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The Race for Vocations - Training, Praying, Running, Finishing (and everything in between)
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| Chris, Willie, Fr. Joe, Eamon, Myself, Aaron, and Dominic - what a great group of guys! (yes, I am standing on my tip-toes - I thought the camera wouldn't catch that...) |
While I haven't posted on it too much, myself and a few other Brute guys ran in the same mini-marathon as we did last year. The half-marathon itself was last Saturday (May 3rd), but this post will try to encompass all the training and whatnot we did during the semester.
Training began about 8 weeks before the run (so back right after the end of spring break). The plan we found online had us doing four runs each week and started out with runs of 3 or 4 miles long. I had been doing a bit of running (on treadmills) on the weeks leading up to that, so I felt great for the first few weeks. Then, to my great surprise, I found that even as the runs got longer (after a few weeks), I still wasn't struggling too much. Actually, I was running faster, further, and more easily than ever before. Last year, at the end of our training (when we were at our fastest), I ran a 4 mile route in 26:50, which is a bit faster than a 7 minute mile. This year, at the beginning of our training, I ran it in 28 minutes, but within a few weeks I was running it faster than I did last year and by the second week of April I ran the same route in 25:46 (6:35 minutes per mile). Another example: last year I ran the eight mile training route in barely under an hour (7:38 pace), but this year, again near the end of our eight weeks, I ran I slightly longer route in 56:44 (7:04 pace). Now, to say that I was running faster than before isn't to say that I was putting in less effort. There were certainly times when I felt terrible (like when I ran 6 miles on the treadmill - yeah, not much fun), or my legs were absolutely dead (like after our 12 mile run when we struggled along slowly the entire time), or when I attempted to play ultimate Frisbee after running those 12 miles (and my legs started seizing up and spasm-ing)... Overall I was certainly in better condition than last year (often running faster than Willie and Dominic, who usually set a brutal pace last year).
During all those runs - whether hard, or really hard - I found that the absolutely best way to pass the time and the long, leg-pounding miles. If I was cruising along without too much difficulty, I found that myself meditating really well on the mysteries (it was easy to get the idea/picture of each mystery in my head), and when I was struggling to keep my legs moving, or completely out of energy at the end of a long run, I found that meditating on the mysteries kept me going. Even if my legs were completely dying, there was no way I was going to stop and walk while in the middle of contemplating Our Lord carrying His cross (or another mystery). Most of the other guys listened to music, but breaking my iPod turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it made me realize just how good of an opportunity running offers for prayer.
Another benefit of all that running (25 or so miles a week during our longest weeks) was that it forced me to keep exercising. If I hadn't been forced to keep training, I certainly wouldn't have exercised anywhere near that often (or that hard), and I probably would have neglected to do much exercise at all, especially during those last few, tough and busy weeks. Exercise, as I learned in psychology class, is the best "antidote" to stress and I can vouch from experience that I feel much better after exercising (and don't feel as bad about eating a good meal during community dinners and the like). The negative of that constant training though was that my legs were often tired and sore when I wanted to play a game of Frisbee or football (and so I couldn't play as hard as I would have liked).
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| Mass for Vocations (I got to hold the missal for Bp. Doherty) |
Anyway, after all that training, eventually the big day came of the actual mini-marathon. The night before we had attended (and I got to serve at) the Mass for vocations, which was a great reminder of what (and Who) we were running for, and we also enjoyed a large pasta dinner afterwards to charge up our muscles for the next day. On the morning of the race, Luke generously drove us downtown and dropped us off a few blocks from the starting zone. We worked our way down to Washington street (where the race starts) and joined the crowd that was filling the different corrals. A few minutes later the first wave was started and the second wave (the one Dominic, Willie, Chris, and myself were in) moved up to the start line. I was surprised to find that we were pretty close to the front of the crowd with only 10 or so rows of people in front of me (last year we were buried back in the middle of the crowd). After a few minutes the countdown started and then, with the music absolutely pounding (which was great!), we took off. I didn't know if we were going to stick together or not - we had been more spread out in training than last year - and I ended up starting at a really fast pace, whereas they weren't as crazy and stuck with a pace they knew they could keep up... So, I was on my own when the crowd surged past the first mile (and I found that I had just ran it in 7:00 - way fast!). I knew that I was going fast, but my legs - while a little bit sore - weren't protesting too much and I was breathing easily, so I just kept going. Mile 2: 14 minutes - uh oh, this is pretty fast. Mile 3.1 (the 5k mark): 21:49 - you have got to be kidding, I just tied for my fastest (timed) 5k!...
