The race that wasn't: National Half Marathon

Over these past few months, I seem to be experiencing a new phenomenon, where I start out feeling great in a race and then, at some point between 25%-50% completion, the wheels fall off and my pace goes right into the toilette.  This time, it was a bit after 4 miles into the National half.  Things were going well, I didn't go out too fast, and was on the whole, feeling pretty damn good.

5:53, 5:43, 11:25 over miles 3 and 4 for an average of about 5:43.  I felt strong, I could actually see the lead vehicle, and I had the entire road nearly to myself.  It was awesome to be that far up in a race this big (27 corrals).  Then we made a turn around and a left up a light and manageable hill.  Then I never saw 5:4X again.  I fell to pieces and pretty much just cruised in, my body wanting nothing to do with going hard.  I finished in an extremely pedestrian 1:22:17, my slowest half in over 2 years.  Heck, I've run near that time on regular runs.

This reminded me much of the NCR trail marathon where I felt invincible for 10-12 miles and then in a split second, everything went straight to hell.  What's even more frustrating is that on the whole, I've been running well as of late, but just fell flat on a day when it mattered.

So naturally, I want to try and figure out just what's going on.  On the whole, racing has been ok since I ran that 1:14:44 half in Philly in September.  Everything has been quite hit or miss, with 2 good races, some meh races, and a few bombs.  I think in general, it is just getting a lot harder to both stay where I am/get better.  I'm sure I'm a lot closer to my limits than I have been the last 13 years I've been running.  Although it doesn't mean I can't get better, I think it means I need to take better care of myself to keep getting better.

Things like sleep and eating well (or at least better...definitely not less!) may just be more important than they used to be.  I've let both of those get away from me and it shows because I feel really tired way too often these days.  It's a pretty vicious cycle really:

1. Go to bed too late.  2. Sleep in as late as possible before work to maximize sleep (7 hours is an accomplishment).  3.  Rush off to work, rarely having breakfast at the time sine it takes a little bit for my appetite to kick in.  4.  Get really hungry at work or on the way and eat whatever is available just to be full enough (rarely anything healthy).  5. Finally, by lunchtime, eat something I cooked that was designed to fill me up and be relatively healthy (I'm actually good at that). 6. crash by the afternoon and take a nap before running. 7. Run  8. Have a 50/50 shot of eating something healthy for dinner. 9. go to sleep too late  10. start over the next day!

Clearly, this is not working.  It all starts (for me anyway) going to sleep on time such that 8 hours from the time I hit the pillow, I need to wake up.  It doesn't mean I'm asleep for 8 hours, but that formula works, because the handful of times I get a week or two like that, I feel much, much better.

I also need time to actually eat a reasonable breakfast, and go back to avoiding buying all that food that I know is bad for me, mainly because it's all I'll eat, to the point of avoiding fruits and vegetables (even though I actually do like them).

And what's the cause of all this?  Honestly...it's just laziness.  I get distracted too easily and stay up too late.  Once that happens, everything crashes down around me as I get too tired when I'm free to actually do much.  Clearly, it didn't matter much in 2010 and early 2011 since I've more or less operated this way for a while.  But now, for whatever reason, it seems to matter more.

Thankfully, I care about my running that much to finally start changing my habits.  If I have to be healthier all around to run faster, than so be it.

It starts Sunday night!  The first step is to just get more sleep, and get up early enough to start the day the way I know I need to.  My next round of groceries are going to be slightly more thought out in terms of buying the right kind of fuel...