Training Log Archive: cporter

Event: QOC: Meadowood
 

Jingle All the Way 10K - in an attempt to get the QOC club name heard of in the greater DC running community (and hopefully pick up some new members or at least strike up some interest), Jon Torrance, pulled together some club members that are more avid runners to create a QOC road race team of sorts. We haven't had much luck throughout the fall finding a race that didn't conflict with many of our schedules (orienteering obviously takes precedent), but we were able to gather enough members to enter a team for the Jingle All the Way 10K. The team members were as follows: Jon Torrance, Ken Walker Jr., David Onkst, Pat Zerfas, and myself.

I can't speak for everyone on the team, but in my opinion they all had really great races, except for myself. Having been sick and therefore not running made just finishing the race a challenge. Also, the race started (unnecessarily in my opinion) at a very chilly 8am - although the temp. could have been a lot worse. The course was a completely flat dog-leg on Hain's Point, in (East/West?) Potomac Park - not terribly interesting, but it at least allowed me to see and cheer on my teammates at the turnaround. As a sidenote, I find it interesting that I've now raced twice on Hain's Point in less than 2 months (part of the marathon ran on it).

Well, how did I do? Since this was my first 10K, I obviously have nothing to compare it to and honestly I did not spend much pre-race time thinking on it - I was more concerned with getting well enough to run it in the first place. That said, I ran it, but it wasn't pretty. I did not take my miles splits so I don't know how consistent (or not) my pace was. I can tell you there were some miles that were very hard. I felt OK in the first 5K, then mile 4 I definetly felt my legs start to stiffen up and my mind started to drift. By mile 5 I managed to regain my focus and get my legs moving a bit more, but it was at that point that I really started feeling like I might be sick. For the rest of the race I continued to feel nauseous so I only maintained my pace and didn't really pick up much more speed (I usually have a pretty good kick), but at least I came in (barely) under 50:00. I had sort of unofficially set that time as the longest I wanted to run it. I suppose some people would say that's not bad for having been sick, but I was disappointed. What was not disappointing, however, was how our team finished!!! We came in 3rd overall out of about 50 teams that raced (100 had entered). Not bad at all for a race of about 4,500 people, in my opinion. And we may have picked up two potential members - a Finnish couple that used to orienteer in Finland.

Meadowood - QOC's last local meet for the year. Even though I've been sick and just ran a 10K a couple hours before, I couldn't miss orienteering for what will probably be the last time this year :( I decided at the start that I wasn't going to kill myself, just go out, and have fun in some nice terrain. The layout of the best terrain on the map was rather unique which caused the course-setter, to set the advanced courses with butterfly loops. There was also a very long trail run to get from one side of the map to the other to run the loops, but it was an enjoyable trail run. Despite being sick and having run one race, and "taking it easy" I was still making decent time on the course and running virtually error-free...until I began to run one of my loops backwards. Thanfully, I realized it as soon as I hit control 14 in the loop thinking it was 13 (which is really fortunate, because I wasn't really checking control codes since my navigation had been so clean.) As far as mistakes go, this was a really stupid one, but since the loop was rather small it wasn't a killer, but I still had to run to 13 and then back to 14 which probably cost me 7ish min. Also, it was at this point that I really started to get tired and I found myself walking more than running. For the remainder of the course the going was a lot rougher. I made a not so great route choice on the way to 16 (which I partly blame on the map). I meant to jump a fence and then run through a field to avoid a rather nasty looking patch of green, but when I got to the field I realized that it was a horse field so there were many fences running throughout it rather than just the fence that was around the preriphery on the map so I couldn't just run straight through. Also, on the way to 17 the woods were mapped as white, but should have at least been light green which caused me to hesitate too.

Despite some of the mapping deficencies (which in the course-setters defense we were warned of at the start) the course was very enjoyable and I'm glad I did it, even if my time was much slower that I would have liked.

Peggy Dickison and Nadim Ahmed (and Max of course!) had an open house for their new home and put on two street-o's through their neighborhood. I ran the shorter of the two, because its been over 3 weeks since I've run (as is evidence by my lack of posting to my log.) The absence of my training over the past weeks has been mostly due to the most stubborn cold (or maybe colds) that I have even encountered. It started with a "cough" that I picked up while in Scotland, which was deinetly manageable, but the illness seems to be just continuously morphing into an entirely new kind of cold every few days. I've had it all - the achey feverishness that makes just getting out of bed a challenge, the uncontrolable cough that keeps you (and all your roommates) up all night long, the merciless running nose (its about the only thing that's been running lately) that makes breathing impossible...I could go on.

Thankfully, I had started feeling well enough to even attend Peggy and Nadim's open house and I couldn't pass on an opportunity to do a little orienteering while I was there so I jogged the short course. I actually used it as a small warm-up for the races that I would be running the next day, just to see how bad they really were going to be. I didn't feel terrible, but in the weeks that I've been sick the weather has turned decidedly colder and running in the cold air without being acclimated to it was tough. My legs didn't feel particularly lively either, so at least I knew what to expect of myself the following day.

Thanks again to Peggy, Nadim, and Max for a wonderful party!

C • Get Well 1