5,000m race report (and a 1,500)

This was my first masters track meet. "Masters"? Yup, masters running or "veteran running" starts at 30 here. In fact, the Girl xould run because she is born in 1979 and will turn 30 this year.

I was going for a 16:40, which is exactly a 5:20 mile. At the gun, I tried to find my favorite spot in any track race (second place). That lasted about half a lap, after which I went to the front. The first half mile was run in 2:44, so 4 seconds slow. I pushed the pace and one guy hung on. Maybe we could work together, I thought. One of his teammates shouted at him "you're on perfect pace. Just stay there. Don't do any work." With that, I started to try to shake him off. There was a pretty stiff wind down the backstrecth. Three times in a row, I would accelerate off the curve onto the backstretch, so he had to close a little gap in the headwind. The third time, he fell off the back.

The whole race, my time was hovering around 16:40. With half a mile to go, I realized I needed a 2:35, which was doable. My time was 16:38. I am satisfied but not thrilled. The upward curve is still looking like faster times are ahead.

The 1500m was just fun. One guy, who supposedly medaled at the masters world championships took off like a rocket. The rest of us stuck in a pack. I was, seriously, in second place (in that pack) for the first three laps. Then I found my old kick and got 50 yards on the third place guy. A cheap, but fun, way to run a race.

Then I ran a 300m leg in a 1000m relay (100 + 200 + 300 + 400). It wasn't pretty.

Will post some pictures later, including one of the Girl in the starting blocks before her quarter mile debut. She won't want me to post a report from that race but I might anyway.

10,000m race report

25 laps is a lot, which is probably why this distance isn't used all too often. I had never raced one before. Knowing I would likely run by myself, I had brought music and had a mental pace chart prepared.

I planned on doing the first 5K in 17:30 and then speeding up, with whatever speed I had left. It went pretty well; got through the first 5K in 17:25 and did the second 5K in 17:13, for a total time of 34:38.

It felt pretty good and I definitely could have gone a bit faster, especially had I had someone to run with.

The Girl lost count of the lap she was on and lost some focus. There was also only one other woman, and she turned out to be five minutes slower than the Girl. Her time was 42:11, which really isn't too bad. She as run three 10Ks around that time now and, in my opinion, is ready to get close to 41 minutes.

This weekend, we took a trip to Sweden. Ran the trails of Söderåsen National Park three days in a row. A great trip but, boy, was I exhausted on Monday. This last month, I have been losing weight and Thursday to Sunday were all hard days. I was almost to the point of being a little depressed Monday.

I have come to enjoy the "running vacation" almost as much as a "race vacation". When you go somewhere simply to train, it seems like there is less stress and more time to enjoy the trails. Of course, running a race has its own charm.

First 10,000 ... Ever

So these last three weeks have been spent in intense training and dieting. I can't remember the last time I had three weeks like those. Sunday, I ran the best training session of the year in the nearby woods. I has such intense runner's high that I kept getting tears in my eyes for absolutely no reason. And I wisely concluded that the reason why Tom Petty is so unfairly excluded from the musical canon is that he had a cameo part in The Postman.

So it's not his hair or the fact that he didn't know when to retire. It's Kevin Costner rubbing off.

We've been talking a lot about moving back to the US. I don't like it here; I'm not sure why but I don't. It's a stupid subjective sense of not being anything special here. I am just like everyone else. I went to the same medical school, get paid the same, drive the same car and watch the same TV shows as everyone else. These is no way to fail or excel here. No one cares if I do my job right. It's almost impossible to get fired but it's equally impossible to advance in pay or status by working hard.

So last night the Girl suggested that we move back. I got excited. We wouldn't move back now, of course, but after our programs in hematology and ophthalmology are complete. It's out there as a prospect now.

I run my first 10,000 on Thursday. After failing so terribly at the first two races this year, I want a good time. I expect to be running all alone, with music, keeping track of pace. Modest goal is 35 mins. Anything under 34:30 would make me happy. We shall see.

The Girl is running, too. She is hoping to break 41 but I am quietl thinking that she could come close to 40. There is a group of guys, who will all be shooting for 40, so she'll have plenty of pacers.

Running Track Again

Last week, we went to check out the local track club. It's been five years since I ran actual "track". Those days, I trained with a group of guys at roughly my level. We pushed each other and all got faster. We ran track races, road and cross country races.

