Most people, including myself, a lot of times consider the success of a race dependent on the finish time & place. There are some cases however, where I will still consider a race a success for other reasons. For example, the 10k race I ran on Sunday although it took me longer than I had anticipated and I didn’t place very well, I learned a lot of lessons from so I am still happy I did it and consider it a success! Here is my race report:
It was a warm day with an 8 am start and perfect day for running. I was happy to receive a visor and a mug versus the usual race t-shirt! The mug’s had gold, silver and gold writing on them, depending on the time you finished, was what determined the color mug you received. To receive a gold mug you needed to finish the race in 63 minutes which may sound like a lot but this race was all uphill with 1,400 ft vertical climb. Based on a past time of 1:11 in this race and the fact that I had been training a lot more for it this time and had a successful practice run on the course a few weeks before I thought for sure I’d hit this time. The first couple of miles I was right on target with 10 minute miles or a little less. Then at the third mile I slowed down by 30 seconds and noticed I was starting to feel a little funny. At about mile four is when it all hit me and I completely fell apart and from there to the end it was a struggle not to want to just call it 10k walk instead of run. I had horrible allergies (which I never have) and it was hard to breath with snot everywhere! Then my stomach started to rumble and I felt nauseous, and my legs were shot they were like jell-o and were refusing to come back to me! My tendonitis in my foot started yelling at me and the pain started to move up my leg. The last mile which is the steepest I ran into an old friend and as he passed me he mentioned “IFM” to me. I asked “what’s that?” he said “Inssessant Forward Motion” which became my mantra for the last mile and I finally crossed the finish line way into my anaerobic zone at 1:12:54. I was finisher 151/240 with an age group finish of 21/38. Turns out I qualified for the silver mug but I thought my time was so dismal I didn’t bother to check and just grabbed a bronze mug. P.S. this race is very well organized and tought out and is super fun I would recommend it to everyone who's up for a challenge!
Lessons learned:
You don’t need to “carb load” for a 10k!! I used my race as an excuse to eat an extra serving of spaghetti for dinner that night. It was homemade sauce and healthy but I ate so much that I was still full when I woke up the next morning, didn’t eat breakfast, and was burping spaghetti sauce during the race!! I know, I know duh!
Don’t do a heavy weightlifting session even if It’s 3 days before the race. At the gym on the Thursday before the race I was feeling so good that I did way more leg work than I normally do with forward and back lunges, side lunges, jumps, calf raises, leg presses and I was so sore that no matter what I did it wouldn’t go away and I had dead legs!
I might actually have to go see a doctor about my foot now that the pain is starting to radiate and stretching only helps for very short amounts of time.
Believe it or not I still had fun during this race and feel it at least counted as a good training run for my upcoming triathlon in May. My friend did awesome on her run with a 55 min. time and 3rd in our age group! I saw friends I hadn’t seen in a long time! I have a flat 10k race coming up in 2 weekends and hope to be better prepared! Loving getting back into shape and reconnecting with the running/triathlon community!
