Training Yourself…Racing for Others (2)

by Dave Presby

I. Building a Base

II:  Warming Up

I’d been aware of the Bar Harbor Half Marathon for several years, but I’d never made the trip up north for the race.  Instead, I’ve made it my annual tradition to run the Mount Desert Island Marathon, which is held just a month later in October.  Due to conflicting schedules and prior obligations, this was one of the few summers that our family had skipped our annual camping trip in June.  Not wanting to miss a year at the campground, Dad and I decided to take a shorter trip in September and scheduled our stay during race week.

Unlike the full MDI Marathon, which is run strictly on the main roads of the island, a significant portion of the Bar Harbor Half Marathon is run on the carriage roads of Acadia National Park.  In addition to the millions of dollars and thousands of acres of land he donated, John D. Rockefeller was the visionary responsible for the construction of Acadia’s well-known system of interconnected carriage roads and breathtaking stone arch bridges.  The surfaces of these roads are composed of a layer of finely crushed stone, offering runners a respite from the pounding of the main roads.  I’d been running the carriage roads for over twenty years and was very familiar with the terrain, so the opportunity to finally race them was exciting.

As far as race goals are concerned, the half marathon has always proven to be very puzzling to me.  It’s clearly my strongest event, but I’ve never specifically targeted any half in particular or tailored my training to excel at that distance.  Instead, I’ll typically look for a half during each training cycle that falls four to six weeks before my full marathon, and run the race as a speed workout or tempo run.

My best performance to date unfolded in bizarre, inexplicable fashion at a local race in April of 2014.  Up to that point, my previous personal record (PR) had been mired around 1:28:30 for four years.  Even more puzzling was the fact that I’d taken the previous December, January, and a portion of February off to recover from an ankle injury.  I’d only been running for two-and-a-half months leading up to the race.  What’s more, I hadn’t included any speed or tempo training to prepare, save for a 5k and a 15k during the previous month.  I simply entered the race to evaluate my current fitness after several months off.

Just over thirteen miles later, I crossed the finish line as the clock read 1:23:58, almost five minutes faster than my previous PR.  I still haven’t figured out to this day how ten weeks off, followed by ten weeks of easy running with minimal speed training, leads to a five-minute half marathon PR.  But I’ve run at least one half under 1:25 every year since, so I know that my breakout performance wasn’t an aberration.

Under normal circumstances, I would have relished the opportunity to earn a PR on this particular course.  While the profile is challenging with almost eight hundred feet in elevation gain, I’ve always excelled on hilly terrain.  I was also extremely familiar with the majority of the route.  Unfortunately, I was nursing a tight left hamstring, which tended to seize and numb up during the middle of a fast workout.  This peculiar condition didn’t involve any sharp pain and certainly wasn’t debilitating by any means.  But it forced me to slow down significantly for a short spell while shaking out my left leg, hoping the sensation would pass, all while adding unwanted seconds or even minutes to my time.  Seeing that I’d be running a full marathon just a month later, I decided to treat the race as an up-tempo speed workout, hopefully sparing myself any possible injury.

On race morning, a thick layer of fog rolled in from the ocean, suffocating all of Bar Harbor.  After picking up my race number and t-shirt inside the YMCA, I jogged around for awhile, running a few strides on the baseball field next to the starting line to keep loose.  I found myself entranced watching other runners warming up on the road near the starting line.  One by one or in small groups, they’d jog down Main Street towards the center of town, becoming smaller and smaller, until eventually dissolving into the fog.  A few minutes later, each one would reappear as they made their way back towards the starting line.

The race began on Route 3 in front of the baseball field, headed through the village towards the harbor before veering left, eventually leaving town and climbing sharply uphill into national park territory.  The middle of the race followed a loop around a section of Acadia’s carriage roads, including the heavily-traveled six mile circuit around Eagle Lake.  The final stretch returned runners to the main roads, where they enjoyed an extended downhill journey back into town, eventually returning to the baseball field where the finish line had been set up.

Before the start, I was sizing up the competition in the first row, trying to determine the eventual winner.  In all my years of racing, I’ve never toed the starting line with any expectations of winning.  My lone victory came just over two years ago in a half marathon with a fairly small field in Meadville, Pennsylvania.  As usual, I hadn’t been keying on this particular race for any reason.  I had been visiting my sister’s family for the weekend, learned about the race at the last minute, and decided to run as a speed workout.  On that day, I just happened to be the fastest runner to show up.

Dad had also been in town to watch my two nephews in a cross country meet with the family during the previous afternoon, so accompanying me to my race was a no-brainer.  While being the first person to cross the finish line was certainly exciting, the best feeling occurred a hundred yards earlier where Dad had set up camp to get a good view of the final stretch.  As I approached all alone, his face absolutely lit up with excitement when he realized there was nobody else following.  As I ran by, we shared a high five that neither of us will forget.

On this particular day, I initially had my eye on a gentleman decked out in a bright yellow singlet and skimpy black shorts, who appeared to be anywhere in his late thirties to early forties.  He was all business during warmups, stretching silently, bouncing up and down in place, and striding out a handful of times.  I could tell from his graceful, efficient form that he’d be a force to be reckoned with.  Having studied the results from the past four years, I knew I’d have a good shot at a top ten finish, or perhaps even top five.  Boldly, I lined up next to the warrior in yellow.

Next Up

III. The Race