I have missed the "track club" feeling ever since. Our present home town has a track club with a nice club house and a really nice track. Walking in, I noticed kids doing intervals and testing out starting blocks. However, five minutes later we learned that the adult track team is almost extinct. There is a group of maybe 100 runners of varying abilities who train together, usually running on trails in the many forests and hills around town.

It turns out there are a few fast people. A 45 year old man, who won the national M45 title in the 800m in 2:15 and an 18-year old who runs a 1:56 800. I tried my best to keep up with the national champion on a few 300m intervals; just running around instantly reminded me of training on my old track. The national champion, of course, kicked my ass.

We officially joined the club now and have been on a few runs with them. The Girl went on a tempo with the fast guys. I guess they started out 20 people, people evetually got dropped one by one and at the end there were three men and the Girl left.

In two weeks, there is a 10,000m club championship. Should be fun to see if some fast people will emerge. If not, I guess I will end up as 10,000 champion of a club I joined last week.

In my old club, the club championship would be awarded to the one who posted the fastest time at the "regular" distances through the calendar year. I never won anything there, as that meant a 29 minute 10K, 14 minute 5K etc.

Another Bad Race

This was a 5K on the trails I run every week. I won this race a number of years ago and had thought I would at least get a top 3 this year.

The race started with a loop around the track (always a fun way to start a race) and then 1K of a strong headwind. For some reason, I let the front group go. I probably could have held on, and should have considered doing it in the wind. So 3 guys got ahead by working together, while I ran behind a guy who seemed like he was working way too hard.

Then we turned right and the wind was in our backs. I tried half-heartedly to bridge the gap up to the top three. With 2K left, one of the guys up ahead fell off the back of his group and it looked like he might come back. He didn't and I finished fourth.

In short, I felt fat, old and out of shape. Everything was clicking a couple of months ago. Then came our vacation and two races that got in the way of focused training. I have gained weight during all this. I gotta get back in shape; next target race is a half-marathon in June.

The Girl ran a great race, setting a strong PR. For someone who runs for fun, she is getting very fast.

Slow

Had a very disappointing race this weekend. Leading up to it, I thought I was a little off PR pace, but not much. I had gained a couple of pounds in America but didn't think it mattered too much.

This was a half marathon. We started out running two loops around a track, which was cool. I found myself in a front group of three, with me in the back (as is my weasly nature). At 2K, one of the two guys fell off the back, leaving me with a man in his late 20s, who wore a "save Tibet" shirt and long compression-type socks. Needless to say, I thought I had this one in the bag. My parents had come to watch the Lorax during the race, and I figured they would think it was cool to see their son win a big(ish) race like this.

Then at 5K, I had half a cup of some Gatorade-like drink. It didn't sit well in my stomach. I had fallen behind the guy at the aid stating but caught back up almost immediately. I was planning my attack, when the legs started getting increasingly heavy. Then it was holding on for dear life for a couple of Ks and I finally let go at 7K.

At 12K, the stomach cleared up and I ran OK the rest of the way. As I was finishing, I thought I had run a low 1:15, which would be a little worse than expected. However, my real time was low 1:17 (don't know the exact time as the timing system required me to walk through the shute and then back to the finish line to scan my chip).

The Girl came in in PR time (again, not sure of the exact time), in around 1.34.30. She outsprinted another woman to take third place. We both got a small cash prize (so far we are making money off the races here in Denmark).

I don't know what happened. I have to get back to the drawing board. I have to lose some weight. More miles; keep up the intervals.

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On a side note, I was out of town for a few days to a hematology meeting. The Girl came with me for the first couple of days. It was in Odense, the birth place of Hans Christian Andersen. The hotel room must have had some fairy tale dusy left over from his day, because I had the two most vivid dreams I have had in a while.

Dream # 1 had me back in medical school. I have always said I never want to be the Guinea pig in any study involving brain imaging, because I would be afraid of what they would find. Nevertheless, in this dream I was rolling through the CT scanner and when the scan got to my brain, my whole medical school class, which included the Girl (and a childhood friend named Anders, whom I haven't seen in years), screamed in horror. Or was it more like amusement? I tried to ask what they had seen, but suddenly someone was reading the CT real time from the neck down. Everything was normal and I forgot about the yelling.

