Fruit

Elsie, Betty, Mik, Santiago and I ran the Sue Kren 15K yesterday (although I beg to differ with the 15K notion...but more about that later). I also got to see Anne and Irene (yay for meeting up with fellow-bloggers!), both of whom have really excellent race reports already posted.

It was a beautiful morning for a run...cool (low '50's) but sunny....a little wind on the front side of Fiesta Island, which helped my then foggy sunglasses to clear.

Here's a really lousy outline of the route...trust me, we didn't walk on water or anything, there is a man-made peninsula called Fiesta Island in the middle of the bay.

I ran about 9.5 miles last weekend at the Silver Strand, so I thought this 9.3 mile jaunt wouldn't be that big of a deal. It's a pretty flat course, around Fiesta Island, then onto the path at East Mission Bay. The path has a lot of rolling hills, so it's a lot tougher than it looks. Last year, when I wasn't nursing the PF, or a (now) tender Achilles Tendon, or an achy hip, (whine, whine, whine), I ran it in 1:41:56 (10:56). This year, I finished in 1:50-ish (official times haven't been posted yet...) also, I'm waiting for a disclaimer that this year's race was longer than 15K. Garmin indicted that I ran 9.56 miles. Now I know that it's completely normal to run farther than the official race length, and even though I try to run the tangents, and the inside corners as much as possible, I think 1/4 mile more than the offical race length is a BIT MUCH. Also, I heard from Irene that others with Garmins and GPS devices were saying that they thought they had run farther too.

All things being equal, it was really just a training run with the SDTC, so it doesn't matter, really, how far it was...and I can do the math (well...the Garmin does the math now) and I know that last year, I was running about a 11 minute mile pace during this race, and this year I ran at about an 11:30 pace, so I know I was sloooooooower.

Here's the run-down (hahahahah)

Before race highlights - I played HefferVan driver and picked up both Betty at her house about about 5:50 and Elsie (who lives in the center of town, and nowhere near a freeway on-ramp or exit) at about 6:10. Elsie promised good stories about her 3rd date, so I was COMPLETELY WILLING to drive the extra way to get her (actually, I'd get her anyway). We were supposed to be at the race site by 6:15, but since I was picking up Elsie at 6:10, we were a tad late. That being said, we did get juicy details of the third date.

When we got to the race, I dropped off the girls so they could get their race bibs (oh, and thanks for getting mine for me BTW) and parked the car...as I was jogging back to the race (my warmup) I ran into the SDTC group warming up..NICE TIMING.

After the warm-up and stretching (turns out I probably didn't stretch enough)...GAH! I stood in line to use the RR, but decided to just forgo it because the line was too long and I thought I'd miss the start of the race (which I would have had I waited...GAH!)

The Sue Kren 15K is a pretty small field race, mostly track club members, but also some community peeps who wanna run 9.3 miles on a Saturday morning. It's all pretty low key. For example, there's no start gun. We basically just lined up and I'm sure someone yelled "go." But I didn't hear it. Of course I was talking to Irene, Anne, and everyone else around me at the time (gosh, I feel so popular at these things now!) so that's not surprising.

Miles 1 & 2 - After that low-key start, the first two miles of the race felt great, but I pretty much knew I'd started off waaaaay to fast. I'm a slow starter. I have NO PROBLEM running the first mile of 9 or 10 at a 12 minute mile pace...but since I wanted to hear more of Elise's Date 3 stories, I kept up. But for the first two miles, my breathing was out-of-sync with my running; I wasn't out of breath, really, but I wasn't breathing easily either. However, Elsie's stories made it worth it.

Also, still had to pee...GAH!

Mile 1 - 10:43

Mile 2 - 10:38

Miles 3 & 4 - The east side of Fiesta Island was windless and humid, so I took off my outer layer long sleeve shirt, and wiped the inside of my sunglasses which were literally dripping with sweat (GAH!). I really never like running on Fiesta Island for this reason. I knew the wind would pick up in the west side, which would clear the glasses, but running into wind is akin to running up a hill. That being said, the bay was BEAUTIFUL. I wish I'd brought the iPhone or a camera.

At about Mile 3, Elise pulled away. I figured she had many things to think about...all of which made her run really FAST... ahhh young love...she's got a new dude in her life so she's HIGHLY MOTIVATED and focused on the fruit*

Also, WTF was the first water station? Last year, I would check these things out ahead of time IN DETAIL. I thought it'd be around mile 2...turns out it was past mile 3 (probably at the 5K mark). I stretched there for a few seconds and I probably should have stretched for longer, but I felt pretty good and started running again when I saw Betty.

Still had to pee and while there were porta-potties, literally, every 100 yards or so, I didn't stop. MEH!

