ERIC SENSEMAN TAKES ON USATF 50K ROAD CHAMPIONSHIPS
The U.S. 50k Road Championships: A Different Kind Of Race Report
–by Eric Senseman
The outside temperature hovers around 33° Fahrenheit/0.5° Celsius in Long Island this morning. Or in any case the temperature gauge on the dash of my rental car illuminates with two threes. The car sits idle in a grass lot but the engine continues to run and heat blasts from the floorboards. I chuckle as the irony of my situation becomes apparent: I refuse to turn off the car, to let the temperature around me drop, to enter a state of mild discomfort; yet, I will soon voluntarily run a 5-kilometer loop a full 10 times – a decision that will leave me decidedly uncomfortable. If I’m going to endure more than three hours of considerable suffering, what’s another 30 minutes of mild discomfort?
I turn off the car. The U.S. 50k Road Championships will begin in 45 minutes. I reflect on the previous months of training, recall key workouts, transport myself into the impending race, consider how it might feel, how I might feel, and allow myself a few blissful moments to dream of winning, of succeeding, of bettering my expectations. I stop, reel my quixotic thoughts from dreamland back into reality, and admonish myself: focus on the long-term goal, the more important race five weeks from now, and save your dreams for that race. I begin to change my apparel and I look down at my leg and I see the tattooed initials of a friend long gone. Remember why you are here, I think. Semblances of discomfort begin to rise to the surface as goose bumps form and hair erects. I am cold.
Stories about running do not begin and end with a start and finish line. If this is a story, then it dates back to at least last November when I struggled mightily at the final race of my 2015 season. It was then that I committed myself to training rigorously and racing wisely in 2016. I sat down in early January this year and, along with the help of Ian Torrence, devised a training plan that would adequately prepare me for the U.S. 100k Road Championships this April. The drawing-up-a-training-plan part of running lacks glamour and is seldom discussed and so the intricacies and nuances of individual training plans are often overlooked. The importance of a sound training plan cannot be overstated and I have had to find that out through experience. Like I said, no one talks much about how to draw up a training plan. Ian and I decided that the road to the 100k Championships would take me to Caumsett, host of the 50k Road Championships.
The temperature has risen slightly and the sun presents itself but I remain somewhat chilly. I perform sundry drills, run a few sprints, and finally shed my outer layers just before the start of the race. Now it feels very cold again. I approach the start line among a hoard of others but I do not notice them. I’m focused, contemplative. I think about my lost friend, just like I do before every race. It reminds me why I’m here, why I voluntarily endure copious amounts of pain by running hard for long distances. I do it, in part, because pleasure doesn’t teach us anything; comfort does not force us to learn. But the world has much to teach and we have much to learn and if we are lucky enough to exist in the world – lucky enough not to have succumbed to a disease and luckier still to have ever been born at all – then we owe it to those absent to learn, to try and to fail and to eventually prosper and achieve, to dare to dream and then to do. That’s why I’m here: to dream and to do. The gun goes off and so do I, too.
In race reports, runners tend to recount – in great detail and to a great extent – what went through their head during the race, how the race played out for them, what they ate and when, etcetera, etcetera. I find this very tiresome and uninteresting and I won’t bore my readership with it here. To put it simply, it is quite a painful experience to run an ultramarathon and we ultramarathoners spend most of the race trying to run as fast as possible while remaining as comfortable as possible and then we spend the final portions of the race gritting it out and pushing our bodies through those insufferable moments that exist because we’ve pushed ourselves to the brink of our capacities. With slightly less drama and probably a bit less discomfort, that’s what happened during the race for me. As a result, I was rewarded with a new personal best for the distance (3:06:54) and a 5th-place finish.
Customarily, race reports end with gratuitous words for sponsors, the race organization, fellow competitors and the like. These are all appropriate here. It is worth specifically thanking the race director, Carl, for his kindness, and SCOTT Running for their generous support. But I would rather end this somewhat non-traditional race report with a quotation, which I find rather appropriate in the current context:
“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.”
– Ernest Hemingway
I think that should be the aim of a race report, too. I’ve tried here, in the best and simplest way possible, to write what I saw and how I felt at the Caumsett 50k. I readily admit that it may not be done in the best and simplest way but I hope you, the reader, has gained something valuable still.
