I Got Schooled

Benjamin runs the same 10-mile route through Culver City every Saturday morning. I had to work all day today, so I thought a morning jog with him would be a nice and not-so-streneous way to start the day. It was supposed to be a piece of cake. In our last race together, the olympic-distance 2006 Ventura Breath of Life Triathlon, I beat him by a good 18 minutes, a full seven of those minutes were gained over the 10k run. During last year's Wildflower half-iron distance triathlon, my half marathon was 10 minutes faster than his.

But I didn't count on two things: 1) Fernando decided to run with us, and 2) Benjamin has been running twice as much as I have. And he got pretty fast.

I was a little worried when my heart rate soared over 160 in the first mile, but I figured that if Benjamin could keep Fernando's pace, so could I. It was a very annoying whenever we each called out our heart rates, and Fernando's was consistently 10 bpm slower than mine. Right up until mile 6, however, I had no problem holding pace. At that point, I made the mistake of reminding Benjamin that I beat Fernando to the top of Mandeville canyon on a bike ride a few weeks ago. Actually, my mistake was speaking loud enough for Fernando to hear, because he immediately gapped us.

But a funny thing happened at mile 7--I started feeling good! I closed the gap to Fernando, and on a short downhill, I shot right past him. For about 5 minutes I really thought that I was going to be the first to the end of the run. I was feeling so euphoric when I realized that Fernando wasn't making up ground that I didn't take heed of my heart rate monitor screaming at me to slow down. I stopped looking at it. I didn't want to be reminded that I wouldn't be able to sustain 90% of my maximum heart rate for more than a few minutes.

To make a long story short, the wheels flew off the wagon when Fernando effortlessly passed me. I couldn't even think about keeping up. By the time Benjamin caught up, my body wanted to shut down. But good 'ol Benjamin was nice enough to keep me company. We ran together as he scolded me about challenging the machine known as Fernando. Then at mile 9, he dropped me.

I now know that it was a conspiracy. Fernando drew first blood. Benjamin finished me off. Thanks a lot guys.
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My heart-rate chart tells the entire story. I was in over my head from the get-go:


I'm actually proud to say that this was the fastest 10-mile run of my life--I averaged a 9:02 mile. Yeah, I know. I have a long way to go to reach my goal of a sub two-hour half marathon.


-Arnold