Lent & Westchester 50K Run Success!!!
Race Report: Lent & Westchester 50K Run Success!!!
Westchester, CA
The last 45 days I’ve been processing through the season of Lent which transitions tomorrow with Easter Sunday. This season has been very different than every other year I’ve ever experienced in my life and likely one of the largest transitions we’ve gone through in the world in our lifetime.
Today was my fifth ultra-endurance event in less than six weeks. All of these events took place during that 45-day window. Starting with two back-to-back 200-mile cycling races in Death Valley, followed by the last organized race I will likely see for most of the year ahead, the Joshua Tree 200-mile ride. Then I completed a 200k cycling ride around Westchester and the surrounding community, had an attempted 50K run which I wasn’t feeling it with all the changes going on in the world around me, and then this morning feeling comfortable heading out again for an early event.
For the first time ever, I practiced a completely vegetarian diet for Lent, doing my best to keep it as plant-centric as possible. It’s been a very positive experience. Although we are transitioning as a family back to our normal diet tomorrow, I didn’t feel like the vegetarian diet hindered my athletic or mental performance during this season. In fact, I had new personal records (PR’s) of pushups in a day – 2,000, pull-up’s in a day – 200, completed 20 pull ups in a row, and managed to drop off an extra 5 pounds that I’ve been trying to chisel off for the last six months. I also participated in intermittent fasting for a week and had a better experience than my last attempt because of minimizing my food intake during the 8 hour window per day that I was eating (10am – 6pm). With the “Stay at Home” orders due to the COVID – 19 situations I am also on Day 23 of the “Camino Westchester” and my wife Kristin and myself have pushed Hudson and Kalea over 120 miles in that time through our local neighborhoods on our daily adventure and usually nap.
The 31-mile (50K) run this morning was actually pretty uneventful which is a nice way to experience a long distance run. I met up with Jay, one of my training partners, at 4:00am at my house and we jogged next to each other for the entire distance “at an appropriate social distance”. We started with a 5-minute warm up walk, headed down Manchester Blvd. and then got down to the waterfront road and took a left heading on the main drag down the coastline. We stayed on the main road which we shared periodically with the cyclists cruising by and turned around just past Manhattan Beach to make our way home. Our tempo was a 4-minute jog, one minute walk pattern which we kept up all the way to the marathon distance near LAX which we hit right at 4 hours and 45 minutes. We had four small stops which we limited to an extra few minutes each along the way to get into our running packs and keep ourselves in optimal running condition.
After the marathon mark I suggested we switch to a jog 3 walk 2 minute pattern and we kept this up for the last five miles of the course. We made our way along the airport perimeter and then took the very familiar turn up Westchester parkway for the last few miles back home. Our final time for the thirty-one mile run as we approached the house was 5 hours and forty-two minutes which I realized was a new personal best for that particular distance! I’ve never run extra miles after a fast marathon, and Jay was about as steady and consistent as you can be for the first 50K race of his life and moving him into the ultra-endurance runner category!
The journey through Lent has been a very intense season for the world. The DeCou family is doing our best on a daily basis to do all that we are able within the ever changing guidelines in this time, reaching out to family, friends, and our communities we are a part of. As much as it has been added uncertainty and a complete shift to our routine, we’ve found continued joy in our young children, daily adventures close to home, pushing our passions, and a renewed intensity to podcasting, video conferencing, and a bit of reading and art work when we can make some limited time between connecting with the kiddos.
As we continue to push forward into the unknown circumstances in our future we chose to make the most of this time. It isn’t easy, and it doesn’t always have to be pretty or glamorous, but I can’t imagine another season of life where I’ll have the depth of time and ability to focus attention on my family and daily routines.
I encourage each of you to take advantage of this season of life, push off your anxieties, worries, and fears and focus on the community and activities that are encouraged during this season as we reposition ourselves into the post-quarantine version of ourselves when we resume a new normal at some point in the future.