2008 Gate River Run Recap Part II

"You don't train for a 15k, you just do it."
...with apologies to Barney Stinson and the writers of How I Met Your Mother

Greetings, faithful readers! When we left off, Lana had just found me in the crush of people running the Gate River Run. I swear, the girl has eyes like an eagle! And I wasn't even wearing my big orange shirt anymore... as it turns out, running == warm, even when it's cold and blowing outside. But that's another story. As it is, I suddenly had a running buddy. Of course, at this point, the lack of training was starting to catch up to me, and we decided to be walking buddies for a little while. But not very long... Lana was on a mission, so she left me and my walking ways after just a couple twists and turns.

Of course, at this point, we're in the neighborhoods of San Marco, and one of the greatest things about this race is the community support. People come out of their houses and make little parties... they sit out on their lawns and have breakfast, cheer, and occasionally even hand out water or oranges to the runners. This is also where we started seeing more of the bands that the race organizers set up along the course... I heard it was 10 bands on the course, and I believe it! But, with all these people cheering and hootin' and hollerin', I started getting a little excited. And there was this one incredibly encouraging group that somehow encouraged me to sprint. And, never being one to deny my fans, I did so. What I didn't know at the time was that during this heads-down sprint of at least 20 yards, I somehow passed Lana.

Following this, we continued through neighborhood, and up Hendricks until we turned into another neighborhood. We were coming up on mile 5, and around this point, I started looking for Lana. She had left me behind, after all, and I *should* be catching up to her by now, right? See above, re: I didn't know at the time. I actually spent the rest of the race looking for her at just about every chance I could. That'll teach me to sprint in a 15k.

In any case, we were running by a park where I came upon... another band! I don't even remember which one it was (sorry, guys), but what I do remember is that there were smoothie cups littering the ground, which stuck out quite a bit from the standard paper Wendy's cups that the water stops had. Somewhere, somebody had set up a smoothie stop... and I missed it! Now, if that ain't encouragement for improving next year, I don't know what is!

Of note, at this point, I also noticed that my camera died. We lost the charger somewhere in the house, but I thought I still had enough juice. Guess not.

From there, we ran up Atlantic for a little bit, and then into historic Saint Nicholas. At least, that's what the sign read. To be honest, I've never been into this area, but it seemed nice. The people were friendly... to the point that one of them gave out a beer! Of course, it was the guy running in front of me that actually grabbed it, but more power to him. He was faster... that day. Further on, there was even a group of folks blasting 80's music out of their house and dressed in vintage hair band gear. Best laugh I had on the course that day, guys. Around that point, I definitely needed it.

Why, you ask? Well, one of the other treats of running through St. Nicholas is that as we headed along Nicholson Road, we could catch glimpses of the future. Off to our left was that torture device we had been hearing of all year, and been dreading all morning... the Hart Bridge. It was just barely peeking out, mocking us as we struggled along. I refused to fall into fear, and I rose up and challenged it! "Not today, bridge", I huffed. "I'm looking forward to beating you!"

If only I knew.

Once we got back out onto Atlantic, things were looking up. The wind that had been beating us down all day was suddenly at our backs. I took this opportunity to run as much as I could... my mantra became "Run while it's flat". And that I did. But it was not to last... this occasion was cut short after about half a mile by... it.


It doesn't look like much from afar, and I really wish I had some pictures from going up the bridge, but it didn't disappoint. Honestly, I think that if it hadn't been for the wind, I think it wouldn't have been that bad. Now, that's not to say that I would have been dancing up the span, but really, it was just a big, long, hill.

If it hadn't been for the wind.

The light breeze that had been guiding our way so far suddenly turned into a tempest, in Florida, would normally have a name. The news reports that I saw was claiming 40mph winds, but I really think it must have been even faster than that. People were honestly hunkering down and fighting through the wind! Every now and then (twice, I think, as I was going over), the wind would die down, and everyone would suddenly fall about two feet to the left as they didn't have to struggle anymore. But don't worry, the wind always came back immediately.

