After last year's debacle of a race weekend for the Shamrock Shuffle (terrible weather, chaotic pre-race packet pick up, dealing downtown Chicago on race day) I told myself I would never do another race in downtown Chicago again, let alone this speicific race. However, my brother and his buddy signed up for it again this year and since they were making the drive from Michigan I felt compelled to register myself. I was also a little leary about being "race ready" by March 21st after my 8 week lay off from running and subsequent slow 6 week ramp up.
The weather the week before the race was beautiful - 60s everyday with sun and light breezes. As we got closer to the weekend and race day (Sunday) the forecast was looking grim - snow, sleet, rain, wind, 30s. Basically a carbon-copy of last year. Great!
Given the questionable conditions and the fact that I haven't done any "hard" run workouts since October I told myself I would wait until I crossed the start line to determine whether I was running this one for time or as a "fun run" at an easy pace. In the back of my head I really wanted the opportunity to give it my all so I could use it as a fitness benchmark to know how to structure my run training going forward now that my injury is healed.
I woke up race morning feeling pretty good despite 3 straight days of solid bike workouts (Thurs: 1 hour of VO2max workouts; Fri: 40 mile bike commute to work, albeit easy spinning; Sat: 2 hours riding at 83% of my Functional Threshold Power). Breakfast consisted of a bowl of puffed brown rice cereal with almond milk, banana, cup of coffee, water (3 hrs pre-race); Odwalla Original Super Protein smoothie, cup of coffee, water (2 hrs pre-race); HammerGel, cup of water (30 minutes pre-race). The GI system never felt so comfortable before a race - no bloat, no hungry feeling, no mad dashes to the porto.
The weather wasn't too bad: low 30s, spitting rain, breezy, wet roads but no slush or snow. I got to the start line feeling awesome - light on my feet, empty stomach, snap in my legs, ready to roll. Still I wanted to go out conservatively in the first mile then assess what I should do after that based on how I was feeling - I was thinking somewhere just under 7:00/mi pace.
I hit the clock at the first mile and saw 6:29. "OK", I thought, "I'm feeling good, I'm just going to keep it rolling. If I run out of gas at least I know where things stand." I continued to feel smooth and strong through about mile 3.5 - a 1/4 mile stretch into a strong headwind. The "burn" started and I was confronted with the suffering that comes late in a hard run effort that I haven't felt in soooo long...I fed off that pain because I knew I was back! I continued to push and focused on excellent form. I made my way up the final climb onto Columbus Ave, turned back north for the flat 1/4 mile finish stretch and hit the line in 30:57 - a 50 second PR on this course (set in 2009). Mile splits were as follows:
Mile 1: 6:29
Mile 2: 6:21
Mile 3: 6:11
Mile 4: 5:57
Mile 5: 5:58
I'm pretty happy with this result for a couple reasons:
1) My run fitness wasn't as hurt by the 8 week injury break and slow 6 week build up all at slow, easy paces. I peaked last season with a Vdot (Daniel's running formula) of 56. I was thinking I was probably around 50-51 going into this race, but with this result I found I'm actually at 53.4. It won't take me long to get back to last season's form!
2) I felt no pain related to the pelvic stress fracture or addductor inflammation while racing. Things are healed!!
3) I continued my streak of negative splitting run races! I've had it going for over a year now.
A couple reasons I can point to for the better-than-expected result and the ability to hang onto a good part of my run fitness even with the injury recovery process:
1) I was still able to do all the cycling workouts in my Endurance Nation OutSeason training plan plus some (to make up for the lack of running)
2) A large focus on core strengthening and stretching during the injury recovery. Also, while ramping up the run miles at easy pace I've been very conscious of my running mechanics.
3) A huge focus on body composition since being injured - I think this is the main reason I haven't lost much run fitness. I'm already at my Ironman race weight (weighed in at 170.4 race morning) so I was just able to carry less weight around for 8K which makes less work for the body.
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