R and J in the USA

[Note: The following is Julie’s section of the “Detailed Race Report for Running Nerds” for our Arizona race, but we decided it deserved its own post. If you don’t usually read those, it might be useful to read the “Detailed Race Report for Running Nerds” from our California Santa Paws 5K race in our 5K section for context. Or skip it and just dive right in here!]

When the race started, Julie’s Calves woke up from a quiet state of peace and began a conversation with Julie that would continue throughout the race.

”Hey! Hey up there!” Julie’s Calves shouted up to Julie like someone that got woken up in the middle of a deep sleep by a bunch of rowdy kids outside playing too loud and too late at night.

”What, praytell, do you think you are doing?”

”What do you mean?” Julie replied, feigning innocence.

”Do you recall, YESTERDAY?”

”Hmmm, what was that again? Remind me.” Julie said, playing dumb.

”When I politely invited you to go f&^% yourself.”

”Right. Yea, that’s ringing a bell.”

”And, what are you doing right now?”

”Um…not doing that?”

The negotiations continued throughout the race. Julie repeatedly promised her Calves that today’s race course would actually be for real mostly flat and, with the exception of a few very small hills, we’d be pretty much in the clear. And then, after today, she promised to pamper her Calves with rest, compression boots and muscle magic cream. And she promised to run fairly easily through the race. At this point, her Calves were leary and not ready to fully trust Julie after her decisions of the last four days, but decided to cooperate nonetheless, keeping their protestations to a steady, but acceptably quiet murmur throughout the race – piping up louder in the small uphills that popped up, but mostly cooperating.

At some point, Julie’s overall Body Battery, the part that keeps track of general energy level, piped into the conversation. 

“Hey! Whose bright idea was it to run a 5K the morning after getting 4 and half hours of sleep AND running a 5K YESTERDAY morning? I assume it was the same schmuck who chose to wear 3 different long-sleeve layers to run in Phoenix, Arizona that goes from 40 degrees to 75 degrees in the short space of a morning.” It continued. The body battery was low and, understandably cranky, not as tactful with words as it tends to be when more full. “I fueled you yesterday while you crammed in your 5K, all that driving, all those postcards and all that blog writing that you are so insistent on doing. And THEN you wake me up at 4AM when I am not even CLOSE to done sleeping because you can’t rest until you finish your California song. And now this! Who is running this friggin’ place?!”

Julie sheepishly raised her hand, admitting guilt on all counts.

”I didn’t want to start the race cold.” Julie attempted to offer a fairly lame defense, as she continued running the course through what was now multiple layers of insulated sweat. “And, I am so glad to have the California song done so now we can just be totally present in Arizona. So worth it.”

Julie’s Body Battery was not convinced or assuaged and gave a good “Harumpf” as it turned its focus back to fueling the rest of the race ahead.

As she ran on, Julie noticed Ryan, who was running it low key today, running not too far ahead for most of the race, there were a few moments where Julie’s Ambition showed up – a drooling, cross-eyed wildabeast or Tasmanian devil-like creature. It enthusiastically piped up in its typical competition-based inebration, “Let’s beat Ryan!”

Julie’s Calves, Body Battery and her Reason and Foresight all turned and screamed, “Chill the f out, you drooling nutjob!” The beast’s feelings completely unhurt, tongue dangling out in its near constant ambition-fueled stupor, it took the hint and skipped off in another direction, following whatever shiny object immediately grabbed its fancy. It took 31 races to shut it up so completely, but we got there.

”Well,” the Body Battery chimed back in, “I’m sure we’ve got plenty of time scheduled today to rest. We wouldn’t have packed in so much without scheduling in a rest day.“

At this point, the Planner popped in – replete with a full track suit, visor, a whistle around her neck and clipboard in hand. “Today’s schedule is packed. We will finish the race, go to the capitol and then the Heard Museum.”

Now the Body Battery was pyisssed. “Those are activities where we actually have to pay attention. You know that takes more fuel, correct?”

