Bad races happen. You set your goal too high, or you’re just not as fit as you thought you were, or there were things that were out of your control that caused you to do badly.

I’ve been lucky. I’ve had nothing but successful races, due in large part to only having started running in 2014. Beginner gains are fantastic. But they will run out. As you get faster, the PRs start getting smaller and harder to come by. Up until now, I’d had races where I didn’t PR, but I always had I reason. I was injured or I was pacing someone else, or I had signed up for the race but decided to use it as a training run instead.

That was not the case Saturday morning.

Mellew Productions is a terrible race company.

I’m not going to pull punches on this one. I’m mad about the way the race was put on and that I didn’t get the 5km race that was advertised. I signed up for the Hypnotic Donut Dash back in October when I was tapering for the DRC Half. I was scared I was going to have a horrible half marathon and wanted a couple of 5ks to look forward to if that happened. Those races were the fantastic Speedway Candy Cane Classic from Cowtown and Mellew’s Hypnotic Donut Dash.

The Speedway Classic was challenging and the weather was horrible, but it was still a great race. I will sign up for that race again this year with no hesitation. Everything about it was well done. I had specific parking and stadium entrance instructions the day before, the charity aspect was better implemented (and probably received more money from the race), and more importantly, the course was actually 5km.

The 2017 Hypnotic Donut Dash 5K was somewhere between 2.96 and 3.0 miles, according to the Strava Flybys and the other finishers I talked to at the finish line. For $30, I expect a for-profit company make the race the actual distance advertised. The DRC gets all of their courses USATF certified, and they’re a non-profit that’s entirely volunteer-run. Cowtown did the same, at least for the Candy Cane Classic. But a for-profit company whose only purpose is to put on races can’t even get the distance right?

On top of the course being short, it had entirely too many sharp turns. I managed to wing a better course that was actually 5km on my cool down than the organizers of the race did. Mellew Productions also managed to not send race day information to a huge number of participants, as evidenced by the number of cars in the caravan I was part of as we were trying to figure out which entrance we were actually allowed to use to get into Fair Park.

When I asked the race directors to send me the race information on the morning of the race, they said they couldn’t and directed me to the website, which contained no parking or entrance information. I told them that, and they told me that I wouldn’t be able to miss the signs and to follow the cars. Funny, I didn’t see any signs, and I followed the cars to different gates for fifteen minutes before we got to the right one.

Aside from a bad race experience, I raced badly.

On top of Mellew’s terrible race production, I raced badly myself. I went out too fast, knew I was toast after a mile and a half. My 21:26 for 2.98 miles still doesn’t work out to a sub-22, despite cool temperatures, clear skies and relatively okay wind.

I would probably be less upset about the course if I had been on track to break 22 based on this finishing time. I may or may not be fit enough to do it right now, but it wasn’t going to happen that day. That compounded how mad I was about the course being short.

So I fumed during my cool down. And I fumed while I was putting my shirt and Bislett pants on by bag check. I paused the fuming while the little girls were getting their age group trophies because they were absolutely adorable. I resumed my fuming on the way home, where I wrote up a race report for the Advanced Running subreddit.

As people started commenting, I stopped fuming. We started looking to how my performance improve between today and the DRC 5K next weekend. I got ideas. As I got to *identifying the problem*, I started running out of fumes. I started thinking about how I can use the next week to maximize the chance of me breaking 22 minutes on Saturday. I stopped being mad about this crappy race was and started getting excited about this week’s chances.

So that’s the key for me. I get to fume and mope for a little bit, but after that, what makes me get over a bad race is attacking the race and finding out what happened. And it really helps to talk to people about it and get their ideas on my race. I’m so glad I can always get feedback from such a great, knowledgeable group of people.

Looking ahead

So this week, I’m going start using visualization during my training runs. I’m going to make sure to throw a few strides in near the end of the week. My fellow meese led me to realize I needed to work on my mental game and really focus on pacing. My last few 5Ks have been solidly positive splits, and that’s got to change. I’m also thinking about not using my heart rate monitor. As much as I love the data, I have to admit that it does impede my breathing just slightly, and that’s not worth the data.

My legs were pretty wrecked after that race weekend – in addition to racing, I tacked on some near-LT pace miles at the end of my 10 mile long run. It’s Thursday morning and I’m just now shaking the legular fatigue. I’m going to throw some strides in this afternoon’s run and do a quick shakeout tomorrow and then it’s race day again.