Month: May 2016

Lately, I’ve had a run of bad prizes.  First there was the 25,000 airline miles ‘negative prize’ at the DC Race for the Cure. And now no one at the DC Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon will return my emails about the fact that I haven’t yet received my $500 cash prize (or the trophy they were supposed to mail).  So in honor of my current state of prize grumpiness, I’m going to take a trip down memory lane to highlight the best and worst of my running prizes over the years.  Note that the quality of a prize is not necessarily an absolute, but often a function of the delta between the expected prize and the actual prize.

 

WORST PRIZES

1.   25,000 taxable American Airline miles, Suman G. Komen Global Race for the Cure (2016).  I’ve had my share of disappointing race prizes, as I’ll be enumerating below.  But no prize where I’ve actually have a net negative cash flow.  Paying upfront income taxes for airline miles I’ll never use has to be the #1 worst prize in my 20+ years of competitive running.

2. 

   Coaster, Fool’s Gold 50mi (2014).  Alex P. stopped by the bar one night after WUS to promote his new race in Montana, with 100-mile, 50-mile and 50-km options.  Aaron and I signed up for the 50-mile race, which offered $300 in prize money to the winner.  As we came to discover, weather in Montana in August is wildly unpredictable, and it snowed 8 inches the night before the race.  At the second aid station, Alex instructed all the 50-milers to turn around and do the 50-km course, because the snow storm had made the high elevation pass too dangerous.  It was raining and windy and the coldest I’ve ever been in a race, my teeth chattering for hours.  But I couldn’t drop, not with $300 of prize money on the line.  At the award’s ceremony, I didn’t get an envelope of cash.  I got a small wooden coaster in the shape of Montana that said 50k winner.  Gary K. tried to take my picture standing with the RD for the VHTRC Facebook page.  I was able to tolerate standing up there for the moment Gary needed to snap the picture, but my smile barely conceals how I felt about my coaster prize.

3. Zip, Fire on the Mountain 50k (2011).  Aaron and I both won the Fire on the Mountain 50k in 2011.  After the race, the RD told us he didn’t have our prizes on hand, but he’d put them in the mail.  Six months later, nothing ever came.  We emailed him and got no response.  The following April we just happened to run into him again at the Race for the Birds.  I cornered him at packet pick-up, and was not shy in my request for a FOM prize status update.  He said if I won the Race for the Birds that day too, I’d get double prize.  I won the Race for the Birds as well, but no prize ever materialized.
4. Gift Certificate to a Running Store That was Closed, Charlottesville Marathon (2011).  In 2011, most of State College’s CVIM Boston Marathon team didn’t register in time.  It was the crazy year where the race sold out in hours, that brought about the new waved registration that lets faster times sign up earlier.  So we all decided to go to Charlottesville instead.  I won the marathon and a bunch of my friends got age group awards.  But we soon discovered that the gift certificates were to a Charlottesville running store that wasn’t even open that day.  We were heading home that afternoon.  I guess only locals could use the prizes.

5. 

   Bladder-less camelback, WHM (2011).  I have a long history with the WHM, but the most memorable race for me by far was the 2011 show-down with Eliza.  It was the only time I ever looked (and felt) really vulnerable during the WHM.  It was my slowest time ever on the course.  I felt terrible.  I ran terrible.  And it didn’t help having 8-pack girl battling it out with me.  I managed to eke out the win.  As a prize I won a lovely camelback, something I didn’t actually have and needed desperately.  But it turned out that the bladder had been accidentally placed in Eliza’s pack.  There were numerous efforts to reach out to Eliza to obtain my bladder and have it delivered to me.  Fortunately, the bladder-less pack is still very useful for when I occasionally bike to work and need to put some clothes/snacks/phone/money/keys/badge in it.

