Location: Greenville, SC
Date: March 7, 2009
Placing: 34th Overall
Race Photos
Results: fsseries.com

Superman has kryptonite. Apparently, I have Bradford Pears. [In my best announcer's voice...]...when last we left our hero, he was rebounding from a year of asthmatic turmoil; with solid performances in the first 4 events of the new season. But then, disaster struck...

Well, in today's economic times, I'd hardly compare it to a disaster that some folks are feeling, but let's just say it was not a 'happy' day. This was either my 4th or 5th running of the Reedy River 10k (at 44, I'm allowed to start forgetting things). If there was any humor in my performance today, it was the joke that my wife and I have that you can set your calendar to my 'Spring Fling' with allergies. Seriously. last year, I ended up with mild pneumonia 2 days after this race and the year before that, I ran feeling sick. I had hoped that this year would be different since I was on asthma medication. As a matter of fact, I had already convinced myself that I was gonna sail through March without a problem. Not only was that not true, but this year it was worse now that I've developed asthma.

As I approach the finish line, I'm thinking to myself 'What the hell just happened?'

In reality, this whole asthma thing reminds me a lot of when I struggled with plantar fasciitis a while back. Everyone told me how it was supposed to feel, but mine never felt that bad...which made the situation even worse because it affected my performance just enough to be annoying and not enough to say 'Hey, I definitely have something wrong with my foot here.' So it is with my newly developed asthma. Although you will ocassionally see (or hear) me cough during an event - and sometimes see me fall into a coughing fit after an event - I don't ever feel myself wheeze or have trouble breathing. Just like my foot, that makes it really hard for me to be sure that it is slowing me down. Even after losing 3 minutes in this race to my anticipated time, I had nothing tangible that made me believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was my asthma/allergies. I have no evidence...just the result. But unlike last year, when my problems happened so slowly that I second-guessed my fitness, I have multiple races this year already that prove to me that I can run fast.

So, how does this happen? For starters, I took my waking pulse when I got up and that was signal number one; 45bpm after a rest day was quite high (normal = 35 to 39). I wish I hadn't taken it - so I tried to forget that I did and that worked pretty well. After all, I was excited by the prospect of a gorgeous day. Plus, this would be my first event in my new team apparel. I felt OK when we arrived at the race site but my warmup was indicator number two. I shrugged off my sluggishness during my warmup because I often have this feeling when in reality, I am moving well. But when I hooked up with a couple of teammates, I felt like they were forcing the pace a bit for a warmup. Uh-oh.

I wished my friends and teammates good luck on the start line and when the gun sounded, I actually felt good. I even told myself that I would not run a 5:20 first mile like I had a couple of years ago which nearly killed me. So I conciously allowed several runners to simply glide ahead of me. I passed mile 1 at 5:32. Perfect. I continued on at what felt like the exact same effort level but for some reason one person came by me, then another and then a group of about 10 that contained most every one of my 'true' competition. I had to watch as they floated by me and I had no extra energy to react. According to my Garmin, my second mile dropped to somewhere around 6:20 and the trend continued. I calculated that after the first mile, my pace lost a second per mile every tenth of a mile. As I looked at my average pace, it was like looking at a second hand it was moving so quickly. I felt like I was in a parade and I was the clown riding the tiny bicycle that couldn't keep up.

The thought crossed my mind to simply stop at mile 2.5 when we reached Falls Park again but I didn't feel sick and that was taking the easy way out. I'd seen others quit over the years instead of finishing and I thought 'what kind of example is that?' I'd rather quit than get beat by the guy in sweat pants? No way. Every dog has his day and today, a few 'extra' people worked their arses off to beat me and I wasn't going to take away their day by quitting. By the same token, I'm still a competitor so I'm not just going to lie down and 'give it away'. So when Greg Spindler passed me in the final turn with a surge, I replied in kind and was almost hoping we would have a nice sprint finish for the crowd - but we sepearted and came across individually. A 6:13 pace. I can't remember the last time I didn't break a 6:00 pace in a race. As a matter of fact, today's pace was my exact pace at the Boston Marathon a couple of years ago...

I give Janis the universal symbol for 'it ain't happenin' today'

Aside from simply having a poor race today, there was a lot of irony going on; some of which made me laugh even though it added insult to injury. For starters, I was scheduled to start receiving allergy shots last Monday but the doctor was closed because of the snow. Of all the races to do poorly in, you always gotta hate doing it in front of a hometown crowd. It was also my first 'B' race of the year (all the others so far have been 'C' races), my first race in my new team clothing and one of the few races that I can typically win money at. But the straw that really broke the camel's back was that this year, the awards were ice cream mugs. Did you hear me? ICE CREAM MUGS!!?? Nobody loves ice cream like I do. Ask my wife how long it took me to pick out the perfect ice cream scooper to buy. My poor lonely ice cream scooper...

Race Notes:
* Since this was a huge local race, it would be hard for me to congratulate all my teammates and friends so...CONGRTULATIONS, GREENVILLE!
* Being fast and old has the advantage of 'rolldown'. That means if I perform great, I can place overall. Otherwise, I can place in the overall Masters. Finally, if I don't do that well, I can always 'rolldown' to my age group. Because of this, I still managed to place 3rd in the 40-44 age group.
* Next up: My first traithlon of the year...Parris Island. Let's hope I can get the allergies under control in a week's time.