Holiday Half

Location: Portland, Oregon
Distance: Half-marathon
Chip Time: 2:31:08
Pace: 11:31/mi

Well. This was a rough one. My last race of 2023, the finale of my mission to run run run run run, and this one was … not it.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m proud that I finished it. I just thought I had more in me.

Pre-Race

There was a lot going on in my life prior to running this thing. The most egregious being my car, which was broken into about a week prior. A lot more stress than usual. And then, my company’s holiday party was the night before the run. I had planned to go, not drink, sing a karaoke song, and then leave. I didn’t want to go. Turnover at my office is so bad that I don’t know who is who anymore. I don’t remember anyone’s names, because I only see them in emails. So I can’t put names to faces. I guess this is partially my fault for working at home, but still.

I ended up bailing because I just wasn’t feeling it. I also hung out with friends at an arcade in Vancouver a few days prior, and then one of my friends revealed later that he had gotten covid after we hung out, which didn’t help matters. The first time I got covid, it was last year, at the company holiday party. The last thing I wanted to do was GIVE people covid the next year! (Note: I don’t have covid. I tested and all that.)

Anyway, a lot going on, but I ended up staying home and getting to bed at a good hour. Slept fine, woke up, got all my stuff together. It was super rainy so I did something Incredibly Smart: I put big band-aids over my nipples. This was the best idea I’ve ever had (that I stole from someone on YouTube, I’m sure). Had plenty of layers on so no one was like, “Hey, look at that guy over there! He clearly has band-aids over his nipples! Let’s get him!”

I wore three layers (short sleeve, long sleeve, pullover, all athletic of course) and that was a bad idea, but it wasn’t terrible. I also wore a beanie–the pullover and beanie were both Boise State apparel, and at one aid station some kid was like, “Go Broncos” and I made phonemes that may have sounded like words but were really just me attempting to speak while my body was actively fighting me.

I had three Clif bars and I ate one in the morning. My pre-run fueling isn’t great generally so I was trying to fix that. I think it helped, but not as much as I had hoped. More on that later.

Drove to the spot where the shuttle buses were. I’m glad I got on a bus (they were free) but it did not help at all, because traffic was still bad. I think we spent 30-40 minutes trying to get to a place that was 5 minutes away, but if I had driven there it would’ve been even longer. I realized on the bus that I had forgotten A) my water bottle, and B) my gloves. The latter was fine, but the former made me nervous, because I had no hydration now other than fueling stations. Foot Traffic is trying to go cupless for their events, too, so I felt bad grabbing cups every aid station.

Atmosphere

The area was very well set up. Everyone was soaked because it was raining like crazy. There were TWO different coffee vendors. Two! Probably a genius move so people don’t get stuck in long lines, but it also felt like a double booking. Two big tents, one for food and one for beer. Tents in these things always feel so weird. It’s like, you walk in, there’s food, there’s sponsor tables with the gaudiest kitsch splayed out that you’ll grab and then throw away a week later (c.f. my first few months this year). Then, standing tables. I don’t know, it just seems so … I don’t know. I wish I was a better writer so I could make a witty comparison.

Speaking of food, there were a couple of options. A lot of few options, if that makes sense. They had like five big plates full of bagels, but no cream cheese, and the bagels weren’t even cut. Naturally, nobody ate the bagels. We know how bagels work, and this is not how they work, so we avoided them. No bananas, either. I was surprised by that. No fruit at all from what I could tell. A little disappointing, I love eating an orange wedge after a run.

The Race

So, right up front, I was disappointed in my performance for this race. I think you can see why from the pace graph above. From about the halfway point onward, I could not get my shit together. I started out in the 2:15 pacer group, and honestly thought I could keep up with them, or at least still have them in my sights by the end. But boy was I wrong.

At the start of the run, there was a big puddle. A street-sized puddle. Most people ran around it, I ran through it. I had one of those “oh shit” moments where I remembered the rule to never drive through standing water, cause you don’t know how deep it is. I was worried that I would step through a sinkhole and break my leg. I didn’t. But I could have!

The first 3 miles were business as usual. The course started with a pretty big incline, but I powered through it. Then, as you can see, the rest of the first half of the course was a gradual decline. Easy peasy. But, since I had forgotten my water bottle, I had to use aid stations for water. This meant stopping to drink, because while I wanted to go fast, I also thought it would be fine to walk for a few seconds while drinking water. This wasn’t my downfall, by the way, it’s just an annoyance.

You can see that basically by the halfway point, my tolerance for running was coming to an end. I walked a lot. I didn’t realize at the time that the course was now going uphill. (I didn’t notice the elevation change that much other than the big incline/decline at the start, really.) So a lot of my fatigue could be attributed to that.

Regardless, I hit some kind of wall pretty damn hard around mile 9. That was the mile where I thought, “I’m never doing this again.” I had run all these races over the past year, grew so much as a runner, but in the end, I think 10k is my upper in terms of pushing myself. I could be wrong–I’ll probably completely flip on this in a couple of months–but it just doesn’t seem worth it. You ultrarunners and marathoners can keep it. I’ll stick around here, in the 30-60 minute running range.

So, mile 9 through to the end is a blur of running and walking. A lot of do-si-dos with other runners who are doing run/walk cycles. I feel like this would be a great time to get to know people, if we weren’t all actively dying.

Then, thankfully, gracefully, the end of the course was downhill. I had absolutely nothing left in the tank, but I was able to push myself a bit heading downhill. You can see my pace pick up. I was also running by the Adidas store and I didn’t want it to judge me. Sorry I’m running in Saucony’s, Adidas! But even the downhill wasn’t enough, and I kept slowing to a walk. I did manage to push myself through the final 10th of a mile though.

So: disappointed. My time was 11 minutes slower than I wanted. I just couldn’t hang on to my energy levels, which were dipping faster than I could replenish them. I’m proud of myself for finishing and for only being a couple of minutes slower than my previous half, but I still wish I was better than the last one, you know? It felt like my progress has dwindled a bit lately.

Post-Race

Standing tables and uncut bagels. Delicious hot cider. A Rogue pilsner I drank too fast. A lot of those heat radiator things, like you see outside restaurants, but none of them worked. People handing out Celsius energy drinks. Do people even buy those things? I’ve only ever gotten them for free.

The wildest thing was that nobody was handing out medals. Instead, the medals were just on a table, all the different course lengths, and people were rummaging through them like a bargain bin at Goodwill. It was a very strange sight, all these exhausted people pawing through metals and lanyards. Oh, and the paint on the medals was peeling. That seemed like a bigger faux pas to me.

I went through the lines, got the drinks, got the foods (except the bagels, which were Incorrect), then got on the shuttle bus and went home.

And that’s 2023 folks. That’s the end of my race year. Started absolutely freezing, ended absolutely drenched. What a wild New Years resolution.

My itinerary next year has FAR fewer races planned, mostly because I would go bankrupt if I did this a second year in a row. But there will be some surprises, I’m sure.

Anyway, thanks for reading!