California International Marathon Race Recap

The time is 1996, it’s my freshman year of High school and I had just been cut from the Freshmen basketball team.  I had dream most of childhood of playing basketball, but I guess I should have seen this coming when twice during the first week’s scrimmage the coach had to blow the whistle and stop play because my glasses fell on the court.  When the coach told me, I was being cut he told me I was “The Wrong Height” I was 5’11 and probably the 2^nd tallest kid I sort of got the hint.  That winter I was playing pickup football with my friends, when my childhood friend was blowing past me all game and catching bombs.  He trash talked me as kids do that he was in shape because he ran XC that fall and that I should try it but I couldn’t beat him.  That spring I decided to get into shape so I decided to try out for track, I did some research about Olympic events and decided I wanted to be a Pole Vaulter and Javelin thrower, the Head Coach took one look at me and said “Distance Runner”.  I was not a natural, I remember cutting runs, skipping practice, and not doing workouts my freshman year.  Distance running was not for me.  22 years later (with an 8-year hiatus) here I am still doing it, running times I couldn’t have ever imagined for a kid who cut a 3 mile run down to 1 constantly freshmen year.

This weekend started with a rabbit Team Dinner Friday night where I met teammates that I have shared a journey with on social media for 6 months now, into a rabbit shake-out run on Saturday morning.  Meeting up with my sister, my friend Mary, her husband Jon and my good pal AnnMarie on Saturday after hitting the expo, we enjoyed a low-key dinner together.  Never have I felt more at peace before a race then hanging out in my Airbnb doing dinner together just talking about life and everything with these lovely people.  Find yourself someone who keeps you calm before a race AND NEVER LET THEM GO.  I went to bed that night, excited and ready for whatever the day would bring.  A 4:30am Uber ride(not used to this city life) with Mary got us to the buses early and off we went.  Only our bus got lost, ended up in the wrong area and had some fun encounters with volunteers to figure out where we were supposed to be and a local hero on the bus got us back on track.  As I said earlier, having a calm at peace person like Mary with you race morning and nothing can worry you.  We shared some laughs and warmed up together before we said our goodbyes and off to the corrals we went.  I was probably 1000 runners back when the gun went off, can’t say I’ve started that far back in a while, it took me 9 seconds to get to the starting line but off I went, CIM was here.

I read my Puppy Unicorn race day email from Coach David many times that week, it is not filled with paces, or race plans or any of that.  It is filled with everything a runner needs to be calm, to enjoy the process, to enjoy this day and to make sure we have clean narratives in our mind of what’s coming.  I was mentally ready and off I went.  I went out calm”ish” I was sort of blowing past runners but I was pretty far back.  The funny thing is I may have been 3000 miles from home but I can’t say I have ever known more runners in a race in my life.  Between Instagram, local running friends, rabbit or SWAP teammates for the first 2 miles every time I passed someone I was like “Hey What’s up!”.  About 2 miles in I rolled into rabbitElite teammate Michele who said she wanted to run 2:35(haha), I wanted to go out a little slower so I just tucked in with her at 2 and ran into Sean O’Leary for about the 5^th different race this year.  We keep finding each other out there.  So the three of us were running together I was making some jokes I found funny, doubtful they were.  We had a good laugh when Michele had her first ever water bottle pickup from a fluid table dropped it and it rolled a good 10 meters from her.  About 6 miles in I looked back and saw we were now not 3 of us but a pack of about 35 runners we were leading down the street, where did everyone come from?  Why was I doing all the work?  Was that Wayne in front of us?  Onward we went.