Mile 3 - 10:53

Mile 4 - 11:37 (see...I stretched for probably about 30 seconds, as this includes the water station, which I always walk through as I am utterly unable to run and drink at the same time)

Mile 5 - I started thinking about how last year, I would notice silly little things on my long runs, and I'd somehow remember them to blog about them later, and how this year, I haven't done as much of that since I'm so focused on my various aches and pains...so I tried, for awhile, to pay attention to what was going on around me, looking for funny things (you know, like broken bongs, or used condoms, both of which I might expect to see on the utility road on Fiesta Island). Unfortunately, I didn't see anything of note, just two headbands, and I feel sad about this, first, because I ALWAYS lose headbands when I run, and it pisses me off, and second, because there's really nothing funny I can say about headbands. Had I known at the time, I might have looked for fruit.*

Coming off the island after Mile 5, I still felt pretty good. I sorta dreaded getting off the asphalt utility road to the walking path as it is concrete and running on concrete just KILLS me right now.

I did wave to the photographer, so hopefully there'll be some really nice pix of all of us, but they hadn't been posted yet.

Also, the walking/running path on East Mission Bay is just a sidewalk. It's not as narrow as your typical neighborhood sidewalk, but it's pretty narrow at points. There were also a fair number of morning walkers on the path (it is a walkers path after all) AND we ran by a couple of children's playgrounds (can you stay strollers? and not the running kind), and (thank goodness) there was another water stop...In other words, it got sort of congested.

Mile 5 - 11:02

Miles 6, 7 & 8 - The last 1/3 of this race is an out and back, which means that around the 6th mile or so, we passed the finish line, then kept going for another couple of miles out, then back to the finish line. As we passed the finish, we started to see the runners who were headed back...which is always a little depressing to me. Also, around the finish, the race organizers wanted those who were going out to move to the left (in this country, don't we travel on the right side of the road?), which makes sense, since runners are exiting to the grass on the right, but then at some point, you need to move back to the right, or you're gonna run right into someone who is walking with a stroller...a little confusing. I wonder if this race isn't getting a little too large for the path...hmmmm...

Around mile 6, I got to see Santiago...who was running very well.

By about mile 7 or so, I couldn't hold it any longer...I had to pee, so I stopped, which didn't take much time off, per se, but in stopping, EVERYTHING GOT TIGHT, which was bad. I stretched a little more, but I could tell that my IT band, my achilles, and my calf were going to give me heck later on.

But the biggest issue is that there was some other track group with a bunch of REALLY LITTLE KIDS running a 1-mile route, with a turn around right in front of the next water stop. I nearly ran over a several of them who just flipped a U-Turn right in front of me. GAH!

Finally, a little past 7 miles, we reached the turn-around and headed back to the finish.

Mile 6 - 11:28
Mile 7 - 13:25 (see the potty, stretch stop really slowed me)
Mile 8 - 11:25

Mile 9 and then some - So, I was checkin' the Garmin along the way, and I could see that since about Mile 4, there had been about 1/10, and then by Mile 6, 2/10 difference between the Garmin and the mile markers. In other words, at Mile 4, Garmin said 4.10...and I thought, "OK, maybe I started it too soon at the start (but .10 of a mile? REALLY?)." But then, by mile 8, Garmin said 8.2 somethin' ...and I started thinking either I'm doing a shiz job of running the tangents or there's something amiss here. Then by Mile 9, G says 9.3-ish and I thought to myself, "SWEET GEEZ-US!" I've still got 3/10 of a mile to go, and not 1/10... WTF?

In all honesty, I was about done at that point anyway. Maybe I started too fast. Maybe I didn't stretch enough. Maybe running only one other day this week (on Tuesday with the track club) was taking it's toll, but I was DONE. So much so that I actually walked for a few seconds AFTER the 9 mile marker...until some kind guy from the track club looked at me and said (really nicely), come on, you can do it. You're almost there!

So I did, but it wasn't much fun...until I got to the end and saw Irene and Anne. That just rocked!

Mile 9 - 11:58
Mile 9.56 - 12:51 (which might be a little off because I always forget to stop my timer at the finish line...not that I knew where the finish line was...I kept running all the way into the shoot. I think Anne told me I could stop running and hand her the bib-tag).

Finish time - 1:50:29 (unofficial...they still haven't posted official results on the website)

Post-run Highlights - Rusty the PT was doing a talk about, well, PT stuff. He'd told me the day before (Friday) when I went to see him that he was going to hand me the microphone so that I could tell eveyone what I do during a long run (stop and stretch occassionally, although I would have been a piss-poor, good model yesterday) to deal with my PF, but he was running out of time (thank goodness). However, he did spot me and "voluntold" me to be a tendon in a human version of muscle, bones, and tendons. (I was a tendon...I think).

Then Elsie, Betty and I went to World Famous for breakfast and mimosas...which is when we decided that for all future references to Date Three activities would be referred to as "fruit."

I have no idea why. It was Elsie's idea. At first Betty and I were doubtful about the usefulness or appropriateness of the reference (Fruit? Really? Fruit? That won't work...). But the seed had been planted (both literally and figuratively apparently), thus we managed to spend the rest of breakfast and the subsequent drive home afterward coming up with all sorts of double-entrendres for fruit, all of which will make my next trip to the grocery store highly entertaining.

Just wait until the next time you are in the produce ailse and you see melons, or kiwi, or kumquats, or canned fruit cocktail in light syrup...you'll giggle too.

And to think...last year at Sue Kren, all I learned about was where to put the Glide...

*Fruit = Sex