Preparation

Training Changes

This year my preparation for these distance running events has been different from my preparation last year. Since the beginning of February I’ve been training via CrossFit workouts at CrossFit Impulse. I did a few running workouts over the past few months via CrossFit Endurance, although the CrossFit main site workouts of the day (WODs) and programming from CrossFit Impulse made up the majority (90%+) of my training.

Diet Changes

On top of the training changes this year I’ve made several dietary ones as well. Along with the training ideas in CrossFit are several dietary ideas that are promoted among CrossFit advocates. Two of these dietary ideas are the Zone and Paleo diet. The summary of the Zone diet is that macronutrients (carbohydrate, fat, and protein) are eaten in a specific ratio. The paleo diet is based on increasing the quality of food eaten by exclusion of food that was not typically present in the diet of humans before 10,000 years ago. One of the major shifts I made about a month ago was excluding grains (wheat, rice, etc.) from my diet. This has helped my digestion tremendously. Gone are the occasional upset stomach and gurgling.

Race Day

On the morning of the race I woke up relatively early to eat a small version of my typical breakfast (scrambled eggs and turkey sausage). That morning I weighed 173.0 pounds which is the heaviest I’ve been since high school football. I’ve been steadily gaining weight since the beginning of February when I started CrossFit and from looking in the mirror it appears to be muscle gain. Leading up to this morning I’ve been a bit nervous about how I would actually do in the race as my longest training run was a 5km time trial a few weeks before. Although I feel that I’m close to being in the best shape of my life I had my doubts about how I would do in today’s race especially after the four mile mark. Adding on top of this was the fact that I weighed the most I have since high school and I began to wonder if my endurance would hold up and carry me through to the end in under my 10km run PR of 47:59 from June 2009.

The race course included a hill at the end of the course (~5.75 miles) so I wanted to save some fuel in my tank for the end. The start of the race is always a bit clustered and I now kept towards the front of the pack before the start, not at the very front but close to the front. I want to stay out of the madness of the start, but not get in the way of the more elite runners who will fight for the win. While starting too fast at the beginning of the race can mess up your pace for the rest of the race, the beginning of a race for me seems to be fueled by adrenaline and nerves. I let that carry me at a good pace for the first mile.

With all my concerns about lasting the whole race, when I reached mile marker 4 I felt great. It was uncanny how good I felt at this point. At this point the course was beginning to get harder as we were passing Dublin Park and turning into a subdivision that contained a few rolling hills before exiting out at the base of the Eastview Drive monster of a hill before the home stretch. A few people around me at this point seemed to be suffering a bit and I decided to keep a decent pace and slowly pace a few runners. The entrance to the subdivision at Crestview Drive has a long slight incline all the way up before we make a right-hand turn. I paid attention to my form and breathing to save as much I could going up this rise. Almost immediately after the right turn we made a left turn onto Briarwood Drive, the decline here became too much for me to hold and let gravity pull me down and I churned my legs as fast as possible. I didn’t want to fly down this hill, but as this point in the race, just over 5 miles, my feet were hurting a bit and I have not gotten the hang of keeping my running pace under control going downhill in my FiveFingers. At this point the course is relatively flat before the final hill so I took it easy and got myself ready mentally for the climb ahead.

The climb at the end of the course is crazy. Where the course takes a left onto Eastview Drive leaves you at the base of the climb and it is a low slight incline before reaching upward for the sky. With hills I like to get up them as quickly as possible within reason. If I take it slow on a hill it just last longer time-wise and seems worse. I put everything I had left into chopping my feet quickly and getting up the climb. The hill was not easy at all and punished me for trying to take it quickly. the downhill portion was another beast in itself as by this point I was exhausted from the climb and my feet felt pounded from the running, it was all I could do to keep from letting gravity pull me down the hill. Eventually I relented and churned my legs as fast as possible to keep up with how fast gravity was pulling me down the hill. This is an area I will need to work on for future runs as this took the most out of me. When I reached bottom and all that was left ahead me was a relatively flat quarter-mile I checked my watch to see a time of just over 44 minutes. I knew at this point that beating my PR was all but in my hands. As much as I wanted to coast into the finish line it’s hard to do with my sprinter mentality. Also, a friend of mine that had already finished was cheering me on and the woman that would finish second for the women was right behind me. What can I say? My ego is what pushed me at this point. I managed to muster some energy and finish strong through the finish line in an official time of 46:16.