6. Bonus miles, 5th grade mile, Chevy Chase Elementary School (1991).  I ran my first timed race ever in 5th grade.  I won the girl’s mile race in 6:58.  I was 3rd overall.  I didn’t get an official prize from the school, no ribbon or anything.  But it was the kind of thing where my parents could have taken me out for ice cream or something to celebrate.  The actual Nelson family response?  There seemed to be an overwhelming and immediate need to to find out whether I was actually fast.  So my brother, father, and I raced another mile on the spot.  And yes, they both beat me.  Demoralized, I never raced again until high school.
7. (Honorable Mention) All-America Award, NCAA Div III Cross Country (2001).  This gets an honorable mention because the award itself was lovely, a large calligraphed parchment for finishing All-America at Nationals in xc.  But the award makes the list because my college coach Ned offered to get my name professionally calligraphed.  A couple weeks later we had a falling out when I told him I was going to study abroad the next semester in Australia and miss the indoor and outdoor track seasons.  Every time I visited his office for that awkward conversation about where my award was, he shrugged and said he hadn’t seen it recently.  It’s likely still lying somewhere in a file cabinet in his office.

BEST PRIZES

1.  $300, Shepherdstown Library 5K (2008).  This gets top bill because it is the one and only time that a prize has been so generous that in good conscience I had to give some of it back.  This was a dinky 100-or-so person 5k race in Shepherdstown, WV to benefit the local library.  Sure, it was a killer course that ended on the toughest hill I’ve ever had in a 5k.  And I had to come from behind to win.  But I gave $100 of it back.  It just wasn’t proportional to the size of the field or the level of effort.
2. Ceramic vessel, Uwharrie (2011).  When I won the Uwharrie 20-mile race, I was so delusional that when they handed me my prize I thought it was a bucket to puke in.  Only when I regained brain function did I discover that the prizes at Uwharrie are beautiful.  The region in North Carolina where the race is held is famous for pottery, and the prizes are vessels made by local potters with local clay. The piece I won at Uwharrie was soda-fired, one of my favorite firing methods.  It fits my aesthetic perfectly.  There aren’t many races where you come away with a prize that’s meaningful and one of the most treasured items in your home.

3. 

   Dinner for 2 at Suski-Ko, Ellen’s Run 5k (2015).  In previous Ellen’s Runs, I had always won $100 in cash.  Last year, instead I won a gift certificate for dinner (up to $100) at a fancy sushi restaurant in DC.  I had a debate with my father, the economist, who vehemently rejected my claim that the gift certificate was a superior gift to the cash because it would make me have an enjoyable experience that I wouldn’t otherwise have (I’d otherwise just spend the $100 on a new pair of running shoes).  Fortunately, WUS has behavioral economist Julian J. on its payroll, who could confirm the validity of my opinion.  A memorable dinner with my mom, brother, and Aaron entirely trumps a new pair of sneakers.

4. 

   Handmade plaque, Teton Crest Trail (2015).  Jack K. made us the coolest prize ever for our completion of the ~35 mile Teton Crest Trail in Jackson, WY.  The prize got triple bonus points for (a) Jack having mad woodworking skills, and (b) the fact that it wasn’t a race and we had no expectation of getting a prize.  Still, it was one of the best days I’ve ever had on the trail, and it’s wonderful to have such a beautiful token to commemorate it with.

5. Flowers, WHM (multiple years).  I’ve done everything I can to alleviate WHM RD Tracy’s concerns that a bouquet of flowers is an overly-girly prize.  Tracy has amazing taste in flowers, and long after the flowers dry out, I still keep them in my Uwharrie vessel as permanent home decoration.  My cat Leda loves them.  She purrs and rubs her cheek on the dried flowers, and sometimes her whole body.  What prize could possibly be better than one that makes my kitty happy?
6. Patagonia Refugio backpack, Holiday Lake 50k (2015).  Everyone knows Horton gives out great swag, and I’ve gotten a lot of sweet clothes over the years, some that I practically live in.  But the Patagonia backpack makes the list because it was life-changing.  At the time I already owned a backpack with a pouch for a laptop, and it seemed pointless to receive another one.  But I had no idea how comfortable a backpack could be until I tried the Refugio.  I travel a lot, and hauling my computer long distances had always hurt my back and shoulders.  The Refugio distributed the weight in a way that the computer felt weightless.  Sometimes I’d have a fleeting panic attack that I’d left my computer at the security line because my pack felt too light.  I used to have to plan my life around minimizing time with my laptop in tow — e.g., dropping it at home before going out for dinner..  Now I hardly notice it.

Momma Jill’s Performance of the Decade

My mom’s been running the Susan G. Komen Global Race for the Cure 5k for 20+ years, marking 20+ years of cancer survivorship.  Somehow, over these two decades my mom has reversed the course of aging.  At age 69 she is actually running faster than she ever ran in the previous two decades.  This year, following some quality prep at the tough, hilly Race for the Birds trail race in April, the roads around the Tidal Basin must have seemed breezy, and she cruised to a 2-minute PR in 37:13.

