A Weekend of Riding, Rain, Racing, Records, and Rewards

This weekend turned out to be an unexpectedly big weekend on the training front. On the plan was a long ride on Saturday and the Patriot's Cup 8k race on Sunday. This weekend was definitely billed as a training weekend, with no intent to "race" the 8k, since I would be running on wasted legs from the long ride the day before.

Saturday, I loaded up the bike and drove out to Glen Echo to meet the other HIPsters who were doing the planned ride. The ride called for options of 30, 40, or 55 miles. You can guess which one I chose. I rode 40 miles last week (and suffered through it on a flat course), so I needed to progress in my training to be ready for the Crystal Ride road race in a month. However, I was not looking forward to it, because the planned ride was pretty hilly, through Potomac and out to Poolesville and back. If I was going to feel anything like I did last week, I would be in for a long and painful day. Below is the route:



Because my longest ride to date this year has been 40 miles (and I felt terrible on it), I didn't want to go too hard out of the gate on this ride. I knew there were hills, which have burned me in the past toward the end of my rides, so my plan was to go out comfortably and ride in easier gears than I typically would for the first half, and then see how I felt and try to ride a bit harder for the second half.

About an hour or so into the ride, with the miles clipping by pretty quickly, we ran into a sheet of rain coming down. This was just as we were hitting the hills of River Rd and on our way out to Poolesville, so we were at the furthest point from the cars. Despite the thoughts in my head of just turning around, I realized that turning around was no different than finishing the ride! So into the rain and hills we pressed. It was ugly, windy, and wet but eventually the rain stopped and to roads started to dry out a bit. I was glad too, because the return ride back on River Rd has a lot of big hills and without being able to fly on the downhills due to the wet roads, that would mean I would actually have to work to climb the whole hills, rather than coast into the hill with some good pace and spin up the rest of the way. So we hit the turnaround of the ride in "downtown" Poolesville and I was really feeling great. I pressed on and starting increasing my level of effort. Turns out, I was able to hold a strong effort for the rest of the ride, passing a bunch of other cyclists on the roads and seperating myself from the group I was with, who seemed to be hitting a hall at about 40 miles into the ride. With only one slight wrong turn, we rounded out at an even 56 miles, with an average pace of about 18 mph. Not bad for a hilly course with some rain mixed in! Workouts feel so much better when you negative split them, don't they?

Sunday brought about more rain! And I had a race to run. I'll save the details for a formal race report, but my legs felt awesome, despite the long ride the day before. While I didn't "race" the course, I ran it pretty darn hard. My unofficial time from my watch was 33:19, which turned out an average pace of 6:42/mile. Though I've never run another 8k race (an automatic PR!), my splits and average pace would have also worked out to a 10k PR from my recent time at the Ukrop Monument Ave 10k. Using the McMillan Running Calculator, my projected 10k time would be 41:59, which factors in a slowdown in my pace over the remaining 2k that I would have run. I try not to read too much into these predictions, but in a race so close to the distance, I have figure I would hit a time close to that, if not slightly faster. I felt great in the race and as I was coming to the finish line I was thinking to myself that I could definitely have held this pace and even put in a stronger kick (Remember - I didn't race this, it was a training run, so I didn't want to completely waste myself) for 2k more. So while I can't claim this race as a 10k PR, at least I know there is a high likelihood that I could crack 42 minutes in the 10k, without honestly doing any speedwork. I'll save that for next time I guess.

I'm also not sure of my final standing, as I ran a good chunk of the race alone between pack groups. After the first half mile, nobody passed me and I probably passed about 3 or so people total. It was a well paced effort by myself and those around me. I'll have to wait till the final results are posted, but my work's running club, which was one of the sponsors of the race won the overall co-ed team competition. We took home a trophy and smiled for the cameras on stage. And I got a few other goodies. Details and maybe a photo or two to come!

Another Day, Another Fenty Article

Boy, they sure do like to write about him. But I enjoy reading him too, so nobody is complaining from my side. Afterall, anyone that can share the concept of making time for things you believe in and enjoy is good in my book. More power to them. Without further ado, I bring you the latest Mayor Fenty article.

Fit for Fame

When everyone's eyes track your every move, staying in shape is anything but routine.
May 3, 2009 | By Sarah Wildman | Photographs by Timothy Devine

Adrian Fenty

Norah O'Donnell

Mike Green

Carla Hall

Nancy Pelosi

Marathon Man

Running in his parents' footsteps taught Adrian Fenty the importance of endurance

Some people grow up playing catch with their fathers. Some recall the smell of barbecue, or reading time, or family dinners. For D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, childhood was a blur of watching his parents run: 10Ks, 10-milers, marathons, triathlons. "My father was my original inspiration for getting into working out, way back in high school," he explains.