Photo Finish

Performance Data and Analysis

10km run – official time 46:16, official results here.

Overall, I should have pushed my pace a little more on the earlier miles. This comes down to smart pacing in the beginning and not leaving a lot left in the tank by the end of the race. Placed 4th in my age group (Male 25-29), finished 25th overall, ~420 registered, not sure how many ran in the actual event. Very happy with this as my PR last year was 47:59 at the Alabama A&M 10km (June 2009) race and I have not been running near the mileage I did last year. Also, my weight Saturday morning was 173 lb. which if I remember correctly is the highest since high school football. Overall, I was very nervous before the race thinking I would hit a wall somewhere around mile four or five. That nervousness dissipated once the race started and by mile four I was feeling great. This is also the longest distance I’ve run in my Vibrams FiveFingers. The hill on Eastview at the end of the race was killer, I gave it everything I had to get up that hill quick. That is one area I need to work on as that hill really punished me for trying to surmount it quickly. The downhill was no picnic either as I could hardly hold myself from flying down the hill at this point. I ended up letting myself ’sprint’ down the hill and that took a beating on me as it was all I could to do to churn my legs quickly enough to stay upright. At this point my feet were on fire as my feet pounded the pavement coming downhill.

Aftermath

After crossing the finish line I laid down on the asphalt to give my legs some relief and let myself breath. Happy with the result I felt ready to relax and get some calories in me to recover effectively. With a storm threatening we decided to head home shortly after finishing and talking with a few people I knew who ran the race. Once I got home I stretched and worked on my calves to help flush out the waste there so I wouldn’t be horribly sore for the next few days. Feeling my calves getting tight I decided to head to CrossFit Impulse and run through the CrossFit Endurance Recovery WOD. It definitely wasn’t fun but I could feel myself loosening up going through the three rounds.

Thoughts and Summary

My primary reaction to this result is that CrossFit works. I ran about a tenth of the miles leading up to this race than I did for either of the 10km races I ran last year. I’m also stronger and bigger than I was at any point during 2009. I noticed last year that while I was getting more running in and I completed a half-marathon I felt that I was losing strength and noticed it during a couple weight lifting sessions last year and early this year. One of my concerns when looking at a CrossFit training program earlier this year was whether I would maintain any sense of running endurance for races of a 10km distance. From what I read then and what I have experienced now has proven to me that I can hold onto my running endurance while gaining muscular size, endurance, and strength. It’s not so much that I doubted these claims but more as to whether a person with typical time and energy constraints would be able to obtain such results.

A few mistakes I made on this race were my racing strategy and in-race nutrition. Even though I kept a decent pace throughout much of the race, I feel that I didn’t push it hard enough earlier in the race. The psychological aspect of the hill pushed me to “save” my strength for the hill and not use up my fuel before then. I think I could have gone a little faster earlier on the course and still ascended the hill in a comparable time. Also, I carried an energy gel with me during the race. My thinking here was that I would keep it with me more as a psychological aid (in case I need it) more than a physical or nutritional need. Close to the five mile mark there was a water station and I took a sip (~1 oz.) of energy gel and washed it down with some water. Again I did this in anticipation of the hill. Some reading after the race indicated that calories consumed within 2-4 miles of the end of a race will only works towards recovery and will not have any real beneficial impact on performance. From the way I felt when I hit the hill I can only say, if anything the gel hindered my performance by having something on my stomach for my system to digest. So, for my next 10km race I’ll drop the energy gel completely and see if I can’t push myself to go a little faster earlier in the race.

Next Race…Cotton Row 10km

The next 10km race I’ll be running is the Cotton Row Run on May 31st in downtown Huntsville. It is a big race so there will be the added challenge of more people on the course, but from this last race I feel that if I run a smarter race I can get close to or under the 45-minute mark. My running strategy will change at Cotton Row as the big hill on that course is at the midway point. It is a steep climb, but if I remember correctly it shorter than the hill on Eastview Drive. I was able to power up that hill last year at Cotton Row and I believe I will be able to do the same this year. After that hill the course is relatively flat then descends into downtown. The descent is not as steep as the downhill on Eastview so I should be able to use some power to get up the hill quickly and let the downhill portion pull me down the course easily and not too fast. To hit the 45 minute mark I’ll have to average a 7:12 mile pace over the whole course, that doesn’t leave me much room for error with looking at my most recent performance.