It was Wayne in front us, my old co-worker who I spent 2 years training with but has since moved.  Honestly I had to sound like such a dork as I screamed, WAYNE BLAS at mile 7 of a marathon around a bunch of very quiet determined runners.  We caught up a bit as we kept rolling on with this ever growing pack.  We were not running 2:35 pace but probably closer to 2:30 pace.  At this point I was vested so I smiled and kept on rolling.  Around mile 9, I just got going a little bit up a hill and then next thing I noticed I had broken off from the pack and off I went feeling fabulous.  In my mind I thought I could go anywhere from 2:26 to 2:31 on this day depending on any number of factors.  So as I started rolling and I clicked off back to back 5:20 miles and was feeling great, by mile 11 I rolled up alongside Steph Bruce and Sara Crouch and another woman runner who were in 2,3,4.  Gave them a great job as I had every other runner I passed and kept rolling ahead.  I was feeling great, and now in a great rhythm clicking off 5:35’s to 5:40’s while basically dominating the USATF TV coverage haha.  I have received many photos and messages about too much Nick Klastava on the woman’s feed (like there could ever be too much of me).  Up to the half we went and 1:14:25 was on the clock.  Welp never been here before, but that’s fine.

At the half you are basically on a REALLY long stretch of road you can see in front of you, so at this point I just sort of got in the best consistent pace I could and took as much energy as I could from the crowd every time I could.  The paces were coming naturally and these were numbers I’m not really used to, 5:35, 5:37, 5:41, 5:40 split after split of perfection.  Earlier this year these were 10k, 10 mile splits I ran not Miles 14-18 of a Marathon.  My friend Alex who was absolutely amazing and I saw probably 10-15 times on the course had some excellent cheers including my all-time favorite “Your Doing it Nick!”.  I was doing it, still on 2:28 pace, sub 2:30 it was all there for the taking.  Let’s talk fueling for a second, I went against the number 1 rule and changed my fuel on race day to Maurten’s gels.  Let me tell you I hands down made the absolute right call.  Not only did it taste a million times better, was it so much easier on my stomach but every time I took one it hit me right away.  I managed to get 3 of them in by mile 13 but, I also only brought 3 (idiot) so at mile 18 when I needed more fuel I took out a Gu.  I have taken them many times before but it didn’t sit well this late in a race, probably mixing didn’t help either.  I wish I had 1-2 more Maurten’s with me but I won’t make that mistake next time.

I rolled up to 20 and made runner mistake #1 at this point in a race.  I did some quick math and said, As long as I don’t start running these splits you got it in the bag.  I hit 20 in 1:53:40(never EVER been here before, not even in this stratosphere).  So quick math 36:19 10k and I’m golden, as long as I don’t start seeing any 6’s I’m good.  Why do we do this as runners, for 20 miles I was smiling, not aware of pace I was on or splits really, just cruising but at 20 I fell back to old ways and give myself a mental out.  Mile 21 my pace dropped to 5:46 no big deal let’s just keep that but then I started to slow and by 21.5 I was down to over 6:00 pace.  This was happening fast, what was going on we got to snap out of this.  Then I head some cheering Come on Steph, yup I knew what that meant.  I’ve written a long IG post about it so check that out if you want more dets here but needless to when one of my running idols passes you at mile 21.5 you go with her.  For 1 mile side by side we ran, all the cheers I have once received were replaced with Go Steph, but I just enjoyed them like they were my own.  Honestly one of the coolest moments of my running career next to sharing the last 10 miles of a race gone terrible bad with a friend at JFK50.  By about 22.5 after a 5:40 mile with Steph I started feeling like I might throw up, I had to slow down.  Steph continued on and I took advantage to just keep her from getting too far away to pull me along for 1 more mile, 5:50 as she was gone.  I was slowing but I might still get this, at least I had fought off the 6’s.

