“Mirabelle! Mirabelle!” I shouted and waved my arms, willing her to see me from the other side the street where she was closing in on her final half-marathon miles, at a strong, 7:21 per mile pace.
Saturday morning I board a float plane in Seattle, bound for Victoria, British Columbia, just 30 minutes away.
She grinned, confirming that she’d seen me. It would be hours before I reached the spot where she now was on the out-and-back course, as I was going twice the distance, and at a slower pace.
As the marathoners began to approach, I watch first for pace groups — groups of runners led by the Super Pacers, with their star placards announcing the group’s marathon finish time. 3:40. 3:50. 3:55. I began studying oncoming runners in earnest. Cathy had a 3:55 marathon PR, and she was trying for another one in Victoria.
Then, the blond pigtails I recognized, high on her head. “Cathy!” “Jenna!” “Cathy!” “Jenna!” We high fived over the double yellow lines in the center of the street, squeezing one another’s gloved hand before letting go to continue on our way. Cathy would finish in 3:53, a personal record.
With race-time weather forecast at 51 degrees and sunny on the waterfront course, I make the decision to trade in my half marathon bib for a full marathon bib at the expo.
“Jenna! Jenna!” They shouted from the right side of the finisher’s chute, just yards from the finish line. I cut sharply to the right to grab their hands. “Don’t stop,” they laughed, waving me on. “Just finish!” I too, laughed. “I don’t care!” (About my finish time.)
Mirabelle and Cathy were the only reason I was even at this race; the beautiful race weather the only reason I was running the full marathon, rather than the half I’d signed up for. And, with a 50k just six days away, I wasn’t trying to accomplish anything significant in Victoria.
Cathy, Mirabelle and I, with four other amazing women, at trail running camp in Colorado over the summer. We met here, and have stayed close through social media, and encouragement for our individual athletic endeavors.
Post-race brunch is filled with catching up (we’d not seen one another since we’d departed trail running camp in July), french fries and croque-madame, before I board the float plane for the 30 minute flight back to Seattle. Mirabelle and I promise to make plans to get together, as only 3 driving hours separate our Seattle and Vancouver homes. Cathy, I will see in December, where she will travel from Mississippi to pace me at the Kiawah Island Marathon, as I am training for a sub-4:00 finish, a 13-minute PR.
Some friends, I realize, plan shopping excursions as a reason to see one another. Mine plan race excursions.
Thirty-four races, and it’s just another Saturday. Just another 10k, and I run, not drive, to and from Magnuson Park in Seattle, turning the morning into 18 miles. There is nothing remarkable about Race 34, on a course I’ve run before. Except perhaps, the sky.
DNS. Did. Not. Start. Trail runners fear its dirty cousin, the DNF: Did. Not. Finish. But people rarely talk about the DNS which is, to me, the worse of the two by far. The DNF says, “I tried; I really tried and I fell short.” The DNS says, “I never even tried.” Put that way, it seems as though one would need a really, really good reason to DNS.
Mine was commute related. On Friday night, just 12 hours from the start of the Cle Elum Ridge 25k, I realized I was also registered for the Run/Walk for the Poor trail 13.1 mile in Lakewood, Washington. Two races, 103 miles apart, starting on the same day at the same time. Cle Elum, I knew, would be tough. Billed at nearly a 30k (despite the official “25k” listing) with 3700 feet of gain. The Run/Walk for the Poor would not only be 5 miles shorter, but I expected it would be nearly flat. In the end, it wasn’t the course difficulty that steered me away from Cle Elum and towards a DNS, though; it was the fact the race was further from my house.
I don’t know what I missed in Cle Elum. At Fort Steilacoom Park in Lakewood, the clouds burned off early, and the trail stretched like my personal yellow brick road for just over 13 miles. What the race lacked in participants, it made up for in tranquility.
The Cle Elum results list me as a DNS. I never even tried. But in Lakewood, I finished 13 miles without regret. 33 races down, and I feel like I haven’t missed a thing.
One person’s fun run is another person’s race.
I signed up for the Beat the Blerch half marathon because someone in my 24,000 person online running group asked me if I was running it. Really, that’s all it took. I didn’t even know they’d be chocolate and bacon dipped marshmallows at the start. Or Doritos.
The Blerch incarnate, with his bad of marshmallows and Doritos at the ready.
I don’t typically have a half marathon wall; not since I began running full marathons three years ago, and ultra-marathons the year after that. Thirteen miles is a fun run, a training run on any given day. But one person’s fun run is another person’s race.