I Discover There’s Such Thing as a ‘Negative’ Prize

My quads were still chewed up from the prior week’s Promise Land 50k, and  I was in no shape to race.  But the Race for the Cure is more fundraiser than road race, and I realized 30 seconds into the race that an easy hand gallop would still win.  I ran 1:30 slower than last year’s win, but hey, a win’s a win.  ABC 7 was there with a camera crew, and it was fun to tell the story of how I’ve been running this race for 20 years to celebrate my mother’s survivorship.

So I’ve been running competitively for 20 years, and have won all kinds of prizes of varying qualities, but I never knew that you could win a ‘negative’ prize.  This is the email I received the week after R4C:

Hi Martha,

Nice chatting with you just now; congratulations on being the top female runner at the DC Race for the Cure this year!

As I mentioned on the phone, as the top female runner you will receive a certificate for 25,000 American Airlines miles for your use.

Please note that  the recalculated market valuation of the AAdvantage miles certificates is $0.03 per mile (or $750 per 25,000 miles certificate).  As any gift or any awarded item valued at $600 or more is considered taxable income by the IRS, recipients will now be receiving a 1099 form at the end of the year to include in the amount for their taxable income.  This means that all recipients must now complete a W-9 form prior to receipt of any AAdvantage miles certificates moving forward.

I’ve attached the W9 form for you to complete.

If you could please send me your mailing address, I will send you your certificate via overnight mail in the next day or so, and you should have it by Monday.

Many thanks,

Adrienne

So, let’s see here: I have to pay hundreds of dollars in income taxes for airlines miles that I likely won’t be able to use.  I won 25,000 American Airlines miles at last year’s race, and I pulled my hair out all year trying find a route where I could use them.  Never found a way.  The American Airlines AAdvantage frequent flier program was recently ranked as the worst program of all US airlines by the Wall Street Journal, which noted the paucity of seats available to frequent fliers on American’s flights.  American Airlines has not been on our good list after charging Aaron $210 last month so that he could still use the return leg of flight to Boston after we got stuck in Colorado during the mammoth April snow storm.  In the end, I declined the prize.  Fortunately, the prize is the least of the reasons why I run the Race for the Cure.

 

 

 

Wednesday, April 27th, 11:30pm: 30 minutes before registration closes for Promise Land.  Aaron had long ago passed out in bed.  He was exhausted.  He’d been exhausted for months.  My fingers hovered over the keyboard in indecision.

Reasons for running the Promise Land 50k:

(a) I need to get some quality mountains training in during the next couple weeks if I want a prayer of finishing the Laurel Highland 70 mile race in June.

(b) Our friend PJ had kindly offered to give me a ride to Promise Land.  Easy peasy.

(c) Aaron had declined my initial suggestion to head out to Canaan Valley this weekend.  I was tempted to whine my way to West Virginia.  I’m a good whiner.  After all, we hadn’t been to Canaan since February.  And Thursday was my 35th birthday.  Usually this would be all the extra ammunition I’d need.  But Aaron saying no to a trip to his beloved Canaan Valley only means one thing: Aaron is about a 9.5 on a 10-point work stress richter scale.  Whining under such circumstances is only likely to backfire.  When Aaron is in work stress mode, the best thing is to back off and give him space.

Reasons for not running the Promise Land 50k:

(a) The closest I’ve gotten to doing any kind of climbing in the mountains the last few months was riding the chairlift in Colorado last week.  Promise Land is one of the most mountainous 50ks around.  When Keith K. raves about a race, you know you’ d better have your hill legs.

(b) There weren’t many people I knew running PL this year.  No Wussies.  No Andrish clan.  The main point of running these races is getting to hang out with friends.

(c) Do I really need any other reasons than being utterly ill-prepared and having no friends?

(d) Okay, there were a few more bonus reasons to skip out.  I came to realize that PJ was driving down to the race with his girlfriend.  Being third-wheel is no-win.  Either the couple is having a grand ole time and you feel even worse that your boyfriend chose work over you on your birthday weekend.  Or, even worse, the couple is fighting the whole time and you wish you could shrivel to pea-size and disappear.