And once I reached the top (finally), I looked at the Garmin. According to it, I had about a mile left, and I was at 1:47. Oh, my God... I actually have a chance to break two hours! After not training... at all! I couldn't believe it! And that's when it happened. The fuel hit the fire. And I was running! I ran all the way down the bridge. I had to stop for a second since my shoes became untied, but I tied them really quickly (some tme, I'll have to explain how I tie shoes), and got right back to running... and it hurt. As I was heading down the ramp, I just couldn't run any more. I had to walk, but I was coming up on the stadium... and the finish! So, ok... I'll just walk for a second. After all, I suddenly had a time to beat! So I walked. But not for very long.

As I came up on the stadium, the emotion just took care of me, and I just had to run for all it was worth. I screamed through the tunnel (passing several people as I went), and burst onto the field! And there were people in the stands. Still! After two hours, people were still watching the scrubs like me finish. There was cheering, and there was the finish line on the Jumbotron. But I still had to finish. Now, let's see... when I crossed the start, they told me it was seven mintues in, so if the clock says anything less than 2:07, I should be OK, right? I look up, and...

2:05

SPRINT!!!!

And then it was done. It actually ticked over to 2:06 before I crossed, but my official chip time was 1:58:52. I did it!

And then I realized what kind of idiots we were. Here I was, in a crowd of 12,000 people, with absolutely no plan for meeting up with the folks that I showed up with. If you look hard at the MapMyRun course, you'll notice that I didn't turn my Garmin off for a while, and it kept the track running as I wandered around the stadium, looking for anyone. And wouldn't you know it, that eagle-eyed wife of mine found me again! She's good. Of course, we still had two more people to find, and no phones. We managed to wander back to the car and wait... and that's when Dar showed up. And then we waited. And waited. And waited. And pulled out a lawn chair. And a yoga mat. And a hammock (seriously), and laid out in the cold wind and long sleeves and sweatpants, and waited. Finally, we got a call from our long lost fourth member that she was able to get a ride back to the house from someone else, but by this point, we had already missed the afterparty, and Lana missed her massage.

Oh, well... if it were perfect, there wouldn't be any reason to do it next year.

Here's to next year!!!

Not yet

Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to write the second part of the recap today. A rough day at work was followed by an awesome massage...

And all the evils of the world went away, if only for a moment.

2008 Gate River Run Recap

or "Bill and the Blustery Day"

For a whole week, I've been in training for this year's Gate River Run/USA 15k Championship. This year, the course has changed... the start was on Gator Bowl Blvd, just south of Jacksonville Municipal Stadium (or "No-tell Stadium", as my wife likes to call it), with the finish actually being on the field! Of course, leading up to the run, all eyes were on the weather, as the storm that absolutely drenched/buried the east coast this week also hit North Florida.

As it turns out, the rain stopped during the early morning hours before the race, but that left high winds. Very high winds. Like 25mph winds... with gusts up to 40. Heading out to the start, it was coooooold -- about 55 degrees (yes, that's cold in this area). Coffee would have been great, but I gave up caffeine for Lent. That may have been a mistake. I probably should have done what Lana did and given up TV. It would have been much better for me, but then again, it's during basketball season, and that would really hurt. But I digress...

We got to the stadium parking lot just before the 5k was scheduled to start. We still had about an hour until the start of the 15k, but we had a ways to go, and we were hoping to meet up with some of our friends, so we stripped down. I still wore a long sleeve shirt with running shorts, but Lana stripped down to a t-shirt and running shorts -- she must have been jacked up to not freeze in that weather! Somehow, we actually managed to find Megan before the race, but she came in from Chicago late the night before, so still had to run to the expo and get her race number. Lana ran off to find Mike and Chris, but they were already up near the starting corral, so they didn't want to come back to where we were. Lana came and got us and we were off to the start.

