got quiet, resigned to the task ahead of us. The lights changed, we clicked our watches, and began.

We moved at an easy pace as the wind kicked up in our face and the cars zoomed by our shoulders. Rohan had zipped on a reflective vest to help stand out. I ran just off his left shoulder. The road began a gentle climb that made our breathing just audible enough to hear and let you know you were indeed working. Just when we’d become comfortable, the road disappeared behind a curve. As we approached it, it pitched steeply upward and the conversation halted while we minced our steps and fought off the strain in our quads.

For the first two miles, we alternated those steep climbs with what felt like plateaus but in reality were steady inclines. We came through a stoplight and gas station that I noted would be a brief reprieve.

We overtook a man speed walking with urgency along the trail.

“Looking good,” we tossed to him.

He waved and put his head back down.

Then as we neared mile 3, something strange happened. We hit that glorious moment where you suddenly feel as though you can run forever. That no matter how hard or fast you push, you won’t be able to do any damage.

It was clear that we were working but the conversation flowed as easily as our strides. The sun warmed us as the trees disappeared for a spell and opened up to a lily-pad-covered pond.

Rohan glanced at his wrist, then over at me. “What does your watch say?”

I looked down and did a double take.

“6:36. Whoa! You?”

“Same. When did that happen?”

At six miles, we could feel the finish. There was a dull ache in my quads as we forged ahead. The road rose steadily in front of us and didn’t quit. Some of that early confidence faded and we both made note aloud that we had two more bends to make it around before the finish. Our breathing grew louder but the apex came into a view.

“To. The light.” I said.

“Ok.”

We pushed on to the stoplight and came to a halt. Hands on our heads, we made the slow walk back to the car exchanging fist bumps and sucking down on our water bottles.

Satisfied with the effort of having conquered "the hill," we did the one thing left to do, we went for breakfast.

Backyard Burn Trail Series (Finale), Fountainhead - Redux

Some of the BYB Survivors.

“Pretty much from the time we got off the road to the finish, I was in oxygen debt,” a man, clearly fatigued, said to his equally weary friend.

I nudged my dad as we watched the other runners come through the chute. “Did you hear that?” I asked, turning tired eyes toward him. “That’s how it was.”

Going into the fourth and final Backyard Burn Trail Series race, I took comfort in the fact that I could opt out of the race and still finish second overall. But it did little to calm my nerves, not on the course billed as the hardest and most technical. Not after winning the last two outright.

All week, I kept this race near the front of my mind yet felt altogether Zen about it…until 6:00 Sunday morning. I opened my eyes, glanced at the clock, and felt a surge of energy shoot through me. Whoa, whoa! I pleaded with myself. There’s still an hour to sleep. But it was no use.

With several friends running the race, I spent the 30 minutes before the gun chatting and joking around, which helped to take the edge off. At 9:00, however, there was still a race to be run.

“Ten seconds,” the director called. My fingers flickered at my sides. You could feel the anticipation moving through the pack in jittery arms and bouncing bodies. I alternated glances at the other runners I’d come to know so well over the past four weeks and the dreary sky above us. Then the siren blared. Then we bolted.

We entered into the familiar dance of the past four weeks. Ten of us bolted to the front and began to jockey for position, some burning off adrenaline and quickly realizing they could not sustain the pace, others driving the pace harder, and me, just trying to go with them.

The first .6 miles climbed the park’s paved road. I wanted to separate myself from as many five milers as possible and eliminate the awkward business of trying to pass on single track.

A blue-shirted runner caught up to his friend and said, “Hey! Yeah, I’m just running the five today.” I took careful note of him and wove my way through two runners to get ahead of him before we hit the trail.

The pack strung out into a neat single file line as we descended into the woods. The trees created a narrow corridor that made our road pace feel suddenly reckless and thundering. I fought to hold the pace and my form as I dodged roots, rocks, and potholes. A stray arm shot out here, an awkward foot plant there. I could feel my heart beating in the white flashes at the corners of my eyes.

We came to the farthest point of the loop and began our way back to the road. I took a moment to look up and see the ridgeline high above us. We had some climbing to do. Behind me, I’d gapped the blue shirt but the same had happened ahead of me. Per usual, I ran alone.

The final podium.

Mercifully, I hit the top of the road, waved off the water station volunteers, and crossed over to the next segment of trail, happy to see the “3 miles to go” sign.

Thanks to a friend of mine, I had some inkling of what awaited me. He’d gone and run much of the course the day before and shown me the elevation profile, which looked like a heart attack.

I spent the next two miles rocketing down steep declines and picking away at the seemingly steeper inclines. My ankles twisted and rolled sending scree tumbling down the hills behind and in front of me. I kept blue shirt behind me and used the switchbacks to get a glimpse of how far back (or close) he’d come. I used the white shirt ahead of me to gauge whether the trail rose or fell.

Each uphill felt hard enough to nearly bring me to a hike while the downhills were never quite long enough to recover before having to climb again.