Still, I was feeling pretty good, so I just kept going at a pace that was comfortable and gradually it started to slow down. My legs were starting to feel legitimately tired by the time I hit the 5 mile mark, but I was nearing the Indianapolis 500 track, so I kept my mind off the pain by looking for the group of guys that were coming to cheer us on from Brute. I didn't see them on my way into the track so I figured that they had scoped out a spot near the exit and so, in I went. There was a pretty good sized ramp up into the track, but my legs survived the challenge pretty well (as they had for the smaller hills on the first few miles), and I crossed the 6 mile and then 10 kilometer marks at a pace a bit slower than a 7 minute/mile (7:05 or 7:10). I knew that this pace was pretty fast, but it's not quite as crazy as a 7 minute/mile, and I figured that the track - being pretty flat - would offer a chance to just cruise along and knock out the next 2 miles while maintaining that fast pace. On the one hand, I was worried because I knew that I was dead tired after holding a pace like that for our 8 mile run, but on the other hand I knew that even if I slowed down a ton after the 8 or 9 mile mark I could still hit my goal of 1:40 (sub-100 minutes). Either way, I did keep the pace somewhat high on my way around the track, but - as last year - it wasn't anywhere near as cool or easy as I thought it would be. The track is long, really, really boring, and the crowd was squeezed pretty tightly together by this time (both because they wanted to be on the inside of the curve, but also because I had caught up with, and was in the middle of, the first wave of runners). Basically, the track was miserable - not because I was feeling terrible - but because I knew I was getting tired, and when you are getting tired you don't want to be dodging around people, bored out of your mind, or finding out that there is a bit of wind pushing you around... Two things kept me going though: first, the rosary, which I had been praying since mile 2 or so, and was now on the luminous or sorrowful mysteries (I don't remember which ones) and second, it was on the track that Fr. Dustin Boehm (who I didn't know was a priest at the time) passed me and congratulated me for pacing him that entire time (I guess he had been trying to catch me since the beginning of the race). I managed to stay pretty close behind father as the track slowly slid by (this year I saw the yard of bricks - which wasn't nearly as cool as people made it out to be), but I could feel myself hurting as we (finally) exited the track and a bit later hit mile 9. Unfortunately, I didn't see the Brute guys here either (as it turned out, they were at the entrance of the track and we had missed each other), so I was starting to feel worn out but managed to struggle on towards mile 10.
I knew that at mile 10 they were handing out gel packs (which basically give you a boost of electrolytes and sugar) which I figured would help my legs to keep going, and also, at the 10 mile mark I was only 3.1 miles from the finish (a 5k)! I picked up two the gel things and swallowed about a quarter of one (didn't want to over do it) along with some water (which they were handing out) and I promptly got a terrible stomach cramp. It was one of those things, I was doing a pretty good pace - so that was good - but I was starting to really feel tired and I was hoping that these gel things would give me the boost I needed to finish strong and they did the exact opposite. Now, on top of legs that were threatening to collapse, and an uphill last few miles (or so it seemed), I had the added discomfort of a stomach cramp - wonderful... I forced myself to keep running, knowing that all of the pain wasn't just going to go away if I stopped to walk (and it would be immensely harder to get going again), but those last few miles were absolutely brutal. I star
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| The only picture that I could find of me during the race (near the finish line) |
ted praying the rosary again, something that I had forgotten to keep doing during the middle of the race, and eventually crossed the 11 miles mark (almost there, come on), and after an eternity of swinging my lactic-acid-filled legs and jarring my knotted insides I finally also passed the 12 miles mark. Now, with only a mile to go, and knowing that I could just about walk it and still make it under 1:40 (my pace had only dropped to 7:30 or so for the last few miles), I just kept going. Yeah, the last mile was uphill, and seemed more like 2 miles (soooo long), but the crowd was cheering, I was almost there, and you just can't stop at that point. I did run just a tad faster for that last tenth of a mile or so. I wasn't sprinting by any means, but I wasn't crawling either. Final time: 1:35:24 (7:16 min/mile pace) - almost 10 minutes faster than my time last year and something like 10% faster as well! I was really happy to finish with that time - especially considering those harsh last few miles - it was way faster than I had expected (even considering my pretty good times in training). Some fun numbers: this year I was the 759th person to cross the finish line, last year I was #2347. This year I finished 90th in my age group (20-24), last year I finished 88th in my age group (14-19). And, just for fun, I was also the first "Dominic" to cross the finish line! Dominic Vahling finished several minutes after me (cutting a few minutes off his time from last year) and Willie was a few minutes after that. We grabbed some cookies, bananas, chocolate milk (and other such such wonderful things) and headed over to the race for vocations tent to celebrate and wait for the other finishers.
Yeah, so the mini-marathon was awesome! I was forced to stay in shape the entire semester. I got to spend a lot of good time with the other guys I was training with. I got to experience a wonderful Mass at St. John's and a delicious pasta dinner afterwards. I ran my second mini-marathon - feeling great for the first few miles, keeping the pace high for the middle miles, avoiding collapsing during the last few miles, and finishing with a fantastic time! I ran for a great cause, got some praying in, offered up a bit of suffering, and had a blast doing it!
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