Unfamiliar Territory - Turkey Trot Race Report

So excited for a few people this past week…last Saturday competed in the Grant Park Turkey Trot, a 5K race of about 6oo people.  I signed up months ago thinking the race wouldn’t cause much anxiety & recruited a decent-sized group or friends who joined in the race as well.  Most of the group have run a 5K at least once before.  Gina Ciaccia, one of my (and many others) favorite people, had never really run before.  Gina & I sat down together and planned out a six-week plan prior to the race.  That first day she was concerned about being able to run longer than 3 minutes without stopping.  After 4 weeks, she was running a full 3+ miles without walking and gaining more confidence that she would be able to complete the race.  Come race day she was all smiles as she achieved every single goal she set for herself. 

Some of my friends ran just to run, some ran for new PRs, and everyone had a great time.  Was a very well-organized event, especially considering it was an inaugural race.  The day was cold and windy but they had hot apple cider for racers and spectators alike. 

As I mentioned, the race was intended to be low-stress, and in comparison to any triathlon I’ve competed in, it really was.  My primary strategy was to go out hard, get a rhythm, and finish hard (each segment seemed like seconds in my head and seconds during the race itself).  My girlfriend Melissa reminded me that my last 2 races were more along the lines of 3 hours and 10 hours.  It seemed in high school, running these races involved so much more strategy, more places for things to go wrong which gave more places to make a move.  Here it seemed I had to simply go out hard and hang on.  This was not familiar territory anymore.  Not entirely sure of what to expect I thought there would be a couple college kids home for Thanksgiving or high school kids fresh off a cross country season who would push the pace.

As the gun went off, there was a quick funnel into a narrow space and I found 3 others in front of me, 2 who were gone before I could latch on and one who I would pass about 2 minutes in.  From there on out, I found myself alone – clinging to a much faster pace than I am normally accustomed to.  I didn’t get my first check until 2 miles in (10:30).  This was a little faster than I anticipated and now I just had one mile to go so.  My body felt fine but my breathing was much too quick.  I had to settle in a little and focus on my form.  Normally at any other race when I have to think about maintaining form my body is so tired I don’t usually get much of a response—here, I could feel that the better my form, the faster my pace.  I tried to hold that against a fairly strong head wind for most of the last mile and thought about my friends who stepped up to run this race so I could dig a little deeper.  I came around the corner of the Lake Shore Drive bike path and sprinted to a 16:23 finish in 3^rd place.  This was about 20 seconds faster than I expected and was even happier that it was just 8 seconds slower than my PR which came about 13 years ago! 

After the finish I went back to cheer on my friends and say that 2 others also came in under their goal time!  Everyone had a great day.  Special congrats to Chris Boisselle and Dr. Plonka who met new PRs; Gina Ciaccia for her first 5K; Emily France, Marianne Kwiatkowski, & Charlie Player for helping Gina to the finish…it was awesome to see you guys come through.  I’ll post pics above when I get my camera back.

Official race results are here:
http://itsracetime.com/Results.aspx?ID=330

Special thanks to Melissa, who’s always there for me.  I know she enjoyed the shorter race as it was only about 2 minutes time that she didn’t see runners.  Also thanks to Dr. Scheunemann, Dr. Ciaccia, Dr. Player, and Dr. Chua for your mad OMT skills in helping me stretch and reset my legs and spine.  Anytime you need a practice pig, I’d be happy to lend my body. 

Final thanks to Isabel Lopez, Melissa’s niece who celebrated her 1^st birthday on race day, for finally getting over her stranger anxiety and allowing me to play with her. 

Numbers

Someone asked me how much ground I covered last year in training…I feel like I’m ready to start looking ahead a little more now and, in the process, have looked back a little closer at the past year to help me structure next year.  Here are those answers & a few more tidbits. 
 

371         Days of training up until Milwaukee Marathon.

4,230      Miles from Chicago to Kailua-Kona, Hawaii

4,483      Miles I’ve covered in training over the past year by swimming, biking, and running.

1,826      Miles run

2,575      Miles traveled with my butt on the bikeseat. 

82          Miles traveled in the water.

41          Approximate time in hours spent entertaining my mind while swimming.

2            Number of sharks I thought I saw while swimming in Belize.  

2            Number of dolphins I actually saw which I mistook for sharks while swimming in Belize.

10,931   Calories burned during Ironman Wisconsin
3,177     Number of M&Ms that could be consumed to make up that calorie deficit. 

