The perfect race?

by Pete McGill

I ran into Nolan Shaheed on my run yesterday.

Nolan recently set the M60 world record for the indoor mile, running 4:57.06. He was the first man ever to run sub-5 minutes indoors at age 60 or over. For his accomplishment, he was named USATF Athlete of the Week.

Not bad.

So the first thing I said to Nolan after a fist bump and big hug (a Nolan staple when greeting all his friends) was, "Great mile, Nolan, but you can run a lot faster!"

Nolan broke into a big smile and said, "I know - a LOT faster."

"So tell me what's wrong," I said.

"It's my foot," he said. And then proceeded to describe a foot problem that's been bothering him for a year, that caused him to take two months off at one point when he became convinced it was a stress fracture (it wasn't), and that the last doctor he'd seen had diagnosed as a small ligament tear or sprain beneath his ankle.

I shook my head sympathetically. And he shook his head.

And then we both laughed again.

"I'm telling you," I said. "We have to be so fit, so unbelievably in shape, so much faster than any record in order to have any chance of breaking that record, because something always goes wrong."

"That's the truth!" he said. "The odds of having a race fall on a day when you're actually at your best, it just doesn't happen! You always get injured the week before, or sick, or something goes wrong."

"There's no such thing as a perfect race," I said.

And there isn't.

It's something I've tried to explain to the athletes I coach when they start planning for a PR. They set a goal time, and then they want to prepare for that race time by running intervals at the required pace. Or a time trial at pace for a portion of the race distance. They want to map out the exact splits they'll have to hit every quarter mile in order to achieve their goal. And then they want to obsess over those splits and what it'll take to hit them.

Only one problem: it doesn't work that way.

In order to run a particular time in a race, we have to be much better than that time in the build-up to race day.

We can't rest on the hope that race day will be perfect.

That the clouds will part, and the sun will come out, and the birds will sing, and peace will descend upon the world and the music of the heavens will serenade us on our journey.

We can't depend on the weather, the race starting on time, our competitors, or even our own bodies ... on our calves or hamstrings or Achilles tendons or stomachs.

It might rain.

There might be wind.

In a road race, some politician might decide he wants to blow hot air for 20 minutes while we stand on the start line.

Some guy might decide he's not gonna let us pass him and take us wide on turns, make us run mini-races just to get around him.

We might have slept only two hours the previous night.

Or eaten a pizza that didn't sit right.

Maybe we stepped on a rock a few days earlier, leading to a heel bruise at best, plantar fasciitis at worst.

Maybe we just don't have it that day.

The point is that the stars rarely align for race day. So the only way to guarantee a good race is to come in prepared to run an even better race.

When I broke the American M45 record for 5000 meters the first time, it was on a hot July morning in Sacramento. I'd turned 45 two weeks earlier. I'd trained my ass off for six months leading up to turning 45. Then I stepped wrong on the trail three weeks before my birthday and tweaked my plantar fascia. Suddenly, I couldn't run at all. Heck, I could barely walk.

My podiatrist shot the sore spot with cortisone, just so that I could move. After a week off, I was able to jog lightly. Two weeks later, I ran a 3000 at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon. I set the American M45 record. But the foot hurt like hell.

So I decided I'd better go for the 5000 record right away, before the foot got worse and my fitness completely slipped away.

I signed up for the Pacific Association Championships in Sacramento six days later, then drove 400 miles north from my South Pasadena home to give it a try.

It was about 80 degrees at race time. The gun went off, and I took the lead. I was alone by 100 meters. I hit the 200 too fast, passing in 32 seconds. I slowed down to finish the first 400 in 68, then settled in at about 71 from there. I started lapping people at about 1200 meters. At one point, the PA annoucer said, "Runners, please don't change lanes when you're being lapped, just stay in the lane you're in." That was because people kept stepping in front of me. I almost came to a complete stop a couple times. I also spent several turns in lap 3, going wide around the slower moving runners. At about lap 9, the heat and the burden of running alone out front and my fading fitness (from the reduced training due to PF) started to get to me. I ran a 73 lap and felt like swooning. But I didn't. I pressed forward, finished with a 33 last 200. And set the record in 14:45.96.

About 10-15 seconds slower than I'd figured I could run just a few weeks earlier.

I was ecstatic.

Because something always goes wrong. It's a victory when we can overcome what goes wrong to the point that we achieve our goal.

The point is that we can't train for specific time goals. We can't train as if race day will be swathed in a magician's blanket, as if some force greater than ourselves will ensure perfect race conditions and a perfectly executed race strategy.

We have to train for the real world.

And that means training to be the fittest runner we possibly can be, independent of arbitrary time goals. And training to be the wisest runner we possibly can be, able to adapt to whatever race day throws at us.

And then racing with abandon.

Nolan Shaheed has had some incredibly bad luck over the past decade, with a kidney problem at one point, plantar fasciitis, this latest foot injury, and all sorts of stuff. Along the way, he's accumulated more age group American and world records than I've got fingers and toes.

There's no such thing as a perfect race.

Just perfect racing attitude.

When I was 46, I ran a 5000 at the local Ben Brown Invitational. The temperature was cool. There was no wind to speak of. I had great competition from runners in their teens and twenties. And ran 14:34.27, shattering the record I'd set that day in Sacramento.

But there were 40 runners in the race. I ran in lane 3 the first three laps. My lap splits ranged from 62 to 73. I'm sure I could have run faster in a race with fewer runners and more even splits.

I was ecstatic.