From about mile 21 on you enter the “Streets of Sacramento” which basically means if you look at the street signs they count down from 57^th street to 17^th with many named streets in the middle to annoy you.  I was in hell, sign after sign telling me I had so many blocks to go.  Mile 25 became the struggle, my hamstring which was tight all race was now not cooperating, my stride had been shorten and I was struggling.  I finished mile 25 and it was my first mile over 6:00, I looked at the clock and did some math and realized my goal of sub 2:30 was now gone unless I pulled out a 5:15 or something (nope not happening).  I had noticed something else interesting my friend Alex who had been cheering me all race, was also there to cheer his girlfriend Michele.  Well as the later miles went on I had been noticing he was cheering me and then on his bike quicker and quicker and I didn’t take notice until Mile 25 when he basically cheered me and I saw him on his bike seconds later.  Before I could put 2 and 2 together boom there went Michele still not run 2:35 pace.  I gave a cheer and tried to summon any strength I could to go with her and help her catch 3^rd place but not today.  This mile lasted forever, I was moving best I could I knew 2:30:XX was still possible and that’s a goal let’s do it.  As I rolled around the last turn I saw the big clock and saw if I kicked in to sub 2:31, or officially 2:30:47.  Woof that hurt, I saw some local area friends post-race as my friend Dickson had crushed a 12 year old PR.  Post-race my amazing sister was there which was awesome to see her.

As I stumbled around post-race, I ran into so many friends, I got interviewed by the local news where I proceeded to spell my name on camera as NICHLOAS ALASTAVA, Marathon brain is real folks.  I found Mary who had run 2:48, also a 7 minute PR and was delirious because she basically ran 26.2 miles on 2 shot blocks(no not packs, just 2 shot blocks).  But she crushed it anyway.  I ran into some rabbit PRO and Elite teammates, found out Brogan from rabbit won the whole race, my friends Curly and Jarret had both run OTQ’s, I was so excited to see my friend Ryan Miller who has twice been within 20 seconds of an OTQ breakthrough and run 2:14. The rabbitElite ladies absolutely crushed it,  Michele had placed 4^th overall and ran an 11 minute PR and holds the 12^th fastest time on the qualified Olympic trials list, is 25 years old and you know #notsponsored.  My friend Allison Cleaver (drop the Mendez) crushed Anotha One and ran 2:36 for the A standard while my friend AnnMarie also ran a 7 minute PR (man do a group dinner together and we all run 7 minute PR’s) for 2:37.  Local friends who I have run into every race this fall Julia ran 2:36 also while at like 100 years old Jason ran 2:42 very close to his PR. The rest of the day consisted of me getting to hang out with some elites at the post race party when my first Melissa (also huge 10 minute PR snagging that OTQ) snuck me in, and then I spent the night celebrating everyone’s amazing results.

What a journey, 1 month ago, I was a 1:13 marathoner who has spent much of 2018 putting tons of pressure on himself with every race and running much much slower as the year dragged on.  I was feeling the need to BE ELITE, instead of just being the runner David had taught me to be.  I went into Richmond thinking if I ran my PR I would be ok and then maybe 2:35 at CIM would be good.  My 1:11 there and now 2:30 here has still completely shocked me.  I never ever thought I’d be here.  70-minute half, 2:30 full, these are barriers I dreamed impossible 8 years ago when I started running again.  I thought I lost my chance after taking 8 years off, that I would just settle for being an older runner who missed his glory years.  Now, I believe none of that.  I believe my best is yet to come, I believe 2019 I am going to scare myself even with the times I am going to run, or to quote Nike “Don’t ask if your dreams are crazy, ask if they’re crazy enough”.  I spent an entire weekend being around rabbit professional and elite teammates believing in me and telling me what they think I can run.  I met Matt Llano and his parents at BWI who asked me “You going after an OTQ?  We think you should”.  So what’s next for me?  I’m not sure, nothing is set in stone yet.  I know in 2019 I’ll be 37, I’ll have my second daughter on the way in January and I am dreaming bigger than I ever once imagined.  But what I know is having rabbit, SWAP and the amazing Baltimore running community by my side I have never felt more loved and supported in my entire life.  There is absolutely no one telling me what I can’t do, just telling me to believe in myself.  Everything about this weekend was amazing from start to finish.  I met friends for the first time, I met and ran with running hero’s, I saw local runners many miles away and shared an amazing weekend with rabbit and friends and family.  This is what running and the running community is all about, and if 2019 continues like this I will continue to be blessed.

