The first race of the season came and went. I have quickly lost track of my weekly training reflections here on my blog. The little attention I have is split across so many different facets of my life – family, friends, work, grief, training, repeat.
A few days before the race, we decided to renew our Magic Key passes. More trips to southern California to see friends, take care of family business, work with co-workers, and go to Disneyland. It’s not a bad plan. We’ll likely be back in CA more often in the next year as we continue wrapping up family matters.
This was my first race in awhile. It took me awhile to go through my calendar and training logs. My last race was in February (the Death Valley Half Marathon). I had DNS’d Running with Scissors marathon and the Colfax half marathon. I didn’t feel too remorseful, given the upheaval in my work life at the time. By the time I got a new job, summer was underway and I spent a majority of my time traveling to “drink from the firehose,” as they say in corporate.
I had stretches of time where I ran. Stretches of time when I was too mentally tired to do much but doom scroll. Sometimes I try to relax by reading, but I get bored so easily that I end up reverting back to social media scrolling. It’s either that or just sit and stare at the wall, because that’s all my ADHD brain can handle nowadays.
All that to say – the race went well, despite all of the things that were going sideways. In the days leading up to the race, I closely watched the weather. With the race starting after 5am, I was looking at a temp of 65 degrees with around 83% humidity. I’ve gotten so used to the low humidity in Colorado that I knew I’d have to be careful, drink more concentrated electrolytes, and adjust my pacing. I knew I’d be running around 15-17 minute miles, which indicated that I could be on the course until 9am. It looked like as the temps increased, it would burn off some of the humidity…a trade-off of sorts.
The first part of the race was muggy. There was a lingering dampness hanging in the air. I had forgotten my interval timer, so was left figuring them out on my own. I stuck with my usual plan – go consistent and strong during the first half to bank time, and then to do intervals the rest of the time. I know that isn’t advised for the Galloway training plans…it’s actually something they actively advise against. However, I find that it works for me mentally. For Disneyland, the halfway point is also nearly the place where I can get swept while still on park grounds, which inherently feels safer in Anaheim than getting swept out in town. If you can’t tell from the photos above, I was already pretty tired and glistening from a mixture of the effort and the environment.
I made it less than 2 miles when I reexamined how I felt…a bit wobbly, which was really odd. I’ve never had that happen before. I had pushed myself a bit too hard in an effort to give myself safe distance from the crowd and the balloon ladies. I decided to take it down a notch so that I could actually finish the thing without putting myself in harm’s way. Added a few short walk breaks so that I could rest my legs before starting up again. As the sun came up in the park, I began feeling well enough to continue on after the halfway point.
Leaving the park means leaving all of the characters and music behind. The Disneyland races are much different than Disney World. The Disney World races are all held on their property, so it’s easier to maintain security, safety, and continuity. At Disneyland, their area of ownership ends at the park boundary, and you cannot get 13.1 miles on resort property without interfering with business hours, so off into Anaheim we must go.
We wound around some major streets, rounded some areas in the business parks, and then headed back to the Toy Story parking lot. As I mentioned, I forgot my interval timer and I didn’t feel like keeping up with a pacing group, so I counted out my own intervals. 30 Mississippis running, 30 Mississippis walking. Just kept repeating that until I got myself to the finish line.
This year was certainly not as hot as last year. I did sweat a lot more, so I opted for the on-course electrolytes. I was relieved to see that they were pouring straight from the bottles and not diluting them. I reapplied sunscreen many times because of my experience last year. It felt like I was running in Florida, but alas it was just Anaheim in late summer.
All in all I was still happy with my performance, especially with spotty training leading up to it. I know that Dopey is not too far away, so I like using this race as a training benchmark. 145 minutes in zone 4, 65 minutes in zone 5. Wrist-based heart rate monitors aren’t very accurate, but I use the measurements longitudinally to see how far above from baseline my efforts compare. I think I could’ve done a better job starting off slower, rather than presumably starting off right at zone 4. My 5K time was 42:15 (13:36/mi pace), which is pretty fast for me. The first 5K always lies, except this time it made me wobbly and obviously was telling me the truth. My overall pace was over the Dopey requirement (16:15/mi vs 16:00/mi), but with the right training and strategy I’m sure I will figure it out.
Amara in Training 