Phil Fenty, 68, didn't run his first race until he was 39, he says, a year older than the 38-year-old mayor. "D.C. didn't have anything like the exercise culture we have now," he says. "My wife and I would run, and people would throw things at you on the road. If you ran in the city, people would holler at you out of their cars. It wasn't in the culture at all."

The Fentys set out to change that, taking their sons -- Shawn, Adrian and Jesse -- along with them. By the time he was in his early teens, Adrian Fenty was running right alongside his parents. The training began early, and it hasn't stopped.

"You make time, and you don't ever give it up," says Fenty, sitting at the back of the bullpen of cubicles at the John A. Wilson Building one evening in late December. His jacket is off, but the tie is still on, the shirt still pressed, though the day is rounding toward the 14-hour mark. It started at 5:30 a.m. on a bitterly cold track where Fenty and his 15 to 30 training partners run every Wednesday. It's a motley collection of men and women, spanning a range of professions, with a shared dedication to the workout. They line up outside a public school in the pitch dark to run three to six miles in intervals as their families sleep cozily at home. Mondays and Fridays are the long runs, the 10-milers that start and end at the mayor's house. Swims are "squeezed" in once a week or so, sometimes during the day; in summer, a group meets at Hains Point and trains together.

"A lot of my workouts occur before the day begins, before my family wakes up," Fenty says, explaining how he eats breakfast with the family but never misses a training session. "I get back right around 7. ... Then we wake up the kids." What some would see as a slog fits neatly into Fenty's idea of good governance. "Endurance is a big part of this job, and endurance is, obviously, probably one of the biggest factors in being an endurance athlete."

A multisport athlete since high school, Fenty started training for triathlons five years ago. "The discipline," he says, "in doing the workouts, having the schedule and finishing the workouts gives a lot of qualities that help on the job. You perform better because you are doing very different tasks, and it's more enjoyable -- both the sport and the work." The more the mayor trains, the more he feels balanced. "If I'm working to a certain point and don't get a workout in, I think I'm also not being as productive as possible. Getting in the run, the bike or the swim gives me a great release, and then I can clear my mind and come back to work reenergized."

The delicate equilibrium of the Fenty super-athlete model comes from his father, who stopped competing last year. "When I turned 30, Adrian, my second son, was getting ready to be born, and I decided it was time to get in shape, to be there to play with these boys," the elder Fenty says.

We are sitting in Fleet Feet Sports, the quarter-century-old, family-run, sporting goods shop on Columbia Road NW where the Fenty boys all once worked. Shawn is the oldest and recently bought Fleet Feet. Jesse is the youngest. Nine years after lacing up his first pair of running shoes, Phil Fenty tried the Baltimore marathon, then some shorter races, 10-milers, half-marathons. By his second marathon -- a smaller event called "God's Country" in Pennsylvania -- he "fell in love" with the culture of marathoning.

Phil and Jan, who started running in the early '70s, would take their sons along when they ran, and sometimes there would be shorter-distance races where "they'd [also] have kids' runs, a mile or a half-a-mile race."

"Adrian understands ... that athletics is part of life and it feeds your energy system; it doesn't take away," Phil Fenty says. "So when he wakes up in the morning, the first thing he needs to do is run, bike or swim. That's what other people need coffee for."

The Fenty house in Mount Pleasant was stocked with fare from health food stores long before a Whole Foods broke ground in the District; the family shunned meat and chicken, sugar and salt, eating only fish, pasta and vegetables, and making their own yogurt and growing their own sprouts. As an adult, the younger Fenty has added in "lean meats," but he still eats lots of vegetables and complex carbohydrates. Every morning, he has oatmeal, a banana and a cup of tea.

Phil Fenty still spends two hours a day in the gym, cycles for two hours a day, takes long swims and practices yoga. His arms are tattooed with interlocking words: One arm reads "Omm, Metta, Practice," the other "Patience, Balance." "Everything is practice," he says earnestly, a Buddha earring swinging from one ear. "Life is practice, and omm is the universal sound of the universe. And the only way to [live] is to have balance."

Now, Phil and Jan help the mayor and his wife, Michelle, a lawyer, find that balance with their children. The newborn girl, Aerin, has yet to pick her sport, but the 9-year-old twins, Andrew and Matthew, need to be shuttled to practice nearly every day -- basketball, tennis, baseball, football, swimming, golf. The mantle is being passed down.

"My dad completely motivated me to run, but he never pushed it," Fenty says. "I just one day started running. I saw his commitment and dedication, even more so since they owned a sporting goods store. That could happen to my kids, just by seeing me work out."