Extremely short version:

15 miles of hot, hilly, and humid.  1:46:55.  22/520 overall.  1st 50-54 male AG.  Just shoot me now because this is the most miserable I have ever been.

Ridiculously long version:

In March, I was diagnosed with a stress fracture.  I missed nearly two months of running and only started doing hard workouts around the first of August.  Entering this race, I knew my fitness was decent but didn't really know what I might be capable of doing.  But, I buy into the "show up and give yourself a chance" philosophy so I did just that.

This was the 42nd (I think) iteration of the Charleston Distance Run.  It's run on Labor Day weekend.  It's a 15 mile race and NOT a half marathon (trust me, that makes a huge difference).  It has over 1,000 feet of elevation change.  (And that makes a huge difference as well).

Last Sunday, I had a great confidence building workout.  6 miles easy + 3 miles @ marathon pace + 3 miles @ tempo pace.  I cranked the final mile close to 6:20 and felt great.  Wednesday, I went out for an easy jog and it was flipping miserable with the humidity.  Thursday, the temperature was very nearly the same as Wednesday but the humidity was low and it felt completely different.  That set my race strategy.  I thought, "if it's like Wednesday, I'll go out conservatively and then see if I have any gas in the tank at Mile 10."  "If it's like Thursday, I'll go out hard and then just try to hang on."

Race day dawned and it was 73 degrees with 95% humidity at the start.  No clouds.  Worse than Wednesday.  So, I decide to go out like a bat out of hell and see how long I last before I crash.  And I know I'll crash.  The only question is how hard I'll crash.  But, my thinking is that this isn't a marathon and if I give up 2-3 minutes early, it's only going to get hotter as the day wears on and there is no way I'll make up that kind of time.  Oh yeah.  The course.

The first two miles are dead flat.  The next mile goes over a really steep bridge and back down the other side.  At Mile 3.7, you see a sign that says, "Capital Punishment Hill Begins."  I have a tradition of giving the sign the middle finger as I pass.  Roughly 3/4 of a mile and 325 feet later you see a sign that says, "Capital Punishment Hill Ends."  I hit that damn thing as hard as I can.  To the extent you think you are done, you are dead ass wrong.  You still have over 200 feet of climbing left and some of it is really, really steep.  It's short but it's steep enough to make you want to cry.  Or walk.  Or both.  You then have nearly a mile of downhill just to beat the hell out of your quads.  Then, just as the sun is coming out in full force, you turn onto Virginia Street and you have 7 miles of flat ground.  No shade.  On the pavement.

I get in my warm up and I feel ridiculously great.

Mile 1 - 6:42.  I know damn well I shouldn't be running this fast.  To hell with it.  You never know what you can do if you don't give yourself a chance.

Mile 2 - 6:46.  Hey, our track coach is only 50 meters in front of me.  This is not going to end well.

Mile 3 - 7:04.  Slower because we just went over the Southside Bridge but I still have our track coach in sight.  Around Mile 3.7, Capital Punishment Hill begins.  One of our local runners who is way, way faster than me passes me just as we start up the hill.  I'm thinking, "Oh hell, if T.W. just passed me, I'm in for a world of hurt."  I'm not wrong.  Our track coach dusts me like I'm sitting still and I never see him again.

Mile 4 - 7:20.  One of our best local masters female runners passes me.  In her younger days, she went to the Olympic trials twice.  Yikes!  Capital Punishment Hill takes its toll.  I suck at hills.  No matter how much I train on them, I just flat out suck.  I'm great at flying down a hill but no matter how much I train on them, I end up at a jog uphill.  It feels like the whole damn race is passing me.  To wit:

Mile 5 - 8:14.  Oh god.  Everyone has passed me.  Worse, I'm done.  I'm sucking wind hard.  My strategy now is to take it easy on every uphill and try to recover a bit.  I fail miserably.  Instead of recovering, I'm redlining it on every single uphill.  I can feel it and it feels like the last 400 meters of a race.  I recognize that I'm starting to overheat.  Not good at all.  I should pull back and jog to recover.  Screw that.  No guts, no glory.

Mile 6 - 7:33.  Just surviving a bunch of ups and downs.

Mile 7 - 7:12.  Damn.  I thought I'd be faster by this point but I'm not.  This is starting to suck a lot and I'm not to the halfway point.

Mile 8 - 6:15.  This mile is nearly entirely downhill.  In most years, I try to hammer it around 6:05.  This year, because I recognize the early signs of overheating, I try to let myself cool down, run the tangents, and relax a bit.  I don't want to give up too much time but I know I can't push.  I hit Mile 8 and look at my overall time and my thought is that I can still come in under 1:50 if I don't completely crash.  My thought now is to run about 7:15 the rest of the way.

Mile 9 - 6:52.  The sun is out in full force.  No shade.  It's pushing 80.  Oh my god.  I'm dying.  I'm overheating and I'm going to end up walking the last 5 miles of this race.  I don't think I can survive past Mile 10.

Mile 10.  6:56.  Well I'll be damned.  I manage to get around the female master's runner who has been to the Olympic trials.  I have little doubt that she'll catch me though as I am spent.

Mile 11 - 7:01.  Now it starts to suck even worse.  From Mile 8 until now, there has been a breeze in my face.  Now, it's at my back.  I make the turn west down Kanawha Boulevard and it's like I turned into a sauna.  At every aid station, I dump water on my head and it's pretty ineffective.  I'm blowing up in the heat and there is nothing I can do.  I've blown up in the heat on plenty of training runs and it always feels the same.  My legs are screaming at me telling me, "WTF dude, you're not even racing."  "We feel great and you need to kick it in the ass and go."  Unfortunately, every time I try to listen to my legs, my heart rate skyrockets and I'm forced to slow down.