Now, since I just had gotten my new brace, had no training, etc., I was thinking that I would be walking most of the race. You know, like my training walk last weekend. So I started heading back towards the walkers... and kept walking... and kept walking. I ended up almost getting back to the car before I found the walkers! Of course, in my mind, I'm already rationalizing that I'm not going to walk the *whole* thing, so I stayed just a touch ahead of the actual walkers. At this point, with 12,000+ of my closest friends gathered around me, Megan was actually able to find me again! Granted, it might have been the orange long sleeve UVA shirt I was wearing, but still, that's a honking load of people!

Then there was The Star-Spangled Banner, the blast of the cannon, and we were off!

Well, kinda. Of course, being back as far as I was, it took 7 minutes before I walked across the starting line. And then there was the crush of people trying to take off, and this was my first mistake (have you noticed that most of my blog entries have that exact phrase in them somewhere?). I started running. Just a bit, and pretty slowly, to get out of the way of the throngs. Then, after about 1/3 of a mile, I saw Jaxson DeVille (the Jacksonville Jaguars' mascot) and his big ol' head flopping along the course, so I had to run up and get a picture:


After that grand experience, I was still feeling pretty good, so I was doing some easy jogging, peppered with walk breaks (of course). The first couple miles of the course are pretty uneventful, just winding through the streets of downtown Jacksonville. Of course, when we were running past the Maxwell House plant, that was absolute torture (see above re: gave up caffeine), but I powered through it. The wind was hitting pretty hard, even at this point, and there were a lot of hats scattered around on the ground where they blew off people's heads -- people obviously more competitive than I am, because I would go back and get my damn hat! As it was, I had to turn mine around so that it wouldn't fly off my head.

Our first major hurdle was crossing the Main Street Bridge. This is a lift bridge across the St. Johns River, and it's annoying to run across. The flooring is this nasty metal grating that is hard enough to run over without the high winds, but the winds made it incredibly difficult! Plus, I'm always afraid to run across that grating anyway. So I walked... and not even that quickly. I mostly just focused on not getting blown away. If only I knew what was ahead of me!

After the bridge, we started running into the historic San Marco area of town. These are some beautiful houses right near the river, and running in this area is always nice. It's generally almost like a realty walk -- come look at the nice houses I'll never be able to afford. But this time was slightly different. First off, there was the time... I was still running a little bit, and as I was pulling up to the 5k mark, I realized that I might actually be able to finish that part in less than 40 minutes! Granted, that's not that quick, but you have to remember that I haven't run in FIVE months. And I was tired. And it was cold. And windy. But I was doing well. And I hadn't seen anything yet.

Around the corner from the 5k mark we found our first ground-level view of the mighty St. Johns... and it whipped up like we were in a hurricane! In all my time in Jax (almost 2 1/2 years at this point), I've never seen anything like it. The waves were crashing over the retaining wall and spraying all over the road

The spray was going across the entire road, and people were crowding on the sidewalk just to keep from getting soaked! And then, while I stopped to take the picture above, I heard someone yelling "Billy!", and turned around to find my wife. Somehow, Lana found me in the herd of 12,000 runners!

But now it's getting late, so I'll finish this up tomorrow. Stay tuned for Part II.

Catching Up

At one point, I was going to post updates to the physical therapy as I was going through it. Unfortunately, something got in the way. It was boring. It worked great, and the PT was able to teach me quite a bit about knee stability and exercises to help keep the knee stable, but at the same time, the real highlight was bringing in a UVA pennant for them to put up on the walls (which were already chock full o' SEC flags -- but Virginia needed to represent).

In any case, I finished my physical therapy. And it was good. And I went back to the sports doc, who told me that I still have fluid in my knee and likely what was happening was that my kneecap was floating around and banging into things when I was doing some crazy exercises... like running. The solution at this point was to give me a brace to keep the kneecap in place while working out. As an added bonus, the brace has some stability stays on the side, too!

So, here I am. It's one week until the Gate River Run, which is apparently the largest 15k in the country ("USA 15K Championship", according to the website: http://www.gate-riverrun.com). In any case, there's an untimed 5k for charity, and a vicious 15k that everyone says is absolutely fantastic to do. And I really want to do the 15k. I signed up for it long ago, thinking I'd be healed by now, mostly for the reason that the race finishes inside Jacksonville Municipal Stadium, home of the Jacksonville Jaguars (and to make some of my friends happy, I have to mention that it is also the home of the annual Georgia-Florida game). It ends in the stadium! How awesome is that? They'll put us up on the Jumbotron (which is much larger than the one in Lights, Motors, Action! at the Disney races).

