Against my better judgement, I went down to Central Park this morning and ran the Ted Corbitt 15k. It wasn’t a total disaster, but the result wasn’t anywhere near where I wanted it to be. Or, where it even should be. Nonetheless, being 15K is such an odd race distance, I haven’t run one since 2007, so I managed a PR by 4 seconds. I’ll take it.
There was one point over the past couple of days where I decided I was going to skip this race. Nonetheless, Friday I was running some quasi tempo miles (10 second faster than marathon pace) in Central Park and decided to get my race packet at NYRR on 89th just incase. It was convenient and I had a feeling I might change my mind about skipping this later.
Saturday morning I didn’t have the mojo to do a long run. I wound up taking the day off. With that, I figured maybe I’d go into the city the next day after all… just to see. By the end of the day, I was preparing for the race the next morning.
Lack of pressure, and lack of drive for this race, allowed me to get a great night’s sleep. Ironic in some ways that my best performances are inversely related to how much sleep I get the night before.
The main reason I did not want to do this race was the fact I had no desire to deal with the hassle of traveling down to the city and lining up in the cold. As I sat in the cold waiting for the train, I asked myself why am I in the cold freezing my ass off when I’d rather be in bed? How did I get here? I thought I was going to skip this race!
There was really no reason to be doing this race either. In prior years I might chalk it up to getting a race credit for guaranteed entry to the marathon, but this year I didn’t pursue the 9+1 path, and this was only my sixth NYRR race of the year. Of course, there’s always a PR to be had… and a goal. I had one. I wanted to do a sub 60 minute 15k when I signed up for this. It was a bit of a long shot, but not impossible. However, for the past week or so, I haven’t felt that I was in condition to do that well.
After getting off the train at 125th street, I slowly jogged down to 102nd street transverse and immediately headed to the port-a-johns after arriving. Afterwards, I checked in my baggage and ran to the start as the star-spangled banner was being sung. I got to the back of the blue corral and it was packed.
First mile was surprisingly congested. Everyone was just going out super slow. I decided, since I’m here, I might as well try for that sub-60 15k, or at least see how close I can come. But, maintaining a target pace of 6:27 was nearly impossible. There wasn’t even room to bob and weave around others. I hit the first mile in 6:45 by my watch.
The second mile things started opening up. Towards the latter half of this mile, things were mostly downhill. I hit the 2nd mile marker in 6:11. A bit too fast.
Mile 3 consisted of the turn around back towards the start and included cat hill. Mile 3 6:33, and a bit off pace again, but I blamed it on cat hill.
During the 4th mile, I still couldn’t get my groove. Things felt too hard, or at least harder than they should have felt and I assumed I was going too fast. Then when I hit the 4th mile marker and saw 6:30 I began to realize sub-60 was not in the cards today.
Along the 5th mile, I was completely demoralized. This mile passes by the start and having to go out for a second longer loop, when things felt as bad as they did made me feel completely pessimistic. Along with that, there are three somewhat tough hills to get over before things get easier. I hit the 5th mile marker in 6:39. Way, way off pace.
At this point I was seriously considering dropping out. I was way off pace, I was hurting bad, and I really didn’t have it in me today. Besides that, my nose wouldn’t stop running (no pun intended) and there was just no place for all the stuff to go. After a while, I stopped bothering to wipe it off. Can’t wait to see the brightroom pics when they come out.
But, overall, I felt like a mess. From the start, I just didn’t really want to be here. Every hill, every turn, every mile, I’ve done countless times day after day, and this just felt like a hard training run. I didn’t have that race excitement. I bargained with myself. Don’t drop out, don’t DNF, perhaps sandbag it and jog it in. I dropped the pace a bit in hopes to recover, and being the 6th mile has some downhills things got somewhat easier and I hit the mile marker 6 in 6:32.
Mile 7 goes passed the turn around on the first loop, and at this point I knew I had to cover the complete race distance so dropping out was no longer a possibility. I hit mile 7 in 6:32. I began thinking I’m not even maintaining a pace for a PR, and my PR at this distance is kind of weak.
Mile 8, back up cat hill, and boy were my quads clobbered. But only one more mile to go. No, it’s 1.3 miles to go. That’s like 1.5 miles. Oh my god, when is this ever going to be over? Mile 8 in 6:45. Stick a fork in me.
Towards mile 9, back down the straight flat road a second time and my legs were feeling like jelly. I just held on, and towards the end of mile 9 things all of a sudden got a lot easier. I thought to myself, this is not so bad. Mile 9 in 6:39.
The last .3 miles I think were my fastest. Knowing it was over, I found I was able to push a bit harder than I realized. I actually passed a lot of people at this point. .3 in 1:48. (6:00 min mile)
I cross the finish line and see I PR’ed by a few seconds after all. Well, it wasn’t a total waste. Certainly, not what I hoped for. But, a PR is a PR. And, at the very least, I can put down a strong tempo in my log. 15K in 1:01:04 6:33 pace overall.
One thing I learned is that if I don’t have that hunger to race hard, I’m not going to do nearly as good as I can. In the future, if I’m lacking motivation for a race, I wont push myself to do it again. One thing though is, once this was over, I sort of wished I could do it over again.
I’ll sit with this for a while, and hopefully, it will add to my motivation for the Manhattan Half in January.