Richmond Race Recap New Half PR

It’s been a while since I blogged but Saturday was an absolutely remarkable day for me and I really wanted to capture a race recap and some thoughts while they are fresh in my mind.  Since becoming a part of rabbitElite back in May there was a good couple of months where I put unnecessary amounts of pressure on myself to perform.  I wanted to live up to the name and I felt I had more prove myself again and again.  For a 6-week period leading up to Boilermaker 15k, I put immense pressure on every race.  I had to hit goals, I HAD to now to measure up, or to prove myself to everyone.  Race after race I fell flat on those goals, I felt horrible during the race, and then felt pretty sorry for myself post-race.  Luckily as I have mentioned many times my coach is perfectly suited to handle this and many times just kept posting subtle reminders to love myself, laugh off life, not take any of this too seriously.  After Boilermaker we shut down racing for a bit, I wanted an aggressive Fall with races almost every weekend and he was nice enough to talk me out of it.  We put some races on the calendar but no pressure, train through races just to get me back to how I was earlier this year, enjoying running.

As my fall marched on towards California International Marathon, I had 3 races lined up: Navy AirForce Half Marathon, Army 10 Miler and Richmond Half.  The first two I’ve posted about but the weather for both of those was 70+ degrees with around 95% humidity and both I was very happy with.  As we got close to Richmond, I was feeling more like myself from earlier this year.  I was not stressing paces, times, workouts.  I was just running and enjoying everything.  I’ve posted about the week leading up to my race before so I will not go into that but I really had no expectations going into this race.  A PR was definitely in play (1:13:31 from earlier this year) or just a solid race to keep building on.  It would just depend on my back and how I felt, but I knew no matter what I was going to have a fun time down in Richmond with my large group of friends.

So, race morning I got up and popped two Aleve and stumbled around to figure out what to wear.  I was nice enough to have a friend Emily Ballantyne to stay with while in Richmond and she was an amazing host, helping me get situated in the morning.  We left her place and warmed up to the start line and my back was tight, ugh…  Met up with some friends at the start line and finished my warm up did some strides and figured I’d give this thing a go.  I pulled out my secret weapon my Nike Vaporflys and as soon as I put them on I just felt fast and everything else about my back left my mind.  I did some strides and got to the start line and off the gun went and at this point anything was possible but I was in it.

I like to look at Half marathons in pieces, the first 5k is just get out comfortable, pack in, don’t worry too much about anything and just get ready.  Then after that 10 miles is more manageable, but for Richmond all everyone told me was the last 5k was fast, so I knew I just had to get to 10 miles in a solid time and the course would do the rest.  I settled in early as leaders just took off, and I found a nice pack of 7 or 8 runners and I tucked in as there was some wind.  Around two miles Charlie broke the pack a little and 3 of us crested a hill and then went down a road for an out and back.  On our way back, the pack a little again and it was just 2 of us heading towards 5 miles when I excitedly saw Cheryl who has photographed so many of my races this year with the absolute more amazing photos!  I focused on looking good, you know for the gram.  Rolled through 5 miles in around 27:15 and then put my head down as we headed into the park.  A nice pack of 3 of us worked together in the park and it was so awesome.   Each one of us at a different time pushing the pace while the rest of the group followed along and it really helped me on these rolling miles as none of us wanted to let our pace drop.  And the splits kept rolling off nice and easy, 5:19, 5:21, 5:22, etc