The class ended. The other students evaded the topid of the CT scan and, finally, the radiologist called me into a room to tell me that I had had a huge stroke. I protested, saying I didn't have any symptoms to which he said "then it's probably a tumor". In the dream, I looked at the scan and decided it was inoperable and went about my life. Other dreams came and through all of them I had the horrible knowledge of the inoperable brain tumore growing inside my skull. It felt great to wake up.

Dream # 2 was almost worse. We were in a cabin in the country, again with my childhood friend Anders and some other people. The Girl's ex-husband was there and we were all getting along well. I woke up in the middle of the night to find the Girl gone. As fate would have it, she entered the room, stating that she had slept with her ex-husband the last three nights. I don't think I said anything, but she went on to volunteer that she had simply slept in his bed these three nights. In the dream, I remember wondering where the Lorax had slept , figuring that if she was going to cheat on me, at least she could bring the little midnight cartwheel with her. Then she told me that she had gone to second base with her ex-husband, and I remember wondering what exactly that meant.

Next scene, the Girl and I had made up (turns out I could live with second base). Her ex-husband left, carrying a brown leather bag stylishly over his shoulder.

I know the origins of everything in those dreams:

1. Lately, I have asked myself almost daily: "if you suddenly had cancer and had 6 months left, how would you feel?". I see these people every day and I wonder what it is like. That must explain the brain tumor.

2. My brother saw my old friend last weekend.

3. There was a hematologist, who looked suspiciously like the Girl's Ex.

4. We talked about Daughter growing up so fast and discussed kids making out (including the baseball terminology).

Being stalked

About 6 months ago a lady in a minivan ran over the front wheel of our baby jogger. Our son, 8 months old at the time, was unharmed but it was a scary experience.

She came out from a parking lot, wanting to turn right. Did the usual long look to the left, while advancing onto the road. When she started looking right, she saw us and slammed on the brakes. I have seen this happen hundreds of times and have been the embarrassed driver on a few of those occasions.

Well, we made our eye contact and I even remember her giving us a sheepish smile. We started going. And so did she. Then things happened pretty quickly; The stroller was toppling over while I was holding on to it. The front of her van har missed it but the back wheel caught it as she was turning. The girl started pounding on the van and I kicked it while still holding on to the baby jogger. She drove on slowly, like she didn't know whether to stop and the sped up. The Girl grabbed the baby jogger and I ran after the van - and actually got the license number.

We called the police and an officer came to take a statement. He said since there was damage to property and she didn't stop, he would charge it as a hit-and-run.

I called a couple of days later to find out what was going on. They still hadn't found her, a guy said; it was probably not the right license plate number I had given them.

Then two months later, it turns out that the police did find her. She claimed to not know about the baby jogger being run over. As she puts it "I would have known if I had run over something, since I live in the country". Okay. The charges were lowered to inattentive driving, which probably just means a small ticket. Oh well.

But now it got weird. This lady had written to our hospital and to the state medical licensing board about being attacked by two doctors while driving peacefully in her car. Suddenly, we had to defend ourselves. Her letters were bizarre and she neglected to mention that the police already looked at the case (and that we were the ones to call the police). She talked about how I must have been on steroids at the time, since she had googled my name and found out that I was a runner.

Oh well, right? We decided not to contact her (ie. touch her with a ten-foot pole) to ge the stroller paid for. We figured she got what she wanted: a diminished penalty and not having to replace the stroller.

But no. We just got a letter from our boss at the hospital that she wrote another letter full of what he calls "confidential information" about us. She even writes that she knows that we were visiting town last week! And she is from another town, by the way, so it's not like she saw us.

So we have a stalker on our hands, apparently. These days, it's pretty easy to ruin someone's reputation, especially a physician's.

We regret reporting the traffic incident, since she got our names off the police report. We are worried about how she knows all this "confidential" information about us and how she knew we were in town. We worry about the kids, who have my unusual last name, and whom she could easily find.

We don't know if we should call the police and report her for harassment or what to do. The hospital is letting us know - in so many words - that the lady seems crazy, but they are still treating this as a patient complaint of sorts (big of sorts, as she was never a patient of either of us). Unfortunately, she is a patient at the hospital, so they do have to regard her letters with some seriousness.

Crazy stuff.