I’m spicing things up here to keep you, dear reader, (mommy!) on your toes and skipping some race reports I’m behind on to bring you my download of the Inaurgural National Women’d DC Half Marathon the week in which it actually happened. I’ll return to those other races – those reports are all in various stages of draft form – but wanted to try getting all my thoughts down and out into the universe when they were still fresh and people might actually still care. Without further (usual) ado:

At some point in 2017 I got an email from the National Women’s race organizers with an invite to register for a new DC half marathon in 2018. It was most of a year in advance, and I wasn’t doing anything on April 29th, 2018, so I thought, ‘sure! I’ll sign up for lady-running!’ And that was pretty much the last time I thought about it until I started getting athlete emails a week before race day.

After the Rock n Roll Half Marathon on March 10th (race report coming…I won’t say soon…but eventually) and the Cherry Blossom Ten Miler April 8th, (Id.) work had taken over and I’d started mentally shifting gears from running to triathlon. I had nabbed the sub-1:40 13.1 I was gunning for at RnR (spoiler alert!) too, so I was already resting on my laurels a month into the 2018 season. I’d given this race so little thought that when Coach Josh loaded up my training peaks workouts on Monday I realized he didn’t even know I was running it. Feeling like the most neglectful, half-assed client ever I let him know I in fact had a race that weekend and then didn’t really think about it again until about 48 hours before I’d have to toe a start line somewhere in the District of Columbia.

Race organizers hadn’t done much in the way of advertising or pumping up the event so some of the neglect wasn’t my fault. Besides some emails here and there the general radio silence regarding this inaugural event didn’t inspire a ton of confidence or excitement in its execution, or even its existence. Part of me was concerned I was the only one registered and that I’d been duped out of some bills by a nonexistent online scammer – an athlete-targeting catfish situation. Upon receiving and perusing the athlete guide though I discovered there was indeed a packet pickup scheduled to take place in various Pacer’s stores around the DMV area. While the lack of an actual expo reinvigorated some of my initial concerns, at least I was being directed to real running stores that I knew for a fact existed.

I was going out of town for work Friday through Saturday afternoon so I stopped by the closest Pacer’s Friday morning to collect my packet for a half marathon I was like 65% sure was real at that point. Upon entering I found a tri friend, Dustin, checking women in. That seemed like a good sign – Dustin is a real person after all. (At least as real as any of us are in this simulation!) I approached the almost-surely real Dustin and he looked me up in some sort of computer database, found my info, and signed me in – more progress! Then he picked up a number from a chronological stack, entered it into the computer, and handed it to me. There were apparently no corrals, this was just a first-come-first-served bib situation. My confidence in this race’s existence which had been at an all-time high around 80% upon seeing Dustin and his computer now plummeted to the low 40s. I continued down the packet line though and got a tshirt – cotton and a children’s large – and saw a lot of other women picking up their apropo-of-no-seeding bibs, so heading into the weekend I was like 50-50 that I was running a real race on Sunday.

Mid-Friday I headed out for a work retreat in Cambridge, MD which was filled with wine-ing and schmoozing and staying up too late (for me that means 11:30pm) and generally not ideal pre-race type behavior. I got back to DC around 4pm on Saturday, took the dogs out, ate an entire Red Baron frozen pizza – not a personal pizza, a large feed-a-family-of-at-least-two-or-three pizza, and put together a spin class for the next day because race or not I was teaching at noon. At around 10pm I remembered I was running a half marathon, glanced at Sunday’s weather for clothes-planning purposes, posted a cynical instagram picture about my prospects, and was in bed around 11pm.

Josh often says the sleep the night before a race isn’t as important as the sleep two nights before, but in any case, I slept like crap Friday and Saturday and pretty much hated all of my choices (including that whole pizza pie) when the alarm went off at 5:41am.

Yes. 5:41. Because that was the number I had alighted upon six hours earlier as the last possible second I could get up and still make it to the (stilll hypothetical at this point) start line by 7am. I got up, dressed in whatever I had hastily chosen the night before as appropriate for the mid-spring, mid-climate change apocalypse, mid-40s weather we were getting, and ordered a Lyft.

