Santa Cruz Half-Marathon: Somehow, the Planets Aligned

The start of the Santa Cruz Half-Marathon just before near disaster.
I'm the guy in the white singlet in the middle looking down at his watch
(Photo from FirstWave Events's Facebook Page)

One thing I've learned from running is that no matter how hard you work, a stupid thing like an untied shoe lace can bring months of hard training crashing to the ground.  The flip side is sometimes everything just fits into place and you end up running much faster than you had any business doing.  Such was the case in the Santa Cruz Half-Marathon last Sunday, as everything clicked on a gorgeous early spring Sunday.

Not that things could've gone horribly wrong.   When the starting gun fired, my car remote key entry tied into my shoe laces promptly broke off after I taking the first couple steps at the start.  Some how, it got kicked to the side of the road and a spectator picked it up.  Fighting back through the crowd like a single fish swimming against the rest of the school, I plowed my way back to the nice lady who picked it up, yelling "That's my key!" and took it from her hand in a panic, without even thinking to thank her.  Not the best way to start the race, but imagine the other possibilities.  The remote could've got kicked into the middle of the pack where it would be harder to retrieve, or may have not noticed it missing until half way through the race.  All things considered, I got pretty lucky with the whole episode.

A pristine row of porta-potties is
always a welcome site before a
half-marathon

Working my way through the field, I tried to calm down and settle into a good opening pace.  My plan for the early miles was to make sure no mile was faster than 6:45 pace, so of course, I come through the first mile in 6:35.  Telling myself to slow down and relax, I come through mile 2 at 6:40 pace.  So much for my pre-race strategy.

After five miles at 6:40-6:45 pace, I feared I would finally pay the price leaving the smooth asphalt for the uneven dirt and gravel trails of Wilder Ranch on the west edge of Santa Cruz, but I was still living a charmed life, running 6:45-6:31-6:46 for miles 6 through 8.  There were plenty of great views from the trails as we ran along the cliffs high above the ocean, but I only snuck a few peeks.  I've learned the hard way that taking too much scenery on uneven trails is a face plant waiting to happen.

Exiting Wilder Ranch, the course heads back into Santa Cruz the same way we came.   Coming through mile 9, I wasn't too worried about clocking a 6:59 mile since this part of this mile consisted of a series of uphills, especially since I followed that up with a 6:50 on mile 10.  But the hills and the optimistic pace began to really wear me down, and I started running out of gas from there, with the last couple miles a real struggle at 7:00 pace.  Still, at 1:28:26, I averaged 6:45 pace, the upper end of my pre-race goal, despite chasing down my remote entry key which probably cost me at least 10-15 seconds. 

My training the last three months was plagued with a back injury in early February and a bad stomach flu in early March, each setting my training back about 10 days.  I honestly thought breaking 1:30 for the half-marathon on the moderately challenging course would be difficult.  How did I manage doing nearly two minutes better than that?

Apparently, all those 6-12 mile tempo runs really helped, even though the fastest twelve mile tempo run clocked in a 7:09 pace.  A couple eight mile tempo runs at 6:45-6:50 pace within six weeks of the Half-Marathon were probably good preparation as well, since I came through the first eight miles not too much faster than those training runs.   I find long distance tempo runs help create the pace sense and mental discipline required to keep knocking out mile after mile at the same pace and for the first ten miles, so all those runs really paid off.

There was another slight adjustment I made in my life which also seemed to help.   I cut back on my beer consumption a bit the last couple months.  Yes, beer is good, but each beer has a fair amount of calories and tots of calories aren't good for running half-marathons.

While I'm pretty happy with the performance, what held me back was that my longest runs, save for a 14 miler in January, were all 12 miles.   At that distance, I simply wasn't prepared to grind out the last 2-3 miles of a half-marathon.  And my speed work was non-existent, consisting of a single workout of four half-mile intervals so I didn't have the strength to handle the uphills of the ninth miles and hammer thelast four miles after that.