As I came up on 10 it was really the first time I let myself acknowledge I am having a DAY. I still felt really good and I passed 10 miles in 54:26, a 20 second PR and I knew I had the easiest part of the course ahead of me.  The one runner I was with took off and I thought I might be able to keep him in a view and make a move later so I kept the distance between us the same for the next 2 miles.  I did some quick math at 11 and found out if I ran 2 6-minute miles the rest of the way I’d still PR, but screw that I wanted more.  I want sub 72 minutes; sub 71 minutes even let’s dig deep.  From 12-13 I saw my buddy Jerry shouting at me, my friend Ryan who uttered something along the lines of complete shock and awe that I was this far up and running this fast.  Which brought a smile to my face, and then Emily just in the perfect place to cheer and snap this video!  I made the last turn and was told it’s all downhill from here.  Let’s be honest as a runner when you hear stuff like that you are always somewhat suspicious because half the time there is always some incline or something, they are forgetting but I looked straight ahead of me and we are basically running down this steep decline for 800 meters and I opened up my stride and said let’s get after it.  I went as hard as I could downhill without feeling like I was going to trip and roll down the hill and I turned the final corner and saw the clock counting up from 1:10:52, and then saw it just tick over 1:11 before I crossed a couple seconds behind the pack I had been trying to run down since 10.5.

I literally couldn’t believe it, I just ran 71 minutes for 13.1 miles, 2.5 minutes faster than NJ this year when I thought I was all out.  I saw my friend Caleb right in front of me in the chute and we chatted a bit, he was 1 second off his PR but ran a great race.  Then I turned around and watched as my Baltimore crew came flying in.  PR after PR, Maxime Chevee 1:11, Sean Caskey 1:13, Tristram Thomas, 1:13, Drew Landgren 1:15, Ryan Stas 1:16.  The whole crew lit it up, even the ladies with us Michelle and Shannon both ran huge PR’s while Bryn got back out there with a solid race, and all my boys in the 8k absolutely crushed (Andrew Cantor, Zack Kaminski, Brad Leatherbarrow, Chris DeCamps).  But Emily was the big hero for me this day, she carried my bag with her stuff the whole time.  She came out and cheered and took photos of me, and she was the most supportive person for me post-race.  Find yourself a friend who will unconditionally support you at a race and give up their weekend and you know you have met an amazing person.  Also, the other big hero of the weekend is my amazing wife who watched my daughter back in Maryland by herself while I went out and chased my goals.  A weekend where my daughter seemingly decided it’s time to act like a true 2-year-old and get into everything.  I couldn’t do any of this without my amazing wife and how much she supports me in chasing these crazy running goals.  Additionally, we didn’t just all crush the race, we proceeded to go out and crush the town of Richmond and I’m pretty sure as Cantor would say, “Drank the town out of beers”

Two Days later I look back at this race and I still am in shock, I ran 4 straight 16:54’s 5k’s this day and two 10k’s around 33:50.  Back earlier this summer when I was putting too much pressure on myself, I was running 17:11 5k’s and stumbled through a 35:25 10k.  It’s not like in 5 months my fitness basically doubled, but thanks to my amazing support system and my coach, my mindset changed.  I believed in myself, I enjoyed everything much more.  The photo’s I keep sharing from races over the last 6 months are full of me smiling and enjoying it all, when in the past they were full of grimace.  I am constantly thanking fans and volunteers when things get hard and believing everything my coach is saying and what I know to be true in my head.  I am not going into a race saying I need to run this time to define me, I am just running a race and letting it all come to me.  I have goal times in my head sure, but when I am racing now it is for the love of the game.  I am 20 days out from CIM and just ready for whatever will happen that day but today was one of those days in my life where I finally put it all together.  And a lot of that has to do with me being much less hard on myself as a runner and believing.

