CIM Training log – Week 13 + Race Recap – Turkey 10 Mile

Hi! Coming at you today with a recap of week 13 of CIM training as well as a recap of Turkey 10, a ten mile race in Creola, Alabama. Oddly enough, I ran a Thanksgiving themed race on Veteran’s Day weekend and am running a Veteran’s Day themed race the weekend before Thanksgiving. Very odd indeed.

Week of November 6 – November 12

Monday: 6.5 miles easy (63° w/ dew point of 58°)
Tuesday: 8 miles easy (59° w/ dew point of 59°)
Wednesday: 9.3 miles w/ quality (80° w/ dew point of 64°) + 30 minutes of strength + 30 minutes of Pilates
Thursday: 6.5 miles easy (75° w/ dew point of 65°)
Friday: 4 miles easy (69° w/ dew point of 66°)
Saturday: 15.75 miles w/ Turkey 10! (64℉ w/ dew point of 62°)
Sunday: Rest

Wednesday’s workout was a pretty simple one with a three mile warm up, 10 X 1:00 “on” with 1:00 jogging recovery and a three mile cool down. The goal pace for the minutes on was 5:56 and I averaged 5:32, so a little too hot there, but nothing crazy by any means! The rest of the week was pretty chill as I was gearing up for Saturday’s race.

Race Recap – Turkey 10 Mile

I was using this race as a dress rehearsal of sorts for CIM. The idea was to hone in on the pre-race routine, which included a mini carb load the day before. The goal was to get 400 grams of carbs on Friday. This honestly didn’t feel too hard, but for the marathon I will need to do this for at least three days in a row. I can imagine that by the third day it will feel a bit uncomfortable. I am sharing what I did here, not as nutritional advice by any means, but rather just to document this as part of my pre-race routine.

Breakfast: 2 pieces of toast w/ 4 oz. cottage cheese, banana, 32 oz. water w/ Liquid IV & Nuun
Snack: Smoothie w/ 1 cup of strawberries, banana, 1 cup of spinach + 4 oz. Greek yogurt, 2 pieces of toast
Lunch: 2 mini bagels w/ 4 oz. Greek yogurt, 12 oz. juice
Snack: 12 oz. water w/ Scratch recovery, 20 oz. water w/ Nuun
Dinner: 3 cups of cereal w/ 4 oz. Greek yogurt & PB2, 2 pieces of toast w/ butter

When I woke up on Saturday morning, my stomach was a wreck. So yeah, probably going to try a slightly different strategy for this weekend’s race. I am also rethinking some of my overall nutrition strategies. To make a long story short, I’ve been having major GI issues on the run (you can just ask Rebecca (or not, really please don’t)). I [inadvertently] cut out some of the more nutrient dense foods from my diet in favor of easier to digest alternatives to solve the GI issues. However, it seems to have turned into a cyclical pattern of [unintentional] under fueling, which is in turn making the digestive issues worse. I am also experimenting with iron supplementation, which also may explain some of the digestive issues. My Ferritin is 24, which is low, but not at a critical level. The goal is to get this number up though!

So anyways, back to the race … this is a super low-key race. It is a flat, out and back course with a couple turns to break up the monotony. I always enjoy out and back races because I love feeding off of the energy of other runners after the turnaround. The race starts at 8:00 a.m. in Creola, Alabama. I got to the race about 45 minutes before the start. I did the usual pre-race stuff such as the picking up of the bib, the hitting of the bathroom (a couple times) and the running the warm up miles. I took a gel (Maurten) about 10 minutes before the start.

The conditions were less than ideal, but not *terrible*. It was 64℉ with a dew point of 62℉. It wasn’t raining per say, but it was misting. I debated whether or not to wear a hat, but decided not to. If it had been raining harder, I would have gone with the hat. The race plan was to start a bit conservatively and try to pick it up as I went. I planned to ease into it by running at approximately marathon pace for the first few miles, to then drop it down to closer to half marathon pace for a few miles and to finish up at closer to threshold effort. This was a very solid plan that unfortunately I was just not able to execute.

I started out at close to marathon effort, but when it came time to pick it up … nothing actually happened! The problem is that I felt like I had indeed picked it up. The effort was getting harder. I didn’t look at my watch at all during the race, as this has worked well for me in the past. I am really trying to learn what certain efforts feel like as opposed to interpreting in my brain whether or not the pace the watch tells me *should* feel harder, easier, etc.

My time at the turnaround was 32:00 on the dot and my final time was 64:20. The actual splits were 6:23, 6:16, 6:20, 6:29, 6:24, 6:19, 6:20, 6:25, 6:35, 6:39. While this is not a crash and burn by any means, it also just wasn’t at all what I was attempting to do. After the race I was very dizzy and had a massive headache. I’m assuming the GI issues before the race contributed to those feelings. The weirdest thing of the day was that I was unable to complete my cool down because it felt as if my entire core was completely seized up! It almost felt like I had strained all my ab muscles. I still to this day am not entirely sure what was going on, but it was very bizarre!

There are some lessons to learn from this race and I don’t think I even know exactly what all they are at this point. One for sure is that it is not recommended to start the race with headphones around your neck if you are wearing a necklace. That was a tangled mess that I spent an unnecessary amount of energy fooling with mid-race. I think we’ll just nix the headphones altogether for future races (I enjoy training with them (highly recommend the “guilty pleasure” playlist on Spotify)).

Overall I am just feeling very bummed about the result. Part of the disappointment is related to the fact that if I had been able to execute the plan, I would’ve potentially been able to run both a PR & a state record. Part of me knows that it is completely unrealistic to expect to PR and|or run a state record at every race, but another part of me still kinda feels like a failure when it doesn’t happen. I was also really hoping that this race would give me some solid “proof” of where my fitness was and that the proof would indicate that there was a potential of a marathon PR at CIM. The result I got does not point in that direction. However, I know that you can’t judge an entire training cycle by one race! Especially when the race wasn’t a goal race and was run in the peak weeks of the marathon training block.

I think the biggest takeaway from this race is just going to be the fact that it caused me to take a step back and reevaluate whether or not I was actually doing the right things from a fueling perspective. I felt so crummy after the race that it was a bit of a wake up call! I’ve put a lot of focus on that during this training cycle, but in some ways I think I am still missing the boat. Thankfully there are still a few weeks to adjust and learn!

Onward!