(e) One more bonus reason: PJ’s plan was to camp in the parking lot, something that is very popular among PL runners but which Aaron and I have never done.  We have a strong preference for dry shelter.

As all these competing reasons spun in my head, I could see Aaron’s white feet sticking out beneath the blankets.  And I knew that tomorrow, my 35th birthday, was going to be a gloom-fest.  And that come Saturday I’d better be out there in the mountains.  I whipped out my credit card and sealed the deal.

In fairness, I’d already had a full ‘birth-month’ of celebrations.  First there was the Race for the Birds and LobsterFest in early April, followed by our ski trip to Colorado (https://vimeo.com/163051026), then my brother’s family visiting from Vermont, and culminating with Tuesday’s boisterous Birthday-Wedding WUS.  For bloody sake, I’d already had THREE birthday cakes.  So by the time my actual birth date rolled around on April 28th, even my cat was ready to be done with the overkill of birth-month.  But I was unprepared for the extent of Aaron’s commitment to ‘non-birthday’.  I went to work in a dark hoodie and refused to crack a smile until intern Bobby face-planted into a mud puddle (Bobby also face-planted at the donut run; apparently for Bobby this is a thing).

As Aaron and I pulled the tent down from the closet, I realized I hadn’t been camping since the pre-Aaron era, at Holy Cowan’s Gap, a time when I was single, in my 20s, and did a a lot of things solo.  With Aaron’s work life kicking into high gear, it was time for me to re-discover that 20-something who can decide to do a race on a Wednesday, learn how to put the tent together on Thursday, and climb into the back of a friend’s car on Friday, and just enjoy the thrill of getting out of the house.

~                      ~                       ~

‘I bet if I try to hang with you, it will push me into running at least 10 minutes faster.’

I liked the idea of having PJ to run with, he’s easy to talk with, but I didn’t want there to be any misconceptions about the nature of the run.  ‘PJ, I’m probably going to run in 6 hours or so.  This is just my kick-off training run for Laurel.  I haven’t been running mountains.  I’m not in race mode.  And Promise Land is the kind of race to soak it all in — it’s beautiful — and there’s plenty of opportunity to wipe yourself out on Apple Orchard Falls at the end if you’re feeling good. ‘

PJ was unconvinced.  ‘I couldn’t even hang with you guys at WUS.’

‘Seven miles ain’t 30 miles.’

~                      ~                       ~

It was impossible to find PJ at the start line in the pitch dark, but we connected on the first long climb up the road.  For about 10 minutes, when PJ realized that all my chatter about taking it easy was entirely for real, he found my pace to be lacking and ran sections I walked.  I’d come across him many miles later just before the big Falls climb, and I’d finish only a couple minutes ahead of him.  I couldn’t help but feel that if he’d have been a little patient and just stuck with me, we could have had a jolly good time running together the whole way and he would have had the same net result.  But PJ did his first 50k just last fall and is in full-on ultra trail running honeymoon stage.  They can’t help themselves.

I had gagged/force-fed my bit of breakfast, and while my legs were surprisingly fine, my stomach was bad early on.  I vomited during the second major climb, before even getting to mile 10.  I’ve devoted plenty of blog-space in the past to my endlessly frustrating stomach issues in ultras, and I’m not going to discuss them any further here.  Frankly, stomach, I’m just tired of you.

Fortunately, I didn’t feel like my stomach was totally tearing down my run.  I’d walked a little, and maybe my prophylactic immodium helped.  But my mood started to sour when after the third aid station we set out on what should have been, had it not been for my stomach, a glorious downhill stretch, which I remember vividly from when I ran PL in 2013 as the kind of section that makes you fall in love with running again.

‘How are you doing?’ a young guy asked as he passed me.

I made no effort to sugar-coat my mood or my stomach problems.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Martha.’

‘Okay, Martha, I’m going to say a prayer to Jesus for you.’