The Comparison Trap

It’s been a while since I have blogged but I have been thinking about this topic and its effect it has had on me as a runner most of my life and thought it might be a good topic to talk about.  In life it’s human nature for all of us to compare ourselves to other things in our life.  Sometimes we compare ourselves to other people or sometimes we just compare ourselves to other points in our life to see where we are now.  We take a singular moment in the past and compare it to now without thinking about any of the other factors in play, or we take another person through our view of their lives and we compare ourselves.  Both are unhealthy habits and truthfully never tell the full picture.  As runners we constantly are comparing our old results to our current results.  Workouts, races, even easy days we look back and think that we have not progressed or we are getting worse all because of single moments along the way.  Then we look at other runners and compare ourselves and we end up in a negative spiral sometimes for no reason at all.  This is something I like to think of as the comparison trap and it puts an unnecessary amount of pressure and stress on your life when it is rarely needed.  And this stress sometimes causes us to get further away from our goals.

We have all done it as a runner, we have run a race that didn’t go according to the plan we had in our head.  We trained really hard for a race we have run in the past and leading into it we expected big progress or results but on that day, in that singular moment in time we ended up running slower than expected.  In fact maybe we ran slower than we did a few years ago.  Well how is that possible?  In the past few years I have trained this much harder, ran faster times at these other distances, I SHOULD BE THIS FAST NOW.  Instantly we start doubting all the progress we made and think we are actually getting worse, that all our training hasn’t helped.  Then a teammate or other runner may run faster than you at the race and they are progressing it seems quicker and all we can think about is what has gone wrong.  The problem is from the get-go we aren’t operating with all the facts we need to, we are trying to compare apples to oranges and we are destined to most of the time end up with a comparison we don’t like.  What’s funny is, if the reverse had happened and we ran faster I bet most of us would be somewhat modest and say “Well I just had better weather today, or I just felt better this time that’s all”.  Ultimately by trying to compare these two incomparable things (our teammate vs us and a time in the past vs now) we end up with results that sometimes help us lead to a unconscious feeling we already believe, that we aren’t getting faster and maybe we can't anymore.

So why shouldn’t we compare two race results, on the same course several years apart or why would it not be a good idea to compare myself to my teammate?  I know this course I’ve run it before and I train with my teammate I know their training.  Well simply because we are taking a current situation and trying to assume it is the same as in the past, that all the conditions in our life are the same.  When we ran this race several years ago we had differences in our life.  We were a different person, we had different stresses in our lives, heck we had a different training load then we did now.  How you feel on a certain day can never be an exact comparison to a different day.  Life is complicated and to assume you had the exact same conditions in your life between weather, stress, and training several years apart is not rationale.  As for comparing yourself to someone else, this is just something we as humans do way too often.  We look at someone else and assume we know their story and know what they should/shouldn’t do.  We as humans barely are capable of understanding ourselves and our actions, do we really think we can ascertain this information about another human being from our interactions with them.  This type of comparison is by far the unhealthiest and then leads us down a road of jealous and envy.  I am sure if all of us came to a room and put all our problems on the table most of us would very quickly take our problems back and run before assuming we could handle someone else’s.  So instead of comparing yourself to someone else or an older version of yourself, just look at your current life and know that if you continue to grow as a person you are always progressing and getting faster.  Keep believing that there will always be bumps in the road because of other factors but ultimately they will subside if we allow them to and don’t let them fester.  And to always focus on encouraging and supporting those around ourselves instead of comparing ourselves to others because in the end envy will lead us down a dark path.

As for my running lately, I’ve done two races since the NJ Half Marathon where I have placed 5^th in the Germantown 5 miler and where I placed 4^th in the Bel Air Town Run.  I’ve been ramping up training for the summer and have a busy race filled summer so look for me out at many races just testing my limits and having fun.  And lastly as I haven’t announced it here I have been selected to be a part of an awesome Elite training team sponsored by Rabbit and will be running for the RabbitElite squad for the 2018-2019 year.  It’s an exciting new journey and I look forward to all its adventures and bringing all that Rabbit offers to the running community to all of you.

As always thanks for reading and here are some recent photos!