So I'll give myself a little pat on the back for a job well done, thank the running gods for looking favorably upon me that day, and just hope I haven't blown too much running karma for not thanking that lady for picking up my key remote.  I'll take a couple days off, re-evaluate my training, and start going to work for the next race.  I'm thinking of a 10k some time in May.

The festive oceanside finish area

Target, Santa Cruz Half-Marathon: The Fun Begins

If I wanted to make this blog really tedious and dull, I'd write about my running all the time.  Sure, I enjoy running, its often stimulating with even exhilarating and unique moments from tim, but then some runs are about as exciting as washing the dishes.  Running success requires a certain humdrum day to day consistency which when written out, is about as exciting to read as a bus schedule.  Of course, there are days when you have a workout breakthrough, but of course, to build up a solid foundation, you have to come back every 2-3 days and run another strong workout.  So I'm not big on broadcasting about my training accomplishments on the Internet or through social media for that reason. 

 

But then, runners like to talk about running, and "How's your running going?" is always a great ice-breaker question when meeting runners.  And this weekend, I signed up for the Santa Cruz Half-Marathon, and figured it couldn't hurt to share some experiences and discuss how training leading up to the race is going from time to time.  After running for over 30 years, I have my own thoughts about how to train for half-marathons, and figure some of you might actually be interested in reading about this every few weeks.   When the Santa Cruz Half-Marathon starts April 7th, we'll all find out how all that hard work paid off, a running laboratory if you will.  For those more interested, feel free to find me on Daily Mile where we chat about our respective running and other workouts on a more regular basis.

 

As for my current plans for the Santa Cruz Half-Marathon, I figure to have a finishing time in the range of 1:25-1:30.  I'm building up my long runs to at least fourteen miles by the end of the month, with weekly mileage in the 40-45 mile range.  Then I'll start getting speedier with some 3-4 mile tempo runs starting February, and a smattering of shorter interval track workouts in March.  I'll be writing about those workouts with observations and hopefully some insight that might help you with your running.  I'll also be running The 408k, an 8k in San Jose on March 10th as a tune-up for the half-marathon.

 

Right now, the focus is on the long runs and getting a decent amount of base mileage.  And I'm a believe in doing your long runs fast.  It's a counter-intuitive approach and goes against a lot of so-called conventional wisdom out there.  But running long runs fast has worked for me, and I'll talk about that specifically in two or three weeks with a few more long fast runs under my belt.

 

For those who decide to stick around, we'll see where this all leads.



A Knock Out in Santa Cruz

Thanks to my right hip, I took this picture of the start of the Santa Cruz Half-Marathon. Of course, I was planning on running this race, not taking pictures of it. Don't know what exactly is wrong with the hip, but it's screwed up pretty good. Since it seems unrelated to any particular range of motion or muscle action and is aggravated mainly by putting weight on my right leg, I fear it's a stress fracture. Hopefully next week my doctor can tell me what's going on.

It's simply amazing how quickly training can turn from great to disastrous. Four weeks ago, I ran a 5 mile race hoping for a time in the 31:00-32:00 range, and popped a 30:27. Things kept rolling, and eleven days later on a cold, windy rainy morning, I covered four miles of tempo running on the track at sub-6:10 pace in these difficult conditions, well below my 6:20-6:30 target. But then three days later, feeling a little tired going into a 15 mile timed run where I was shooting for 6:50-6:55 pace, I completely ran out of gas at 9 1/2 miles before staggering to the end. That's when the right hip soreness started getting noticeable, so I took a couple days off, did a couple light runs, before taking one big final 12 mile tune-up before the half marathon. The hip felt fine, and I stopped at miles 1 and 4 to check for any soreness or stiffness, but it felt good and while it stiffened up a little around miles 8-9 before subsiding, I ended the 12 mile run strongly, enthusiastic I was ready for the half marathon and my hip problem licked.

