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| Post-race |
1) Run a familiar event.
This
race is routine for me. I completed the
full marathon at this event in 2005, 2007, and 2011 (early on I believe it was simply
called the Kansas City Marathon, and also ran a different course). I ran the half marathon distance at the event
in 2010, 2012, 2013, and 2014. This is
one race I’ve run when I’ve been injured and not even running or remotely fit. My sister and her family live in Kansas City,
and it’s become a tradition for me and my parents, who live in the Wichita
area, to visit them every October over race weekend. We have all watched this event grow from a
small marathon to a nationally-known competitive event.
2) Win a free entry.
I won a
free entry for life into the event in 2011 in a photo contest -- possibly the
best prize I have ever won! In 2010 I
received an elite comp entry, so I have received a comp entry for the past 6
races. I would absolutely pay the entry
free to run this race, but a comp entry and family to stay with makes it that
much sweeter!
3) Don’t make it a goal race.
My
season goal race is the full marathon in Dallas, and my half goal race has been
ever changing, but it was never Kansas City.
Who tries to PR on a course with around 580 feet of elevation gain
anyway?
4) Make sure the course is hilly, and
the race extra competitive.
See
#3. The course is tough, but it’s also
deceptively fast if you’ve trained well on hills (and don’t all of us living in
the Ozarks train on hills by default?).
You climb a lot in miles 2-3 and 7.5-10.5, but you come down a lot from
4-6, and again from 10.5 to 12.
This
was my first race in quite a while where I wasn’t gunning for an overall female
or top 3 female placing. Past results
showed the top 3 women consistently running under 1:20, something I’m not
capable of. This helped me during the
race because I didn’t focus on, or even know, where I was place-wise (I ended
up 5th overall female, which I was ecstatic about).
5) Work with a coach.
I
started working with a coach for the first time since college in July 2015,
because I decided I needed to go all in to try for a sub-3:00 marathon. This has changed the way I train, and I have
hit paces and workouts I never thought I could.
This
has also shown me what a control freak I am!
I have had some very challenging workouts, but the biggest challenge has
been giving up control of my schedule.
It was clearly a good decision for me though!
6) Don’t listen to your coach.
I am
probably a bit of a nightmare to coach.
I am the one who adds a few miles here, a race there, and a tempo run
there (not to mention I shuffled several races around while I was recovering
from cryptosporidium at the end of the summer).
My coach told me to run Kansas City as a workout. I know he was looking at my long-term goal of
a PR at the Dallas Marathon, and I really considered listening to him. In the end, I couldn’t justify driving 3
hours each way to the event without racing it, and I also really wanted to see
where I was at with my half time at this point in my training.
7) Find a training partner with similar
goals, and push each other to speed up your long runs.
When my
coach advised me to do my long runs around 7:30 pace, I panicked a little. In past marathon training cycles, my long runs
were at a relaxed easy pace, which rarely dipped under 8:00 pace. I even remember one hot 23 miler before my PR
marathon that I ran over 9:00 pace – over 2:00 slower than what I ended up
running for my marathon! I felt
comfortable with 12-14 milers at 7:30 pace, but the thought of doing 20-24 at
that pace running alone terrified me.
Fortunately,
though a mutual friend I connected with Jamie, who was also chasing a
sub-3:00 marathon and had quite the impressive collegiate resume (I knew
because I Googled her before I knew her, after she beat me at the Medical Mile
2.5 mile “5K”). I was really excited to
find a female to train with, even though I feared she would be too fast for
me!
We
started meeting for Saturday long runs, and quickly realized that we were the
perfect match on these runs (plus, she is an awesome person in addition to
being a talented runner). In fact, she
and I seem to be so evenly matched in our paces, I think anytime we race each
other it will simply come down to who has a little better day. Neither of us could imagine running the paces
we hit on our hilly training routes alone, but when running together it was
easy. I never thought I would run 20
miles with over 1300 feet of elevation gain at 7:25 pace and call it easy, but
I believe speeding up my long runs and running them on tough courses was the
biggest training change that contributed to my PR in Kansas City. In addition, running the race with Jamie was instrumental
to the PR, as she pushed me throughout and made me feel like I was on a
training run, only with near silence instead of constant chatter!
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| See how closely matched we are? |
8) Have the most supportive, yet somewhat
doubtful spouse.
My
husband is extremely supportive of my running, and as a runner himself he
understands what it takes to PR. He is
interested in my workouts, my splits, and my races, and he never complains
about the abnormal things I do for the sake of running. He encourages me and not only spectates at
all my races, but genuinely wants to be there (even when I offer to find a
sitter for our daughter so that he can race too, he usually responds with, “I
would rather watch you!”). All in all,
he couldn’t be more perfect, but he was pretty doubtful that I could run a PR
at Kansas City – so much so that he offered to find a “good half course” for me
to run instead that weekend and complained that I was wasting my PR-level
fitness on this event. I was stubborn –
I wanted to visit my family and run Kansas City, and I was determined I could
PR there!