The start area was back behind the Tidal Basin on the National Mall – a fact I’d learned only right before bed Saturday – so I plugged in the WWII Memorial as my destination figuring that was the closest landmark we’d be able to access given how roads were (hopefully) being closed. (I still harbored concerns that if there was indeed a real race we would be running it on sidewalks and into oncoming traffic.) We made it almost to WWII by 6:30am, and I disembarked to hoof it the rest of the way – about a mile walk.

I joined a sea of spandex-clad women which seemed like a good sign, though really that could be most weekend mornings on the Mall. Halfway to the start my tummy started rumbling like it had seen all the lycra-adorned ladies and now knew a race was at hand. Not trusting there to be sufficient (or any) porta potties I ducked into a bathroom near the MLK Jr Memoral and sated my grumpy belly. (Ok maybe it was race nerves, but more likely it was the entire Red Baron pepperoni pizza needing out.)

Because or in spite of my last-minute alarm-setting and laissez fairre approach to dressing for and arriving at the race, I managed to hit the start line perfectly at around 6:50 for a 7am start. It was just early enough to get properly positioned but not enough time for the chilly morning to become too torturous while standing and waiting.

As it was a self-seeding situation, there were pace-markers around the one long corral. Each marker denoted a full minute span of potential paces starting with 6:30-7:30 minutes per mile. I found the one that indicated 7:30-8:30 minute miles and squeezed through the metal barricades. I headed to the front of this small group of women. There was just about no one in the 6:30-7:30 area ahead of me, and a race organizer quickly came by and had me and the couple women around me move up to fill that space. It was little confusing and one of my neighbors asked nervously if we were still in the 7:30-8:30 group. I told her, stone-faced, “no, you now have to do a 6:30 mile the whole way.” She looked terrified. Some people don’t get me.

Right on time at 6:55 the National Anthem was sung and then a small elite(?) group ahead of us was sent off shortly thereafter. Then our 6:30-8:30 group was marched forward and just after 7am we were off. Kind of.

I had texted Josh the day before that I was feeling, and I quote, “blaaaaaaah” about the whole race, and he told me to just use it as a catered workout on some fatigued legs. I hadn’t really internalized what that was going to mean for me though: Was I going to race off my heartrate? Was I going to come out swinging and see what happened? Was I just gonna wing it off perceived exertion? As I traversed the start sensors I decided in the moment for a cross between the latter two. I didn’t want to run too uncomfortable but I realized I would be unhappy with anything too much slower than my recently-set PR of 1:38:57. (Again, I’m totally gonna write a RocknRoll report, it just might not be till July of 2019.)

So I decided in the very moment that my feet hit the sensors and my fingers, the Garmin, that I would go out in the 7:30s and see what happened. In what was maybe the first conscious decision I made about this race since the day I’d registered I opted not to look at my heartrate at all. I didn’t want to get into my head or get bogged down in too many metrics. I had been feeling lately that there was a disconnect between the heartrate I was capable of sustaining and what I intellectually thought was an appropriate number so it seemed better not to worry about that. I would find something in the 7:30s and just see how it felt and go from there.

Funny thing about self-seeding though: people are liars. Vain-glorious, delusional liars. This race really throws a wrench in my previously-stated men are worse about this than women theory because a number of the women who had chosen the clearly-marked 6:30-7:30/7:30-8:30 groups were rocking 9s and 10s. Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with a 9 or 10 minute mile, but you knew you weren’t going to run a 7 so what are you doing?

I think the other problem is that there is a big difference between 7:30 and 8:30 miles. Really in thinking through the begining of the race that I think was the biggest problem. Most runners probably selected the appropriate pace window, but those windows were too wide and it created an irritating traffic jam down the first stretch. I would guess that a pace:population chart in an average race probably looks like a bell curve, so if organizers want to stick with self-seeding, they should plan for very few 6:30-ers and a whole lotta 9s and 10s, and mark the corral accordingly.

