Who is Vicky Rapp?
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That is some chick who jogged with Liza at Karsten's race, and didn't want her result caught up & listed at athlinks
It's a 5k. It hurt like hell...then I tried to pick it up. The end.
Where did you find that name listed?
+1
CAASA Step by Step 5k
2 November 2013
This race is fairly straightforward in my mind. I'll try to be relatively concise.
Preparation: I was unsure if I would run a race this weekend. I enjoy racing when I am fit and healthy. I did not feel either of these states strongly described me going into the week, but I nonetheless became excited with the idea of at least being part of a race environment this weekend and indeed it's always more fun to participate than to be on the sidelines. I ran a lot at the start of the week. This left me somewhat fatigued by the middle of the week and due to some logistical concerns it was easier to simply take Thursday and Friday off from running after the tiresome start to the week. I came into Saturday very uncertain of my fitness. Ryken's time in the 19:30s implied that I should be within striking distance of something in the 18s, but I was not certain of this. I had sharpened very well for Ryken with a combination of a long run 2 weeks before, 800s 1.5 weeks before, and hill sprints the week of the race. For this race I had done nothing in particular to prepare. My best workouts were those over a month old ones from the previous 5k. The best I had done were a few steady state runs and a 3xmile tempo (because I knew I couldn't handle a real tempo). I had no great speed endurance in me and thought that the hilly Ryken course masked this fact well.
Race: I showed up race morning and gave it a real effort. I timed everything well that morning and had the proper focus. I went out faster than usual for me. By this I mean that DR did not immediately leave me in the dust. I ran with a chase pack that stayed just a few seconds behind him. He slowly pulled away, but without a huge burst like he sometimes does. I was happy to be with the chase pack, then lead the chase pack, and then follow the guy who tried to gap the chase pack.
That took us through a mile as a group of about 3 guys relatively close together. When we neared the U-Turn beyond the circle at the extreme of the island another guy joined our group about when another guy was falling back. It was three of us together at the U-Turn and it was supposedly marked with a cone, but instead it had none. The yellow road lines ended a few feet before a fence. I thought the logical action would be to U-Turn at the end of the yellow line. I was not the lead guy, but I was literally on the heels of the lead guy in this chase pack. He went beyond the yellow line and sort of jogged to the fence almost as if to touch it and then U-Turn. We all clumped up for a moment and seemed to jog the U-Turn at the fence. Then the guy who recently caught our pack took the lead quickly and I followed with him. I wasn't sure if he was purposely surging or if he was just continuing what he had been doing when he caught us. I sped up to follow him, but didn't not go all-in for fear he was simply surging. I also thought this was wise because Doug Nassif had been near; I consider myself much faster than he over 5k, but knew I could easily lose to him if I let him be within sprint distance of me at the finish. The guy in front slowly pulled away from me the rest of the race. In the back roads after OLSS I knew I had no worse than 3rd position locked up since I reasoned I had gapped Doug and others enough, so I tried to put in a somewhat risky surge to catch the guy in front. I knew that even if I imploded as a result of the effort I could probably still fight for a sure 3rd place finish. I surged on the straightaway of the back road. It seemed to only hold me even with the guy in front at a distance. I didn't actually close a real gap. Realizing this I stopped the surge and just resumed normal tiresome 5k effort.
Aftermath: I finished 3rd with a time of 19:03. I didn't know what to make of my time. I was disappointed to be so close to the 18s without achieving it. I would have found it motivating to be in the 18s. I also find it motivating to miss the goal, though. It keeps me hungry. The only problem is that it makes me hungry to be in the 18s; whereas, if I had already gotten into the 18s, then I would have been focusing more on getting to the 17s. I feel like those 3+ seconds represent an entire other stepping block in my improvement. After talking to DR it occurred to me that the entirety of those 3+ seconds could have been lost in the jogging U-Turn at the fence. There's no use in splitting hairs, though. My watch actually showed the race a tenth or two short if I wanted to try and start splitting hairs. I would just have to live with 19:03 as my best effort that day. Then DR and I ran a cooldown that was at least as fast as our Wednesday morning runs. That is to say it was recovery for DR and an honest aerobic effort for me.
