Nahant 30K race recap

After running a few easy runs during the week, I figured it would be a good idea to put in a good hard effort on Sunday. My first thought was to find a local running club in the area so I can attempt to keep up with more of the seasoned runners.   After a few google searches for local running clubs,  I stumbled upon the Nahant 30K (or 18.5 mile) race, which happened to be this morning.  After getting the go-ahead from Lauren, I spent the rest of Saturday mentally preparing myself for my first long-distance race in five months.

As a quick aside, last night Lauren and I watched the movie 127 Hours. This is about the story of Aaron Ralston, a hiker who in 2003 was trapped in a canyon in Utah for six days when a boulder pinned his arm against the canyon wall. After five days of trying to free his arm, he came to the conclusion that the only way he was going to save his life was to break and amputate his arm to free himself from the canyon. If anyone ever needs any motivation to do anything, then I would highly recommend watching this film. It definitely fulfilled my objective of mentally preparing myself for the race.

On my hour plus ride to Nahant, I had my usual pre-race meal of an English muffin with peanut butter and a big thermos of coffee. It's not exactly a bowl of Wheaties, but my stomach seems to handle it fine during a race. Within 15 minutes of the start of the race, I jogged for a couple of minutes to loosen up my legs.  After drinking a bottle of water, I was ready as I was going to be this morning to run for 2 plus hours.

After a nice word by the race director in remembrance of 9/11, the gun went off, and so was I. There were approximately 300 people in the race, which made it easy to navigate through the first quarter mile of slower runners who like to sprint out of the gates (I've been guilty of this on more than one occasion, and made it a point to hold back for the first few miles).

Since I have not raced this distance is some time, I had no idea at what pace I should be running at. My first two miles clocked in at 7:14 and 7:13 minutes per mile. If only the rest of the race were this easy, I thought to myself. Halfway through the third mile, we came to the end of Nahant Beach, which meant two things: the end of the nice breeze off of the ocean, and the beginning of 12 miles of rolling hills. Needless to say, this was not a nice surprise. However, the next five miles went by with no difficulties, and I was able to keep my pace between 7:09 and 7:29 min/mile.

As the miles past, the cool morning at 9:00 AM had turned into a hot, bright, and sunny day by 10:30, and my legs began to get heavier and heavier. More hills meant more short, choppy steps up the hills, and then long strides leaning forwards on the downhills letting my weight and gravity do most of the work. Any time I lost going up the hills I more than made up on the down hill. Still, my pace was undeterred, keeping under a 7:30 min/mile pace.

Miles 15 through 18 were difficult, but somewhat manageable. The uphills took longer, and the downhills were not nearly as fast as they were at the beginning of the race. The last mile and half of the race was along the beach bike path. While the views of the beach couldn't have been better, I quickly noticed how cruel the ending of the race was. Being able to see the finish line with more than a mile to go made it seem like the race was never going to end. I managed to stick it out, and finished the race in 2:16:16. All in all, I was happy with the race, and I'm looking forward to the remaining six weeks of my training program.