A Tale of Two Races: Shamrock’n Half-Marathon Report

I’ve never had a race quite like this one before, even though today’s Shamrock’n Half-Marathon was my 11th half-marathon. It was wonderful and awful, greatly encouraging and terribly disappointing, well-executed and gone horribly astray, all in the same race.

I made myself a huge bowl of gemelli bolognese last night, and went to bed early. The race didn’t start until 8 a.m. at Raley Field, the home of our minor league baseball team, but they were expecting more than 4,000 runners and there are only two roads that lead to the stadium. I got up at 5 a.m., went through my usual routine, had coffee plus a bagel with peanut butter, and off I went.

I got there around 6:30, and snoozed in the car until 7:30. I ate a small box of raisins, and I was carrying a 24 ounce bottle of diluted Gatorade and a single Power Gel for the race. I thought I was pretty well fueled, but those who have been reading me for a while will notice I didn’t have any “bad” sugars. Looked like I had plenty of carbs in the tank, though.

The race started on time and though the sky was overcast and threatening, the temperature was perfect and it did not rain. The organizers provided pacers for every 10 minutes from 1:30 to 2:30. I went out slow and steady, and had the 1:50 guy in my sights. I figured anything between 1:49 and 1:52 was right about where I should be at this stage.

The course was mostly flat, and despite all the turns, there were only a couple that were problematic. A hairpin turn with a large field  can be pretty dangerous if you’re not careful. I nearly got bowled over by a guy in a kilt.

To make a long story a little shorter, I hit mile 9 at 1:15:43 – a pace of 8:24. That pace was better than any of the long training runs I did for the race. Through the entire distance, I felt good, with no problems at all. It looked like I had a sub-1:50 in the bag.

“Hitting the wall” means you have depleted your energy, and of course I’ve hit the wall before, but I always got that “low fuel” light first, where my pace deteriorates over a couple of miles before falling apart. No warning this time. I went from feeling fine to losing all desire to run in the space of a half-mile.

I had been sipping my Gatorade every mile, and took my Power Gel at mile 7, but today it didn’t make a bit of difference. I slowed considerably, and despite the help from a training partner trying to urge me on, I started walking. For the last four miles, I would walk for two minutes, run until I couldn’t stand it anymore, then repeat the cycle.

It helped that Raley Field came into view about 3/4-mile from the end, so I sucked it up and kept running. My coach spotted me about 1/4 mile from the end and asked, “How are you feeling?” I shouted, “Awful!” and laughed. The final stretch of the race brings you into the stadium through an opening in the center field fence, and you run around the warning track down the third base side, while they show you on the Jumbotron. It’s pretty cool.

No official time yet, but I stopped my watch at 1:57:01 – an average 8:55 pace, which isn’t awful, but it means it took me 41:18 to cover that last 4.1 miles – a 10:04 pace. How’s that for positive splits?

I was more bummed running the last few miles than I was afterwards. The ammonia stink made it obvious I was in ketosis, despite all the food, gel and Gatorade. I felt a lot better once I had a couple of Fig Newtons in me. It was pretty easy to put it in perspective. Clearly, I wasn’t prepared to run a half-marathon, and I’m still wrestling with whether I should eat what actually works, or what’s supposed to work, and how much. Fueling is a big problem for me.

At the same time, I ran a perfectly fine nine miles, and if the race had ended there, or even at 10 miles, I would have been thrilled with how it turned out.

I’ve got another half-marathon scheduled in six weeks, but maybe I should concentrate on shorter distances until I can comfortably run my target pace. Next up is the Nutrition Fuels Fitness 10k in two weeks. How timely.