The race began heading southeast from below the tidal pool and down and around Hains Point. The sun was coming up but the air was crisp and felt great once we were moving. I loved that we started off on Hains and got it over with. It’s a pretty place to run, but true to form, once we started heading back north just after the Mile 2 marker the headwind picked up. My first two miles were a very comfortable-feeling 7:34 and 7:33 respectively, while my next three into the wind dropped into high 7:30s that I had to fight for.

The first two mile markers also seemed to be dead on the distance with my GPS, but even though we’d only rounded one turn – which I had hugged – mile 3 seemed to be .1 too long. Then mile 4 seemed to be back in sync with my GPS, but for a moment I was very anxious that the course would continue to get longer and my finish time would reflect it. (Yes I’d had to weave around the slower runners but I hadn’t weaved a tenth of a mile and that wouldn’t explain how the distance markers rectified themselves.)

The night before the race and right up to the start line I had been contemplating only running a few miles of it and then heading home. I’d been having some discomfort in my left hip and upper quad which felt like it was bordering on becoming a bigger issue. I’m always trying – biking, running, and lifting – to even out my right-side favoring monodexterity and I think I just overcorrected in the weeks preceding. I hadn’t run since Tuesday and was feeling much better, but I was also mentally giving myself permission to bow out if it was bothering me. Or if I found I just really wasn’t feeling the morning. Over the first few miles that left quad was speaking to me, objecting a little to the exertion. I focused on my form as I ran down Hains Point and by the time I got to that misplanted Mile 3 marker I seemed to have worked out whatever was going on. I didn’t feel any hip or quad pain the rest of the run. By focusing on perceived exertion I think I held back enough to keep my form in check and keep excessive wear and tear off the joints.

Around Mile 5 we ran back near the start area and began an out and back on Rock Creek Park that comprised most of the race. It was pretty similar to the Nation’s Tri bike course and I observed the many pot holes that were easy enough to navigate by foot but were less so on wheels. I got myself back into the low 7:30s and out of the wind felt much more comfortable hanging out there. The pack had thinned and I was far enough towards the front that there were only a few woman around me. I’d worried a little that as the sun came up the long sleeves I’d worn would be too warm but I’d thoughtlessly lucked into the perfect amount of clothing for the climate.

Hitting the halfway point I was just over 50 minutes and I started doing the mental math. The way I was currently running I would be a little over 1:40, and upon saying that number to myself I decided I didn’t like it. I knew if I picked up the pace just a little I could come in slightly under 1:40 and I would feel immensely better about my morning. I had been holding back most of the first seven miles and had plenty of gas in the tank, so I stepped it up into the high 7:20s.

That still felt pretty good. I was far from maxed out when we hit the turn around at mile 8, but I was also still feeling like it wasn’t really my morning – I had barely thought about the race basically until it was actually under way, and I was having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of really racing it. I held the high 7:20s for miles nine and ten and then ran my numbers again.

At this point I realized I was actually doing a lot better than I’d realized or expected. Even though I’d been running RnR harder than this race, that course had included a big climb at the 10k mark which had thrown my averages off in a way this course wasn’t going to do. If I could push the last few miles I could come in close to my PR, and I with only a 5k to go I knew I’d be mad at myself if I didn’t at least try for something under 1:39. So, still running off of perceived exertion and eschewing heartrate, I picked up the pace again and dropped mile 11 into the low 7:10s.

Besides the energy I’d been conserving, after the turnaround I got a boost in my confidence that made a big difference. I always find it inspiring to in races with a turnaround to see the elite runners fly by you in the opposite direction. I love looking for faces I know like Meb in this year’s Cherry Blossom, and my favorite is to look for and scream for the first female competitor. This wasn’t a big elite field, so even though I’m nowhere near those 5 and 6 minute miles, I was in the first handful of women after the turnaround. It was the coolest feeling. I was running mostly alone, just a sprinkling of women around me, and as I continued over the last few miles I could see the crowded field of ladies working their way towards the switchback. It totally made me feel like an elite badass. No I wasn’t running elite mile times, but it gave me an unabashed ego boost and made me want to push a little harder toward the finish – to earn that spot up front.

