I remember a race I did back in April of 2017 - the Backbones 5K - held in Prospect Heights, IL. At the time, I was still in the early stages of figuring out my running routine; still doing a lot of reading and experimentation; not quite comfortable with the idea of thinking of myself as a runner. I had no particular tie to that race’s organizers or pet cause - I really just wanted to get in some quality running while visiting my mom.

Let me briefly summarize my mother

She was born in 1951 in Pusan/Busan, South Korea. For anyone not in the know, the Korean War was in full swing by the time my mom was born. Also, my maternal grandmother was nursing a terminally ill husband and a three year old son, and couldn’t breast feed because of complications with her own health. It was a total shit situation, which left my mom in the predicament of spending the first few years of her life in a 24/7 knife-fight with death by way of starvation. Because of the war, most things that people really needed - like baby formula, rice, medicine - were not what you’d call easy to come by. So my grandmother fed my mom the glutinous runoff slurry from boiling rice to give her something, anything - just to keep her alive, hoping that if she didn’t die, it would toughen her up. My mom survived, but had a hard time walking until she was three years old. For the next 12 years of her life, she became a world class Macgyver at figuring out how to put food in her belly without getting sick, robbed, beaten up, stabbed, raped or murdered - in that order. He entire philosophy of food - what to eat, how long it can be left out before it goes bad, how fast you should eat, how much you should store, how much you should hide, etc. is based upon those years.

The night before my race

I made the mistake of showing up to my mom's apartment hungry - right around 7:00pm. She had several pounds of hormone-injected cow meat ready for me, along with a large bowl of white rice and some salad. I ate about 2-3 pounds of cow, several bowls of rice, and then went to sleep without having taken a dump.

The morning of the race

At 6am, I woke up, went to the bathroom, and forced something the size of a small meatball out of my ass at high speed. It felt like passing a little meteorite, which reminded me of Tundro, one of the Herculoids, from the old Hannah Barbera cartoon. Tundro was a triceratops-like-creature, who could shoot glowing explosive projectiles out of a tumescent forehead appendage that invoked a rhino horn, an elephant snout, and a dildo (simultaneously).

After I flushed down the meatball, I ate a quick breakfast. Some people think this is a big mistake. For me, running at high intensity on an empty stomach in the morning - even for extremely short distances like 3 miles - causes my performance to drop off a cliff. So for a couple years, I stuck to a simple routine of eating about a quarter or an eighth of a meal a few hours before a race to prevent this from happening. My mom had already been up for at least half an hour, and had prepared a half pot of coffee, two fried eggs and two semi-burnt Jewel Osco sesame seed bagels. I wolfed down one of the eggs, a half bagel with a splash of hot sauce, and a cup of black coffee.

Let me now share a theory with no basis in science to explore why I’m so skittish about running while hungry. When you are the child of a person who has been malnourished for most or all of their childhood, it doesn’t matter if you were born in a state of the art hospital (I was not). Somewhere, deep down on a molecular level, the memory of that hunger lives in you. You walk around with the ghosts of that food trauma your entire life, and as a result, all of your small and large judgements concerning food will pass through the prism of that other person’s suffering. As a young boy, and later a man, I have always eaten fast. I never stopped to question why - just accepted it as a de facto truth. In the army, people were astonished that my natural speed of eating blew right past the expectations of drill sergeants. My buddies hated ordering pizza with me because they all knew I could easily finish an entire pizza myself before any of them could finish 2 pieces. I attribute that outlier behavior to my mother’s experiences.

Pre-Race Prep

I dressed in shorts, running tights, a t-shirt, a thermal top layer, and a rain layer. I also wore a hat - the black weather proof one I got from the Richmond Anthem half marathon last November. By 7, we were headed downstairs, out to the parking lot, and into my rental car - a white compact SUV with hardened plastic insides and paper-thin upholstered seats. We drove one mile away to the Dunkin Donuts on Wagner Road where I ordered a large black Dunkin Donuts coffee, along with a 16 ounce bottle of Fiji water. My mom and I sat down for 15 minutes or so, then drove to the race start, which was only a couple miles away.

After I parked, we sat in the car. I tilted my seat back and mentally rehearsed my mile splits, occasionally dishing out some level one chit chat with my mom. She sat in the passenger side seat, looking forward, with her purse on her lap. She spoke slowly, thoughtfully. Like she was determined not to make any pronunciation or grammar mistakes.

“How do you feel? Do you think you’ll do well today?”

“I’m good. I just want to get in some training miles while I’m here.”

“Good, good - do you think you’ll know anybody there?”

“I don’t think so.” but I thought about this, and amended my answer: “Maybe. Probably not anyone from high school, but maybe someone from college.”

Rain

The evening before the race, I noticed the rain was not letting up. In fact, I had received an email from the race organizers a few days earlier, indicating that they might need to cancel out of safety concerns. As it turned out, the rain halted to a light on-and-off drizzle. 

The Course

We started the first leg of the race down what seemed like the service road of a major highway. I was behind the same guy from the time the gun went off, until about mile one. I realized he was probably not pacing himself properly, and based on my confidence that I was indeed holding back for the first mile, I passed him as soon as mile two began. I later learned that that guy’s name was Mike Burns, and that he's a retired 61 year old fire fighter.

AFTER THE RACE

I had dinner with my mom at Martin's family's restaurant in Harwood Heights. It was a meal of fajitas and tacos with a non-alcoholic beer. Afterwards, Martin and I split off to head to a place called Curragh's, located in the newly remodeled Glenview Naval Air Station. We stayed up until 2am. I went to bed absolutely exhausted.

WHAT I LEARNED

• Quality REST before a race is important

• Running 5K's well is something you really need to train for. Specifically. My endurance has improved, but my speed has gone to s***. Developing endurance and speed are actually 2 different training objectives. If you have speed, and don’t polish it, you’ll lose it. Same goes with endurance.

• Be scientific about pre-race nutrition, don’t wing it, and don’t ever deviate from a proven regimen. Oh yeah, and certainly do not leave it in the hands of a person who spent their childhood in alternating intensities of malnourishment. For me, my best races involve…

  • 1 cup (or less) of black coffee

  • 1/2 bagel or 1/4 cup of oatmeal + 1/2 egg eaten 2 hours in advance

  • 8oz or less of water (you better hydrate the night before!)

• Resist the urge to go fast right out of the gate. Several people who bolted ahead of me during the first mile wound up finishing several minutes after me - and this is not an aberration from the norm. First-time racers and children do this all the time

• Quality REST after a race is THE MOST important