NJ Half Marathon Recap

In probably one of the best races of my life I was able to take 2^nd place in the NJ Half Marathon last week in Long Branch, NJ where I spent most of my career competing at Monmouth University.  For one of the first times in my post collegiate career I was able to stay competitive and actually race a competitor instead of just clicking off splits on a watch.  I will write another post about my entire training cycle and compare it to the last time I ran a half marathon but for this post I really just want to focus on the week leading up to my race and the race itself and how I was able to run such a great race.

In the 14 days before the race as I mentioned on social media I started getting some serious foot pain, especially with some numbness on the top of my foot and some nerve pain on the bottom of my foot.  Nine days from the race my coach and I got so worried we had me take completely off from running until I saw my podiatrist, which couldn’t happen for 6 days.  We thought I might have a stress reaction or something worse that might sideline me long term if I pushed through.  So for 6 days during my taper I ran 0 miles, I did some light cross-training, tons of foam rolling, but all the while I tried to stay positive.  As always having a great support crew around me helped me stay positive as they kept me from getting too negative about missing some time.  I just kept trying to remind myself that I was in the best shape I have ever been in and missing a couple days wouldn’t change that.  On Thursday I finally got the diagnosis from the Dr. and it seemed like some incredibly tight calves were causing tightness on the top of the foot and therefore causing the nerve on the bottom of my foot to act up and causing me some discomfort.  So the way ahead was I could still race but the recommendation was to use trainers and to focus the next couple of days on getting my calves right.  I was relived and my coach was very supportive about me still wanting to race but cautioned me to taper expectations due to all the time off.  I got in a run Friday and a run Saturday, neither of which felt great but I was ecstatic to just be healthy and able to race!

So off to NJ I went with my wife and daughter who are the most amazing support crew I could ever ask for.  We headed back to Long Branch, NJ where I spent 5 years in college, met my wife, fell in love with running, ended up working Post College and spent two more years living down.  Needless to say The Jersey Shore and Long Branch particularly have been a huge part of my life to date.  We visited friends, some of our favorite local establishments and we got to take Chloe to visit Monmouth University where Kelly and I met and she fell hopelessly in love with me at first glance.  After picking up my bib we headed to a baseball game down in Lakewood and then in my usual pre-race routine enjoyed some delicious NJ pizza(yes it’s better than MD pizza) and had a beer of course to ensure another PR(A beer for a PR, it’s a thing).  Got to bed early as we had an to get up at 430 the next morning, but in reality I never sleep well the day before a race.

For the first time in my life I had the privilege of being an elite runner in a huge race, with the biggest perk just being access to an area to sit and relax pre-race and also a private bathroom.  I can’t begin to express how much stress this took out of my pre-race routine.  If you ask a lot of my friends, I may sometimes be a bit anxious before a race, which is usually why I like to attend races with some of my calmer friends to offset me.  I got in my warm up and I was pain-free which was great but I still didn’t feel great, I had stayed positive this long so no reason to doubt myself but I had wished one of these runs would have felt better.  I met some friends from the DC area in the elite area I know from previous races and chatted with them a little bit before heading down to the start line.  I was the calmest I have ever been at the start line of a race because I think deep down I knew at this point I was playing with house money.  I had an amazing season so far with several breakthrough PR’s, training really smart and just enjoying everything so much more.  Seven months ago my hamstring pain was so bad I wasn’t even sure I’d ever run pain-free again and started doubting I’d ever be running fast again, so in the minutes before this race I just remembered where I was and how far I came.  Six days off from running would hurt but I was going to run with so much happiness and joy and just leave it all out there and at 7:30 am the race began.