At four points, a stream cut across the trail. My friend and I noted two on his map from the day before so when the third and fourth crossings came, I swore having to figure a way across them. My mind couldn’t map out a route along the rocks fast enough so all four times I went anywhere from ankle to calf deep in the stream, leaving me to tamp out the water as I started to climb.

With less than a mile to go, the trail curved around and ran alongside the river. We had marked this area as a relatively flat part to lead me to the finish. So, with a grin, I opened up my stride and prepared to accelerate the last 600m. Except the straight away turned abruptly and I faced another staggering climb.

The air blew ragged from my lungs. A cemetery came up on my right and I hoped I wouldn’t end up there. Then I saw the blue finish chute and my running partner urging me on. I summoned whatever was left and crossed the finish. Two other runners bent over the picnic table just beyond the chute.

I took third overall and third in my age group for the final race, reinforcing my belief that the 30-39 age group is the hardest to place in.

When all was said and done, I finished first for the series earning a sweet Patagonia bag and another "first place" pint glass, which I promptly used to pour the last of my four-pack into later last evening.

Cheers!

No Rest for the Weary

After the last repeat, following the final click on my watch, when I stopped long enough for the humidity to cling to me and the sweat to raise on my slick skin, I could call it finished.
But, oh, how it seemed like this moment might never come! I toiled around the oval in an endless limbo of ragged breaths, straining muscles, and negotiations. Going to the edge, peering over it, pulling back.

I put my hands on my hips and took one final deep breath and walked back to my things, a haphazard pile of clothes, keys, and water bottles. I swapped out my racers for sandals and in the background, baseball fans murmured at the clink! of a pitch being swatted into the outfield. I sat for a moment and thought about how rare these moments can be, the ones after a good, hard run where the tingle of adrenaline lingers, the colors in the sky appear sharper, and you feel delightfully empty.

Of course, you usually have to crawl through hell to get there.

Thirty minutes earlier, I cinched the laces tight on my racers and tossed my t-shirt over the sandals. I began a slow trot around the track doing math in my head and trying to spot any deer grazing along the edge of the woods. A light rain fell over the field, and though the eastern sky looked ominous, the sun peeked through in the west.

After my fourth lap, steam rose from the track and I walked over to lane four to do some drills before committing to the workout. I recently read an article in Running Times about doing “floating” workouts on the track. In other words, there’s a short recovery between intervals where you float, say, 100 meters. It’s not a traditional recovery jog, but rather a slightly faster spell at about half marathon-marathon pace. My dad used to tell me about running 30/40s, or a 30 second 200 followed by a “floating” 200 at 40 seconds.

The workout today was 3-4 sets of 1200m-400m- @10K/5K pace where the hyphens are 100m floats at half marathon pace. After each set, you do a 200m jog…then start all over again. I decided 10K pace would be 5:45 so a 1200 comes out to 4:18, while 5K pace would be 5:35 or about a 1:23, 400.

With nothing left to do, I took one more shot of water, lined up, and clicked the watch. On the first lap, the pace was controlled, the motions fluid. I came through the first lap in 1:24...too fast, but comfortable and decided to lock into that pace. When the third lap came around, I went about preparing myself to not come to a screeching halt when I crossed the line but to, well, float through and keep the momentum going. I barreled down the last stretch, clicked my watch, saw the “4:08” shrugged and kept moving…there was more work to be done. The final 400m proved slightly crueler mentally because where I normally would only have 200m to go, I had 300 to cover. I concentrated on slingshotting around the curve and keeping my feet under me. When I finished the 400, I slipped into half marathon pace for that final 100m float and smiled at the “1:19” on my watch.

Consistency, I preached on those merciful yet too quick 200m. Don’t blow up the workout.

But on the final lap of the second interval, I had 10 seconds to spare and continued to push the pace. The afternoon sun was naked in the sky and bore down upon me. I cleared the wads of spit from my throat as I blasted around the final curve of that 400. The second set read: 4:07/1:20. I grabbed a swig of water to wash my mouth out then set about tackling the third set.

The sun cooked the track into a humid soup. I had the sense on the backstretch of every lap that the finish line seemed so far and I was incredibly lonely back there. I pushed on and felt a quivering in my hamstrings. A foot would scrape its partner’s calf and I’d curse to get myself under control. Be still, I thought trying to quiet the noise in my head. I fought for a 4:06/1:20 third set. The negotiation began on the 200m recovery.

The schedule called for 3-4 sets. You could call it here…or you could forge on and know you’ll be stronger for it… And on it went until about 20m left. I clicked reset...then start and took off behind the goal posts.

The effort felt harder, but the pace was even, and in fact, it felt smoother than number three. The sun disappeared for a moment bringing a merciful reprieve. I’m going to hate the summer, I thought before refocusing.

After my final 100m float, I did come to that screeching halt I tried to avoid on set one so many laps and minutes ago. I sucked in the thick afternoon air and waited for my breathing to return to normal to really appreciate it. Set four: 4:06/1:19.

I swung the backpack over my shoulders and sipped liberally from my water bottle. I could feel the coolish liquid running down my stomach. It felt good.