Fabulous with 47 4.7k
3 November 2013
I attended this race festivity for the sake of Tucker O'Brien, who was involved with the organization. It was hosted at his family's Woodlawn estate and much of the race logistics seemed to be taken care of by Howie and his wife. It was to benefit people with Down Syndrome. The race was free to enter, but accepted donations. I approved of this business model. I donated $20. The race is more about gathering people together than it is about times and placement. At the end of the race they handed me a piece of paper with my time on it for the 4.7k. I was surprised they even bothered to do this courtesy for the runners. At the race site, though, it barely said 4.7k anywhere so I won't be surprised if some casuals claim this as a 5k time. Anyway, I hardly paid attention to the piece of paper. This is unfortunate, considering I had forgotten my watch. I had just come from Cracker Barrel and breakfast with friends. We were up until 2:30am the previous night and had enjoyed a few alcoholic drinks. I really intended to just use the run as a shakeout.
Tucker was there and really excited. He was warming up when I arrived. He seemed pretty pumped. I spent a lot of my time with him that day. Noah Wood was also there. I asked him how he was doing and he gave me an estimated time he'd be happy to get under. I know Noah well enough to know when he is being modest or polite (which is all the time) and that he was selling himself short of his ability. I was still somewhat uncertain whether I would just jog the thing, but Tucker said one or two things to the effect of being grateful that I was there that I started to feel like a guest of some honor. I felt like I would be a real letdown to the quality of the race if I just jogged it.
So at the start of the race I determined I would just run with the pack and see how they did. Noah went out pretty quickly and Tucker followed for about a second before backing off. I was in a pack with another guy and Dave Walser with Noah pulling away and Tucker between us. I was very happy to run like this. I figured Noah was in fine shape to beat me, so no point in challenging him. I just wanted to stay within myself and I didn't think Tucker would pull away too far. Or, if he did pull away, he wouldn't have the endurance to maintain it and I could reel him in over the last two miles.
Tucker looked good, though. By the mile mark I had left Dave and the other guy well behind and was just focused with not letting Tucker pull too far away. He looked much more fit than a couple of weeks ago. His stride looked comfortably fast and he seemed to almost be a pound or two lighter than when I had last seen him. The course was an out and back that also included a U-Turn. They said there would be a cone to go around. Well, the cone was in front of a larger gravel circle. I have reason to believe based on the gaps that Noah may have literally gone behind the U-Turn sign and turned right around. Tucker was in front of me and used the whole gravel circle. If I had been trying to catch Noah this would have disturbed me, but he was too far ahead to care, plus who knows what a 4.7k is anyway, so it really didn't bother me that we might be running longer than others. I was just trying to keep up with Tucker. He seemed to actually pull away from me after the U-Turn a little bit.
When the race started I thought we might be going about 6:30 pace or slower. Having Dave Walser there made me certain we were over a 6:00 pace. He was the only one I could really key off since I didn't know the capabilities of the others. So after a while I pulled away from him and thought I might be doing faster than 6:30, but really didn't know how fast. I wasn't working very hard at the start, but by about a mile into it when I started chasing Tucker I felt I was working hard. I then tried pretty hard in the third mile to catch him, but kept going through cycles of effort and relaxation. Truthfully I likely never sped up or slowed down that much; it may have mostly been a mental exercise. Then the race ended with me closing, but still very far back. He was just faster than I was. He seemed to keep that pace much more comfortably. I was struggling for the entire last mile to catch him and yet never challenged him.
I was pretty disappointed with the result. I was glad to see Noah and Tucker do well, but it served as a very good reality check. I felt ashamed to call myself a runner in the context of Noah not really training that regularly and Tucker only taking running seriously for the last few months. My reasoning was that I couldn't be much of a runner if two people who haven't been consistent can just show up and beat me. But that's my problem, really. I'm no more a runner than they are. I haven't been training consistently. I haven't even been doing real workouts for an entire year. It made sense for DR to beat me, because he's been consistent and deserved to be known as a runner. The guy who finished 2nd in that race ran very evenly, could probably have run a faster 5k if he had tried harder from the start, and likely deserves the title of runner. I'm sure Noah has been running more than he implied and that Tucker has been running well for a month or two, but those are the kinds of guys I'd like to think I could show up and beat on a regular basis. The Sunday race was a bit of a reality check, because it showed I'm not runner-enough to just show up and beat those guys.
Here Joe has already turned in two fine race repots when I've yet to pen one!
I wish you'd brought your Forerunner along yesterday. Without know how close the course really was to such an odd distance as 4.7k (2.92 miles), it's possible you might've been averaging faster or slower than 6:25/mi. But I don't see how you could've expected to race in top form or at least as well as the day before. Even if it was just a 5k, a hard fought race requires recovery, and thus you were bound to be more sluggish the next day. And the hours that preceded the event were most certainly not conducive to racing: up until very late eating donuts and drinking alcohol, and then sitting at the Cracker Barrel eating a hearty breakfast (including bacon and eggs?) just an hour before the race. So, though you might've still gotten nailed by Noah had he run Step By Step, I bet you would've taken out Tucker if he'd been with us on Saturday.