Immediately a kid with no shirt and basketball shorts running the marathon sprints out in front of all of us and I wondered if Graham Peck had entered this race and didn’t tell me.  Three of us in the half all grouped up and the runner running the marathon had 10 seconds on us by the mile and we just kept seeing him drift away.  As we rolled through the first mile in 5:30 I felt alright, not great but not terrible and the weather was pretty good so I just focused on the competitors around me.  I wanted to run a PR at this race but my biggest goal was I really wanted to win.  I knew one of the other runners with me had run 1:09 in the half before so I knew I had my work cut out for me if I wanted to win this race but on race day anything could happen.  For the first 3 miles I just stayed in the back as the other two runners controlled the pace, nothing really for me to do in the first couple of miles anyway other than just try and get comfortable.  At 3.5 miles in I took the inside around a corner and went to the front and started pushing the pace a bit and ended up breaking loose the 3^rd runner so it was just down to the 2 of us.  Rarely in my life have I gone into a race with someone faster than me and pushed the pace but I really wanted this more than I have wanted anything in a while.  For the next four miles the two of us took turns pushing the pace and surging and then backing off and ducking behind the other runner.  I was ignoring all clocks, all splits on my watch all of that was silly background noise, I was focused on one thing and one thing only.  Winning this race.

Around 8.5 miles in I was starting to feel a little tired, to this point I had done a lot of work leading this race but here I am now so no reason to squander an opportunity especially since a few days ago I wasn’t even sure I’d be here racing.  We went past a water stop and I decided to make a surge right through it, hoping to catch him off guard, as I surged I got a little separation but in a very short amount of timer he was able to quickly close that gap and was right back with me.  I think the first bit of doubt creeped in my head at this point that maybe I couldn’t win this race and like the good runner he is, he was quickly on the offensive.  For the next 1.5 miles he surged a bunch of times and I tried to counter all of them the best I could staying with him and keeping it close until right before 10 miles when my body just finally couldn’t react to a move and a small gap turned into a huge gap real quick.  I fought back as best as I could during the 11^th mile to not completely lose too much time, and hope maybe to make one last move.  As I moved through mile 11 I had fallen back 15 seconds but my body was not reacting as I had hoped.  That bit of doubt I let creep in before plus all the many surges and moved I made earlier were catching up with me.  As I turned into the last straight-away home along the shore, a mile stretch (the moss mile) I had run probably 100 times in college my body was giving up.  I was pushing hard but everything was catching up and 1^st place was out of grasp.  I just focused on landmarks on the side of the road to get me from point to point and ultimately to get me to the finish line.  About 800 meters out I started tightening up a bit and as I pulled through a strange chute of barriers leading us onto the boardwalk and I somehow took the wrong turn and ended up on the wrong side of the barrier.  Luckily a volunteer saw me and was able to open up the barrier to get me back on course with like 200 meters to go, because otherwise I was going to try and jump over it(what’s with me and going off course in race).  I surged hard into the finish line with a new PR of 1:13:31 and 2^nd place and I was pretty dead, but so overwhelmed with joy on how tough I ran.  I met a couple new friends post-race sharing in the race experience and got some fun prizes including some roses and new shoes!  More importantly I was the first runner to the beer tent so that’s a pretty big accomplishment of course!

As I look back on this experience and this race day I am just so proud of myself for doing the right things leading up to the race.  Conventional wisdom makes it easy to say I should have just run through the injury and I would have been fine but instead of being the idiot I was that sidelined me for 9 months with hamstring issues, I got an appointment and got checked out.  I’m also proud of myself for staying focused and not giving up on this race when it would have been easy after 6 straight 0’s to call off the race and look for another one.  Instead I took the fitness I had and the toughness I have built up and ran probably one of the best races of my entire career.  And lastly I am just so happy for how much joy I ran this entire race with, I spent most of it smiling as I pushed through pain, thanking volunteers, and just enjoying every moment.  Ultimately the process leading up to the race is all the hard work, on race day it’s just a celebration!

Up to next is some downtime until a summer of shorter distance races trying to stay competitive and work on some speed before I ramp up again this fall for a Marathon and finally getting down into the low 2:30’s.  As always I hope you enjoyed my recap!