RACING IN A STATE OF CONFUSION

     I like to think while I run. Problem solving thoughts, happy thoughts, heroic thoughts, why I'm right and pretty much everyone else is wrong thoughts. Inside my mind, at least during runs, is generally a very pleasant place.

     But not when I race. Racing is stressful. I'm trying to find the fastest possible pace that I can maintain for the distance we're going. And that means making really intense demands on my legs, my muscles and my heart's ability to get oxygen and fuel circulated to every part of me that's getting increasingly desperate for it.

     And that, as you can imagine, causes me to feel VERY uncomfortable. And that discomfort is not conducive to my usual happy thinking. It's really not conducive to thinking at all. Except, of course, thinking about how I'm doing. Now THAT I can focus on!

     But, sadly, not at today's Roosevelt Island 5K. The race was very unfair to me. It wouldn't let me figure out if I was doing good until I was convinced that I was doing very, very bad.

     Last week you may recall I raced a very tough 5K course in Harlem and averaged 8 minutes and 1 second per mile. So I figured that "doing good" on this easier, much flatter course would be at least a sub 8 minute pace. Of course, beating that pace by just a second or two really wouldn't feel so great. I hoped to get it down around 7:45. That seemed achievable.

     At the starting line, this is what I thought: "Go out agressive but not too agressive. Be fast but not at an exhausting pace. Try to hit about 7:40 at the 1 mile marker and hope to not feel so weakened that the remaining 2.1 miles will seem like torture." Not happy thoughts. Strategic, however.

     The race began and a very fast lead pack went off into the distance. I was at the head of the second pack and no one was passing me. We headed north on the Queens side of the Island, ran under the 59th Street Bridge to the Island's boundary, turned right, then right again and headed back the other way with Manhattan now on our left. At the 1 mile marker I read my watch: 7:52. This was not wonderful...though not terrible...news. Good to be under 8 but I'd have to speed up to reach my 7:45 goal and already I was feeling uncomfortable and fatigued.

     Not pleasant to consider.

     Suddenly I had other thoughts. I was passing other runners. How was this possible? Took me a moment but then I realized it was because there was also a 10K race going on at the exact same time as ours. Their course had begun just ahead of ours and now I was catching up to their back of the pack runners. Damn, I enjoyed that! For the entire second mile...even as my discomfort was getting to mild pain...I had some fun with going by someone on his left, then someone on her right, then in between 2 of them!

     Here came the 2 mile marker...7:27. 7:27!!!! Oh my gosh I ran mile 2 in 7:27? That's so much better than I thought I could possibly do! Now I didn't even have to do a very hard mile 3! I was well ahead of expectations. All I had to do was hang in there! But that was now more and more difficult to do because the discomfort that had turned to mild pain was now definitely, unquestionably true pain. I wanted to slow but I didn't want to slow because it looked like a really good time was in reach.

     I pushed ahead and finally, up ahead, I saw it, the 3 mile marker. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was just getting to 7 minutes! I'd probably hit 3 miles in a bit over 7:30 and then there'd be just a tenth of a mile to go. Sweet!

     And then I really saw it. As I got close to the mile marker I saw it and it was terrible! This: 10K. It was the 3 mile marker for the 10K race, not my 5K race! Where was the 5k marker? I kept running and looked at my watch. 7:45, no marker. 8:00 no marker. 8:30, nothing. Finally, there it was. I reached it...8:54! I'd run an 8:54 mile 3! How could that be? I hadn't walked, had barely slowed. Were the other mile markers wrong? Didn't matter. I'd run this course before and, as I crossed the finish line 41 seconds later I felt pretty confident that it was 5K that I'd just run. A fair mile 1, a good mile 2 and a HORRIBLE mile 3!

     Walking now I was able to calculate pretty clearly. This all added up to a pace well OVER 8 minutes for the mile. On easier, flat Roosevelt Island I'd run substantially slower than I had on the hilly, nasty Harlem course. How could that be? What was wrong?

     I approached the race director and told him something seemed amiss with the mile markers cause my mile 3 had been much slower than mile 2. He asked if perhaps I'd misread the mile 2 marker...maybe that was for the 10K? Yeah, well, right. I'd done it for mile 3. Maybe I'd done it on mile 2 as well.

     "Otherwise," the director asked, "how did you like the race?" "Yeah, well, it was fine, except for my total fuck up," I didn't say but did think to myself. See, no more happy thoughts.

     After awhile I decided to take in the totality of the bad news. I looked at my watch. It read 23:54 for the entire race. Wait a minute. That's not so bad. That's definitely under 8 minute pace. In fact well under it. Was it? Maybe I was mistaken now. No, definitely under 8. How could that be?

     So I looked at the splits for each mile. Remember, at mile 1, my watch said I'd run it in a mediocre 7:52? Well, that's what I saw, but that wasn't what was there. It had read 6:52. But since 7:52 was possible and 6:52 (at least for now) isn't, my mind interpreted it as the reasonable time for the first mile. And so I had an incredibly fast time for mile 1, an equally unbelievable 3 mile split and together, along with my quite good...and perhaps actually accurate...mile 2 averaged out to a 7:43 race.

     About what I thought I could do from the beginning. Too bad my addled running mind couldn't see it coming!