I was going to Chicago for a bat mitzvah with my wife and younger son, and found online this race, scheduled for the morning after the festivities. I’d never raced an 8k before, and imagined this as a small community event. In fact, over 23,000 people showed up!
I was determined not to get precious about this race; I was doing this for the heck of it, modeled after cousin Rob Falk’s casual, multi-race style; but of course I always want a PR and decided on two goals: given my recovery from a very slow and injurious marathon in November and my 7:36 average at the half marathon only two weeks ago, 37:30 minutes (7:30 minute/mile) was realistic, and 35 minutes was a reasonable fantasy.
I was more nervous about what to wear – we had seen two brief blizzards on Saturday, and Sunday morning was predicted to be 35 degrees. I settled on tights, short sleeve shirt, long sleeve shirt, garbage bag vest to tear off pre-race, two sweatshirts to throw away, and a baseball cap. (By mile 3, the tights were a little warm – finally, I’m ready for that plunge into shorts in the fall.)
Based on my lower expectations, I realized when I arrived at my assigned corral that most of the runners around me were solid, experienced runners, but not so fast. They were NOT shooting for 7 minute miles. And I realized, instead of taking off like a gunshot to keep up with the guys shooting for a stellar time; instead of running someone else’s race; instead of nailing the first two or three miles and limping the rest of the race; THIS was going to work for me: starting with a slower group; speeding up; and PASSING people instead of getting passed.
It’s much better for my morale.
Coach Debi (a consistent character in these stories…) had given sage advice – only surprising, of course, because I actually followed it: “Don’t look at your watch. Start smooth and get faster.” I was a little out of breath as I started, settled into being body-aware of my form, settled with my breath, felt my heart rate was comfortable and I was still smiling, and started pushing off harder. Just a little “Benji surge” – like moving up from 8.0 to 8.1 on the Richter scale of running. After around 2 miles, I settled into a group that was fitting my pace, and I cheated: when my watch vibrated to announce I had completed a mile, I glanced to make sure it was still running, and damn, but I just did a 6:58. Sub-7. Nice.
Now, back to work.
That guy in the white shirt and green suspenders (a LOT of green shirts in this crowd!) was getting almost a block ahead, and the younger guy in the black Shamrock Shuffle shirt from a prior year was consistently within reach, and I toyed between running MY race and enjoying the pursuit – “there’s my bunny” (whipping around the race track…).
The skyline was pretty, it wasn’t too cold, I kept checking in (“am I having fun? Hmm, I guess so. Nice tall buildings…”) and when I sometimes felt too comfortable, increased the power of my push off. Briefly hit some headwinds, then turned a corner and felt like the wind was at my back. I’d been warned that the last mile had a so-called “hill”, and glad for the warning- nothing steep, especially compared to the ridiculous terrain where I live, more like a ramp up a bridge, and then a mile to go, and I feel like throwing up (so I am pretty certain this is my maximum), trying to pick up that push off, then turn a corner and the inflatable finish line is in sight and a guy on the sidelines, clearly a coach, grimly calls out, “400 meters to go”, and I can do that, I pour on whatever is left and pick up the turnover and manage to smile at the camera as I cross the line!
35:16. That is, 7:06 per mile. Among my fastest averages and, given that it’s my first 8k, a PR (no matter what I did)! I will take it to the bank, thank you. And in the future, I am starting in a corral slower than wherever I’m assigned.