After that 20-mile run in New York, I’m now into the taper portion of my marathon training; I’ll be running less and less over the next two weeks until the marathon itself. But “less” does still mean that I needed to run 12 miles this last weekend. And just when I was contemplating that in the middle of the week, Erica sent me an IM saying “look what Zach is doing”. What my friend Zach was doing was running 13.1 miles, but broken up into 3 separate races, spread across the day on Sunday and spread across 100 miles of Chicago suburbs.
It’s a funny thing about challenges. A few years ago, running twelve miles alone would have seen like a challenge, but now that I’m in training, it seems like a simple thing. You just run a mile, and then don’t stop until you’ve gone eleven more. So adding a ridiculous layer of challenges on top of it just seems like, well, a good idea.
There are all sorts of reasons why it’s a bad idea. The weather was promising to be awful. With just two weeks to go, I really should be really careful not to injure myself so I don’t screw up the marathon I’ve been training for for months. The structure of the day seemed almost designed to injure us: I’ve gotten into trouble before by running hard and then cooling off and then trying to run again. And the middle run was a trail run, which introduces the dangers of tripping over roots and breaking legs.
So, I emailed Zach right away and asked to get in the action. Zach checked in with Antonio, who would be driving, and then we were agreed.
The day turned out surprisingly well. We made it to all three races. I made good time in all of them. I even set a PR in the last 5 miler (well, easily, because I’ve never run a chip-timed 5 mile race before).
We recorded episodes of the Unnamed Mostly Chicago Race Review podcast after each race, and I’ll be releasing them over the next few days. Here’s the first one: Cupid’s Love Dash 5K 2013.
Official results for the Cupid’s Love Dash 5K:
Time: 26:19.8
Pace: 8:29
Overall place: 59 / 348
Place in sex: 36 / 118
Place in division (M, 40-44): 6 / 15
Frozen Five results (not chip-timed):
Time: 57:19.8
Official results for the Frosty 5 Mile (PR):
Time: 46:49.85
Pace: 9:22
Overall place: 155 / 258
Place in sex: 105 / 150
Place in division (M, 40-44): 13 / 16
Update: I’ve posted the second podcast, covering the Frozen Five. Update: The third and final podcast is up. Did we make it to the last race?
