Goodbye 2011

My name is Tommy Manning. I am a distance/mountain/trail running in Colorado Springs and this is my goodbye to 2011.
I have to say 2011 was a good year of running. It did not start off as such a good year, but I sure had a great summer of racing.
I decided not to run the Boston Marathon so I could concentrate on shorter mountain races during the summer. A lot like the old saying “marathons are not good for bad hamstrings, and vice versa,” the same can be said about mountain training: Mountain training isn’t good for marathons, and marathons are not good for mountain training. Of course the year I decide not to run Boston – which was the first time in 4 years including a 2:26 for 34th place in 2009, is the year they have great weather, a tailwind, and record setting runs. I was kicking myself in the ass all day long as I was watching the times of the leaders on the internet. I kept thinking “this was the year I could have run 2:22.” Oh well.
As it turns out, I probably could not have run anything near that. I had an awful start to my racing season. I ran a 1:16+ Half in April and just felt like crap the second half of the race (I had been on 1:11ish pace through 6). I was very disappointed with that time and quickly found another Half to enter in May. Then I ran a 1:19+ in May! I had no legspeed whatsoever and just could not run any faster. That’s 2:36 for a marathon with a month of rest, which is slower than any marathon I’ve run since 2002 – ouch.
If something like that happened to any of my friends, I would tell them to “stick with it. Don’t worry about it. Shake it off.” It’s not so easy to tell that to yourself, however. I worried about my slow times through June. I was really worried about mountain running season and kept training hard anyway. I had some big mountain races in New Hampshire to run in June, I stuck with my training plan, and hoped things would work out by the Mount Washington Road Race, which was my goal race for the summer. Although Mount Washington was my goal race for the summer, I also practiced running downhill a lot because the U.S. Mountain Running Championships were held on an up/down course at Cranmore this year (odd numbered years are up/down courses while even years are uphill only) and I wanted to make the team again. The selection criteria is to finish in the top-6 at the Championships (Cranmore in 2011).
The training and the work all paid off in June when I went to NH. I rocked Mount Washington and finished 2nd in a PR time, behind my friend Rickey Gates. My time was 1:45 faster than last year and I was excited. I certainly did not expect to finish in the top-6 at Cranmore, the site of the US Mountain Championships the following week (I finished 13th in 2009), but I wanted to at least give myself a chance. I ran an awesome race at Cranmore and finished 5th, which meant I made the US team for the second year in a row. NH has been good to me friends. In three Mount Washington races, my lowest finish has been 7th place. In three Cranmore races, my lowest finish was 13th. Going from 13th to 5th at Cranmore the two years it has been the US Championships (2009 and 2011) shows just how much my downhill running has improved.
My next primary race was the Pike’s Peak Ascent and I also had the NACAC race in July. NACAC is the North American/Central American/Caribbean Championships and I was asked to represent the United States in the race. The race was in Ajijic, Mexico (central Mexico) and the uphill was brutal. I didn’t run well at NACAC, but I didn’t run badly either. I could not have helped the team much more though. Had I run a great race, I think I would have finished 8th instead of 10th. The guys who finished 7th or better really dropped me on the downhill and I was satisfied with 10th.
4:16PP
I came back to the States and ran the Pike’s Peak Ascent in August. I can’t say enough how awesome it was this year. I finished second (8 minutes behind the winner, which isn’t so awesome) for the second time in my three Ascents. I was in second most of the race. I got passed between Barr Camp and the Bottomless Pit sign. I asked the guy if he had every run the Ascent before and he said no. I told him the last three miles were brutal and passed him again once it started getting steep. My time was a PR by 4:16 and I had several friends who drove up to the top waiting for me and cheering me on. It was a fun finish seeing a bunch of my friends up there.
The inaugural Pike’s Peak Road Ascent was a week later. I was one of the lucky few to “preview” the course earlier in the summer. I knew what I was in for and started conservatively. Jason Delaney took off around 4 miles and put a gap on me. I wasn’t worried because I know I’m usually a better climber than him and assumed I would catch and pass him in the later, steeper miles. Bad assumption. I didn’t feel great and kept dropping farther and farther back. I kept telling myself I would start pushing at mile 8 or so and would catch him. By mile 9 I had not started pushing yet and decided to get my ass going. I don’t think I really started increasing my pace until about mile 10 and I worked hard to catch Delaney. I did catch him on the last switchback and pulled up shoulder-to-shoulder with him. We rounded the corner and I told him “this is the last straightaway, one quarter mile to the finish.” Maybe I should not have told him that because he took off. I matched him stride for stride for a little bit, but was too tired from all the work I had to do to catch him. I lost by a few seconds – bummer.

Then I went to Albania for the World Mountain Running Championships. I don’t know how all of my teammates felt, but I thought the country was a shit-hole. There’s no such thing as an EPA or environmental or sanitation regulations over there (not that are enforced anyway). They had piles of trash in the streets and alleys. Instead of taking your trash to dumpster and having a garbage company come pick it up and dispose of it like we do, they just walk their trash down the street and throw it in the trash pile someone already started. There were hundreds of such piles. The water was polluted and littered with trash too. I vomited on a training run the day before the race because we crossed a bridge and the water below was the nastiest, thick green color I have ever seen. The water was covered in litter too and smelled something between raw sewage and manure. The smell and sight made me gag and eventually vomit.
The race itself was a disaster for me. I severely overheated and was very dehydrated – the race was 95° F in September and it had been much cooler in Colorado. While the heat did affect several runners and quite a few dropped out, I really don’t know why it affected me so much. I was doing well going up the first lap and got passed by a million guys going down. I just didn’t have anything in the tank. The second lap up was disastrous. I stopped around the 5k mark (1k into the lap) and walked. I can’t remember the last time I stopped to walk in a race. I started running again and run up the hill to the next water station. At the stop, I grabbed a bottle of water and drank the whole thing. Runners were passing me and I stood there and grabbed another bottle. I drank one and poured another over my head. Volunteers were yelling “Go!” and “Run!” and other similar things in Albanian. I was like: nope, I’m okay and drank more water. Twenty guys must have passed me at that station. Ditto for the next stops. On the third lap, as guys were still passing me, I couldn’t help but think “how far back were these guys?” I couldn’t believe I wasn’t in last place. By then I was running at a pace equal to or slower than our training run on the course two days before and certainly wasn’t “racing” anymore. One by one, as guys kept passing me, I wondered why they were even at the World Championships to begin with. I finished the race; I am not proud of my race. Actually, I am quite embarrassed and hope I make another U.S. team so I can redeem myself.
That’s it for 2011. Some good races, some bad races, and another U.S. Mountain Running Team selection, which I will cherish for the rest of my life.