”Hey, back off lady.” the Planner said, shaking the clipboard, “My job is to get the itinerary organized and executable.”

”Aren’t you supposed to take ME into consideration?” the Body Battery retorted.

The Planner stopped shaking its clipboard and paused in a moment of thought.

”Fair point. My bad.” And then she retreated to her cubicle to make note of the planning error and update the planning policy, tips and guidebook for future itineraries.

At some point, Julie passed mile 1 with a solid and easy 9:03 wile the internal excitement continued.

”Too fast!” the Pacer popped in.

Julie’s Overal Fitness responded, “No. I think we’re good. Feeing strong and solid. All reports back from all of the muscle groups and cardiovascular systems (with the exception of the calves, that you’ve already heard from) are reporting good numbers. Onwards.”

”Fantastic news.” the Pacer responded, with only one goal in mind – negative splits.

The calves continued to sit quietly in the corner watching attentively and making their presence known to everyone, but maintaining civility.

All went well as Julie passed mile marker 2 with an 8:56. The pacer jumped up for joy. “Woohoo. On track, baby.”

All of the sudden, as mile three began, just after having run up a few short hills, Julie’s Heart Rate let out a frantic scream, “Help!” You could hear the pummeling from across the way. Julie turned and looked. Her calves and her body battery were taking turns giving her Heart Rate that had, for a while now, been absolutely fine, a total smack down. They were kicking it, punching it – and even the Pacer got in a few shots at it. Before you knew it, Julie’s heart rate was all riled up. 

Then the Pacer realized the error of her ways. Oh shoot – you CAN’T get that heart rate too riled up!

Before long Julie’s Reason and Foresight came in to break up the fight. Foresight grabbed poor heart rate and took her under her arm. “I got this. Don’t let them get to you.” And with that, Reason and Foresight got Julie to stop running for a moment to let her heart rate calm down at the beginning of mile 3.

”What are you doing?!” Freaked out the Pacer as she watched her average mile pace on Julie’s watch increase higher and higher as Julie stood still to bring her heart rate down.

“Listen, I know you want your negative splits, but we have to think long term and make healthy choices.” answered Reason.

”Screw healthy choices!” the Pacer said. “Let’s get going!”

The Planner popped back in. “Listen. I’ve got this on lockdown! You let Julie rest until her average pace for mile 3 goes up to 10:30s. Then, use whatever Body Battery you have left and all that great Fitness and you just run the s^%& out of mile 3. You can break 8:56. I know it.”

Body Battery whined, “But we are so tired. We need to rest.”

”Shut up, shut up, shut up,” the Pacer quickly and excitedly said, shoeing Body Battery out of the way. “This can work. For everyone.”

Body Battery, the Pacer, Reason, Heart Rate, the Planner and general Fitness all put their hands into the middle. Then they all turned to look back at Calves, sitting in the corner, suspicious of the whole thing. 

“We can’t do it without you.” the Planner said. 

They all looked at Calves.

With tentativeness and suspicion in her eyes, Calves looked tempted to join the camaraderie of the group.

”We’ll do the restoration boots after the race.” the Planner said in a sing-songy way.

Calves’ eyes lit up. Now they got her attention.

”I want daily stretching AND boots AND the muscle cream, for at least 3 days.” Calves negotiated.

The Pacer and Heart Rate looked at Body Battery and the Planner as they both mulled it over.

With that, they both reached out their hands to the Calves and said, in unison, “It’s a deal.”

With that, the Calves lept up and they all put their hands into the middle, “On three!” the Planner said, “1, 2, 3 – go negative splits!” they all said.

Woohoo! Cheers rose up from everyone. Determination sprinkles began raining down on everyone. 

“Let’s do it!” They cheered, now infused with the ubiquitous spray of determination in the air.

Calves, Body Battery, Heart Rate, general Fitness and even Reason and Foresight all banded together and started raising the pace-meter up. The Pacer directed them when to go up or back off a bit, constantly checking the lap pace as it dropped from 10:30 down into the 9’s. Now pushing a 7:55 pace, the lap pace started to drop below 9:30. The Calves and Heart Rate piped up, “We can’t hold 7:55.”

