TODAY’S LESSON
Pat and I had made plans for dinner at about 7, at Maggiano’s, a hearty, wood-paneled old school Italian restaurant, the kind where you think Mafia guys might go – or at least Sinatra and his pals. At about 6:15, I called Pat to give him directions. He sounded fine, lucid and all, but he claimed he was lying on the bathroom floor and couldn’t get up. Something about feeling lightheaded and nauseated. I asked him what he’d had to eat after the race, and he said he got no food for about 90 minutes after the race. He’d been confused about where his baggage bus was supposed to be (it was actually back at his hotel). He had to take the subway back from the finish, and couldn’t figure out how to do that. A little hypoglycemic, maybe?
Anyway, I walked to the restaurant and showed up on time, all dressed in my finisher’s shirt and medal and 2005 jacket. I waited for him there for about 30 minutes, while he got dressed and took a cab over. Once there, we commiserated about our days. Turns out his time was only about 2 minutes slower than mine, but he’d felt much worse at the end. This got me to thinking, would I rather go “too” slow at the start and finish strong, or try to keep too fast a pace, and finish truly laboring (Pat’s version of his race)? Pacing is everything in endurance events.
“You know what I learned today?” I started to lecture him. “I learned that, to do this right [this being something like a marathon or an Ironman], I’ve got to pay attention to only two things: how’s my stomach doing, and how is my brain doing. I don’t care what my legs feel like. They have to be ignored. But if my stomach is not absorbing fluid and sugar, then my brain won’t work. And if my brain doesn’t work, then the whole system shuts down. And I’m not talking about that little part of the brain where consciousness comes from. I’m talking about the whole rest of the brain, which is controlling this entire enterprise. Feed your brain, ignore your muscles. That’s the trick.”
THE NUMBERS
5K splits, with average heart rate during that time (my maximum HR is about 170)
5K 25:58 134
10K 26:35 136
15K 26:40 136
20K 27:11 136 (This includes my pee stop of 40 seconds); half way: 1:52.07
25K 26:16 139
30K 26:51 140
35K 26:49 145
40K 25:47 148
42.2K 11:55 152
20,300 started; I was in the top half at 9891. 2524 men aged 50-59 finished; I was 1151 among them. I qualified for next year by 57 seconds. A success all around. I think I represented myself well.