Meanwhile on Saturday Perry pulled out what was probably his biggest PR in the past couple years. I don't believe that he'd previously run sub-30:00 on a legit 5-mile course, but this time he was quite close to breaking 29:00 (but crap, Demers went sub-27:00 ... meaning he maintained the pace of my reckless 5k opening mile for 5 miles). Naturally this has made me very curious as to what would've happened in Solomons had Perry joined us for Step By Step --- most especially because Perry's 1st and 5th miles on Saturday were virtually the same as my 3rd and 2nd miles in the 5k! I've got a feeling that we might've seen a race hauntingly similar to the Robbie Miles 5k 2008. That was the first race in which he threatened to catch me ... and the last race I would beat him at until the Civista "5k" 2010. Then again, Perry did have me running a bit scared at CAASA last year (when I was way weakened by the wicked wind).
Thanks, DR!
I guess it hadn't really hit me that I'd finally succeeded at what I've been failing at for a while now -- to hold 6 pace on anything beyond 5K. I'd been getting a bit frustrated, not getting PRs in any of my recent races. I've started wondering if I'll ever run 6min pace for a 10K.
I didn't look at my pace during the Downs Pk race; it was all about beating the competition for me. My main goal was to clinch my AG series title. I never saw where David was even from the start, so I was pretty sure he was a ways behind me. I was surprised and excited to pull away from Jim Anderson and Katie Ogden and even Martin S. (Martin outkicked both Jim & I at Dog Days 8K, and I only passed Martin at the very end of Metric.)
Alan Cook came with me, and we changed leads several times, until I finally started pulling away from him in the late middle.
I could almost always see Josh Dawson in red ahead, alongside some guy in a tri suit, and one of the Chesapeake xc kids, in front of us. Late in the race, maybe approaching mile 4, I passed the xc kid.
I wasn't sure if Josh was pacing the other guy, or if he was racing (he ran a 2:53:35 PR at MCM last weekend), but I kept wondering if I could catch him. In the end, I never could, and although I gained some ground on the guy in the tri suit, Josh pulled away from him substantially in the last mile.
At the awards I was surprised to not win my age group, and then later, viewing the posted results, I discovered that the guy in the tri suit just in front of me was my AG winner.
My PR at this distance was at this race two years ago, a 29:50. I had looked that up, but had forgotten it. When I saw the results (29:08), I thought it was probably a PR, but wasn't absolutely sure.
I guess the sub-6 splits didn't really settle in with me until today.
What did astound me was how significantly I beat Katie; she came in at 30:29. At Dog Days 8K I had beaten her by 30sec, but she had afterward told me that she hates XC, so I mentally wrote it off to that. I was surprised to outkick her at LPR10 for a 9sec victory, because she had outkicked me in all the previous races we both ran.
Therefore I was shocked to beat her by a minute and 20s! Woohoo!
Footnote: Brandon told me that he hit the mile at 4:59 and knew he had to throttle it back. The leader came in at 4:57 avg pace.
The significance of your victory over Katie is indeed the most compelling evidence of your advancement. You two have long been neck and neck at races (even as recently as the LPR10), but now you're starting to leave her in the dust. Looking forward, a sub-29:00 5-miler is a major stepping stone to running a sub-60:00 10-miler (in 2011 I managed to run 28:55 in my September 5-mile time trial, and then went on to run 59:28 at LPR10) --- though a sub-37:00 10k is also a crucial step.
I don't know how often Perry tapers for his races, either, but I know he did last week in preparation for the 5 miler. That can make a big difference if you're racing a lot.
if you're racing a lot.
I can't imagine whom you're talking about here. There have been several weekends in the last month, or two, in which I didn't race. I think.
You are incorrect for the last month.
A) That's why I added the "or two"
B) I need that phrase Congress likes to use. Something to the effect of "We reserve the right to amend or extend our remarks at a future time".
This is woefully late, and there isn’t really anything grand/epic to relate. So I’ll settle this Step By Step statement in succinct style.
