Today was the second day of the Firecracker Triple. Today’s race was the Summerlake Loopy Marathon. The course was a paved loop around Summerlake Park in Tigard, OR. The loop was less than a mile long, so we had to run 28 laps.
I’ve run this race once before. In 2013, it was a part of the Firecracker
Quadzilla. While I wasn’t excited about
running this many laps, I knew I would have plenty of opportunities to drink at
the aid station.
I often have trouble
sleeping the night before a race. The exception
is when it’s also the night after a race.
Lack of sleep and physical exhaustion combined to help me sleep like a rock. In that respect, I felt much better this
morning than I did yesterday morning.
In other respects, I didn’t
feel better. My left hamstring didn’t
feel sore during yesterday’s race, but it did feel sore later in the day. This morning, I also had some soreness and stiffness
in other muscles.
Since May, I’ve found
that my left leg sometimes grazes my right ankle when I run. It didn’t happen at all in FANS, but it
happened about six times during yesterday’s race. Each time, I barely brushed against my ankle,
but the cumulative effect was to break the skin. After the race, my ankle was bleeding. Before today’s race, I put a band-aid over it
to help protect it. I didn’t know if the
band-aid would stay on or if it would come loose as I got sweaty.
The race started at 7:00
AM, with packet pickup starting at 6:00.
Deb was volunteering again, so we made a point of getting there by 6:00.
When we picked up our
race bibs, we also got back bibs with our names. That was so we could encourage each other as
we passed each other during the many laps.
In fact, most of the runners at this race already knew each other.
Ten minutes before the
race, we had pre-race announcements.
Then we assembled for group photos.
As we left the start
area, we went downhill to a bridge and then uphill to a parking lot on the
other side. I started running at a slow
pace until I got through this section.
Then I tried to pick up the pace.
As I picked up my pace, I
had a lot of soreness in my legs and glutes.
I also found running at a normal pace to be unusually tiring. I assumed it would get easier as I got warmed
up and worked into my pace. It didn’t.
For the first two laps, I
forced myself to run at a 10 minute mile pace.
Then I had to slow down. That
pace was much too tiring.
I wasn’t even done with
two laps before I felt my left foot graze my left ankle for the first
time. It was painful, even with the
band-aid. Fortunately, that only
happened one more time during the race.
In my next two laps, I
slowed down to an 11 minute mile pace. Even
that pace felt tiring. I wasn’t even
done with my 4th lap when the leader of the half marathon lapped me. That made me feel really slow.
I tried to slow down to a
pace that felt easy. For the next
several laps, I was averaging about 11:30.
That wasn’t as tiring as 11:00, but it still felt tiring.
I was only in my 8th lap
of 28 when the leader of the marathon lapped me. One lap later, the leaders of the half
marathon lapped me for a second time. I
wasn’t trying to keep up with anyone, but it still made me painfully aware how
much slower I was running today.
When we registered for
this race, we had an opportunity to enter something interesting about
ourselves. Steve made signs and posted
them around the course. Here are a few
examples.
Because the laps were so short, I didn’t feel the need to drink after every lap. Instead, I just drank Gatorade after the even numbered laps. Starting with my third lap, I ate glazed donut holes after the odd number laps. Alternating between food and beverage like this made it easier to remember which lap I was on.
Next, I slowed down all
the way to 12 minutes per mile. At first,
that pace felt a little easier, if you didn’t count the soreness in my legs. Eventually, even that pace started to feel
tiring.
At the halfway mark, I
was on pace to finish in just over five hours.
I had been slowing down, and I expected to keep slowing down. I guessed that I would finish somewhere between
5:10 and 5:15. That proved to be
optimistic.
In the second half, my
lap times continued to get slower.
Before long, I was averaging 12:30 per mile, and even that pace was
tiring. At one point, I told Deb how
many laps I had left and she told me to take it easy. My reply was, “There is no easy.” Every muscle in my legs was sore, and no
matter how slow I went, it was still tiring.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way in a marathon.
I’ve had races where I
hit the wall and struggled badly in the last few miles. This whole race felt like that. It was tiring, it was uncomfortable, and it
was taking a really long time.
Running multiple laps
meant we kept seeing the same scenery on every lap. Summerlake Park is a beautiful park, so even
if the scenery didn’t change, it was pretty nice scenery.
Late in the race, I was
counting down the remaining laps. If I
thought about how many miles I had left, it didn’t sound that bad. Normally, it wouldn’t be, but today every lap
seemed to take forever.
I eventually finished in
5:16:52. It felt like it took longer. I wasn’t taking any walking breaks. I was just running really slow. That wouldn’t have been so bad if I was just
taking it easy, but I wasn’t. I was
really trying to go faster, if I could.
I just didn’t seem to have any power in my legs.
There are any number of
reasons which might explain why I was slow today, but none of them tell the
whole story. I ran a marathon yesterday,
so obviously I was going to be a little sore and slow, but I’ve never slowed
down by 45 minutes from one day to the next.
Two years ago, I ran marathons 20 days in a row, and none of them were
this slow. That was with a knee injury.
It's possible I didn’t
eat the right foods yesterday and my muscles were depleted of glycogen. That could explain me hitting the wall, but
not so early in the race.
I’m not as well-trained
as I usually am for racing on consecutive days, but just two weeks ago I was
doing training runs at an 8:30 pace with far less effort. By the end of the race today, I was going four
minutes per mile slower than that, and it was much more tiring.
The only other
explanation I can think of is that I tried to do this triple too soon after a
24-hour race where I ran just over 100 miles.
Maybe that took more out of me than I thought.
After the race, Deb and I
had lunch at Burgerville again. When we
got back to the hotel, I showered, soaked in the hot tub, and worked on my legs
with a massage stick.
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