Mile 12 - 7:08.  I'm shocked that I'm able to maintain this pace at this point because I am so done.

Mile 13 - 7:18.  OK.  Now I'm not shocked.  Somewhere between Mile 12 and here, a guy gets past me.  I ask him his age and he's in his 40's.  That's good as I have no desire to try to pull my testicles through my throat in an effort to keep up.  I even pass a couple of walkers here.  At the paces I'm running, I rarely see someone who has blown up so much he/she is walking.  I see a two in these last couple of miles.

Mile 14 - 7:22.  I can't do anything but jog.  As always, legs are screaming at me to go but I am so overheated I simply can't.

Mile 15 - 7:08.  I have no kick left in me.  None.  I'm jogging to the finish.  Then, some dude tries to catch me in the last 300 meters.  Bad idea.  I may not be a great runner but I have a killer kick.  It's not only a natural talent for me but I work on it.  I dust him and then start to think that the guy who isn't in my AG that got around me at Mile 12 is in reach so I give it everything I have.  Ultimately, I get him by half a second at the line but he gets me by about a second overall due to chip timing.  That's the kind of stuff that makes racing fun.

As I cross the line in a dead sprint, one of the volunteers crosses in front of me and I slam into her full force.  Fortunately, neither of us hit the ground.  She apologizes profusely and I try to reassure her that it's one of those "no harm, no foul" things and I thank her for volunteering.

I meet up with a bunch of friends after the race and we drink a lot of beer.  I doubt I have ever been this dehydrated.  I finished around 9:15.  Since then, I have consumed two 20 ounce bottles of water, two half liter bottles of Diet Pepsi, and four beers.  As I type this, it is 3:30.  I peed for the first time about 15 minutes ago and it was damned dark.

I am left to wonder whether going out at a suicide pace was the best option.  If I had gone out conservatively, could I have made up the time given the reality that the sun was coming out?  Moreover, where is the line between "conservative" and "timid?"  I don't know.  What I do know is that if there had been some clouds, I could have had a really special day.  I also know that you have to give yourself a chance.  You don't know whether there will be clouds in an hour.  If there are, can you live with the fact that you took it too easy early?  I don't know that either.

Mind you, this isn't a marathon.  Going out at a suicide pace and hoping to hold on for dear life is a really, really bad option there.  You will note that I was fading by Mile 11 and I barely pulled a 7:08 at the end and wouldn't have done that if someone hadn't been trying to catch me.  In a marathon, I'd still have had 11 miles to go and I would have ended up walking.  Thus, doing this in a half marathon or a 15 mile race may be a risk worth taking but not in a marathon.

Now I'm going to take a nap.  The Charleston Distance Run will be there next year.  It will be hilly, hot and humid again.  I will again swear I'm going to run it intelligently and I will again throw caution to the wind and run like hell.  If you want a real challenge rather than some bland cool weather flat course, come join me.  I'll bring the beer.

I'm always impressed by how much you can pull out of yourself on race day.  It may not have been "smart" racing, but kudos on a gutty performance on a tough course.   Also, congrats on the AG win.

Very, very, nice. It's crazy how mental the last few miles can be. Every fiber but one in your entire body is screaming at you to stop but that one fiber tells you to keep pushing. I hope you enjoyed the beers. Once after a hard 5k I had three beers at 7:00 in the morning and beer had never tasted so good.  Great RR, LtH.

Great job in tough conditions.

FWIW, I do the Oh, god I am dying during every run down here. :-)

A few thoughts the day after.

 

I continue to be conflicted as to whether my strategy was correct or if I could have run maybe a minute faster by taking it easy in the early miles.  Looking at the results of runners who finished around where I finished, it is obvious that most were gaining on me and that's really unusual.  I nearly every race I run, I'm the one gaining in the end.  If I had dropped to maybe a 7:00 pace in those early miles, could I have run 6:50ish in the last few miles and would that have made a difference?  I just don't know.

 

Interestingly enough, this is the exact dilemma I blogged about a few days before the race.  Do you go out hard and try to hold on for dear life or do you try to run a bit conservatively early on?

 

My legs feel ridiculously good today because the heat kept me from pushing my musculoskeletal limits.  I think I'll be able to resume normal training in both intensity and volume within a week.  I hurt a lot more than this after my HM PR and insanely more after my marathon PR.

 

I really wish more folks would come to town to challenge themselves on this course.  Unfortunately, most of the running world is out there seeking flat, cool PR courses rather than a race where everything is a puzzle.

Hills are one thing, but I have zero desire to race anywhere in high heat and/or humidity which includes flat, upside down, circular or on any course for that matter.  Actually less than zero.

Of course that is my thought today, in running year number 4.  It could change as it did with these ridiculous looking shorts I wear so I would never say never.

 It's crazy how mental the last few miles can be. Every fiber but one in your entire body is screaming at you to stop but that one fiber tells you to keep pushing.

Yes, this. WTF is that one fiber thinking??

Very impressive performance under the conditions; you may have been dying, but the splits over the last miles don't show it.

And thanks for the invitation to join, but no thanks. I have enough trouble figuring out how to pace myself in a normal race, without worrying about heat, hills, and a crazy distance.

 

Word.  I run on the hotel treadmill when I am there.

It is nice to breathe today. I heard people whining that it was oh so humid and I almost laugh in their faces.

It is nice to breathe today. I heard people whining that it was oh so humid and I almost laugh in their faces.

Well you would fall down, roll across the ground and slap your knee at some of the comments heard at yesterday's race!

But it's all relative I guess.