Impediments: This was all something of a shock to the system. My previous 5k was Jingle Bell last December, and for most of the time since I was either training for a marathon, recovering from a failed marathon training, or building up from 10k to 10-miler. Thus, though I had no doubt that I’d be able to blast out a brazen opening mile, I knew that maintaining such a severe intensity much farther than that would not happen naturally. Indeed it was likely that I would fall into a 10k/10-miler-ish pacing typical of what I’d spent the past several months training myself to run. Furthermore, the so-called 5k training I actually did couldn’t have been more hastily conducted. I took 5 days off following the LPR10, my big goal race … and then had merely one week to train for the CAASA Step By Step 5k before it was time to taper for said 5k. All I really did for it was a gritty, not so speedy 14 X “400” Fartlek run at Lancaster Park.
And then there was the issue of compelling competition being MIA.
Pro-speed-iments: The forecast was essentially “race conducive”. A temperature hovering just under/over 60, and a very gentle breeze (the river was becalmed!). This felt like a long overdue reward for all those first Saturdays of November over the years in which we found ourselves keeled over whilst attempting to run against bitter blasts of biting breeze off the river. Suddenly Step By Step felt more akin to one of the best years at the LPR10!
At stake: My first overall race victory was back at the 2006 Three Oaks 5k (a long since defunct event), and when I returned the next year I finished 2OA behind a post-marathon recovering Vic Papagno. Likewise, after “robbing” a win at the 2008 Robbie Miles 5k --- my second ever overall victory --- I placed dismally at that (also long since defunct) event in 2009. Well, with the exception of the Race for Mary Paton’s Miracle 8k in 2010 (a one-time event), it wasn’t until the 2011 CAASA Step By Step 5k that I again vanquished all opponents in a race. Thus my subsequent CAASA victory in 2012 sealed my first ever successful title defense (next I failed at my second opportunity at a title defense, the Jingle Bell 5k, but then resumed the two-timer trend at the Crofton Kiwanis and Chaptico Classic 10ks). And therefore the 2013 CAASA Step By Step 5k was my first ever opportunity to “threepeat” … but the suspense over whether I’d be able to accomplish this was greatly diminished by PHS Coach Walser having given Trent the weekend off following the regional cross country races.
Action: Shooting forth, I expected to drop the field forthwith but, surprisingly, insistent following footfalls plagued me for most of the opening mile. There certainly hadn’t seemed to be anyone present who would follow me through a sub-5:30 opener. Ah, and just like last year, I fell just short of cracking 5:20 for my initial mile split. And then it would’ve been all but impossible not to slow down significantly on the ups, downs, twists and turns around the island’s end. At least I’d definitively dropped everyone by the time I ran along the very tip of the island --- or maybe not by so much. After negotiating that awkward, coneless U-turn by the gate, I beheld that a pack of would-be threepeat busters (including Joe!) was still far too close after me for comfort (but not too close for genuine discomfort).
There was no way that I was going to maintain anything close to the momentum of the opening mile when it came to the hilly back road and the inconvenient U-turn featured in the 2nd mile. Thus I slowed way down to 5:45 and hit mile 2 a few seconds over 11:00 (hitting mile 2 sub-11:00 is always the most crucial check mark of a 5k, and I missed it). Anyway, for one of the first times ever there was no harsh headwind to contend with after passing the Tiki Bar, ascending that slight hill, and heading north whilst passing the slowest folks face to face. Unfortunately that good, straight stretch of road was only to be raced upon briefly, for soon enough the course demanded 4 sharp turns in quick succession: R on Alexander St, L on Calvert St, L on Langley Ln, R on Solomons Island Rd (avoiding an erroneous left onto C St gave me some sense of redemption for my infamous blooper at Jingle Bell last year). Those turns weren’t the best for momentum, and I was getting quite annoyed with the stop-and-go lead cop car (I always felt like I was poised to crash right into the back of it), but it was along the Calvert St stretch that I finally began firing myself up again. I hadn’t paid much attention to the time since my sub-11:00 2-mile failure, but I was still going to finish respectably.
Post: 17:13 was adequate. It was a 25-second improvement over my previous time on that course, yes, but a 20-second slow-down over my most recent 5k. Basically the result is either sub-17:00 or it should be sub-17:00 as far as I’m concerned now. Yet aside from frustration over 14 unwanted extra seconds, the threepeat was official!
I'm always impressed by your insistence upon improving over all previous personal bests. For example, you've only gone sub-17 once, but firmly believe any good race for you should now be under 17. It's like when you do workouts in training that are the same as ones from previous years and attack it with every intention of it being superior to all previous versions of the workout. It's like how with our Wednesday morning runs you look to the total time for each week and plan to see a trend toward improvement each week (will be hard after this past week). You set a strict bar for yourself that makes it difficult to relapse to slower times.
I don't believe you've posted a training plan since the LPRM 10. What 5k-related workouts might you do before Jingle Bell?