3,811     Calories burned during Milwaukee Marathon

40          Roundtrip miles I biked daily to work at Christ Hope Children’s Hospital in July.

4:30am  Time I started my commute to Christ Hospital in July.

2:45am  Earliest I would get up to get a work out in before having to be at the hospital.

56°        Water temperature when I started swimming in Lake Michigan last spring.

80          Roundtrip miles Melissa traveled to pick me up after my bike broke down on a training ride while 35 miles from home.  Thanks honey.  ;-)

9.3         Average miles per run x 196 runs in past year.

7            Times Melissa yelled at me for getting bike & tire residue on our hardwood floor while on the trainer.

Struggles

I’ve been debated about writing this next post for the past few days.  Melissa gave me a journal a few weeks ago to write my thoughts about this coming year.  It’s easy to write in because it’s simply a rambling of my thoughts without consequence of who may be reading & judging my words.  But if I want this blog to have significance, I need to include real substance of what really goes on not only in training but also in life and some of the difficulties I face at the hospital.  

That being said, I’m going to include an excerpt from my journal a couple days ago. 

…A rather tough week—for the past few weeks my mind goes back to 3 years ago when my mom was passing away.  It is still so surreal that she’s gone.  Yesterday (11/8) was 3 years—I hate being at the hospital on that day—it’s hard to focus; plus I somewhat like feeling sad about my mom, it makes me feel closer to her.  She is the reason—along with my dad—that my brother & I have the lives that we do today.  She instilled in us family first; had a great sense of humor; was fun to be around; taught me if you want something, to set a plan and go get it; inspired me to always continue learning when she got her Bachelor’s Degree at age 38 & then went after her Master’s all the while being an amazing mom and working full time.  She is one of my greatest inspirations. 

All the pictures I have of her don’t seem like it was that long ago.  She was really too young—only 50 years old when she passed.  I felt cheated in some ways.  She’s not here anymore; she’ll never meet my kids; I don’t have her ear to ask for advice—she was always so level-headed, the greatest confidant.  A lot of her favorite things I’m now developing a greater appreciation and respect for as I’ve grown further into adulthood.  These are things we didn’t have in common before but do now.  I wish I could enjoy those things with her.  She is why I chose the career path I did and feel like my greatest gift I can give others is to help them to lead a healthier lifestyle. 

…Last night (11/8) was one my toughest nights yet at the hospital.  A lady who was 36 weeks of gestational age came into the emergency room, then shuttled to the labor and delivery floor in active labor & fully expecting to deliver her 4^th child in mere minutes.  Once on L&D, no heart beat could be found and she had to be told right there—her husband still parking the car—that her baby was not alive.  Fifteen minutes later she delivered a stillborn fetus (whom likely passed days earlier) while having no understanding of what could have lead to this.  Her entire world changed in those few minutes.  Words can’t express that degree of sorrow.  To many questions…not enough answers.


Thinking about my mom, I thought back to a previous blog I kept for a promotional sight for Loyola University after my first year of med school as I was a part of a group of med students who took a trip to Nairobi and rural Uganda.  I will post a short excerpt of this as well:  

Written 5/27/07

From where do you get your inspiration?

Every person has a different story to tell, a different motivation for doing what they do. I was reminded of one of my motivations this past week. About two weeks ago, my dad called with the results of my mom's CT scan to help solve the source of her back pain. A week later I received the much-awaited call from my mom regarding the subsequent biopsy of one of her enlarged lymph nodes. After a deep breath from my mom, I knew the results before the words came out...

Cancer is one of those words when heard from a loved-one that changes your entire perspective in a heartbeat. I don't know if I really wanted an answer to my next question but asked anyway “What's the prognosis?”  Without missing a beat, “The prognosis is that I'm going to beat it again.”

That's my motivation. To look straight-faced into this horrible malady and say “I will overcome you”; is exactly the attitude it takes to overcome many of life's obstacles. Throughout this past week I've found myself sliding through each of the stages of acceptance figuring out what all of this means for my mom, for my family, and also for me.

Mom successfully overcame endometrial cancer two years ago (in 2005). She went through the anything but routine treatment of hysterectomy, chemo, and radiation and came out clean on the other side.  Now they say she has cancer cells in her lymph nodes that are from the uterus before they took it out.  So now she'll be getting chemo and radiation again.  Fortunately (and unfortunately) she knows what to expect with this all too well.  Why is it we take so much for granted until something substantial comes along that puts our lives back in focus?

To finish with a quote I know Mom would like:  “Don't tell God how big your storm is. Tell the storm how big your God is.”