Post-Race

As you know this weekend I competed in the Run for Retina Half Marathon. If you read my last post you would have seen I was fearing the unknown due to a few injuries - especially my achilles tendonitis  - that had crept up earlier in the week. In fact, between Wednesday morning's run and the 9:15am race start on the Sunday I had not run due to the injury. Although I was doing other things like biking and swimming to keep myself somewhat relaxed and to keep my muscles from turning into sludge, three whole days off running. That is the longest break from running I have had since June 1st of last year when I take about 9 days off running due to a flare up of my reoccurring shin problems (stress fracture). Going into this race I had thought there were not going to be many fast runners however a few runners from the University of Western Cross Country Team showed up. I asked one before the race what time they were aiming for and the guy said that a few weeks ago in the Chilly Half in Burlington he ran 1:10 - gulp!

Getting ready to go and feeling very nervous.

The gun suddenly went and we were off. The adrenaline seemed to help some of the pain - but I'm not going to say I was pain free as I was clearly favoring that leg and running with a bit of a limp. Surprisingly at about 0.5k I was in the lead for about 2 minutes when the two guys from Western passed me. I tried to stay with them for as long as I could but I knew that the pace was too ambitious for myself so I settled down and let them go - however I did manage to keep them in sight. It wasn't advertised this way but the course was actually very hilly and after the first big one I lost sight of the two leaders. Felt odd during the race since there was about a 1:30 gap between me and the two leaders who were working together (teammates at western) and a 1:30 gap between me and the rest of the runners. So I was largely running on my own for the entire race. Some might say that it is never a good thing to be on your own during a race, but I don't mind it since that's how I do all my training and I am more than capable of pushing myself. At around 14 kilometers the leader dropped out (he went too fast at the start) - and I'm not going to lie, it inspired me to push harder. I closed the gap between myself and the leader to where he was about 40 seconds or so ago but unfortunately I just couldn't find that next gear to catch him. Still, I crushed my previous record for the half and ran a 1:13:56 for second overall. I was shocked that I was able to run that speed in a fair amount of pain - luckily afterwards the prize money and complementary massage made my leg feel a little better. 

Btw to clarify the lady there is in the 10k - so shes not beating me

So onto the mississauga half marathon in 2 and half weeks (May 5) hopefully I can beat this achilles injury before then, and manage to get a couple quality speed sessions along with a few LSD runs. If I manage to do that I don't see why on the largely flat course of Mississauga I can't go sub 1:13 or faster. If my training keeps progressing at this pace I think it may be time to start thinking about taking it to the next level finding a coach, and seeing what I am really capable of accomplishing in the half.