2012 Shamrock Run, Portland, Oregon
By jldeleon
Dan (paraganek), Nick (NickW), Jen (jldeleon) and Mike (migangelo)
(I love how everyone seems to have a “pose” in this photo)
Part I: Rated G
I wouldn’t say I wanted to “race” in this race, but I can say I wanted to meet certain goals. As usual, no injury/no pain, was my number one goal. My second goal was to pace myself well. My third goal was to drink beer. I am happy to announce that all goals were met!
I had made tutus for all my little buddies to wear during this race; David (my husband), Mike, Nick, Dan, Kevin, and Todd. For various reasons, not all of us were able to meet in one place, at one time, before the race started, like we had planned. And with 30,000 people, it’s pretty hard to find all of your peeps anyway. Mike’s friend, Cassie, and Dan and I, met at our normal meet-up spot. Mr. Creative (Dan) had painted a shamrock on his face. Dan and Cassie took the rest of the tutus and left to find Mike and Nick before the race, but just couldn’t get to each other in time. So unluckily, half of them were deprived of their tutus that I slaved so hard over. Luckily they did not go to waste, as Dan wore TWO tutus and Cassie got to wear one too!
Tutus galore, Cassie, and David with my peeps!
I had already decided well before the race that I would run in my injinji socks (rainbow colored of course) because the road was too cold and too rough for me to handle completely barefoot –despite all the work I had done to build up my soles – I have sensitive skin and that’s just the way it is. I knew that if I did not wear “something” on my feet, I would fall to the side of road crying and whining. It was a wise choice, and after this race, I have decided I will be wearing socks in probably every pavement race.
The weather was definitely 32 degrees when wind-chill was taken into account. Despite this cold temperature, I know I ALWAYS get too hot about ten minutes into running and end up stripping down to almost nothing, anyway. So, for about thirty minutes before the race, I ran up and down the streets, around in figure eights, jumped on and off curbs, and karate chopped my husband to help myself warm-up. I don’t know if people were more scared of my socks, my tutu, or my antics –but my husband just told the gawkers that I was out on my weekend release. J My warm-up plan worked and I began the race in my tank top, and I was glad I did, cuz there is nothing more annoying than trying to strip and situate three layers of clothing while running, without falling or running into people.
My honey was running the 8k too, but we don’t run at the same pace, so we arranged to meet after the finish line. I decided that I have to run races, in silence, out of necessity. I have to watch the ground carefully since stubbing your toe, on pavement, is especially painful. I also have to watch other runners so I don’t trip them, they don’t trip me, and they don’t stomp on my feet. Luckily, the only incident I had was tripping on a chick’s heel because she abruptly stopped running right in front of me. Also, in such a crowded race, if you expect to keep a decent pace, you have to continually focus on maximizing the use of your peripheral vision in order to work your way around slower runners, and without getting trampled by the faster ones. Frankly, I don’t know how serious runners can stand such crowded races. Anyway, talking is not conducive to any of these things. It’s too bad my friends couldn’t have seen me running, because they would never believe I actually kept my lips together longer than a second! Lol.
After a couple of delays we were off! I could immediately tell that my trail running, strengthening my arch, abductor/adductor exercises, and core work had TOTALLY paid off. With minimal effort, I had near perfect posture, balance, gait, and my foot strikes were distinctly even in both intensity and surface area strike. As a result, it took less than ten minutes to set my pace.
I love to eavesdrop on people so it was really difficult for me to focus on my cadence at first, since so many people were talking. Plus there were various bands playing along the way that, although they were a nice touch, were interfering with my cadence tempo. I began my cadence chant in my usual way by counting the long way (in my head of course) which I did for about ¾ of the race. In the last ¼ of the race, I changed my chant to “a-void-inj-ur-y” –which I ALWAYS use for my cadence chant in the last mile, or so, since I know that’s when I am most likely to lose concentration and trip, or over-stride. I also made a very conscious effort to increase my cadence and shorten my stride, as the race progressed. I started about 170 and by the time I was done I was at least at 190. As a result, I only took five deep breaths the entire race and they were all evenly spaced (even on the incline), which, for me, indicated a well-controlled pace and a moderate exertion rate.
The only strange thing I had happen was, at the beginning of mile three, for about one mile, I had a strange feeling in my left ankle that felt as if I needed to rotate my ankle around until it popped -but I didn’t. I just shortened my stride, and increased my cadence, and it went away. I believe that I pushed off with that foot, by accident, causing it to get a bit tweaked. Otherwise, I had ZERO pain during the race. The next day, the back of my right heel was moderately sore –not really sure why.
I finished at 54:07. Thank goodness my husband analyzed this all for me. Numbers are not my thing. I was 4659th place out of 6571 total runners in the 8k, which means about 70% of all runners, ran faster than me. Outta just the chicks, only about 36% ran faster than me. Out of my age group, about 39% ran faster than me. And out of all the runners in the 8k, I ran 4 minutes and 8 seconds slower than the average. My pace was 10:54. Not bad for my first 8k.
I will be posting Part II: The “After-Shamrock-Race-Report” in, “The Barefoot Pub” shortly.
