Time for a Nap

Well then. Four races in six weekends, with a solid, if not somewhat agonizing, twenty-one-plus-miler tossed in on the weekend between the last two, It brings to mind one of the few phrases I know in French: Je suis tres fatigué. I give no assurances that I spelled that correctly. Indeed, my French is so poor (read: close to non-existent) that I used to threaten to try to speak it to win arguments with an old college buddy. Faced with the prospect of hearing me butcher the tongue, he’d give in rapidly on almost anything.

But yeah, I’m a bit fatigué (fa-tee-gay), or tired (if you too don’t speak the unpronounceable or don’t care to pull up Google Translate). Part Four of the Race-Your-Way-To-Boston Training Plan is in the books. This last episode was a bit long – but we’ll get back to that later – and it wasn’t that great (though the number crunching hinted it wasn’t that bad, either). But it’s in the books, and Boston now looms a mere nine days away, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

True to form for New England, the lead-up to Boston has been anything but comfortable. Just yesterday, well into April, my evening run was comfortable only due to a liberal piling on of heavy clothing, a lesson learned the previous evening when a howling wind turned our club run into what felt like the coldest outing all winter, even recalling the Groton Marathon at One Big Degree. I’d say it was me, but pretty much everyone was cursing from start to finish. So of course I expect the Boston forecast, currently on the damp side of the fifties, to turn evil and soar to the seventies or eighties by Patriots’ Day. That’s just how we roll, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

The week leading up to this last racing episode was probably more exciting than the event itself, at least if you’re a nerd. Besides hitting a landmark birthday which wins me more time on my Boston qualifier (which already happened, since it applied to this year’s race), and besides crossing the anniversary of restarting this lifestyle, I hit an obscure milestone during that long run a couple of Sundays ago. The run wasn’t as smooth as I’d have liked for the last pre-Boston long one; one of my Squannacook buds came out seeking new scenery and a decent pace and I struggled to provide the latter. But about four miles in we had a solid Nerd Moment when I passed, cumulatively since starting up running again thirteen years ago (I don’t include the youthful days since my records are sketchy at best), one lap around the planet. Twenty-four thousand eight hundred and sixty miles. At least that’s if you measure over the poles. Since the Earth bulges slightly at the Equator (spinning will do that to you), it was another fourteen miles to that related milestone. Crossing both marks on the same twenty-one-plus miler conveniently eliminated the niggling question of which day to peg it to. Now I guess you could say I’m truly on the second lap.

But nerdly joy alone couldn’t get us up the simulated Heartbreak Hill I’d tossed in for Adam. I’d warned him that any run from my place pretty much had to end uphill, and Hosmer Street at mile twenty-one pretty much did us both in. Being a week off New Bedford and having struggled through most of the day’s slog (we’d later argue over who was killing who), I was burnt toast by the end, but save that one last race, the Boston training cycle was in the can.

Ah, that one last race. Being the rare Saturday event, it was a short week’s recovery after the long run, though I’m not sure a long week would have changed the outcome all that much. All I can tell you is that when I toed the line for the seventh time at the Frank Nealon Boston Tune-Up 15K, I wasn’t feeling like a spring chicken. But hey, the sun was shining, everyone who was anyone was there, and we were having a grand time chatting it up on the warm-ups, hanging around, and at the starting line – or well behind the starting line, since this was again a Grand Prix race; translate, every ringer in New England is in the house and you’d be a fool to line up in front.

It didn’t surprise me that they’d moved the start as I presumed they needed to accommodate the expected larger Grand Prix crowd. It did surprise me that they’d moved the start to a spot that seemed considerably farther away. And it surprised me more that they also moved the finish beyond the old one as well. Having logged a half dozen circuits on this course, I’d checked and rechecked and was convinced that their old course, which I believe was certified, was accurate. And a Grand Prix course sort of has to be accurate. So going farther on both ends didn’t add up, but, well, I’d have to deal with that later, it was time to go.

The best way I can describe a Grand Prix is that about a mile in, a mile that I covered at a stupid fast pace yet still had a veritable army in front of me anyway, a mini-gaggle of young studs from some unknown team passed by on the left. These were highly competitive smokin’ fast twenty-somethings and even they were exclaiming to each other, “Can you believe these Grand Prix race starts? Holy cow, look at all of ‘em up there!”

I look at these races as a source of inspiration for top performances, since you know there will always be plenty of people at and above your level. But on this day, inspiration wasn’t going to overcome the lead-up. Within a couple more miles, I was toast. Baked. That little pop-up thing they stick in the turkey had popped. Put a fork in him, he’s done.

Teammate Phil, whom I’d bested in our last two match-ups, caught up around two-and-a-half. I cranked it up to go with him for a half mile, but there was simply nothing in the tank. Fourth race in thirty-five days, six days since that planet-encircling ambulation, well, je suis tres fatigué. My mile splits settled back to ho-hum and I lowered my sights to a back-up time goal.

Long story short, even that didn’t happen. Each five kilometer stretched out worse than the last, and to add an insult, topping the last rise just after the eight mile mark, I cramped. Seriously? A lot of things – even weird things – happen, but I never cramp. But it was just that kind of day.

I actually didn’t look all that horrible in the finish photos, but let’s face it, by then, I’d dialed it down and dialed it in. No wow factor on this day, kids. Nothing to see, move along. Time to look forward to Boston.

The clock said “PW” – Personal Worst – and while it was certainly pretty low on the excellence in execution scale, I wasn’t quite sold that it was an the all-time bottom-scraper. There were, after all, those relocated start and finish lines. A quick casual measurement pegged the course as obviously long – not a big deal for a typical race, but surprising for a certified Grand Prix race course. Adjusted for the distance, it wasn’t quote a PW – some vindication – and subsequently applying the ‘Dude, you’re an old man’ age-grading tables, it really wasn’t that bad after all. But was I happy with it? Hey, look at the bright side, on a day like that, you don’t have to stick around to wait for the awards.

It did occur to me that these four races, Hyannis, Stu’s New Bedford, and the Boston Tune-Up, fell into a pace trend that, when plotted against the race distances (seven, nine, thirteen, and eighteen miles), actually made some sense. While not exactly aligned – New Bedford somewhat beating the trend, or Stu’s somewhat behind, depending on how you view it – one could construe that some extrapolation might give me a hint of where Boston might land. Since I don’t like to bore you with numbers (save the diameter of the Earth, which is hard to leave out), I’ll just say it was pretty much in line with what I sort of think I might kind of be able to maybe do. Perhaps.

So, readiness? Who knows. Stuff hurts, as it usually does, though I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that stuff hurts more than usual. Seeing as I now qualify to move into most adults-only communities, I guess that’s not surprising. But I still refuse to deal with it. Indeed, I still feel like I’m waiting for my Adult Card to arrive in the mail any day now. A week out, the forecast for Boston is damp and cool with a tailwind. Two out of three (I could live without the damp) ain’t bad, I’ll hope it holds true. What I really need between now and then is to go easy this week, rest, or maybe just take a nap.