But I've been sitting on my bum for five months.

What to do?

Well, if you're anything like me, you're going to take your new brace and go for a walk. You'll start out with a notion of going five miles and seeing what it feels like at that point, and if you can keep a reasonable pace going up to then.

And if you're still anything like me at that point, you'll be feeling pretty damn good at five miles, and you'll come up with a plan to go up to the local grocery store and get some G2 and walk back home.

And if you're still anything like me, you'll get up to the grocery store and realize that you've gone 5.8 miles at this point, and you'll be incredibly curious to see how quickly you can finish the 10k. So you'll skip the G2 and keep on going.

Finally, you'll get to the 10k point (in 1:28 -- walking), and realize that you're just short of 5k from the house.

So, here you are. It's your first excursion out of the house in a looooong time. You're testing yourself to see if you think you'll be able to walk a 15k next week, and keep a decent time (hoping for less than a 15 min/mile pace). And to do this, you *do a 15k*.

And you do it in 2:12.

And then you can't really walk much on Sunday. Or Monday, for that matter.

But just wait until Saturday!!!

One week in

Today was my third real physical therapy session, and I think they're going pretty well. We've been warming up with some time on the bike (8 minutes Monday, 10 minutes Tuesday and today), and usually go on to stretches and some basic quad-strengthening exercises. Today, I got a special treat. After those exercises, I got to go on the elliptical machine for 10 minutes to see how things are going!

The verdict: pretty well. I didn't have much pain while I was on the machine (for 10 minutes), and any pain I did have went away pretty quickly afterwards. However, a little while later, my knee is definitely a little sore. At this point, I'm not really sure if it's due to the meniscus or the workout, but I'm going to make sure to mention it to the PT on Monday when I go back.

But I got to do something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike running. Hooray!

Ready for Recovery

It's been a while since posting. I'm not going to go into the full reasons why now (if ever), but there was a lot going on with me in the last couple months. So, the quick version is this:

1. Torn right lateral meniscus. That's why I had to stop running.
2. MRIs suck. Luckily, you can get them scheduled pretty quickly when you need them.
3. Unfortunately, the sports doctor is not the same way. He's really good... it just took literally *weeks* before I could get in to see him after getting the MRI done.
4. yadda yadda yadda
5. I actually did walk two 5k's in that time frame -- the Race for the Cure and the Disney Family 5K at the marathon weekend. Unfortunately, no luck doing the half... :(
   
6. I started my physical therapy today!

Yes, it's true -- I'm staring physical therapy in the hopes that I won't have to have surgery on my knee. The injury itself doesn't seem to be that bad. It really doesn't bother me on a daily basis, maybe occasionally flaring up when I'm going up stairs. So we're trying to work on my quadriceps and see if I can get things balanced out properly. Today was my first session, so they gave me some excercises to do at home, and I'll get into it in earnest next Monday.

Woo hoo!!!

Now, this weekend, off to Tampa and the Gasparilla Pirate Festival!!!!

(Yes, I said pirate festival. Quiver with your jealousy.)

Back on the DL

I know... I still haven't posted the race report for the Race for the Taste. But I've been busy. And, it's just really hard to mention. You see, my knee started hurting in the later stages of the run. It felt good after about a week, so I went on another run, and it flared up again after about three miles. I went to a sports medicine doc, and now I have to get an MRI on it to see what's going on.

Luckily, I've already paid my max out-of-pocket for the year with my insurance. Bring on the free medical!

Anyway, he also said that I'm not allowed to run anymore until things get checked out. So, I still did the Race for the Cure this week... but I walked it:

Chip time: 40:11
Avg Pace: 12:57

Damn, not too bad. But I still hope I don't have to try to walk a marathon...