Suffering is optional, I thought as I tried to haul ass up one of the many hills that constitute the Garin cross-country course. But if I’m not having fun, then it’s really not worth doing, as I tried to pick up some turnover on a downhill and leapfrog in front of the other women in my immediate vicinity. If I’m going to spend money to run, this is what I want to be doing right now. 

Last weekend was the sixth event in the PA USATF cross country series, the 15th Annual Garin Park XC Challenge, up in Hayward in the east bay. As I wrote last year when I ran Garin for the first time, runners love to hate on this course. Compared to others in the circuit, the Garin course can be pretty brutal because among other characteristics, the course is hillier than most in the series, and it’s completely exposed, leaving runners pretty vulnerable to the typically hot and dry weather. Other fun elements include starting and finishing in a field riddled with gopher holes. Combining all those aspects to the backdrop of oh shit this is a 5k; I’m supposed to be going fast, and it can make for a brutal, unenjoyable experience if you let it. 

If you let it, however, is the operative phrase. 

My previous posts for the past ~five weeks have probably clued you in to my goal of racing every single XC event this fall, really for no other reason than why not. In the absence of devoting my late summer and autumn to training for a fall marathon, racing XC has allowed me to shake things up a bit and simply show up and run however my body allows me to run that day. I’m running consistently each week but have only begun doing workouts in the past couple weeks, so I don’t delude myself into thinking that I’m necessarily in fantastic shape. Hell, given the impressive depth of the women’s PA field, on a good day, I finish around the 55th percentile. Sometimes, it’s closer to the 45th, and I don’t even place high enough to score points for my team. None of that particularly matters to me right now, however. 

I show up — and I continue to show up — because I can and because all snarkiness aside, it really is pretty fun to work hard. 

If I finish any of these XC races satisfied with my effort — regardless of how fast or slowly I ran — then I’m happy. That is both the beginning and the end of the story.

Everything about Garin ‘19 was the same was Garin ‘18: same course, same starting area, same everything, with one exception: Garin ‘18 gave us a cooler and foggier morning, whereas Garin ‘19 began warm and only got warmer. I didn’t even bother looking at my ‘18 finish time prior to racing on Saturday because all things considered, it didn’t really matter. I’m not racing against last year’s version of me; I’m simply running right here, right now, and focusing on today. 

Fortunately, our team fielded  full women’s and men’s teams (with some extras), which made the race day morning even more fun than usual simply because I really dig my teammates and enjoy their company. The ladies and I trotted out a brief and easy 2 mile warm-up along part of the 5k course, and before too long, it was time to run fast over that notorious gopher hole-pocked field and through the hills along the ridgeline. 

I was pretty slow to get off the starting line — see the aforementioned there are holes in the ground everywhere mention — but I felt like I was picking up steam as the race wore on. As has been the norm with these XC races, I tended to stay in the same general area of the race and simply leapfrog back-and-forth with women in my vicinity. Seeing some of my male teammates, whose race wouldn’t begin for another 40 minutes or so, distributed throughout the course was definitely a fun pick-me-up because most of them know what it feels like to run Garin, so they know that a quick good job, keep it up can go a long way, mentally, when you’re feeling like you’re laying it all out there running up a hill (or three). 

By the beginning of the 2nd mile, when we were beginning our descent and return toward the starting area, I really tried to let things fly and open up my stride. The course’s first and final half mile is nearly flat (gopher holes be damned), so once I got off the hillside, I tried to channel that forward momentum and work hard toward the finish line. (My Garmin data indicated that around the 20 minute mark, my pace picked up to a ~mid-4/5:30 effort, which at least verifies that I was working as hard as I felt I was working! I’ve been trying to close hard and fast on these races, so looking at the data has been super fascinating, in true runnerd fashion). 

I was trying to make it back in time for a local swim meet, so I kept my cool-down pretty short and stopped partway through to cheer for the open men’s race with Claire. It wasn’t until I got home and compared the data to ‘18 that I saw that I ran ‘19 nearly :75 slower, to which I simply shrugged. I was running and training differently at this time in ‘18 than I am now, in ‘19, so it would reason that I’d be posting comparably different times now, too. 

The conversations I have with my teammates are similar to what I have with my eight year-old: what matters most isn’t how fast you are (or I am, in this circumstance) compared to the field. What’s more important is simply showing up, working hard, and not giving up when it gets tough. That’s what you’ll remember, not the time you posted on any given day. Putting myself in the rather uncomfortable-but-fun environment of racing short stuff, a la cross country, is something that I wouldn’t have done at any other point in my recent running history, but I can do it right now, so I am. I have no doubt it’s making me a better runner, and while I may not “see” the results manifest tomorrow, I’ve no doubt they will. All these miles become a part of my story, and it’s exciting to imagine where it may lead. 

(Again: my weekly invite to local runners to come play cross-country with us! This weekend it’s Tamalpa, which I’ve heard is the best in the series. See you Sunday?!)