March 2002 Newsletter

Toasted!

No buildup this time - let's cut to the chase. In the February 10th Finger Lakes Runners Club meet, I didn't give Molly Huddle any competition at all. Nowhere even close - she just toasted me, along with a bunch of other guys who ran even faster than I did.

But there is a bit more of a story here. After my last report on losing to the 17-year-old Molly by a mere second in the mile race during the January 6th FLRC meet, the pressure was on for a rematch. I felt I could run a bit faster than my 4:57, and she'd run the 4:56 after knocking off a 10:19 two mile, so I was pretty sure she could go faster as well. Nice idea on my part, but reality doesn't always cooperate.

The first problem came a few days later when I signed a contract to write a book, with a deadline of March 1st. I write fast, but six weeks to go from seeing a new program for the first time to 100+ pages of a fully laid-out book is pushing it. Clearly I was going to have to spend more time in front of the Macs than normal, and the two-hour lunch breaks that seem to be necessary to train with High Noon were going to be a luxury.

I decided that the best approach to increasing speed when I wouldn't have time to train as much was to run quality workouts when I did make it into Teagle at noon. It seemed a perfectly reasonable decision at the time, and for the next two weeks, I made it in about twice a week, usually for the Tuesday speed work day, and again on Thursday or Friday for another hard run. In between I'd either run a few miles on my own or not run at all in favor of cranking on the book. In retrospect, stupid move number one.

One of those speed work days was three one mile intervals on the bike path, but the weather and the plans of others generally encouraged me to run in Barton, pounding around the tight turns of the 200 meter track. I felt good in those workouts, the last of which was seven 400s getting progressively faster and four 200s at full speed, but in retrospect, they were stupid move number two.

Where does the stupidity come in? In the dull pain that developed in my right shin. The first day I didn't pay much attention, and after the second day it happened (that last speed workout), I realized I'd done something wrong, but I wasn't entirely sure what. Looking back, stupidity number three was a combination of not enough stretching before running for various reasons, not enough stretching after running, and no icing at all. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

I decided that the better part of valor would be rest, especially since that would provide more work time, so I took five days off entirely, during which my shin didn't improve one bit. Finally on Wednesday before the Sunday meet, I decided to chance a couple miles slowly. By this time, I'd read the section on shin splints (medial tibial stress syndrome) in Tim Noakes's The Lore of Running (an excellent research-based reference book on running), and had started proper stretching and icing. But it seemed that it was the two mile jog I did that Wednesday that started to clear up the problem, and with two more days of 15 minutes of jogging, I was up to Sunday. So much for that quality training, but at least I could say I was well rested.

Needless to say, I wanted to run the race, but I wasn't really sure what was going to happen. I might get there, warm up, feel pain, and decide that there was no reason to compound stupidity with idiocy by running at all. Or I imagined running, but at a distinctly impaired pace. I debated whether I should wear my training shoes, which probably don't have the cushioning they did a few hundred miles ago, or my cross country flats, which would surely be harder on my leg. And I worried that I might even start out fine but then have to drop out in the middle because of the pain.

Warming up that morning with Derek Dean felt good, and peeking at the prediction cards showed that my predicted 4:40 for the 1500 meter race fell right after Molly's predicted 4:35, so we were in the same heat. It didn't quite make sense, since the rumor on the track was that Molly was going to go for the high school record of 4:18. People kept signing up, though, fast people, and by the time they called names for the fourth of five heats, I'd been bumped down so I was the top seed in the slower heat. Everyone at the start was giving me a hard time about how I'd managed to avoid Molly, so I said I'd be willing to run the faster heat, for the sake of the story (the sacrifices we writers put ourselves through!), even though it meant I'd undoubtedly be trailing the pack.

And so it happened that I was bumped back up into the fast heat, with people like Casey Carlstrom (4:43 at the Masters Mile), and Tom Hammer, who was gunning for Molly after being beaten in the two mile the previous meet. I bore no illusions that I was out of my league, but hey, I'd predicted only five seconds slower than Molly, which was about what I'd done the previous race.

We lined up, with me way out on the end past Molly, and the gun went off. We sprinted for the immediate turn, and I swear that was just about the last I saw of her. Actually, that's not entirely true - at one point I caught a glimpse of her ahead of Casey, and then the race started to blur. My first 400 meters was a 69, but even with that I was several seconds behind the second-to-last guy, and my subsequent 74 and 75 second quarters merely dropped me further back. I was in no danger of being lapped, but talk about being out of the race. I did hear great excitement from the crowd as I was heading into my last 100 meters, and a quick glance over to the finish line revealed that Molly was finishing fast, at least 10 or 15 seconds ahead of me. Clearly, my days of competing with Molly are behind me unless I can beat my own high school PRs.

And so, I trudged into the finish alone, looked at the clock, and thought (after the blood returned to my head), "Hey, wait a minute, I just ran a 4:36!" Some number of minutes later, when higher reasoning returned, along with basic math skills, I figured out that I'd run one second faster than my mile pace from the previous meet. So I wasn't loafing out there - it was just that Molly went and ran a 4:22 1500, which works out to a 4:41 pace, or 15 seconds faster than the previous meet. Additional small consolation was provided by the fact that of the people who beat me, only Casey (who ran a stunning 4:17) at 43 and and one other guy were older than me - everyone else was more than 10 years younger. However, the best news was that my leg didn't hurt at all, despite the hard pace in my flats on Barton's turns. I promise not to be stupid about it from now on.

Although Jim Miner claimed the conditions weren't acceptable for an official record (no inner rail, and it wasn't a women-only race), Molly's 4:22 was the second-fastest scholastic women's time ever for the 1500, second only to Lynn Jennings's 4:18. Impressive numbers, and if she can knock 15 seconds off her pace from January to February (though admittedly without the additional fatigue of winning a two mile race beforehand), there are plenty of records for Molly to break, and I hope some of them are in local races.

Of course, this being the Valentine's Day race, I had another 800 to do with my wife Tonya, who has been training for the 2 x 800 mixed relay for a month or two. Coming back after years of not running seriously hasn't been easy, but she still managed a respectable 3:21 for her leg and I turned in a 2:24 for mine. And although our time wasn't sufficient for an award of any sort, I think we were the only team that lived up to the holiday spirit and smooched at the starting line. Now that's my kind of race.

-- Adam Engst

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