Just a little old Sunday run.
“Thank you for being my pace bunny,” he said, referring to someone in the race that sets the pace for those around them. “This was my first half marathon. And this is much faster than I’ve ever run before. Thank you.”
That guy, I thought, had one hell of a race.
“I had you down for a 7:40 start, but it’s closer to 7:45, so I’m changing it.” Dena sat at the picnic table, while Rose pointed toward the paved trail.
“Go left, and when you get to the end of the pavement in a half mile, turn around and come back. It will be obvious. Then go until you reach the snack station and come back. That’s one lap; 13 miles.”
Ready at the start of the 13.1 mile race.
There were less than 30 people in this Sporty Diva half, full and 50k. It was scheduled to start at 9am, but with temperatures forecast in the 90s, I got an email from Rose, the Race Director, letting me know I could start at 7:30am if I wanted to. It was 7:45am by the time I actually got onto the course.
Still cool, inside the first mile.
Our turn-around marker, with snacks.
This was not a race. It was a training run with free food and friends. And a medal at the end.
The phrase “elevation profile” is meaningful to most trail runners. It refers to the rise and fall of a race course over the distance of that course. The elevation profile represents, in layman’s terms, how hilly the course is.
The Boston Marathon, with its famous “Newton hills” and infamous “Heartbreak Hill,” has 783 feet of gain over 26.2 miles. New York City, with its five bridge crossings, has 885 feet of gain. The Toro Trail Run is 3,750… in the half marathon.
It’s a rather hilly course.
30k and half marathon runners ready at the start.
Though cool in the shade at the start line, I made the last minute decision to ditch my long sleeved pullover behind a bush for safe keeping at Toro Park in Salinas, California, approximately 30 minutes east of Carmel. Everyone in the start area was in tank tops, and I thought maybe they knew something that I didn’t. Sure enough, I felt the sun bouncing off my sunscreen-free cheeks and nose inside of the first mile, and I would have heat rash where my sweat-soaked shorts rubbed against my legs by the time the race was over.
Not the first climb, just the first one where I cursed.
Did I mention this was a hilly course? When I posted this photo on Facebook, I got two responses.
The friend on the left is a road runner. On the right, a trail runner.
Just past the five mile mark, I was passed by the first and second place runners in the 30k race. These were men who’d started with me but, after a nearly 6-mile detour, we were now back on the same trail for the remainder of the race.
The 30k first and second place men around Mile 11 of their race. Undaunted.
And the hills kept coming.
I crossed the finish line in the back third of the field, ten seconds behind the second place woman in the 30k (yes, a woman who completed 6 more miles than I did). Nonetheless, it was a good day, and I will remember it as the first race I completed as a forty year old.
And the hills.
Resting at the finish line; my beer to the right.
September 29, 2007. The Buckhead Sizzler 10k in Atlanta, Georgia. My first race in my 30s. (30 years, one month and six days, actually). I finished in 54:08.
I have no photos of this race (it was deep in the Blackberry era and pre-social media), but I remember the thick, cloying smell of Dunkin Donuts as we passed by the Brookhaven store, traveling south on Peachtree Road towards Buckhead. I’d taken the MARTA train one stop north on the gold line to get to the start of the point to point race, so I could walk from the finish line at Buckhead loop back to my apartment behind the Target. My divorce was two weeks final.
August 5, 2017. The Orting Summerfest Half Marathon in Orting, Washington. My last race in my 30s. (39 years, 11 months and 13 days, actually). I finished in 2:04.
And took a selfie.
I can’t remember what I wore to the Buckhead Sizzler, but it wasn’t a pink tank top emblazoned with the names of female marathoners. (I didn’t know any female marathoners when I ran in Buckhead). I wasn’t a marathoner 23 times over when I ran in Buckhead. I also didn’t have the small, triangle tattoo on the inside of my right elbow. I got that, the logo of the Umstead 100 Mile endurance run, after completing the race at the age of 38.
I didn’t have the story about that time I threw up at the bottom of Mount Washington after racing 6288 feet to the top at 31 (my new boyfriend married me anyway, albeit five years later) and the 10k PR of 49:17 I earned three weeks later. I hadn’t set a half marathon PR by 5 minutes at the age of 35 (only to break it again on the same course two years later), and I hadn’t earned my Marathon Maniacs Iridium level membership by running marathons on Saturday and on Sunday in Utah and Wyoming at the age of 38.
When I raced in Buckhead, just weeks into my 30th year, I didn’t know I would go on to race in Washington, DC and Las Vegas; in Chicago and in San Francisco; in the UK and in Dubai and on the Great Wall of China.