”That’s okay,” said the Pacer. “Back off to 8:30s and we should be fine. We just need to get down to 8:55. We can do this. We still have half a mile to go. That’s enough time to bring it down.”

They were all happy. “We can maintain the 8:30. No problem.” 

“Great!” the Pacer said, thinking we were home free. 

But there was one problem. None of them had noticed that the beginning of the race was actually a subtle down hill. It had seemed flat…but it wasn’t. It had been slightly downhill. As Julie turned the corner for the last half mile of the race, she saw a slight but constant uphill before her. 

“Oh no!” The pacer said. “I didn’t account for this.”

They had trouble maintaining that 8:30 pace and started to drift into 8:40s and 8:50s. Not fast enough.

”You know what we have to do.” Reason chimed in.

They all looked at each other with terror. 

“No. We can’t.”

”We have to. It’s the only way.” Reason said.

They all nodded in reticent agreement. 

Reason raised up a shiny bell and began ringing it.

”Here boy. Heeeere boy!”

Before long, the huffing and drooling could be heard coming round the bend with the insane vigor that only one being could bring.

Ambition burst into the room, drool flying in all directions off of its wildly flapping tongue, smacking Heart Rate and Calves right in their faces.

”Go!” Pacer yelled to it.

And for the last quarter of a mile of mile 3, Julie turned up the juice more and more. The finish line was in sight in the distance. The Pacer kept checking the lap pace as it continued to drive the faster Julie pushed the pace. 9:12, 9:10, 9:09. There was only .17 miles left before the lap was done. “Go, go, go!” the Pacer said.

Heart Rate and Calves started freaking out. “We caaan’t hold out.” The whole room had already been covered in the spray of determination by this point, everyone was covered in it – and that is some potent s&%$.

They all pushed and pushed, general Fitness, Body Battery and Calves all slowing down more and more until they all heard it

”Beeep”. the Garmin watch on Julie’s watch blared out.

The lap was over. 

But the Pacer had been looking at the finish line and hadn’t seen what that final lap pace was.

Reason said, “That’s it. I’m calling it. Body Battery and Calves are practically on the ground. We are stopping and resting before we sprint the last .12 miles. That’s non-negotiable. We’ll still get a negative split pace for that last little bit. And then after the race, we’ll see what we did here today. Maybe we made it, maybe we didn’t. But we know we tried.”

The Pacer was frantic to finish the race and find out, not nearly as equanimous as Reason was able to be.

All agreed to Reason’s plan, not that Reason was looking for consensus. Julie took a 10 second rest with the finish line only a tenth of a mile in the distance. After that short respite and her heart rate now slightly relaxed, she started running and sprinted to the finish line.

When the race was done, Julie looked at her watch to find out her splits and the result of this united internal effort towards the goal of negative splits.

MIle 1: 9:03

Mile 2: 8:56

Mile 3: 8:59

.12 mile: 8:43

”NOOOOOO!!!“ They all cried.

As they all lamented the failure and felt the pain of the near miss, Enjoyment, Encouragement and Overall Life Perspective sauntered into the room in the midst of what was clearly a delightful conversation. They were all laughing and carrying on with each other. Enjoyment was carrying its hula hoop, Encouragement was with her pom-poms and Overall Life Perspective held her telescope in hand.

They all said in unison, “What a gorgeous day and a fantastic race. Good effort all. Let’s go rest and play. Nice job!”

And, at the last minute, Julie’s Adaptability popped into the crowd with a sneaky grin. “Hey folks, I got an itinerary rework for you. Go grab yourself an acai bowl and enjoy a restful day.”

And with that, they all cheered and jumped in the air in unison – hands up, legs kicked out and gleeful smiles on all. In that moment of celebration, digestive system ran frantically into the room and screamed, “Geeeeeet me to a BATHROOM!!”

What a party pooper.