9) Make the most obsessive pace band in
the history of the world.
Since I
have run Kansas City so many times, I knew a consistent pace strategy would
never work. There are some fast net
downhill miles on the course, and there are some slow primarily uphill
miles. And I had my race data from 4
previous halves there to refer to! I
analyzed all of my past splits, along with the course elevation chart, and came
up with a formula to get to me to a 1:26 finish. The fastest planned mile was 6:12, and the
slowest was 6:59, but the goal splits averaged 6:37. This was a more painstaking process than I expected
going in (the initial strategy was just to take off 10 seconds per mile from my
splits from when I ran a 1:28 on the course, but I quickly made it more
complicated than that!).
10) Form an unofficial pace group with PR
goals.
Jamie
and I planned to run Kansas City together and push each other, just like in
training. I also connected with Jerry, after pacing off of him for the Panther Run 10K at the beginning of
October. He wanted to run a 1:26 also,
so our unofficial official OMRR PR-chasing pace group was formed! Even though it wasn’t a goal race…
11) Pee behind a dumpster.
Believe
it or not, this was integral to the PR!
I used an actual bathroom in Crown Center before starting my warm-up,
but after a 2 mile jog and plyometrics I knew I needed to go again but didn’t
have time to go back to Crown Center or the porta-john area, then get back to
the starting line in time. With the race
being in an urban area, there weren’t a lot of options, but a few blocks away
from the starting line I found an area tucked away between buildings with
several dumpsters that provided the best possible option. After all, no one can PR with a full bladder!
12) Start out too fast.
Ironically,
my #1 strategy in races is to never start out too fast, because you will always,
always pay for it later. Although our first mile was slow, after the
field thinned out significantly Jamie, Jerry, and I kept clicking off miles
faster than my obsessive pace band planned pace, and the miles really flew by. In the end we ran negative splits, so the too
fast start was just relative!
13) Run the middle miles too fast, and
stop looking at your Garmin and doing the math.
We kept
passing course miles faster than our planned pace, and it felt like a
challenging but do-able half pace. I
stopped looking at our pace, as it was super intimidating! My previous half PR was 1:27:08 – 6:39 pace –
and I knew we were averaging somewhere in the 6:20’s and mentally I just
couldn’t fathom that. Usually in longer
races I will take inventory of where I’m at time-wise and project my finish
time, and although I knew we were on PR pace I couldn’t quite comprehend our
split times. At some of the course miles
I checked our progress and let the others know that we were under pace, and
hoped I wouldn’t bonk!
14) Run the final 5K in 19:10.
Miles
11 and 12 of this course are fast, and Jamie and I were pulling in another
female quickly which really spurred us along.
Our mile 12 split was 5:59, which I would never have expected in
anything over a 5K. The final mile
flattens out before a challenging long incline to the finish, but I managed a
6:10 final mile, and 6:05 pace for the last bit up the hill.
Coming
down (actually up!) the final stretch, I was thinking that I might run a 1:25,
but my math skills were out the window well before mile 12. Once I was close enough to read the clock, I
realized that I would run a solid 1:24!
My parents, husband, and daughter were on the sidelines screaming, and I
crossed the line in 1:24:33 (6:27 average pace) – a bright and shiny new PR
that was faster than I ever thought I could run. Jamie and Jerry also ran huge PRs! I don’t think I could ever have done it without
running with them!
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| PR-ty time! |
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| Garmin + obsessive pace band |
15) Realize that you’re not dreaming, be
thankful, and plan your next PR!
Just
after Madam President Stephanie asked me to write this race report, I received
an email with the subject line “It wasn’t a dream – KC Marathon/Half Marathon
2015 photos prove you did it”. The
experience was a bit surreal and dream-like to me, so I am thankful for those
photos, my Garmin data, and my official certified course time! It’s rare that I am completely satisfied with
my performance, but for this race I was.
I don’t think I could have run it any better, and taking my PR from
1:27:08 to 1:24:33 after several months of chasing a 1:25:59 was HUGE to me.
I am
thankful that God gave me the strength to run a PR, and that He led me to
training with someone with similar abilities and to working with a coach, as
both were key in my performance (all of these blessings came to fruition through
a lot of random events!). Now, I am
going to find a flat course and chase a 1:23:59. One of the beautiful things about running is
that you can always strive to improve on your best, and you always gain far
more than PR along the way.
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| This race had the most awesome runner tracking app I've ever seen |
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| Results |
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| Happy! |
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| I was 5th overall female |
Note: This article appeared in the November 2015 OMRR newsletter
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