But in the nine years (11 months and 13 days) between the Buckhead Sizzler and the Orting Summerfest, I have done all of these things. And more.
August 26, 2017. The Toro Trail 13.1 in Salinas, California. My first race at the age of 40. (40 years and 3 days, actually). Who knows what will come of it.
5:00:21 was the time to beat; set in 2016 by a woman who was exhausted in every fiber of her being. Just returned from a 6-week work stint in Grand Forks, North Dakota, where she ate Amy’s frozen rice bowls for lunch and pasta for dinner; politely accepting the chocolate covered potato chips and deep fried Oreos she was offered as “local delicacies.” Despite finishing a 19.5 mile trail run on her first weekend back in Seattle, she just didn’t feel well.
That woman stuck around until October when, deep friend Oreos nearly forgotten, she crossed the finish line of the Chicago Marathon with a 7-minute PR.
Back on Cougar Mountain one year later, I had something to prove. I’d followed up that Chicago PR with three near misses between January and April, a 100k run good enough to qualify for the 2017 Western States Lottery, and my fastest 10k in eight years. Still, I couldn’t be certain that woman was gone until I looked for her on Cougar Mountain, where the course climbs 3700 feet over 19.5 miles.
For four hours, thirty four minutes and forty six seconds, I searched for her.
When the race was over I collected my commemorative Cougar Mountain Race Series rocks glass, filled it with keg beer, and sat on the grass.
Now I was sure; that woman was gone.
I visualized the course at Mile 8, when the other half-marathoners and I would make a right turn away from Lake Washington, cutting west into Seattle’s Rainier Vista neighborhood, while the marathoners continued south along Lake Washington Boulevard into Seward Park. When that moment came on Sunday morning I knew I would be overcome with the jealous urge to shout at the marathoners’ backs running away from me, Wait! Wait! Don’t leave me! I’m one of you!
After picking up my half marathon bib, I made my way to the Expo’s Guest Services line, the place racers go to solve their problems, and I solved mine: “I’d like to switch to the full please.”
Trading in my custom “J-POW” half-marathon bib for a full marathon bib, less than 18 hours before the race.
20,000 runners descended on Seattle for the Alaska Airlines Rock & Roll Marathon and Half Marathon for the race’s first ever “stadium to stadium” tour of the city. Beginning at the University of Washington’s Husky Stadium and ending at Centurylink Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks and Sounders, the race marked not only number 27 in my quest to run 40 races in 2017 for my 40th birthday, but also my 30th marathon and ultra-marathon in just 3 years. I commemorated this milestone with a congratulatory note to myself on the Expo’s graffiti wall, a map of Seattle, precisely at the spot where I live.
I had nothing to prove in this race; my training plan still believed I was running the half. But I wound my way comfortably through my hometown, stopping at the Mile 4 “Selfie Station” and mugging for the cameras.
There was no rain in the forecast, but Selfie Station “actresses” still played the part in their rain gear.
I completed the race without fan fair. Despite racing in my hometown, my husband was traveling, and I’d had only one friend on the course to cheer me on when I passed through her neighborhood within the first 5k.
I crossed the finish line in a forgettable time, collected my Rock & Roll Marathon Finisher’s jacket, and walked the 1 mile from the finish line to a favorite brunch spot for a breakfast and cocktail worthy of 30 marathons and ultras. The race upgrade was worth it.
The clocked ticks to 24:22 as I approach the 5k split, the half-way point in my 10k race. A decade ago, back when I ran 5ks regularly, I used to count anything that started with “24” as a solid race effort. But I don’t race 5ks anymore.
Forty-nine minutes. I did the math quickly. 24:22 times two is 48:44; round up to 49:00. My 10k PR is 49:17. It was 2009 and I was 31. In 13 subsequent 10ks, I’ve not seen 49 minutes since. I can’t slow down if I want to see it again here.
At the split I am passed by a young woman in a bright, salmon-colored t-shirt and striped socks. She’s fast. And fluid. If I can keep her in my sights, I might be able to to hold this pace. But if I lose her, I will fall apart.
I pass her near the 6 mile mark. I would later learn her name is Joan.
I squint as I approach the finish chute. My eyesight is good, but I’m bouncing and winded, and my eyes are a little watery from pollen in the air, or maybe the exertion. I can see 49. 49:48. Thirty-one seconds from a PR. But still, my fastest 10k time in 8 years.
A solid race effort.
A happy, sub-50 minute 10ker.