That wasn’t exactly a direction I’d been prepared for the conversation to go.  ‘Oh, no, that’s not really necessary.’  I was certain that even if Jesus could hear us, he had orphans to feed and plagues to offset and my little stomach couldn’t plausibly crack even the top million of worthy pleas around the world.  But even if the Liberty University culture feels as distant from my DC life as Calcutta, I recognized that the gesture was genuine and from a place of kindness.  And at least it got Parker Millsap’s killer tune ‘Truck Stop Gospel’ stuck in my head for a couple miles.  And as I rolled along down the switchbacks, I started to find my downhill groove.  By the middle of the descent I was having to ask a lot of guys if they could please let me by.  Finding your downhill running groove makes my top-5 list of The Ultimate Best Things in the World, nudging out both Belgian chocolate and farts.  So this was no small matter.  A handful of synapses began to consider whether Jesus had actually heard the prayer.

Horton was at the aid station at the bottom of the climb.  Seeing Horton always gives me a twinge of guilt.  I know that, above all else, Horton wants to see folks ripping up the trails.  When I first started running with WUS, Keith and Sean prophesied that I’d be a great ultra runner.  Every race we talked about, whether it was Bull Run or Holiday Lake, the common refrain was, ‘You’ll totally set a course record there.’  Eight years later, you have to wonder what they got wrong.  It’s not just my stomach.  It’s more fundamental.  They both made a (really rather reasonable) assumption that a woman running sub-3 marathons knows how to train.  How to structure training weeks that combine long runs and intensity with proper rest periods, etc. etc.  I don’t think it ever occurred to them that I didn’t own a watch, and that my marathon preparation consisted solely of haphazard 4-7 trots on dirt paths looking for birds and gossiping, with some kind of long-ish run over 12 miles tossed in just to say I’d ‘trained’.  But I’ve found that while genetics and sheer will power are enough to gut it out on the roads, not being trained is punishing in tough mountainous ultra races like Promise Land or Manitou’s.  You don’t train, you don’t win.

I am not a naturally structured person.  I don’t write outlines before I write my manuscripts.  I’m not very tidy.  Okay, at Aaron’s insistence I will correct that sentence: I am not tidy at all.  I entirely lack the compulsiveness and propensity for structure and record-keeping that is required for training.  I tried to wear a watch.  That failed.  I probably shouldn’t feel guilty when I see Horton.  It’s not like I’m a quitter or a litterer or violator of some code of the trail.  I’m a perfectly nice little trail runner and he probably just feels bad for me that I get sick at all his races, with no inkling of the gap between my actual and theoretical performance.

I ended up finishing the race with my new Jesus friend, Weston.  Around mile 25ish I caught up to a large peloton of dudes all running in a line that included he and PJ.  Karma comes around, and I ditched PJ and stuck with Weston.  He and I made it together through the rough, never-ending finish of the Apple Orchard Falls climb.  And stuck together down the final road descent.  My quads were absolutely trashed.  But running slower didn’t make them feel any better, and he clocked us at 6:15 pace down the last miles.  He was trying to calculate whether we could finish in under 6 hours, which was his goal.  So I thought I was doing him a favor pushing him a little.  When I realized he was hurting more than I, and got clarification that there wasn’t actually any chance of breaking 6, we eased up a bit.  I was just hoping to be top-ten to get the awesome Horton swag.  And I thought there was something very fitting about finishing with the guy who’d prayed for my belly at mile 10.  My stomach was by no means perfect, but it never took the run-destroying nosedive.  A coincidence or not, that I didn’t puke once post-prayer?

The swag was, as predicted, awesome.  I will probably live in my new Patagonia hoodie sweatshirt, at least until DC summer temps hit.  PJ finished a little bit later.  I gave him a little bit of shit for ditching me.  It’s okay, though, he’s still finding that fine line between running comfortably and racing.  But he was jetting off for what sounded like an impossibly awesome boys rafting trip in Southern Utah.  How come no one ever invites me on boys rafting trips in Southern Utah?  I ended up hitching a ride with a guy named Luke, who was heading back to Vienna.

‘You know, I didn’t really achieve either of my goals today,’ I admitted to PJ after the race as we tried to smush the muddy, wet tent gear into bags that now seemed way too small.  ‘I didn’t run fast and I didn’t spare my legs.’

PJ laughed.

‘But I sure did boot and rally.’  I paused.  ‘Boot and rally — isn’t that something from college where you drink so much you puke, and then keep drinking?’  I strained to imagine what could possess a girl to keep drinking after barfing. ‘I never did that.  But hey, at this ole age of 35, I guess it’s never to late to learn.  Thanks, Jesus.’