When I hit the Mile 11 marker I again did the adding and the multiplying and the carry-the-one-ing and thought, if I can really drop the hammer over the last 2.1 miles I could actually come in under 1:38. I wanted to be able to sprint the last mile point one so for mile 12 I stayed in the 7:10s, feeling prepared to turn in a final mile in the 7:00s.

I felt like I was holding back just enough to get that done or maybe even run a sub-7 for the last 1.1miles, when just after the Mile 12 marker the half marathon course merged with the 8K course. And here, with a 1:37:something in reach, is where the race planners fulfilled the very low expectations I had for them.

I went from only being able to see two other runners anywhere near me, both pushing for those low, low 7s, to an instant wall of women running (and walking) what I would guess (and based on the 8K’s 7:30 start time) were 12 and 13 minute miles. The 8K-ers were taking over all lanes of traffic and there were no signs or volunteers anywhere to direct people. At first I thought these women were just starting their half marathon since we were back tracking over the north end of Hains Point, and then I thought with a pang of panic that I must have gone off-course somehow thanks to the absolute absence of any sort of direction.

I looked around frantically for anyone to ask or any other 13.1 athletes and in both I came up empty. I literally thought about stopping and backtracking. I slowed way down, not just to weave around these women, (who I didn’t want to be angry with but honestly, I was, ) but also to scan everything I could see (I’m 4’10” so that’s not much) for some sort of guidance.

We came around the final turn and I finally I got a glimpse of the finish line ahead – according to my watch it was a half mile away.I now understood that organizers had just done a garbage job of merging the two distances and I was still on course. I ran the numbers and realized my 1:37 was fading from reach.  I stepped on the gas as much as I could with the oblivious 8K joggers still trotting way too many abreast across the wide road. The headwind was the worst it had been the whole morning which added to what must have been a sky-high heartrate but I charged as much as I could.

I passed the mile 13 marker and looked down toward the finish line. It was much further than .1 miles away. A DC east-to-west block is generally about .1 miles, so I feel like I’ve gotten pretty good at eyeballing the distance, and this was way overshooting it. I sprinted as fast as I could, but even laying it all on the line, that miscalculated 160 meters was the final nail in the coffin of the 1:37 should have been mine.

I crossed the finish line at 1:38:45 and felt elated and furious. It was a 12 second PR! Totally surpassed my expectations for the morning. Hell, eleven miles ago I’d been considering quitting; and eleven hours ago I wasn’t convinced there was actually a real race happening! A PR was massive in the face of my pre-race doubts. But I had earned a 1:37:59. If the course had been measured correctly or, more importantly, if planners had thought through the implications of ending concurrent 8k and 13.1 mile races at the same place it would have been mine.

Most races measure a little long so really I was angry about the way the last mile point one had been orchestrated. The road was wide; it would have been so simple to lay down cones to divide the two distances. Organizers could have put up a sign to let runners know we were on course, and to ask the 8K-ers to be mindful of the half runners. I finished 58th overall out of almost 3500 women, so when my course merged with the shorter course, there weren’t a lot of us running the half and the women doing the 8K were pretty oblivious to the situation. In fact, in the final 100m when the chutes finally were divided and marked by distance, I had 8K-ers run across my toes to make it into the proper channel. I honestly think organizers didn’t concieved that, by starting the 8K 30 minutes after the 13.1, even though we had to run almost three times the distance, there would be half marathoners finishing when the 8K was still wrapping up.

Ok I’ll stop kvetching about the last 8% of a race that was for the most part a surprisingly great experience. I don’t think it was benefitting from low expectations either – it was a just a beautiful day on a nice course and my preference to be surrounded by female athletes is no secret. I know I’m not the only half marathoner who was frustrated by the way the last mile was handled so I expect, if the National Women’s Half lives on to a second year, race planners will probably address their mistake. And if planners do decide to keep going with it, and they send me an email at some point this summer, and I’m free that day, I will sign up. And maybe I’ll even tell Josh about it more than a few days out. I’ll probably still eat a whole pizza the night before though; hell that might be my new every-race night-before dinner now!