Back In Track

Yesterday I raced in my first track meet in more than four years. It was a mixed success, but net-net a positive, and it felt great to be back in competition!

My last track meet was in January of 2020 – indoor championships for the US southeast region. I was slated to compete in the national championships the following March, but the COVID pandemic hit, and they were shut down. Later in 2020 we moved to a new state, where I wasn’t plugged into a local track club. In 2021 I had my spinal surgery, which necessitated a year of recovery. In 2023 we had a new baby.

Yada yada yada, I entered 2024 realizing that it had been years since I had competed in any running events, and I resolved to get back into it. I love competition, and find it really motivating for training. Earlier this year, my favorite training tool, Stryd, featured my comeback training in one of their videos:

In March, I eased back into running competition by entering a local 5k race. It was a flat, easy course – just what I needed for my first in-person race in more than four years! If you scroll back far enough in this blog, you’ll see that I used to run 5ks in 20ish minutes. Way out of shape as I am, though, my goals for this race were much more modest: 30 minutes.

Stryd used data from my recent runs to advise me to run ~330 watts with a target time of ~28:30. I began the race that way, but couldn’t help myself as the adrenaline of competition took over. I ran each km a little faster than the previous, and, with a big kick at the end, finished in 26:30 with an average power of 336 watts. It was both the slowest 5k race I had ever run and one of the ones about which I felt the best. I was elated to be back competing again, and I was excited to have set a new benchmark on which I could set about improving.

There were no more races during the spring, and I was unfortunately out of town for the famous Bolder Boulder 10k, so I set my sights on a summer series of track meets held at the University of Colorado. These looked very similar to those I used to attend at the University of North Carolina – which are what got me into masters track competition in the first place.

I was out of town for the first meet of the series, but last night was the second. I signed up for the 100m, 200m, and 400m events, and, as with the 5k, I reset my expectations to line up with my current level of fitness and training. My goals for this meet were (in descending order of priority):

1. Don’t get injured
2. Have fun
3. Run hard, and be proud of my effort
4. 100m: 16s
5. 200m: 34s
6. 400m: 1:20

The good news: I ran the 100m in 14.2s and won my heat!

The bad news: I pulled my hamstring toward the end of the race, so I couldn’t compete in the 200m or 400m! Track spikes and adrenaline combined to have me running much faster than I had in recent memory, and that was a little more than my muscles could handle! I achieved goals 2, 3, and 4, but not 1, 5, or 6.

Still, it feels great to have a full-speed race behind me, and, of course, I love analyzing the data from it. My Stryd says I hit 749W during the race. That’s greater power than I’ve generated in recent memory – all those hill workouts must have been working!

It’s also interesting to look at how much bigger my stride is when running at top speed. The solid lines are my stride geometry (viewed from the side) during the 100m race; the much more compact dotted lines are during an easy jog:

I’ll spend a little time rehabbing this hamstring, and then will do more top-end speed work to refamiliarize my muscles with race paces. I’m not sure I’ll be back in competition shape for the next meet (in two weeks), but hopefully I will be for the one after that!