Except for a couple hours later, all I could do was stand awkwardly on my left leg with my right leg helplessly dangling from my torso. It's gotten better, albeit very slowly, but running a half marathon on it was likely going to end up in disaster, and quite likely some really nasty long term injury. I don't regret the risks I took to get to the starting line in what I thought would be the best shape possible. They were calculated risks that just didn't work out. This, unfortunately, is part of running.

Running is not like a Rocky movie. Just because you work hard and want it really bad, that big bad mean dude can still clock you with a right uppercut in the first round, and it's all over. Such is life.

But sometimes the good guys still win. My wife Linda worked hard for weeks too, and ran her personal best that day for the the half-marathon. So see, if you just hang in there and keep swinging, you still have a chance to take the bad guy down.

A good thing about drinking beer is that it requires very few functioning body parts. So a small consolation from being injured and not starting the Santa Cruz half marathon the next day was that I could have that extra beer without concern for any race day repercussions. So when Linda and I rolled into town, we first stopped at Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing for a pint and midday sandwich. The small tap room seemed a little spruced up from the last time we were there, and as always, a cross section of the diverse and slightly funky Santa Cruz population cruised through the place to get a growler fill or enjoy a pint for themselves. Hands down, our favorite for the afternoon was the Chile Chocolate Stout a special release available only from the tap room. While we both appreciated the dark chocolate flavors in the roasty malt, its rich character and slight sweetness, what really got us was it's mouth numbing tingly chile zip. The chile wasn't subtle, and for some people not particularly balanced, but for us, it was perfect. We also tried a sample of their barley wine aged 8 months in Chardonnay barrels. I thought the vanilla and Chardonnay flavors the barrel aging brought to the malty, toffee-like barleywine was rather interesting, but wasn't sure that the final product worked. Linda was sure it didn't.

Later that evening, we went with a friend for dinner at a place on Santa Cruz's West Side called burger. where oddly enough, you can order a burger from a wide ranging, eclectic menu supplemented by a tap list of no fewer than 48 beers. The Syd Barrett Burger I ordered was likely named for Barrett's legendary wide ranging and ultimately damaging experimentation with hallucinogenic substances, since it was topped with mushrooms. At least that's my guess, since I had to explain to the two twenty-something ladies behind the counter who Syd Barret was. There was a time explaining who Syd Barrett was made me feel cool, but now, it just makes me realize how old I'm starting to get. As for the beer, they have a few local favorites such as Santa Cruz Ale Works Red IPA complimented with the usual California craft beer suspects like Sierra Nevada, Anderson Valley, Green Flash, and Port Brewing was a few solid imports thrown in for good measure. If you want to get a good organically grown grass fed burger, yummy sweet potato fries, and a good beer, there's no better place to go than burger. But if you only have a half-hour to get a burger, you'll probably have better luck with the McDonald's across the street.

For Linda's Half-Marathon PR celebration, we headed over to Seabright Brewery where the outdoor patio that sunny day was filled with tired but jubilant runners adorned with their finisher's medal around their necks. Some of them were even limping around as badly as me. Linda and I started off with the The Freak Pale Ale, named in honor of San Francisco Giant ace Tim Lincecum. For a Pale Ale, both the malt and hop levels were as wispy as Lincecum's slender build, but for that late morning, light caramel flavors with a tea-like and slightly earthy hops made for a rather refreshing brew. Keeping with the San Francisco Giants theme, I also tried the Say Hey Wheat, their filtered wheat beer. Crisp and clear, with a nice wheat tartness and light citrus note, I could see why this was a popular post-race beer with many of finishers on the patio. And extra bonus points for Seabright not serving it with the standard lemon per my request. Linda finished with Seabright's Amber which had the requisite roasty malt and earthy finish one finds in a good amber.

As for you, Santa Cruz Half-Marathon, I am not finished with you yet!