In the Arena with the ITA NH Team: Learning to Race Again

Thanksgiving morning found Ben, David and I amidst a crowd of 15,000 for the Manchester Road Race in CT. Live llamas, people dressed up like llamas, Teletubbies – you name it; this race had it all. It was an exciting venue for us to make our debut as members of the In the Arena New Hampshire Track Club. For me it has been a long journey to the starting line.

Almost 7 months have passed since the last time I raced. Following that race I spent two months with minimal running while combating IT band syndrome. The next three to four months consisted of slowly building up my mileage. I finally started working out again about six weeks ago.

Racing again after so much time away is almost like racing for the first time. It was hard to predict how I was going to feel, and harder still to interpret how I would feel while racing; racing is always going to hurt, especially the first race back.

On Thursday I approached the race as I approach all of my races: with a carefully constructed plan. I guess my inexperience road racing got the best of me though, and my plan went out the window. The race had a mixed start (men and women) and the women were quickly enveloped in the mix. Sally Kipyego blasted to the front, splintering the rest of the women’s field. Instead of going with the flow, I decided to run conservatively the first mile, hoping that this would pay off in the latter portion of the 4.748-mile race. I reached the first mile at 5:18 and had already lost sight of the lead group of women. I used the second mile (which is mostly uphill) and the third mile (which is all downhill) to make up ground. At the four-mile mark I could see a group of three women ahead of me. Despite closing the last ¾ mile under 5:10 mile pace, I was unable to improve upon my finishing place.

While it is disappointing to think that I could have performed better had I employed a different race tactic, I am encouraged at how well I felt despite just starting up again.

In the Arena had a successful morning with Ben running a great race to place second in 21:43. David ran 23:14 finishing 25^th in a very competitive men’s field. I was the 11^th woman across the line in 25:50. I then headed home to Long Island to eat some turkey.